Syrian Jet Strikes Close to Border With Turkey

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syria pulled both Turkey and Israel closer to military entanglements in its civil war on Monday, bombing a rebel-held Syrian village a few yards from the Turkish border in a deadly aerial assault and provoking Israeli tank commanders in the disputed Golan Heights into blasting mobile Syrian artillery units across their own armistice line.

The escalations, which threatened once again to draw in two of Syria’s most powerful neighbors, came hours after the fractious Syrian opposition announced a broad new unity pact that elicited praise from the big foreign powers backing their effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

“It is a big day for the Syrian opposition,” wrote Joshua Landis, an expert on Syrian political history and the author of the widely followed Syria Comment blog. Mr. Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, wrote that the “Assad regime must be worried, as it has survived for 42 years thanks to Syria’s fragmentation.”

There has been speculation that Mr. Assad, feeling increasingly threatened, may deliberately seek to widen the conflict that has consumed much of his own country for the past 20 months and left roughly 40,000 people dead. Although there is no indication that Mr. Assad has decided to try to lure Israel into the fight, any Israeli involvement could rally his failing support and frustrate the efforts of his Arab adversaries.

The attack on the Turkish border, by what Syrian witnesses identified as a Syrian MIG-25 warplane, demolished at least 15 buildings and killed at least 20 people in the town of Ras al-Ain, the scene of heavy fighting for days and an impromptu crossing point for thousands of Syrian refugees clambering for safety into Turkey.

“The plane appeared in seconds, dropped a bomb and killed children,” said Nezir Alan, a doctor who witnessed the bombing. “Here is total chaos.” In a telephone interview from Ras al-Ain, he said the bombing wounded at least 70 people, 50 of them critically. Turkish television stations reported that ambulances were rushing victims into Ceylanpinar, Turkey, just across the border.

Windows of shops and houses in Ceylanpinar were shattered by the force of the bombing, and Turkish television showed people on both sides of the border running in panic, while military vehicles raced down streets as a huge cloud of smoke hung over the area.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries in Ceylanpinar. But the Turkish authorities, increasingly angered by what they view as Syrian provocations, have deployed troops and artillery units along the 550-mile border with Syria and have raised the idea of installing Patriot missile batteries that could deter Syrian military aircraft.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, sent a diplomatic note to Syria on Monday to protest the Ras al-Ain bombing, the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency reported.

Civilians in southern Turkey’s provinces of Hatay, Sanliurfa and Gaziantep, where the government has erected camps for Syrian refugees, have been advised not to travel close to the border.

In Israel, the military said Israeli tanks that are deployed in the Golan Heights, which the Israelis seized from Syria in the 1967 war, had made a direct hit on Syrian artillery units on Monday after consecutive days of erratic mortar fire coming from the Syrian side of the armistice line. The Syrian mortar shells caused no damage or casualties, the military said.

Military officials and analysts in Israel said that they viewed the Syrian shelling as unintentional spillover from the civil war and that Israel has no desire to get involved in the Syria conflict. But the Israelis have expressed increasing concern that after four decades of relative stability in the Golan area, the Assad government may be trying to push them into a fight that could galvanize Arab hostility toward Israel and distract attention from its own problems.

If an errant Syrian shell hit a school filled with children on the Israeli side, said Prof. Moshe Maoz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a strong Israeli response would be all but guaranteed. “Assad knows very well that Israel does not have a sense of humor here and can retaliate very heavily.”

The United Nations, which monitors an armistice agreement between Israel and Syria in force since the 1973 war, has said it fears that Golan violence could jeopardize the cease-fire.

In Doha, Qatar, where Syrian opposition figures had been meeting since last week, the agreement reached Sunday on forming a new umbrella organization, which could become the basis for a provisional government, was welcomed by participants and the effort’s foreign backers, including Turkey, the United States, the European Union and the Arab League. There were expectations that the new group, called the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, would be permitted to take Syria’s seat at the Arab League, which had expelled Mr. Assad’s representative.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that the agreement “would add momentum to efforts in completing the democratic transition process in line with the legitimate expectations of the people.”

In the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, a focal point of the conflict since this summer, civilians who have been living under the threat of constant shelling by the Syrian Army welcomed the opposition unity agreement and expressed hope that it signaled a turning point.

“We have been waiting for this for a very very long time,” said Abu al-Hasan, an anti-Assad activist in Aleppo who was reached by telephone. “Even if it is not perfect yet, it will save us.” But he also warned that “people do not believe this will stop the shelling like a miracle.”

There was no sign that the violence was abating elsewhere inside Syria. Activist groups said warplanes were dropping bombs in Damascus suburbs and that army snipers had taken up positions in areas where bombs had been dropped. The mayhem surrounding central Damascus made residents in that part of the capital feel increasingly isolated.

“The inside of the city is like a big prison now,” said Alexia Jade, a media activist contacted inside Damascus. “The checkpoints have increased and the lines of cars waiting to be searched are getting longer.”

Sebnem Arsu reported from Gaziantep, Turkey, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Hurricane Sandy and the Disaster-Preparedness Economy

Jeffrey Phelps for The New York Times

An assembly line at a Generac Power Systems plant. Generac makes residential generators, coveted items in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

FOLKS here don’t wish disaster on their fellow Americans. They didn’t pray for Hurricane Sandy to come grinding up the East Coast, tearing lives apart and plunging millions into darkness.

But the fact is, disasters are good business in Waukesha. And, lately, there have been a lot of disasters.

This Milwaukee suburb, once known for its curative spring waters and, more recently, for being a Republican stronghold in a state that President Obama won on Election Day, happens to be the home of one of the largest makers of residential generators in the country. So when the lights go out in New York — or on the storm-savaged Jersey Shore or in tornado-hit Missouri or wherever — the orders come pouring in like a tidal surge.

It’s all part of what you might call the Mad Max Economy, a multibillion-dollar-a-year collection of industries that thrive when things get really, really bad. Weather radios, kerosene heaters, D batteries, candles, industrial fans for drying soggy homes — all are scarce and coveted in the gloomy aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and her ilk.

It didn’t start with the last few hurricanes, either. Modern Mad Max capitalism has been around a while, decades even, growing out of something like old-fashioned self-reliance, political beliefs and post-Apocalyptic visions. The cold war may have been the start, when schoolchildren dove under desks and ordinary citizens dug bomb shelters out back. But economic fears, as well as worries about climate change and an unreliable electronic grid have all fed it.

 Driven of late by freakish storms, this industry is growing fast, well beyond the fringe groups that first embraced it. And by some measures, it’s bigger than ever.

Businesses like Generac Power Systems, one of three companies in Wisconsin turning out generators, are just the start.

The market for gasoline cans, for example, was flat for years. No longer. “Demand for gas cans is phenomenal, to the point where we can’t keep up with demand,” says Phil Monckton, vice president for sales and marketing at Scepter, a manufacturer based in Scarborough, Ontario. “There was inventory built up, but it is long gone.”

Even now, nearly two weeks after the superstorm made landfall in New Jersey, batteries are a hot commodity in the New York area. Win Sakdinan, a spokesman for Duracell, says that when the company gave away D batteries in the Rockaways, a particularly hard-hit area, people “held them in their hands like they were gold.”

Sales of Eton emergency radios and flashlights rose 15 percent in the week before Hurricane Sandy — and 220 percent the week of the storm, says Kiersten Moffatt, a company spokeswoman. “It’s important to note that we not only see lifts in the specific regions affected, we see a lift nationwide,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We’ve seen that mindfulness motivates consumers all over the country to be prepared in the case of a similar event.”

Garo Arabian, director of operations at B-Air, a manufacturer based in Azusa, Calif., says he has sold thousands of industrial fans since the storm. “Our marketing and graphic designer is from Syria, and he says: ‘I don’t understand. In Syria, we open the windows.’ ”

But Mr. Arabian says contractors and many insurers know that mold spores won’t grow if carpeting or drywall can be dried out within 72 hours. “The industry has grown,” he says, “because there is more awareness about this kind of thing.”

Retailers that managed to stay open benefited, too. Steve Rinker, who oversees 11 Lowe’s home improvement stores in New York and New Jersey, says his stores were sometimes among the few open in a sea of retail businesses.

Predictably, emergency supplies like flashlights, lanterns, batteries and sump pumps sold out quickly, even when they were replenished. The one sought-after item that surprised him the most? Holiday candles. “If anyone is looking for holiday candles, they are sold out,” he says. “People bought every holiday candle we have during the storm.”

If the hurricane was a windfall for Lowe’s, its customers didn’t seem to mind. Rather, most appeared exceedingly grateful when Mr. Rinker, working at a store in Paterson, N.J., pointed them toward a space heater, or a gasoline can, that could lessen the misery of another day without power.

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Mind Faded, Darrell Royal’s Wisdom and Humor Intact Till End

Three days before his death last week at 88, Darrell Royal told his wife, Edith: “We need to go back to Hollis” — in Oklahoma. “Uncle Otis died.”

“Oh, Darrell,” she said, “Uncle Otis didn’t die.”

Royal, a former University of Texas football coach, chuckled and said, “Well, Uncle Otis will be glad to hear that.”

The Royal humor never faded, even as he sank deeper into Alzheimer’s disease. The last three years, I came to understand this as well as anyone. We had known each other for more than 40 years. In the 1970s, Royal was a virile, driven, demanding man with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Bevo, the Longhorns mascot. He rarely raised his voice to players. “But we were scared to death of him,” the former quarterback Bill Bradley said.

Royal won 3 national championships and 167 games before retiring at 52. He was a giant in college football, having stood shoulder to shoulder with the Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Royal’s Longhorns defeated one of Bryant’s greatest teams, with Joe Namath at quarterback, in the 1965 Orange Bowl. Royal went 3-0-1 in games against Bryant.

Royal and I were reunited in the spring of 2010. I barely recognized him. The swagger was gone. His mind had faded. Often he stared aimlessly across the room. I scheduled an interview with him for my book “Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story.” Still, I worried that his withering mind could no longer conjure up images of Steinmark, the undersize safety who started 21 straight winning games for the Longhorns in the late 1960s. Steinmark later developed bone cancer that robbed him of his left leg.

When I met with Royal and his wife, I quickly learned that his long-term memory was as clear as a church bell. For two hours, Royal took me back to Steinmark’s recruiting trip to Austin in 1967, through the Big Shootout against Arkansas in 1969, to the moment President Richard M. Nixon handed him the national championship trophy in the cramped locker room in Fayetteville. He recalled the day at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston the next week when doctors informed Steinmark that his leg would be amputated if a biopsy revealed cancer. Royal never forgot the determined expression on Steinmark’s face, nor the bravery in his heart.

The next morning, Royal paced the crowded waiting room floor and said: “This just can’t be happening to a good kid like Freddie Steinmark. This just can’t be happening.”

With the love of his coach, Steinmark rose to meet the misfortune. Nineteen days after the amputation, he stood with crutches on the sideline at the Cotton Bowl for the Notre Dame game. After the Longhorns defeated the Fighting Irish, Royal tearfully presented the game ball to Steinmark.

Four decades later, while researching the Steinmark book, I became close to Royal again. As I was leaving his condominium the day of the interview, I said, “Coach, do you still remember me?” He smiled and said, “Now, Jim Dent, how could I ever forget you?” My sense of self-importance lasted about three seconds. Royal chuckled. He pointed across the room to the message board next to the front door that read, “Jim Dent appt. at 10 a.m.”

Edith and his assistant, Colleen Kieke, read parts of my book to him. One day, Royal told me, “It’s really a great book.” But I can’t be certain how much he knew of the story.

Like others, I was troubled to see Royal’s memory loss. He didn’t speak for long stretches. He smiled and posed for photographs. He seemed the happiest around his former players. He would call his longtime friend Tom Campbell, an all-Southwest Conference defensive back from the 1960s, and say, “What are you up to?” That always meant, “Let’s go drink a beer.”

As her husband’s memory wore thin, Edith did not hide him. Instead, she organized his 85th birthday party and invited all of his former players. Quarterback James Street, who engineered the famous 15-14 comeback against Arkansas in 1969, sat by Royal’s side and helped him remember faces and names. The players hugged their coach, then turned away to hide the tears.

In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the annual Mexican lunch for Royal attended by about 75 of his former players. A handful of them were designated to stand up and tell Royal what he meant to them. Royal smiled through each speech as his eyes twinkled. I was mesmerized by a story the former defensive tackle Jerrel Bolton told. He recalled that Royal had supported him after the murder of his wife some 30 year earlier.

“Coach, you told me it was like a big cut on my arm, that the scab would heal, but that the wound would always come back,” Bolton said. “It always did.”

Royal seemed to drink it all in. But everyone knew his mind would soon dim.

The last time I saw him was June 20 at the County Line, a barbecue restaurant next to Bull Creek in Austin. Because Royal hated wheelchairs and walkers, the former Longhorn Mike Campbell, Tom’s twin, and I helped him down the stairs by wrapping our arms around his waist and gripping the back of his belt. I ordered his lunch, fed him his sandwich and cleaned his face with a napkin. He looked at me and said, “Was I a college player in the 1960s?”

“No, Coach,” I said. “But you were a great player for the Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1940s. You quarterbacked Oklahoma to an 11-0 record and the Sooners’ first national championship in 1949.”

He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be doggone.”

After lunch, Mike Campbell and I carried him up the stairs. We sat him on a bench outside as Tom Campbell fetched the car. In that moment, the lunch crowd began to spill out of the restaurant. About 20 customers recognized Royal. They took his photograph with camera phones. Royal smiled and welcomed the hugs.

“He didn’t remember a thing about it,” Tom Campbell said later. “But it did his heart a whole lot of good.”

Jim Dent is the author of “The Junction Boys” and eight other books.

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Mind Faded, Darrell Royal’s Wisdom and Humor Intact Till End

Three days before his death last week at 88, Darrell Royal told his wife, Edith: “We need to go back to Hollis” — in Oklahoma. “Uncle Otis died.”

“Oh, Darrell,” she said, “Uncle Otis didn’t die.”

Royal, a former University of Texas football coach, chuckled and said, “Well, Uncle Otis will be glad to hear that.”

The Royal humor never faded, even as he sank deeper into Alzheimer’s disease. The last three years, I came to understand this as well as anyone. We had known each other for more than 40 years. In the 1970s, Royal was a virile, driven, demanding man with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Bevo, the Longhorns mascot. He rarely raised his voice to players. “But we were scared to death of him,” the former quarterback Bill Bradley said.

Royal won 3 national championships and 167 games before retiring at 52. He was a giant in college football, having stood shoulder to shoulder with the Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Royal’s Longhorns defeated one of Bryant’s greatest teams, with Joe Namath at quarterback, in the 1965 Orange Bowl. Royal went 3-0-1 in games against Bryant.

Royal and I were reunited in the spring of 2010. I barely recognized him. The swagger was gone. His mind had faded. Often he stared aimlessly across the room. I scheduled an interview with him for my book “Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story.” Still, I worried that his withering mind could no longer conjure up images of Steinmark, the undersize safety who started 21 straight winning games for the Longhorns in the late 1960s. Steinmark later developed bone cancer that robbed him of his left leg.

When I met with Royal and his wife, I quickly learned that his long-term memory was as clear as a church bell. For two hours, Royal took me back to Steinmark’s recruiting trip to Austin in 1967, through the Big Shootout against Arkansas in 1969, to the moment President Richard M. Nixon handed him the national championship trophy in the cramped locker room in Fayetteville. He recalled the day at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston the next week when doctors informed Steinmark that his leg would be amputated if a biopsy revealed cancer. Royal never forgot the determined expression on Steinmark’s face, nor the bravery in his heart.

The next morning, Royal paced the crowded waiting room floor and said: “This just can’t be happening to a good kid like Freddie Steinmark. This just can’t be happening.”

With the love of his coach, Steinmark rose to meet the misfortune. Nineteen days after the amputation, he stood with crutches on the sideline at the Cotton Bowl for the Notre Dame game. After the Longhorns defeated the Fighting Irish, Royal tearfully presented the game ball to Steinmark.

Four decades later, while researching the Steinmark book, I became close to Royal again. As I was leaving his condominium the day of the interview, I said, “Coach, do you still remember me?” He smiled and said, “Now, Jim Dent, how could I ever forget you?” My sense of self-importance lasted about three seconds. Royal chuckled. He pointed across the room to the message board next to the front door that read, “Jim Dent appt. at 10 a.m.”

Edith and his assistant, Colleen Kieke, read parts of my book to him. One day, Royal told me, “It’s really a great book.” But I can’t be certain how much he knew of the story.

Like others, I was troubled to see Royal’s memory loss. He didn’t speak for long stretches. He smiled and posed for photographs. He seemed the happiest around his former players. He would call his longtime friend Tom Campbell, an all-Southwest Conference defensive back from the 1960s, and say, “What are you up to?” That always meant, “Let’s go drink a beer.”

As her husband’s memory wore thin, Edith did not hide him. Instead, she organized his 85th birthday party and invited all of his former players. Quarterback James Street, who engineered the famous 15-14 comeback against Arkansas in 1969, sat by Royal’s side and helped him remember faces and names. The players hugged their coach, then turned away to hide the tears.

In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the annual Mexican lunch for Royal attended by about 75 of his former players. A handful of them were designated to stand up and tell Royal what he meant to them. Royal smiled through each speech as his eyes twinkled. I was mesmerized by a story the former defensive tackle Jerrel Bolton told. He recalled that Royal had supported him after the murder of his wife some 30 year earlier.

“Coach, you told me it was like a big cut on my arm, that the scab would heal, but that the wound would always come back,” Bolton said. “It always did.”

Royal seemed to drink it all in. But everyone knew his mind would soon dim.

The last time I saw him was June 20 at the County Line, a barbecue restaurant next to Bull Creek in Austin. Because Royal hated wheelchairs and walkers, the former Longhorn Mike Campbell, Tom’s twin, and I helped him down the stairs by wrapping our arms around his waist and gripping the back of his belt. I ordered his lunch, fed him his sandwich and cleaned his face with a napkin. He looked at me and said, “Was I a college player in the 1960s?”

“No, Coach,” I said. “But you were a great player for the Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1940s. You quarterbacked Oklahoma to an 11-0 record and the Sooners’ first national championship in 1949.”

He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be doggone.”

After lunch, Mike Campbell and I carried him up the stairs. We sat him on a bench outside as Tom Campbell fetched the car. In that moment, the lunch crowd began to spill out of the restaurant. About 20 customers recognized Royal. They took his photograph with camera phones. Royal smiled and welcomed the hugs.

“He didn’t remember a thing about it,” Tom Campbell said later. “But it did his heart a whole lot of good.”

Jim Dent is the author of “The Junction Boys” and eight other books.

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Changing of the Guard: Chinese Communist Party Faces Calls for Democracy

BEIJING — As the Communist Party’s 18th Congress approached, Li Weidong, a scholar of politics, made plans to observe a historic leadership battle in one of the world’s great nations.

Instead of staying in Beijing to monitor China’s once-a-decade transfer of power, Mr. Li boarded a plane.

“I’m going to the United States to study the elections,” Mr. Li said in a telephone interview during a stopover in Paris. After witnessing the American presidential election on Tuesday, Mr. Li went on the radio for another interview. “I still think China’s politics remain prehistoric,” he said. “I often joke that the Chinese civilization is the last prehistoric civilization left in the world.”

With China at a critical juncture, there is a rising chorus within the elite expressing doubt that the 91-year-old Communist Party’s authoritarian system can deal with the stresses bearing down on the nation and its 1.3 billion people. Policies introduced after 1978 by Deng Xiaoping lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy. But the way party leaders have managed decades of growth has created towering problems that critics say can no longer be avoided.

Many of those critics have benefited from China’s stunning economic gains, and their ranks include billionaires, intellectuals and children of the party’s revolutionary founders. But they say the party’s agenda, as it stands today, is not visionary enough to set China on the path to stability. What is needed, they say, is a comprehensive strategy to gradually extricate the Communist Party, which has more than 80 million members, from its heavy-handed control of the economy, the courts, the news media, the military, educational institutions, civic life and just the plain day-to-day affairs of citizens.

Only then, the critics argue, can the government start to address the array of issues facing China, including rampant corruption, environmental degradation, and an aging population whose demographics have been skewed because of the one-child policy.

“In order to build a real market economy, we have to have real political reform,” said Yang Jisheng, a veteran journalist and a leading historian of the Mao era. “In the next years, we should have a constitutional democracy plus a market economy.”

For now, however, party leaders have given no indication that they intend to curb their role in government in a meaningful way.

“We will never copy a Western political system,” Hu Jintao, the departing party chief, said in a speech on Thursday opening the weeklong congress.

The party’s public agenda, which Mr. Hu described in detail in his 100-minute address, was laid out in a 64-page report that is in part intended to highlight priorities for the new leaders, who will be announced later this month. Much of the document had retrograde language that emphasized ideology stretching back to Mao and had little in the way of bold or creative thinking, said Qian Gang, the director of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

Most telling, there was no language signaling that the incoming Politburo Standing Committee, the group that rules China by consensus, would support major changes in the political system, whose perversions many now say are driving the nation toward crisis.

While Chinese who are critical of the current system generally do not expect a wholesale adoption of a Western model, they do favor at least an openness to bolder experimentation.

“To break one-party rule right now is probably not realistic, but we can have factions within the party made public and legalized, so they can campaign against each other,” said Mr. Yang, who added that there was no other way at the moment to ensure political accountability.

Only in the last few years has the idea of liberalizing the political system gained currency, and urgency, among a broad cross-section of elites. Before that, as the West foundered at the onset of the global financial crisis, many here pointed to the triumph of a “China model” or “Beijing consensus” — a mix of authoritarian politics, a command economy and quasi-market policies.

But the way in which China weathered the crisis — with the injection of $588 billion of stimulus money into the economy and an explosion of lending from state banks — led to a spate of large infrastructure projects that may never justify their cost. As a result, many economists now say that China’s investment-driven, export-oriented economic model is unsustainable and needs to shift toward greater reliance on Chinese consumers.

Constant lip-service is paid to that goal, and on Saturday, Zhang Ping, a senior official, reiterated that stance. But it will not be easy for the new leaders to carry it out. At the root of the current economic model is the political system, in which party officials and state-owned enterprises work closely together, reaping enormous profits from the party’s control of the economy. Under Mr. Hu’s decade-long tenure, these relationships and the dominance of state enterprises have only strengthened.

“What happens in this kind of economy is that wealth concentrates where power is,” said Mr. Yang, the journalist.

The 400 or so incoming members of the party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee, as well as their friends and families, have close ties to the most powerful of China’s 145,000 state-owned enterprises. The growing presence of princelings — the children of notable Communist officials — in the party, the government and corporations could mean an even more closely meshed web of nepotism. It is a system that Xi Jinping, anointed to be the next party chief and president and himself a member of the “red nobility,” would find hard to unravel, even if he wanted to.

Mia Li contributed research.

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DealBook: In Unusual Move, the Delaware Supreme Court Rebukes a Judge

As the chief judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery — the country’s most influential court overseeing business cases — Leo E. Strine Jr. has been called an activist. He has also been called an iconoclast, a genius and a humorist.

But this week, Delaware’s highest court called him out of bounds.

The Delaware Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke of Judge Strine on Wednesday, criticizing him for what it said was an improper digression in an opinion. Judge Strine’s decision related to a contractual dispute but went off on an 11-page tangent about an obscure issue related to limited liability companies.

“The court’s excursus on this issue strayed beyond the proper purview and function of a judicial opinion,” the Supreme Court wrote, adding, “We remind Delaware judges that the obligation to write judicial opinions on the issues presented is not a license to use those opinions as a platform from which to propagate their individual world views on issues not presented.”

Famous among lawyers for his colorful opinions and courtroom meanderings — which are frequently laced with cultural references, both high and low — Judge Strine has supporters and detractors in the securities class-action bar. The Delaware Court of Chancery exerts a powerful influence on United States business because many large companies are incorporated in Delaware and litigate cases there.

Several lawyers, none of whom would be quoted by name because they all practice before him, said it was only a matter of time before someone sought to rein him in. “I’m only surprised it took this long,” said a corporate litigator from New York who has argued cases in Judge Strine’s courtroom.

The Supreme Court advised Judge Strine that if he wished to “ruminate on what the proper direction of Delaware law should be, there are appropriate platforms, such as law review articles, the classroom, continuing legal education presentations and keynote speeches.”

Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal and judicial ethics at New York University School of Law, said that the court’s admonition was highly unusual.

“You rarely see this type of ruling because judges understand that a judicial opinion has a distinct and narrow function and is not supposed to be a platform for your public agenda or your broader views on the law,” he said.

Reached by e-mail, Judge Strine, whose official title is chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, declined to comment.

The ruling came during a week when Judge Strine’s unique judicial stylings were on prominent display. During a hearing in a lawsuit between the fashion designer Tory Burch and her former husband, Christopher Burch, he described the dispute as a “drunken WASP fest.” At the center of the case is whether Mr. Burch, in starting his own retail stores, C. Wonder, borrowed too heavily from Ms. Burch’s successful chain.

During the hearing, Judge Strine addressed scheduling issues in the case, and said, “I didn’t see any reason to burden anyone’s Hanukkah, New Year’s, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus with this preppy clothing dispute.”

He went on to consider why he gets assigned all the preppy clothing cases, noting that he had recently heard a dispute involving J. Crew. That led to a critique of a certain line of rain boots.

“What’s a duck shoe?” he asked. “You see all these freaks wearing this really ugly — I like L. L. Bean, but those duck shoes are ugly. I mean, there’s no way around it.”

He then said he was puzzled by his son’s recent purchase of a pair of Topsiders. “I’m like, what is this?” Judge Strine asked. “I mean, you know, how do you actually want to wear these things?”

As the hearing continued, Judge Strine suggested that there might be nothing unique about the clothing lines of Mr. Burch and Ms. Burch, who divorced in 2007. He stumped one of the lawyers in the case by quizzing him on Ralph Lauren’s original surname, which is Lifschitz.

After his lengthy sidebar on preppy attire, Judge Strine said he was deep in “an autumnal Cheever phase,” referring to the novelist and short story writer. He then encouraged the lawyers to read Cheever’s works, go see the Broadway revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and watch “Mad Men.”

“We’ll be all geared up and in the mood for this sort of drunken WASP fest,” Judge Strine said, and then proceeded to ask about the litigants’ religion. “Are the Burches WASPs?” he asked.

Robert Isen, the chief legal officer at Tory Burch, hesitated before responding, “Tory Burch is Jewish and Chris is not Jewish.”

The answer did not entirely satisfy Judge Strine. “But not Jewish doesn’t make you a WASP, because it could make you an equally excluded faith like Catholic, right?” he asked. “I mean, that’s not a WASP. You know, a WASP is a WASP.”

Mr. Gillers of N.Y.U. Law said that discussing religion in such a manner was conduct unbecoming of a judge. Even if it is done lightheartedly, he said, it could compromise the public’s confidence in the impartiality and integrity of the judiciary.

“Asking about religion, in my mind, is way off base,” Mr. Gillers said. “It’s certainly not legally relevant, and a judge certainly wouldn’t do that with race or sexual orientation.”

Judge Strine began his career in the early 1990s as a lawyer in the Wilmington, Del., office of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He then joined the staff of the Delaware governor Thomas R. Carper, who is now a senator. Judge Strine, who is 48, was named to the Court of Chancery at 34. Many of his opinions are considered among the most influential rulings in corporate law.

A lawyer based in Wilmington, Del., who described himself as a supporter of Judge Strine, said that behind this week’s Supreme Court ruling was a simmering tension between Myron Steele, the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, and Judge Strine. That conflict appears to have its roots in a disagreement over an arcane subject: the default fiduciary duties of a limited liability company.

This lawyer said that he found Judge Strine’s rapier wit and off-topic asides to be a breath of fresh air in a judiciary that too often can be painfully dull.

“He’s a brilliant dude,” he said. “It’s just Leo being Leo.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/10/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Unusual Move, the Delaware Supreme Court Rebukes a Judge.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.

Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.

Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.

“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”

What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?

Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.

The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”

This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.

“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.

Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.

As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.

Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.

A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.

“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”

Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.

Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.

Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.

“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”

The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.

“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.

In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.

Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.

Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.

Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.

Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.

“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”

What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?

Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.

The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”

This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.

“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.

Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.

As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.

Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.

A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.

“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”

Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.

Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.

Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.

“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”

The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.

“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.

In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.

Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.

Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?

Read More..

Bits Blog: On Twitter, Steve Jobs Is Immortal

Steve Jobs is gone, but on Twitter his @name lives on. And on.

The chief executive of Apple, who died in 2011, is memorialized on Twitter by about a thousand fans, parodists, traffic seekers, unrepentant haters and crypto-historians, among others. The accounts use his name as either as a title or, with many variations, as an address.

The copycats include @FakeSteveJobs, @FauxSteve and @SteveJobsFalso, a collection of admitted imposters who are following in the footsteps of a parody Web site that was active from 2006 to 2011. Other versions include @RememberSteve, @PulseonJobs and @RealSteveJobs. There are a couple of @BlackSteveJobs, plus Twitter accounts by various articles of clothing and body parts.

Several of the accounts are operated by start-ups hoping to generate attention for themselves. Their tweets contain links to corporate Web pages. Some of the accounts are in languages like Arabic, Thai or Japanese. Many others use Mr. Jobs’s name for the account but have a different address.

Searching the name “Steve Jobs” on Twitter yields about 1,080 accounts, some of which are unrelated to the Apple co-founder; there are people on Twitter who are really named Steve Jobs.

Twitter does not keep score of how many of its 140 million accounts are fakes, but it generally supports the idea of parody accounts. “It’s very helpful for political dissidents, who can’t write under their own name,” said Rachael Horwitz, a company spokeswoman. She also noted that Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, has a parody account. Jack Dorsey, the chairman of the company’s board, is likewise roasted.

Possibly for his close identification with technology, Mr. Jobs does appear to be the most popular identity on Twitter to leverage. President Obama has about 600 versions of his name, either through the “@” address, or in the name of the account. Given much of the venom of the recent election, several of these accounts are remarkably ugly, certainly worse than the treatment afforded Mr. Jobs. Michelle Obama, who like the president has an official and verified Twitter account, has about 500 copycats.

Bill Gates, Mr. Jobs’s longtime nemesis and eventual frenemey, does better than the president and first lady, with about 840 imitators and parodists. There is also a Klingon version of him, which to date Mr. Jobs’s name does not appear to share. There also appear to be a lot more people on Twitter who are simply named “Bill Gates,” a characteristic that must fill their lives with a lot of predictable humor.

Justin Beiber gets a mere 240 people hoping for a bit of his lustre. John Lennon, Mr. Jobs’ idol, has fewer than 100.

Twitter will take down parody accounts, but usually when it is not clear that they are parodies. That is not a problem in the case of most public figures. “It’s a form of speech,” Ms. Horwitz said. On the Internet, everyone needs a thicker skin. The situation does come up enough that the company has published formal policies on acceptable parody and fan accounts , along with impersonation.

There are parody accounts for Oracle’s chief executive, Larry Ellison; for Larry Page, the chief executive and co-founder of Google; and for Mark Zuckerberg, the chief of Facebook. With so many parody accounts around, some technology chief executives may worry if they are not being parodied.

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In Soldier’s Hearing, Afghans Tell of Horror

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — Through a live video feed from half a world away in Afghanistan, in an extraordinary night court session, descriptions of chaos and horror poured into a military courtroom here as if from an open spigot.

Lois Silver/FR 170774 Associated Press, via Associated Press

In a courtroom sketch, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, lower right, is shown during testimony on Friday.

Reuters

Sergeant Bales, left, during a 2011 training exercise in Fort Irwin, California.

“Their brains were still on the pillows,” said Mullah Khamal Adin, 39, staring into the camera with his arms folded on the table, describing the 11 members of his cousin’s family he found dead in the family compound — most of the bodies burned in a pile in one room.

Mr. Adin, in a hearing that started here late Friday, was asked about the smell. Was there an odor of gasoline or kerosene?

Just bodies and burned plastic, he replied through a translator.

The Army’s preliminary hearing in the case against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province this year, unfolded last week mostly in the bustling daylight of a working military base an hour south of Seattle. But to accommodate witnesses in Afghanistan, and the 12-and-a-half-hour time difference, the schedule was shifted at week’s end, with testimony through cameras and uplinks in Afghanistan and here at Lewis-McChord starting at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday and running until shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday.

The attacks, which occurred on March 11 in a deeply poor rural region while most of the victims were asleep, were the deadliest war crime attributed to a single American soldier in the decade of war that has followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and they further frayed the relationship between the American and Afghan governments.

The military says Sergeant Bales, 39, was serving his fourth combat tour overseas when he walked away from his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan and shot and stabbed members of several families in a nighttime ambush on two villages. At least nine of the people he is accused of killing were children, and others were women. After the victims were shot, some of the bodies were dragged into a pile and burned.

“ ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ ” one witness, a farmer named Haji Naim, said he had shouted to the American soldier, whom he described as wearing a blindingly bright headlamp in a house that, without electricity, was pitch black. The gunman said nothing, Mr. Naim said, and simply kept firing.

“He shot me right here, right here, and right here,” he said, indicating wounds from which he has apparently recovered.

Most of the testimony, however graphic, was circumstantial, pointing to a lone American gunman but not directly implicating Sergeant Bales. The villagers testified on the fifth day of a military proceeding known as an Article 32 investigation, held to establish whether there is enough evidence to bring Sergeant Bales before a court-martial. If a court-martial is ordered and the Army decides to continue the prosecution as a capital case, the sergeant could face the death penalty.

Sergeant Bales, a decorated veteran of three tours in Iraq before being sent to Afghanistan last December, was deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He was held at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas before being brought here for the hearing.

Witnesses earlier in the week talked about the blood-soaked clothes that Sergeant Bales was seen wearing when he returned to his base in Kandahar and his comments to fellow soldiers about having done “the right thing.” There was also testimony about the test for steroids in his system that came back positive three days after the killings.

The hearing’s night sessions, which were scheduled to continue on Saturday, were all about the violence that unfolded the night of March 11. Mr. Adin, who was summoned to his cousin’s compound by a telephone call early the next morning, told of boot prints that were on some bodies, including the head of a child who had apparently been shot and stomped or kicked. Mr. Adin talked about a small child who he said appeared to have been “grabbed from her bed and thrown on the fire.” But Mr. Adin never saw the gunman, arriving after the fact.

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