Putin to Sign Ban on U.S. Adoptions of Russian Children

MOSCOW President Vladimir V. Putin said on Thursday that he would sign into law a bill banning the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, retaliating against an American law that punishes Russians accused of violating human rights and dealing a potentially grave setback to bilateral relations.

Mr. Putin announced his decision at a meeting with senior government officials, including cabinet members and legislative leaders. The adoption ban, included in a broader law aimed at retaliating against the United States, was approved unanimously by the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament, on Wednesday.

Mr. Putin also said he would sign a decree calling for improvements in Russia’s deeply troubled child welfare system that the Federation Council also adopted Wednesday. “I intend to sign the law,” Mr. Putin said, “as well as a presidential decree changing the procedure of helping orphaned children, children left without parental care, and especially children who are in a disadvantageous situation due to their health problems.”

United States officials have strongly criticized the measure and have urged the Russian government not to enmesh orphaned children in politics.

“It is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations,” a State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, said on Wednesday before Mr. Putin announced his decision.

Internally, however, Obama administration officials have been debating how strongly to respond to the adoption ban, and are trying to assess the potential implications for other aspects of the relationship with Russia. The United States, for example, now relies heavily on overland routes through Russia to ship supplies to military units in Afghanistan, and has enlisted Russia’s help in containing Iran’s nuclear program. The former cold war rivals also have sharp disagreements, notably over the civil war in Syria.

Until Thursday, these larger considerations, along with the possibility that Mr. Putin might veto the adoption bill, seemed to forestall a more forceful response from Washington.

The ban is set to take effect on Tuesday, and some senior officials in Moscow said they expected it to have the immediate effect of blocking the departure of 46 children whose adoptions by American parents were nearly completed. Adoption agency officials in the United States who work regularly with Russian orphanages said they expected the number of families immediately affected by the ban to be far larger, about 200 to 250 who have already identified a child that they planned to adopt.

Since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency in May, Russian officials have used a juggernaut of legislation and executive decisions to curtail the United States’ influence and involvement in Russia, undoing major partnerships that began after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The adoption ban, however, is the first step to take direct aim at the American public and would effectively undo a bilateral agreement on international adoptions that was ratified this year and took effect Nov. 1. That agreement called for heightened oversight in response to several high-profile cases of abuse and deaths of adopted Russian children in the United States.

About 1,000 Russian children were adopted in 2011 by parents from the United States, which leads in adoptions here, and more than 45,000 such children have been adopted by American parents since 1999.

Pavel A. Astakhov, Russia’s child rights commissioner and a major proponent of the ban, said the 46 pending adoptions would be blocked regardless of previous agreements, and he expressed no regrets over the likely emotional turmoil for the families involved.

“The children who have been chosen by foreign American parents — we know of 46 children who were seen, whose paperwork was processed, who came in the sights of American agencies,” Mr. Astakhov said in his statement. “They will not be able to go to America, to those who wanted to see them as their adopted children. There is no need to go out and make a tragedy out of it.”

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Careers of Former Stars Renewed by Social Media

IN the 1990s, Sally Jessy Raphael was the doyenne of daytime television, a bespectacled redhead whose mild, auntish mien belied the sensational tabloid fodder that her syndicated talk show was built upon.

These days, Ms. Raphael, 77, is exposing her edgier side on social-media sites. Words like “homies” and “haters” are a part of her everyday lexicon. She enjoys absinthe. She’s a fashion fanatic who’s as comfortable donning Forever 21 as she is Chanel. She listens to cool-kid music like Girl Talk and supports the Russian punk rock troupe Pussy Riot, some of whose members have been imprisoned. She expertly spoofs “Jersey Shore” and the Kim Kardashian sex tape on YouTube.

This new, sassy and sardonic Sally is the one who has become familiar over the past couple of years to the thousands of people who follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

“Sally Jessy Raphael is the best on Twitter,” one of them wrote recently on Tumblr, another platform where Ms. Raphael appears to be enjoying a modest comeback. BuzzFeed, the popular arbiter of all things viral, dubbed her “The Queen of Social Media.”

Without social-networking platforms such as these, “I think I’d be in, ‘Is she still alive?’ heaven,” Ms. Raphael said in a phone interview from the 55-acre farm in Dutchess County, N.Y., that she shares with her husband, Karl Soderlund, and their four affenpinschers.

If the social web is what made Internet phenoms like Ms. Kardashian and Justin Bieber famous in the first place, it’s also giving Ms. Raphael and others who have veered into the Hollywood hinterlands a much-welcomed second wind — or, at the very least, a medium by which to rebrand and reintroduce themselves.

No longer must celebrities of yore resort to appearing on campy reality shows to remind the public they exist. Over the past two years George Takei, best known as Hikaru Sulu of the U.S.S. Enterprise on the original “Star Trek” series, has cultivated more than 3.7 million followers combined on Facebook and Twitter. (He did appear, however, on “The Apprentice” earlier this year, and on a British reality show in 2008.)

In November, Mr. Takei, 75, joined Tumblr; The Los Angeles Times described his blog there, “Are you talking to meme?” as “goofy, surreal, and nerdy with just a touch of political activism,” and noticed that most of his posts were receiving more than 600 comments apiece.

After thyroid cancer destroyed Roger Ebert’s ability to speak, the film critic and former television personality found a voice of sorts on Twitter, where he pronounces on movies, politics and just about everything else to nearly 800,000 followers.

A tweet from Mr. Ebert “is worth as much traffic as a small Digg or Y Combinator hit,” Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic noted earlier this year. “Crazy. That’s some distribution power.”

Mr. Ebert’s 2.0 persona has also earned him a large following for a new film Web site and helped raise the profile of an annual film festival in his native Illinois.

A fellow avid tweeter and a former child star, Soleil Moon Frye, otherwise known as Punky Brewster, is having a lucrative new career as a mommy blogger with her own Web series and an e-commerce shop for children’s clothing. Ms. Frye, 36, has parlayed her Internet stardom — 1.5 million Twitter followers and 112,000 Facebook likes — into a job as a contributor on NBC’s “Today.” In September, she took over the show’s Twitter feed for an hour. “Watch out, world!”  an NBC blog post proclaimed.

Justine Bateman (Mallory from the popular 1980s sitcom “Family Ties”), 46, has attracted more than 88,000 Twitter followers while developing a digital consultancy. She has also enrolled in the computer science program at the University of California, Los Angeles; she blogs about it on “College Life,” one of her two Tumblr pages. (She also used Tumblr to promote “Wake Up and Get Real,” an Internet talk show she hosted with Kelly Cutrone, a fashion publicist.)

Jennifer Grey (Baby from “Dirty Dancing” and Ferris Bueller’s uptight sister), a self-described “novice blogger” at 52, has been Tumbling up a storm about health and wellness. (You can also find her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.)

“When you look at these faded personalities, imagine what the pitch would be if you were a publicist trying to get press on one of these people,” said Janice Min, editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter. “You absolutely could not.”

But the metrics for success are shifting.

“Now you can measure it in Twitter followers or Facebook likes,” Ms. Min said. “It’s a new way of establishing legitimacy.”

Howard Bragman, a veteran celebrity publicist and vice chairman of the online image-management firm reputation.com, said, “If you’re someone who hasn’t had a project in a few years, it’s a great way to keep your voice out there.”

He cited Rosie O’Donnell as a good example of someone who uses social media to stay on the radar in-between jobs.

“You used to have to just sit on your hands and wait for a new pilot to get on the air,” he said. “It’s not like that anymore.”

The celebrity social-media comeback is a byproduct of two larger cultural trends, said Scott Lamb, BuzzFeed’s editorial director (and the 18th “most viral” person on the Internet, according to the Web site Gizmodo). One is the cultural nostalgia for which the Web, with its video clips and searchability, is such an ideal medium. The other, he said, is a softening of the “nasty and gotcha-based” tone that has long pervaded celebrity journalism.

“It’s obviously really difficult for someone who’s considered B-list or washed up to break back into the popular consciousness” through television or magazines, Mr. Lamb said. “But with social media, if you’re talented and good at it, it’s more of a meritocracy. There are no gatekeepers.”

Though that ease of communication has made some publicists guarding A-list talent nervous, for a client like Mr. Takei there is no apparent drawback.

“The easy accessibility to enormous firepower is ridiculous,” he said over the phone en route to the vacation home in Show Low, Ariz., that he shares with his husband, Brad Takei. “I’ve been able to reach a whole new group of people.”

Mr. Takei’s latter-day career had long consisted of “Star Trek” conventions, voice-overs, television guest appearances and a regular slot on “The Howard Stern Show.” His foray into social media began in early 2011 as he began promoting “Allegiance,” a musical inspired by his experience living in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.

Mr. Takei now credits a surge in professional opportunities to his unexpected Internet stardom. He recently finished filming a guest appearance on “Hawaii Five-0.” The San Diego premiere of “Allegiance” in the fall broke box office records, he said. And “Oh Myyy!” the e-book he published several weeks ago about his social media success — named for his signature catchphrase — was No. 10 on the New York Times list of best-selling nonfiction e-books on Dec. 23.

“There’s been a pecuniary aspect to this as well,” he said with some satisfaction.

As for Ms. Raphael, she has a way to go before she reaches George Takei proportions. (She’s holding steady at nearly 5,000 Twitter followers and 2,600 likes on Facebook.) She hasn’t had any bites yet for a television comedy series she’s been pitching, but her social-media presence has led to her acquiring a new voice-over agent, she said.

Mostly though, Ms. Raphael is just happy that people know she’s still got a bit of the old fire.

“Sometimes you begin to think that nobody cares, but then you get on in the morning and you’re thrilled,” she said, referring to the Internet. “I just want to continue doing it. I think it’s a part of being alive.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2012

An earlier version of this article, quoting a tweet from Alexis Madrigal, contained an incorrect Twitter username for Roger Ebert. His account is @ebertchicago, not @rogerebert.

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The iEconomy: Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China

The iEconomy: Factory Upgrade:
Change comes to factories in China.

CHENGDU, China — One day last summer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift inspecting iPad cases when she received a beige wooden chair with white stripes and a high, sturdy back.

At first, Ms. Pu wondered if someone had made a mistake. But when her bosses walked by, they just nodded curtly. So Ms. Pu gently sat down and leaned back. Her body relaxed.

The rumors were true.

When Ms. Pu was hired at this Foxconn plant a year earlier, she received a short, green plastic stool that left her unsupported back so sore that she could barely sleep at night. Eventually, she was promoted to a wooden chair, but the backrest was much too small to lean against. The managers of this 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, believed that comfort encouraged sloth.

But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.

Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk.

“The days of easy globalization are done,” said an Apple executive who, like many people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “We know that we have to get into the muck now.”

Even with these reforms, chronic problems remain. Many laborers still work illegal overtime and some employees’ safety remains at risk, according to interviews and reports published by advocacy organizations.

But the shifts under way in China may prove as transformative to global manufacturing as the iPhone was to consumer technology, say officials at over a dozen electronics companies, worker advocates and even longtime factory critics.

“This is on the front burner for everyone now,” said Gary Niekerk, a director of corporate social responsibility at Intel, which manufactures semiconductors in China. No one inside Intel “wants to end up in a factory that treats people badly, that ends up on the front page.”

The durability of many transformations, however, depends on where Apple, Foxconn and overseas workers go from here. Interviews with more than 70 Foxconn employees in multiple cities indicate a shift among the people on iPad and iPhone assembly lines. The once-anonymous millions assembling the world’s devices are drawing lessons from the changes occurring around them.

As summer turned to autumn and then winter, Ms. Pu began to sign up for Foxconn’s newly offered courses in knitting and sketching. At 25 and unmarried, she already felt old. But she decided that she should view her high-backed chair as a sign. China’s migrant workers are, in a sense, the nation’s boldest risk-takers, transforming entire industries by leaving their villages for far-off factories to power a manufacturing engine that spans the globe.

Ms. Pu had always felt brave, and as this year progressed and conditions inside her factory improved, she became convinced that a better life was within reach. Her parents had told her that she was free to choose any husband, as long as he was from Sichuan. Then she found someone who seemed ideal, except that he came from another province.

Reclining in her new seat, she decided to ignore her family’s demands, she said. The couple are seeing each other.

“There was a change this year,” she said. “I’m realizing my value.”

An Inspector’s Push

“This is a disgrace!” shouted Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer and Apple’s most important industrial partner.

Keith Bradsher reported from Chengdu and Chongqing, and Charles Duhigg from New York. Yadan Ouyang contributed reporting from Chengdu and Chongqing.

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Creating the Ultimate Housework Workout

Robert Wright for The New York Times

Chris Ely, an English butler, and Carol Johnson, a fitness instructor at Crunch NYC, perfecting a houseworkout.

CAN housework help you live longer? A New York Times blog post by Gretchen Reynolds last month cited research linking vigorous activity, including housework, and longevity. The study, which tracked the death rates of British civil servants, was the latest in a flurry of scientific reports crediting domestic chores with health benefits like a lowered risk for breast and colon cancers. In one piquant study published in 2009, researchers found that couples who spent more hours on housework had sex more frequently (with each other) though presumably not while vacuuming. (The report did not specify.)

Intrigued by science that merged the efforts of a Martha with the results of an Arnold (a buffer buffer?), this reporter challenged a household expert and a fitness authority to create the ultimate housework workout — a houseworkout — in her East Village apartment. Perhaps she could add a few years to her own life while learning some fancy new moves for her Swiffer. Christopher Ely, once a footman at Buckingham Palace, and Brooke Astor’s longtime butler, was appointed cleaner-in-chief. Mr. Ely is a man who approaches what the professionals call household management with the range and depth of an Oxford don. Although he is working on his memoirs (he described his book as a room-by-room primer with anecdotes from his years in service), he was happy enough to put his writing aside for an afternoon. His collaborator was Carol Johnson, a dancer and fitness instructor who develops classes at Crunch NYC, including those based on Broadway musicals like “Legally Blonde” and “Rock of Ages.”

Mr. Ely arrived first, beautifully dressed in dark gray wool pants, a black suit coat and a crisp white shirt with silver cuff links. He cleans house in a white shirt? “I know how to clean it,” he countered, meaning the shirt. When Ms. Johnson appeared (in black spandex and a ruffly white chiffon blouse, which she switched out for a Crunch T-shirt), theory, method and materials were discussed.

“If you’re dreading the laundry,” Ms. Johnson said, “why not create a space where it’s actually fun to do by putting on some music?” If fitness is defined by cardio health, she added, it will be a challenge to create housework that leaves you slightly out of breath. “I’m thinking interval training,” she said. As it happens, one trend in exercise has been workouts that are inspired by real-world chores, or what Rob Morea, a high-end Manhattan trainer, described the other day as “mimicking hard labor activities.” In his NoHo studio, Mr. Morea has clients simulate the actions of construction workers hefting cement bags over their shoulders (Mr. Morea uses sand bags) or pushing a wheelbarrow or chopping wood.

Mr. Ely averred that service — extreme housekeeping — is physically demanding, with sore feet and bad knees the least of its debilitating byproducts. Mr. Ely still suffers from an injury he incurred while carrying a poodle to its mistress over icy front steps in Washington When the inevitable occurred, and Mr. Ely wiped out, he threw the dog to his employer before falling hard on his backside. And the right equipment matters: After two weeks’ employ in an Upper East Side penthouse, he was handed a pair of Reeboks by his new boss, the better to withstand the apartment’s wall-to-wall granite floors. (For cleaning, Mr. Ely wears slippers, deck shoes or socks.)

Mr. Ely, whose talents and expertise are wide-ranging (he can stock a wine cellar, do the flowers, set a silver service, iron like a maestro and clean gutters, as he did once or twice at Holly Hill, Mrs. Astor’s Westchester estate), is a minimalist when it comes to materials. He favors any simple dish detergent as a multipurpose cleaner, along with a little vinegar, for glass, and not much else. “Dish detergent is designed for cutting grease; there’s nothing better,” he said. He’s anti-ammonia, anti-bleach. He said bleach destroys fabric, particularly anything with elastic in it. “Knickers and bleach are a terrible combination,” he said. “I had a boss who thought he had skin cancer. His entire trunk had turned red and itchy.” It seems his underpants were being washed in bleach. (Collective wince.) “It’s horrible stuff.”

As for tools, he likes a cobweb cleaner — this reporter had bought Oxo’s extendable duster, which has a fluffy orange cotton duster that snaps onto a sort of wand, but Mr. Ely prefers the kind that looks like a round chimney brush. (If you live in a house, he also suggests leaving the cobwebs by the front and back doors, so the spiders can eat any mosquitoes coming or going.) Choose a mop with microfiber fronds (he suggested the O Cedar brand) because it dries quickly and doesn’t smell. And a sturdy vacuum. Also, stacks of microfiber cloths or a terry cloth towel ripped up.

But first, to stretch. Ms. Johnson took hold of this reporter’s Bona floor mop (it’s like a Swiffer, but with a reusable washcloth) and Mr. Ely followed along with an old-fashioned string mop. Though Mr. Ely has a kind of loose-limbed elegance, he is not exactly limber. He grimaced as he parroted Ms. Johnson, who used her mop as Gene Kelly did his umbrella, stretching her arms overhead, one by one, twisting from side to side, sucking in her stomach, rising up on tip toes. (Mr. Ely said his old poodle-hurling injury was kicking in.) Ms. Johnson adjusted his chin — “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep sticking your neck out,” she warned — and Mr. Ely raised a black-socked foot napped with cat hair and chastised this reporter: “Would you look at that?” (The cat had vanished early on, but his “debris,” as Mr. Ely put it, was still very much in evidence. The reporter hung her head. Did she know that cat spit is toxic? Mr. Ely wondered.)

“We’re warming up the spine,” said Ms. Johnson. “Squeeze your abdominals.”

Mr. Ely looked worried: “I don’t think I have abdominals!”

MR. ELY’S technique is to clean a room from top to bottom. That means he begins with the cobweb cleaner, wafting it along ceiling corners, moldings, soffits and, uh, the top of the fridge (major dust harvest there). His form was pretty, like a serve by Roger Federer, if not exactly aerobic. For Mr. Ely kept stopping to lecture this reporter — on condensation; on the basic principles of heat transfer and why one needs to vacuum the refrigerator coils; on the movement of moist air in a kitchen; on floor care, which involved a long story about a Belgian monastery whose inhabitants never washed the kitchen floor; on how to dust the halogen spot lights (use a cotton cloth, not a microfiber one, and make sure the lights are off, and cool).  “I do rabbit on, don’t I?” he said. Ms. Johnson gamely hustled him along, noting that anytime you raise your arms over your head you can raise your heart rate. “What about a balance exercise?” she cajoled, executing a neat series of leg lifts. “That’s good for the butler’s booty!”

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Egypt’s Hamdeen Sabahi vs. Islamists and Free Markets

CAIRO — Hamdeen Sabahi was the most popular leader in the fight against Egypt’s new Islamist-backed constitution. Now he is preparing for his next battle: against Islamist leaders’ plans for Western-style free-market reforms.

Do not listen to your allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Sabahi said he warned President Mohamed Morsi, of the Brotherhood’s political arm, in a private meeting a few weeks ago. “Because the Brotherhood’s economic and social thought is the same as Mubarak’s: the law of the markets,” Mr. Sabahi said he had told Mr. Morsi, referring to Hosni Mubarak, the former president. “You will just make the poor poorer, and they will be angry with you just as they were with Mubarak.”

Mr. Sabahi, 58, a leftist in the style of another former president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, frightens most economists. He is an outspoken opponent of free-market economic moves in general as well as of a pending $4.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund that economists say is urgently needed to avert a catastrophic currency collapse.

But to the dismay of some Western diplomats, Mr. Sabahi is emerging as an increasingly salient voice in Egyptian politics, in part because of the bruising race to ratify the Islamist-backed charter. Both sides now expect the anti-Islamist opposition to reap big gains in the coming parliamentary vote, set to be held in two months against the backdrop of a simultaneous debate over the I.M.F. loan.

Among Egypt’s opposition figures, Mr. Sabahi has the biggest base of support in the streets. After campaigning as a dark horse in the spring’s presidential election, he missed the runoff by fewer than a million votes, finishing the first round almost neck and neck with Mr. Morsi.

Economic overhaul now poses a critical test of Egypt’s fragile democracy. Without enough trust in government, the changes to the systems of taxes or subsidies needed to reduce the deficit could easily stir new unrest in the streets, just as such moves have in the past. But if Mr. Morsi expects his opponents to hold their fire just because economists say the need is dire, Mr. Sabahi said, the president should think again.

“Why support him, for what?” Mr. Sabahi said in an interview in the borrowed offices of an Egyptian film director, decorated with pictures of President Nasser but also of Che Guevara. “Is he a democratic ruler, is he a revolutionary? Is he a model of a president, so I want him to succeed?”

Mr. Sabahi, 58, known for writing poetry and quoting Arab literature and for his blow-dried hair, was one of the few non-Islamist politicians willing to endure imprisonment alongside the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the struggle against Egypt’s autocracy, giving him a unique credibility among more secular leaders.

But after missing the presidential runoff this year, Mr. Sabahi declined to endorse either Mr. Morsi or his opponent, Ahmed Shafik, a former Mubarak prime minister. It was a choice between “tyranny in the name of the state” and “tyranny in the name of religion,” Mr. Sabahi said at the time in a television interview.

Mr. Sabahi argued in the interview that although Mr. Morsi won election democratically, he has failed to govern as a democrat. “He is kicking away the ladder he climbed,” Mr. Sabahi said, arguing that Mr. Morsi’s decree setting his authority above the courts, if only for a month, ended his credibility as a democrat.

The resulting discord between the Islamists and their opponents has postponed the I.M.F. loan and helped bring Egypt closer than ever to economic collapse. State media on Tuesday described a “dollarization frenzy” gripping the country as people raced to sell Egyptian pounds. The currency is at its lowest level in the past eight years.

Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Egypt’s hard currency reserves have fallen to $15 billion from $43 billion as it has struggled to prop up the pound, and economists say the government now urgently needs a cash infusion of about $14 billion in order to stay afloat. The $4.5 billion I.M.F. loan is expected to act as a seal of approval for others, after the I.M.F. concludes Egypt is at least on a path to greater balance.

If that loan does not come through soon, “the risk is a disaster,” said Heba Handoussa of the Economic Research Forum. “We can’t afford to wait.”

There are other more Western-friendly faces of the opposition, like Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, and Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister. But neither has Mr. Sabahi’s following at the grass roots, and he speaks for a segment of the Egyptian public deeply suspicious of free markets and, especially, the I.M.F. A popular singer, El Manawahly, has even recorded a song and music video opposing the loan. “Oh monetary fund / Show me how to industrialize, plant and kneel.”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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The 30-Minute Interview: The 30-Minute Interview With Nick J. Romito

Mr. Romito, 30, is the founder and chief executive of View the Space, a new real estate technology business that creates online video tours, primarily of office space, and provides data-tracking services to commercial real estate companies, among them SL Green Realty, Vornado Realty Trust and Silverstein Properties.

Before starting the business last year, Mr. Romito worked as a commercial broker and tenant and landlord representative.

Q. How has business been so far?

A. Business is good. We launched the beta version of the Web site about a year ago, and this April was when we took the beta logo off and decided that we were at a point where we could start charging for the product. We’ve grown extraordinarily fast, but that’s a good thing.

Q. Are you profitable yet?

A. We had profitability in May, then like most start-up companies we scaled up. We hit profitability again in October.

I put in all my life savings, which was roughly $50,000 to $100,000, with my wife’s help. As we were going into the market and trying to get people to believe in our dream it gets rough. But we actually got really lucky and found some great partners — a syndicate of hedge fund professionals who knew commercial real estate and invest in start-ups — who liked our idea. We raised about $650,000.

Q. Let’s talk about the services you provide.

A. As you probably know, commercial real estate is an antiquated business, more or less reluctant to embrace technology. We thought we were a crazy enough bunch to change that. We decided we could improve the process by taking it online from start to finish. So for us that means video. We’ve created a style of shooting video for office space that’s really never existed. Ours is the closest thing to actually being there, where you fly through the space and you actually feel like you’re in it. You just can’t touch the walls.

On the landlord side, we allow you to track how a person is interacting with the tour. So you get to see 1) the prospect who’s looking at it; 2) how many times they’ve watched it; and 3) how engaged are they with it. You’ll actually be able to tell whether a specific firm has taken the tour 10 times — that’s a very, very high level of engagement — and they’re a serious prospect so I’m going to follow up with them.

Q. What kind of analytics software accomplishes this?

A. We had to build a pretty serious back end of data that’s taken us awhile. You’ve got I.P. addresses all over the place, so we had to build a library of those, which we can identify for the most part which companies are viewing your space.

Q. And how do the clients see this information?

A. They can see it in real time whenever they want — from their dashboard. And if they’re not online we’ll e-mail it to them.

Q. Has this service helped to sell property faster?

A. Yeah. We’re at about 1.5 million square feet leased on View the Space since December 2011.

Q. How many clients do you have right now?

A. Over 50. We’ve got most of the larger commercial real estate institutions both on the public and private side.

It’s funny, when we first started, our thesis was that we would get all of the smaller landlords on board first because we have more access to them. But because we worked so tightly with the brokerage community to build this, SL Green caught wind of what we were doing very quickly and they ended up being our first big client.

So it’s kind of like a domino effect where you get the SL Greens of the world soon enough the Silversteins and all the other players want to find out what you’re doing.

Q. Where do you hope to see your business in, say, the next five to 10 years?

A. We think that technology is here to stay in commercial real estate. And we see us growing, hopefully, in every major market. We’re actively in 10 markets right now.

New York right now is probably 60 percent of the activity that we have.

Q. You don’t have a technology background, do you?

A. I don’t. During the first year of development I was still a broker. I tried to outsource the first part of this to India, which was a very painful process. You’ve got to start your day at 4 a.m., because of the time difference, and the language barrier was very difficult. Not only was I trying to learn Hindi, but also the language of technology.

Q. So when you’re not learning new languages, what do you do for fun?

A. I surf. That was more or less my life growing up on the Jersey Shore. In Toms River.

Q. Were you or your family affected by Hurricane Sandy?

A. My mom lost her house. She got a couple of feet of water, and now they’ll have to demo the house.

But as long as everyone is O.K., it’s just stuff. I think everybody down there is so resilient, and this is like when everybody really comes together.

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Fiscal Cutoff Gradually Morphs Into a Horizon

Quick action by President Obama and Congress could still help the economy escape the full impact of hundreds of billions in tax increases and automatic spending cuts set to take effect shortly after the last minutes of 2012 tick away next week. But if the deadlock in Washington persists much longer than a few weeks, the consequences will quickly mount, economists warn.

Until late last week, most observers had expected the president and Congressional Republicans to come up with at least a short-term compromise before the year-end deadline. But the failure of Speaker John A. Boehner to win support for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans from fellow House Republicans has forced many economic observers to reconsider what might happen if political leaders remain deadlocked into 2013.

Wall Street is still betting on a quick deal, but that confidence is misplaced, said Julia Coronado, chief North American economist at BNP Paribas. “Markets have been incredibly complacent about this,” she said. If a compromise cannot be found by Jan. 1, she said, “the markets will take that hard.”

Some hits — like a two percentage point increase in payroll taxes and the end of unemployment benefits for more than two million jobless Americans — would be felt right away. But other effects, like tens of billions in automatic spending cuts, to include both military and other programs, would be spread out between now and the end of the 2013 fiscal year in September. These could quickly be reversed if a compromise is found.

Similarly, the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts on Jan. 1 would not have a major impact on consumers if Congress quickly agreed to extend them for all but the wealthiest Americans in early 2013, as is widely expected.

Other probable changes, like a jump in taxes on capital gains and dividends, would most likely be felt over a broader period rather than as an immediate blow to the economy.

In the meantime, more observers are contemplating what the impact will be if Washington ignores the year-end deadline and waits until January or February to act.

“It’s still possible they will work something out by the end of the year, but the probability seems reasonably high that we may go into January with no agreement,” said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. “But the longer this goes on, the more nervous I get about first-quarter growth. If negotiations were to linger into March, then the first quarter could be much weaker.”

If the impasse lasted even longer and the full force of more than $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts hit the economy, the Congressional Budget Office predicts the country would slip into recession in the first half of 2013, with unemployment rising to 9.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2013. But for all the pessimism recently, most observers still think a compromise will be reached, even if it takes a few more weeks.

Negotiations are set to resume in the coming days, following a break for Christmas, although hopes for a so-called grand bargain have faded. Instead, President Obama is pushing for a scaled-back plan that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes below $250,000, while suspending the automatic spending cuts and extending unemployment benefits.

Michelle Meyer, senior United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said there is a 40 percent chance of what she calls a “bungee-jump over the fiscal cliff,” with Congress failing to act until after Jan. 1 but eventually averting the full package of tax increases and spending cuts by mid-January. If that were to happen, she predicts a steep sell-off on Wall Street, which would quickly force political leaders to compromise.

Over all, Ms. Meyer estimates that the economy will grow by just 1 percent in the first quarter of 2013, well below the 3.1 percent pace recorded in the third quarter of 2012.

What’s worrisome, she added, is that consumer anxiety about the fiscal impasse has begun to mount, catching up with business leaders who have been warning of economic danger since summer. “What’s been missing in this recovery has been confidence,” she said. “We’d see a healthy recovery if it weren’t for this uncertainty and the potential shock from Washington.”

Indeed, the economy has been showing signs of life recently. Unemployment in November sank to 7.7 percent, a four-year low. Consumer spending has been picking up, and the housing market has continued to recover in many parts of the country. Overseas worries like slowing growth in China and recession in Europe have also faded.

Those trends have encouraged some observers, like Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research. He estimates that the economy will grow by nearly 2.5 percent in the first quarter if Washington comes up with even a modest compromise. In the absence of a deal, the pace of growth would be more like 1 percent, he said.

“I don’t think that not having a deal going into the new year is all that critical,” Mr. Blitz said. “It doesn’t mean you will immediately go into a recession.”

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Recipes for Health: Penne With Mushroom Ragout and Spinach

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Penne with mushroom ragout and spinach.

​​Mushrooms and spinach together is always a match made in heaven. I use a mix of wild and regular white or cremini mushrooms for this, but don’t hesitate to make it if regular mushrooms are all that is available.

 

1/2 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried porcini mushrooms

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion or 2 shallots, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound mixed regular and wild mushrooms or 1 pound regular white or cremini mushrooms, trimmed and cut in thick slices (or torn into smaller pieces, depending on the type of mushroom)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhone or Côtes du Luberon

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or a combination of thyme and rosemary

6 ounces baby spinach or 12 ounces bunch spinach (1 bunch), stemmed and thoroughly cleaned

3/4 pound penne

Freshly grated Parmesan to taste

 

1. Place the dried mushrooms in a Pyrex measuring cup and pour on 2 cups boiling water. Let soak 30 minutes, while you prepare the other ingredients. Place a strainer over a bowl, line it with cheesecloth or paper towels, and drain the mushrooms. Squeeze the mushrooms over the strainer to extract all the flavorful juices. Then rinse the mushrooms, away from the bowl with the soaking liquid, until they are free of sand. Squeeze dry and set aside. If very large, chop coarsely. Measure out 1 cup of the soaking liquid and set aside.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy, nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the onion or shallots. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the fresh mushrooms. Cook, stirring often, until they begin to soften and sweat, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and salt to taste, stir together for about 30 seconds, then add the reconstituted dried mushrooms and the wine and turn the heat to high. Cook, stirring, until the liquid boils down and glazes the mushrooms. Add the herbs and the mushroom soaking liquid. Bring to a simmer, add salt to taste, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the mushrooms are thoroughly tender and fragrant. Turn off the heat, stir in some freshly ground pepper, taste and adjust salt.

3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Fill a bowl with ice water. Add the spinach to the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds only. Remove with a skimmer and transfer to the ice water, then drain and squeeze out water. Chop coarsely and add to the mushrooms. Reheat gently over low heat.

4. Bring the water back to a boil and cook the pasta al dente following the timing suggestions on the package. If there is not much broth in the pan with the mushrooms and spinach, add a ladleful of pasta water. Drain the pasta, toss with the mushrooms and spinach, add Parmesan to taste, and serve at once.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: The mushroom ragout will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator and tastes even better the day after you make it.

Nutritional information per serving: 437 calories; 9 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 73 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 48 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste or Parmesan); 17 grams protein

​

Up Next: Spinach Gnocchi

 

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Penne With Mushroom Ragout and Spinach

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Penne with mushroom ragout and spinach.

​​Mushrooms and spinach together is always a match made in heaven. I use a mix of wild and regular white or cremini mushrooms for this, but don’t hesitate to make it if regular mushrooms are all that is available.

 

1/2 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried porcini mushrooms

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion or 2 shallots, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound mixed regular and wild mushrooms or 1 pound regular white or cremini mushrooms, trimmed and cut in thick slices (or torn into smaller pieces, depending on the type of mushroom)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhone or Côtes du Luberon

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or a combination of thyme and rosemary

6 ounces baby spinach or 12 ounces bunch spinach (1 bunch), stemmed and thoroughly cleaned

3/4 pound penne

Freshly grated Parmesan to taste

 

1. Place the dried mushrooms in a Pyrex measuring cup and pour on 2 cups boiling water. Let soak 30 minutes, while you prepare the other ingredients. Place a strainer over a bowl, line it with cheesecloth or paper towels, and drain the mushrooms. Squeeze the mushrooms over the strainer to extract all the flavorful juices. Then rinse the mushrooms, away from the bowl with the soaking liquid, until they are free of sand. Squeeze dry and set aside. If very large, chop coarsely. Measure out 1 cup of the soaking liquid and set aside.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy, nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the onion or shallots. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the fresh mushrooms. Cook, stirring often, until they begin to soften and sweat, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and salt to taste, stir together for about 30 seconds, then add the reconstituted dried mushrooms and the wine and turn the heat to high. Cook, stirring, until the liquid boils down and glazes the mushrooms. Add the herbs and the mushroom soaking liquid. Bring to a simmer, add salt to taste, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the mushrooms are thoroughly tender and fragrant. Turn off the heat, stir in some freshly ground pepper, taste and adjust salt.

3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Fill a bowl with ice water. Add the spinach to the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds only. Remove with a skimmer and transfer to the ice water, then drain and squeeze out water. Chop coarsely and add to the mushrooms. Reheat gently over low heat.

4. Bring the water back to a boil and cook the pasta al dente following the timing suggestions on the package. If there is not much broth in the pan with the mushrooms and spinach, add a ladleful of pasta water. Drain the pasta, toss with the mushrooms and spinach, add Parmesan to taste, and serve at once.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: The mushroom ragout will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator and tastes even better the day after you make it.

Nutritional information per serving: 437 calories; 9 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 73 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 48 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste or Parmesan); 17 grams protein

​

Up Next: Spinach Gnocchi

 

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Irish Travelers, Gathering for Christmas, Flood a Town

RATHKEALE, Ireland — Christmas in Ireland is a time of homecomings, with joyous family reunions at airports and ferry piers. But the largest single gathering of all briefly turns this little town into the only place in Ireland where armed police officers patrol the streets 24 hours a day to deter internecine feuds and other disorderly conduct.

Usually, Rathkeale is an unremarkable rural town in County Limerick, but every year at this time, cavalcades of Irish nomads — known as travelers — return here to the place they regard as their spiritual home. It is an opportunity to hold fairy-tale weddings and christenings, and to settle old scores. The highly mobile families are deeply interwoven through marriage and kinship, and extremely suspicious of outsiders and the authorities.

For about six weeks of the year, the town’s population swells to 4,500 from 1,500, and ostentatious displays of wealth are common. Expensive sport utility vehicles create gridlock in the narrow streets and alleyways, trailers and mobile homes clutter the sidewalks and young men speed through the surrounding country lanes in their sports cars.

A long history of violence between clans hangs like a cloud over the travelers. When they congregate at Christmas, brawls involving knives, cudgels, iron bars and screwdrivers have been known to erupt, and traffic violations multiply. Last year alone, the police seized 30 vehicles for various offenses.

Over the past couple of decades, the travelers have bought or built houses in Rathkeale. The rows of extravagant, mock-Georgian mansions that have sprung up just off the main street are boarded up for most of the year but come alive around Christmas when their owners return, mainly from Britain but also from increasingly far-flung places.

The Rathkeale travelers have long had a reputation for business acumen, making fortunes by developing property, dealing antiques, trading in scrap metal and asphalt paving. But in recent years, a growing body of evidence has fueled suspicions that not all of the money flowing into Rathkeale comes from strictly legal transactions and that the property deals are a form of money laundering.

“People won’t say a bad word against them in public because they’re afraid of getting a bottle through the window — or something a lot worse,” said one Rathkeale resident, who did not want to be named. “Who really believes tarring driveways or fixing gutters gets you those massive houses or flashy cars?”

Certainly, travelers with links to Rathkeale have made headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent years.

Five members of one family were sentenced to prison this month after being found guilty of forcing vulnerable men to work for them under virtually slavelike conditions. According to court documents, the British police believe that the family owns several properties in Rathkeale, and the British authorities are working with their Irish counterparts to seize the family’s assets.

Others with Rathkeale connections have been jailed for various offenses from Australia to Iceland, including smuggling and handling counterfeit goods. In 2010, two men were caught trying to buy illegal black rhino horns from undercover federal agents.

Edward Grace, the deputy chief of law enforcement with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency expected “more indictments of members of the Rathkeale Irish Traveler group.”

“These Irish Traveler gang members are the middlemen in the operation that also involves Chinese and Asian gangs,” he said. “They have access to large amounts of cash to buy the horns, and they have the network to sell them on at exorbitant prices. Some people will say, ‘What’s the harm here? These animals are already dead.’ But they are fueling an illegal trade and that means more incentive to kill endangered species.”

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