1. Art and Diseño

ITALIAN CASTLE
A FIXER-UPPER
FOR $3 MILLION
GOOGLE GLASS
WHERE IT ALL
WENT SO WRONG
‘HAMILTON’
THE HIP-HOP VERSION OF
AMERICA’S REVOLUTION
PAGE 7
PAGE 15
PAGE 10
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PROPERTIES
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BUSINESS
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CULTURE
....
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015
Refugees tell
of death and
terror under
Boko Haram
West mounts
push to end
Ukraine war
amid distrust
MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA
KIEV, UKRAINE
Nigerian city harboring
400,000 from towns
taken by militant group
Hollande and Merkel
to meet Putin as U.S.
weighs sending arms
BY ADAM NOSSITER
BY MICHAEL R. GORDON
AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
They came in the dead of night, their
faces covered, riding on motorcycles
and in pickup trucks, shouting ‘‘Allahu
akbar’’ and firing their weapons
‘‘They started with the shootings;
then came the beheadings,’’ said Hussaini M. Bukar, 25, who fled after Boko
Haram fighters stormed his town in
northern Nigeria. ‘‘They said, ‘Where
are the unbelievers among you?’’’
Women and girls were systematically
imprisoned in houses, held until Boko
Haram extracted the ones it had chosen
for ‘‘marriage’’ or other purposes.
‘‘They were parking’’ — imprisoning
— ‘‘young girls and small, small children, parking them in the big houses,’’
said Bawa Safiya Umar, 45, whose 17year-old son was killed when her town
fell under Boko Haram’s control. ‘‘They
parked 450 girls in four houses.’’
Refugees flocking into this besieged
provincial capital describe a grim world
of punishment, abduction and death under Boko Haram in the Islamist quasistate it has imposed in parts of northern
Nigeria.
Mass open-air prayer sessions, conscription at gunpoint and occasional
handouts of stolen food are the tools of
its outreach, they say. Forced marriage,
slavery and imprisonment are vital institutions in its way of life. And casually
meted-out death — by shooting or beheading — is the punishment for men
who refuse to join.
‘‘They tied their hands behind their
backs, said ‘Allahu akbar,’ and cut their
head off,’’ said Shuaibu Alhaji Kolo, 22,
recounting how captured men were
swiftly beheaded.
As Boko Haram terrorizes the area
surrounding this city, as many as
400,000 people have fled to this island of
tenuous government control.
The peril these refugees have escaped
is pressing in on Maiduguri — the city
NIGERIA, PAGE 6
YOAN VALAT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
President François Hollande at his news conference on Thursday at the Élysée Palace. He later traveled with Chancellor Angela Merkel to Ukraine for talks with its president.
In secular France, are all faiths equal?
ROSNY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE
Ban on public exercise
of religion is an uneasy
fit for many Muslims
BY STEVEN ERLANGER
AND KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA
Laïcité, the concept of state secularism,
is a defining principle of the French Republic, right up there with the national
motto of liberty, equality, fraternity. De-
veloped in the French Revolution, which
targeted the Roman Catholic Church as
much as the monarchy, laïcité governs
the public life of a nation that sharply delineates the realms of Caesar and God.
But laïcité is now under severe challenge from a vibrant, growing religion,
Islam, which arrived in France with
post-colonialism and does not easily accept the ban on the public exercise of religion, whether it is the full veil or
gender-mixed swimming pools or Friday Prayers overflowing the mosques
or halal food in schools.
In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo
murders and an attack on a Jewish supermarket by Islamist gunmen, there
are new questions about laïcité and
whether it is being fairly applied in a
France with some five million Muslims
— close to 8 percent of the population,
and making up the largest number of
regular worshippers.
After the killings, there is a new government edict to reinforce teaching of
ONLINE: HOLLANDE VOWS TO DEFEND IDEALS
The president said France would not be
cowed by terrorists and would defend
liberty and free expression. nytimes.com
Luxury retailers set sights
on expanding elite in U.S.
Firms seek newly minted
millionaires as growth
slows in other markets
BY HIROKO TABUCHI
In Houston, Chanel’s new 5,000-squarefoot galleria is styled after Coco
Chanel’s Baroque-inspired apartment,
with bronze screens, an antique fireplace and a chandeliered shoe salon.
Yves Saint Laurent’s 10,000-squarefoot flagship store on Rodeo Drive, in
Beverly Hills, Calif., its biggest, features
white marble and polished brass with a
discreet, back-alley entrance for celebrities.
And in downtown Manhattan, Hermès,
Salvatore Ferragamo and Paul Smith are
DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
set to open locations at a $300 million luxurious redevelopment of the World Financial Center on the Hudson waterfront, complete with a glass pavilion and
European-themed gourmet market.
Purveyors of high-end luxury goods
are chasing millionaires in the United
States as upper-income spending falters
in Europe and in the emerging markets
once considered luxury’s promised
land. And the wealth, they say, is not just
confined to the American coasts.
Fast-growing industries, like technology and energy, are transforming cities
like Houston, Dallas and San Jose, Calif.,
into some of the densest aggregations of
wealth in the world. Since 2012, the number of high-net-worth individuals has
jumped as much as 20 percent in Dallas
and 18 percent in Houston, according to
a Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management tally.
Propelled by market gains and a
skewed economic recovery, the United
States’ share of the world’s superrich is
rebounding. America added 1.6 million
millionaires in 2014, by far the most in
the world, and dwarfing the 90,000
Chinese who crossed the million-dollar
mark last year, Credit Suisse estimates.
In 2014, Americans with net wealth of
more than $50 million outnumbered
their Chinese counterparts eight to one.
Luxury retailers now see America’s
ultrarich, more than Hong Kong magnates or Russian moguls, as their
biggest drivers of growth.
LONDON
BY SCOTT REYBURN
AND DOREEN CARVAJAL
WEALTH, PAGE 16
The 1892 Paul Gauguin oil painting ‘‘Nafea faa ipoipo (When will you Marry?).’’
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IN THIS ISSUE
No. 41,025
Books 11
Business 14
Crossword 13
Culture 10
Opinion 8
Sports 12
FRANCE, PAGE 4
Gauguin is said
to sell for close
to $300 million
A Tory Burch shop in New York. America
added 1.6 million millionaires in 2014.
NEW YORK, THURSDAY 12:30PM
PREVIOUS
laïcité in public schools, where religious
education is banned — especially in the
schools of the heavily Muslim banlieues,
or suburbs, where many children
shocked the country by refusing to obey
a national minute of silence for the dead
of Charlie Hebdo, who they believe insulted the Prophet Muhammad.
France has even declared Dec. 9 a
new ‘‘Day of Laïcité’’; candidate teachers will be tested on their understanding of the concept. From September, students and parents must sign a ‘‘Charter
of Laïcité’’ to ‘‘demonstrate their will-
ARTOTHEK, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sony studio chief will step down
Amy Pascal, whose emails denigrating
President Obama came to light amid
turmoil brought on by an online attack
against Sony, has resigned from two
high posts at the studio. BUSINESS, 14
BT to buy British mobile firm EE
More than a decade after it sold out of its
earlier cellphone business, BT is getting
back into mobile networks, agreeing to
buy the British operator EE. BUSINESS, 14
Germans cool to Greek proposals
German officials showed no sign that
they considered Greece’s recent change
of government to be an opportunity for
a fresh start. The Greek and German
finance ministers even failed to agree
on whether they disagreed. BUSINESS, 14
North Korean truths
Hyeonseo Lee writes that the furor
over a North Korean defector’s
fabrications is a distraction from the
larger issue: Pyongyang’s continuous
abuse of human rights. OPINION, 8
With fighting intensifying in eastern
Ukraine and the White House weighing
whether to send arms to bolster the government’s forces, Western leaders embarked on a broad diplomatic effort on
Thursday aimed at ending a conflict
that has strained relations with Russia.
Yet the prospects of achieving a new
peace plan remained clouded by deep
suspicions of Moscow, born of its history
of dissembling about its intentions and
operations in Ukraine, Western diplomats and Ukrainian officials said.
And while the United States has
provided weapons in similarly unstable
circumstances, including to governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia’s
long historical ties to the Ukrainian military and security apparatus present an
unusual challenge, one that was illustrated by the arrest on Wednesday of a
senior officer in the Ukrainian military’s general staff on charges of spying
for Russia.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
and President François Hollande of
France traveled to the Ukrainian capital,
Kiev, on Thursday for talks with President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, officials from the two countries said.
On Friday, Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande are to continue to Moscow, to meet
with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and discuss a new initiative from the
Kremlin to end the fighting in Ukraine,
which has killed more than 5,000 people
and displaced hundreds of thousands
over the past year. Mr. Hollande said at
A sensuous Paul Gauguin painting of
two Tahitian girls has been sold from a
Swiss private collection for close to $300
million, one of the highest prices believed to be paid for a work of art, according to a number of European and
American art world insiders with
knowledge of the matter.
The sale of the 1892 oil painting, ‘‘Nafea
faa ipoipo (When Will you Marry?),’’ was
confirmed by Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel
who owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and PostImpressionist art, including the Gauguin,
which has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel for nearly half a century.
Two dealers with knowledge of the
matter, who declined to be named, identified the Museums Authority of Qatar
as the buyer of the painting. Mr. Staechelin declined to say whether the new
owner was from the tiny, oil-rich emirate. ‘‘I don’t deny it and I don’t confirm
it,’’ Mr. Staechelin said, also declining to
disclose the price. The museums authority in Doha did not respond to telephone
calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Guy Morin, the mayor of Basel, was
one of those who acknowledged news of
GAUGUIN, PAGE 5
ONLINE AT INY T.COM
Never too old for pickup hoops
At perhaps the most persistent game of
pickup basketball in New York City, at
the McBurney Y.M.C.A. on West 14th
Street in Manhattan, old age is relative.
nytimes.com/basketball
Rolling back the red carpet
Some A-list stars have joined a growing
outcry against the objectification of
women on the red carpet at awards
ceremonies. nytimes.com/movies
ROMAN PILIPEY/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
John Kerry, visiting Kiev, blamed the
Kremlin on Thursday for renewed violence.
a news conference in Paris that he and
Ms. Merkel would present an initiative
to end the fighting and guarantee the
‘‘full territorial integrity’’ of Ukraine.
The German and French moves were
announced as Secretary of State John
Kerry arrived in Kiev for high-level talks.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepared for parallel consultations on Friday with European leaders in Brussels.
The deep Western distrust of Moscow
has been heightened by what diplomats
say is the Kremlin’s role in the arming, financing and guiding of rebel separatists
in the current surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine, even after helping forge a
cease-fire in September. As it did in late
summer, they say, the Kremlin is stepping in to end fighting that it instigated,
but only after achieving its objective of
expanding rebel-controlled territory.
Since the accord was signed, the Russian-backed separatists have taken control of about 200 square miles in the east,
including the airport at Donetsk, and
they are currently threatening Debaltseve, a town that sits astride a critical
rail hub.
Mr. Kerry did not mince words in a
news conference on Thursday in Kiev,
laying blame for the renewed violence
in eastern Ukraine at the door of the
Kremlin. ‘‘We talked about the largest
threat that Ukraine faces today, and
that is Russia’s continued aggression in
the east,’’ he said after meeting with
Ukrainian officials.
UKRAINE, PAGE 4
Mystery in New York train crash
The question persisted more than a day
after an inferno had engulfed the first
car of a Metro-North train in
Westchester County, killing six people:
What was an S.U.V. doing on the
tracks? nytimes.com/nyregion
Smart travel options for Mexico
Mexico is a big country, and there are
plenty of ways to get around it. Which
method is right for you depends on a
number of factors, the Frugal Traveler
writes. nytimes.com/travel