In Verse, a Hoodlum’s Rage and War’s Spoils

Listen. Listen harder. That’s what the British playwright Howard Barker needs you to do during “Gary the Thief” and “Plevna: Meditations on Hatred,” his two short, dense plays produced by the Potomac Theater Project/NYC at Atlantic Stage 2.

Theater is elastic, he reminds us, and proceeds to stretch our definitions of it. Mr. Barker, also a poet, describes his work as a Theater of Catastrophe in which, as it says in the program, “no attempt is made to satisfy any demand for clarity or the deceptive simplicity of a single message.”

Indeed. These two pieces, written as poems and delivered as monologues, come at you in a rush and can be fragmentary and elusive. Don’t be surprised if you miss things. But also don’t be surprised if Mr. Barker’s blunt lyricism lingers in your mind.

“I hate the weak/And whimper in the presence/Of the strong,” says Gary the Thief. A working-class hoodlum, Gary kills a baby, goes to prison (with its “dirty glamour attaching to/Insane and paltry acts”) and is courted by powerful people. At the end — impossibility of spoiler alert — the “cold has riddled his youth/And the ice has quarried his teeth,” but he sets off to be a prophet.

Plot, obviously, doesn’t make “Gary the Thief” run. (Good thing: chunks of it passed me right by.) The poetry — slippery and impressionistic — does, and the play, receiving its world premiere in this production, directed by Richard Romagnoli, is lucky to have the actor Robert Emmet Lunney to deliver it.

Mr. Lunney makes visceral what might have been abstract. He varies the colors of his voice and his accent: he can be prim, even schoolmarmish when he narrates, but as Gary the Thief he has a Cockney swagger and impacted rage. Gary’s stare is ferocious. (Reader, he scared me.)

Mr. Lunney, in a dark suit, performs on a bare black set with only a hint of theatrical artifice: a wry proscenium arch near the back of the stage. It’s all very spare and tasteful — he seems like a pearl nestled in a velvet jewel case — but it creates a respectful hush that tames the play.

Still, Mr. Lunney carries the day, making “Gary” the more dramatically satisfying of the two pieces on this 50-minute program. In “Plevna: Meditations on Hatred,” receiving its New York premiere, Mr. Romagnoli also keeps the stage bare, save for a few chairs. But here he has a conceit, which might be trite if it were more insistent.

For this monologue about war and the nasty things civilians do, the actor, Alex Draper, wears a tux and brandishes a highball glass. He surveys and anatomizes the wreckage of battle as if pointing out the vomit after a drunken party.

Plevna was the site of a siege in 1877 in the Russo-Turkish war. Not that Mr. Barker tells you that and not that he means his play, with its shifting perspectives, to be restricted to one historical event.

Mr. Draper, though, doesn’t have Mr. Lunney’s range, and his slow build to anger seems a bit mechanical. Squint, and he’s just a guy reciting poetry onstage. But that poetry compels. Passages stick: “Who was drowned by the snow/Which rose to the mouth of the sleeping sentry/The thaw will show.”

“Gary the Thief” and “Plevna: Meditations on Hatred” continue through July 31 at Atlantic Stage 2, 330 West 16th Street, Chelsea; (212) 279-4200 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 279-4200      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, ticketcentral.com.



Woody Allen’s Talk Therapy: Audiobooks by a Technophobe

With the possible exception of his invention of the orgasmatron, Woody Allen is not necessarily known as an early adopter of cutting-edge technology. Still, Mr. Allen has taken a bold leap into the 21st century and recorded audiobook editions of the four collections of humorous essays he published from 1971 to 2007, the digital agency ClearMetrics said on Tuesday.

Mr. Allen’s readings of his anthologies “Getting Even,” “Without Feathers,” “Mere Anarchy” and “Side Effects” — including his short story “The Kugelmass Episode” — can be purchased from Audible.com and iTunes; ClearMetrics also said that it had created a Web site for Mr. Allen at woodyallen.com, having wrested the domain name from two Icelandic college students.

From the set of his coming film “Midnight in Paris,” Mr. Allen answered a few questions by e-mail about his digital upgrade and the fate of one of his best-known literary creations.

Q. How were you persuaded to embrace the audiobook format? Do you own or regularly use any of the high-tech gadgets that play these files?

A. I was persuaded in a moment of apathy when I was convinced I had a fatal illness and would not live much longer. I don’t own a computer, have no idea how to work one, don’t own a word processor, and have zero interest in technology. Many people thought it would be a nice idea for me to read my stories, and I gave in.

Q. What was the recording experience like for you? Did you make any new discoveries about these pieces in rereading them? Did it take you back to the frame of mind you were in when you first wrote them?

A. I imagined it would be quite easy for me, and, in fact, it turned out to be monstrously hard. I hated every second of it, regretted that I had agreed to it, and after reading one or two stories each day, found myself exhausted. The discovery I made was that any number of stories are really meant to work, and only work, in the mind’s ear and hearing them out loud diminishes their effectiveness. Some of course hold up amusingly, but it’s no fun hearing a story that’s really meant to be read, which brings me to your next question, and that is that there is no substitute for reading, and there never will be. Hearing something aloud is its own experience, but it’s hard to beat sitting in bed or in a comfortable chair turning the pages of a book, putting it down, and eagerly awaiting the chance to get back to it.

Q. Are you of the opinion that the printed word is dying out? Will your conversion — literally and figuratively — to digital audiobooks lend credence to these depressing forecasts?

A. I can only hope that reading out loud does not contribute to the demise of literature, which I don’t think will ever happen. When I grew up, one could always hear T. S. Eliot, Yeats, S. J. Perelman and a host of others read on the Caedmon label, and it was its own little treat that in no way encroached on the pleasure of reading these people.

Q. Did Kugelmass ever escape from that irregular Spanish verb?

A. As far as Kugelmass goes, he’s being chased by the same obnoxious verbs that still chase me.

Greek Rail System’s Debt Adds to Economic Woes

ATHENS — In 2009, bankers for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley pitched the Greek government on a plan to overhaul its money-losing railway system. Among the ideas was to lay off half of the system’s 7,000 workers and have the government take on roughly half of the company’s 8 billion euros in debt.

The suggestion did not fly. It was an election year in Greece, after all, and the country was already struggling to keep up the payments on its debt, which is higher in proportion to economic output than in any other nation in the European Union.

The plan was shelved, soon to be overshadowed by the country’s close brush with bankruptcy.

Losses at Hellenic Railways, however, continue to mount — at the rate of 3 million euros ($3.8 million) a day. Its total debt has increased to $13 billion, or about 5 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product.

Now, as a condition of Greece’s financial rescue, the International Monetary Fund is demanding that a solution be found. The fund and the European Union, which also chipped in to provide the bailout, are requiring that the debt of Hellenic Railways, as well as the off-balance-sheet obligations of other state-owned enterprises, be counted toward Greece’s official debt — which Greece has agreed to do.

Analysts estimate the total to be around $33.6 billion, a sum that would add another 11 percentage points to Greece’s current debt level of about 120 percent of gross domestic product. It would also surely raise questions for many investors about the government’s ability to repay ever-increasing amounts as the overall economy contracts.

Some have argued that Hellenic Railways should shut down the majority of its routes, especially in the mountainous Peloponnese region where trains manned by drivers being paid as much as $130,000 a year frequently run empty.

The government, perhaps optimistically, is advocating the sale of a 49 percent stake to the French, who said this year that they would take a look. But it remains unclear how the French rail network, already burdened with its own high levels of debt, would be able to assume Hellenic’s liabilities and losses.

The debate, a longstanding one in Greece, has taken on new urgency of late. For the better part of a decade, Greece has provided sovereign backing to Hellenic Railways, thus allowing it to borrow billions from accommodating foreigners even though the company’s finances are so skewed that it pays three times as much on interest expenses than it collects in revenue.

The precarious nature of euro zone finances has made it increasingly difficult for state rail companies to raise capital throughout Europe. Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded the debt of the French and Portuguese national rail operators, and earlier this month Moody’s placed the Spanish train operator on review for a possible downgrade.

Until now, Greece has been able to use its rail system as a means to support employment while not adding to its official debt number.

“This was an accounting trick, another good way for the government to hide its debt,” said John C. Mourmouris, a former chief executive of the railway who is now an economics professor here. “But a company with 100 million euros in revenue can no longer borrow 1 billion euros a year.”

In the latest annual figures available, Hellenic Railways reported a loss of more than $1 billion in 2008, on sales of about $253 million. Of course, shaky finances are not uncommon among rail operators in Europe. Many are poor cash generators. Their prices are kept low as a matter of social policy, forcing the companies to become heavy state-backed borrowers to finance upkeep and expansion.

Even so, the Greek railway is in a category by itself. According to an analysis by Mr. Mourmouris, for Hellenic Railways to just break even, it would need to increase passenger traffic by a factor of 10, an outcome that seems unlikely. Greece has a well-developed road network, a relatively short distance separates its main cities and the railway’s shabby reputation makes it an unpopular travel option for most Greeks.

In spite of about $3.2 billion of investment since 1997, outside of the main route between Athens and Thessaloniki, the network seems in many respects patchwork and at times chaotic.

Earlier this month, for example, a trip from Athens to Diakopto, a seaside town on the northern coast of the Peloponnese, took more than four hours. The journey required train passengers to complete a second leg by transferring to an overcrowded bus that was delayed for an hour. The result was a near riot as enraged passengers hurled abuse at overwhelmed train officials.

The same trip by car would take less than two hours.

“It is crazy,” said Nikolaos Kioutsoukis, the union chief for the railway. “It’s not surprising that people prefer to go by car.”

Even he accepts that train travel in Greece is not financially viable on many routes. He blames low prices, misguided investment and political meddling for the railway’s poor condition, and says the government should make new investments to modernize the network. He opposes privatization and says that if jobs and benefits are threatened, the union will strike.

Haris Tsiokas, the general secretary for the Greek Transport Ministry, contends that the government’s plan to close at least 35 loss-making routes and cut 2,500 jobs (1,000 via mandatory retirement, with the rest being moved to other government jobs) will make Hellenic Railways attractive to foreign investors. But he concedes that the pressure is building for the railway, which, for now at least, does not have access to debt markets.

“We are struggling to avert the closure” of the rail system, he said in response to questions sent by e-mail. “We want Greece’s future railway to be competitive with road transport services.”

But reaching such a goal may be impossible, especially when the average salary of a rail employee is over $78,000. Employees benefited from politically inspired pay increases over the last decade. Between 2000 and 2009, the cost of the company’s payroll soared by 50 percent even as overall personnel decreased by 30 percent.

In the eyes of Costis Hatzidakis, the former transportation minister, talk of streamlining, reform and the search for a foreign investor is mere cosmetics when compared with the weight of the rail system’s debts — the bulk of which will mature in 2014.

“When I was minister I said I was not going to privatize” Hellenic Railways, he said, “because I knew I couldn’t find an investor silly enough to invest in a company with so much debt.”

Computer and Mobile Sales Lift Apple Net 78%

SAN FRANCISCO — The iPhone 4 antenna may be causing static for some Apple investors, but the company is showing no signs of slowing down.

Apple said on Tuesday that its net income rose 78 percent last quarter, driven by strong sales of the iPhone, the iPad and the Macintosh line of computers.

The results show that Apple is continuing to outpace its competitors in its three major lines of business: computers, phones and tablets. And Apple would be selling even more iPhones and iPads if it could keep up with demand.

“More and more, people’s lives are dependent on desktop and mobile computing,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “People realize that and are willing to pay up for it, and Apple is capitalizing on that.”

Apple executives said they were pleased with the results, which topped Wall Street’s forecasts.

“IPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year,” Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said in a news release.

Apple sold nearly 3.3 million iPads in the quarter. Consumers gravitated to higher-priced models of the tablet, helping to create a new segment of Apple’s business that generated revenue of $2.1 billion.

With 8.4 million units sold, the iPhone remains Apple’s biggest and most profitable business, generating $5.3 billion in revenue in the quarter. Most of the sales were of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, since the iPhone 4 went on sale June 24, just three days before the quarter’s end.

And Apple sold 3.47 million Macintosh computers, the most ever in a quarter, dispelling fears that the iPad would hurt those sales.

“Apple was scared that the iPad would cannibalize sales of Macintosh computers,” Mr. Munster said. “That’s not happening.”

Apple said its net income rose to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, a 78 percent jump from a year earlier. Revenue rose 61 percent, to $15.7 billion.

On average, Wall Street analysts had expected Apple to report net income of $3.12 a share on revenue of $14.75 billion.

Investors were watching for the effect of the iPad on Apple’s profit margins; the company had warned earlier that the iPad’s margins would be lower than those of products like the iPhone. But in a conference call with investors, Apple executives said that the drop was less than expected, in part because of brisk sales of highly profitable iPhones.

Over all, Apple’s gross margin was 39.1 in the most recent quarter, down from 40.9 percent in the period a year earlier. The company also gave a bullish forecast for the current quarter.

“Apple is now a multifaceted company, and it continues to defy the economy,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers.

Shares of Apple had fallen nearly 9 percent since the introduction of the iPhone 4, but they rebounded 2.57 percent on Tuesday to close at $251.89. Apple released its financial results after the close of regular trading, and its shares rose an additional 3.1 percent in after-hours trading.

Problems surrounding the iPhone 4’s antenna reception made headlines in recent weeks. Shortly after the release of the device, users began to complain of weak reception and dropped calls when they touched the lower left portion of the antenna, which is built into a steel band that encases the phone.

On Friday, Apple gave its most detailed and forceful defense of the iPhone 4’s ability to receive and hold calls. In a news conference at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Mr. Jobs said the reception problems were common ones that affected most smartphones, an assertion that several competitors rejected.

Mr. Jobs also said the iPhone’s antenna problems had been blown out of proportion by the media. But to end the controversy, he said, Apple would give customers free bumper cases that insulate the antenna from human touch.

Apple executives dismissed concerns that worries about the antenna were affecting sales.

“We are selling every unit we can make currently,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, during the conference call. Mr. Cook also said Apple was working hard to increase the supply of iPhones and iPads to catch up with consumer demand.

Apple did not give precise numbers for the cost of the free bumpers, but some analysts said they expected it to be about $178 million.



Goldman Earnings and Revenue Fall

Those master traders at Goldman Sachs didn’t see it coming, either.
The “flash crash” and the rest of the stock market madness in May and June, as well as the cost of settling an embarrassing civil fraud suit, hammered Goldman’s second-quarter profits. Earnings plunged 82 percent.

The results were Goldman’s worst quarterly performance since the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008, and the first time that it had missed analysts’ estimates in five years.

“It’s rare for them to miss, but it does happen,” said Guy Moszkowski, an analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “It was a very, very bad operating environment.”

But at $613 million, the investment bank’s quarterly profit was well above the $550 million that Goldman agreed to pay last week to settle fraud claims brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The agency had accused Goldman of misleading institutional investors who bought financial products linked to subprime mortgages that ultimately defaulted. Goldman did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to provide better disclosure to investors in mortgage securities as part of the settlement, one of the largest ever for a Wall Street firm.

On a conference call with reporters Tuesday, the focus remained on the S.E.C’s suit and the after-effects of the settlement. Goldman’s chief financial officer, David A. Viniar, struck an apologetic tone when it came it to the case but insisted Goldman’s sterling image had not been tarnished.

“We acknowledge that we made a mistake, we regret that we made a mistake and we know it was not good for us,” he said. “I can’t tell you if there were calls that we didn’t get; that’s impossible to measure. We feel that our clients have been pretty supportive of us, so far as we can tell.”

Besides the weak trading results, the lackluster numbers also reflected weakness across a range of businesses, including its investment banking unit. “It was really driven by lack of client activity and lack of revenue,” said Mr. Viniar.

In a sign of just how unpredictable investors can be, Goldman’s stock jumped despite the disappointing results, as investors concluded the worst was behind the 141-year old firm. Shares of Goldman rose $3.23, to close at $148.91.

What’s more, Goldman’s employees are on track for what could still turn out to be a very good year. Goldman has set aside $9.3 billion for bonuses and other compensation so far this year — down 18 percent from the first half of 2009 — but enough to equal more than $500,000 per employee at the firm, which has a work force of 34,100.

Goldman’s traders have long aroused envy across Wall Street for their ability to prosper in markets good and bad, but they lost the Midas touch in the spring, especially when it came to trading stocks. As clients bet on rising volatility, Goldman took the other side of the trade, leaving it on the losing end when volatility did in fact surge.

“We didn’t hedge it fast enough,” Mr. Viniar said in a conference call with analysts after the earnings announcement. “Things spiked really dramatically, really fast.”

Mr. Viniar said he did not foresee any changes in Goldman’s top ranks as a result of the settlement. Nor did he foresee the firm giving up the bank status it hastily received after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. As a result of the financial regulatory reform legislation approved by Congress last week, banks will face new restrictions on trading as well as investing in private equity and hedge funds.

The new rules will still permit the kind of trades on which Goldman was caught by surprise, however, because they were done on behalf of clients, underscoring how difficult it will be for regulators to distinguish between proprietary trading and serving customers. Other financial giants, like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, also reported disappointing results from their trading operations when they announced second-quarter results last week. Morgan Stanley, Goldman’s longtime rival, is to report its results on Wednesday.

In addition to the $550 million S.E.C. penalty, Goldman also had a one-time charge of $600 million for a tax on industry bonuses that was imposed in Britain.

In the second quarter, net income totaled $613 million, or 78 cents a share, down from $3.43 billion or $4.93 a share, in the same period a year ago. Revenue fell 36 percent, to $8.84 billion from $13.76 billion.

Analysts had been expecting net income of $1.23 billion, or $2.08 a share, on revenue of $8.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

“It’s a weak quarter, that happens,” said Roger Freeman, an analyst with Barclays. “But I wonder to some extent whether any of this quarter’s trading results could be attributed to distractions that management was facing, both around financial reform legislation and the S.E.C. investigation. I wonder if that took away from their focus on markets.”

Japan Training Program Is Said to Exploit Workers

HIROSHIMA, Japan — Six young Chinese women arrived in this historic city three summers ago, among the tens of thousands of apprentices brought to Japan each year on the promise of job training, good pay and a chance at a better life back home.

Instead, the women say, they were subjected to 16-hour workdays assembling cellphones at below the minimum wage, with little training of any sort, all under the auspices of a government-approved “foreign trainee” program that critics call industrial Japan’s dirty secret.

“My head hurt, my throat stung,” said Zhang Yuwei, 23, who operated a machine that printed cellphone keypads, battling fumes that she said made the air so noxious that managers would tell Japanese employees to avoid her work area.

Ms. Zhang says she was let go last month after her employer found that she and five compatriots had complained to a social worker about their work conditions. A Japanese lawyer is now helping the group sue their former employer, seeking back pay and damages totaling $207,000.

Critics say foreign trainees have become an exploited source of cheap labor in a country with one of the world’s most rapidly aging populations and lowest birthrates. All but closed to immigration, Japan faces an acute labor shortage, especially for jobs at the country’s hardscrabble farms or small family-run factories.

“The mistreatment of trainees appears to be widespread,” said Shoichi Ibusuki, a human rights lawyer based in Tokyo.

From across Asia, about 190,000 trainees — migrant workers in their late teens to early 30s — now toil in factories and farms in Japan. They have been brought to the country, in theory, to learn technical expertise under an international aid program started by the Japanese government in the 1990s.

For businesses, the government-sponsored trainee program has offered a loophole to hiring foreign workers. But with little legal protection, the indentured work force is exposed to substandard, sometimes even deadly, working conditions, critics say.

Government records show that at least 127 of the trainees have died since 2005 — or one of about every 2,600 trainees, which experts say is a high death rate for young people who must pass stringent physicals to enter the program. Many deaths involved strokes or heart failure that worker rights groups attribute to the strain of excessive labor.

The Justice Ministry found more than 400 cases of mistreatment of trainees at companies across Japan in 2009, including failing to pay legal wages and exposing trainees to dangerous work conditions. This month, labor inspectors in central Japan ruled that a 31-year-old Chinese trainee, Jiang Xiaodong, had died from heart failure induced by overwork.

Under pressure by human rights groups and a string of court cases, the government has begun to address some of the program’s worst abuses. The United Nations has urged Japan to scrap it altogether.

After one year of training, during which the migrant workers receive subsistence pay below the minimum wage, trainees are allowed to work for two more years in their area of expertise at legal wage levels. But interviews with labor experts and a dozen trainees indicate that the foreign workers seldom achieve those pay rates.

On paper, the promised pay still sounds alluring to the migrant workers. Many are from rural China, where per-capita disposable income can be as low as $750 a year. To secure a spot in the program, would-be trainees pay many times that amount in fees and deposits to local brokers, sometimes putting up their homes as collateral — which can be confiscated if trainees quit early or cause trouble.

The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization, or Jitco, which operates the program, said it was aware some companies had abused the system and that it was taking steps to crack down on the worst cases. The organization plans to ensure that “trainees receive legal protection, and that cases of fraud are eliminated,” Jitco said in a written response to questions.

Ms. Zhang says she paid $8,860 to a broker in her native Hebei Province for a spot in the program. She was assigned to a workshop run by Modex-Alpha, which assembles cellphones sold by Sharp and other electronics makers. Ms. Zhang said her employer demanded her passport and housed her in a cramped apartment with no heat, alongside five other trainees.

In her first year, Ms. Zhang worked eight-hour days and received $660 a month after various deductions, according to her court filing — about $3.77 an hour, or less than half the minimum wage level in Hiroshima. Moreover, all but $170 a month was forcibly withheld by the company as savings, and paid out only after Ms. Zhang pushed the company for the full amount, she said.

Bound to a Rocking Chair, Wishing Upon a Star

As part of its third program at the Joyce Theater, Pilobolus unveiled a work that broke the company’s artistic mold. For “Contradance,” receiving its New York premiere on Monday evening, two former dancers choreographed a production without the assistance of one of Pilobolus’s artistic directors.

Matt Kent and Renée Jaworski (the group’s rehearsal director and artistic associate) tell a story of two misfits who find a connection one soulful night. “Contradance” also features music by Dan Zanes, who leads a family-oriented, Grammy-winning band. While the work doesn’t herald a fresh choreographic voice within the Pilobolus family, the pairing of Mr. Zanes’s music and Liz Prince’s costumes lends a certain dreaminess to the production.

The dance for six — it was created in collaboration with Winston Dynamite Brown, Eriko Jimbo, Jun Kuribayashi, Nile H. Russell, Annika Sheaff and Christopher Whitney, as well as others — focuses on an outcast (Mr. Kuribayashi, who is never too far from his rocking chair) and a demure young woman (Ms. Jimbo). Her friends, who clamp kazoos in their mouths like cigars, try to prevent her from getting too close to the stranger. The couple nevertheless find love: as Mr. Zanes puts it, “two misfits on the endless sea, drifting so easy and free.”

Eventually, the boy-meets-girl routine grows tiresome; often Mr. Kent and Ms. Jaworski don’t have enough material to fill the music. Poised on the rocking chair — which, at one point, becomes something of a boat — the couple sway back and forth. Ms. Jimbo holds a tattered umbrella and suddenly, held aloft by the other dancers, she and Mr. Kuribayashi soar through the night.

In the end, “Contradance” is too naïve for adult consumption. (There’s also something about the dance that resembles a Kindle commercial.)

Far more enthralling is “Gnomen,” a dance for four men choreographed in 1997 by Robby Barnett and Jonathan Wolken, in collaboration with the original dancers. On Monday Mr. Brown, Mr. Kuribayashi, Mr. Russell and Mr. Whitney — as if linked by strands of silk — moved through rigorous, sculptural positions with a startling airiness. The theme of an outsider is present, but here the result has weight.

Pilobolus continues through Aug. 7 at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800

Country and Rock, Delivered With Rawness

HOBOKEN, N.J. — John McCauley, gaunt and scraggly, clutched an electric guitar at Maxwell’s here on Monday night, finger-picking a lone song, “Houston, TX,” by himself. His band, Deer Tick, had spent the past hour digging into roadhouse country and rawboned rock ’n’ roll, with a bluntly effective fervor. This solo interlude seemed like an unscheduled detour, announced on the fly. But it was a clear, vital moment in an unfocused show.

“Houston, TX” comes from “Born on Flag Day” (Partisan), Deer Tick’s winningly ragged 2009 album, and in the original arrangement it’s a lilting shuffle, offered in tribute to the Bakersfield sound. Here, Mr. McCauley made it more desperate, nearly unmoored. His voice — tart, coarse, with a liberal pinch of twang — felt painfully exposed, adding weight to his lyrics about cutting loose from an exhausted love affair.

“There’s nothing left,” he sang, “and I am sure that it’s a sign/That maybe I’m about as good as gone.” The shift from “sure” to “maybe” in those lines felt awkwardly true to the song, and so did a later jolt of self-reproach: “I ain’t gonna talk like a gentleman, no/‘Cause I’m sick of always letting myself down.” Pulling back from the microphone as if repulsed, Mr. McCauley yelped that last word again: “Down! Down!”

Since forming Deer Tick in Providence, R.I., late in 2004, Mr. McCauley has been both its engine and its engineer. Last month brought “The Black Dirt Sessions” (Partisan), another album stocked with his cagey, questioning songs. But Deer Tick, whose current tour will end on Aug. 13 at Webster Hall in Manhattan, seems to be in some kind of flux: this show included just a handful of tunes from the new release, most of them tossed off or hurried through. And the band’s frontman often took a backseat.

He surrendered the wheel mostly to Ian O’Neil, the other guitarist in Deer Tick, and increasingly its other songwriter. “Hope Is Big,” one of Mr. O’Neil’s better songs, took the form of a heaving country waltz. Elsewhere he leaned more toward snarling honky-tonk, as on a stomping cover of Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene.” Mr. O’Neil was merely serviceable as a singer, which at least put him ahead of the band’s Amish-bearded drummer, Dennis Ryan, whose take on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” was pure stunt work, a floppy salute to Jack Black.

Stunts can be fine, and Deer Tick delivered a few that worked: a furious romp through ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses,” for one, and a perfectly smarmy alto saxophone solo by Rob Crowell, the band’s keyboardist, on “Ashamed.” That song had the crowd singing along with its chorus: “And oh, what a crying shame, what a crying shame/What we became.”

It would be wrong and too facile to apply that lamentation to Deer Tick, which has a lot going for it as a band. But with the way things are headed, Mr. McCauley might consider a side project: solo acoustic, perhaps, so he could move along without actually moving on.

Deer Tick will appear on Wednesday at Ottobar in Baltimore, on Thursday at the Rock and Roll Hotel in Washington, and on Friday and Saturday at Floydfest in Floyd, Va.; deertickmusic.com.

UK retail sales fall in September

UK retail sales fell again September, the second month in succession they have declined, official data has shown.

Sales last month were 0.2% lower than August, led by falls in clothing and car fuel sales, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS also revised down August's decline, saying sales that month slipped by 0.7% compared with its original calculation of 0.5%.

The data comes as a number of retailers have warned of weak trading conditions.

Three such warnings have come this week from Debenhams, Argos-owner Home Retail Group, and sportswear chain Sports Direct.

The ONS said that compared with the same month last year sales in September were 0.5% higher. However, this was below analysts' expectations of a 1% rise.

BAE faces 'modest' hit from UK defence cuts

BAE Systems has said that the impact on its business of the UK government's defence cuts will only be "modest".

While the defence group has been hit by some cuts - such as the retirement of the Harrier jet - a number of its manufacturing contracts will continue.

These include the two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, of which BAE is a lead member of the consortium that is building them.

Outside of the UK, BAE said it was enjoying strong business in the US.

Credit Suisse profits hurt by weak market

Credit Suisse's profits fell 74% in the third quarter, thanks to choppy stock markets hitting its investment bank.

The Swiss bank earned 609m Swiss francs ($630m, £400m) during the three months, down from 2.4bn francs a year ago.

Investment banking revenues fell by 30%, mainly because of low client activity in the group's equity advisory and underwriting businesses.

Stock markets took a battering over the summer because of fears over eurozone debt and a US double-dip recession.

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Morgan Stanley sees surprise loss
Bank of America makes $7.3bn loss
Citigroup reports $2.2bn profit
As a result, fewer companies paid the bank to arrange share offerings, advise on mergers and acquisitions, or provide other such services during the quarter.

Toyota to recall over a million cars in US and Japan

Toyota has announced a recall of more than 1.5 million cars worldwide over brake and fuel pump defects.

The carmaker said the decision affected certain Avalon, Highlander and Lexus cars, including 740,000 cars in the US, 600,000 in Japan and 17,000 in the UK.

It wants to ensure that fluid does not leak from the brake master cylinder, causing the warning light to turn on.

The fault could cause the brake pedal to feel spongy, and braking performance to "gradually decline".

China's rapid economic growth slows in third quarter

China says its economy has maintained robust growth in the third quarter of 2010, but at a slightly lower rate.

Official figures show a drop from just over 10% growth to 9.6%.

This leaves China still far ahead of any major economy, but experts fear the slowdown will reduce the contribution China can make to a global recovery.

The Chinese government has recently taken measures to cool a credit boom in order to achieve more sustainable growth levels.

Spending Review: Osborne defends 'fairness' of cuts

Chancellor George Osborne has defended the "fairness" of his UK spending cuts after Labour claims they were reckless and would hit the poorest hardest.

He told the BBC that including Budget measures, the top 10% of earners would be hit hardest but everyone was making a contribution to cutting the deficit.

He said "the path to economic ruin" lay ahead if the deficit was not tackled.

Labour called the £81bn cuts - the biggest since the 1970s - a "reckless gamble" with the economy.



Kanye West says he 'contemplated suicide'

Kanye West says he's thought about killing himself, but now feels a responsibility to make a meaningful contribution to pop culture and art.

The 33-year-old rapper didn't say when he'd considered suicide.

He told an audience at a screening of his new film Runaway in LA that although there had been times when he "contemplated suicide" he would "not give up on life again".

The star went on to describe himself as a pop icon and "soldier for culture".

He said there were so many people who would never have their voices heard, that he'd "do it for them".

The singer is credited as a director for the 35-minute film, which features portions of nine new Kanye West songs.

The movie is set to premiere this weekend on American cable channels and will accompany his upcoming album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy released on 22 November.

JLS and Tinie Tempah scoop Mobo Awards

Pop heart-throbs JLS and hip-hop MC Tinie Tempah shared the major spoils at the Mobo (Music of Black Origin) Awards in Liverpool, winning two prizes each.

Former X Factor finalists JLS won best album and were named best UK act, as well as inducing the loudest screams from fans at the Echo Arena.

Tempah, whose debut album recently topped the charts, won best newcomer and best video for his single Frisky.

N-Dubz and Plan B were among the other winners at the 15th Mobos ceremony.

The awards were first handed out in 1996 to showcase British urban music at a time when it was largely overlooked in the mainstream.

Yulianna Avdeeva scoops Chopin Piano award

Russian musician Yulianna Avdeeva has become the first woman to win the prestigious Chopin Piano Competition in 45 years in Warsaw, Poland.

Ms Avdeeva, 25, who won £26,506, said she had been working towards winning the competition her "whole life".

Held every five years, the contest for young pianists is one of the most important in the classical music world.

Martha Argerich, a past winner and member of the jury, caller Ms Avdeeva a "harmonious artist".

She added: "I am extremely happy about Yulianna, and particularly because she is the first woman after 45 years. After me there was no lady, so I am very happy."

Tributes paid to Happy Days actor Tom Bosley

Veteran US actor Tom Bosley, most famous for playing all-American father Howard Cunningham in the 1970s TV series Happy Days, has died aged 83.

The star, who had been suffering from lung cancer, passed away at his home just outside Palm Springs, his family said in a statement.

Henry Winkler, who played The Fonz in Happy Days, paid tribute to the actor.

"He was our television father on the sound stage, but a father figure in real life," he said.

The New Constitution of Nepal still Uncertain

 

Six months after the extension of the Constituent Assembly (CA) deadline for one more year, the political leaders and constitution experts paint a bleak picture on the prospects of the country getting a new constitution. They say if the leaders continue lacking a sense of urgency, the CA would not be able to promulgate the new constitution in the next six-month timeline.

“The six months have passed without any substantial progress, so there is no room to express satisfaction," said Nilamber Acharya, chairman of the Constitutional Committee (CC) of the CA. "If the parties continue the same tendency, the country will not get the constitution in time.”

The high-level taskforce headed by UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has settled some of the contentious issues of new constitution such as citizenship and language. However, the parties are yet to sort out differences on several other vital issues like forms of governance and mapping of the federal states. Besides, the works of the taskforce have also been questioned by some lawmakers.

CC Chair Acharya and some lawmakers have expressed their dissatisfaction over the formation of the taskforce stating that it is beyond the jurisdiction of the CA. On Tuesday, some lawmakers urged CA Chairman Subas Nembang not to extend the duration of the taskforce. The taskforce is scheduled to hold a meeting on Wednesday after the gap of two weeks due to the Maoist plenum.

Five-month-long deadlock on government formation and souring relationship among the parties due to the budget issue have raised doubts about timely promulgation of the constitution. Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had resigned from office five months ago, but a new government is still nowhere in sight. Another key issue linked with the constitution drafting process—integration and rehabilitation of the former Maoist combatants—has failed to make pace despite the compressed deadline of UNMIN's exit [Jan 15, 2011].

Constitution expert Purnaman Shakya said it is time the political leaders feel the sense of urgency.

On May 30, two days after the extension of CA by one year, CA Chairman Nembang had said they would prepare a time-bound action plan to draft the constitution within nine months of the extended period. He had also talked about issuing a white paper about the delay on constitution drafting.

Political leaders concede their doubt over the prospect of the country getting the new constitution on time. “We set a work plan but failed to implement it,” said CPN-UML leader Pardip Gyawali. “If the same pace continues, there are no grounds to expect a new constitution in time.”

The Constitutional Committee, which has the responsibility to prepare a draft of constitution, is jobless for months as different thematic committees failed to forward their reports.

Speaker Nembang, who is helpless against political wrangling, is also worried whether the leaders are serious about resolving the deadlock over constitution writing. He has expressed serious exception to the foreign trips of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other political leaders at a time when they had to engage in a serious and result-oriented dialogue. “The time is running out," said Nembang. "The parties should be serious about drafting the constitution on time.”

Belgian skydiver who killed love rival to be sentenced

A Belgian woman convicted of murdering her fellow skydiver and love rival by sabotaging her parachute is due to be sentenced.

Els Clottemans, aged 26, faces between three years and life in prison.

On Wednesday, a jury heard how she cut key parts of the parachutes of Els Van Doren, 38, because she was jealous of her relationship with a male skydiver.

Ms Van Doren fell 1,000m (3,200ft) to her death in November 2006. Clottemans denied the charges.

The four-week trial in the north-eastern Flemish town of Tongeren (French: Tongres) gripped the nation.