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Enter your comments here…Hi,
I wanted to let you know (perhaps you can share this with your
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Hi
Below is a true story about a man who was mistaken as gay because of a misunderstanding of one word in a short conversation. He suffered 30 years of bullying, exclusion and violence yet not once did he tell his tormentors that he was not gay.
We are running an explosive promotion that can work only with a heartfelt effort by Lady Gaga’s fan sites. We need you to promote Rashomon by a mass email to your members and by displaying the saga on your site if possible. We have put a post in our little monsters forum directing Lady Gaga’s fans to your site.
It’s time to stop bullying, homophobia and hatred. Become part of Lady Gaga’s team by doing your part for the underdog.
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UMSG
.
ps
Rashomon is a 1960 Japanese movie showing different perspectives on a heinous crime.
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This is the true story of a man who was mistaken as gay for 30 years.
Malicious lies were told of him and he was ostracized from his society. He collected his tormentors lies and misdeeds until the day that he would take his revenge simply by reveling the personal secret that each hid in shame. This is that day.
Each actor in this play can confirm only their part in this ridiculous saga, which can be seen true as a whole only after all of the pieces have been proven on their face.
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First Contact: Gordy McLelland
Gordy hired a hooker to be the nanny for his 3 children while his wife was away for 2 weeks. He had the hooker parade half naked for 100 basketball players and several sworn officers of the law. story below.
email: gmclennan@newtonfallsfp.com
Employer: Newton Falls Fine Print who seem to be having some trouble with mill closings
Work Tel: (315) 848-2406
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Rashomon
This is the chronicle of a series of unfortunate events that resulted from the miscommunication of not one sentence but one word with fallout affecting my life even 30 years later. Every word is true, from my perspective, and verifiable by the people named below.
I ask you to email this story to 10 friends and ask each to do the same, in the hope that someday this letter will end up in the mailbox of one of the protagonists and that they will search out the others to confirm my tale of woe.
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“the tragic or the humorous is a matter of perspective” Arnold Beisser
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The Tale Of Mr Poo Hands
My platonic friend Colin MacDonald liked an attractive girl at his work and was making his moves for a date when a new good looking male employee was hired. Colin’s object of affection was wooed and word got around the office that she wanted the new guy to ask her out for a date.
Realizing that his window of opportunity between the boyfriend and friend zones was quickly closing Colin concocted a daring last ditch plan to put up a cock block. Colin waited for the new guy to go to the bathroom and then followed him in. After they both washed and dried their hands at the same time Colin followed him out then made a horrendously disgusted face behind his back, in the direction of a couple of coworkers.
“He went in the stall for a shit and then walked right out of the bathroom without washing his hands, it was disgusting! I am never touching anything that he’s picked up and I’m going to watch him so I’m sure. Mr Poo Hands!”
And that was it, all that it took.
Once the rumor is spoken twice it becomes a fact that would follow the new guy through his job and life outside of the office for the rest of his life: “Don’t shake hands with him, he’s Mr Poo Haaands! He gets shit on his hands and doesn’t wash after going to the toilet! The guy is fucking disgusting!”
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I look back on my life not as a continuous stream of time but in moments, instants in time that can alter the course of a life forever. A loved one dying, being told that you have cancer. One second – one word – of miscommunication that can turn the course of a life forever. After that instant in time nothing is ever the same again, like walking through the looking glass.
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Tracey Bowie (aka Smiley): The Love Of My Life
I met Tracey when I was a councilor at a UPEI summer basket ball camp which she attended as a player. I was immediately smitten but according to the unwritten camp councilor honor system suggestions one does not approach romantically the players. So each time I was laying beside some girl that I had drunkenly picked up at Gentleman Jim’s bar that week I thought – “When this camp is over …. “
A few days after returning to UPEI for the fall semester I broke up with my long time girlfriend Jen to go out with Tracey. I wanted Tracey to feel valued and for her father (ex RCM Po-lease who might have shot me) not to think that I was just going to ravish their teenage daughter, so I thought that I’d wait a week before getting to the ravishing.
7. Whole. Days.
Tracey and I were together for 4 days, the happiest 4 days of my life. Then she jumped ship and landed on the virile Jimmy Dowe of the Charlottetown Rural boys basketball team. She was rumored to say about me: “It was like going out with my brother Trevor, a girl has to get some action.”
So I took Jen back, who had lost 23 lbs starving herself over the 4 days Tracey and I were together. I knew that Jen must’ve been really happy going out with me because no matter how poorly I treated her or how many times I broke up with her or how many times I cheated on her – she always found her way back to me to apologize. And then put the weight back on nicely.
I knew that Jen would always treat me fairly when speaking to others.
I tried to set Jen up with my platonic teammate Ron Valentine, sitting Jen beside Ron at team gatherings. Nothing happened and I think that Ron thought that I might kill him out of spite.
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Mike “Bunny” Morgan: Alpha Male of the shower stalls
Mike reminded me of a velociraptor – great big legs with skinny little arms and upper body. He always jumped off two feet and had an incredible move for getting open to get his shot off. He would jump off two feet and land on both feet about 3 feet to the side where he’d launch himself with another bunny hop and sink a great 10’ jumper.
I thought that Mike would be great at breaking a full court press, he could jump around like in a Mario Brothers video game, turning sideways for two jumps to get around the defense then turning back to the basket and hopping away to the Mario Brothers music.
As amazed as I was with Mike’s bunny hop prowess I was equally amazed that this move was legal under CIAU rules. But Mike went on to be an All Canadian player while I played in the Pedicodiac River Valley men’s winter basketball league so what the fuck do I know.
Mike had a peculiar habit in the showers after practice, he would walk into one of the two occupied stalls and pivot his hips back and forth to swing his ample penis while trying to hit his opponent on the hips or the buttocks. Mike’s penis had been named The Weapon by Ayon, which told me more about Ayon than I could see about Mike. All of the players would cheer on their favorite in a one sided battle which usually included Mike and Curtis:
Curtis: “AAAAAHHHH! GIT AWAY FROM ME MIKE! DON’T TOUCH ME O LORD JESUS SAVE ME!”
“GIT HIM MIKE!”
“GIT UNDER ‘IM AND BUNNY HOP ‘IM MIKE!”
“LOOK OUT CURTIS, HE’S GOING TO CORNER YOU!”
This was the first time that I had seen a naked black man climb a sheer wall and hang from the celling.
I was somewhat concerned as I had watched enough prison movies to know what happens to pretty white boys who showered with 11 black men. But I wanted to give them a chance, to really learn the inner city culture and to understand my teammates from their perspective.
After weeks of observation and analysis of this dance I finally realized my mistake: these guys weren’t butt pirates, this was some kind of inner city shower ritual that ensured the alpha males a warm shower where hot water is a limited resource. How could I have thought these guys were fags when all they were doing was slapping their dicks against each other’s hips and ass in the shower stalls then chasing each other around the dressing room naked to the cheers of the rest of the team?
I now understood why Ron would tilt his head 15 degrees to the side and shake it back and forth while he grimaced at the spectacle. Ron didn’t think that Curtis was about to have sex that the rest of us had no business watching, Ron was thinking: “Damn! My nigga’ Curtis be git’n schoo’ed! Be cold showers again t’night.”
I was glad that I had taken the time to understand some of what it is to a black inner city ball player and that I didn’t ruin our blooming friendships but I had my grades to consider so I moved to a different residence where I could have a single room and shower behind a locked door with all the hots water I wants.
I figured that I would save a lot of time, what without all the shower bustling and penis namings, that I could devote to drinking until I could no longer remember the day’s practice.
Instants In Time
I was taking Psychology 101 from a 40 something professor who was still cool because he smoked pot. We had an open discussion on Anal Retentive Behavior and I had to admit that I was myself obsessing on details and I had to relax a bit. The professor also joked that “Anal Retentive” could be shortened to just “Anal” and we all had a great laugh and were smug in our new found knowledge.
After class I was walking toward my fortified dorm room when I crossed paths with Mike outside of the engineering building. Mike was an always friendly, warm and smiling guy and chirped out a “How ya doing!” as we approached with each other and I replied “I’m stuck in the Anal stage Mike.”
For some reason Mike didn’t laugh and his face was frozen with his mouth fully open and I deduced that Mike did not know what Anal meant.
The term anal-retentive (also anally retentive), commonly abbreviated to anal,[1] is used conversationally to describe a person who pays such attention to detail that the obsession becomes an annoyance to others, potentially to the detriment of the anal-retentive person. The term derives from Freudian psychoanalysis
My first thought was “Don’t embarrass Mike!” about his poor vocabulary. Mike was a product of UPEI’s infamous “You’re accepted if you pass your first year” enrollment policy which afforded 11 of our 12 players a chance to earn a good education for a year.
So I cut the conversation short, said bye and turned to walk away as Mike remained frozen in place, mouth still drop jaw open and his face showing a mixture of horror, terror and disgust in varying proportions.
It wasn’t until I took my third step that I realized that Mike did indeed know what Anal meant. I felt a chill sweat travel through my body and I couldn’t remember what I was suppose to be doing and finally realized that I’m a breathing animal and I had to pull air in and push it out of my lungs via my mouth.
This was one of those instants in time in which nothing was the same after as it was before and the consequence of this short greeting would certainly affect the course of my life forever.
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Ayon Pettigrew (sexual predator) – the only black man to earn the title “Poor White Trash Lazy”
Some people thought that Ayon was slimy because he took the time to carefully plan a peep hole between the men’s and women’s basketball change rooms. Ayon worked the equipment cage at night and used his time to drill a hole through both plaster board walls with a pen. But not just a straight line of sight to the opposite wall as one might think. Ayon took the time to measure the holes’ angles to give a line of sight straight through the two holes to the middle of the girls dressing room. This was the most enthusiasm and work Ayon showed as both a basketball player and student while at UPEI.
Other people thought that Ayon was slimy because he’d tape record young girls during sex then try to get them to say that he was good, then play the recordings for the team to hear while wearing his teeth together shit eater grin. “eeeyeahaaa” was a sound that I would hear once too often in the coming months.
Still other people thought that Ayon was slimy because he had a penchant for driving other peoples’ cars, and yet once again Ayon was misunderstood. You see what had happened, and what Ayon freely told the Po-lease, was that Ayon had rented the car for a week from a black guy on a street corner and there was no paper work because the black guy didn’t want to pay tax on the income.
Personally I was amazed that any black man could earn an income by renting their $75,000 luxury car from a street corner to strangers without asking for paper work or a driver’s license.
Unfortunately for Ayon the “a black guy on a street corner” defense only works for white people and I’ve always wanted to ask Ayon if was better to give a blow job or take it up the ass while in lockup.
The very best that I can say about Ayon is that he was the absolute worst university basketball player that I have ever seen. Ayon was a 5’9” guard who could not dribble twice in a row with his left hand. He could not move side to side while dribbling with his right and could only go straight ahead after revving up for 2 seconds, his tell. Ayon could neither sink a 15 footer nor a left hand layup and was sketchy at best when defended on the right. He could only pass to an open stationary man and could not remember the simplest of offensive plays, often blaming his missteps on the defense. Coach Hilton openly called him “The Excuse Man”.
How did this happen? Who was to blame?
Certainly not Coach Hilton who had inherited the team intact as the interim coach. Cutting Ayon from the team would be the pleasure of the new full time coach the following year.
Certainly not assistant coach Courtney Betty who had somehow learned how to put Ayon out of his head during his previous year as a player.
And perhaps not even the stately Coach David Nutbrown who had recruited Ayon as a 31 year old working part time in a Mr Sneaker outlet. It was actually the strain of coaching Ayon that was the catalyst for Dave’s decent into madness until finally Nutsy was banished to a locked gym at Acadia University, never again to enjoy the red sands of Prince Edward Island.
The first day of pick up I was playing defense on Ayon when he pretended a two handed pass over my head and when I turned around to follow the pass Ayon pulled the ball back over my head. When I turned back Ayon, still holding the ball above his head with 2 hands, fashioned his best shit eater grin and through clenched teeth and said “eeeyeahaaa”.
I thought “Huh, they do that in university ball?” I quickly made a devilish plan and the very next time up the floor when Ayon faked his pass again I put both arms straight up in the air, stood up and walked backwards, knocking the ball from Ayon’s hands. I turned to pick up the ball and passed it to Billy Redman so he could do some kind of Larry Bird thing and I could learn something about basketball from the day.
Confident that I had seen Ayon’s entire repertoire I was awed when he adapted so quickly. Instead of faking the pass Ayon would still hold the ball with two hands but was now moving the ball to the back of his head and bending forward at the waist while looking me in the eyes. “eeeyeahaaa”.
Out foxed I retired to my own private dorm room (now named Masada), showered, then set about my nightly ritual of spending an hour meditating on the day’s hoops, from the change in temperature between the outer and inner gym doors to my escape from shower bustling after practice.
I came up with a move that would later evolve into a rebound steal that won me so many friends among forwards in the Moncton Beer League (MBL). When Ayon took the ball up and back I would put my hand by Ayon’s forehead, palm away from head. When he brought the ball forward, which he had to do at some time, I would flick my wrist and knock the ball out of Ayon’s hands, pick up the ball, pass to Billy. I practiced the move in my room that night then again the next day in the gym during my 2 hour pre practice practice. I was ready.
Fortuned smiled upon me that day as my defensive move worked one hundred percent of the time. I thought that I was the cat’s meow until my physics professor told me that mater cannot occupy the same space with other mater so my ploy was about as complicated as dropping a coin in a gum ball machine. She was Asian so I figured that she knew what she was talking about and I was humbled.
As time went on I saw that no one was going to do anything about Ayon so I decided to blind him.
The next practice Ayon went into his regular “eeeyeahaaa” routine and I moved my right hand from it’s usual forehead high to chin high, palm up. When Ayon bent at the waist I drove the middle finger of my right hand into his left eye socket up to the second knuckle, using Ayon’s own forward momentum against himself. He only got to “ee …”. I thought that that ought to do it but when Ayon’s skull slowly feel off my finger and onto the floor I noticed that there was no blood or eye juice and I knew that couldn’t be good.
I’m not sure how long Ayon was out of practice but as the maxim goes: a minute is an instant in the arms of a beautiful woman but an eternity over a flame. Ayon was gone but for an instant and back for what seemed an eternity.
For all this Ayon might have been my best friend on the team. After I became Mr Poo Hand’s Ayon tried to set me up with teammate Evan Forbes by telling me that Evan said that I was rugged. I always meant to thank Evan for the compliment but I’d have to hurt his feelings by telling him “Sorry man, I’m not gay.”
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Down Town Curtis Brown: The King Of Smooth
I have never had nor will I ever have anything but good to say about The King. Like his soulmate Ron, Curtis was always a gentleman’s gentleman.
There were 3 distinct situations on the court in which all eyes had to be on Curtis and this was when he was at his best, a showman.
The first is when Curtis ran fast down the left side of the court, catching the ball and changed direction 90 degrees, getting 30” off the ground in a quarter second. Perfect form jumper from 25 feet that hits nothing but net.
The second was when he did his run from the left side dribbling right handed, turn sideways jump and dunk with his right hand over his head as he floats towards the baseline.
And the third and most important of course was to do his pretend defensive slide back below our foul line extended after completing one or two, palms out chest high, eyes bulged, lips pursed and looking straight ahead into nothing while not breathing.
I needed a test subject and Curtis was it, easily the fastest runner from free throw line to free throw line on the team. But how could I use my knowledge of Curtis’ game for the advantage of all humanity?
Earlier that day I walked by a TV that showed two guys running into each other full speed then flying backwards about 10’. “No way!” Little did I know they wore wires to pull the runners backwards and no one bothered to tell me. This was an invitation to disaster.
As the team warmed up for post season scrimmage I tossed the ball in the general direction of the hoop while I scanned the team with my peripheral vision, judging Curtis’ energy level for the day. I had decided that the only way to get Curtis to terminal velocity while looking up was to create an open court loose ball situation that could quickly develop into a sideways dunk if Curtis picked off the loose ball in time, a rare pleasure.
I read the play like a book and I reached my maximum speed just before Curtis redirected his momentum to jump upward for the loose ball. Terminal velocity! Criss Cross!
I was shocked when my experiment didn’t produce results anything like those on TV. My eye’s flashed white and my left arm was numb and I had a pain in the left side of my chest. I circled Curtis’ prone body counter clockwise, opening and closing my left fist to work out the numbness in the arm. My left lung was paralyzed too so I had to suck in air though clenched teeth and snort it out though my nose in what must have sounded like an angry predator snarling as it circled it’s downed prey because our team mates formed a semi circle about 4 feet out from my circling radius and watched Curtis wondering if he was going to die.
What hurt me more that the crushing realization that I’d never breath normally again was my fear that Curtis would be depressed by our failure. But as Curtis had always been there for me in the past he came through big this time with his best William Shatner in The Wrath of Khan, reaching from death’s door as Curtis reached up from the floor: “K’all! K’all!” (You have to say each syllable with one outward breath, like you’re coughing the word, the last sentence all in one breath, start again) “K’all! K’all! I’m going to kill you K’all!”
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Doris MacPhee: Jesus’ roll model
Doris was a cute little girl with nothing upstairs, neither in her chest nor her mind. I helped her through a relatively simple finance class taught by professor Bob Rorak. The 3 segments of this crippling business course were simple linear algorithms so I thought the tutoring would be easy. Have you ever spent your night with a female Scooter?
Doris repaid me for my kindness one night by yelling to me “We’re going to pick up some guys, wanna come?”, then enjoying a good laugh with her clique A true catholic if ever there was one. I followed Doris to church one day to see what that might get me and Father Pete said “Good for you, I knew that you’d come to us eventually.”
Doris hopped groups for the final project of the degree so she could bask in the holiness of an all heterosexual group, just as Jesus would do. So to fuck with her tiny mind I told her that I was going to get an 80 on the course then got exactly that. I did George the same way after I got tired of class and flunked 4 of 5 courses just because I refused to be bullied into writing exams. I told George not to worry about it, that I’d make the dean’s list next semester. Which I did to the decimal point and zeros over 5 classes.
I met Doris for the last time at a women’s alumni basketball game, I asked her when she played next, that I’d come watch the game. Doris replied:
“No don’t come.”
I was denied yet again.
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Ria and Paula: A most unfortunate sequence of events
I had been working on the north shore of PEI for the summer, running a shock and awe campaign from my latest travesty of business. When I went back to UPEI I dropped by the gym and met 2 of the most beautiful young ladies that I had seen in some time, Ria and Paula.
We talked and got to know each other a bit, but I was in a rocky relationship with a girlfriend who would later become my wife, the mother of my only child, and soon after my ex wife. I had acquired the most perplexing habit of not cheating on girlfriends, which I would regret for years. I could never ask out either Paula or Ria until I was single. Code.
Later that weekend I made my way back to the gym, hoping that I wouldn’t have to pick between my two new friends. I walked up to the equipment room smiling a “Hi” at my best buddies and they stared at me unspeaking, a disgusted look on both faces. I had been at the beach all sumer and hadn’t thought about him for even an instant but I was once again Mr Poo Hands.
A few years later I brought a couple of players from Dalhousie and Acadia University to an Island tournament, 2 excellent young men: Reggie Obletay and Dave. I picked them up in Halifax as neither had a car and we chatted during the 6 hour drive at night because of the white out snow storm. They crashed at my place, we played some afternoon hoops the next day, then headed to the tournament becoming fast friends. After our Friday night game we all headed to Smiley’s bar and got blind drunk. Reggie and Ria made friends and I was happy for them because they were both great people.
The next morning I was in the change room when Reggie came in glaring at the floor. I said “Hi” and Reggie glared at me without speaking, looking like he’d lash out at me if he dared. The term “Tough Basketball Player” is an oxymoron, sure I’ll always have Rodman and Charles Barkley but where is the love in today’s NBA?
Perhaps the last time I shot hoops in the old UPEI gym was the same last time that I saw Mike Morgan. It was early in the fall, before the allowed preseason when it was still illegal, under CIAU rules for a coach to be in the gym with the players. I remember this because Coach George Morrison walked the length of the gym to Mike and said “Go tell that fucking cocksucker to get the fuck out of the gym!”
How do I know this? I had studied George when I was a player and his body convulsed when he swore and convulsed differently with different words. We had heard fuck, fucking and cocksucker enough to know the convulsion signs. If we wanted to look.
George’s first year as a coach was tough, he was rather new to basketball and the task before him was daunting. During his first year George asked me to come to his office to talk about co captains. This didn’t concern me as my ex roommate and good friend TJ Allean was the team leader and captain and the other position was merely a sign of respect, as was George’s talking to me about the mater as he had already decided to go with Mike and TJ. I could use the time saved from pretending to listen to the referees at half court before tipoff to meditate until I no longer heard George’s voice and could finally think about the upcoming game.
George asked me who I would pick as co captains, I wanted to make him work a bit so I said that TJ and I were the only ones I’d pick. George said “So would I but black players only respect superior athletic ability.” to which I replied “Then you have to go with Mike.” who surpassed me both in athletics and social hierarchy centered around their hive of rooms at the residence. Mike was the correct choice for the team. I said goodbye and left through the side door to avoid being pulled into any wayward shower bustling. Verbatim.
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Years later, while training in UFC style fighting with my good friend and wrestling coach Tony Cecchine (Catch Wrestling) and my boxing sparring partner and good friend Mark Adams (Canadian pro boxing champion, 7 national titles) that I learned just how fragile a human life is and I therefore trained my club to respect life by following the maxim “If you break your toys you’ve got nothing to play with.” I would often enunciate that rule by randomly smashing my teammates with a broom stick while they sparred, screaming orders that even I did not understand. Platonic brotherly love.
Scortched Earth
I think back about Mike from time to time and one of my painful regrets in life was that I didn’t reach out with one hand and crush his windpipe like a vacuum cleaner hose then walk away while he died. As Prince Edward Island has Canada’s longest standing “Blacks can’t own land” law the homicide would be labeled “suicide by self throat strangulation”. If anyone ever tied me to the corpse I could used Prince Edward Island’s “The black man came at me” defense. Now my only respite from regret lies in the prayer:
So long as we draw breath there is hope.
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Raymond Burns: Dreams of young boys naked and covered in maple syrup.
I did some house painting during the summers when I was in University and hired Ray and two other junior high kids to do tasks that I didn’t want to do, mostly painting. I paid them by how high they’d climb a ladder, Ray made $20 on a good week and he wasn’t the lowest paid painter on the crew.
When I moved back to my home town after being away for a few years I saw this old guy with thinning male baldness pattern hair and bulging gut that looked like Ray and I wondered if it was his father. It was Ray. The ball players around town called him “Mr Burns” – not as a sign of respect, rather that his personality’s resemblance to the Simpson’s character.
The first time I went to a gym that year Ray was coaching a junior high girls team, another invitation to disaster. My exotically beautiful yet platonic friend Krista Harrison told me that Ray had told all of his players when they looked my way to see who came in the gym “Don’t bother with him, he’s gay.” Thank you Mike.
I let this slide as a gimme and took Ray on a few drive arounds after a girl would pick me up at a running event and we’d go to a casino hotel or go sailing, and at each place Ray would go off to a corner and sulk instead of picking up my routine as I had hoped. I was good to Ray, he had more problems than being physically disgusting.
Krista and I played on the same summer basket ball team, I taught her how to yell at people while playing and she fed me raw gossip from our basketball circuit. The latest news from Ray was that I was stalking Krista and I thanked her for the heads up.
This was the last straw for Ray who I screamed at incoherently. As if Mr Poo Hands wasn’t enough. Ray got me later by saying that I took a girl from the high school basketball team, who had an incredible ass, sailing for an afternoon. If only.
The last I’d heard about Ray was from a newspaper when he had a misunderstanding with the law similar to Ayon’s. As with Ayon, Ray was not to blame, it was a simple misunderstanding of a couple of points in a couple statutes. Regrettable Ray must now inform his neighbors each time he moves and cannot live within 400 yards of a school.
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Scooter MacKay (AKA Tosk): Ritalin’s poster child
Scooter had never been closer to death than at this moment in time.
I heard no sound, through neither my ears nor my mind, and the entirety of the universe was focused on Scooter’s head on the floor below me.
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Scooter, Gordy and I were driving to some beer league outdoor half court tournament early one Saturday morning. I don’t like getting up early for any reason, let alone for a game on pavement and with clanky rims. I was tired, I was sick to my stomach and I just didn’t want to be there and only did so I could laugh at Gordy and trip Scooter on asphalt. My eye balls were aching and Scooter was going to pay for it.
Gordy, as usual, was going on about some story he had stolen off the CBC radio earlier in the week while he was driving around selling paper or whatever the fuck he does. I remember this CBC story in particular because I had heard it two days before on the CBC radio and the caller didn’t sound anything like Gordy.
It seems that Imaginary Gordy and his university roommates would cook hotdogs in the same water all week and then on Friday they would make something disgusting like hotdog water soup or Kraft dinner or something. Pretty much exactly like the guy as the radio but with a different voice. Which was quite a coincidence once again.
Scooter was sitting in the middle of the van’s back seat, bouncing up and down with a ready question about cooking hot dogs in the same water day after day whenever Gordy slowed his story. True symbiosis.
My head was splitting, I was near insanity from playing with Scooter and Gordy and the only good thing in the entire tournament was watching Chris Roworth saunter down the key on defense then get his elbow above the rim and toss his opponent’s shot out of bounds. It was interesting to see a glimpse of the man who was before he crawled into the bottle.
I had made it though the day and was walking out of the gym with Scooter when he inexplicably jumped off his feet and put me in a flying head lock. I hadn’t had any headlock escape training at this time and with each moment my rage was increasing at an exponential rate, like the ever increasing tension in a fault line just before an earthquake.
The entire world disappeared, I grabbed Scooter by the balls to get him to let go of the headlock and brought my hand up into a hammer fist to pound Scooter’s head into 14 pieces of skull with brain mater and blood over much of the gym floor.
Why didn’t I kill him? Scooter scurried back so fast in horror that I thought that he was Curtis. A piece of floor opened between us and I knew that: not only would I not get the blood cleaned from the floor before discovery, Gordy would never let me take Scooter’s body in the Gordo Van.
And those two reasons are why Scooter McKay is alive today.
Why did I grab Scooters balls to get him to let go of the headlock, breaking the unwritten Bro rule?
1. It worked.
2. As there can be no pact between man and lion there can be no pact between Scooter and I.
To this day I regret not killing Scooter, it seems that I have a lot of regrets in life. I thought that maybe Scooter couldn’t be killed so I designed a series of experiments to test my hypothesis.
I don’t want to make it seem like Scooter and I didn’t have any good times in our platonic partnership, we had a great summer league team with only 7 players so we could get a good run in. We beat a team by 100 points because they disrespected us by bringing their girlfriends to the game. In fact we only lost one game all summer, to a group of 16 to 19 year old kids who had to drive in from a small community 90 minutes away in their borrowed parents’ cars. Good kids, played great and beating us was like going to Disney Land for them. Polite, well mannered and gracious in victory.
We walked silently to the car and I thought about the day’s game, where we went wrong. As I put on my seatbelt I realized that once again I had only Scooter to blame for our loss so out of pure spite I started my car and backed into the passenger’s side of the other team’s ride.
I took my time getting my insurance papers then slowly got out of the car, tilting chin to chest and looking at the kid as a predator stalking it’s prey. I slowly wrote out my insurance information without saying a word, stopping my writing every few digits to glare at the kid.
I held the insurance paper between the thumb and index finger of my right hand palm up, upper arm against my side so the kid had to take a half step forward and reach out to get the paper, all the time holding back his tears.
I got in my car without saying a word and turned left onto the street so Scooter and I could glare at their team as we drove by. The kid was now openly sobbing and still holding the insurance paper between thumb and forefinger of his left hand. I thought of calling the kid’s parents before he got home and telling them that the kid was doing donuts in the parking lot and hit my car but it seemed like overkill.
We’ve got our shower rituals too and Scooter and I were the alpha males of the parking lot. On any given day you couldn’t know if we were going to mediate parking disputes or make the players empty the gym and move theirs cars so we could park diagonally over the 8 spaces closest to the school.
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Scooter, Gordy, Pete and I were playing 2 on 2 at the Mt A University gym one Saturday afternoon and Scooter was screwing the pooch as usual. He wouldn’t play defense and was standing flat footed on the free throw line while checking the ball to me so I lit him up with a couple of 3s hoping to find some spark of dignity. What I found nearly cost Scooter his life once again.
Scooter started ticking my elbow to a side when I shot, he couldn’t get to the ball so he was screwin’ around. I called him on it and he gave me the “Oh you’re not going to call that are you?” So the next play I didn’t call it.
Scooter picked up the loose ball and stretched out his stride for an easy right hand layup. I stood up, flat footed and straight back, and as Scooter ran by me I reached my left arm straight out, picked him up by his chest and threw him backwards and down, bouncing the back of his head off the gym’s hardwood floor.
As I looked down at Scooter I was amazed at how peaceful he looked with his eyes shut and lying on the floor and I thought that he must be dead but suddenly Scooter jumped up and said “I’m out of here.” and left. Gordy turned to watched him walk out of the gym until Scooter could no longer been seen, then said to no one in particular “I’ve never seen that before.”
This left Gordy, Pete and I to play 3 way one on one (no pun intended) bringing us to the next Scooter chapter.
To get distance from me Scooter went to the one place that he thought I’d never go: UPEI. So I made sure that UPEI’s first home basketball game that year was against the Moncton Beer League All Star Team.
Little did Scooter anticipate the treatment he would receive at UPEI when he mentioned my name in the athletic department: Coach Hilton rolled out the red carpet and embraced Scooter like his own lost child, a sure spot on the team, preferential treatment in the dinning hall. Not quite what Scooter had expected.
I got the MBL team ready, starting early in the year. We overwhelmed a frightened Mount Allison University which closely resembled a poorly coached high school team. We doubled them in 147 of the 148 10 minute games we played that afternoon.
We had to leave early after the 148th game because it was Halloween and Ted, Gary and Kevin had earlier broken into Biage’s house and had stolen 3 of Biage’s Royal Canadian Mounted Po-lease uniforms and now Teddy wanted to get some beer and drive his truck drunk in full costume.
We went to the University of New Brunswick and doubled them with a team consisting of an All Canadian center, an all conference forward, 2 semi pro guards and a drunk All Conference Teddy Branch coming off the bench as 6 man when sober.
I was now ready for Scooter.
Late in the week before the big UPEI game my key players started dropping out: our All Canadian center coached a high school basketball team and couldn’t go; our left side semi pro guard had to work; and I think that Chris wanted to get started drinking early so he could stay ahead of Ted for the night. Believe it or not in this part of the world players of this quality are hard to replace on short notice.
Concern turned into worry when the guys showed up at the UPEI gym and Teddy was limping and Biage was shuffling. I asked what had happened and was told that Biage, a Po-lease, wouldn’t let Teddy drink in the car so he got in the trunk for the drive over.
Our only hope for the game had been to get a few good minutes out of Ted between beer timeouts. We now played without hope.
The game was no longer about winning or loosing but about slowing the tempo down enough for Biage to shuffle from key to key, arms bent up at the elbows and hands out like a praying mantis. Biage shuffled up and down the court like Mr Burns on the Simpsons and I hoped that I never had to help him up if he fell down because he’d surely get a spiral fracture in his arm from osteoporosis.
I split my game time between distributing the ball on offense to whoever wasn’t dry heaving that trip up the court and the rest of my time full court pressing a university team by myself in the hopes that I could give Biage an extra 2 or 3 seconds to get back to our key on defense. All the while lulling UPEI into a walking stupor that no one noticed. I didn’t want this fetal atrocity to become a game.
We were behind by 20 points near the end of the game and no one had any gas left in their tank. While Teddy opened his second beer of the timeout I unfocussed my eyes and saw George mouthing to his hunched team “That cocksucker hasn’t scored a fucking basket all game and I fucking don’t fucking want him to. You cocksuckers get up above the fucking 3 point line on fucking defense! Fuckdidlyfuckfuckfuck!”
So after Drop Jaw Gordy inbounded the ball to me in our back court I dribbled up the court so close to George on the sideline that he could have reached on to the court and pulled my Sleaman’s jersey then I drilled a 27 footer in George’s eye, my only shot of the game. George went fucking ballistic at his closest guard and I near feel down and pissed myself laughing.
The game was over and we were humiliated by 20 points, my plan for Scooter didn’t come to fruition and Gordy was warming up his story voice for the trip home. Once again things did not turn out as I had planned.
It was time to fuck with George. (racist homophobe)
George was happy with the way his team played the game and equally happy that Grant MacDonald, Steve Gillet and Chris Roworth didn’t show up for his first home game of the season. He told his guys good job, shake hands, I’ll see you in the locker room in a few minutes.
George was gracious and I apologized whole heartedly and sincerely for bringing this rotting corpse of a team to waste his and his team’s time. I remembered that he had told me years ago that if a team gets beat by 20 points they should forfeit their guarantee and I was so humiliated that I could only agree and suggested giving him referee and coffee money as well.
Out of respect I asked George to tell his guards that I wasn’t full court pressing by myself for the full 40 minutes because I thought that I could steal the ball from them even once but to slow down the game just enough so Biage could get back on defense before we changed to offense. I pointed out Biage’s arthritis and when George turned he saw for the first time that night not the legend but the man who is Biagio Caresse, still shuffling back to our bench even then, his gnarled arms twisted in the Steven Hawkins pose.
I apologized for not bringing the all stars I had promised. I apologized even more for Gordy, who along with 2 of our 7 players had not played high school basketball. And last but not least I apologized for Teddy who was now passed out drunk laying flat on the bleachers with a beer dangling from his hand.
George silently looked from player to player, finally seeing what I saw. His breathing came deep as though he were holding back a great force.
I once again thanked George for not trouncing us and told him of the team that Scooter and I had beaten by 100 points in summer league just because they disrespected us by bringing their girlfriends to a game. George nodded in agreement, eyes now bulging and pupils fully dilated, still staring dumb founded at my team as Biage, god love him, made his final turned for the final leg of his journey back to our bench. I said that if a team comes onto my court they better show some respect and come ready to play. I knew then what a man looked like just before having a stroke.
George and I said our goodbyes and the rest of the story comes though Scooter’s eyes.
George came into practice the week before and called the team together to tell them about our up coming game. According to Scooter it went something like this:
“That cocksucker might bring over NBA cocksuckers then you cocksuckers will all be on the fucking court sucking cock together! FUCK!”
I personally thought that George communicated with his team through enigma code but I could not for the life of me figure out how the players deciphered and interpreted the orders in real time.
The team was stoked when George told them that they had played well and the dressing room was a veritable Good Time Charlie bar that night. The players smiled and laughed, talking about their exploits when a mighty crash jolted them upright as one and George stormed into the dressing room. All present averted their gaze and shied away, hoping that it was another who had brought forth the demon. George came into the room blazing, throwing every sneaker, every piece of clothing 360 degrees at the same time while the team dove for the corners.
“YOU FUCKING COCKSUCKERS COULDN’T BEAT THOSE BROKEN DOWN FUCKING COCKSUCKERS BY MORE THAN 20 FUCKING COCKSUCKING POINTS?! YOU WILL RUN AND RUN AND FUCKING RUN UNTIL YOU’RE TOO FUCKING TIRED TO SUCK COCK AND THEN YOU’LL RUN AGAIN YOU FUCKING COCKDIDLEFUCKINGCOCKFUCKINGSUCKERS! FUCK!”
I won’t get into the rest but as I understood the situation from Scooter no one on the team could understand what had happened to George between the team huddle after the game and the locker room 10 minutes later. All that we all can be sure of is that Scooter sure did run for the next few days.
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Post Script:
Theodore Branch is now a sworn officer of the law keeping Ottawa’s streets safe from drunk drivers.
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One night I was on the telephone with Tracey Bowie and I had no idea how that had happened.
I could not think of even one reason why Tracey would call me and I had no idea where she was or how to get ahold of her and we hadn’t talked since university so I could only conclude that Scooter and I had been out drinking earlier that evening. I thought “Well, make hay” so I asked Tracey if I could come to visit her, wherever that was. She said “Sure, but you’re sleeping on the floor.” I thought “No problem, it’d be great to see Tracey aga … oh yeah, Mr Poo Hands.”
I wished Tracey well and said my good nights and that was the last time I talked to my soulmate.
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Gordy McLelland: passive aggressive manipulator
email: gmclennan@newtonfallsfp.com
Employer: Newton Falls Fine Print who seem to be having some trouble with mill closings
Work Tel: (315) 848-2406
Most people said that I kept Gordy on the team just so I could have someone to laugh and yell at and they were right. Gordy had never played high school ball and it showed, but I analyzed Gordy’s game and found a spot on the left baseline for him where he could do the least damage.
The first thing I did when Gordy came on the floor for warm up before a game was to figure out if we’d be seeing Level Head Gordy or Drop Jaw Gordy that night. Level Head Gordy was almost tolerable, he might tie his season high 4 points by canning 2 of 9 jumpers from 10 feet out on the left baseline, flat bald head perfectly level, and be mostly benign on defense. I had one rule when we played: no zone defense, so we couldn’t hide Gordy and I had to direct the ball to the opposite side of the floor from where Gordy had dug in and was defending his Maginot Line from all comers.
Drop Jaw Gordy was another animal entirely.
If I let Gordy drift into the key like a forward or edge out to the side of the court like a guard I may as well have just run back on defense then and there. Off his baseline habitat Gordy would catch the ball and hold it a foot and a half in front of him while looking straight ahead. He didn’t even square up to the hoop, he just put one foot about 4 feet in front of the other, chest over front knee and head angled up so he could see, and his neck muscles pulled his jaw open. Try it.
To see different players Drop Jaw Gordy would pivot to face them as he could only see straight ahead, often turning to what seemed completely random angles to the hoop. My biggest fear was that Drop Jaw Gordy would inadvertently disable one of our contributing players during warm up, it was like dealing with Pee Wee Herman and a slightly more pathetic Pee Wee Herman with a deluded sense of self entitlement.
Biage always seemed to be running a practical joke of some kind, often mixing the short con jokes with a long con joke so no one could figure out what was going on, he kept us in stitches and we bowed before his genius. Gordy watched the admiration that Biage received and wanted it for his own, a Gollum of the soul. “My Precious.”
Only Gordy didn’t understand that the quality of laughter lie not only in humiliating a friend for the amusement of others but as well for the love of designing a complex sequence of events and watching the dominos fall by themselves as the joke progressed into an inevitable preplanned outcome. Like putting a coin in a gum ball machine, regardless the course the gum has to come out eventually.
Gordy’s practical jokes were simply to get someone to say something then schmoozing with whatever athletes or business people he could attach himself to and concoct a story to make himself out to be an avenging genius humiliating imbeciles. Think: Hot Dog Water Soup Gordy.
Gordy’s name came up on my call display one day, years since I had seen him last, and I thought “What’s the game.” Seems that Gordy and a friend were starting a business and he thought that it would be great for me and that they needed me to make the business work. What an opportunity.
So I let Gordy beg me to visit him 2 hours away until he finally said “Well am I going to have to come to see you?” And my brain exploded “Fuck No!” How do you get rid of Gordy in your own town? A more neutral setting was required.
As Gordy lay the business plan before me I thought that it sounded a whole lot like groceries by mail and I knew then and there that I wanted in and that I was getting 3 weeks free groceries by mail even if I had to get Scooter to call Gordy telling him that he wanted onboard as my downline.
But Gordy had no brochures, not even a black and white on plain paper. He would not let me sample the service before signing up, there was no preparation or forethought and his only goal was to get a binary answer that he could exploit. All that he wanted was for me to say that I was in, asking this again and again and again so he could tell his schmoozing buddies that he made a fool of someone.
I had witnessed enough. Wanting no more of Gordy I told him that I had to leave because I was getting my brain waves scanned in the next strip mall over by a woman who was working towards her massage therapy certificate. It seems that my brain had been running too fast on one side and I had to adjust the idle. He sincerely looked concerned, this was the first time that I had seen real empathy in the face and ample forehead of Gordy McLelland.
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The day before leaving for an away tournament Gordy called me to say that he had flown in a nanny in from Calgary while his wife was away for 2 weeks and that the nanny would be coming on the trip with he and the kids. I found this odd, both the reason for the telephone call and the veracity of Gordy’s claim. Again I waited for Gordy to come to me.
I was already at the gym when Gordy’s brood walked in. I looked for the nanny and immediately thought “Damn! My nigga’ Gordy makin’ some serious coin an’ be spendin’ it wisely!” Everyone in the gym stopped what they were doing and turned to watch her climb the bleachers, like hounds stalking a rabbit. It occurred to me that everyone might know something that I did not.
Leaving the Hotel later for Smiley’s bar (no, another Smiley) this beautiful young lady looked up at me smiling and said “Gordy’s say’s that I’m to be with you tonight.” Never had a sweeter sentence been spoken. Gordy had finally found true altruism as there is no greater demonstration of platonic brotherly love than loaning someone your hooker.
We got to the bar which was packed with the players from all the teams and she took off her coat for me to check and all that she had on was a bra. She told me that this was the fashion in Calgary and I said that I know where I moving to. As we walked into the bar the legion of ball players parted like the Red Sea and she and I strolled through as royalty.
As the night went on I smiled my thanks to Gordy in the bar and wondered who was looking after his 3 children at the hotel.
She stayed beside me at our table all night, intelligent, articulate and gorgeous, a geisha. We left the bar together to a roaring cheer, I was now the conquering hero with poo about to be washed from my hands. We drove around the harbor like a real date, comfortable conversation as she curled up in the passengers seat pulling my jacket close around her.
This is where my madness began.
I walked her to her room and she asked me if I’d like to come in yet somehow I heard my voice saying “I’m married.” It was as if my mind were torn asunder and I had broken my brain. I kissed her on her cheek and went back to our room to see what Scooter had done with the drunken sasquatch he had found.
What had I done. What had I done.
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I am not nor I have never been homosexual. I am not nor have I ever been bi sexual. I am not nor have I ever been bi curious. I have never had sexual contact with a male. I have never propositioned a male. I am completely heterosexual.
I will not become Tom Cruise fighting a sand storm that can never be stopped.
It would have been nice to stay in contact with some old friends from basketball but people are just uncomfortable when they’ve been told that I’m a bi sexual or a necrophiliac. I am creeped out my own bad self when around some homosexuals, if they stare at me too long. I just want to be gone but I know that some fag will look at my ass while I walk away. I understand the uneasiness.
This will be the last I talk on the subject and I want to be perfectly clear so there is no doubt left about my sexuality:
Fags give me the willies!
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I ask you to email this story to 10 friends and ask each to do the same, in the hope that someday this letter will end up in the mailbox of one of the protagonists and that they will search out the others to confirm my tale of woe.
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So long as we draw breath there is hope.
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I don’t know who wrote the above, but its all true. I wish I could figure out who it is. I have a few names in mind, as I recall twho was there when we got dressed up in Mounti Uniforms and went down to theShediac Hotel for Halloween. Bar tab was high, and i got stuck with most of it. We were a bunch of guys trying to play ball and have fun. We succeeded at both.
Ok, just scrolled above and saw that karl Doucett was the author of the B-ball and drinking stories. Damn, forgot about little karl. Gordy always had something on the go for us. He would sign us up for tournaments and then beg us to attend after the fact.
the important — how the charity will use the money to improve the world — and concentrates instead on the banal: what the charity can do to publicly thank the donor.In one particularly odious in New York, two foundations which helped pay for a big new FDR memorial on Roosevelt Island went all the way to the state’s Supreme Court to ensure that their names appeared so prominently as to damage the whole architectural construct. In their minds, the quality of the memorial itself was less important than the conspicuousness of the thank-yous.It’s incredibly easy to find examples of all of these sins, but one in particular jumps out at me for the way it encapsulates many of them at once. Here’s , talking about the way that the University of Virginia’s Teresa Sullivan tried to get money from one of its richest alums:One of Sullivan??s most promising targets was Paul Tudor Jones, a Virginia alumnus, billionaire hedge-fund manager and philanthropist. Though he had given away countless millions, Jones considered his brain to be his primary asset: he was fond of saying that ??intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.?? He had already given large sums to his alma mater, and he told Sullivan that he and his wife had an exciting new idea: endowing a center for yoga.??I thought, Oh, man, people are going to be very cynical about this,?? recalls Bob Sweeney, UVA??s fund-raising chief. So Sullivan convened a dinner at her home with professors of religion, medicine and other disciplines. ??I said, ??O.K., let us think about it a little bit,?? ?? she said. ??We began talking about, wait a minute, it??s not just yoga.?? The group swiftly produced a proposal for a multidisciplinary Contemplative Sciences Center, which was vetted by Jones??s paid yoga consultant. In April, Sullivan announced the $15 million gift, one of the largest of her tenure.This was all part of a multi-year buttering-up campaign, of someone who is convinced that just by thinking about the University of Virginia in the right way, he can do more good than by giving it money. The University, of course, knew exactly what it needed money for, but Paul Tudor Jones wasn’t interested in what the University thought: he had his own ideas — and his own paid yoga consultant.When someone offers you $15 million, and a very large part of your job is to raise money, you can’t just laugh and say their idea is ridiculous. Instead, you have to spend an inordinate amount of valuable management time, across multiple university faculties, and eventually construct a white elephant that no one actually wanted in the first place.And so the lesson here is pretty simple: Don’t be Paul Tudor Jones. Instead, have some humility. Here’s one idea: for every dollar you spend on overhead and payroll at your foundation, make sure that you donate a dollar earmarked for overhead and payroll somewhere else. Those are the funds which are always the hardest to raise, after all.If you did that, you would be helping to counteract one of the most corrosive and invidious in the nonprofit sector: the idea that it’s incredibly important to look at the “overhead ratio”, and give only to charities which spend a small proportion of their money on overhead, and a large proportion of their money on program activities. It really isn’t. But partly because a lot of people think that it is, this year I gave to , the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, an amazing nonprofit which is basically all overhead. Its job is to coordinate the work of organizations all over the world, from non-profits to pharmaceutical companies to multilateral organizations to national health ministries, and to get them all working together to create drug cocktails which can cure devastating diseases in some of the most forlorn parts of the world.What else should you do? Well, if you’re one of those extremely wealthy people who has to give away most of their money, then follow the spirit of the pledge, rather than just the letter. It’s not enough to set up a foundation which will receive most of your wealth when you die: that’s, quite literally, a cop-out. Instead, embrace the concept of front-loading, and give the money away right now, as much as you can. In a world which is getting richer, your money is best put to use now, rather than in the future. And in a world with many vicious cycles, an increase in up-front investment can prevent enormous damage down the road. You’re not building a business with permanent equity capital, you’re trying to make a difference. And if you think that the world would be better off if you invested the money, made a huge return, and then gave away that much larger sum — well, that’s just your hubris at work. Remember, in philanthropy, you’re meant to be the humble one. The graveyards are full of people who dreamed of giving away hypothetical future riches. Much better to give away real present ones.What’s more, if it turns out that you really are very successful, and that your wealth is going up rather than down, increase your giving commensurately. This is a tough one: even very large-scale philanthropists like George Soros have found it very difficult to make a serious dent in their wealth by giving it away. But it is possible. Do it.Finally, there’s something that all of us can do, whether we’re dynastically rich or really rather poor: volunteering. But weirdly, volunteering is harder for the rich, who can more easily afford the time commitment: they often think that time spent volunteering is wasted.The logic, after all, is simple and clear. The value to the charity of my labor is $x; so if I just donate $y>$x then the charity is better off. What’s more, the value of my time is $z>$x, so in a way I’m destroying value by volunteering.The problem with this logic is that it ignores the enormous value to the volunteer of volunteering. Volunteering is the best and most effective way of piercing the bubble that all wealthy people live in every minute of every day, and of giving such people a gut-level understanding of the problems the charity is trying to solve.On that level, volunteering is much more effective than some fact-finding poverty tour, where a bunch of rich donors or potential donors jet in to observe the Great Work Being Done in some far-flung country. The logistics involved in organizing such tours are substantial, and the good they do is minuscule. So if you want to see for yourself what an organization is doing, find out by doing that work yourself.But volunteering is also worthwhile for its own sake. It gives an extremely valuable perspective on life, one that’s hard to find elsewhere. And it can be incredibly rewarding, in ways both expected and unexpected. Find time to do it: almost nobody ends up regretting the time they spent volunteering.The theme here is humility, mixed with seriousness. Giving away money effectively isn’t fun or easy, and although it can be rewarding, it’s important to keep your eyes on the job at hand, rather than on maximizing those rewards. Philanthropy has always been self-serving in large part, and that’s never going to end. But there’s no good reason why you should be part of the problem.(The following statement was released by the rating agency)LONDON, August 13 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has affirmed PhilipMorris International, Inc’s (PMI) Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR)and senior unsecured rating at ‘A’ and Short-term IDR at ‘F1′. The Outlookon the Long-term IDR is Stable. The affirmation and Stable Outlook reflects PMI’s strongoperating profile – which translates into a healthy operating EBITDA margin inexcess of 47%, a stable and large underlying free cash floFitch, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service have all raised their Philippines ratings to one notch below investment grade, thanks to the government’s improving finances. “The tax ratio has been improving and that indicates they are getting somewhere to an extent,” said Philip McNicholas, Fitch’s Hong Kong-based director of Asia Pacific sovereign ratings. “It is clearly a positive for the rating, but that’s got to be sustained,” he said. To McNicholas, what’s needed is a “structural uplift… you’ve got to change people’s perceptions, change people’s minds on these things, and get them to participate.” RUN AFTER TAX EVADERS After taking the helm, Henares revived a BIR campaign to catch cheats and promised no let-up. She quickly filed her first case, against a pawnshop chain owner who bought a Lamborghini for 26 million pesos during a year in which he and his wife allegedly did not pay tax. The case is pending in a tax-appeal court, with the accused out on bail. The cases that Henares files at the Department of Justice can lead to arrests, but only a court can convict. To date, only five tax cheats have been convicted. While Henares may have to wait years to get her first criminal conviction, she has filed 135 evasion cases so far. They include a 120 million peso suit against an impeached Supreme Court chief justice and a 5.5 billion peso claim against a billionaire businessman. “I take pride in all the cases we file, they are fully backed by data and evidence,” said Henares. The tax chief said she isn’t discouraged by how slow the legal process can be. For alleged cheats, “we can always attach their property, we can foreclose on them, and we can garnish their bank account,” Henares said. “Don’t push us to that point.” PLAYING HARD The bureau is playing some hard-ball. Recently, it temporarily shut a hardware store in Davao which was accused of under-declaring sales by more than 30 percent. Henares, who is married to a businessman, has an annual salary of only $17,000. Aquino gets paid about $20,000. Abad, who was Aquino’s campaign manager, said Henares long has had a reputation for being straight and firm. “She is not very sociable, which actually is good because of the kind of work she does,” Abad said. As she is incorruptible, people “don’t even attempt to induce her with whatever form of inducement,” he added. In the office, Henares tries to make every minute count. She photocopied a newspaper article on places to get the tastiest roast pig in Metro Manila, not for eating-out tips but because she saw them as potential tax targets. “I asked my people if they are registered and if they are issuing receipts,” she said. ($1 = 40.87 Philippine pesos) (Editing by Richard Borsuk)(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)The is easy on the pocket. All one needs is a packet of gulaal (coloured powder), buckets of water, friends and family; and perhaps some music and alcohol.Holi, the festival of colours, is to mark the beginning of spring and harvest season. In places associated with the Hindu god Krishna, Holi is traditionally played over several days with revellers flinging coloured powder and water at each other.[To view a slideshow on Holi, click While the rest of India’s capital city went about its daily business on the eve of Holi, its biggest wholesale market was teeming with last-minute shoppers stocking up on colour sprays and pichkaris (water jets).Vendors wooed passers-by with multi-hued pouches and sacks of gulaal as customers haggled for the best bargains.Those selling water jets, called pichkaris in Hindi, rarely fail to surprise custumers with new and unusual designs.The most expensive water jet in the market was priced at 750 rupees ($14) .As vendors, mostly male, worked hard at making a killing on Holi… … I spotted Jai Devi, 70, sitting by herself with packets of water balloons, waiting for customers.Some, like this boy, played with colours by the roadsideCount the number of water jets in the picture below — that’s the biggest order of pichkaris I saw at Sadar Bazaar. And just in case you want a break from the traditional Holi look, these glasses won’t look all that bad.Photographer Eric Thayer travelled to Brooks County, Texas and Reynosa, Mexico to investigate the rising rates of immigrant deaths along the border, spending time at a migrant’s hostel in Mexico and with U.S. Border Patrol in Brooks County. In 2012, sheriff’s deputies in Brooks County found 129 bodies, around double the amount from the year before and six times the number recorded in 2010. Most of those who died succumbed to the punishing heat and rough terrain that comprise the ranch lands of south Texas. Many migrants, after spending several weeks travelling through Mexico and past the Rio Grande, spend a few days in a “stash house”, such as the Casa del Migrante, in Reynosa, Mexico, and many are ignorant of the treacherous journey ahead. Read Eric’s personal account and a Reuters story . 25 PHOTOSA 22-year-old photographer was gang-raped by five men in India’s financial capital Mumbai on Thursday, evoking comparisons with a similar incident in Delhi in December that led to nationwide protests.The incident took place near the posh Lower Parel area when the woman, a photojournalist with a magazine, was out on assignment. She was accompanied by a male colleague, said.A case has been registered at Mumbai’s N.M. Joshi Marg police station.“An FIR has been registered … nobody has been arrested so far,” a head constable at the police station told India Insight. He gave no details.The incident is likely to shock residents of Mumbai, considered one of India’s safest cities.“Can’t travel to Bihar, U.P., Delhi, Haryana, M.P., Pune & now?Lower Parel. Can’t travel to work or school. Girls a liability. Vicious circle,” someone calling herself said on Twitter. “Every Mumbaikar must come out & show their outrage to the failed government, police system & laws,” The woman has been admitted to Jaslok Hospital in south Mumbai and sketches of the suspects have been made, police said.“The patient is with us after the unfortunate incident since last night. As of now, she is stable,” the hospital said in a statement.In December, a 23-year-old woman died days after she was gang-raped by five men in a moving bus in New Delhi, a case that led to street protests,?candlelight vigils?and a new anti-rape law. The trial is under way.While Delhi has been nicknamed India’s rape capital, Mumbai, a city home to more than 18 million people, has always been considered a safe place for women to travel even at night.Sexual violence against women in largely patriarchal India is widespread, say gender rights activists, and crimes such as rape, dowry murders, acid attacks, honour killings, child marriages and human trafficking are common.(Disclaimer: This article is website-exclusive and cannot be reproduced in any form without prior permission. Follow Aditya on Twitter )By Larry Downing and Jason ReedMoments after musicians Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham stepped onto the creaky stage inside the old Boston Garden forty-four years ago it was obvious 16,000 teenaged baby boomers were witnessing the infancy of one of rock and roll’s greatest acts.“Led Zeppelin” opened 1969’s “Tribal Rock Festival” with a throbbing, “Good Times Bad Times,” and the world changed forever for those inside; most of whom had been schooled under the shadows of strict, conservative innocence in the 1950’s and early 60’s. The band played with such primal passions and steady bass rhythms it generated enough vibration to free decades of tired dust from the tops of the aging rafters; waterfalls of filth drifted below and continued during the entire performance.None of those New England fans would ever see, or hear, music the same after those loud layers of complex notes and vigorous lyrics were let out of the genie’s bottle and took possession of every happy toe-tapper inside that ancient structure built back in 1928.And no one who actually “remembers” that night will forget the numbing cannabis high enjoyed at no additional cost after paying only $3.50 to watch from the cheapest seats. Warm, freshly exhaled marijuana floated up as clouds of pungent second-hand smoke stoning everyone inside that building famous for poor circulation. I heard this included the unsuspecting cops who inhaled from the top rows and later mentioned they would find relief for their own “munchies” searching for chocolate donuts on the way home.Pop’s early lyrics had always been uncomplicated verse catering to adolescent boys and girls and their simple tastes, perfect harmony for the pink ‘poodle skirt’ crowd; Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and the Beach Boys were all success stories. And if fans were asked before that night at the Garden to describe their childhood memories most would have reminisced as if they were scenes seen in grainy 8mm black and white movies.Florange, FranceBy Vincent KesslerThe name “Valley of the Angels” is derived from the last four-letters, “ange” meaning “angel” in English, which is found in the names of many cities in the Lorraine valley of northeastern France. This valley, also known as Fensch Valley for the river which flows through it, was long home to forges and steelmaking which grew out of the mining of iron ore. The mines and steel foundries forged the culture of a people and the landscape they live in.The decline of this industry started at the end of the seventies with major social conflicts and demonstrations in other nearby valleys in the region, also involved with the steel industry. For 20 years now the valley has faced closures of industrial sites, mines, furnaces, all contrary to the steel tradition of the region. When I headed there last week, I first photographed the imprint of the past and present on the valley. And like anybody, I was initially taken by the kind of “gloomy” atmosphere you will find in any industrial area.But the interest was also to try to go further in finding people and testimony about the past, and how it exists with the valley today. As a starting point I contacted trade union representatives and steel workers I knew from coverage of demonstrations and strikes in the region for 20 years, and especially during the last 20 months of social conflict at the Florange-Hayange and ArcelorMittal sites, the last two blast furnaces in the valley.London, EnglandBy Russell BoyceDuring recent photography workshops we have been running, many of those attending described themselves as “a professional photographer working in the news business” while others described themselves as “photojournalists”. The title “Photojournalist” is an occasionally abused title but for those professionals who are attending our courses who communicate their picture stories to a sophisticated audience I think it’s quite fair for them to describe themselves as a photojournalist.I began to wonder, is there a difference? Is it just about self-perception or merely a name tag? Does a news photographer see themselves as a working professional who is given assignments and their job is to produce a picture to match that assignment? And is a photojournalist someone who actively chases stories or looks for new ways to illustrate recurring themes through photography and doesn’t just wait for assignments? Both, and a mixture of both, at the present are valid roles. Or is it maybe time to find a new definition? But I am wrestling with the question “what future for photography in a news environment in the next five years and onward?” What status and role, will these photographers have? Before I could examine this further, first I thought it was important to research the actual definition of the roles.A quick look in the Concise Oxford Dictionary for “news photographer” comes up blank as does a search online. A search for the word “photojournalist”, the noun derived from photojournalism reveals a definition “1. The art or practice of relating news by photographs, with or without an accompanying text, esp in magazines”.WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENTLahore, PakistanBy Damir SagoljA man wearing traditional white Pakistani clothes disappeared from the window back into the burning building. A minute later, a different man wearing black emerged from inside but it looked like someone was holding his lifeless body. The body was slowly pushed over the edge of the window and then released. Twenty seconds later the man in white came out again. He sat calmly for a few seconds in the open window with his back turned outwards and then just fell.And that was it; both men were dead in less than a minute. After several long hours of fighting a raging fire (or were they short hours? Time gets twisted in extreme situations like this), this part of the story ended in the way I had feared from the beginning – the worst possible way. I shot pictures of people falling from the building to their deaths, of others crying on the ground, of desperate and helpless rescue workers.It was supposed to be an easy pre-election day in Lahore. We did expect some heat as the campaign of the two main candidates was coming to an end but what happened that Thursday still haunts me without any signs of easing. What started as an easy day for me and poor government workers in their modern office building in Punjab??s capital ended with more deaths than in election violence across the country over the next few days.Earlier in the day, just after arriving in Lahore I received a short text message saying that a fire had broke out on the seventh floor of a government building and that there could be some people trapped inside. I was on my way to the hospital where Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricket player and rising star in politics, was recovering from an injury. He was big in the news and there was a possibility for journalists to see him but a building on fire, with people trapped inside, is always the priority. I put Imran aside for a while and headed toward the LDA Plaza.As expected, the scene around the building was as chaotic and mad as in your darkest nightmares. The ??do not cross?? yellow line served only to make our pictures more dramatic. Hundreds of onlookers around the building stood in the way of already confused rescue teams showing no signs of fear or respect for the situation. Later, the rumor spread that the building had cracked and it may collapse ?C nobody either cared nor moved back an inch.The Reuters pictures team of John Gress, Matt Sullivan and Jeff Haynes reflect on covering the past weekend’s Kentucky Derby.By Jeff HaynesFast forward 25 years from 1988 and the Winning Colors victory to 2013 and Orb, include every Kentucky Derby winner in-between and you have a total of roughly 50 minutes of what I call a spring time tradition – photographing what many call the most photographed two minutes in sports. Just like in years past photographing the Derby for me is one of the most thrilling events I cover each year. 2013 was no different.It was this annual event that got me hooked on becoming a wire service photographer. Covering the Derby is like no other event. You show up days before to go to early morning work-outs and photograph the horses training on the track, being groomed and bathed, and maybe catching a quiet moment where a trainer and horse just graze on Kentucky Blue grass on the back side of Churchill Downs.Not much has changed in 25 years, maybe a few more people get in the way trying to get a glimpse of each horse. Then comes the first Saturday in May – the numbers change but the day is always the same. We arrived early in the morning to set up remote cameras, check the computers and internet connection so everything was ready to go for later in the day. You kill time by taking photos of beautiful ladies in even prettier hats, and guys smoking huge cigars they have waited all spring to smoke.There are the silly hats, the mint juleps and the drunks in the infield who might not even know there is a horse race about to happen, but you always think about the race that is going to happen later in the day. We waited for the bugler to call the horses to the post for this year??s Kentucky Derby. This year??s main attraction was the rain. The rain started around 9am and didn’t stop all day, adding another factor to our long day.Karachi, PakistanBy Insiya SyedA few days after I photographed my second Fashion Week story in Karachi over the course of a month, a friend of mine asked me a legitimate question: “Why do these organizers call it “week” when it’s never a week? Why not just call it a month then? Or a millennium? Pakistan Fashion Millennium! That sounds so nice.”Each year, Pakistan has a few of these events: Pakistan Fashion Week, Karachi Fashion Week, Pakistan Fashion Design Council Fashion Week… And then there’s Bridal Couture Week, which I’ve now had the opportunity to cover two years in a row.Every year, and with every fashion show, I face the same struggle to obtain full backstage access – my primary area of interest – and I find myself making the same promises to remain an unobtrusive photographer.But the struggle is worth it because one thing is for sure: backstage is where you really find all the fashion. It’s where all the gossip happens, where the chaos begins and ends, and is the source of all the mad rushing and pushing around. This is where it all starts.Over the course of the three-day Bridal Couture Week, one of the many designers, Zainab Chottani, showed bridal wear ranging in price from $3000 to $8000, while the most expensive piece of jewelry designed by Nadia Chotani was priced at $2000. These are significant quantities of cash in Pakistan where, according to UNICEF statistics, around 23 percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.Augusta, GeorgiaBy Phil NobleIt was the author Mark Twain who wrote “Golf is a good walk spoiled” and although the persistent rain that dogged the final round play at this years Masters certainly made it tough for both players and photographers alike, the amazing photographs at the final hole of regular play and the subsequent thrilling playoff certainly ensured our “good walk” wasn’t ruined.I was lucky enough to be asked to return to the Augusta National golf club this year for my second Masters tournament. Along with my Reuters colleagues Mike Segar, Bryan Snyder, Mark Blinch and 24 year Masters veteran Gary Hershorn, who would edit our pictures, we pitched up again at the Mecca of golf to cover a tournament unlike any other.At most other golf championships we cover, photographers are allowed to work inside the ropes that hold the spectators back, making the job of following play and getting into a good position to photograph the golfers a relatively easy one. At Augusta however, we are accorded no such privilege, the hallowed, well manicured and vibrant green turf being preserved only for those playing in the tournament, meaning we are in with the spectators, or in the case of Augusta, the ‘patrons’.With tens of thousands of golf fans all vying to get a view of their heroes, moving around the course and finding a clear vantage point is more challenging than usual, but once you’ve got your ‘masters head’ on and a bunch of “Excuse me”, “Would you mind awfully if I…” and a liberal sprinkling of “If I kneel can I squeeze in front of you?” in your camera bag the course offers a wealth of angles and pictures unlike anywhere else.The course is a work of art with towering Georgia pines providing the scaffolding for the miles of vibrant green fairways and greens to roll through. Throw into the mix a splash of vibrant azalea pinks and purples and a hint of dogwood and wisteria all bathed in amazing Georgia light and you have a breathtaking vista in which to photograph golf.Manila, PhilippinesBy Romeo Ranoco Traditionally, Filipinos are gun lovers, particularly in the southern Philippines, where almost every household keeps a rifle or a pistol at home. I know someone who said “I can let go of my wife, but I can’t live without my Armalite”. Thus, I got excited when I was asked to do a gun culture picture story, focusing on a pistol-packing judge who helps train fellow magistrates and lawyers at a target range.When one talks about a pistol-packing judge, one person immediately comes to my mind, a legendary former police officer who traded his blue uniform for a black robe. Jaime “Jimmy” Santiago is a celebrity in his own right. The presiding judge of branch 3 of Manila’s Regional Trial Court, Jimmy was a police officer a quarter of a century ago. He rose to celebrity status when as a commander of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit in the Philippine capital city Manila, he rescued several victims and “neutralized” a total of six gunmen in several separate hostage-taking incidents. His exploits were eventually made into a full-length movie, entitled “SPO4 Santiago, Sharpshooter”.When I came to see him at his office, I knew I was in the right place. It was quite a normal office, but one wall was decorated with an M-16 Armalite rifle and shotgun. His office is just next to the courtroom where he hears criminal and civil cases. I had the chance to see him in action, sitting on the bench and listening to lawyers from both sides arguing and issuing his orders after hearing the cases. He agreed to talk to me for a few minutes before clearing his desk of cases and our chat touched on a subject close to his heart. At one point, he mentioned an incident at a court house on central Cebu island, where a Canadian national went on a shooting spree, killing two and wounding a prosecutor. At this point, he emphasized the need to arm judges and lawyers in the country so they can protect themselves from threats coming from some disgruntled litigants who couldn’t accept losing a case.Knin, CroatiaBy Antonio BronicEthnic conflict shook Croatia to the core during the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Today, both Serbs and Croats in the country still bear the scars – something clearly visible if you visit the areas around the southern town of Knin. Before the war broke out, most of Knin’s citizens were Serbs. When Croatia declared independence in 1991, Serbs who wanted to remain part of Yugoslavia staged a bloody rebellion, and Knin became their stronghold. The town was recaptured by the Croatian army in 1995 and the Serb population fled in the thousands, leaving behind their homes, most of which were soon torched or blown up by the Croats.After the war ended, some of the Serbs returned and Croatian authorities promised they would receive equal assistance in rebuilding their damaged properties. But 18 years after the conflict, many are still making do with basic or temporary living arrangements. Croatia, preparing to join the European Union on July 1, has told the EU that houses for returning refugees would be constructed. I thought I would go and investigate the situation, and after a bit of research and a few phone calls, I managed to find people to talk to both in Knin and the surrounding areas.Among them, I found Croatian Serbs whose houses are still in ruins, who are struggling to make ends meet, and who have survived on welfare since their return. One of them is Sava Knezevic, who has been living in a barn next to his destroyed home for 17 years now, and ekes out a meagre living by collecting and selling discarded plastic bottles. Instead of a toilet he uses bushes around the back, he has one electric socket in the barn, a small bed and a wood burning stove – and these are all of his possessions.Rochester, New YorkBy Adam FensterWhen I got a call from one of the publicists in University Communications a couple of weeks ago asking whether we should try to find stock art or make our own photos to illustrate a recent paper by University of Rochester PhD student Daniel Scantlebury, I immediately jumped at the chance. I had read that the paper, which describes a slowdown in the rate at which species form on Madagascar, involved obscure gecko species and, as an occasional photographer of frogs and other critters, I thought it would be a great opportunity to make some interesting studio photographs, push my photography skills and at the same time help to publicize a critical scientific study.I emailed Dan, explaining what I wanted to try and emphasizing that the comfort and safety of his geckos was critical. I had been told he had a collection containing some of the animals in the study but was distressed to learn upon meeting him in his office later that he had given them away. Fortunately, as someone with close ties to Rochester??s ??gecko community??, he was able to put me in touch with Thomas Wood, a local expert and aquarium store owner who possesses a large collection of the same leaf tailed gecko species that were part of the study.After we set up a time to meet at Tom??s house I tried to figure out how I wanted to photograph these animals. I had long been inspired by the work of National Geographic contributor Joel Sartore, particularly . But when I saw the stunning I knew exactly what I wanted to try (minus the kung fu part). I sourced a piece of black plexiglass from a local plastics company, then made some test shots in our office combining the plexiglass on a small table with a black backdrop and two lights: a Paul C Buff Einstein with 35?? gridded octobox, placed camera left and another Einstein with a grid spot at upper back right. Gridding a light source minimizes light spill and maximizes directionality, which was important in getting everything to go solid black to create contrast to set off the unique features of the geckos. If I were to do this again I??d use even smaller light sources as there was still a bit of spill, or I??d move the backdrop a little farther back. I triggered the lights using the newer Pocket Wizards (radio transmitters) that allow for power adjustment on the fly with a little gadget that clicks into the camera??s hot shoe. This proved helpful as some animals frequently changed their distance to the lights in addition to having various hues that required more or less light to photograph suitably. The results were about what I had hoped for so I packed everything back up and waited for our shoot day.Rome, ItalyBy Alessandro BianchiAfter what seemed like a lifetime of standing in the rain, “Habemus Papam” (We have a Pope!).I woke up after basically not sleeping at all. Another day and now what? We had no idea what Pope Francis would do. Nobody knew. Only that he was due to attend a small prayer at the Santa Maria Maggiore – a basilica in central Rome. So, fellow photographer Stefano Rellandini and I got on our scooters and went to take a look. When we got there, there was a lot of people – media, tourists (the basilica is right next to the main train station), curious bystanders, and a big wall which surrounds the basilica. Stefano stayed with the pack outside the main entrance and I went for a little wander. How could I see above this wall? The only way was to go into a local school. I walked in, looked for the principle and said “Come with me I have something to show you. I will show you the Pope.” He smiled and said “Okay let’s see.” I said, “I have to have this picture, or my boss will be very unhappy…”We entered into a class of school kids, around 15 years old (to tell the truth I wasn’t really paying attention to them). Then came one of the longest moments of my life as I walked through the class and saw that from their window I could see into the courtyard of the basilica. I saw cars, police and a couple of priests. This was it. Seconds later he appeared at the doorway and I started taking pictures. I said to the kids “It’s the Pope, it’s the pope. He’s here, say something,” but they were a little star-struck and I had to say “Yes, it really is him – say something.” So the kids all shouted “Viva il Papa, viva papa.” Then one of his close cardinals tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the kids (or more importantly me). Then the Pope waved and smiled and finally I could relax.Shanghai, ChinaBy Aly SongLiving in the metropolis of Shanghai for over 10 years, it makes sense to me that all the luxury malls, high-end goods and soaring skyscrapers are made by the hands of migrant workers. As a result, I pay extra attention to the migrant worker community.Shortly after the Spring Festival holiday, I had a chance to photograph dozens of migrant workers traveling from home to job interviews at an underwear factory in Shanghai. They were all recruited by an employment agency, a popular business nowadays especially on the coastal area where the labor shortage situation has reached a worsening level.The interview was the simplest I had ever seen, the only requirement by the factory was “good health”, followed by several questions which altogether lasted about 5 minutes. Afterwards the workers were divided into two groups – experienced and “whiteboard” (without any work experience). The experienced workers were asked to start working right away, while the whiteboard workers needed to attend a training course – by observing the production line and following a veteran for one or two days.There were two “whiteboard” girls that caught my eye during the assignment. The two shy girls in their 20s were both ethnic Yi minorities from a village in southwestern China’s Yunnan province. You could almost see in their eyes that everything was so new and strange to them. They wouldn’t give me their names, but they told me that it was their first time leaving home for work, and it brought them to a city over 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) away.Insecurity and uncertainty have long been the key words for Chinese migrant workers, mainly because they left their homes for a strange environment with few friends and usually zero social insurance. A recent hot topic at the ongoing annual National People’s Congress (NPC) was the household registration system (or hukou regime) reform. Through this, migrant workers could finally benefit from government funds on medical services and education for their children, which are given free to urban dwellers. It would, however, take some time for the new policy to carried out. So, what’s the situation now?Kiev, UkraineBy?Gleb GaranichPassing through a pedestrian subway in central Kiev about twenty years ago, I saw elderly people dancing. I stopped for a few moments and then proceeded on my route – I was 25 years old at the time and, frankly speaking, this story was of no interest to me.By pure accident, I ended up in the same place one evening in early February, and all of a sudden I felt a completely different attitude to what was happening… I was no longer indifferent to the lives and destinies of these people. What makes some 200 people gather in this passway on weekends for twenty years and dance for four hours?Why gather in this very subway? Well, it is understandable – they have no money to rent a spacious room and dance indoors, and the mayor’s office allows them to gather underground instead of allocating any funds.The reason they dance is also well understood – this is probably the most affordable way to while away their spare time and communicate.Yet the main problem of the elderly generation in this country is that they feel unneeded by the state and people that surround them. This generation grew up in the Soviet Union. Many cannot adjust to a completely different lifestyle or reconcile with new realities and values. They don’t understand communication via social networks, but they still clearly remember the way all holidays were celebrated during their childhood and youth; when tables laden with food were brought out, and neighbors from the same street or house would sit down together and then dance to the tune of an accordion through the night.Shanghai, ChinaBy Aly Song“Mom, can I touch the stuffed steamed bun? I won’t eat it, just touch.” Four-year-old Wang JiachengNiuniu, nicknamed Niuniu, said to his mother while desperately eager for a bite of the steamed bun stuffed with meat in front of him. Half a year ago, Niuniu was diagnosed with late stage neuroblastoma. Since then, he has undergone chemotherapy treatments which cause him to vomit constantly and make it almost impossible to eat anything, especially meat. Yan Hongyu, Niuniu’s mother, cast a bitter smile at her son’s naive request. She was still struggling to believe that her boy had to suffer such a great deal in his childhood.I came across Niuniu’s story while doing research to find a family for an in-depth picture story on China’s healthcare policy. Before I met them, I did some searches and found out there weren’t many treatments available in China for neuroblastoma, which is a neuroendocrine tumor arising from any neural crest element of the sympathetic nervous system. This cancer has a more successful treatment rate if the patient is less than two-years-old. But in Niuniu’s case, the risk is much higher. Nonetheless, Niuniu had surgery to remove the tumor. After that, he would have to completely rely on chemotherapy to kill the cancer cells.Knowing the chances were slim, Niuniu’s parents committed to the treatment with 100% faith. Yan quit her job in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, and took her son to Shanghai for better medical services in early 2013. They rented a 10-square-meter small apartment near the hospital, and since then have been rushing between the two places. Niuniu’s father, who used to own a small company in Yancheng, recently sold the company in order to pay the bills. He was still taking some jobs in their hometown to make ends meet, but whenever he had a chance he would go to Shanghai to help his wife. “Nowadays, people just cannot afford to get sick” Yan said as she chatted with other patients’ relatives in the hospital. Before Niuniu fell ill, they were a happy upper-middle class family. But now the estimated cost for the entire treatment is over 300,000 yuan (48,991 USD), and the insurance can only cover as much as 80,000 yuan (13,064 USD). A huge financial burden, restless nights while taking care of Niuniu and mental anguish – none of this matters to Yan. “Nothing is worse than seeing my son suffer everyday,” Yan said. “I would rather myself being sick.”Gove, also known as Nhulunbuy, AustraliaBy David GrayIt’s around 10pm, and we have just entered the ‘Malay Road’, so named by English explorer Matthew Flinders to commemorate his meeting with “Malay” fishermen during his circumnavigation of Australia in 1803. Captain ‘Dusty’ Miller gives his patrolmen their final briefing in the bow of a landing craft sailing west along the coast of Arnhem Land. His indigenous soldiers seem extremely calm and relaxed to me, but then one, who is from an Aboriginal community located a long way from the coastal regions, asks to be excused and is violently sea sick for the rest of the journey. ‘He is simply not used to riding in boats’ is the explanation from a fellow soldier, who can’t help but laugh at his mates’ discomfort. ‘Dusty’ continues his briefing, and explains that the patrol’s orders are to look for signs of any illegal or unusual activity, which usually involves illegal fishing boats, in the area encompassing what are called The English Company’s Islands (named by Flinders after the East India Company). They will be part of Operation ‘RESOLUTE’, the Australian Defense Force’s contribution to the government effort to protect Australia’s borders and offshore maritime interests.Captain Miller and his four patrolmen, 33-year-old Lance Corporal Danny Daniels, 24-year-old Lance Corporal Vinnie Rami, 27-year-old Private Jonah Thinglere and 24-year-old Private Drew Perry, are Australian Army Reservists serving with the North West Mobile Force, the Regional Force Surveillance Unit better known as NORFORCE. Formed in 1981, this infantry regiment conducts reconnaissance and surveillance patrols in remote areas of Northern Australia, including the indigenous Aboriginal reserve known as Arnhem Land. It consists of 600 soldiers, which includes 60 regular army officers, and around 240 indigenous soldiers from remote Aboriginal communities. These indigenous soldiers are really what make this unit unique. Their local knowledge about the terrain, the flora and fauna, and the means to which these can be used to sustain their time out on patrol in the ‘bush’, make them an invaluable part of an army that performs active patrols in the largest area of operations of any military unit in the world – some 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles) – that includes some of the most remote areas on earth.I learn that the landing craft we are travelling in is officially called an LCM8. Its bow ramp is finally lowered after a slow and bumpy five hour ride to our drop-off point. Looking at the small boats rocking on the swell, I am now glad I took the Army swim test before embarking, which involves swimming 100 meters, and treading water for five minutes, fully clothed (and that includes hiking boots). The patrol’s two inflatable boats, called Zodiacs, are pushed down the ramp, and we clamber aboard. We are now trying to find our way using just the illumination of a half-moon, and millions of stars. The destination is still some 30km (18 miles) away – a small beach on what’s called Astell Island. Our first attempt at landing is a somewhat scary experience. With visibility extremely low, and with less than 50 meters to the beach, we are suddenly caught on the crest of a wave that up until just seconds before, was impossible to see. Sixty-year-old Dusty, with his many years experience having joined the Australian Navy in 1968 and serving during the Vietnam War, calmly advises his driver to turn around, as he ‘doesn’t want to go surfing tonight’. After checking several more beaches for waves, we finally find a calmer beach shortly before midnight. The greatest worry now becomes saltwater crocodiles. Dusty leads the exodus from the boats, with his soldiers sweeping the sea and shoreline with torchlight, looking for the telltale red eyes. Fish are jumping at the beams of torchlight, when suddenly just a few feet from the boats, something splashes on the surface of the water, and I ask ‘Is that a croc?’ Two of the soldiers, who have already entered the water, dive rather unceremoniously back into the Zodiac, much to the delight of the rest of the group. But it turns out to be nothing more than a sting ray, which of course is not exactly a comfort, but compared to a ‘croc’, it will do. Once all the equipment has been brought ashore, we set out our sleeping bags, and after a quick meal, it doesn’t take long to fall asleep.Salt Lake City, UtahBy Jim UrquhartPeanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz once said, “All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.”For me there is a simple truth in that statement. I have many failings and weaknesses that I am continually trying to learn from. Some I am just learning to accept, new ones get pointed out daily by others. That is just me. But I have the privilege of owning and caring for a dog.Spending time with most dogs you will probably find they want nothing more than to be close to you and be at your side as you experience the world. Food, water and loving attention is all you need to provide to win a dog’s heart. It is a simple price. But the admission into their hearts is worth more than their weight in gold.Dan McManus is a professional paragliding and hang gliding instructor in Utah. He has been flying for about 37 years and he can be found most days catching the breeze at the flight park on a mountain ridge at the south end of the Salt Lake valley. However, in recent years he has also been joined on many flights by his service dog Shadow. McManus suffers from a general anxiety disorder but manages to keep many of the symptoms in check with the constant companionship of his Australian cattle dog. While flying in itself has been a calming pursuit he soon found out that his service dog never wanted to be away from him (a bit of separation anxiety for Shadow).McManus said he would often come home from flying to find that Shadow had scratched up the doors and floors while he was away. At the flight park Shadow could run but was often times on the ground chasing him from below as he made his flights. Shadow has even been to known to try to hold onto McManus’ boots with his teeth in order to get in the air. “It felt like he wanted to keep me safe.”Gettysburg, PennsylvaniaBy Gary CameronThe 150th anniversary and reenactment of the U.S. Civil War battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was a story suggested months ago by Reuters Pictures Editor Mike Fiala. Lasting three days, it would include thousands of re-enactors dressed in blue & gray wool uniforms who would live in historically accurate camps with canvas tents, and include 400 horses for cavalry units, with over 200 cannons from both sides to effectively blast each other off the battlefield. Add thousands of rifles and side arms to the mix (all weaponry fires black powder but no shells or bullets in re-enactments), and you have the makings of one very loud display of history, carnage and destruction.What I did not know is that NO re-enactment battles of Gettysburg would be played out on the actual “hallowed” ground of the 1863 conflict. Two separate re-enactment groups would have their own events, each with versions of the July 1, 2, and 3 battle days, on large nearby farms. Stadium seating similar to those used at professional golf tournaments would accommodate 10,000 fans and border the battlefields.All of this would follow immediately after President Obama’s trip to Africa that fellow staff photographer Jason Reed and I were assigned to. While looking forward to the Gettysburg assignment, Africa (three countries in seven days with numerous events and time zones) would have to come first. And the temperatures experienced in Africa would break me in for the sweltering heat and humidity of 12 hour days in Pennsylvania. Not quite….Phnom Penh, CambodiaBy Damir SagoljLike a true professional, Maen Sopeak sings to the audience of seven people who sit on the bare floor of her room in a Phnom Penh suburb. Her singing is soft, at moments almost a whisper, but her beautiful voice is clear. In a country even slightly richer than devastated, impoverished Cambodia, she could be a star. She could perform to packed halls, wearing only the best clothes.Maen Sopeak is, however, just a poor garment worker. There will be no sell-out crowds or fancy dresses for her anytime soon. She shares a single, hole-in-the-wall room with six other women, who all work at a nearby garment factory producing clothes for Western brands.The song is excruciatingly sad. It tells the story of a girl forced into marriage with an older man, not the one she loves. Maen makes the grim song sound somehow joyful, although suicidal thoughts would be more appropriate. The abject conditions where she lives and works are a natural setting for this tragic ballad. Here, misery invites yet more misery. Just like in my home country of Bosnia, another devastated post-genocide country where its sevdah music is just a natural extension of everyday hardship.I’m in Cambodia for five days to do a story on garment workers. The idea is to see how these women live, and shine some light on these conditions before a tragedy strikes (which I hope will never happen). Working conditions are better than in Bangladesh, but not by much. After a building collapsed in Bangladesh in April, killing more than 1,000 workers in the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry, more business has come to Cambodia. Many fear more accidents will follow.I knew coming here was not going to be easy. No matter how long I stay, or how good or lucky I am, many layers of this complex story will remain unseen. What I have seen and photographed is not easy to put into one picture or into a single thought.SingaporeBy Edgar SuAs someone who has lived in Singapore all my life, haze is not unusual, it is somewhat a seasonal event that I have become used to. But last Monday was different, I woke up to a slightly smokey smell in the air and the view outside my apartment was more hazy than usual. Immediately, I checked Facebook to see what my friends working in the city were experiencing. Many posted pictures of a very hazy skyline from the view in their office and remarked that even the air in the subway and malls smelled of smoke. I immediately made my way to the business district to have a look. My first instinct was to get up to the rooftop of the Marina Bay Sands hotel to get the best vantage point available in the city. On the way up, a hotel staff member apologized to me in the elevator, “I am sorry for the view today”. He was right, from the observation deck, the haze was so thick that I could only see the outlines of landmark buildings. There on the 57th floor, I could feel no breeze. It was very humid, my chest felt tight and I found it hard to breathe carrying all my gear with me. I needed that one picture showing a human element against the hazy skyline and I knew it was at the poolside which only hotel guests had access. My only option was to wait to join one of the three daily scheduled tours of the pool for the public. So I waited two hours in the humidity before a tour guide came along and brought us in. “Take as many pictures as you want” he said. The only problem was, it wasn’t exactly a tour of the pool, we were only allowed in a small 20 yard stretch shared among at least 40 other tourists with cameras and we had only about fifteen minutes. Worse still, many of the hotel guests were suddenly getting out of the pool because of all the tourists looking at them. But I was lucky, just before I was about to leave, a man began swimming in front of us…Moore, OklahomaBy Lucas JacksonMinutes, sometimes seconds, is all the time people get to shelter from a tornado. Rarely with that much time is it possible to feel safe, especially as one of the rare category EF5 storms that bore down on Moore, Oklahoma rages overhead. It is overwhelming to see what wind can do when it unleashes an unfathomable amount of energy on structures that we humans believe are solid and safe. Full sized trucks wrapped around trees, suburbans turned into an unrecognizable mass of metal void of any identifying features, and blocks of neighborhoods laid flat, down to the foundations. Seeing this almost complete destruction – for blocks and blocks – makes it hard to comprehend how anyone could live through something like this. My own difficulty in matching what I was seeing with the reality that hundreds of people had managed to survive this event led me to start recording the stories of survivors and taking portraits of where they took shelter.I felt it was important to record these stories as they could help future tornado victims prepare a location inside of their home to better withstand a storm like this. The voices of Robert, Scott, Matt, Corey and Donna capture this experience that most of us can not even imagine and I thank everyone who was kind enough to share their memories. Almost every person I spoke with was watching the news to see where the tornado was heading as they sought shelter somewhere in their home. As the reality of the storm bearing down on them became clear and they ran for shelter in their homes, almost all of them remember hearing the phrase “If you are not underground, you will not survive this storm. You have run out of time,” said by Gary England, a meteorologist for News Channel 9 in Oklahoma City as the world began to rumble around them. These are their stories.“We were in the living room and all of us was in there, watching Channel 9. And he said that we needed to take cover immediately and also stated that it needed to be underground because it probably wasn’t going to be good if we took it on top of ground.from Blogs Dashboard: It turns out that advisers to ultra-rich aren’t always so flush themselves. So, what happens, if, say, you spend a day on your client’s fancy yacht, then go back to your own tiny dinghy?It’s simpler, more elegant . . . or just smaller.“It’s an awkward position you’re in when you’re dealing with high net worth individuals and families because even if you have a pretty nice lifestyle at home you go on a trip and visit three or four clients and you come home at the end of the day and say, ‘Wow, how do I suffer through this five bedroom house and four bathrooms, and woe is me,’” BNY Mellon Wealth Management Managing Director of Family Wealth Services Thomas Rogerson told the in Boston.“I think that advisors that work with high net worth families very often have to struggle with that issue,” he said.Rogerson is a funny case. He, himself, is heir to a fortune. His great grandfather was president of Boston Safe Deposit and Trust, a Massachusetts state-chartered bank taken over by Mellon, and started the Boston Foundation and Rogerson Communities philanthropic organizations. But, the money is essentially gone.The damages claims in Irving Picard’s pursuit of the banks that allegedly helped Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff are so outsized that even a simple two-page letter from a federal judge can lead to a $2 billion kerfuffle. On Tuesday, Manhattan federal district court judge Colleen McMahon sent a letter to lawyers for Picard, the bankruptcy trustee for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, and to lawyers for UBS, which is a defendant in two of Picard’s suits. UBS’s counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher had moved in June to transfer two Picard suits naming the bank as a defendant out of bankruptcy court and into federal court; Judge McMahon, who is overseeing Picard’s case against JPMorgan Chase, on July 7 and began requesting information, by letter, from Picard counsel at Baker & Hostetler and UBS counsel at Gibson Dunn.To understand Judge — and how it was misinterpreted — it’s important to know that in the two actions naming UBS defendants, Picard is asserting different causes of action and seeking different amounts of money. In the case known as Luxalpha, Picard and Baker & Hostetler claim that UBS breached its fiduciary duty and aided and abetted fraud. That suit demands $2 billion from UBS and other defendants. The other case, known as LIF, is a clawback action demanding the return of all the money the bank and other defendants redeemed from Madoff or earned in fees, a total of $550 million, according to Picard. Though the press release announcing the LIF suit refers to “alleged financial fraud” by UBS, the suit actually claims only unjust enrichment and another common-law cause of action as an alternative to the clawback theory.In a , Judge McMahon told Baker & Hostetler and Gibson Dunn that she needed more explanation of how the LIF and Luxalpha cases intersected and overlapped, and warned the lawyers that she wasn’t going to slow down the JPMorgan case to address complications in the UBS suit. In response, the Picard lawyers decided to simplify matters, reasoning that if they dropped the alternative-theory common law claims in the $550 million LIF case, there would be no reason for the case to stay in federal court. Picard could simply go after the $550 million in a bankruptcy court clawback action.Baker & Hostetler’s letter explaining its decision to drop LIF claims to Judge McMahon isn’t in the docket. But the judge entered into the record her July 19 letter, in which she notes (rather cryptically unless you know the background) that Picard “has withdrawn his non-bankruptcy claims.”On Wednesday morning, Bloomberg put out , reporting that Picard “may drop $2 billion in claims against UBS AG,” and quoting a bankruptcy lawyer who’s not involved in the Madoff litigation saying that Picard may have made a tactical decision to retreat from bigger claims. Bloggers who picked up the story reported that Picard was only going to pursue clawback claims against UBS. (See and .) Bloomberg to indicate that UBS’s shares were up in both Switzerland and the United States “after the withdrawal of Picard’s claims was reported.”But according to Picard’s lawyers, he hasn’t given up a penny of his demands against UBS. Oren Warshavsky of Baker & Hostetler told OTC Wednesday that the common-law claims Picard dropped from the $550 million LIF suit “were alternative theories of recovery,” to the bankruptcy-court clawback theory. “By dismissing the two common-law causes of action, our goal is to streamline the case and effect judicial economy. We did not diminish the amount sought in any way,” he said.Moreover, Picard hasn’t dropped any claims in the $2 billion Luxalpha fraud case against UBS, in which both sides will now presumably brief the very serious questions of standing and pre-emption that Judge McMahon is considering in Picard’s JPMorgan case.I contacted the editor of the Bloomberg story, asking for comment on my reporting that Picard hadn’t, in fact, dropped any valuable claims. “Our story is based on Judge McMahon’s letter to counsel filed in the district court docket yesterday,” he replied in an e-mail. Bloomberg updated its story Wednesday afternoon to include a comment from Picard’s spokesperson stating that the dropped claims don’t impact the damages sought against UBS. Bloomberg also reports that the bankruptcy lawyer quoted in early versions of the story had reviewed “Picard’s original suit against UBS” (it doesn’t say which one) and concluded, “The trustee ‘will get large sums of money using garden bankruptcy law, but he is giving up at least $2 billion based on common and state law claims.’”UBS’s lawyers at Gibson Dunn didn’t respond to requests for comment.There’s going to be big news coming soon in Picard’s cases against the banks. Judge Jed Rakoff has on the threshold question of whether the trustee has standing to sue the banks that allegedly abetted Madoff’s fraud. If Rakoff agrees with the banks, that’s a titanic defeat for Picard.But the trustee dropping duplicative claims to keep his case in the friendlier confines of bankruptcy court? Not so much.(Reporting by Alison Frankel)“” is a book about cricket, but it is also a tale about the rapid rise of modern India and the corruption that plagues it. A series of scandals in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the glitzy Twenty20 tournament run by the country’s cricket board, got James Astill hooked to the game in India. What followed was the 40-year-old journalist’s first book – an account of India’s rich cricketing tradition, politics, religion and the emergence of the cash-rich IPL.Astill takes the reader from the slums of Mumbai to a village in north India, places where cricket is as much tamasha (spectacle) as it is religion. Bollywood stars, business tycoons and cricketers, both past and present, feature in “”. So does Lalit Modi, a former IPL chairman, now an outcast in India’s cricketing circles.Astill spoke to India Insight about his book, cricket and its celebrity culture. Here are edited excerpts.Q: Why “Tamasha,” which can mean “spectacle,” “commotion” or a tempest in a teapot?A: The idea of spectacle and entertainment or theatricality in public life, sometimes chaotically, sometimes premeditatedly… It’s that coincidence of meaning that I wanted.Q: “Tamasha” is being increasingly used in a negative sense in India.A: The fact that it is used pejoratively is nonetheless something I wanted to capture. As you say, Indians speak of the IPL, speak of goings-on in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) dismissively as just tamasha — not serious cricket, not serious politics. I wanted that attitude also to be contained in the meaning, in the title, but that’s not necessarily my view.Q: Why did you think Indian cricket was worth writing a book about?A: I love all cricket, Indian cricket especially. But then more broadly and increasingly as I undertook research for this book, because of the way that cricket illustrates and to a certain extent explains so much else in India — in politics and business, the way that the society is organized and has changed so rapidly in recent years — lots of these things are manifested in cricket. And I think that as India gets ever more complicated, it is increasingly useful to have a lens or a code or a theme or a story to tell to explain India.Q: Tell us about your research for the book and the writing process.A: I’ve been visiting India on and off for 20 years, and I’ve lived in Delhi for four-and-a-half years as The Economist correspondent there. But specifically, I started out at the end of my time in The Economist with an idea to write a book about the IPL because it had been such a big news story. It seemed to say so much about growth and zest and enterprise in this new, young, fast growing India.
stigma normally associated with such borrowing.It was one of several innovative lending mechanisms the central bank created to keep at least some credit flowing during a deepening crisis.”I will remember Chairman Ben Bernanke as an individual who – in the midst of very stressful circumstances – led the Fed in taking bold, decisive, and creative actions to avoid a global financial catastrophe,” said Dana Saporta, senior economist at Credit Suisse.The enormity of what lay ahead would not crystallize until 2008, when U.S. investment firms came under speculative attack. Only two of the five biggest, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, survived – and only because of taxpayer support.The bank bailout generated a powerful public backlash. Critics charged that the bank aid was not matched by similarly aggressive rescues for troubled homeowners or jobless Americans.But Bernanke, drawing insights from his Princeton research, argued that rescuing the financial system was central to saving the economy.His main academic focus, sparked by the experiences of his small businessman grandfather, was the central role of the Fed in creating the Great Depression when it kept monetary policy too tight and allowed banks to fail en masse.As Bernanke rewrote the rules on providing liquidity to parched financial markets, he also led an historic easing of monetary policy.By December 2008, the Fed had brought overnight interest rates down to effectively zero for the first time in its 100-year history. It then further pushed down borrowing costs with three rounds of bond purchases that have quadrupled its balance sheet to a record $3.7 trillion.Bernanke’s efforts were recognized when Time Magazine named him as “Person of the Year” in 2009, dubbing him “the most powerful nerd on the planet.”But the unconventional policy attracted critics, including those who argued it risked fanning inflation or creating asset price bubbles – concerns yet to be substantiated.When Bernanke came up for reappointment to a second four-year term in January 2010, the Senate confirmed him on a tepid 70-30 vote, the narrowest margin in the position’s history.Both Democrats and Republicans assailed his leadership, blasting him for the unpopular $182 billion taxpayer bailout of insurer American International Group and for regulatory failures that fueled the crisis. Many criticized the bank’s closeness to Wall Street.By his own admission, Bernanke failed to predict the housing bubble fall-out. In March 2007, he told Congress that “the problems in the subprime (mortgage) market seem likely to be contained.” Several other times he expressed optimism about the financial system’s soundness.RECOVERY NOTAnother Bernanke legacy will be his push for greater Fed transparency, particularly in convincing his colleagues to adopt a numerical inflation target.He also created a more collegial, less hierarchical central bank than the one Greenspan left behind.”One of the things that I hoped to accomplish and was not entirely successful at … was to try to depersonalize, to some extent, monetary policy,” he told reporters in March 2013.Bernanke might prefer to leave with the nation on a more solid economic footing but reality has not cooperated. U.S. unemployment remains high at 7.3 percent and labor force participation continues to decline.There also are doubts about the Fed’s rosy 2014 growth forecasts given a deteriorating global outlook, with rising tensions in key emerging markets such as India.Fed officials’ faith in the recovery’s strength is sufficiently weak that they surprised markets with a decision not to begin cutting back bond purchases in September. That sparked criticism about the Fed’s communications – despite Bernanke’s transparency drive.Some now see the decision as prescient given fresh clouds of economic uncertainty from a federal government shutdown and a political standoff over raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling that could lead to a default.(Additional reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Krista Hughes, Marilyn W. Thompson and Tim Dobbyn)TI Media in talks with L’Espresso on broadcasting tie-upMILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s Telecom Italia Media has signed a non-binding term sheet with publisher L’Espresso to pave the way for a tie-up of their digital broadcasting activities.In a statement on Monday the media company said the operation would generate industrial synergies and create a company with five national bandwidth assets, also known as multiplexes, owned by Telecom Italia Media.The company, controlled by debt-laden phone group Telecom Italia, said its board had decided to continue talks to reach a final agreement.Two sources familiar with the matter said the newly created broadcasting company, which would sell bandwidth in competition with Mediaset and state broadcaster RAI, could be put up for sale at a later date.”The rationale of the operation is to put together the assets and extract value from them, probably through the sale of a stake or of the entire entity,” one source told Reuters.The value of each multiplex is between 80 million euros ($100 million) and 200 million euros and could benefit from a recovery of the Italian advertising market, analysts said.Mediobanca advised Telecom Italia Media and Banca IMI advised L’Espresso.Shares in Telecom Italia Media closed up 2.5 percent on Monday and L’Espresso was up 4.75 percent, outperforming the broader Milan bourse.($1 = 0.7368 euros)(Reporting by Danilo Masoni, editing by Stephen Jewkes and David Evans)Timberlake celebrates return to music with 2nd No. 1 album this yearLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop singer Justin Timberlake scored his second chart-topping album this year on Wednesday as his latest record debuted at No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 album chart, capping the singer’s successful return to the musical spotlight.Timberlake’s “The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2,” which follows the first set of 10 songs released in March this year, sold 350,000 copies in its first week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan.The first installment of “The 20/20 Experience” sold 968,000 copies, the biggest opening week sales of the year so far.Timberlake, 32, returned to music after more than a five-year hiatus, during which he focused on his acting career. His debut single “Suit & Tie” featuring rapper Jay Z became a chart-topper in January, and his album was received well by fans and critics.Other new albums in the top 10 this week include 16-year-old New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde at No. 3 with her debut album “Pure Heroine,” selling 129,000 copies.The album has been driven by the popularity of the single “Royals,” which topped Billboard’s digital songs chart this week, selling more than 2 million download copies in the United States. Lorde’s album also garnered nearly 6 million U.S. plays on online streaming platform Spotify in its first week.Country singer Tyler Farr entered the chart at No. 5 with his debut album “Redneck Crazy,” while Los Angeles sister trio Haim came in at No. 6 with the critically acclaimed debut album “Days Are Gone.”On the digital songs chart, which measures song downloads, the top three songs remained steady this week with Lorde’s “Royals” at No. 1, Katy Perry’s “Roar” at No. 2 and Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” at No. 3.A surprise entry on the digital songs chart this week came in the form of British 1960s rock band Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” at No. 32. The song scored 37,000 downloads in the past week after being featured in the closing scene in the final episode of AMC’s drug drama “Breaking Bad” last month.Overall, album sales for the week ending October 6 totaled 4.8 million, down 10 percent from the comparable week in 2012, according to Billboard.(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Stacey Joyce)Time not on the side of older Americans in housing slumpCHICAGO (Reuters) – Prior to 2008, many baby boomers assumed they were set for retirement. They would fund those golden years by tapping into their homes if they hadn’t saved enough in their 401(k) plans.But home equity no longer looks like a safe Plan B for a fast-growing group of pre-retirees and seniors.About 3.5 million homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than their properties are worth, according to a report released last week by the AARP Public Policy Institute. The rate of foreclosures is lower for homeowners under age 50, while the 50+ population experienced a much higher rate of growth in foreclosures from 2007 to 2011.At the end of last year, 2.92 percent of mortgage loans to 50+ households had been foreclosed – a whopping 873 percent increase from 2007, AARP reported. By contrast, 3.48 percent of loans to younger households had been foreclosed, with a corresponding growth rate of 729 percent.The study adds to the growing mountain of evidence that the economy has shredded retirement possibilities, especially for low and middle-class households. Lower home values are especially devastating for these demographic groups.The Federal Reserve Bank reported recently in its triennial Survey of Consume Finances that housing accounted for 51 percent of household wealth for middle-income households, compared with just 19 percent for households in the top ten percent of income.HIGHEST ACTIVITYForeclosure activity remains high in many parts of the country, according to a report released today by RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosed properties. The report found that the number of foreclosures rose in 59 percent of the nation’s top metro markets.California accounted for 10 of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates during the first half of the year; Florida accounted for four of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates, and Illinois accounted for two of the top 20. Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado each had one city in the top 20.”Even if seniors are only a little underwater, that can be a big problem since they may be at a time when they want to make a move, and can’t easily sell,” says Andrea Alegria, an industry analyst specializing in real estate at IBISWorld. “They don’t have the benefit of time, which would allow them to wait for the property’s value to increase.”AARP found that 53 percent of foreclosures among homeowners over age 50 occurred on loans where borrower income was between $50,000 and $124,999; another 32 percent occurred where borrower income was less than $50,000. Last year, the foreclosure rate for Hispanics over age 50 was 3.9 percent and the foreclosure rate for African Americans was 3.5 percent – double the rate of 1.9 percent for whites.NO TIME TO WAITEven if a housing recovery does get underway, older homeowners who are underwater aren’t likely to have sufficient time to wait out a full recovery, which likely will take years, if not decades. About half (51 percent) of families headed by a person age 65 to 74 had no money in retirement savings accounts in 2010, according to Federal Reserve data. And among those with savings, half had less than $100,000. Among families headed by a person age 75 and older, 67 percent had no money in retirement savings accounts in 2010.”Many of these seniors are relying entirely on Social Security,” says Debra Whitman, executive vice president for policy at the AARP Policy Institute.That leaves many older adults with very limited options when mortgage problems surface. “Many will look to family members for housing – we are seeing a lot of multi-generational housing,” says Alegria. “Or they’ll rent.”Experts advise seniors facing foreclosure to seek counseling – but only from one of the network of free counseling services approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A federal task force has been seeking to crack down on scams by fee-based counseling services that promise vulnerable homeowners that they can save their homes and lower their mortgage payments.”A lot of the fee-based services we think of as scams,” says Bruce Dorpalen, executive director of the National Housing Resource Center, a nonprofit organization advocating for housing counseling agencies. “They aren’t as well-connected or as effective as the HUD-approved counseling services.” HUD’s website offers a national directory of free counseling services (), which work with mortgage lenders to try to avoid foreclosure. Housing counselors also can help homeowners organize their finances and understand mortgage options.The department also offers a 24-hour housing foreclosure hotline (888-995-4673) that can provide foreclosure assistance.The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) offers a useful page of advice and resources for consumers at risk of foreclosure on its website, including HUD-approved counseling and free legal services. ().(The writer is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. For more from Mark Miller, see )(Follow us @ReutersMoney or . Editing by Jilian Mincer and Alden Bentley)TIMELINE – Fed’s Bernanke saw U.S. economy through turbulent timesWASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama nominated Janet Yellen on Wednesday to take over from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, closing a chapter in a turbulent period for the U.S. economy that has spurred unprecedented central bank action.Following is a look at Bernanke’s two four-year terms in office, which come to a close on January 31:October 24, 2005 – President George W. Bush nominates Bernanke to four-year term as Fed chairman. Bernanke is confirmed by the Senate on January 31, 2006, and sworn in the following day.August 17, 2007 – Fed cuts discount rate it charges banks for emergency loans by 0.5 percentage point to ease growing strains in financial markets.November 14, 2007 – Fed announces it will increase frequency of its economic forecasts in an effort to improve transparency.December 2007 – U.S. economy slips into recession.December 12, 2007 – Fed launches Term Auction Facility to encourage borrowing by banks hesitant to borrow at its discount window. It was the first of several crisis-era programs the Fed would launch to keep money flowing through the economy.March 11, 2008 – Fed invokes emergency powers to launch a $200 billion Term Securities Lending Facility in which it offers Treasury securities to primary dealers against a broad range of collateral, including home mortgages, as a way to foster market liquidity. The Fed would invoke emergency powers multiple times during the crisis to launch new lending facilities.March 14, 2008 – Fed provides emergency financing to Bear Stearns through JPMorgan, the first bailout of a broker since the Great Depression.March 16, 2008 – Bear Stearns collapses and JPMorgan agrees to buy it with $30 billion in backing from the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Fed launches Primary Dealer Credit Facility for investment banks.September 7, 2008 – U.S. government takes over mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.September 14, 2008 – Bank of America buys Merrill Lynch for about $50 billion.September 15, 2008 – Lehman Brothers becomes the largest firm in U.S. history to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the Fed and Treasury fail to find a buyer and make the controversial decision not to bail out the giant investment bank.September 16, 2008 – Fed lends $85 billion to insurer American International Group to prevent its bankruptcy.September 19, 2008 – Fed begins Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility to foster liquidity in the ABCP market and money markets in general.September 21, 2008 – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs become bank holding companies, giving them access to the Fed’s discount window.September 23, 2008 – Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urge Congress to approve a $700 billion financial bailout fund.September 29, 2008 – Dow Jones industrial average drops 778 points, its largest one-day decline in history, after the House of Representatives fails to pass the bailout bill. The Senate passes the bill on October 1 and the House takes it up again on October 3 and this time passes it.October 8, 2008 – Fed, European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden coordinate a global interest rate cut.October 21, 2008 – Fed announces a $600 billion facility to help money markets purchase certificates of deposits and commercial paper.October 27, 2008 – Fed expands support of commercial paper market with creation of a temporary Commercial Paper Funding Facility to extend liquidity to non-bank issuers of the paper.November 23, 2008 – Fed, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp bail out Citigroup by backing $306 billion in loans and acquiring preferred shares in the bank.November 25, 2008 – Fed launches first round of quantitative easing, or QE1, with plans to buy up to $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $100 billion in housing agency debt.December 16, 2008 – Fed cuts overnight federal funds rate to between zero and 0.25 percent.January 16, 2009 – Fed, Treasury and FDIC bail out Bank of America by backing some $118 billion in loans and acquiring stock in the bank.February 18, 2009 – Fed policymakers add longer-run projections for GDP, unemployment and inflation to their quarterly forecasts, a move seen as effectively establishing informal inflation target.March 15, 2009 – In interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Bernanke says he sees “green shoots” of economic revival. It is the first television interview by a sitting Fed chairman in 20 years.March 18, 2009 – Fed announces it will expand QE1 with additional $750 billion in MBS, $100 billion in housing agency debt and $300 billion in Treasury securities. It also vows for first time to hold short-term rates near zero “for an extended period.”June 2009 – U.S. economic recession ends. The 18-month downturn was the longest and deepest since the Great Depression.August 2009 – Obama nominates Bernanke for second term.October 2009 – U.S. unemployment rate peaks at 10 percent, its highest since 1983.January 28, 2010 – Senate confirms Bernanke for second term. The 70-30 vote is the weakest endorsement of a chairman in the Fed’s 96-year history.November 3, 2010 – Fed announces second round of quantitative easing, or QE2, totaling $600 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds.April 27, 2011 – Bernanke holds Fed’s first post-meeting news conference.August 29, 2011 – Fed says plans to keep rates near zero until mid-2013.September 21, 2011 – Fed announces “Operation Twist,” a plan to exchange $400 billion of short-term Treasury bonds on its balance sheet for long-term bonds in attempt to lower longer-term interest rates.January 25, 2012 – Fed adopts inflation target for first time, setting 2 percent as the goal. It also says it expect to keep rates near zero through late 2014 and begins publishing policymakers’ projections of when they think federal funds rate should rise.September 13, 2012 – Fed announces third round of quantitative easing, or QE3. It starts by purchasing $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month and says it will continue to reinvest principal payments from its holdings.December 12, 2012 – With Operation Twist expiring at year end, Fed announces plan to expand QE3 by adding purchases of $45 billion worth of longer-term Treasuries per month. It also says it expects rates near zero would be appropriate as long as the jobless rate is above 6.5 percent and inflation does not threaten to top 2.5 percent.June 19, 2013 – Bernanke says Fed expects to begin to wind down QE3 by year end and bring it to full halt by mid-2014.September 18, 2013 – Bernanke says the economy is not yet strong enough to allow the Fed to begin reducing its bond buying, confounding markets which had been betting on a decision to taper the purchases.October 9, 2013 – President Barack Obama, nominating Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen to replace Bernanke at the Fed’s helm, thanks the chairman for his service: “He has truly been a stabilizing force, not just for our country but the entire world,” he said. (Compiled by Paige Gance; Editing by James Dalgleish)Timeline: Fed’s Bernanke saw U.S. economy through turbulent timesWASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama nominated Janet Yellen on Wednesday to take over from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, closing a chapter in a turbulent period for the U.S. economy that has spurred unprecedented central bank action.Following is a look at Bernanke’s two four-year terms in office, which come to a close on January 31:October 24, 2005 – President George W. Bush nominates Bernanke to four-year term as Fed chairman. Bernanke is confirmed by the Senate on January 31, 2006, and sworn in the following day.August 17, 2007 – Fed cuts discount rate it charges banks for emergency loans by 0.5 percentage point to ease growing strains in financial markets.November 14, 2007 – Fed announces it will increase frequency of its economic forecasts in an effort to improve transparency.December 2007 – U.S. economy slips into recession.December 12, 2007 – Fed launches Term Auction Facility to encourage borrowing by banks hesitant to borrow at its discount window. It was the first of several crisis-era programs the Fed would launch to keep money flowing through the economy.March 11, 2008 – Fed invokes emergency powers to launch a $200 billion Term Securities Lending Facility in which it offers Treasury securities to primary dealers against a broad range of collateral, including home mortgages, as a way to foster market liquidity. The Fed would invoke emergency powers multiple times during the crisis to launch new lending facilities.March 14, 2008 – Fed provides emergency financing to Bear Stearns through JPMorgan, the first bailout of a broker since the Great Depression.March 16, 2008 – Bear Stearns collapses and JPMorgan agrees to buy it with $30 billion in backing from the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Fed launches Primary Dealer Credit Facility for investment banks.September 7, 2008 – U.S. government takes over mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.September 14, 2008 – Bank of America buys Merrill Lynch for about $50 billion.September 15, 2008 – Lehman Brothers becomes the largest firm in U.S. history to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the Fed and Treasury fail to find a buyer and make the controversial decision not to bail out the giant investment bank.September 16, 2008 – Fed lends $85 billion to insurer American International Group to prevent its bankruptcy.September 19, 2008 – Fed begins Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility to foster liquidity in the ABCP market and money markets in general.September 21, 2008 – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs become bank holding companies, giving them access to the Fed’s discount window.September 23, 2008 – Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urge Congress to approve a $700 billion financial bailout fund.September 29, 2008 – Dow Jones industrial average drops 778 points, its largest one-day decline in history, after the House of Representatives fails to pass the bailout bill. The Senate passes the bill on October 1 and the House takes it up again on October 3 and this time passes it.October 8, 2008 – Fed, European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden coordinate a global interest rate cut.October 21, 2008 – Fed announces a $600 billion facility to help money markets purchase certificates of deposits and commercial paper.October 27, 2008 – Fed expands support of commercial paper market with creation of a temporary Commercial Paper Funding Facility to extend liquidity to non-bank issuers of the paper.November 23, 2008 – Fed, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp bail out Citigroup by backing $306 billion in loans and acquiring preferred shares in the bank.November 25, 2008 – Fed launches first round of quantitative easing, or QE1, with plans to buy up to $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $100 billion in housing agency debt.December 16, 2008 – Fed cuts overnight federal funds rate to between zero and 0.25 percent.January 16, 2009 – Fed, Treasury and FDIC bail out Bank of America by backing some $118 billion in loans and acquiring stock in the bank.February 18, 2009 – Fed policymakers add longer-run projections for GDP, unemployment and inflation to their quarterly forecasts, a move seen as effectively establishing informal inflation target.March 15, 2009 – In interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Bernanke says he sees “green shoots” of economic revival. It is the first television interview by a sitting Fed chairman in 20 years.March 18, 2009 – Fed announces it will expand QE1 with additional $750 billion in MBS, $100 billion in housing agency debt and $300 billion in Treasury securities. It also vows for first time to hold short-term rates near zero “for an extended period.”June 2009 – U.S. economic recession ends. The 18-month downturn was the longest and deepest since the Great Depression.August 2009 – Obama nominates Bernanke for second term.October 2009 – U.S. unemployment rate peaks at 10 percent, its highest since 1983.January 28, 2010 – Senate confirms Bernanke for second term. The 70-30 vote is the weakest endorsement of a chairman in the Fed’s 96-year history.November 3, 2010 – Fed announces second round of quantitative easing, or QE2, totaling $600 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds.April 27, 2011 – Bernanke holds Fed’s first post-meeting news conference.August 29, 2011 – Fed says plans to keep rates near zero until mid-2013.September 21, 2011 – Fed announces “Operation Twist,” a plan to exchange $400 billion of short-term Treasury bonds on its balance sheet for long-term bonds in attempt to lower longer-term interest rates.January 25, 2012 – Fed adopts inflation target for first time, setting 2 percent as the goal. It also says it expect to keep rates near zero through late 2014 and begins publishing policymakers’ projections of when they think federal funds rate should rise.September 13, 2012 – Fed announces third round of quantitative easing, or QE3. It starts by purchasing $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month and says it will continue to reinvest principal payments from its holdings.December 12, 2012 – With Operation Twist expiring at year end, Fed announces plan to expand QE3 by adding purchases of $45 billion worth of longer-term Treasuries per month. It also says it expects rates near zero would be appropriate as long as the jobless rate is above 6.5 percent and inflation does not threaten to top 2.5 percent.June 19, 2013 – Bernanke says Fed expects to begin to wind down QE3 by year end and bring it to full halt by mid-2014.September 18, 2013 – Bernanke says the economy is not yet strong enough to allow the Fed to begin reducing its bond buying, confounding markets which had been betting on a decision to taper the purchases.October 9, 2013 – President Barack Obama, nominating Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen to replace Bernanke at the Fed’s helm, thanks the chairman for his service: “He has truly been a stabilizing force, not just for our country but the entire world,” he said.(Compiled by Paige Gance; Editing by James Dalgleish)To maximize retirement benefits, know the rulesNEW YORK (Reuters) – When the oldest baby boomers start turning 66 this year, they’ll be eligible to file for full Social Security benefits. But pollsters say many Americans plan to work well past that age, reflecting tough economic times and a general desire to reshape the idea of retirement.What will working longer mean for the Social Security benefits of these seniors? How about Medicare, which has filing rules that are closely linked to those of Social Security and employment status?These are important questions for a large portion of the U.S. population; about 10,000 seniors will turn 66 every day over the next 20 years. Social Security and Medicare both have detailed rules governing the interplay of work and benefits, and making the right decisions make a difference of thousands of dollars in enhanced Social Security benefits or the Medicare premiums that you pay.I’ll be looking at how work and entitlement benefits are intertwined in two columns, starting today with Social Security.Social Security’s rules encourage seniors to keep working at least until the Full Retirement Age (FRA) of 66. You can work and receive full benefits starting at that age. You can start receiving Social Security as young as 62, but if you’re working, $1 will be deducted from benefit payments for every $2 earned over $14,640. Although this is often described as a penalty, the withheld benefits are added back to your benefits, after you reach 66, using a complex actuarial formula.Social Security offers another important incentive to forestall filing until at least 66. Benefits are reduced permanently for every year that you file before the FRA, and increased for every year that you wait to file beyond it, up till the age of 70.That’s intended to keep the program actuarially fair, paying roughly equal lifetime benefits to everyone in the program. But delaying does deliver a major boost to monthly income – and it serves as an inducement to work longer and wait to receive benefits.For example, filing at 62 means you retired four years early, and the net effect is a permanent reduction in annual benefits of 25 percent. On the other hand, if you wait until age 70, your annual benefit will be 32 percent higher than if you started at age 66.Married couples can coordinate these decisions to boost benefits through smart navigation of Social Security’s survivor and spousal benefits rules.The survivor rules permit widows to receive up to 100 percent of a deceased spouse’s benefit or her own benefit, whichever is greater; the spousal rules permit receiving the greater of her own benefit or up to half of a living spouse’s benefit.The survivor rule has a very simple implication for retirement timing decisions: couples usually benefit when the spouse with the higher lifetime earning history (which translates into a bigger Social Security check) delays filing.That’s most often the man – and men can expect their wives to outlive them. A delayed filing by the higher-earning husband usually sets the stage for the widow to receive a higher benefit down the road, after his death.But that doesn’t mean couples must forego Social Security entirely while the husband delays filing, notes Jim Blankenship, a financial planner in New Berlin, Illinois and author of “A Social Security Owner’s Manual: Your Guide to Social Security Retirement, Dependent’s, and Survivor’s Benefits” ().Blankenship suggests that the lower-earning spouse files for her own benefit at 62, receiving the lower rate, or at her FRA. When the higher-earning spouse files to receive the increased, delayed benefits, the spouse is eligible to shift to the spousal benefit (again, based on half of the spouse’s benefit) in situations where that makes sense.”That brings in some benefits while the higher-earning spouse – usually the husband – keeps working and earning credits toward a higher benefit,” he says.Blankenship takes it one step further: He suggests that the higher-earning spouse files for a spousal benefit while he waits to file for his own benefits.”It’s not a lot of money in most cases, but it is money you’re entitled to and should receive,” he says.Another perfectly kosher maneuver is known as a “file and suspend.” Let’s say the higher-earning husband wants to continue delaying taking benefits past his FRA in order to keep accruing credits. But the lower-earning wife would like to file for spousal benefits on the husband’s record.Here’s how the “file-and-suspend” works:1. The higher-earning spouse files for benefits at his FRA but immediately files a notice to suspend benefits.2. The lower-earning spouse elects to receive spousal benefits3. The higher-earning spouse continues to accrue higher payments for whatever point he elects to begin receiving benefits.For more on the ins and outs of filing for benefits , see my guide to Social Security basics ( ) and an FAQ on spousal and survivor benefits ().In a future column, I’ll take a look at how Medicare’s filing rules and how they interact with employer-based benefits.(Editing by Bernadette Baum)Toilet glitch forces JAL to turn around Dreamliner flightTOKYO Oct 10 (Reuters) – Japan Airlines Co wasforced to turn around its Tokyo-bound flight from Moscow onThursday due to a problem in the Boeing 787 jet’slavatory, a spokesman for the Japanese carrier said.The incident on the 787 Dreamliner follows a spate ofproblems since its first flight in December 2009, including abattery fire that temporarily forced the grounding world-wide ofBoeing’s high-profile fleet.JAL spokesman Takuya Shimoguchi said the toilet malfunctionon the flight from Moscow was likely caused by an electronicglitch. The airline was working on repairs on the ground, headded.The flight, carrying 141 passengers, departed Moscow onWednesday evening and returned after about five hours, he said.Shares in JAL, which made headlines this week by signingwith Boeing rival Airbus for the next generation oflong-haul jets, were up 2.1 percent on Thursday morning,outperforming the broader market.Top court upholds healthcare law in Obama triumphWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s healthcare law on Thursday in an election-year triumph for him and fellow Democrats who championed the most sweeping overhaul since the 1960s of the unwieldy U.S. healthcare system.In a 5-4 ruling based on the power of Congress to impose taxes, the nation’s highest court preserved the law’s “individual mandate” requiring that most Americans obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a tax. The justices also preserved, with some changes, a provision of the law expanding the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor.The decision – written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s four liberals – was a setback for Republicans who mounted unified opposition in Congress to the law before its 2010 passage and who deride it as meddling in the lives of individuals and in the business of the states.Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger in the November 6 presidential election, immediately responded, with the president calling the ruling “a victory for people all over this country whose lives will be more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it.”"We will continue to implement this law and we’ll work together to improve on it,” said Obama, speaking somberly in the White House East Room, the same setting he used to announce the 2011 death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”What we won’t do – what the country can’t afford to do – is re-fight the political battles of two years ago or go back to the way things were. With today’s announcement, it’s time for us to move forward,” Obama added.Romney, who pushed through a similar healthcare overhaul at the state level in 2006 as governor of Massachusetts but opposed Obama’s law, called on voters to help him defeat the president in order to repeal the law critics derisively call “Obamacare.”"If we’re going get rid of ‘Obamacare’ we’re going to have to replace President Obama. My mission is to make sure we do exactly that,” Romney said on the roof of a building overlooking the U.S. Capitol.The healthcare law, known formally as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is the biggest overhaul of the $2.6 trillion healthcare system in about 50 years. It was signed by Obama in March 2010 and promptly put to the test in the courts by 26 of the 50 states and a trade group for small businesses.The court’s decision largely vindicates Obama and Democratic lawmakers in their attempt to fix a system that, while representing 18 percent of the economy, leaves 16 percent of Americans uninsured, a fact that sets the United States apart in the industrialized world.The U.S. system, unlike other rich countries, is a patchwork of private insurance and restrictive government programs. The United States pays more for healthcare than any other country, but about 50 million of the roughly 310 million Americans still have no insurance at all.The Obama law was meant to bring coverage to more than 30 million of the uninsured and slow soaring medical costs.Roberts was joined by liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in upholding the law’s pivotal “individual mandate” provision.The four dissenters, all from the court’s conservative wing – Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, took the unusual step of issuing one joint opinion and said they would have struck down the entire law.Kennedy, summarizing the dissent from the bench, accused the court majority of “vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of healthcare regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect.”‘CHARACTERIZED AS A TAX’Opponents said the individual mandate was an overreach by the federal government and that Congress had exceeded its powers. The court was deeply divided on this issue, but the majority ruled that Congress’s taxing authority allowed the mandate.The law’s “requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Roberts wrote for the court’s majority.”Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” Roberts wrote.In another part of the decision, the court said Congress went too far in a part of the law that requires states to expand the government’s Medicaid health insurance program for the poor with the goal of covering more of the uninsured.The court said this problem can be fixed by precluding the federal government from stripping states of existing Medicaid funds if they did not comply with the expansion, and that this did not require striking down other parts of the law.DRAMATIC DAY AT COURTThe court began its session much as it always does. At 10 a.m. sharp, the marshal’s familiar cry of “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” rang out as the nine justices entered through heavy scarlet drapes and took their seats at the tall mahogany bench.The looks on their faces gave nothing away. As he took a seat, Chief Justice Roberts smiled slightly in the direction of the justices’ guest seats, where his wife, Jane, was sitting.As he and other justices read statements, it became obvious that Roberts, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2005, had been the crucial vote upholding Obama’s law.Roberts showed he had taken control over a divided bench. He highlighted flaws in the administration’s arguments and stressed the majority was not commenting on the wisdom of the law.Rather, he said, if it could be upheld, the court must uphold it. He said it was not the job of the judiciary “to save” the nation from policy choices made by elected legislators.Romney and the Republicans had hoped the Supreme Court would gut the law. Deprived of that outcome, they can now continue pressing the attack on Obama on the campaign trail, but their hopes for a rollback or repeal will hang on legislation, unlikely before the elections, and on the voting public, whose views are mixed.”What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution,” Romney said. “What they did not do is say that Obamacare is good law, or good policy.”About 56 percent of Americans said they opposed the law in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. When asked about its individual provisions, however, most respondents said they strongly supported them, except for the individual mandate, which was opposed by 61 percent of those surveyed.Most respondents in the survey favored banning insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions; letting young adults stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26; and making companies with more than 50 workers offer insurance to their employees. All are parts of the law.So are the creation of state-based exchanges to offer health insurance; insurance premium assistance to poor people; and insurance tax credits for those just above the poverty line.Jamie Thompson of Harleysville, Pennsylvania, who has a daughter with cystic fibrosis, welcomed the ruling.”My daughter’s healthcare costs a fortune. She’s 10. We haven’t gotten to the end of the line, but we’ve been told it’s not uncommon for cystic fibrosis kids to discover they’ve used up their lifetime benefit from healthcare,” he said. “It means she will have healthcare when she needs it.”House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, said, “Today’s ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety.”Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said the House would vote on July 11 on legislation that would repeal the law. The Democratic-led Senate is certain to block any repeal legislation coming out of the Republican-controlled House.Democrats hailed the court ruling as a posthumous victory for a longtime healthcare reform champion, Senator Ted Kennedy, who died in 2009. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she called his widow Vicki Kennedy to say: “Now, Teddy can rest.Shares of hospital chains jumped, while large health insurer stocks fell after the ruling. Widening the pool of paying patients stands to benefit hospitals, which are often left to cover the high medical bills of the sick who have no coverage.(Additional reporting by David Morgan, Donna Smith, Deborah Charles, Thomas Ferraro, Jeff Mason, Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis in Washington with Lewis Krauskopf in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)Top SEC lawyer on ‘Fabulous Fab’ trial to join WilmerHaleNEW YORK (Reuters) – Matthew Martens, the top trial lawyer at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who led the agency to victory in its blockbuster civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre, is joining the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.The law firm, known as WilmerHale, announced on Wednesday that Martens will be joining as a partner in its securities and litigation practices.Martens most recently served as chief litigation counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the SEC. Although his main job was to oversee other lawyers, he tried the case against Tourre, the highest profile case to emerge from the agency’s investigations into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.The SEC had accused Tourre, who once referred to himself as “the fabulous Fab” in an email, of misleading investors in a synthetic collateralized debt obligation called Abacus 2007-AC1. The SEC said Tourre failed to disclose that Paulson & Co Inc, the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, helped choose subprime mortgage securities linked to go into Abacus and also that the fund planned to bet against it.Martens joined the SEC in August 2010 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he joined as an assistant U.S. Attorney and left as a deputy criminal chief.WilmerHale, which represents major corporations, has 1,000 lawyers across 14 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia, according to its website.(Reporting by Andrew Longstreth and Sarah Lynch; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)Top shareholders back Alibaba’s controversial corporate structure(Reuters) – Alibaba Group’s biggest shareholders have backed a partnership structure that is at the center of a debate over where the Chinese e-commerce giant may list its shares in the most highly anticipated Internet IPO since Facebook Inc’s $16 billion offer last year.Alibaba, which analysts value at as much as $120 billion, appears to have failed to convince Hong Kong regulators to waive tough listing rules, potentially handing the lucrative IPO to rival U.S. market operators.Founded by billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma, Alibaba wants to find a home for its stock where its 28 partners, mainly founders and senior executives, can keep control over a majority of the board, even though they own only around 13 percent of the company.In the first public comments from one of those partners, Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai defended Alibaba’s corporate structure on Thursday, saying it is a “living body” intended to preserve the company’s culture.While losing such a large IPO would be a blow to the Hong Kong stock exchange – Alibaba could seek to raise as much as $15 billion in the initial public offering – regulators there have stood firm in their defense of small investors and a policy of treating all shareholders alike.”We understand Hong Kong may not want to change its tradition for one company, but we firmly believe that Hong Kong must consider what is needed in order to adapt to future trends and changes,” Tsai, one of Alibaba’s 18 founders in 1999, wrote in a blog post. ()On Friday, Alibaba received the backing of both Japanese wireless carrier SoftBank Corp and Yahoo Inc, its two largest shareholders with stakes of 36.7 percent and 24 percent, respectively.”Alibaba has built a phenomenal business and created tremendous value for its shareholders over the years,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement. “We are therefore very supportive of the Alibaba partnership structure.”In a brief statement, Jacqueline Reses, Chief Development Officer at Yahoo and an Alibaba board member, said: “In a fast-moving technology market, it’s critical that a company’s leadership can continue to preserve its culture and set its strategic course for the future.”"As one of Alibaba’s largest shareholders, Yahoo believes that management’s efforts reflect the desire to govern the company for long-term success while also balancing the rights of shareholders.”STRONG DEFENCETsai’s defense of Alibaba’s partnership model comes as debate rages in Hong Kong about whether the Asian financial hub should be more flexible to attract new and emerging companies.Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (HKEx), which is both the regulator of new listings and a publicly traded company that benefits from IPO fees and subsequent stock trading volumes, has insisted that its first duty is to protect all shareholders.In a lengthy blog post this week, the exchange’s CEO Charles Li suggested maybe leaving open the door to potential rule changes, so long as discussions aren’t rushed. He did not directly name Alibaba in his commentary.Hong Kong’s failure to secure the Alibaba IPO would mean lost revenues and less marketing clout to attract other deals. Alibaba commands 80 percent of China’s e-commerce market and handled 1 trillion yuan ($163.4 billion) of goods last year through its Tmall and Taobao market platforms.”The question Hong Kong must address is whether it is ready to look forward as the rest of the world passes it by,” Tsai wrote. “As a company with most of our business in China, it was natural for Hong Kong to be our first choice.”"Those who lack appreciation of our partnership philosophy may view our proposal merely as a founder wanting to preserve control. We could not have a more different objective,” he added.Alibaba declined to comment beyond Tsai’s post. A spokesman for the Hong Kong exchange declined to comment.($1 = 6.1214 Chinese yuan)(Reporting by Paul Carsten in BEIJING, Edwin Chan in SAN FRANCISCO, Mari Saito and Nobuhiro Kubo in TOKYO, Elzio Barreto and Denny Thomas in HONG KONG; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)Top U.S. bankers warn against prioritizing interest payments: WSJ(Reuters) – Top U.S. bankers have warned the Obama administration and Republican lawmakers that any move to pay interest on debt before obligations such as Social Security and payments to veterans would pose severe risks to financial markets and the economy, the Wall Street Journal reported.Some lawmakers think prioritizing interest payments would placate bond investors if the government breaches its borrowing limit, the Journal said.However, heads of the nation’s largest financial institutions told the officials in meetings that prioritizing some payments would create insurmountable uncertainty for investors, drive up borrowing costs and disrupt markets, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the meetings.As the U.S. government moved into the second week of a shutdown on Monday with no end in sight, a deadlocked Congress also faced an October 17 deadline to increase the nation’s borrowing power or risk defaulting on its debt.If no deal is reached, many outside observers including debt-ratings firms assume the government will begin prioritizing payments to bondholders over others, rather than risk defaulting on its debt, the Journal said.(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)Top U.S. SEC lawyer on ‘Fabulous Fab’ trial to join WilmerHaleNEW YORK Oct 9 (Reuters) – Matthew Martens, the top triallawyer at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who ledthe agency to victory in its blockbuster civil fraud caseagainst Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre, isjoining the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.The law firm, known as WilmerHale, announced on Wednesdaythat Martens will be joining as a partner in its securities andlitigation practices.Martens most recently served as chief litigation counsel forthe Division of Enforcement at the SEC. Although his main jobwas to oversee other lawyers, he tried the case against Tourre,the highest profile case to emerge from the agency’sinvestigations into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.The SEC had accused Tourre, who once referred to himself as”the fabulous Fab” in an email, of misleading investors in asynthetic collateralized debt obligation called Abacus 2007-AC1.The SEC said Tourre failed to disclose that Paulson & Co Inc,the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, helped choosesubprime mortgage securities linked to go into Abacus and alsothat the fund planned to bet against it.Martens joined the SEC in August 2010 from the U.S.Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he joinedas an assistant U.S. Attorney and left as a deputy criminalchief.WilmerHale, which represents major corporations, has 1,000lawyers across 14 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia,according to its website.Tough times for hedge funds that bet on market tumultNEW YORK (Reuters) – Nelson Saiers, a trader and math whiz, runs the type of hedge fund that tends to perform best when markets are going haywire.The $600 million Saiers Capital fund and other so-called volatility funds use complex trading strategies to take advantage of pricing discrepancies caused by gyrations in global financial markets.These funds flourished in the years after the financial crisis, when volatility was running hot, but this year is a different story.Financial markets have been largely moving upwards with few wild swings along the way. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up about 11 percent and the closely watched CBOE Volatility Index hit a six-year low in March.Saiers Capital’s fund is down about 1.24 percent through April 26, according to an investor. Overall, volatility funds gained 1.16 percent in the first quarter, according to hedge fund tracking firm eVestment, underperforming the broader hedge fund industry’s 3.7 percent gain.Saiers, who manages one of the better-known volatility funds, declined to confirm specific return figures but said some of his fund’s underperformance this year is the result of a deliberate strategy to put on trades that would profit in the event of a U.S. stock market crash.”If you buy crash protection you most likely lose a small amount of money, but if there is a crash you make a windfall,” said Saiers, who earned his doctorate in mathematics when he was 23 years old and joined the Alphabet Capital hedge fund in 2010. Alphabet changed its name in December to Saiers Capital to recognize his contribution to the firm’s performance.Many volatility traders are math nerds like Saiers, who cut their teeth on Wall Street trading derivatives or working on quantitative trading desks. Others come from the options pits or were specialists in statistical arbitrage.But one thing all volatility traders abhor is calm markets.”This is an environment to hit singles and doubles as opposed to home runs,” said Joshua Thimons, a portfolio manager with the PIMCO Multi-Asset Volatility Offshore Fund, which the Newport Beach, California-based investment firm launched in 2011.The $1 billion volatility hedge fund run by bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co fell 1.4 percent during the first quarter, according to data from HSBC’s Private Bank. Thimons declined to comment on the figure.Last year, volatility managers were able to boost returns with successful bets on price dislocations triggered by the European crisis in May and June. The PIMCO volatility fund gained 13.4 percent, while Saiers Capital was up 10 percent. The average hedge fund was up 6 percent last year.TAIL RISKThis year’s flattened returns are one byproduct of efforts by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to keep interest rates low and create a more tranquil trading environment.The Volatility Index fell 30 percent during the first quarter from 18.02 to 12.70. The VIX is often referred to as Wall Street’s “fear index” because it tracks the price of puts on SP500 index options. In periods of relative tranquility, demand for puts falls as they are often used as insurance against a market slide. A put option gives the holder the option, but not the obligation, to sell at a set price by a certain date.”The low-volatility environment could potentially persist for the next few years,” said Vishnu Kurella, portfolio manager at BlueMountain Capital, which has a $600 million fund that specializes in equity derivatives and volatility trading. “With extremely accommodative monetary policy and supportive fiscal policy, governments globally have all but committed to supporting the markets.”BlueMountain’s portfolio is one of the few volatility funds doing well in 2013, up 3.74 percent through April 12, according to data from HSBC’s Private Bank. Kurella declined to give specifics of the fund’s performance.For the most part, volatility funds remain a small corner of the hedge fund world, representing roughly $17 billion of the industry’s $2 trillion in assets. But last year PIMCO’s volatility fund scored a coup when the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System allocated $220 million to its fund. The pension fund did not return a request for comment on whether it was satisfied with its investment in the fund.One reason volatility funds have attracted investors is that they are not merely positioned as “tail risk” funds that make money when financial markets implode. The funds, which buy and sell options linked to an underlying asset, aim to take advantage of mispricings in stocks, currencies, commodities or bonds in both rising and falling markets.A big component of an option’s price is its implied volatility, or the likelihood for a sudden swing in the price of the option or the underlying asset. Low implied volatility typically translates to a low price.Many volatility funds tend to bleed when markets are stress free. In March, for example, 7 out of 10 funds that comprise the Newedge Volatility Trading Index posted negative returns, according to the broker. That index fell 2.6 percent in the first quarter.TEMPORARY SETBACK?The Saiers fund pared some losses as April progressed, according to the investor.Saiers said underperformance in his fund is a temporary setback and he stands by the decision to purchase crash protection even though the trade has eaten into returns. Though he doesn’t think a stock market crash is imminent, he said macro uncertainty persists.Even if a U.S. stock market crash is not in the offing any time soon, volatility investors say there is money to be made with bets tied to Japan’s recent embrace of Fed-style easy money policies.PIMCO’s Thimons said the Bank of Japan’s “extraordinary balance sheet expansion” has triggered big swings in the country’s currency and interest rate markets and his team has “dedicated a significant amount” of time to looking at trades that capitalize on those mispricings.For BlueMountain’s Kurella, government intervention in the financial markets should not stop volatility investors from making money.”While the environment feels like low-vol in the US, Japanese equities are up 60 percent in the past six months,” Kurella emailed. “And that’s anything but low volatility.”(Reporting By Katya Wachtel; Editing by Matthew Goldstein, Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn)Tough US crackdown on tax evaders forces Swiss bank to shut downJan 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. government has raised the stakesin its crackdown on Swiss banks through a hard-chargingprosecution that has forced the closing of a 272-year-old Swissfirm for offering tax-evasion services to wealthy Americans.Tax lawyers and former prosecutors said on Friday theclosing of Wegelin & Co, Switzerland’s oldest private bank,served as a stark warning for some Swiss banks underinvestigation, especially smaller firms such as Wegelin.Wegelin, founded in 1741, said on Thursday it would shut itsdoors permanently after pleading guilty to an indictmentcharging it with helping Americans dodge taxes through secretaccounts.It was the first time the United States forced a foreignbank to close because of its sale of tax-evasion services.”The Justice Department wanted a scalp to send a message toall the other banks, in particular the small cantonal andprivate banks,” said Christopher Rizek, a tax lawyer at Caplin &Drysdale in Washington, D.C., and a senior former TreasuryDepartment tax official.Around a dozen banks are under criminal scrutiny by theJustice Department, including Credit Suisse AG, whichdisclosed last July it had received a target letter saying itwas under a grand jury investigation.Zurich-based Julius Baer and some cantonal, or regional,banks are also under scrutiny, U.S. sources familiar with theprobes previously told Reuters. So are UK-based HSBC HoldingsPlc and three Israeli banks, Hapoalim, Mizrahi-TefahotBank Ltd and Bank Leumi, U.S. sourcesbriefed on the matter said previously. Those banks have notcommented on the inquiries.The widening probe grew out of an investigation of Swissbank UBS AG, which in 2009 entered into adeferred-prosecution agreement and paid a $780 million fineafter admitting to wrongdoing in selling tax-evasion services towealthy Americans.Unlike UBS or Credit Suisse, both major global playerswidely regarded as “too big to fail,” Wegelin and the cantonalbanks are smaller institutions unlikely to pose any systemicrisk to the global financial system if indicted or put out ofbusiness.As such, the old model in which UBS averted indictment andsurvived does not appear to be a road map going forward forsmaller banks, tax lawyers said.Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor involved incriminal proceedings against UBS, said that “the cantonal banksthat have similar exposure now have a blueprint to look at inorder to see how to resolve their liability.”The prosecution and closing of Wegelin, however, did notsacrifice a significant number of jobs. Although Wegelin hadabout a dozen branches, all in Switzerland, at the time of itsindictment, it moved quickly to wind down its business, partlythrough a sale of its non-U.S. assets to regional Swiss bankRaiffeisen Gruppe.In contrast, after Arthur Andersen was found guilty for itsrole in the failed energy company Enron Corp, the accountingfirm went out of business in 2002. A 2005 Supreme Court rulinglater overturned the conviction, but it was too late to save thefirm.Wegelin’s plea offers other hints of things to come. TheSwiss government has been at odds with the United States oversecrecy laws that govern bank client data and the plea leavesopen the question of how or whether the bank will discloseclient data in coming months. Going forward, the role of theSwiss in resolving the logjam could be magnified.Neiman said the plea, which ended the case against Wegelin,but required it to preserve client data, suggested the U.S.government had decided to take the issue of client data “head-onwith the Swiss government” and not with the Swiss banks.”Clearly there is another process at work here and it’s onein which there is now not going to be a compelled disclosure inconnection with a plea,” said Scott Michel, a tax lawyer atCaplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C. with many wealthy clientsof Swiss banks. A Justice Department spokesman did not returncalls requesting comment.As part of its agreement, UBS was required to turn over some4,450 client names, a long process that involved Swiss financialand legal authorities and rattled sacred Swiss secrecy laws.U.S. authorities have long maintained that client data is theirprime quarry.But by leaving open the question of how or if Wegelin willdisclose client data, the Wegelin plea magnifies the new rolethe Swiss government will likely have to play in resolving itslogjam with the United States over secrecy laws protecting bankclient data.A Swiss government source declined to comment onlong-running talks between Switzerland and the JusticeDepartment and U.S. Internal Revenue Service regarding ahandover of American client names. The two sides are set to meet”shortly,” the source said.U.S. authorities already hold more weapons in their arsenalfollowing the 2009 agreement with UBS. Since then, tens ofthousands of Americans have come forward to the I.R.S. tovoluntarily disclose their hidden offshore accounts, providing aroad map to the inner workings of Swiss banks, and prosecutorialleverage over them.Last December, Switzerland agreed to comply with new U.S.disclosure rules on offshore accounts controlled by Americans, anew enforcement regime known as FATCA, or the Foreign AccountTax Compliance Act.”The Justice Department has a lot more leverage now than itdid with UBS,” said James Mastracchio, a tax controversy lawyerat Baker Hostetler in Washington, D.C. Unlike UBS, whose casedragged out over several years, Wegelin, indicted less than ayear ago, “had a very fast acceptance of responsibility.”Tourre on stand says email in SEC case ‘not accurate’NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader accused of secretly helping the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson construct a $2 billion deal it could bet against, said Wednesday an email he sent to a key participant in the investment was inaccurate.Tourre, 34, made the statement after taking the stand in the eighth day of what has become the highest-profile trial to come out of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigations of the 2008 financial crisis.The trial is a chance for the SEC to show it can win big cases against individuals on Wall Street for wrongdoing that caused the financial crisis.SEC lawyers say Tourre was driven by “Wall Street greed” to mislead investors in the infamous investment called Abacus 2007-AC1. Tourre denies any wrongdoing.Early questioning of Tourre on Wednesday afternoon focused on a January 10, 2007, email Tourre sent describing what became Abacus to an executive at ACA Capital Holdings Inc, which the SEC claims was misled into believing hedge fund Paulson & Co Inc was an equity investor.The email said the riskiest slice of Abacus was “pre-committed,” which an executive at ACA testified she believed meant Paulson would invest in it. Tourre, who left Goldman in 2012, acknowledged Wednesday that it was not pre-committed.Asked repeatedly by an SEC lawyer if the statement was “false,” Tourre said, “It was not accurate.”"I wasn’t trying to confuse anybody, it just wasn’t accurate at the time,” he said.2010 LAWSUITTourre’s testimony comes three years after the SEC accused him and Goldman Sachs Group Inc of fraud over Abacus, a synthetic collateralized debt obligation.Defendants can assert the right under the U.S. Constitution not to testify, to avoid incriminating themselves, and frequently do in criminal cases. But experts say that in a civil case, such as Tourre’s, a jury could draw an adverse inference if he asserted that right.”It creates the presumption you did something wrong,” said David Marder, a former SEC lawyer at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi.Goldman and Tourre did not tell potential investors that Paulson & Co helped select the mortgage-backed securities linked to Abacus and then went on to bet against it.When the securities in Abacus turned toxic amid the downturn in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, investors lost $1 billion, the SEC says. Paulson, who made $15 billion betting against the housing market, meanwhile made about $1 billion shorting the CDO, the SEC says.Goldman Sachs agreed in July 2010 to pay $550 million to settle the claims against it without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Before that accord was announced, Tourre received a settlement offer but rejected it, a person familiar with the matter said.Tourre, who in an email cited by the SEC is referred to as the “Fabulous Fab,” is now an economics doctoral student at the University of Chicago. He faces a fine and a lifetime ban from the securities industry if jurors find him liable.At times, the judge or court reporter had difficulty understanding the pronunciation of so
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