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SPORTS
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CULTURE
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BUSINESS ASIA
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2014
Deaths cast
spotlight on
Hong Kong’s
class divide
Obama takes
a firm line
with Putin
on Ukraine
HONG KONG
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
To earn extra money,
some housemaids are
drawn into prostitution
President moves close
to calling Russian actions
against Kiev an invasion
BY MICHAEL FORSYTHE
BY MARK LANDLER
The banker, Rurik George Caton Jutting, a Cambridge graduate and securities trader, came from London in 2013,
one of thousands of expatriates who
move to Hong Kong every year to pursue jobs in banking and burnish their resumes with Asia experience. Mostly
men, they often live expense-accountsubsidized lives in luxury high-rise
apartments, filling the trendy Western
bars in the pricey Soho district at night
and socializing at members-only tennis
and yacht clubs on weekends.
The women, Seneng Mujiasih and
Sumarti Ningsih, also came to Hong
Kong to better their lives. Leaving grinding poverty in rural Indonesia, they
were among the city’s more than 300,000
foreign domestic workers, mostly women from Southeast Asia, earning as little
as $530 a month cleaning houses and
caring for children and elderly people,
six days a week, 17 hours a day.
Their worlds came together, authorities believe, in the garish neon-lit bars of
Hong Kong’s red light district of Wan
Chai, where Asian women, often current
or former housemaids, earn extra
money by selling overpriced drinks and
furtive sex to foreign men.
The encounters ended tragically in Mr.
Jutting’s upscale apartment. Ms. Seneng, 29, was found there by police in the
early morning of Nov. 1, with cuts to her
throat and buttocks. Ms. Sumarti, 23, was
found hours later, her decomposing body
stuffed into a suitcase on the balcony.
The police said she had died on Oct. 27.
Mr. Jutting, 29, who had called the police, was charged with two counts of
murder. He is now being evaluated to
determine whether he is mentally fit to
stand trial, where, if convicted, he would
face life in prison.
The police have released few other details. How Mr. Jutting met the women,
the nature of their relationship and investigators’ theories about the motivation
for the killings are not publicly known.
But interviews with friends, relatives
and acquaintances, as well as extensive
records left online by both the suspect
and the victims, yield a detailed portrait
of a little-known world that pervades
President Obama on Sunday said he
told President Vladimir V. Putin in
meetings last week that the United
States and its allies would continue to
impose sanctions on Russia for actions
in Ukraine that he edged close to calling
an invasion.
The United States, Mr. Obama said,
was ‘‘very firm on the need to uphold
core international principles, and one of
those principles is you don’t invade other countries.’’ The Russians, he said,
were supplying heavy weapons and financial backing to separatists in
Ukraine.
Speaking at the end of a meeting here
of the Group of 20 industrialized economies, Mr. Obama said leaders of European allies confirmed that Russia was
still violating the terms of an agreement
it signed on Ukraine. He characterized
his encounters with Mr. Putin as ‘‘businesslike and blunt.’’
Mr. Obama’s wide-ranging news conference came at the end of a hectic
weeklong trip to Asia that produced a
landmark climate-change agreement
with China, progress on a number of
trade issues, and a return visit for the
president to Myanmar, in which he admonished its military-dominated government to keep the reform process on
track.
But the trip was also shadowed by renewed fears of Russian incursions in
Ukraine. Mr. Obama held a meeting
here with European leaders to discuss
the prospect of additional sanctions
against Russia, after new reports of
Russian troops operating inside the
country.
The bitterness of Russia’s actions
spilled over into the G-20 meeting, with
Mr. Putin getting a chilly reception from
several leaders. Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada bluntly told Mr.
Putin that he needed to withdraw from
Ukraine.
Turning to Syria, Mr. Obama said the
United States would not make ‘‘common cause’’ with President Bashar alAssad in the campaign against the Islamic State group. But he said the
United States was not weighing ways to
HONG KONG, PAGE 4
URIEL SINAI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rangers in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The park’s director was shot and nearly killed hours after he delivered a report on oil company activities.
Oil dispute takes page from Congo’s past
VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK,
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Bloody standoff in park
pits conservation against
economic development
BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The trouble started when a British company suddenly appeared in this iconic
and spectacularly beautiful national
park, prospecting for oil.
Villagers who opposed the project
were beaten by government soldiers. A
park warden, who tried to block the oil
company, SOCO International, from
building a cellphone tower in the park,
was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s
director, a Belgian prince, was shot and
nearly killed hours after he delivered a
secret report on the oil company’s activities.
Much like the fight over drilling on
federal lands in the United States, the
struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s
national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic development against environmental preservation.
But out here, the quest for oil seems to
be more volatile, and the stakes are arguably higher — on both sides.
While West Africa has been a major
hydrocarbon producer for decades, new
technology like deeper drilling has led
to a bonanza of new energy discoveries
here on the continent’s east side.
Oil companies are now circling several African parks like this one, home to
critically endangered wildlife, such as
colossal silverback mountain gorillas,
among the last of their kind.
But development is far more than just
a buzzword here. The people in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania,
northern Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique — all places of recent hydrocarbon
finds — are among the poorest in the
world, many without electricity or clean
water, their children often facing relentless illness and few prospects.
African governments say they have a
moral obligation to pursue anything
that might lift their countries out of
grinding poverty, including drilling for
oil in pristine natural environments.
With an unprecedented surge of oil
activity in this region, environmentalists vowed to ‘‘draw the line’’ here in
Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park
and a Unesco World Heritage Site, pro-
Video game pro gets million-dollar treatment
LOS ANGELES
BY CONOR DOUGHERTY
Matt Haag, a professional video game
player, makes close to a million dollars a
year sitting in a soft chair smashing buttons. It is a fantastically sweet gig, and
he will do about anything to keep it.
That is why, on a recent morning, he
was in a bungalow in Venice Beach, Calif., making pancakes. Not just regular
pancakes, but high-protein pancakes
with ingredients like flax oil and chia
seeds, whose balance of carbohydrates,
fat and protein was created by a dietitian hired to teach him how to eat more
healthily.
The pancakes were just the beginning
of a monthlong training session that
Red Bull, one of Mr. Haag’s sponsors,
organized for him and his team, OpTic
Gaming. Over the next several days, he
and his fellow players gave blood while
riding stationary bicycles, had their
brains mapped by a computer and attended an hourlong yoga class where
they learned, among other things, how
to stretch their throbbing wrists. The
purpose of all this: to help them get better at blowing their opponents away in
video games.
Three years ago, he was flipping bur-
MONICA ALMEIDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES
INSIDE TO DAY ’S PA P E R
Militants claim another beheading
The fate of 43 college students missing
and presumed killed by a drug cartel has
bred outrage in Mexico. WORLD NEWS, 6
The Islamic State released a video
purporting to prove that they had
executed an American aid worker, who
disappeared in Syria last year while
delivering supplies. WORLD NEWS, 4
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OBAMA, PAGE 5
More U.S. agencies using
undercover operations
BY ERIC LICHTBLAU
AND WILLIAM M. ARKIN
Matt Haag, a professional player of the game Call of Duty, and his teammates undergoing training organized by Red Bull, a sponsor.
(852) 2922 1171
CONGO, PAGE 5
WASHINGTON
GAMES, PAGE 15
A familiar anger boils in Mexico
tected for its ‘‘outstanding universal
value’’ to all humankind. The World
Wildlife Fund swung into action, signing
up hundreds of thousands of supporters
in a global campaign.
In June, it made a triumphant announcement: ‘‘Major Conservation
Win: Oil Company Backs Off Oil Exploration in Africa’s Oldest National Park.’’
It looked like a happy ending for the gorillas and the trees.
There’s just one problem: It might not
be true.
In a private letter sent the same day
the environmentalists were savoring
their victory, SOCO International reassured the Congolese government that it
was continuing to evaluate seismic data
so that ‘‘the D.R.C. government can
take all appropriate measures to pur-
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IN THIS ISSUE
No. 40,957
Books 7
Business 14
Crossword 13
Culture 7
Opinion 8
Sports 11
Convincing ride in virtual reality
For decades, virtual reality was a
complete flop. But now with the
nausea-free Oculus Rift headset, it may
be a total win in producing an
immersive and convincing audiovisual
illusion. BUSINESS, 14
In India, growth breeds waste
Indians are getting dirtier as they get
richer, and we can no longer keep up:
There’s too much stuff being made now,
thanks to the backwash of globalization,
Jerry Pinto writes. OPINION, 8
The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in
recent years, with officers from at least
40 agencies posing as business people,
welfare recipients, political protesters
and even doctors or ministers to ferret
out wrongdoing, records and interviews
show.
At the Supreme Court, small teams of
undercover officers dress as students at
large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for
suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.
At the Internal Revenue Service,
dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers, accountants, drug
dealers or yacht buyers and more, court
records show.
At the Agriculture Department, more
than 100 undercover agents pose as food
stamp recipients at thousands of neighborhood stores to spot suspicious
vendors and fraud, officials said.
Undercover work, inherently invas-
ive and sometimes dangerous, was once
largely the domain of the F.B.I. and a
few other law enforcement agencies at
the federal level. But outside public
view, changes in policies and tactics
over the last decade have resulted in undercover teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal gov-
UNDERCOVER, PAGE 6
Sitting out a shopping holiday
ONLINE AT INY T.COM
Last year, more retailers decided to
stay open on Thanksgiving in the
United States, but this year many
others are promoting their decision to
remain closed on the holiday.
Challenge to Malaysia sedition law
The colonial-era Sedition Act is being
used against politicians, activists and
students. But a professor is challenging
its constitutionality. nytimes.com/asia
nytimes.com/business
Moment resonates, but quietly
Is quantum entanglement real?
Einstein thought it was not, but
experiments suggest that tiny
particles, such as electrons, can still
affect each other even after they have
moved apart. nytimes.com/review
GABRIELLA DEMCZUK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Protests at the Supreme Court over issues
such as abortion draw undercover officers.
RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Noelle Ahl and her
son in Sweet Home, Ore., a town where the
logging jobs have vanished. nytimes.com/us
LOOKING FOR GROWTH
Derrick Gordon, the first openly gay
player in Division 1 men’s college
basketball, is happy to find his coming
out barely caused a ripple at his
university. nytimes.com/ncaabasketball