The New York Times Newspaper - August 20 2012, Literatura, Gazety, Magazyny
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VOL. CLXI . . No. 55,869
NEW YORK, MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2012
© 2012 The New York Times
G.O.P. PACKAGING
SEEKS TO REVEAL
A WARM ROMNEY
CAUTIOUS MOVES
ON FORECLOSURES
HAUNTING OBAMA
CONVENTION STAGECRAFT
HOUSING REMAINS WEAK
TV Professionals Help
Finesse Each Detail
of Tampa Show
Drag on Recovery Seen
as Obstacle in Bid for
Second Term
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
WASHINGTON — After inher-
iting the worst economic down-
turn since the Great Depression,
President Obama poured vast
amounts of money into efforts to
stabilize the financial system,
rescue the auto industry and re-
vive the economy.
But he tried to finesse the
cleanup of the housing crash, re-
jecting unpopular proposals for a
broad bailout of homeowners fac-
ing foreclosure in favor of a lim-
ited aid program — and a bet that
a recovering economy would take
care of the rest.
During his first two years in of-
fice, Mr. Obama and his advisers
repeatedly affirmed this carefully
calibrated strategy, leaving un-
spent hundreds of billions of dol-
lars that Congress had allocated
to buy mortgage loans, even as
millions of people lost their
homes and the economic recov-
ery stalled somewhere between
crisis and prosperity.
The nation’s painfully slow
pace of growth is now the prima-
ry threat to Mr. Obama’s bid for a
second term, and some econo-
mists and political allies say the
cautious response to the housing
crisis was the administration’s
most significant mistake. The
By JEREMY W. PETERS
TAMPA, Fla. — They hail from
the Broadway stage, the control
rooms of NBC and the design stu-
dios that created sleek sets for
Oprah Winfrey and Jon Stewart.
Their craft is slick packaging
and eye candy that audiences
consume by the millions.
Their latest project? Selling
the Mitt Romney story in prime
time.
Working from makeshift of-
fices at a hockey arena here, a
team of Romney advisers, pro-
ducers and designers have been
staging and scripting a program
for the Republican National Con-
vention that they say they hope
will accomplish something a year
of campaigning has failed to do:
paint a full and revealing portrait
of who Mitt Romney is.
Instead of glossing over Mr.
Romney’s career as a private eq-
uity executive, they will highlight
it in convention videos and
speeches as the kind of experi-
ence that has prepared him to be
the economic steward the coun-
try needs.
And rather than shy away from
Mr. Romney’s faith, as some
campaign aides have argued he
should, they have decided to em-
brace it. On the night Mr. Rom-
ney will address the convention,
a member of the Mormon Church
will deliver the invocation. On
Sunday, this new approach was
apparent as Mr. Romney invited
reporters to join him at church
services. [Page A12.]
The campaign aides are de-
termined to overcome percep-
tions that Mr. Romney is stiff,
aloof and distant. So they have
built one of the most intricate set
pieces ever designed for a con-
vention — a $2.5 million Frank
Lloyd Wright-inspired theatrical
stage. From its dark-wood finish
to the brightly glowing high-reso-
lution screens in the rafters that
look like skylights, every aspect
of the stage has been designed to
convey warmth, approachability
and openness.
Conventions no longer com-
mand the kind of public attention
they once did, and their very
slickness can conspire against
addressing the kinds of percep-
tion problems Mr. Romney faces.
So one recent morning as Mr.
Romney’s image makers — a
team that includes many people
who have never worked on a po-
litical convention before — scur-
EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Romney campaign wants the main stage for the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., to convey warmth and openness.
Chinese Defer
Death Penalty
In Lurid Killing
Ramadan TV Gently Pushes Saudi Boundaries
during Ramadan, a monthlong
religious celebration when people
pray, fast all day and then feast
throughout the night. It’s a fes-
tive season that also serves as a
sweeps month: TV ratings peak
because people stay home and
watch with their families, avoid-
ing foreign shows to focus on
Arab television. Especially in
Saudi Arabia, which has the high-
est advertising rates in the Mid-
dle East, Ramadan prompts an
avalanche of new dramas, com-
edies, talk shows and game
shows. Because people are fast-
ing during the day and obsessed
with food, there are also lots of
cooking shows, including “Saudi
Chefs,” which stars two young,
quirky alumni of “Top Chef Mid-
dle East.”
Ramadan is also when Saudis
talk, blog and tweet about what
they are watching, and it’s a
broader and spicier array of
shows than outsiders might
imagine.
Taboos and a vigilant religious
police force control public behav-
ior but they don’t shackle view-
ing habits nearly as much.
Through satellite dishes and the
Internet, Saudis have access to
the wide and wanton world: racy
Turkish soap operas, violent ac-
tion movies, sexy Moroccan pop
singers and episodes of “Gossip
Girl” and “CSI.” Their own pro-
gramming tests the fault line be-
tween modernity and tradition;
in a rigidly controlled country
television is the arena in which
small rebellions can be staged
and festering tensions addressed.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —
Women are driving in Saudi Ara-
bia.
Not on the streets. That would
be illegal. But on a recent episode
of “Hush Hush,” a new comedy
on Saudi state television, a lilac
sedan comes to a halt and a wom-
an climbs out of the driver’s seat.
A group of goofy, lascivious men
(three stooges in red-checked
kaffiyehs) try to pick her up by
offering to repair the car. From
beneath a black hijab and opaque
abaya, glints of the woman’s con-
tempt show
through. “Who
says my car broke
down?” she says
coolly. “I’m wait-
ing for my friend.”
A matching Bar-
bie-pink car pulls up and two
women glide away, leaving the
Saudi dolts deflated and agog.
It’s a fantasy, of course, a com-
ic trial balloon. “Hush Hush” was
created for Ramadan, the Muslim
holiday season that ended this
weekend, and the state-sanc-
tioned sketch makes the case for
female drivers in a jokey way
that heartens modern-minded
viewers without provoking tradi-
tional ones. The woman is never
shown actually driving; the cam-
era cuts away before she grasps
the wheel. It’s the kind of ellipsis
that American television once
used for homosexuality; you
didn’t actually see it but you
knew it was there.
Even on state television gentle
social satire about Saudi life is
permissible and also welcome
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — A Chinese court
on Monday handed Gu Kailai, the
wife of a disgraced Communist
Party leader, a suspended death
sentence for killing a British busi-
ness associate who she reported-
ly feared was plotting to harm
her son. In the Chinese legal sys-
tem, such a sentence is tanta-
mount to life in prison.
Ms. Gu could have been exe-
cuted soon after the guilty ver-
dict was announced, although
most analysts had thought such a
punishment unlikely. The sen-
tence was announced with a two-
year reprieve, meaning that the
threat of execution would be lift-
ed after two years, contingent
upon her good behavior.
The verdict and sentence ap-
pear to wrap up one of the more
lurid chapters of a sweeping
scandal that brought down Ms.
Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, and chal-
lenged the Communist Party dur-
ing a politically delicate, once-a-
decade leadership transition that
is set to culminate in the fall.
Tang Yigan, deputy director of
the Hefei Intermediate People’s
Court in Anhui Province, an-
nounced the sentence.
He Zhengsheng, the lawyer for
the family of the Briton, Neil Hey-
wood, said, “We respect the
court’s decision.”
Ms. Gu’s main accomplice,
A MEASURE OF CHANGE
Obama’s Mortgage Millstone
ALESSANDRA
STANLEY
THE TV
WATCH
bailouts of banks and automakers
are now widely regarded as cru-
cial steps in arresting the re-
cession, while the depressed
housing market remains a mill-
stone.
“They were not aggressive in
taking the steps that could have
been taken,” said Representative
Zoe Lofgren, chairwoman of the
California Democratic caucus.
“And as a consequence they did
not interrupt the catastrophic
spiral downward in our econ-
omy.”
Mr. Obama insisted the gov-
ernment should help only “re-
sponsible borrowers,” and his ad-
ministration offered aid to fewer
than half of those facing foreclo-
sure, excluding landlords, own-
ers of big-ticket homes and those
judged to have excessive debts.
He decided to rely on mortgage
companies to modify unafford-
able loans rather than have the
government take control by pur-
Continued on Page A6
SAUDI STATE TELEVISION
In a scene from the Saudi TV series “Hush Hush,” women are
almost but not quite presented on screen as drivers.
Continued on Page A12
Continued on Page A8
Continued on Page A11
In Sliver of Old U.S.S.R., Hot Soccer Team Is Virtual State Secret
To Survive, a Catholic School
Retools for a Wealthier Market
don’t want anybody to know
about this club. Everything is hid-
den.”
Back when the Soviet Union
was collapsing, Transnistria, a
tiny, secretive, 15-mile-wide self-
declared republic, was fighting a
war of independence with Moldo-
va, a former part of the Soviet
state between Ukraine to the east
and Romania to the west. Tran-
snistria, which leaned toward
Russia, did not want to be part of
the new Moldovan nation.
That war ended in 1992 in a
stalemate. Since then, Transnis-
tria has followed its own Soviet-
style path, leaving the enclave
adrift from almost all of the rest
of the world and firmly under the
wing of the Russians, who main-
tain a military base here. It has
its own border, currency (the
Transnistrian ruble, virtually
worthless outside the territory)
and police. Its flag still bears the
hammer and sickle.
But somehow, soccer has man-
aged to bridge these fault lines.
Because Transnistria is recog-
nized by virtually no one, includ-
ing European soccer’s governing
body, F.C. Sheriff begrudgingly
plays in the Moldovan league, de-
spite all the enmity. And madden-
ingly for Moldova, it keeps win-
ning. F.C. Sheriff has won 11 of
the last 12 Moldovan league titles.
When the Transnistrians show
up at soccer games, it’s often not
pretty. Sheriff fans scream “Rus-
sia! Russia!” and insult the Mol-
dovans, who these days tend to
look west toward Europe and
away from Russia. But winning
in the Moldovan league has given
the team access to one of the big-
gest prizes in the soccer world —
participation in the European
By JAMES MONTAGUE
TIRASPOL, Moldova — It is a
soccer club that few have heard
of, from a corner of the former
Soviet empire even fewer could
easily locate: F.C. Sheriff Tiras-
pol, champions of Transnistria.
The club was started by a former
K.G.B. agent, and it plays in a
place where smuggling is ramp-
ant and statues of Lenin still
stand revered.
Its fans are a bawdy, often vio-
lent bunch. Its officials treat bas-
ic details of the club’s operations
— even the recent successes that
have brought it to the verge of
joining Europe’s soccer elite —
like classified material.
“With Transnistria, there is al-
ways secrets,” says Mihai Sitnic,
a soccer journalist for Fotbal.md,
a Web site in Moldova. “They
By JENNY ANDERSON
Catholic schools have been
bleeding enrollment and money
for years, and many have been
forced to close. But some, like St.
Stephen of Hungary, on the Up-
per East Side of Manhattan, have
found a way to thrive — attract-
ing a more affluent clientele by
offering services and classes
more commonly found in expen-
sive private schools.
Selling points include small
class sizes and extracurricular
activities beginning in the young-
est grades. And by often charging
far less, these schools have been
able to stabilize themselves and
even grow.
“Our competition or our stand-
ard isn’t another good Catholic
school,” said the Rev. Angelo
Gambatese, the pastor at St. Ste-
phen of Hungary church, which
shares a building with the school.
“It’s the best independent
schools in Manhattan, and we in-
tend to achieve the same level of
performance that they do, aca-
demically, developmentally.”
If the neighborhood has wel-
comed a nurturing school that
comes without sticker shock —
tuition at St. Stephen starts un-
der $8,000, less than a quarter of
what some Manhattan schools
charge — school leaders ac-
knowledge that there has been a
JAMES MONTAGUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Soviet images near F.C. Sher-
iff Tiraspol’s field in Transnis-
tria, a self-declared republic.
Continued on Page A3
Continued on Page A3
NATIONAL A10-13
Rape Remarks Criticized
INTERNATIONAL
Anti-Japan Protests in China
BUSINESS DAY B1-8
Fallout From a Patent Case
SPORTSMONDAY D1-D7
Federer Wins With Ease
The G.O.P. Senate candidate in Missouri
said that women rarely get pregnant
from “legitimate rape.”
Anti-Japanese demonstrators protested
in nearly a dozen Chinese cities over the
weekend, as Japanese activists intensi-
fied tensions between the nations by
landing on a disputed island.
If Apple wins its case against Samsung,
which it has accused of patent infringe-
ment, the verdict may resound through-
out the technology industry.
Roger Federer gained momentum head-
ing into the United States Open, sweep-
ing Novak Djokovic for a title.
PAGE A13
PAGE D1
PAGE B1
Jets Still Finding Their Way
A Mississippi Less Mighty
PAGE A8
Looking to Schools for Profit
Quarterback drama is an afterthought
for the Jets’ offense, which has yet to
score a touchdown.
The Mississippi River is shrinking un-
der one of the worst droughts in modern
history, keeping dredging crews con-
stantly working.
Media companies are turning to educa-
tion to capitalize on the growing use of
technology in classrooms.
PAGE D1
PAGE A10
PAGE B1
ARTS C1-6
Monuments That Wash Away
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19
INTERNATIONAL A4-9
India Seeks Pakistan Inquiry
NEW YORK A14-17
Subway Color Scheme Falters
Paul Krugman
PAGE A19
At Rockaway Beach in Queens, a con-
test held by Creative Time, the public
arts organization, invited artists to rede-
fine the sand castle. Above, a model of
the Roman Colosseum.
Indian officials say grisly photographs
that set off fears of violence last week
were uploaded from Pakistan.
Riders were perplexed, even philosophi-
cal, over a sign that mixed up the tradi-
tional colors of subway lines.
U(D54G1D)y+@!,!#!=!$
PAGE C1
PAGE A4
PAGE A14
A2
THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2012
N
Inside The Times
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
‘‘
They can register the
cars under their own
names, but they must let
their fathers or brothers
drive them.
’’
KHALID HAZMI,
the host of a Saudi TV game
show called “Every Day a Car,”
which gives away a car to call-
ers answering traffic-safety
questions, on whether women
can win despite the country’s
ban on them driving. [A6]
ARTS
Fortune Smiles
On Toxic Terrain
“Lionel Asbo: State of England” by
Martin Amis explores the relation-
ship between the title character — a
ruthless, psychotic thug — and his
nephew, as the two live out their
lives in a nasty and brutish neigh-
borhood. Books of the Times.
PAGE C1
The Shades of Shakespeare
“Henry V,” “Much Ado About Noth-
ing” and “Cymbeline” mixed histo-
ry, romance and roistering comedy
of the lower levels at the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival in Ontario,
with virtually no weak perform-
ances. Critic’s Notebook. PAGE C1
Youthful Scores by Mozart
Louis Langrée conducted a Mostly
Mozart Festival program at Lincoln
Center, with he and his players
shaping Mozart’s Symphony No. 1
(K. 16) as if it were a Platonic state-
ment of formal beauty and youthful
vigor. Music Review. PAGE C3
SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Members of Sonali Skandan & Jiva Dance perform in the “Erasing Borders Festival of Indian
Dance” at the Battery Downtown Dance Festival in New York.
PAGE C5
INTERNATIONAL
NATIONAL
BUSINESS
Retreat for Mind and Body
Nears 50 Amid Concerns
As the Esalen Institute prepares to
celebrate its 50th anniversary, some
worry that the Californian retreat
that helped make things like yoga
and organic food part of the main-
stream is losing its relevance and
becoming more corporate. PAGE A10
Romney at Church Service
For the first time, Mitt Romney’s
aides invited reporters to accompa-
ny him to church services, a rare
glimpse into the private life of a can-
didate who almost never talks about
his Mormon faith. PAGE A12
Coming Next: Medical Apps
Prescribed by a Doctor
Smartphone apps, which already fill
the roles of bike speedometers and
flashlights, may soon also act as
medical devices, helping patients
monitor their heart rate or manage
their diabetes, and be paid for by in-
surance. PAGE B1
Tension Over Aid to Greece
While the Greek prime minister will
be greeted with military honors in
Berlin, his pleas for easier bailout
terms could meet with a cool recep-
tion, setting up tension that could
rattle financial markets. PAGE B1
A Bet on Digital Advertising
Condé Nast, the high-end magazine
publisher, announced that it will
purchase a stake in Flite, which pro-
vides cloud-based technology that
allows marketers to change the text
and images of digital ads in real
time. PAGE B6
Taliban Keep Up Attacks
On Officials in Afghanistan
The Taliban continued its strategy of
trying to assassinate government
officials in Afghanistan, killing three
relatives of a police chief in Hel-
mand Province, and trying but fail-
ing to kill top government officials of
Logar Province in an ambush and
extended firefight.
PAGE A4
Assad in Rare Appearance
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria
appeared at a small mosque in Da-
mascus, in a show of piety that
seemed to be an attempt at project-
ing a sense of normalcy but also re-
newed doubts about the strength
and confidence of the government.
PAGE A4
A Deadly Attack in Iraq
An influential Sunni cleric was criti-
cally wounded and four of his body-
guards were killed when a bomb
struck his convoy in western Bagh-
dad during one of the country’s
most important holy days.
PAGE A7
Car Bombs Strike Libya
At least two people were killed when
car bombs exploded outside securi-
ty buildings in Libya’s capital, Trip-
oli, in what appeared to be the first
deadly car bombings in the city
since the fall of Col. Muammar el-
Qaddafi nearly a year ago and the
latest in a string of violent episodes
in recent weeks.
PAGE A7
OP-ED
Paul Krugman
PAGE A19
NEW YORK
In Affordable Housing,
City Oversight Is Faulted
Unions and owners of city-subsi-
dized homes who complain of shod-
dy workmanship support a bill to
publicly disclose information about
builders, but Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg has vowed a veto.
PAGE A14
ONLINE
VIDEO
A new generation of robotics
is set to change manufacturing
around the world.
nytimes.com/business
SPORTS
Bridge
C4
Crossword
C2
Obituaries
A17, A20
TV Listings
C8
Weather
D8
Auto Exchange
D6
Classified Ads
A16
Commercial
Real Estate Marketplace
B7
A Yankees Veteran
Now in Nascar Land
With 10 championships and 206 vic-
tories in 29 seasons of racing, it is lit-
tle wonder that Hendrick Motor-
sports is sometimes called the Yan-
kees of Nascar. And now that it has a
Yankee lifer on its staff, it would be
hard to argue the point.
PAGE D2
OBITUARIES
William Windom, 88
Mr. Windom was an Emmy-winning
actor who may be best remembered
for his roles on “Star Trek” and
“Murder, She Wrote.”
PAGE A20
Corrections
INTERNATIONAL
The Saturday Profile article,
about the leader of Israel’s settle-
ment movement, Dani Dayan, in-
cluded several errors.
The underground military or-
ganization led by the revisionist
Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky is the
Irgun, not the Haganah.
One of Mr. Dayan’s critics,
Itzik Shadmi, serves as chairman
of the settlers’ committee in the
Binyamin Region, not as chair-
man of the Binyamin Council.
(That position is held by Avi
Roeh.)
Mr. Dayan moved to Israel
with his family from Buenos
Aires in 1971, not in 1979.
And Mr. Dayan’s father,
Moshe, was a second cousin —
not a first — to Gen. Moshe Da-
yan.
Romney campaign’s transition
team described incorrectly a con-
versation last month between
Mike Leavitt, the head of the
transition team, and Jacob Lew,
the White House chief of staff.
They spoke on the phone; they
did not meet in person.
Because of an editing error, an
article on Friday about a walkout
by top editors at The Red and
Black, the student newspaper at
the University of Georgia, over
the hiring of non-students to
oversee news coverage, misstat-
ed the day of the editors’ protest.
It was Wednesday, not Thursday.
dia, technology and film hub mis-
identified the type of marble used
in building the hospital. It is
Tuckahoe marble, not Tuskegee.
The article also misstated, in
some copies, the amount of
money the developers are seek-
ing from New York City and
State. It is $35 million, not $37.5
million.
Because of an editing error, an
article on Thursday about a pro-
fessor at the United States Mer-
chant Marine Academy accused
of “notoriously disgraceful con-
duct” after his remark upset a
student whose father had been
killed in a mass shooting last
month in a movie theater in Auro-
ra, Colo., included an erroneous
location for a funeral that stu-
dents from the class received
permission to attend in lieu of
class. It was not in Colorado.
(The Times is not giving the cor-
rect location because of privacy
concerns for the student.)
Errors and Comments:
nytnews@nytimes.com or call
1-888-NYT-NEWS
(1-888-698-6397).
Editorials: letters@nytimes.com
or fax (212) 556-3622.
Public Editor: Readers dissatisfied
with a response or concerned about
the paper’s journalistic integrity can
reach The Times’s public editor, Art
Brisbane, at public@nytimes.com
or call (212) 556-7652.
Newspaper Delivery:
customercare@nytimes.com or call
1-800-NYTIMES
(1-800-698-4637).
NEW YORK
An article on Friday about an
agreement between the Brooklyn
Navy Yard Development Corpo-
ration and the developer Douglas
C. Steiner to convert the yard’s
old hospital complex into a me-
NATIONAL
An article on Friday about the
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2012
Ø
N
A Catholic School Retools to Attract Wealthier Families
From Page A1
cost. Three years ago, 46 percent
of the students received free or
reduced lunch, in keeping with
the Catholic Church’s mission of
tending to the poorest; this year
the number is down to 17 percent.
Enrollment of African-Ameri-
can students has dropped 15 per-
cent; for Hispanic students, it
has dropped 33 percent. And the
school, which runs through the
eighth grade, is noticeably whiter
in its lower grades.
Patrick J. McCloskey, director
of Funding Solutions for Catholic
Schools, an initiative at Loyola
University Chicago, said it was
not unusual for schools to try to
appeal to neighborhood families,
since most of them are strongly
tied to their parishes. “But edu-
cating the poor is part of the
Catholic mission as well,” he said.
In some states, Catholic
schools have benefited from ex-
pansions of voucher programs
that allow some students, usually
those in poor neighborhoods, to
attend private school at public
expense. But other schools have
taken the approach of St. Ste-
phen, by reinventing themselves
with new features to bring high-
er-income students into the fold.
St. Therese Catholic School in
Seattle received financing from
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun-
dation and from the Seton Part-
ners, a nonprofit organization
based in San Francisco, to con-
vert itself into St. Therese Acad-
emy, a blended technology
school. This fall, computers will
be in every classroom to enable
small-group learning, said Scott
Hamilton, managing director of
Seton Partners. Enrollment is ex-
pected to reach 185, up from 95.
In Tacoma, Wash., Holy Rosa-
ry, a struggling Catholic school,
has converted itself into a dual
language Spanish immersion
program, in part to attract more
affluent families. Enrollment is
expected to be 150, up from 100.
Timothy J. McNiff, superin-
tendent of schools for the Archdi-
ocese of New York, where 46
schools have been shuttered
since 2006, praised the turn-
around of St. Stephen, which was
once designated for closing. “We
are here to serve children,” Dr.
McNiff said. “We are not looking
to see their ethnicity or their so-
cioeconomic background.”
He said 64 percent of students
in New York City Catholic schools
lived at or below the poverty line.
The Upper East Side, home to St.
Stephen, is predominantly white,
he noted.
The schools have also had to be
careful not to jeopardize their
Catholic identity, to avoid alienat-
ing their traditional core. At St.
Stephen, crucifixes are in every
classroom, there are morning
prayers every day, and religion
seems to be the one subject
whose curriculum is relatively
unchanged.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Katherine Peck, principal of
St. Stephen of Hungary, at
left, and the Rev. Angelo
Gambatese, the pastor, above,
have rebranded the school.
Stabilizing falling
enrollment, but at
a cost to diversity.
ing to St. Stephen.) “Everything I
was doing at Teachers College, I
could do in the classroom,” she
said, compared with the public
school where she said everyone
had to teach from the same page.
Mrs. Peck, dressed in pearls
and Tory Burch shoes, and sitting
in front of a portrait of Pope John
Paul II, said she had to save the
school by rebranding it to fam-
ilies who could afford the tuition
and who would invest in the
school. “We struggle to keep di-
versity as the school is chang-
ing,” she said, adding that stabil-
izing the school was her primary
focus in her first years.
Those efforts have paid off.
There are now 13 full-time teach-
ers, up from 11, thanks to new-
found success in fund-raising.
The school’s annual fund
raised $2,000 three years ago;
this year, about $120,000 has been
pledged. The spring auction
raised $60,000, up from $20,000
two years ago. A golf fund-raiser
in Pelham this spring raised
$10,000. And when the school
made a plea for money for six
new iPads a few weeks ago,
grandparents donated enough for
nine. This summer a $250,000 sci-
ence lab will be completed.
“Kate Peck is like a gem,” Ms.
O’Connell said. “When she’s done
with all this not-for-profit stuff, I
keep telling her she should come
to Wall Street.”
St. Stephen was founded in
1928, serving working class fam-
ilies from the neighborhood’s
Hungarian community at a
monthly cost of 50 cents. The
nuns slept where the 4-year-olds
now eat their veggie chips.
While 70 percent of the stu-
dents are Catholic, a figure that
has not changed, it has a more
Franciscan focus on kindness and
respect rather than papal edicts,
which makes it more palatable to
families not traditionally in the
Catholic school market.
“I don’t feel like it’s holy rollers
over there,” said Richard Sher, a
parent of two at the school who is
half Jewish, half Protestant.
Mass is every other week; the
homily is more of a discussion
than a lesson. When Father Gam-
batese talked in May to the
youngest students at Mass about
Adam, he wondered why Adam
asked God for more humans. “He
wanted people to talk to and play
with,” Sabrina Vidal, 8, said.
“Yes!” Father Gambatese said.
“Don’t you get tired of hugging a
lion?”
St. Stephen offers the kind of
extras found at far more expen-
sive schools, like French for
3-year-olds, violin for fourth and
fifth graders, and iPads for sixth
to eighth graders. But some par-
ents, Catholic and non-Catholic,
said they were also drawn to the
discipline and values-based ap-
proach at St. Stephen, elements
that have fallen out of fashion at
most nonreligious schools.
“We were looking for struc-
ture, and that’s what we got,”
said Deirdre O’Connell, a parent
who works in banking.
In Katherine Peck, the entre-
preneurial 33-year-old at the
heart of St. Stephen’s revitaliza-
tion, the parents also got a princi-
pal schooled in progressive
teaching. Classrooms are no
longer teacher-focused, with stu-
dents at desks, but student-cen-
tered, with children at tables. Stu-
dents have publishing parties ev-
ery month to showcase their
writing, textbooks have been de-
emphasized in favor of hands-on
learning and every classroom
has an interactive projection sys-
tem.
Mrs. Peck, who is Catholic and
attended Teachers College of Co-
lumbia University, said Catholic
schools gave her more flexibility
than the public schools where she
had taught. (She also taught at
the Epiphany School before com-
In Sliver of Old U.S.S.R., Soccer Club Is Virtual State Secret
From Page A1
Champions League.
In recent weeks, F.C. Sheriff
played a group of qualifying
matches, hoping to reach the
group stage of the Champions
League, where it would be
matched against European
heavyweights like Barcelona and
Chelsea. F.C. Sheriff fell short,
losing to Dinamo Zagreb of Cro-
atia. But is still competing in the
Europa League, a second-tier but
still prestigious competition,
where it will play Thursday
against the noted French team
Olympique de Marseille.
F.C. Sheriff was formed in 1997
by Viktor Gushan, a former
K.G.B. officer, and is embedded
in the private economy in Trans-
nistria. Its distinctive black-and-
yellow sheriff’s badge can be
found on everything from super-
markets to gas stations.
The money has helped F.C.
Sheriff become the richest club in
the Moldovan league, allowing it
to scoop up talented young play-
ers in Africa and nearby Serbia.
Its stadium is considered one of
the best in Eastern Europe, a
modern building with a training
stadium next door and a hotel
with accommodations that would
not seem unfamiliar to the best
teams in Europe.
“I don’t like the pitch here,”
Aleksandar Pesic, an under-21
Serbian international who re-
cently signed for F.C. Sheriff, said
before a recent game on a de-
crepit soccer field in the village of
Ghidighici, three miles outside
the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.
“But you should see the pitch at
Sheriff in Tiraspol. It’s perfect.”
The disparity in wealth was
clear as the game proceeded. F.C.
Sheriff beat the home team, Aca-
demia, 4-1, after bringing on two
big-money foreign signings, one
of them Pesic, who scored.
“I enjoy living there,” F.C.
Sheriff’s Serbian coach, Milan
Milanovic, who has since been
fired, said coyly after the match,
referring to Transnistria. “The fa-
cilities are great.” He added, “I
JAMES MONTAGUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Marcel Metoua, center, a defender for F.C. Sheriff Tiraspol, be-
fore a match against Academia in Ghidighici, Moldova. F.C.
Sheriff, of secretive Transnistria, plays begrudgingly in the Mol-
dovan league, where it has won 11 of the last 12 championships.
100 Miles
UKRAINE
TRANSNISTRIA
Dnieper
River
think, in Europe, I have never
seen such good places like this.”
Beyond that, though, nobody
wanted to talk about the club,
from a nation where even 20
years after the war of independ-
ence with Moldova, phone calls
between the two capitals do not
connect, no matter that the team
regularly crosses the border to
play Moldovan teams.
“Every club in Europe wants to
promote his product to the world,
but when we call F.C. Sheriff,
they won’t tell us anything,” said
Sitnic, the Moldovan journalist.
The few home supporters for
Academia had long gone when
the 30 fans of F.C. Sheriff left the
stadium grounds singing their
Russian songs. They boarded a
new yellow-and-black bus for the
journey back home.
Ask for an interview with
Gushan, Sheriff’s guiding force,
and you will be told it will not
happen.
“I am sorry, but no one from
the club will speak to you,” said
Vadim Kolchev, the club’s friend-
ly press attaché.
Soviet-era suspicion and para-
noia persist in the Transnistrian
capital, where no one — not fans,
players, or the man on the street
— will talk on the record. Even
the woman playing accordion
near Lenin’s statue did not want
to talk about life. Instead, she
squeaked her musical box shut
and sat looking the other way.
Gushan’s reticence might be
explained by the slightest hint of
change in Transnistria. In presi-
dential elections last December,
the incumbent, Igor Smirnov, a
strongman who had been presi-
dent since Transnistria’s declara-
tion of independence in 1990, was
voted out of office and replaced
by Yevgeni Shevchuk, a young
lawyer and possible reformer.
Gushan’s Sheriff monopoly had
flourished under Smirnov. Ac-
cording to a 2010 United States
Department of State report, “The
company also effectively con-
trolled the Obnovlenie (Renewal)
ROMANIA
Black Sea
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Party, which held a majority of
seats in the region’s legislature.”
But Renewal is also Shev-
chuk’s party. According to the
Transnistrian government’s Web
site, Shevchuk was also once dep-
uty director of Sheriff. But don’t
try to sort all this out.
“We are speaking about the
football, not about the money, not
about the revenue,” Kolchev told
reporters after F.C. Sheriff ad-
vanced to play Dinamo Zagreb in
the Champions League qualifier
by defeating the Armenian team
Ulisses before almost 10,000
home fans, many of them flying
Russian flags.
“We do not talk about money,
about Transnistria or putting
Transnistria on the map,” Kol-
chev said.
Alina Totti contributed reporting
from Chisinau, Moldova.
A4
N
MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2012
India Traces
Lurid Texts
And Panic
To Pakistan
By JIM YARDLEY
NEW DELHI — India’s top do-
mestic security official on Sun-
day called on the Pakistani gov-
ernment to investigate Indian
claims that “elements based in
Pakistan” had orchestrated a
fear-mongering misinformation
campaign using text messages
and social media that helped set
off last week’s nationwide panic
among migrants from India’s iso-
lated northeastern states.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar
Shinde, speaking by telephone
with his Pakistani counterpart,
Rehman Malik, asked for “full co-
operation” in “checking and neu-
tralizing such elements,” accord-
ing to a Home Ministry state-
ment. His telephone call came a
day after a senior ministry offi-
cial said that doctored images of
dead bodies had been sent to
thousands of northeastern mi-
grants living in several of India’s
major urban centers.
“We want people to know that
the bulk of this was done from
Pakistan,” Home Secretary R. K.
Singh told reporters in New Delhi
on Saturday night. He added, “A
total of 76 Web sites were identi-
fied where morphed images were
uploaded, and the bulk of these
were uploaded in Pakistan.”
The Indian news agency,
IANS, quoted an anonymous Pa-
kistani official denying any in-
volvement. Describing India’s
claims as “cooked up,” the official
told IANS that “instead of indulg-
ing in mudslinging and the blame
game, it’s time for India to ad-
dress its internal issues.”
For much of last week, India
experienced a panicked exodus
by tens of thousands of north-
eastern migrants working in ma-
jor cities like Bangalore, Chennai
and Pune — a mass departure
linked to ethnic violence between
Bengali Muslims and the indige-
nous Bodo tribe in the northeast-
KEVIN FRAYER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boys played at the Jama Masjid in New Delhi on Sunday. Text messages circulated last week warning of attacks by Muslims on migrants from northeastern states.
ern state of Assam. The violence
in Assam, rooted in a complex lo-
cal dispute over land, immigra-
tion and political power, has
claimed at least 78 lives as more
than 14,000 homes have been
burned. At least 300,000 people
have fled to refugee camps in the
state.
The conflict in Assam, which
started in July and worsened in
early August, was initially con-
tained in the state, but tensions
have rippled outward. A protest
by Muslims in Mumbai, the coun-
try’s financial center on the west-
ern coast, turned violent. Attacks
on northeastern residents in the
city of Pune spread alarm among
other migrants from the region.
Then, authorities say, mislead-
ing cellphone text messages and
other social media messages be-
gan circulating on Wednesday
with warnings that Muslims
would attack northeastern stu-
dents and migrants. Tens of thou-
sands of people hurriedly
boarded overcrowded trains to
the northeast as leaders pleaded
for calm.
By Sunday, the panic had
eased. In Pune, near Mumbai, the
number of northeastern students
and migrants rushing to train sta-
tions to leave had declined, news
outlets reported. In Bangalore,
the country’s technology capital,
an estimated 30,000 northeastern
migrants and students fled last
week, but the authorities said the
situation had stabilized.
“A sense of security is prevail-
ing in the city,” said V. S. D’Souza,
deputy commissioner of the Ban-
galore police. “The exodus has
stopped.”
Mr. D’Souza said the Banga-
lore police had arrested 22 people
on charges including assault and
intimidation against northeast-
ern natives, as well as the
spreading of inflammatory mes-
sages. Some of the threatening
text messages sent last week had
warned that northeastern mi-
grants would face reprisals if
they had not left by the start of
the Muslim festival of Id al-Fitr,
which has just begun.
As a precaution against any
possible trouble on Monday, Mr.
D’Souza said, the police were
planning a huge security pres-
ence, with 17,000 police officers,
along with paramilitary and oth-
er security forces.
Antarikhya Deka, 21, a student
at a university in Bangalore, said
she was one of the northeastern-
ers who had received text mes-
sages or saw Facebook postings
last week warning of violence
against northeasterners. Many of
her peers fled, but Ms. Deka said
she had decided to remain in
Bangalore. She said northeastern
students at her college had been
excused from classes this week.
“I will stay indoors for the next
two days,” she said. “Everyone
says these are rumors, but it is
better to take precautions.”
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, So-
nia Gandhi, president of the gov-
erning Congress Party, ex-
pressed her “deep pain” over the
violence in Assam and called for
legal action against those respon-
sible.
Niharika Mandhana contributed
reporting from Bangalore, India.
Taliban Keep Up Attacks
On Officials in Afghanistan
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK
KABUL, Afghanistan — The
Taliban continued its strategy of
trying to assassinate government
officials in Afghanistan on Sun-
day, killing three relatives of a
police chief in Helmand Province,
and trying but failing to kill top
government officials of Logar
Province in an ambush and ex-
tended firefight.
Separately, in what appears to
be the latest case of so-called in-
sider or green-on-blue attacks, an
Afghan police recruit killed one
NATO service member and
wounded another in the Spinbal-
dak district of Kandahar Prov-
ince, Afghan officials said. NATO
military officials confirmed the
killing but gave no details. Most
foreign troops in Kandahar are
American.
American officials have grown
increasingly alarmed about such
killings, instituting new precau-
tions in recent days to try to
make Western military and po-
lice trainers more secure as they
train Afghan counterparts. A
NATO study has found that near-
ly 90 percent of such killings stem
from personal disputes or out-
rage rather than insurgent plots
to infiltrate the security forces or
use them as cover for attacks.
There has long been an ele-
ment of tit-for-tat in the Taliban
attacks on lesser-ranking, and
thus lesser-protected, govern-
ment officials: In the past several
years American and NATO forces
have stepped up night raids on
the homes not just of senior Tali-
ban commanders, but also of
those suspected of being Taliban
fighters and lower-ranking com-
manders. While the military often
says it tries to capture Taliban
members on these raids, the re-
ality is that a great number of
their targets are killed.
Over the same period the Tali-
ban have also raised the stakes,
assassinating important but
more minor officials and others
linked to the government and
NATO. In the first six months of
this year at least 255 Afghan civil-
ians died in targeted killings by
“antigovernment elements,” a
euphemism that includes the
Taliban and other insurgents, ac-
cording to the United Nations.
That marked a 53 percent in-
crease over the same period last
year, a leap that was all the more
significant because overall civil-
ian casualties fell by about 15 per-
cent, and one that suggests that
the rise in assassinations reflects
some sort of coordinated effort
by militants.
One such attack on Sunday, the
assault in Helmand Province,
was particularly shocking, and
only partly because it came early
in the morning on the first day of
Id-al-Fitr, one of the most im-
portant Muslim holidays: Three
relatives of the Nawa district po-
lice chief, including two of his
brothers, were killed when a
roadside bomb exploded as they
made their way to a cemetery in
Lashkar Gah, the provincial cap-
ital. The police chief, Mohammed
Shah Khan, escaped unharmed,
but the attack wounded eight oth-
er members of his family, includ-
ing women and children. They
were all going to visit the grave of
another brother who had also
been the police chief in Nawa be-
fore he was killed by the Taliban,
officials said.
In Logar Province, the gover-
nor, police chief and head of the
provincial council were am-
bushed at noon as they were
driving in an armed convoy es-
corted by Afghan soldiers. Insur-
gents armed with guns and rock-
et-propelled grenade launchers
fought them in the Mohammed
Agha district of Logar, south of
Kabul, said Ghulam Sakhi Muh-
sin, the provincial police chief.
The three officials had been on
the way to Kabul to celebrate the
holiday. “We normally set up se-
curity check posts when we try to
take off from our duties or we
want to go somewhere on special
days, and this was our Id day, and
we all wanted to go to Kabul to
join our families,” Mr. Muhsin
said.
The Logar governor, Tahir
Khan Sabari, said that one rocket
hit his bodyguards’ truck,
wounding one of them. “After the
gunfire and rocket attacks from
the insurgents, my guards got out
of their vehicle and fought with
the insurgents for almost an
hour, and the firing stopped,” he
said.
In Bamian Province, a rugged
region of central Afghanistan,
three soldiers from New Zealand
were killed by a roadside bomb.
Waiting for bread
in Aleppo, Syria,
on Sunday, the
first day of Id al-
Fitr, marking the
end of Ramadan.
In Damascus,
some mosques
were closed and
many streets were
empty.
BULENT KILIC/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
On a Bleak Holiday, Assad Makes a Display of Piety
This article is by
an employee
of The New York Times in Syria
and
Damien Cave
.
DAMASCUS, Syria — Presi-
dent Bashar al-Assad of Syria
appeared Sunday at a small
mosque in Damascus, with state
television showing him complet-
ing his prayers for an important
Muslim holiday alongside some,
but not all, members of his inner
circle.
It was only the second time
that President Assad has been
shown on television since a July
18 bombing that killed Syria’s de-
fense minister and three other
senior officials.
His show of piety seemed to be
an attempt at normalcy during
Id al-Fitr, a three-day holiday af-
ter Ramadan that is usually
characterized by social visits
and feasting, but it also renewed
doubts about the strength and
confidence of his government.
Mr. Assad normally prays at
the Umayyad mosque, the big-
gest and oldest in Damascus, but
on Sunday he chose a much
smaller, safer location: the Rihab
al-Hamad mosque, which is next
to the presidential palace.
He also did not appear with all
of the government’s senior offi-
cials. Though several ministers
were with Mr. Assad, Vice Presi-
dent Farouk al-Sharaa was not
among them, fueling the spec-
ulation that he had been thinking
about deserting the government,
especially after the recent de-
fection of a cousin.
Some rebel fighters have said
that Mr. Sharaa has fled to Jor-
dan, but the vice president’s of-
fice issued a statement on Satur-
day saying that he “did not think,
at any moment, of leaving the
country.” But he has not ap-
peared on Syrian television for at
least a week.
Other absent officials included
Abullah al-Ahmar, the assistant
secretary general of the Baath
Party, which suggested to some
Syrians that either he had fallen
out of favor or that President As-
sad had decided to keep his sen-
ior officials separated in case of a
large-scale attack.
This year’s Id al-Fitr has been
constricted by the 17-month war,
which shows no sign of ending.
Normally the three-day holiday
begins with shopping for clothes
and sweets to bring to family and
friends. The streets of Damascus
are typically clogged with peo-
ple, smiling, laughing, beeping
their horns and arguing over
parking.
But many refugees are now
too poor to shop, living in gar-
dens and packed into apart-
ments. More mosques were
closed in neighborhoods filled
with shrapnel-pocked buildings.
Soldiers in pickup trucks moved
through streets that were largely
empty.
Across the country, thousands
of Syrians staged prayers and
held antigovernment protests on
Sunday. At a graveyard in
Qaboun, an opposition strong-
hold on the northeast fringe of
week, when government forces
started trying to regain the area
with tanks, artillery shelling and
helicopter fire.
Abu Khalid, 35, his wife and
two children moved into a class-
room a few days ago. “I don’t
know what to say or how to ex-
press my feelings,” he said. “I
left my house, and I don’t know
what happened to it. I don’t care
about the Id; every day is the
same. We are alive, but expect to
be killed in any moment.”
He said he was particularly
angry about the use of airstrikes.
“No one can possibly believe this
is done to kill ‘armed fighters,’”
he said.
In the Yarmouk district, which
is Syria’s largest Palestinian
neighborhood, residents de-
scribed a holiday filled with fear
and devoid of the typical pleas-
ures. Nearby is the Tadamon
neighborhood, where the fight-
ing has been particularly intense
in recent weeks.
“Every Id, I usually buy fruits,
sweets, chocolates, and I make
Palestinian biscuits,” said Abu
Amare, 45. “But this Id, I just
bought a half kilo of coffee.
That’s all I have to present.”
Lack and loss, he and others
said, had come to replace abun-
dance and happiness. “It is
shameful,” Abu Amare said, “to
celebrate while our neighbors
are dying.”
A leader’s prayers
raise questions about
Syria’s government.
Damascus, a dozen men
mourned sons and brothers who
had been killed. Abu Moham-
mad, 50, was reading from the
Koran and crying.
“How can we find a space for
joy and happiness?” he asked.
“We are burying our dead people
every day.”
Farther south, in Alhajar
Aswad, dozens of Syrian families
were hiding in a school, trying to
avoid the aerial bombing attacks
of the last several days. They
said that the rebels had con-
trolled the district until last
An employee of The New York
Times reported from Damascus,
and Damien Cave from Beirut,
Lebanon.
Habib Zahori and Jawad Sukhan-
yar contributed reporting.
A5
THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2012
N
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