Technology investors awaiting the crucial second financial report from Yahoo Inc. pulled the stock market out of a three-day dive today only to be blindsided by the Internet company after the bell.
Yahoo delivered profits of 8 cents a share -- precisely what analysts were predicting -- on revenues that fell a couple million dollars short of the $611 million consensus estimate.
The revenue shortfall was an unpleasant surprise and even the as-predicted doubling of profits was not what Wall Street really wanted to see.
Yahoo has a history of delivering slightly better earnings than Wall Street has been expecting, so hitting the target still missed the mark, as far as many traders were concerned.
Yahoo shares immediately plunged in after-market trading, dropping more than 10 percent in a matter of minutes and setting technology stocks up for a worrisome opening on Thursday.
Though Yahoo's own stock slipped about 1 percent during the trading day, the overall market managed to hold its ground -- no small accomplishment after the Nasdaq Stock Market composite index had fallen more than 4 percent over the three previous days.
The Nasdaq composite gained a little less than three points to 1966.08. The Standard & Poors 500 stock index picked up 2 points, closing at 1118.33. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 21 points to 10240.29.
While today's trading stopped the slide, it did not produce the big bounce that Wall Street's bulls were looking for and Yahoo added significantly to the market's worries.
Yahoo has been the leader of the technology stock rebound. The stock was up 50 percent in the second quarter. Going into Wednesday's session it was selling for 130 times earnings -- compared with 21 times earnings for the stocks in the S&P 500.
If Wall Street decides to revalue Yahoo, it is likely to revalue the entire tech sector, perhaps even the whole market.
Other technology stocks already are getting a hard look, because several big names are reporting results that mirror those of Yahoo -- good, but maybe not good enough.
After the bell today, software giant Siebel Systems Inc. warned that second quarter results would not meet expectations. Siebel shares, which had been up during the day, quickly tanked in after-hours trading, falling as much as 18 percent.
During the day PeopleSoft Inc. -- another key producer of computer programs used by businesses -- issued an earnings warning, just as Veritas Software Corp. had the day before.
Woven through all this underachievement was a theme that does not bode well for either the market or the economy. Several of the companies said they fell short of their goals for the quarter because orders that were expected to come in at the very end of the quarter failed to materialize. If that's the problem, it could signal a slowdown in the business spending that is needed to keep the economy moving ahead.
Construction of a proposed $5.9 million cultural and heritage center for Fairfax County, although supported overwhelmingly at a public hearing recently, appears doubtful unless county residents are willing to fund the center through a tax increase or by private donations.
The proposed center would provide a facility for the county's scattered historical, visual and performing arts groups, including the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, light opera societies, ballet and dance organizations and a wide variety of little theater groups.
The plan for the center was contained in a $35,000 study ordered by the Fairfax County Park Authority.
Joseph Downs, director of the Park Authority, which conducted the public hearing, said there were several ways in which the heritage center could be funded, including county funding, a bond referendum or a countywide fund-raising effort.
Warren Cikins, Fairfax County Supervisor for the Mt. Vernon area, warned that county funding was unlikely because "right now we're in a bad period and money is tight." He said that a bond sale to fund construction also may not be possible because of pending requests for general obligation bond financing.
"There are several areas already where bond referendums are in the offing," Cikins explained. "While I think the idea has a great deal of merit, that's a lot of money at a time of difficult budgetary constraints. I think the majority of citizens are not aware that we had to raise taxes last year 50 cents a hundred (dollars of assessed property value) . . . and cut the budget $20 million. We're still straining to stay even."
During the public hearing, representatives of various cultural and performing arts groups voiced support for a central facility to house their activities. Only two of 24 speakers were critical of the central facility idea. The suggested location is Wakefield Park, Annandale.
"We have no center to bring together our beautiful history and culture and you have to go all over the 410 square miles of Fairfax County to see what's here," explained Doris Dakin, chairperson of the Fairfax Legacy Action Group, which recently has spearheaded the drive for the center.
"We have no adequate facilities for performing arts. Right now we use church basements, school auditoriums, small performing centers. When performing groups try to schedule themselves in our overcrowded high schools, they often are denied the use of the facilities because the schools are overloaded with their own activities. Or there are conflicts with other community groups."
Fairfax County residents will vote on a proposal to sell $18.7 million in general obligation bonds to finance construction of a new country courthouse. County officials say that bond sale will not result in a tax increase for the county. The Park Authority is expected to request shortly a $39 million bond referendum on June 14, to finance a five-year capital improvements program. Whether that referendum, if approved by the Board of Supervisers and the voters, would result in a tax increase has not been determined.
Downs said the Park Authority may consider including the heritage center in the park bond referendum request, or "do a single rederendum on just this issue." He said a major corporation also might be persuaded to fund the center "as a gift to the citizens of Fairfax County. At this time, we know of no such interest on the part of a corporation."
"There's never going to be a cheaper time to build it," she added. "It's just going to get more expensive. I think when the building gets built, we'll wonder what we ever did without it."
A feasability study conducted by Fothergill Beekhuis Associated of Washington identified 77 active cultural groups in Fairfax County, "53 engaged in the performing arts," and estimated that 422 performances were staged in the county during ghe 1975-76 season.
"It is estimated that these groups represented a membership of 27,000 and that their programs during the 1975-76 season reached a combined total audience in excess of 279,000," the study reported.
A conceptual design for the proposed center prepared by Arthur Cotton Moore Associates of Washington includes a large theater-concert hall of 1,800 seats with a moveable accoustic ceiling to close off the 600-seat balcony for smaller audiences, a 350-seat "Little Theater," galleries for historical and art exhibitions, backstage facilities rehearsals rooms and administrative offices.
Consultant Jeanne Beekhuis said Wakefield Park was proposed as the best site for the center because of the aesthetics, easy access from the Beltway and major arterials, and its location "right in the center of the county."
One of the two speakers to criticize the proposal at the public hearing was Bruce Bolstad, a member of the Mount Vernon Council of Citizens Associations, representing 41 citizens groups in southern Fairfax county. Bolstad complained that very few people in the Mt. Vernon area are aware of the proposal and feasability study and said the council favors a smaller central facility with additional cultural facilities located in the different regions of the county.
"It's too grandiose," Bolstad explained. "We just don't need an attraction 15 miles away that thinks it can compete with things going on across the river. People who live in Mt. Vernon and Lee, they're closer to the Kennedy Center."
"We hope they will consider a regional approach," he added. "I think that Reston and Herndon and all the other fringe areas are going to feel the same way."
Fairfax County Park Authority chairman Fred Crabtree admitted that very few county residents are aware of the proposed center at this point and said he public center at this point and said the public hearing was televised on WNVT-TV in hopes of increasing that awareness. But the day after the hearing, Crabtree said the Park Authority office received no response, "negative or positive."
The Park Authority is inviting comments and testimony, he continued, and then Park Authority members will make their recommendations concerning the center and funding to the Board of Supervisers.
The Washington Sanitarium, a white, gable-roofed landmark close to the District line in Montgomery County, is facing demolition. And with it, say Takoma Park residents who oppose its demise, is going the spirit of cooperation that has existed for 75 years between the city and officials of the Seventh Day Adventist Church's Washington Adventist Hospital, which owns the adjoining and now empty sanitarium.
The residents' five-year-old efforts to prevent the sanitarium's demolition come together beginning today, when hospital lawyers are scheduled to argue for a demolition permit from the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection. The city and county historic commissions, two community organizations, the city government and numerous individuals have contested the permit. The City Council recently declared the entire hospital grounds a historic district, and the hospital sued the county in Circuit Court demanding that it issue the demolition permit immediately. The court is expected to take up the issue next month.
In some ways, the dispute is not unlike others that erupt in urban neighborhoods when history-minded citizens fight to save old buildings. But in other ways, the conflict is unique.
Despite all the bitterness displayed on both sides, there are no obvious good guys or bad guys. The 310-bed, nonprofit hospital has had its accreditation threatened if it doesn't either tear down or restore what accreditation officials call a structurally unsound fire hazard that is now unused. Restoration, hospital officials say, is prohibitively expensive--it would cost more than $5 million.
Yet Takoma Park residents can correctly say that the sanitarium has played a vital role in their history, giving them a common identity and their town a definition. City residents have been born there, and died there.
The hospital and the city grew up together, but in the last decade, they've grown apart. Takoma Park is the headquarters for the church's four million members worldwide; its health organization includes 79 other hospitals internationally, making it the world's largest Protestant hospital system.
But as the church's concerns were expanding beyond the town's two square miles, Takoma Park's 16,000 citizens were growing increasingly concerned about and active in local affairs, and sophisticated in stopping development they didn't want. As it became clear the hospital intended to tear down what the residents considered their most important landmark, they began to feel betrayed by their largest hometown business. Hospital administrators, on the other hand, felt the town was standing in the way of medical progress.
Unless millions of dollars suddenly become available, it is now only a question of when the sanitarium will come down, or how much of it, if any, will remain.
High up on the banks of Sligo Creek, a meandering tributary of the Anacostia River, the Adventists built the sanitarium in 1907 -- a four-story health resort known for its wide sun porches and dormer windows of colored glass.
The town was then 14 years old. Benjamin F. Gilbert, the city's developer and first mayor, stood that summer on the steps of the "San," as it is affectionately called, to welcome the Adventists, who had moved their headquarters there from Battle Creek, Mich. He was delighted they shared his affinity for the pristine realm he had created and named with the Indian word Takoma, meaning "close to heaven," a place where the Adventists believed a Christian environment would flourish.
Congressmen and wealthy Washingtonians traveled out to Takoma Park to recuperate in the restful atmosphere of the sanitarium, spending the days in exercise classes, rowing on an artificial lake, soaking in swirling hydrotherapy tanks, eating meatless meals in a refined dining room. Nobel Prize-winning poet Juan Ramon Jimenez wrote some of his verse there, touched by the calming sunlight and the solace of the woods.
By 1940, hospital officials decided to build a new wing onto the front facing the creek, tear down the lower porches, and convert the sanitarium's back into a new front with a columned entrance.
Ten years later, a whole new building went up, a six-story brick building that marked a departure from the old, both in construction and in the emphasis on the institution's brand of health care. The Washington Adventist Hospital was now in a league of metropolitan hospitals, offering advanced surgery that evolved into radiation therapy and pulmonary medicine.
Hospital administrators had always been able to adapt the building to keep up with stricter safety standards -- adding a sprinkler system, installing doors on previously open stairways. But in 1976, the national Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals and the Maryland state fire marshal adopted newly revised fire codes, and the sanitarium's basic wooden structure was no longer acceptable. Hospital trustees got a temporary accreditation on the promise the sanitarium would be torn down.
In 1977, they won approval from the county board of appeals to tear down the building and move patients into what were then proposed additional levels to be built onto the hospital's new wing. Two residents argued unsuccessfully at the hearing against the demolition.
In 1978, the hospital fought off an effort to have the sanitarium added to the county's register of historic sites, arguing that it could no longer be used for patient care, was too costly to heat, too big for conversion to offices and stood in the way of future construction. The county planning board decided hospital needs outweighed historical value, according to hearing records.
The city government, long run by officials supported by Adventist leaders, had never opposed the hospital's expansion. But by 1978, things were changing: More and more young professionals were moving into Takoma Park, and they were interested in preserving its old-fashioned charm.
In 1980, running on a movement to give citizens more local control, Sammie A. Abbott was elected Takoma Park mayor after a voter turnout more than three times larger than the turnouts of 1976 and earlier. To Abbott and others, the sanitarium became a symbol of the power struggle between the old guard and the new.
Last year, the hospital asked the city to sponsor $4 million in municipal bonds needed to finish building the two new floors. The mayor and City Council used the opportunity to get a promise in writing from Herbert Z. Shiroma, the hospital president, that, "at present the hospital has no plan to either abandon or demolish the sanitarium building."
Historic Takoma, a local preservation group, hired an architect for $1,300 and presented the hospital trustees with a plan that would save the sanitarium's columned facade, leaving room to build doctors' offices in a separate building behind it. But the board didn't approve. The site where the sanitarium stands is the only place on the hospital's 16 acres where a future patient-care building could join the 1950 and 1972 wings.
Last fall, the hospital accreditation commission informed Washington Adventist Hospital it would not be accredited in 1982 unless the sanitarium was either torn down or restored. In February, the trustees voted to proceed with the demolition.
"I felt they were making a mistake," said Ronald J. Wylie, a former trustee now gathering signatures to save the sanitarium. "I felt they weren't taking into consideration the affection and support this community has given the hospital."
Eight-year trustee Dr. Naor Stoehr said outsiders don't understand what a difficult choice he and the other trustees had to make. "As a doctor involved emotionally, denominationally and professionally, I had to anguish that there was no way to save it, that we had to give it up. Then to have [the citizens criticize] us -- I feel betrayed."
City officials and residents were alarmed when the hospital went to the town of Riverdale seeking $24 million worth of municipal bonds. Sponsoring bonds was Takoma Park's only bargaining tool over the tax-exempt hospital.
Hospital Vice President Gerald M. Northam said at the time that the hospital was only seeking to refinance a debt that was coming due, and didn't want Takoma Park to attach conditions to it. He said the financing contained nothing the city contested.
But when the bonds were issued, it became clear that some of the money was to go toward the sanitarium's demolition. Northam said he considered that part of the refinancing. Another thing upset residents: The hospital had agreed to transfer $17,000 to Riverdale through its sister hospital, Leland Memorial in Riverdale, according to Charley Eldridge, former president of Washington Adventist Hospital and now administrator at Leland Memorial.
As it stands, the sanitarium's fate will be decided somewhere in a battery of hearings. Following today's hearing, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission will hold a hearing tomorrow to decide whether it should recommend that the sanitarium be placed on the county's master plan of historic places. That designation wouldn't keep hospital officials from tearing the sanitarium down, commission officials say, but would slow the process by requiring more hearings concerning alternatives to demolition.
If there is to be healing, city leaders say the hospital must adhere to the way Takoma Park residents expect things to be done. They believe the hospital should have been more candid from the beginning.
"This dispute goes beyond four columns and a pediment," said Mayor Abbott. "It's a question of frankness, or lack thereof."
Retired spaceflight engineer and team bring back to life a 3-decade-old spacecraft - The Washington Post
In 1978, Robert Farquhar helped launch NASA’s International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 spacecraft from Florida’s Space Coast into orbit. ISEE-3’s goal was to measure charged particles flowing from the sun.
Instead, it became the first satellite to “park” in a place where two bodies’ gravitational fields balanced, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The spacecraft was renamed ICE and earned fame when it made contact with a comet in 1985, passing through the tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.
Some three decades later, Farquhar, the now 82-year-old spaceflight engineer, along with a team of so-called “citizen scientists,” is picking up where he left off by bringing back to life a spacecraft that has been dormant its graveyard orbit since 1997 when NASA ended its mission.
On July 2, the Cold War-era satellite fired its first thrusts since 1987, according to team members of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project.
Though made up largely of former NASA employees, ISEE-3 Reboot Project’s private group also has some younger space-lovers on board.
“Some of our team members were not even born yet the last time the engines fired,” the team said via Twitter.
In May, NASA gave the team permission to attempt to put the spacecraft back into service for its own research purposes.
The team only needed money. So two of Farquhar’s associates, Cowing, a former NASA astrobiologist, and Dennis Wingo, chief executive of the small space engineering firm Skycorp, proposed a crowdfunding campaign. The group has raised nearly $160,000 so far through donations.
“Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 spacecraft, command it to fire its engines and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission,” Keith Cowing, who runs the NASA Watch Web site, wrote in a project status report in May. “If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet.”
If the effort is unsuccessful, the spacecraft will slide by the moon and continue to circle the sun, according to Reuters.
One of them to ignite interest among the general population about space exploration and research at a time when the costs of launching objects into orbit around earth have fallen sharply. … Another is to show how modern tools, such as software-defined radios (in which a radio’s capabilities are defined in computer software rather than in a specific piece of hardware), can be used in powerful ways that formerly required a massive capital infrastructure. These days, miracles can be accomplished with a small bit of radio hardware and a laptop. And the reboot will generate new scientific research. The first science data in 29 years was received days ago from the craft’s magnetometer. (At 44 years old, the magnetometer is even more ancient than the rest of the craft: it is a prototype built for the Pioneer missions several years earlier.)
The group is now gathering data from the spacecraft in preparation for its next contact with the Deep Space Network, a collection of NASA dishes the team is renting to get precise information on ISEE-3’s location, Space.com reported. The next step will be to change the spacecraft’s trajectory, which could happen early this week, according to reports.
Trajectory efforts will be led by Farquhar and his team at KinetX, according to Rockethub.com. The team is also working in collaboration with the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center and the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute at NASA Ames Research Center.
“New data resulting from the project will be shared with the science community and the public, providing a unique tool for teaching students and the public about spacecraft operations and data-gathering,” according to NASA’s press release.
MINNEAPOLIS College basketball coaches use one word when they want to cut through the overanalysis of big games:
It all comes back to talent, coaches say, rejecting theories about team chemistry, offensive schemes, trick defenses, pressure, adversity, history and destiny.
Tonight, in the national title game at the Metrodome, with Arizona (28-7) facing Duke (34-4) in a meeting of the nation's preseason Nos. 1 and 2 teams, one would be well-served to trot out the old "talent" mantra and look at two players.
"You like your odds going in with those two guys," Blue Devils sophomore Mike Dunleavy said yesterday at the Metrodome.
Indeed, it's difficult to attribute much significance to any of the popular story lines with the nation's two best players wearing Duke blue. Maryland learned Saturday that even a blistering start and a 22-point lead can fade into a loss when countered by the leadership, scoring and pressure playmaking of Battier and Williams.
In Battier, the Blue Devils have a 6-foot-8 senior of high intelligence, varied skills and relentless effort, one who, as Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "throws himself completely into it, gives a consistently high level of performance and makes people around him do the same."
In Saturday's 95-84 semifinal win over Maryland, Battier scored a game-high 25 points, marking the seventh straight time he has put up at least 20 in the NCAA tournament. Battier shoots 42.3 percent from 3-point range, hits 80.5 percent free throws, grabs 7.2 rebounds, leads Duke with 86 blocks and 82 steals and scores an even 20 points a game.
"I remember when I saw him in high school, there was no comparison between him and anyone else you wanted to mention that year," Arizona coach Lute Olson said. "And the great thing with Shane is that he's gotten better every year… . It's a case where he has really worked hard to continue to be the best player.
"He creates so many problems. He shoots the 3, he sets great screens for his teammates, he gets to the boards, he blocks shots. There really isn't anything he doesn't do… . I really don't know who could create more problems for you than he creates."
The 6-2 sophomore is clearly NBA-bound and NBA-ready able to beat any college defender off the dribble and nail 3-pointers (43.6 percent) from well beyond the pro arc. Williams leads the Blue Devils in scoring (21.7 points) and is their top one-on-one option when the set offense breaks down.
Olson calls Duke's 3-point shooting 38.6 percent on an astonishing 1,030 attempts his biggest fear tonight, and the coach places Williams clearly at the front of that attack.
"The biggest thing is you have to defend them well beyond the 3-point line," Olson said. "It's like, 'He's not going to shoot it from there.' Yes, he will shoot it from there. What is Jason Williams' range? I don't know. Across halfcourt and inbounds is what Mike tells him."
Countering Duke's bare-knuckled one-two punch is the underrated defense of Arizona, which has won 20 of its past 22 games and decimated Michigan State 80-61 in Saturday's semifinal. Thanks to a midseason defensive renaissance, the Wildcats have held 14 of their past 22 opponents below 40 percent shooting. On Saturday, Arizona's 12 steals and switching of zone and man-to-man defenses undid the defending national champions.
Both teams are keeping matchups quiet. It's expected that Wildcats forward Richard Jefferson, the athletic stopper, will guard either Williams or Battier, but it is unclear who will spot the other critical position. It appears unlikely Arizona will experiment much with zone defense, considering Duke's ability to reverse the ball and hit jump shots.
"We haven't played that much zone since the Tipoff Classic against North Carolina in December 1996," Wildcats assistant Jim Rosborough said. "Since then we've used it off and on, but never like [Saturday]. We'll give it a look early [against Duke] and see. But Duke spreads you out and can shoot."
The Wildcats appear to have advantages with 7-foot-1 center Loren Woods blocking shots and all five starters averaging double-figure scoring. And the team certainly bears a unique sense of destiny with its season dedicated to Bobbi Olson, Lute's late wife who died of ovarian cancer Jan. 1.
But Duke, at day's end, has two virtually unstoppable players in Battier and Williams. About the only person who believes that the pair won't be a key tonight is Battier himself, who points to his other trip to the title game, a loss to Connecticut in 1999.
"I beg to differ," Battier said. "I think it comes down to someone else stepping up. If you look at two years ago, everyone was worried about [UConn guards] Khalid El-Amin and Richard Hamilton. The one who hurt us was Ricky Moore. I think often when you get to this game, the ones who are expected to do the most often aren't the difference-makers."
George W. Bush is in the Oval Office, but is he in control of government? Of the 487 presidential appointees necessary for a Bush administration to function, President Bush has 32 confirmed. Consequently, the president of the United States is being swept along by events, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developments takeover of world tax policy and obliteration of financial privacy.
The Treasury Department has a staff that liaisons with the OECD. Treasury bureaucrats, protective of their fine times in Paris, are most obliging to their OECD counterparts. With no one to ride herd on civil servants, bureaucratic agendas prevail. President Bush is behind schedule on appointments partly because Al Gore contested the Florida vote, but other factors increasingly make appointments a drawn-out process. Background investigations of potential nominees have become more detailed and invasive.
Within living memory the presumption was that anyone nominated by a president was upright. But appointees grew in number with the size of the federal government, and today a president can no longer vouch for all of his appointees. Background checks became necessary to guard against agents of Soviet influence. Today the investigations screen for politically incorrect speeches and newspaper columns and for insensitive jokes. The last thing a Republican president wants is nominees whom the liberal media and Senate Democrats can paint "racist, sexist, extremist" and defeat.
In fact, it is worse than that. Anyone who believes in tax cuts, national defense, limited government, the traditional family, and other core values of the Republican constituency can find themselves too controversial to survive the process of vetting.
When liberals lose elections, they minimize the damage to their policy positions by defining permissible policy changes and protesting aggressive appointees. Ronald Reagan was an anomaly. A revolutionary president determined to bring down the Soviet Empire and high taxes, Mr. Reagan appointed just enough strong principled people to get the jobs done.
In contrast, Mr. Bush is focusing on the race and gender composition of his appointees. According to the Wall Street Journal, 45 percent of his nominee list is female and minority.
Most people who serve in government seek appointment for reasons inconsistent with serving a presidents policy agenda, assuming he has one. The jobs are valuable for making contacts and appeasing interests that boost ones career and income afterward. Appointees of this ilk want to stay out of controversies, not get out front with a new or controversial policy.
Thus, even when Mr. Bush has staffed his administration, he may still be swept along by other agendas.
After the Clinton experience, most Republicans will be satisfied by Mr. Bushs different demeanor. The absence of White House scandals might substitute for policy. Just by being there, Mr. Bush will be perceived as making a big difference even if he achieves few substantive goals.
In such an atmosphere, avoiding controversy can become the indicator of success. But is freedom advanced by an administration well-honed to avoid heat? At the beginning of the 21st century, government in the United States. is far more invasive than it was at the middle of the 20th century. Privacy outside the bedroom has essentially disappeared. The family is no longer sacrosanct. The sphere of parental influence and authority has been greatly reduced. Every locality has government officers eager to reinterpret discipline as abuse and to regulate the family function of raising children. The ease of divorce means that marriage, once a source of strength, dissolves under the slightest stress.
Freedom requires strong and independent people. Ever since the New Deal, the weight of government has been against such a people. We must reverse this course before we forget what it means to be strong and independent.
The Democrats are not going to change their agenda. If Republicans are to make a difference, they must pursue goals that will attract strong appointees who will sacrifice career for principle.
Somewhat like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, the Foreign Service men and women who staff America’s embassies and consulates around the world these days feel underappreciated and in need of a little more respect.
That may help to account for the tremendous cooperation we received when we set out at The Washington Times to tell their story like no daily newspaper has ever told it before.
State Department reporter Nicholas Kralev spent the better part of the past six months working on the project, which will appear as an occasional series of articles beginning very soon — hopefully tomorrow, depending on the flow of daily news.
During that time, Mr. Kralev has conducted interviews with five past and present secretaries of state and almost 300 other diplomats, both in Washington and at some 30 U.S. missions on five continents.
Seeking the broadest possible understanding of how our diplomats live and work, he has visited both the prestige capitals of Europe and Third World hardship posts such as Maputo, Mozambique.
The project was made possible in part through a generous grant from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation, a Washington-based organization dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the U.S. diplomatic service.
We made clear from the beginning that we had no agenda other than to put the Foreign Service under a microscope and to report what we found.
For Mr. Kralev, the interest in undertaking the project grew out of his travels around the world with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the sometimes momentary glimpses into the lives of the permanent overseas staff that those visits provided.
“I realized that most people in this country don’t know what the Foreign Service is and what it does,” Mr. Kralev says. “Even in Washington, there are many misperceptions about the Foreign Service and what diplomats do — outdated notions left over from 1930s images of white men in striped pants.”
The State Department was extremely helpful on the project, providing access to top officials who usually do not speak to the press.
Spokesman Richard Boucher sent a cable to the missions on Mr. Kralev’s schedule urging them to cooperate. The press officer at every post had already lined up a series of interviews by the time he arrived. Any requests for additional interviews were quickly honored.
Not everything that Mr. Kralev heard, however, can be reported. In some cases, diplomats provided off-the-record details of sensitive ongoing negotiations that could compromise American interests if published.
At every mission he visited, Mr. Kralev reports, the staff were thrilled that someone was interested in telling their stories. Over and over he heard people say that, while the U.S. military gets a great deal of much-deserved respect for the courageous work it does around the world, few realize that from the Vietnam War until the recent Iraq war, the Foreign Service suffered more casualties in the line of duty on an annual basis.
The diplomats “really feel that they don’t have a constituency in Washington and that people don’t appreciate the sacrifices they make for their country just by going to work every day in a building that could be blown up at any time,” Mr. Kralev says.
Their sacrifices will be one of the themes running through Mr. Kralev’s articles, which will be appearing on Mondays over the coming weeks, either on the front page or the Global Issues briefing page.
But Mr. Kralev will also take a hard-headed look at U.S. diplomacy, and the service’s critics will be heard from as well.
This is the kind of project that might not be possible to do for a newspaper in any other capital but Washington, which boasts the greatest concentration of U.S. and foreign diplomats anywhere in the world. It’s all part of the fun of being a newspaperman in this city.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A Pulitzer Prize winning composer who is also an environmental activist is coming to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as part of the school’s Earth Day celebration.
On Monday, Adams will spend the afternoon working with music students. In the evening, he will deliver a lecture about how his compositions relate to his environmental activism. Both the rehearsal and lecture are free and open to the public.
The visit will be followed by a Tuesday performance of Adams‘ “Inuksuit” for nine to 99 percussionists. The performance by the UT Percussion Ensemble and guests takes place at Ijams Nature Center. Admission is $20 per car and $10 per bike.
The Fitzpatrick Hotel is a fully restored, historic hotel located on the Square in lovely, downtown Washington, Georgia, The Fitzpatrick Hotel features 17 finely appointed guest rooms that allow… read more
The Fitzpatrick Hotel is a fully restored, historic hotel located on the Square in lovely, downtown Washington, Georgia, The Fitzpatrick Hotel features 17 finely appointed guest rooms that allow guests to experience luxurious accommodations reminiscent of another era, while providing all the modern amenities guests have come to expect. The Fitzpatrick Hotel was originally constructed in 1898 and served the thriving county seat of Wilkes County until 1952, at which time the hotel and dining room were closed. After 50 years of neglect, the hotel was purchased in 2002 and an intensive restoration plan culminated with the re-opening of the grand hotel in June 2004. Inside and out, today the Fitzpatrick looks much like it did when it opened in all its grandeur at the turn of the last century. We would love for you to be our guest at the Fitzpatrick.