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* * * * MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2015 ~ VOL. CCLXV NO. 61 WSJ.com HHHH $3 .00
Israeli leader says he’sin danger of losingelection and pledges toaddress economic woes
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CONTENTSAbreast of the Market C1Business News...... B2,3Global Finance............ C3Heard on the Street C6Markets Dashboard C4Media & Marketing B6
Moving the Market C2Opinion................... A11-13Sports.......................... B7,8Technology................... B4U.S. News................. A2-6Weather Watch........ B7World News............ A7-9
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What’sNews
Israeli leader Netanyahupleaded with conservative vot-ers to shore up his campaign,warning he could lose his jobin Tuesday’s election. A1AMedicare panel said aplanned overhaul of paymentsto long-term-care hospitalsdoesn’t go far enough. A1 Venezuela’s president wasgiven power to rule withoutlegislative approval to com-bat alleged U.S. threats. A7 A 20-year-old man wascharged in the shooting oftwo police officers in Fergu-son, Mo., last week. A3 Clinton has been reachingout to Hispanics as part of aneffort to blunt a potential Re-publican election threat. A4 Turkish officials stoppedand deported three Britishteens suspected of seekingto join militants in Syria. A8 Putin said he prepared toput Russian nuclear forceson alert ahead of Crimea’sannexation last year. A7 Ten U.S. clinicians wereflown home from Sierra Le-one after aiding a health-care worker with Ebola. A6 Robert Durst, the son of areal estate scion and subjectof an HBO documentary, wasarrested in a 2000 killing. A3 The U.S. and Iranwere setto resume nuclear talks, hop-ing to seal a tentative deal. A8 Texas is about to run outof pentobarbital, its drug ofchoice for executions. A6Remarriage is on the rise,with about 17% of Americansmarried two or more times. A3
China is flooding theworld with steel exports
as domestic use slows, spur-ring calls for tariffs by steel-makers world-wide. A1 Beijing signaledmore mea-sures are in the works to re-gain economic momentum andovercome weak demand. A9 GE agreed to sell its Aus-tralia and New Zealand con-sumer-lending business to aKKR-Deutsche Bank investorgroup for $6.26 billion. B1 The FTC is revising proce-dures for challenging mergersamid growing pressure fromcongressional Republicans. B1 Bank stocks will continueto be squeezed by low interestrates, tougher regulations andlegal bills, analysts and port-folio managers predict. C1 Big hedge funds haveprofited from the euro’splunge as their managers betagainst the currency. C1 A Bank of Montreal unit islaunching a cardless ATM net-work in the U.S. that will letcustomers withdraw cashwith their smartphones. C3Blackstone agreed to buyChicago’sWillis Tower for $1.3billion, a record for a U.S. officetower outside New York. C3BlackBerry unveiled a high-security tablet as it seeks toexpand its base with businessand government customers. B4 Boston Scientific won FDAapproval for its Watchmanstroke-prevention device. B3 Disney’s “Cinderella” ledthe weekend box office, open-ing to a strong $70.1 millionin the U.S. and Canada. B6
Business&Finance
World-Wide
China’s massive steel-makingengine, determined to keep hum-ming as growth cools at home, isflooding the world with exports,spurring steel producers aroundthe globe to seek governmentprotection from falling prices.
From the European Union toKorea and India, China’s excessmetal supply is upending tradepatterns and heating up turf bat-tles among local steelmakers.
In the U.S., the world’s sec-ond-biggest steel consumer, afresh wave of layoffs is fuelingappeals for tariffs. U.S. steel pro-ducers such as U.S. Steel Corp.and Nucor Corp. are starting toseek political support for tradeaction.
China’s steel exports rose63% to 9.2 million tons in Janu-ary from a year earlier, a risethat puts them on pace this yearto beat the 82.1 million tonsChina exported last year. Thatnumber increased 59% from 2013and was the most steel ever ex-ported by any country this cen-tury.
China produces as much steelas the rest of the world com-bined—more than four times thepeak U.S. production in the1970s. But as China’s growthslows, the excess steel that Chi-nese industry doesn’t need iswashing up overseas.
Steel use in China grew by just1% in 2014 and growth will slowfurther to 0.8% in 2015, accordingto the World Steel Association, asthe country’s real-estate sectorcools. China’s mills have yet to
Please see STEEL page A9
By BimanMukherji inHong Kong, JohnW.
Miller in Pittsburgh andChuin-Wei Yap in Beijing
Ire RisesAt ChinaOver GlutOf Steel
TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahuwarned of a “real danger” hewould lose his job in Tuesday’selection and pleaded with con-servative voters to shore up hiscampaign, blaming a foreignconspiracy for boosting his ri-
vals’ prospects.In a rare show of vulnerability
for a leader who normally proj-ects confidence, Mr. Netanyahualso said Sunday that he couldhave done a better job listeningto Israelis’ complaints about thehigh cost of living—a leadingconcern of voters during thisyear’s campaign.
“A left-wing government willcome to power—this possibilityexists,” Mr. Netanyahu told thou-sands of right-wing demonstra-tors at a rally here Sunday night.He cast himself as the underdogafter public-opinion polls lastweek showed his conservative
Likud party trailing a center-leftalliance by four seats in the 120-member parliament. “We mustclose this gap. This gap can beclosed.”
It is a risky tactic two daysbefore an election that has es-sentially become a referendumon Mr. Netanyahu’s nine-yeartenure, the longest of any Israeliprime minister since David Ben-Gurion, a founder of the state.
The prime minister’s cam-paign has gone into a frenzy inrecent days. He has given aflurry of interviews to Israelimedia after largely shunningthem for years and urged Israeli
voters abroad to return home tocast ballots.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is seek-ing a third consecutive term anda fourth overall, has long fo-cused on a security-first agenda.He opposes the terms that havesurfaced so far of a nuclear dealbetween a U.S.-led group of sixworld powers and Iran. Over thelast year, peace talks with Pales-tinians were suspended and Is-rael fought another war withHamas, the Islamist group thatrules Gaza.
Nahum Abramovitch, a 70-year-old computer technician,
Please see ISRAEL page A8
BY NICHOLAS CASEYAND JOSHUA MITNICK
Netanyahu Pleads for Votes
A planned overhaul of Medi-care payments to long-term hos-pitals doesn’t go far enough, acongressional advisory panelsaid, and it called for furtherchanges to discourage timing pa-tients’ discharges to financial in-centives.
Long-term-care hospitals getsmaller payments for short vis-its, but after patients stay for acertain number of days the pay-ments jump to much larger lumpsums.
That gives the hospitals “a
strong financial incentive tokeep patients” until they qualifyfor higher payments, “and theyappear to respond to that incen-tive,” the Medicare Payment Ad-visory Commission, called Med-PAC, said in a report Friday.
Medicare’s planned overhaulaims to limit the number of pa-tients qualifying for high long-term-hospital payments. But aWall Street Journal analysis ofMedicare data suggests the newrules wouldn’t have much effecton the incentive to discharge eli-gible patients at particulartimes.
Mark Miller, MedPAC’s execu-tive director, said in an inter-
Please see PANEL page A2
By ChristopherWeaver,AnnaWilde Mathewsand TomMcGinty
Medicare Panel FaultsPaymentFix asTooWeak
OdedBa
lilty/A
ssociatedPress
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—Thenew government here is racingto carry out an ambitious 100-day plan to overhaul the consti-tution and reinvigorate the econ-omy as it girds for electionslikely within the next fewmonths.
But on Saturday, Prime Minis-ter Ranil Wickremesinghe took abreak from affairs of state—towatch a high-school cricketmatch.
It isn’t just any game. Knownas the Battle of the Blues, it hasbeen played annually for 136years between two of Sri Lanka’s
oldest and toniestall-boys schools,Royal College and S.Thomas’ College.
The three-daymatch is among themost important so-cial events for mem-bers of the Colomboelite, who gather ingrandstands andtents festooned withbunting to party,schmooze and watchcricket.
“It’s like an annual pilgrim-age. You come to meet your oldfriends,” said Dilshan Jayasuriya,a lawyer who graduated from S.
Thomas’ in 1994.Luckily play ends ona Saturday, he said,since “it takes onefull day to recover.”
About 30,000 peo-ple turned out towatch, according toorganizers. Alumni,known as Old Royal-ists and Old Thomi-ans, flew in fromaround the world.
This year the cele-brations also had political over-tones, because the prime ministerand a dozen other cabinet minis-ters and deputy ministers are
Please see CRICKET page A10
BY GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
MarchMadness? Sri Lankans Crazy for High-School Cricketi i i
Capital grinds to a halt as country’s elite turn out for annual match
Cricket bats and ball
Right-wing Israeli demonstrators at a rally in Tel Aviv on Sunday where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen on the screen, appealed for votes.
UPLAND, Calif.—From thetime he was a young man com-ing of age in the 1970s, MikeMassey could have served as aposter child for his generation,the baby boomers. He grew hishair long to the dismay of hisfather, surfed, played in rockbands and says he regularly gothigh on marijuana and cocaine.
The wild times receded as hegrew older. In his 30s, hestopped using drugs altogether,rose into executive positionswith the plumbers and pipe fit-ters union, bought a house inthis Los Angeles suburb andstarted a family. But at age 50,Mr. Massey injured his kneerunning. He took Vicodin for thepain but soon started using pillsheavily, mixing the opioids with alcohol, he said.
“It reminded me of getting high and gettingloaded,” said Mr. Massey, now 58 years old,who went into recovery and stopped usingdrugs and alcohol in 2013. “Your mind never
forgets that.”Today, the story of this
balding, middle-aged executivecontinues to reflect that of hisgeneration.
Older adults are abusingdrugs, getting arrested for drugoffenses and dying from drugoverdoses at increasingly higherrates. These surges have comeas the 76 million baby boomers,born between 1946 and 1964,reach late middle age. Facingthe pains and losses connectedto aging, boomers, who asyouths used drugs at the high-est rates of any generation, areonce again—or still—turning todrugs.
The trend has U.S. health of-ficials worried. The sharp in-crease in overdose deathsamong older adults in particu-
lar is “very concerning,” said Wilson Compton,deputy director for the federal government’sNational Institute on Drug Abuse.
The rate of death by accidental drug over-Please see DRUGS page A10
BY ZUSHA ELINSON
AGING BABY BOOMERSHOLD ON TO DRUG HABITSCounterculture generation, now middle aged, falls into addiction
THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.
Note: Methodology changed in 2002, resulting ina higher response rate.
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental HealthServices Administration
8
0
2
4
6
%
1980 ’90 2000 ’10
Boomers areages 49–67in 2013First baby
boomers entercategory in 1996Boomers areages 32–50
Still Turning OnPercentage of people age 50 andolder reporting any illicit drug usein the past year
March ManiaAs the NCAA announces the tournamentbracket, Jason Gay braces for the madness.SPORTS | B7-8
How to Say ‘No’To Retirement
ENCORE | R1
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