Gasoline Runs Short, Adding Woes to Storm Recovery

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

A gas station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, had long lines on Thursday, and police officers to keep the peace. Officials said the fuel shortage would thin the taxi fleet. More Photos »

UNION, N.J. — Widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services on Thursday as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Tiny increments of progress — some subway and bus lines were back in service — were overshadowed by new estimates of the storm's financial cost, struggles to restore power, and by the discovery of more bodies in flooded communities.

The lines of cars waiting for gas at a Sunoco here ran in three directions: a mile-long line up the Garden State Parkway, a half-mile line along Vauxhall Road, and another, including a fleet of mail trucks that needed to refuel before resuming their rounds, snaking through a back entrance. The scene was being replayed across the state as drivers waited in lines that ran hundreds of vehicles deep, requiring state troopers and local police to protect against exploding tempers.

"I've been pumping gas for 36 hours, I pumped 17,000 gallons," said Abhishek Soni, the owner of an Exxon in Montclair, where disputes on the line Wednesday night had become so heated that Mr. Soni called the police and turned off the pumps for 45 minutes to restore calm. "My nose, my mouth is bleeding from the fumes. The fighting just makes it worse."

Four days after Hurricane Sandy, the effort to secure enough gas for the region moved to the forefront of recovery work. The problems affected even New York City, where the Taxi Commission warned that the suddenly indispensable fleet of yellow cabs would thin significantly Friday because of the fuel shortage.

City officials said they had reached an agreement with a major supplier Thursday night that would ensure emergency operations — fire, police, sanitation and work by the parks department to clean up downed trees — would continue uninterrupted.

Though Thursday marked a return to routine for many who ride the subway to work or celebrated the resumption of power, the scenes of long lines, fistfights at gas stations and siphoning at parking lots highlighted the difficult, uneven slog to recovery.

The losses from the storm will approach $50 billion, according to an early estimate from economists at Moody's Analytics — about $30 billion in property damage, the rest in lost economic activity like meals and canceled flights. At the same time the death toll in New York City rose to 38, as rescuers continued to discover bodies while combing through coastal wreckage. Among them were the bodies of two boys, 2 and 4, who had been torn from their mother by raging floodwaters on Staten Island on Monday night.

The lack of power continued to bedevil efforts to address the damage. About 43 percent of customers in New Jersey and about 16 percent in New York State remained without electricity, and Officials said that they expected power to be restored to all of Manhattan by Saturday. Those issues were only aggravated by the increasingly short supply of gas, particularly given that many suburban residents in New Jersey and elsewhere were heading to the stations to fuel generators, which provided the lone source of power and heat to homes across the region.

According to figures from AAA, of the gas stations it monitors, roughly 60 percent of stations in New Jersey and 70 percent on Long Island were closed.

At stations that were open, nerves frayed. Fights broke out Thursday at the block-long Hess station on 10th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, forcing the Police Department to send three officers to keep the peace, a police official said. By evening, the police had to close two lanes of the broad thoroughfare to accommodate a line of customers stretching eight blocks, to 37th Street.

The ports and refineries that supply much of the region's gas had been shut down in advance of the storm and were damaged by it. That disrupted deliveries to gas stations that had power to pump the fuel. But the bigger problem was that many stations and storage facilities remained without power.

Politicians were scrambling Thursday to increase the supply of fuel — the Port of New York and New Jersey opened just enough to allow boats carrying gas to move, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey waived restrictions that make it harder for stations to buy gas from out-of-state suppliers. Mr. Christie's office had warned that price gougers would be prosecuted, but drivers were reporting that some stations were charging more than $4 a gallon, even though the state had set gas prices at $3.59 on the highways last week.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Graham B. Spanier, Former Penn State President, Charged in Sandusky Case

In February 2001, Graham B. Spanier, then the president of Penn State, exchanged e-mails with two top university officials regarding Jerry Sandusky.

The three men had been told of an allegation that Sandusky, a former top assistant to the longtime football coach Joe Paterno, had sexually abused a young boy. It was decided that they would approach Sandusky directly, rather than going to outside authorities. Spanier deemed this a "humane and a reasonable way to proceed," with one caveat: "The only downside for us is if the message isn't 'heard' and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it."

It is now known that Sandusky continued to sexually abuse young boys for years after. On Thursday, Pennsylvania's attorney general, Linda Kelly, said Spanier and the two other university officials — Gary Schultz, a former university vice president, and Tim Curley, the athletic director, who has been on administrative leave — engaged in a "conspiracy of silence" to "actively conceal the truth."

"If these men had done what they were supposed to do and legally required to do, several young men may not have been attacked by a serial predator," Kelly said at a news conference, adding it was not a "mistake" or an "oversight" by the men that allowed Sandusky to continue his abuse.

Spanier, 64; Schultz, 63; and Curley, 58, now all face numerous charges, including perjury, obstruction of justice, endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy. Schultz and Curley, who reported to Spanier, were already scheduled to stand trial in January on charges of perjury and failing to report child sexual abuse.

In a statement, lawyers for Spanier called the charges a "politically motivated frame-up of an innocent man."

They added, "Graham Spanier has committed no crime and looks forward to the opportunity to clear his good name."

Spanier's arraignment is set for next week.

The charges filed Thursday retrace many of the same issues raised in a report released in July by Louis J. Freeh, a former director of the F.B.I. who conducted a seven-month investigation commissioned by Penn State. Freeh concluded that university leaders had disregarded the welfare of Sandusky's victims, and his report quoted from Spanier's e-mail in 2001 and included notes Schultz took in 1998 that the attorney general's office also cited.

The new charges come nearly a year after Pennsylvania authorities arrested Sandusky. Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse, and in October, Sandusky, 68, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.

In building the case against the Penn State officials, the attorney general's office focused on allegations they concealed claims in 1998 and 2001 that Sandusky had abused young boys on campus.

"It is not just one instance where this was swept under the rug," Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said during the news conference.

According to the grand jury report released Thursday, in May 1998, Schultz took detailed notes of a conversation he had with the university police chief about an allegation against Sandusky.

"At the conclusion of his notes, he pondered two chilling questions when he wrote: is this opening of pandora's box? Other children?" the grand jury report read. A copy of the notes was included with the jury report.

The grand jury alleged that certain documents requested from the Penn State officials were not turned over after they were subpoenaed. Among them, the jury report said, was Schultz's Sandusky file, which he kept in a drawer in his campus office and which contained notes and documents about the 1998 and 2001 allegations. His administrative assistant said he instructed her to never look in the file.

Joel Feller, a lawyer for several of the victims, said charging the Penn State officials "comes as no surprise."

"They cared for themselves, the university and the program solely," he said. "They totally disregarded the safety and well-being of Jerry Sandusky's victims."

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Estimate of Economic Losses Now Up to $50 Billion

Economic damages inflicted by Hurricane Sandy could reach $50 billion, according to new estimates that are more than double a previous forecast. Some economists warned on Thursday that the storm could shave a half percentage point off the nation's economic growth in the current quarter.

Losses from the storm could total $30 billion to $50 billion, according to Eqecat, which tracks hurricanes and analyzes the damage they cause. On Monday, before the storm hit the East Coast, the firm estimated $10 billion to $20 billion in total economic damages.

The flooding of New York's subways and roadway tunnels and the extensive loss of business as a result of utility failures across the region were behind the sharp increase in the estimate, the firm said.

"The geographic scope of the storm was unprecedented, and the impacts on individuals and on commerce are far larger," said Tom Larsen, Eqecat's senior vice president and product architect. "Lost power is going to contribute to higher insurance losses."

Eqecat predicted that New York would bear 34 percent of the total economic losses, with New Jersey suffering 30 percent, Pennsylvania 20 percent and other states 16 percent. That includes all estimated losses, whether covered by insurance or not. The estimates and the share that will be covered by insurers are far from certain at this point, as government officials, property owners and insurance adjusters struggle to assess the destruction.

While the stock market, banks and other financial institutions regained some of their stride on Thursday, other sectors like retailing, transportation and leisure and hospitality face a much longer and more difficult recovery. With fuel in short supply in many areas and utilities warning that power may not be back for a week or more in some areas, businesses found themselves preparing for the equivalent of a long siege.

FedEx, for example, was trying to rent fuel tankers for its trucks in New York and New Jersey as commercial gas stations ran dry.

"We're reaching out to everyone who has a gasoline tanker that we can move to these areas," said Shea Leordeanu, a spokeswoman for the company. While FedEx had stocks of oil in advance of the storm for generators, it was not prepared for the gas shortages that caused long lines at stations on Wednesday and Thursday.

"There has not been an impact yet, but this is something we can see as an issue and we're concerned," she said.

As logistical problems mounted, and damage estimates surged, economists raised their estimates of the storm's impact.

"I think the effect will be quite big," said Julia Lynn Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas. "In the fourth quarter, we're probably looking at an impact of half a percentage point."

She said some of those losses would be made up in the first quarter of 2013, as insurance reimbursements were distributed and homeowners and businesses rebuilt.

Hurricane Sandy will rank high among disasters in terms of economic impact but will not be at the top of the list, said Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics. He estimated that the losses would be less than half of those suffered because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and from Hurricane Katrina.

Moody's Analytics also put the impact in the $50 billion range, with about $12 billion in losses falling in the New York City metropolitan area.

About $20 billion of that total is from lost economic activity like meals not served in restaurants, canceled plane flights and bets not placed in casinos, Mr. Zandi estimated. The rest, about $30 billion, will be from property destruction, including damage to homes, cars and businesses, Mr. Zandi said.

Eqecat said it believed that various forms of insurance would cover $10 billion to $20 billion of the total cost. Other losses will be borne by individuals and businesses, or covered by federal government programs like the National Flood Insurance Program. Much of the federal spending will be used to repair damaged public infrastructure, rather than for private property.

Eqecat said that if insured costs remained at the lower end of its predicted range, at $10 billion, then about 60 percent of the losses would be covered by homeowners' and, to a lesser extent, auto insurers. The remainder would be covered by commercial and industrial insurance.

The firm's officials said that if total insured losses rose to the higher end of its predicted range, it would be because of costs like business-interruption losses — and in that case, commercial insurers pay more.

They said this possibility would depend to a great extent on how long power failures continued. They said there were no solid data yet on the number of transformers and power lines that had been knocked out. They added that in some cases, power might not be restored until well into December.

Moody's issued a report on Thursday stating that the large nationwide insurers had "diversified exposures and strong capital bases to withstand" payouts related to the storm. It added, however, that the costs could disrupt the capital bases of smaller regional insurers.

State Farm, the largest writer of home and auto insurance in the region, reported having received nearly 25,000 homeowners' claims and 4,000 auto claims as of Wednesday. Those numbers are probably a fraction of the eventual totals. Some of the losses will not be recouped. Lost Halloween sales will be especially painful for some retailers, according to a separate analysis by Moody's.

"As shoppers in the affected regions focus on the storm, other discretionary spending will fall and not be recouped," Moody's said.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Power Restoration After Hurricane Sandy May Take Longer Than Expected

Some New Yorkers whose homes lost electricity may have to wait more than two weeks to get it back — especially if their homes are the only ones on the block that lost power during the storm, utility officials said Thursday.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Volunteers checking on residents Thursday at the Village View housing complex on East Fourth Street; the residents, who are mostly older, did not have electricity.

Power companies in the region had been using the ballpark estimate of "at least a week" to signal how long it could take to restore all of the power knocked out by Hurricane Sandy. But as they have started assessing the situation more closely in many neighborhoods and suburban towns, they have begun trying to lower expectations.

Consolidated Edison, for example, tucked an especially dire note into a news release on Thursday afternoon. It said the "vast majority" of its customers in New York City and the northern suburbs should have power by Nov. 11, but a significant number could remain in the dark for a week or more beyond that.

John Miksad, the company's senior vice president for electric operations, said some "stragglers" might not get electricity again until the middle of this month. Those living through the worst-case situation may account for just a few percent of the 850,000 Con Edison customers who lost power, but their numbers could still add up to tens of thousands of households.

The customers' plight is largely a function of circumstance, said Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Edison. The company is planning repairs based on efficiency, he said. So repairs that will bring the most customers back go to the top of the list.

"If we can restore 1,000 people with one fix as opposed to restoring five people with one fix, we'll take care of the 1,000 people first," Mr. Clendenin said.

That leaves people whose candlelit houses are bathed in the glow of more fortunate neighbors at the low end of the priority pole, whether they reside in split-levels on Staten Island or in mansions in Larchmont.

By comparison, the 220,000 customers in Manhattan who lost power after the East River swamped a Con Edison power plant at the east end of 14th Street should have power again by Saturday.

That contrast has prompted grumbling from some community leaders in Westchester County, where rumors have spread that Con Edison diverted crews from the suburbs to the city. Mr. Miksad has rejected that idea, saying the company has allocated resources in proportion to the number of problems to be solved.

"We don't want to blow smoke on this," Mr. Miksad said. "We're doing our damnedest to get power back on as quickly as possible, but it is what it is — and it's a long hard slog to get this done."

Con Edison may have been blunter about the outer limits of restoration than other utilities, but Mr. Clendenin said he did not think the company was a laggard. Indeed, in northern New Jersey, some customers of Public Service Electric and Gas who understood that they had been promised electricity again by the start of next week were hearing on Thursday that the end of next week was more realistic.

Jersey Central Power and Light still had about 900,000 customers without power on Thursday and was estimating that most of them would be restored within a week and most of the rest within two weeks. But it added that it could take much longer to get electricity flowing again to customers in places where roads, bridges and other infrastructure needed to be rebuilt.

On Long Island, where nearly 650,000 customers of the Long Island Power Authority still did not have electricity on Thursday, the utility company was not even venturing to estimate when all would restored.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Live Coverage: Increments of Progress, and New Struggles, After Storm

• Full Coverage
• Comments
• Photos
• Game Updates
• Ask The Times

State-by-State Guide

A look at the devastation caused in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to New England.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

New Yorkers Cling to Hope of a Better Commute

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

The view from Third Avenue in Brooklyn toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Wednesday morning. With most mass transit out of service, many commuters had no choice but to drive. More Photos »

With commutes that took hours, half-mile lines at suburban gas stations and city buses stuffed beyond capacity, the transportation systems in most of the region slowed to a crawl on Wednesday, amid promises that some subway and commuter rail services would be restored by the Thursday morning commute.

Beginning at 6 a.m., some service will resume on 14 of the city's 23 subway lines, but several critical lines — the No. 3 and 7 trains and the B, C, E, G and Q trains — remain entirely dark. Many trains will have gaps in their routes, including the No. 4 train, which will have no service between 42nd Street in Manhattan and Borough Hall in Brooklyn.

And if New Yorkers want to try their luck at driving into Manhattan on Thursday, most will require company: Beginning at 6 a.m., the city planned to bar private vehicles carrying fewer than three people from entering Manhattan over most major bridges, like the Robert F. Kennedy, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges.

But on Wednesday, as many businesses resumed normal operations for the first time since the storm, commutes were a mess.

"I left at 8:30 this morning and got here at 11:30," said Eddie Malae, 29, who drove from Forest Hills, Queens, to the salon on Lexington Avenue near 77th Street where he is a stylist. "And I did tricks, shortcuts."

On Wednesday night, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a transportation emergency and said all fares on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's commuter trains, subways and buses would be waived on Thursday and Friday. He said that the goal was to help alleviate the kind traffic that had clogged city streets on Wednesday."

He said that the goal was to help alleviate the kind traffic that clogged city streets on Wednesday.

"The gridlock was dangerous, frankly," Mr. Cuomo said.

Joseph Lhota, the chairman of the M.T.A., said that roughly half of the commuters who take Metro-North trains would see regular service starting Thursday morning. The Harlem and the New Haven lines will both be running normal schedules to Grand Central Station, he said.

The storm damage had a synergy of its own. Efforts to pump floodwaters from subway and automobile tunnels were slowed by electrical shortages. Hastily arranged car pools became bogged down on highways and city streets clogged with other commuters. Many gas stations, without power to operate their pumps, could not open for business, eerily evoking the fuel crisis of the 1970s.

Only bicycles seemed to be rolling.

The delays were "the equivalent of a subway strike with several of our major tunnels closed," said Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner known as Gridlock Sam, who said he could only recall one instance — when there was a powerful storm during a transit strike in 1980 — when traffic had been as bad.

City buses, the only piece of the mass transit network operating in earnest on Wednesday, often bypassed waiting commuters, unable to take on more passengers. Those who did make it on board often got off well before their stop, reasoning that they could walk faster.

"Maybe when it turns green, people will start moving," Abraham Riesman, 26, said as he rode an M10 bus stopped at a red light along Central Park West. Then the light turned.

"Nope."

Eric Bourne, 27, waited 30 minutes for the M4 bus at 138th Street and Broadway before he realized there was a path of less resistance: walking to his job at Parsons Dance in Times Square, where he is a modern dancer. Woe was to the less fit.

Parking garages filled early, with lines of cars in front of some gates before they opened near dawn. Diego Trilleras, the manager at a Manhattan Parking Group garage at East 56th Street, said he had not seen such a business boom since before the economic downturn. Some customers, he said, would probably have to wait an hour to get their cars out again. "They understand," he said hopefully.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Obama Tours Storm-Ravaged New Jersey With Gov. Chris Christie

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey viewed storm damage in Brigantine, N.J., on Wednesday. More Photos »

WASHINGTON — President Obama toured the storm-tossed boardwalks of New Jersey's ravaged coastline on Wednesday, in a vivid display of big-government muscle and bipartisan harmony that confronted Mitt Romney with a vexing challenge just as he returned to the campaign trail in Florida.

The scene of Mr. Obama greeting his onetime political antagonist Gov. Chris Christie in Atlantic City was a striking departure from what has become an increasingly bitter campaign, marked by sharp divisions between Mr. Romney's more limited view of the federal role and Mr. Obama's more expansive vision. The president placed a hand on Mr. Christie's back and guided him to Marine One, where the two men shared a grim flight over shattered sea walls, burning houses and a submerged roller coaster.

Speaking to storm victims at a community center in the hard-hit town of Brigantine, Mr. Obama said, "We are going to be here for the long haul." Mr. Christie thanked the president for his visit, saying, "It's really important to have the president of the United States acknowledge all the suffering that's going on here in New Jersey."

The tableau of bipartisan cooperation, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's highly visible role in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, has put Mr. Romney in an awkward position during the last week of a campaign in which he has fought Mr. Obama to a virtual draw. Last year, in a debate during the Republican primary, Mr. Romney appeared to advocate handing to the states much of the federal government's role in dealing with major disasters.

On Wednesday, as images of Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie dominated the newscasts, Mr. Romney was in Florida, a key electoral battleground that is no stranger to destructive hurricanes, where he struggled to square his small-government credo with a national disaster that seemed to cry out for a major federal response.

Before taking the stage at his first rally in Tampa, Mr. Romney issued a statement pledging to continue financing FEMA to insure it can "fulfill its mission."

"I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters," Mr. Romney said. But reaffirming his earlier point, he added that he would channel resources to "the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters."

Aides to Mr. Romney reiterated that Mr. Romney was not backing away from comments he made at the debate in New Hampshire in June 2011. When asked about a fierce battle in Congress over continued financing of FEMA, Mr. Romney declared, "We cannot afford to do these things without jeopardizing the future for our kids."

As the Romney campaign was confronting questions about the candidate's position on the federal role in emergency response, Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie were being accompanied on their tour of a devastated New Jersey by FEMA's administrator, W. Craig Fugate, whose agency has won unstinting praise from Mr. Christie, a Republican, for the speed and intensity of its response to the devastation.

Kevin Madden, a senior Romney adviser, said that Mr. Romney still believes that states, not the federal government, should lead the response to disasters. Pressed on FEMA's proper role, he said that Mr. Romney believes "being a partner for the states is the best approach."

Mr. Romney got some help from Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, who said at the Romney rally in Tampa, "My experience in all this emergency response business is that it is the local level and the state level that really matters. That if they do their job right the federal government part works out pretty good."

Mr. Romney has had to balance the demands of the campaign's final week with the desire not to look unseemly in the face of the storm's tragic toll. On Tuesday, in Ohio, he scrapped rallies in favor of a canned-goods drive. Though he returned to politics on Wednesday, he avoided attacks on the president, never mentioning his name.

"My view is pretty straightforward, and that is I believe that this is time for America to take a different course, that this should be a turning point for our country," he told 2,500 people in Tampa.

Aides to Mr. Romney said that he had no immediate plans to visit areas damaged by the storm, though they had not ruled it out.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Michael Barbaro from Coral Gables, Fla. Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Washington.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Wary of Future, Professionals Leave China in Record Numbers

Lee Yangang and his wife, Wang Lu, emigrated to Sydney, Australia, from Beijing last year, saying they felt insecure in China.

BEIJING — At 30, Chen Kuo had what many Chinese dream of: her own apartment and a well-paying job at a multinational corporation. But in mid-October, Ms. Chen boarded a midnight flight for Australia to begin a new life with no sure prospects.

Like hundreds of thousands of Chinese who leave each year, she was driven by an overriding sense that she could do better outside China. Despite China's tremendous economic successes in recent years, she was lured by Australia's healthier environment, robust social services and the freedom to start a family in a country that guarantees religious freedoms.

"It's very stressful in China — sometimes I was working 128 hours a week for my auditing company," Ms. Chen said in her Beijing apartment a few hours before leaving. "And it will be easier raising my children as Christians abroad. It is more free in Australia."

As China's Communist Party prepares a momentous leadership change in early November, it is losing skilled professionals like Ms. Chen in record numbers. In 2010, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 508,000 Chinese left for the 34 developed countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That is a 45 percent increase over 2000.

Individual countries report the trend continuing. In 2011, the United States received 87,000 permanent residents from China, up from 70,000 the year before. Chinese immigrants are driving real estate booms in places as varied as Midtown Manhattan, where some enterprising agents are learning Mandarin, to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which offers a route to a European Union passport.

Few emigrants from China cite politics, but it underlies many of their concerns. They talk about a development-at-all-costs strategy that has ruined the environment, as well as a deteriorating social and moral fabric that makes China feel like a chillier place than when they were growing up. Over all, there is a sense that despite all the gains in recent decades, China's political and social trajectory is still highly uncertain.

"People who are middle class in China don't feel secure for their future and especially for their children's future," said Cao Cong, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham who has studied Chinese migration. "They don't think the political situation is stable."

Most migrants seem to see a foreign passport as insurance against the worst-case scenario rather than as a complete abandonment of China.

A manager based in Shanghai at an engineering company, who asked not to be named, said he invested earlier this year in a New York City real estate project in hopes of eventually securing a green card. A sharp-tongued blogger on current events as well, he said he has been visited by local public security officials, hastening his desire for a United States passport.

"A green card is a feeling of safety," the manager said. "The system here isn't stable and you don't know what's going to happen next. I want to see how things turn out here over the next few years."

Political turmoil has reinforced this feeling. Since early this year, the country has been shocked by revelations that Bo Xilai, one of the Communist Party's most senior leaders, ran a fief that by official accounts engaged in murder, torture and corruption.

"There continues to be a lot of uncertainty and risk, even at the highest level — even at the Bo Xilai level," said Liang Zai, a migration expert at the University at Albany. "People wonder what's going to happen two, three years down the road."

The sense of uncertainty affects poorer Chinese, too. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, 800,000 Chinese were working abroad at the end of last year, versus 60,000 in 1990. Many are in small-scale businesses — taxi driving, fishing or farming — and worried that their class has missed out on China's 30-year boom. Even though hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted from poverty during this period, the rich-poor gap in China is among the world's widest and the economy is increasingly dominated by large corporations, many of them state-run.

"It's driven by a fear of losing out in China," said Biao Xiang, a demographer at Oxford University. "Going abroad has become a kind of gambling that may bring you some opportunities."

Amy Qin and Patrick Zuo contributed research.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

New Jersey Continues to Cope With Hurricane Sandy

Richard Perry/The New York Times

People used improvised plastic bags to navigate flood waters in Hoboken. More Photos »

HOBOKEN, N.J. — New Jersey was reeling on Wednesday from the impact of Hurricane Sandy, which has caused catastrophic flooding here in Hoboken and in other New York City suburbs, destroyed entire neighborhoods across the state and wiped out iconic boardwalks in shore towns that had enchanted generations of vacationgoers.

Though the storm raged up the East Coast, it has become increasingly apparent that New Jersey took the brunt of it. Officials estimated that the state suffered many billions of dollars in property damage. About a quarter of the state's population — more than two million people — remained without power on Wednesday, and more than 6,000 were still in shelters, state emergency officials said.

At least eight people died, and officials expressed deep concerns that the toll would rise as more searches of homes were carried out.

On Wednesday, President Obama visited the state and viewed the destruction with Gov. Chris Christie.

"The entire country has been watching what's been happening," Mr. Obama said at a stop in Atlantic County at the Brigantine Beach Community Center in Brigantine. "Everybody knows how hard Jersey has been hit."

Perhaps as startling as the sheer toll was the devastation to some of the state's well-known locales. Boardwalks along the beach in Seaside Heights, Belmar and other towns on the Jersey Shore were blown away. Amusement parks, arcades and restaurants all but vanished. Bridges to barrier islands buckled, preventing residents from even inspecting the damage to their property.

Localities across New Jersey imposed curfews to prevent looting. In Monmouth, Ocean and other counties, people waited for hours for gasoline at the few stations that had electricity. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare.

Two days after Hurricane Sandy struck, such distress was not limited to New Jersey.

Others parts of the Northeast, including Long Island, also suffered significant losses. Over all, the death toll from the storm passed 60, officials said Wednesday, and about six million people did not have power.

One of the most pressing crises was unfolding here in Hoboken, a city of 50,000 that is directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

"This is flooding like we've never seen," said Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken, where National Guard troops on Wednesday were trying to rescue thousands of residents trapped by sewage-laced floodwaters.

"It filled the city like a bathtub," she said.

When the storm surge hit on Monday night, the Hudson overcame the sea wall at the north and south ends of the city in a devastating westward torrent that made an island of the slightly higher, eastern half of the city.

After Ms. Zimmer appealed for aid on Tuesday, saying that as many as 20,000 people could be stuck in their homes, the first National Guard trucks arrived just before midnight. Overnight, they responded to emergency messages to find people and transport them to dry ground.

On the city's Facebook page, officials called on residents in need to listen for the trucks' approach. By midday on Wednesday, 12 National Guard trucks and two Humvee vehicles were in Hoboken for the rescue effort. City officials have not reported any fatalities in Hoboken so far.

Among the first to be rescued during the night were two babies, one 5 days old and another 3 weeks old. By midday Wednesday, the trucks at the unloading point by City Hall were bringing older people, including several in wheelchairs, and many families with babies and small children.

Robyn Pecarsky, who was eight months pregnant, was helped down from the back of a truck with her two children, who are 5 and 8.

"We saw the National Guard, and I sent my husband to tell them he had to get his pregnant wife out," Ms. Pecarsky said. She said the family lived in a third-floor apartment on Jackson Street that was not damaged, but as of this morning the water remained at thigh-high level on the ground floor of the building.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Euro Watch: Finance Ministers Add to Pressure on Greece Bailout

BRUSSELS — Greece must undertake further economic revamping before it can receive the next portion of bailout funds it needs to keep from defaulting on its loans, finance ministers from euro area countries warned Wednesday.

"We called on the Greek authorities to solve remaining issues so as to swiftly finalize the negotiations with the troika institutions," the so-called Eurogroup of finance ministers said in a statement issued shortly after a scheduled conference call.

The troika, a reference to the European authorities and international lenders supervising the Greek bailout, consists of representatives from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

Greece and the troika have been negotiating for weeks over an austerity budget package that would require the approval of the lenders, and be passed by the Greek Parliament, before a loan installment of €31 billion, or $40 billion, can be unlocked. Without that money, Greece could face default by the end of the month.

Greek politics continue to add uncertainty to the process. After the government on Wednesday released details of the austerity package — including raising the retirement age by two years, to 67; cutting salaries and pensions, and increasing taxes — the country's labor unions responded by announcing a 48-hour strike next week when the parliamentary vote is expected to be held. The Democratic Left, the smallest member of Greece's shaky three-party coalition government, has said it will not give its full support to the budget package if it includes changes to labor laws that the party opposes.

Adding to the political tension, the Parliament on Wednesday passed only narrowly a bill aimed at speeding the process of raising money by selling publicly owned Greek assets. Several members of Parliament from the Democratic Left and the other coalition partner, the Socialists, voted against the measure, and the leaders of the parties abstained. Afterward the leader of the Socialists, Evangelos Venizelos, hastily convened his party's members of Parliament for an emergency meeting, in an apparent effort to contain dissent ahead of the vote next week on the budget package.

But Greece, in perhaps the most dire circumstances of the 17 members of the euro zone, is hardly alone in its economic problems. Data released Wednesday by the European Union indicated that euro zone unemployment set another record in September, with 18.49 million people out of work.

The jobless rate in the 17-nation currency union ticked up to 11.6 percent from 11.5 percent in August, according to Eurostat, the E.U.'s statistical agency. The August figure, which had itself been a record level for the euro zone, was revised upward from the 11.4 percent initially reported.

Meanwhile, in Portugal on Wednesday, the Parliament passed the biggest tax increases in modern Portuguese history in an effort to meet the budget targets of its European bailout program. While the nation's center-right ruling coalition supports the tax increases, the opposition Socialists are challenging them in court.

The Eurogroup finance ministers, in their statement Wednesday on Greece, said any decision to release the next round of money "was subject to the completion of prior actions by the Greek authorities" — a reference to commitments already made by Greece to overhaul labor laws and raise the retirement age.

The group said it hoped to finish assessing Greece's progress by Nov. 12.

"Even if the troika report has not (yet) been officially released, it seems clear that the euro zone is willing to give Greece somewhat more time for the adjustment," Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Belgium, wrote in a briefing note issued Wednesday. But, he wrote, "Filling the funding gap for Greece will again require some creativity."

Many economists still contend that without some form of debt forgiveness, Greece will ultimately have to leave the euro union.

The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said Wednesday after the Eurogroup conference call that no decisions had been made at the meeting. He said he did not expect the next status report by Greece's troika of lenders to be issued before Nov. 11. "There are a lot of difficult issues that still need to be resolved," he said.

At a news conference, Mr. Schäuble said the country's relatively strong economy and low unemployment would expand Germany's tax receipts by €29 billion this year, for a total of €602.4 billion.

But in the European unemployment figures released Wednesday it was not Germany, with a jobless rate of 5.4 percent, that had the lowest figure. Austria, at 4.4 percent, had the lowest. Most euro zone nations are faring much worse, particularly Spain, where the jobless rate reached 25.8 percent. Close behind was Greece, at 25.1 percent in July, the most recent month for which data were available for that country.

In contrast, the United States had an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent in September, and joblessness in Britain was at 7.9 percent in the three months through August.

The euro zone economy is expected to have contracted again in the third quarter, after a 0.2 percent quarterly decline in the three months through June. With the global economy showing signs of slowing and European governments cutting spending to balance budgets, economists say the contraction could extend into next year.

David Jolly reported from Paris. Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More