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YELLOW VOL. CCLXIII NO. 109 ******** SATURDAY/SUNDAY, MAY 10 - 11, 2014 HHHH $2.00 WSJ.com WEEKEND Traps for The Guilty By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner REVIEW The Instant Family Heirloom OFF DUTY n Prosecutors’ frustration with BNP over what they con- sider foot-dragging in a probe of potential sanctions viola- tions is one factor that has hardened their determination to push the bank to plead guilty to criminal charges. B1 n The chiefs of Publicis and Omnicom sought to reassure in- vestors, clients and employees after their merger unraveled. B1 n The Dow rose 32.37 points in quiet trading to notch a fresh record of 16583.34. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also gained. B5 n Beats’ co-founders would likely take senior positions with Apple if the tech giant seals a deal for the company. B3 n T-Mobile is demanding a big breakup fee as the car- rier works with Sprint on terms of a possible deal. B3 n New York’s attorney general is scrutinizing private stock- trading venues run by Goldman, Barclays and other banks. B2 n America’s weakest malls are being pushed to the brink as once-reliable anchors Pen- ney and Sears close stores. A1 n Prosecutors are appealing the sentence of Beanie Babies creator Ty Warner, arguing probation was too lenient. A6 n The NBA named Citigroup and Time Warner veteran Parsons as interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers. B3 What’s News i i i Business & Finance World-Wide i i i CONTENTS Books........................ C5-10 Corp. News................ B3-4 Heard on Street ....... B16 Letters to Editor...... A12 Opinion.....................A11-13 Sports............................. A14 Stock Listings..... B13-15 Style & Fashion......D2-3 The Week....................... C4 U.S. News.................. A2-6 Weather Watch........B15 World News............. A7-9 Wknd Investor ..... B7-10 s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved > Inside NOONAN A13 Owning Up: Benghazi vs. Iran-Contra F ighting continued in Ukraine as separatists prepared for a referendum on independence Sunday in two regions bordering Russia, a vote Kiev says is illegal. A1, A7 n Nigeria’s effort to rescue abducted schoolgirls is being hampered by an ill-equipped military and reluctance to ac- cept broad foreign help. A1 n A U.S. airliner nearly col- lided with a drone aircraft over Florida earlier this year, a federal official said. B1 n Mass protests returned to Bangkok following a court’s removal of Yingluck as prime minister earlier in the week. A9 n The EPA took a first step toward possibly requiring dis- closure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. A2 n Federal regulators are wor- ried that 18 nuclear reactors in 10 states east of the Rockies are vulnerable to earthquakes. A2 n Obama touted executive ac- tions and public- and private- sector commitments aimed at cutting carbon pollution and improving energy efficiency. A2 n The agency overseeing U.S. natural-gas pipelines has been doing a poor job of making sure states enforce safety rules, a report said. A2 n The Postal Service said it lost $1.9 billion in the first three months of 2014. A6 n The GOP is moving to cut the number of events in its presidential-debate process. A4 SASSNITZ, Germany—As Ger- man Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande strode shoulder-to- shoulder across the harbor jetty here Friday in a display of Euro- pean unity, out at sea a giant rail ferry was steaming toward a ter- minal nearby. It was carrying 38 loaded freight cars from Russia. Ms. Merkel invited the French president here to her election district for a two-day visit, stressing Germany’s close bond with its western neighbor amid the most intense East-West con- frontation since the Cold War. But Ms. Merkel’s home state on the Baltic Sea coast in former East Germany in many ways highlights Germany’s inextricable ties to Russia. The port of Sassnitz is home to a unique rail-ferry terminal that Communist East Germany built in the 1980s to receive goods from the Soviet Union. It has in recent years become one of Europe’s important hubs for trade with Russia. Authorities in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Please turn to page A7 BY ANTON TROIANOVSKI Germany Vexed by Ties to Russia Summit at Port Underscores Their Vast Trade Links Any Portmanteau in a Storm: ‘Pun Slams’ Can Be Game of Groans i i i It’s a Punderful Life for Competitive Wordsmiths Whose Jabs Can Stink or Win MINNEAPOLIS—These are pun-loving times. On a snowy night last month, dozens of spectators trudged through the sleet to watch nine competitors face off at Punda- monium, a monthly “pun slam” where am- ateur wordsmiths lob jabs and jokes at each other and the audi- ence, roughly in the style of a poetry slam. Results ranged from clever to crass to curi- ously off-base. In the first round, Taylor Cisco, a 34- year-old marketing consultant, drew a slip of paper out of an empty beer pitcher with his theme: “stereotypes about Minneso- tans.” Standing on stage at a dim-lit venue, he told the crowd he was originally from Chicago but his wife “who is quite the hot dish” wanted to move back to Minne- sota. A few months later, “We had a little baby; she’s my little Taylor Tot.” Pundamonium is just one of the forums that have cropped up for punsters. Brook- lyn’s Punderdome, hosted by a Rodney Dangerfield imperson- ator and his comedian daughter, has grown from a gathering of fewer than 40 in 2011 to frequently selling out crowds of more than 400. The granddaddy of them all is the annual O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships in Austin, Texas. At the event, held this weekend, contestants will vie for trophies and titles like “punniest of show.” Some of the best puns, says Please turn to page A10 BY CANDACE JACKSON Art Allen NORFOLK, Va.—With J.C. Pen- ney Co. and Sears Holdings Corp. racing to close stores, America’s weakest malls are being pushed to the brink. Nearly half of the 1,050 indoor and open air malls in the U.S. have both of those struggling chains as anchor tenants, accord- ing to real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors. Of those malls, nearly a quarter are strug- gling with sales below $300 per square foot and vacancy rates above 20%, meaning they will have a hard time finding new tenants if old ones leave. For an already-weakened mall industry, the negative turn for two once-reliable anchors is promising more stress at a time when the Internet is steadily stealing traffic. And the pressure is only growing. Sears Chief Ex- ecutive Eddie Lampert this week said he plans to close more stores to help return the com- pany to profitability. Vacancy rates rose and sales plunged at the Gallery at Military Circle, about 5 miles from down- town Norfolk, Va., after the Sears store closed its doors two years ago. Eventually the mall’s owner missed multiple payments on its debt. Remaining retail tenants worry about what will happen when the Penney store closes this month, darkening another corner of the 44-year-old property. Bruce Van, who manages Gent’s, a locally owned boutique specializing in men’s suits and fe- doras and Sunday church clothes, said foot traffic fell by more than half after the Sears closed. “When J.C. Penney goes out in May, it’s going to be bad,” said Mr. Van, who is also pastor at Rivers of Life Fellowship in Hampton, Va. The first U.S. indoor mall opened in Edina, Minn., in 1956, and construction peaked in the 1980s. Only six new malls have been built since 2010, according to CoStar Group, a provider of commercial real-estate informa- Please turn to page A4 BY SUZANNE KAPNER AND ROBBIE WHELAN Struggling Malls Suffer As Penney, Sears Shrink Spouses, parents and children of deceased veter- ans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan received $6.7 billion in the 2013 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Payments are based on financial need, any disabilities, and whether the veteran’s death was tied to military service. Those payments don’t include the costs of fight- ing or caring for the veterans themselves. A Har- vard University study last year projected the final bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would hit $4 trillion to $6 trillion in the coming decades. Eric Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, often cites President Abraham Lincoln’s call, in his second inaugural address, for Americans “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” “The promises of President Abraham Lincoln are being delivered, 150 years later, by President Barack Obama,” Secretary Shinseki said in a speech last fall. “And the same will be true 100 years from now—the promises of this president will be deliv- ered by a future president, as yet unborn.” Please turn to page A10 WILKESBORO, N.C.—Each month, Irene Triplett collects $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Af- fairs, a pension payment for her father’s military service—in the Civil War. More than 3 million men fought and 530,000 men died in the conflict between North and South. Pvt. Mose Triplett joined the rebels, deserted on the road to Gettysburg, defected to the Union and married so late in life to a woman so young that their daughter Irene is today 84 years old—and the last child of any Civil War veteran still on the VA benefits rolls. Ms. Triplett’s pension, small as it is, stands as a reminder that war’s bills don’t stop coming when the guns fall silent. The VA is still paying benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War. The last U.S. World War I veteran died in 2011. But 4,038 widows, sons and daughters get monthly VA pension or other payments. The government’s annual tab for surviving family from those long-ago wars comes to $16.5 million. BY MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS ENDURING COST The Civil War’s Last Pensioner Civil War veteran Mose Triplett’s gravestone in Wilkes County, N.C. Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal Putin Is Cheered in Crimea as Referendum Nears ‘HELLO COMRADES:’ In his first official visit to Crimea since it was annexed in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin yelled congratulations to mark the Soviet victory in World War II. Pro-Russian separatists vowed to push ahead with a vote on independence set for Sunday in two regions of Ukraine. A7 Nigeria’s efforts to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls abducted last month have been hampered by an ill-equipped military sapped by decades of corruption and by the country’s reluctance to accept broad international help, Western and Nigerian officials said. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, facing his people’s fury that one of Africa’s most powerful armies has proved unable to res- cue the high-school girls kid- napped by a terrorist group, put out a desperate call for help on Friday from “everybody on earth.” But as a first trickle of U.S. assistance began arriving in Ni- geria—and the Obama adminis- tration encountered building po- litical pressure at home for more drastic measures, including the use of special operations forces—U.S. officials said the Ni- gerian government remained leery of foreign intervention. A first group of U.S. military personnel reached Nigeria on Fri- day to begin setting up a modest advisory and assessment cell that will encompass a military contin- gent of 18 people, 10 from the U.S. embassy and eight from U.S. Africa Command headquarters. U.S. officials have said this week they were discussing intelligence sharing with Nigeria, including Please turn to page A9 By Drew Hinshaw, Julian E. Barnes and Heidi Vogt Distrust Hampers Nigerian Search Yuri Kadobnov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Review: The true origin of the name ‘Boko Haram’ ..................... C4 Heard on the Street: France and Germany’s great divide ........... B16 **Monthly charges exclude taxes & Sprint Surcharges [incl. USF charge of up to 16.6% (varies quarterly), up to $2.50 Admin. & 40¢ Reg./line/mo.) & fees by area (approx. 5%–20%)]. Surcharges are not taxes. See sprint.com/taxesandfees. Offer ends: 7/10/14. Credit approval required. Excludes existing accounts and discounted phones. Group members must agree to share their names, last 4 of phone numbers, Framily ID, group status and that they are subscribed to Framily plan with group or be removed from group and asked to select another rate plan. Sharing Framily ID allows users to join group. Discounts awarded $5–$30/mo./line off $55 base rate plan depending on number of members in the group. Discounts not prorated. Groups cannot merge. 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