Disney Taps Into Blu-ray’s Interactive Technology

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company , along with the broader entertainment industry, is counting on “Sleeping Beauty” to help awaken interest in Blu-ray DVDs. In October, the company will release a 50th anniversary edition of the classic animated movie in the high-definition Blu-ray format. But Disney is not stopping there. “Sleeping Beauty” will also come with unusual features geared toward a generation of viewers that embraces interactivity and social networking. Viewers can watch the movie in tandem with friends in other locations and chat using a laptop, P.D.A. or cellphone. (Comments appear on the screen.) Parents who are not able to watch the film with their children can record a video message that will pop up during a designated scene as the child watches. Viewers will also be able to compete against others around the world at trivia. All of these activities are possible because of a technology that connects Blu-ray discs with the Internet, which the entertainment industry is calling BD Live. Disney and other studios, including Lionsgate and Sony , believe that BD Live could be Blu-ray’s killer app, potentially altering the tepid response that consumers have given Blu-ray to date. “Our research shows that so many people watch TV with their laptop nearby,” said Lori MacPherson, senior vice president and general manager for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment North America. “Online gaming and texting are already popular. The question is, how do we harness this?” Hardware is a giant hurdle. First-generation Blu-ray players are not compatible with BD Live and cannot be upgraded. Although Sony’s PlayStation 3 can use the technology, there is currently only one BD Live Blu-ray machine — Panasonic’s DMP-BD50K model — and it costs about $800. Several new BD Live-enabled machines will arrive in stores by fall, but they will still be out of reach for many. The new Blu-ray players will sell for as little as $400. There is also the problem of acquainting consumers with a technology that sounds daunting. In reality it is fairly simple to use, but Disney plans advertising and demonstrations in stores and elsewhere to help introduce it to the public. “We need to demystify this technology for the mass market,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s home entertainment unit. The lack of compatible hardware has not stopped the studios from incorporating BD Live features. They assume the market will catch up. Lionsgate released BD Live titles in January 2007. With “Saw IV” and “War,” viewers can exchange messages with other fans and see the conversation as the movie is playing. Text chat, which Lionsgate calls MoLog, for “movie log,” is also available in the recent release of “Rambo.” The company said it would add BD Live features to selected titles in the future. Sony currently has eight BD Live movies, including “Men in Black” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” By the end of August, an additional eight movies will be available, including “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and three “Starship Troopers” titles. Viewers of “Walk Hard” can download three featurettes. “Men in Black” offers a multiplayer game, and viewers can upload a still image of themselves into two of the three “Starship” movies, which will then be incorporated into a series of stills from the movies. Consumers will also be able to download new trailers appropriate to the rating of the movie they are watching. Lexine Wong, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s senior executive vice president for worldwide marketing, is pitching Blu-ray with BD Live as “packaged media that feels new and exciting.” “BD-Live lets us have a direct relationship with the consumer, which we could never have with packaged media,” she said. Making DVDs exciting is a trick movie studios are desperate to pull off. After years of blistering growth, domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year to $15.9 billion, according to Adams Media Research, the first annual drop in the medium’s history. While DVDs are still a big business, any decline is cause for concern because DVD sales can account for as much as 70 percent of revenue for a new film. Results for 2008 have been mixed, with overall sales flat. Sales for the DVD version of the box office hit “I Am Legend,” for example, were notably soft. Blu-ray discs, which sell at a sharp premium to standard DVDs, are growing quickly but still occupy a tiny bit of the market. The industry estimate for sales of Blu-ray discs in 2008 is nearly $1 billion, up from $170 million last year. The BD Live-enhanced Blu-ray discs cost even more. The “Sleeping Beauty” Blu-ray set will carry a suggested retail price of $40. Another barrier, according to consumer surveys, is the opinion of many people that they do not need to upgrade to high-definition DVDs with futuristic-sounding side offerings; standard DVDs are good enough. Mr. Chapek of Disney brushes aside that skepticism. “Henry Ford said, ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said “a faster horse,” ’ ” Mr. Chapek said. “We don’t rely on the consumer to have our vision for us.” Although “Sleeping Beauty” is Disney’s first BD Live-enhanced Blu-ray release, all of the company’s future Blu-ray titles will include BD Live features. Mr. Chapek says he sees BD Live as Blu-ray’s breakthrough moment. “The idea of my little girl being able to experience a movie and chat in real time with her grandparents across the country is very exciting to me,” Mr. Chapek said at a recent BD Live demonstration in Los Angeles. “I can’t help but think it will be exciting to a lot of consumers, too.”

DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)
Disney Walt Co
SONY Corporation
Entertainment and Amusements
Motion Pictures
Animated Films
Computer and Video Games
Computers and the Internet


Schools Throughout the Region Are Giving Hands-On Lessons in Gardening

Abstract: Princeton, N.J. ASK Maddie Deutsch, a fourth grader at Riverside Elementary School here, what she likes best about her school’s herb garden, and her answer is one rarely heard spoken by a 9-year-old: “I like to eat the pineapple sage. It tastes cool. The lemon sorrel is good, too.” Welcome to the Princeton School Gardens program. Here, children regularly work in one of the district’s 15 gardens during school hours, preparing garden beds, planting herbs and vegetables and harvesting them when they are ripe. The students eat raspberries from their own raspberry plants, sample cherry tomatoes off the vine and take bok choy, kale and cabbage home to cook and eat. “We made sure that everything in our herb garden was edible, and when the children go out there, you can see them eating fistfuls of flowers and plants — they’re just munching them right on the spot,” said Dorothy Mullen, a parent who was the driving force behind the school gardens project in Princeton, which started seven years ago. From Scarsdale, N.Y., to Bloomfield, Conn., to Lawrenceville, N.J., students are getting hands-on lessons in how to plant vegetables, compost and prune. The garden is a year-round commitment, and it is being used to teach subjects like math, science and language arts. Home gardeners may be cleaning up their beds and putting away their tools for next year. For schools interested in creating a garden program, now is just as busy as in the spring. It is the time to start planning a new garden. It can take months to obtain money, like grants, or to get permission to start a garden from a school district or principal. At some schools, the work is just beginning for students who are growing plants from seeds indoors. “You can teach almost any school subject through a garden,” said Marc Bouvier, executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey. “And a garden is also a wonderful vehicle for kids who don’t do well in traditional classroom settings. For kids who are disengaged in school, we often find that gardens are a place where they thrive.” The benefits don’t stop there, said Mr. Bouvier. Working in school gardens encourages kids to be physically active and it gets them out in nature. And children who grow their own vegetables are more inclined to eat them. “On every level, it’s such a win-win situation,” he said. “People come out of school gardens feeling very empowered. It really engages people and builds confidence for kids and parents.” In Princeton, Ms. Mullen and other members of the Princeton School Garden Cooperative wanted to make it easy for their teachers to use the gardens in their classes, so they put together sample lesson plans for various subjects. For instance, in math, children can learn how to measure the rows in a garden, determine the perimeter of the bed and chart the growth of plants. The cooperative has made all the lesson plans available free at www.prs.k12.nj.us/GardenCoop /, its Web site. THE district now has gardens in every school, including the middle school and high school. Other schools frequently visit to learn how to put together their own garden programs, and Ms. Mullen offers free workshops on the subject, including how to write grants and tap into local businesses to fund garden projects. In Scarsdale, a school garden program being run by a nonprofit group takes all the vegetables grown in the gardens during the summer and donates them to the local food bank. Last summer, more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables, including tomatoes, eggplant and broccoli, were donated; organizers hope to triple that number next summer. “It’s exciting to see kids in Scarsdale — which has one of the best school districts in the country — using nature to give back to the community,” said the aptly named Russell Greenleaf, owner of Greenleaf Gardens, which runs Scarsdale’s four-year-old garden program. Scarsdale students also host harvest festivals twice a year, using their gardens’ vegetables to make dishes like potato leek soup or eggplant parmigiana, which they eat along with their parents and teachers. Many of the vegetables are also used in the school cafeterias. And Mr. Greenleaf is planning to plant several apple trees at the schools. One of the elementary schools is built on land that was once an apple orchard, so he found the variety of apples that once grew there. In a few years, he hopes that students will be able to eat apples from their own trees. It’s the understanding of where the food they eat comes from that many school garden advocates point to as one of the most important advantages of these programs for children. In Bloomfield, Conn., the high school students work in the school garden in their botany classes, then cook the food that they grow in their culinary arts classes. Much of that food, like winter kale picked last week, is then served in the school cafeteria. “I don’t think these kids were really aware of where their food came from before,” said Joseph Rodrigues, who teaches botany and environmental science at the high school. “But once they get their hands into the soil and see the fruits of their labor, and then they prepare something, I think it really gets them to change their mind about their food choices. It’s so much better to have them involved in the process rather than just talking to them about it.”

Education and Schools
Children and Youth
Gardens and Gardening


Red Bulls Beat Fire

Abstract: Sacha Kljestan broke a tie on a penalty kick in the 71st minute, and the host Red Bulls beat the Chicago Fire, 3-2, to move into first place in the Eastern Conference.

Soccer
Chicago Fire Soccer Team
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team


Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women

Abstract: BAQUBA, Iraq — Wenza Ali Mutlaq walked a bit uncertainly up the long street near the main government offices here on June 22, the hot wind stirring her heavy black abaya. She passed the concrete barricades put up to ward off suicide car bombers and made her way alone, almost haphazardly. Suddenly, a police car zoomed in. A policeman got out to talk with her. And then their lives were over — torn apart, along with 14 other people, by the huge blast of fire from her concealed explosive vest. Ms. Mutlaq, who was in her 30s and whose attack was captured on a security video, was the 18th female suicide bomber of the war to strike in Diyala Province, which has been hit by female attackers much more frequently than any other province of Iraq, according to Iraqi police records and the American military. So far, 11 of the 20 suicide bombings carried out by women in Iraq this year have occurred in Diyala. Why so many women? Why now? In a particularly painful twist, the phenomenon seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia , a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners. The women who become suicide bombers often have lost close male relatives — a husband, a brother, a son — in fighting, because they became suicide bombers themselves or because they were detained by American or Iraqi security forces. Ms. Mutlaq was no exception: her older brother had already taken the same path, detonating a suicide vest on June 10 during a shootout with Iraqi government forces. “If there’s one single trend that I see, it’s the women’s relationship with the male figures that were members of A.Q.I. and were captured or killed,” said a senior military analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing information that had not been released publicly. The subordinate role of women in conservative, rural Sunni families in Diyala makes them particularly vulnerable to pressure, said Sajar Qaduri, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council and the only woman on its security committee. “Although she is bombing herself and aiming to kill people, I feel these women are really victims of terrorism,” said Mrs. Qaduri, who is a Shiite and whose husband was kidnapped two years ago and has not been heard from since. “Only women in despair, in desperate situations, would do this. Dealing with such a phenomenon is not easy.” She added: “Our Oriental society is not like your Western society. It seems in many of these cases the women have had their husband killed or sent to prison and she feels she has no choice, she is very depressed.” Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total, according to the United States military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, suicide attacks by women did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq. All but one of the female bombers have been Iraqis and most are young, between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the police and American military analysts. Almost all the attacks have been attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Diyala has been a stronghold for the group since it was chased from Anbar Province in the west in 2004. The province’s attraction was clear: it offers easy hiding places in its palm groves and orchards, and a Sunni-majority population that includes many people who supported Saddam Hussein and are sympathetic to the insurgency. But in the past year, American and Iraqi forces have had much greater success in killing and detaining the group’s members in the province, as well as thwarting many of its bigger attack plots. The rise in female suicide bombings has directly coincided with the timing, and the locations, of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s biggest loss of manpower in Diyala, Baghdad and Anbar. “Al Qaeda is always innovating: finding new ways to work,” said Ghanem al-Khoreishi, the police chief of Diyala. “When we destroyed them in fighting, they started to use new methods. And because they knew that women are treated more gently than men, they began to use them. “The people don’t search them so well even at checkpoints.” Interviews with police officers and politicians, American military analysts and Iraqi women yield different views of the phenomenon. But many agree that the province’s traditional, conservative and still largely rural society is a factor. In Diyala’s countryside, most women cannot imagine the world beyond the date palms they see on the horizon. It might be an hourlong walk to the next village, there are no telephones, and cellphones often do not work. Most of the women cannot read. “Most of the women who have killed themselves are from the villages,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie, the head of the Iraqi Army operations center in Diyala. “She is living a very traditional life. She has no rights.” “For that reason,” he added, “her ideas are very small.” During Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s big push to take over Diyala villages, starting in late 2004, many families yielded to the extremists to protect themselves. Wide networks of villages that support Al Qaeda were created when subtribes, and sometimes even whole tribes, embraced the movement. “In these families, they are terrorists: the conversations at dinner are about suicide bombs, about explosives, about improvised explosive devices,” said Col. Ali Ismari Fateh, a police commander who has been involved in hundreds of interrogations of people suspected of being insurgents. Mrs. Qaduri, the provincial council member, said she believed that an element of sexual abuse may be involved as well. Many families marry their daughters off to local Qaeda leaders, known as emirs, at age 14 or 15. In some cases the girls are forced into marriage contracts in which they are married to a local emir, but if he dies or is captured, they are obligated to marry his successor and if he is captured or killed, that one’s successor. At the same time, Diyala residents and officials say, militants from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago, they began holding religion classes for men and women. “Even in Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who also serves on Diyala’s provincial council. “They gathered people in the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lectures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had a long beard and a sword with him.” Insurgent recruiters and religion instructors add promises to the threats, too, assuring people that they will go to paradise if they die fighting for Islam — a sometimes alluring dream for many in their largely poor, uneducated audience, said police officials and politicians in Diyala. In some cases, it may not just be a matter of co-opting or persuading vulnerable women. In one case in April recounted by Police Chief Khoreishi, a woman came to the station asking for protection; she was being forced to become a suicide bomber and trained to use an explosive belt by two members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, one of them a close relative. The police now have her in protective custody, and two people suspected of being group members are in detention. Iraqi police officials also say that a few of the bombings involved women wearing vests that were exploded by remote control, though it is unclear exactly how many because explosions usually destroy telltale design details about the detonators. “There are two ways a suicide vest can work: there is a button they can push themselves and there is a remote control detonation,” Colonel Fateh said. “They follow her and if they think she is afraid to do it, then they will do it for her.” Mrs. Qaduri believes that knowing the basic profile of the women who tend to become suicide bombers can inform policing: if a woman has a male family member who kills himself or is killed in the name of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or one of its sister organizations, it should be a warning sign that she or other close female relatives are at risk of becoming bombers. Her dream is to start an intervention program that would take the women out of their homes and put them in shelters where they could not harm themselves or anyone else. “We can predict that such a woman is ready to be used as a suicide bomber,” she said. “But at the same time, we don’t have any concrete proof that we can use to detain these women.” Ms. Mutlaq’s life and death track the profile described by Mrs. Qaduri and others. A native of the rural area south of Buhriz in southern Diyala, about 40 minutes northeast of Baghdad, she grew up in a landscape of date palms and orange orchards fed by irrigation canals. Her tribe aligned itself early on with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and her brother and husband became influential emirs, officials said. Buhriz was one of the most violent areas of Diyala in 2005 and 2006, with periods when there were nearly weekly bombings. Last June, her husband was killed while fighting in Baquba, the province’s capital, around the time that the American offensive in the city began, according to Baquba police officials. Almost exactly a year after that, her brother detonated his suicide vest during fighting with government forces. Twelve days later, she walked alone past the barricades.

Iraq
Women
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia
Terrorism
Rural Areas
Bombs and Explosives
Families and Family Life
United States Armament and Defense


Thailand: Police Push Back, Briefly

Abstract: The police managed to clear antigovernment protesters from a major boulevard in the Thai capital for a short time on Friday as the authorities try to reclaim areas that have been closed during a three-month push to unseat Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. In the first major pushback against the demonstrators, hundreds of police officers met no resistance as they dismantled a sprawling protest camp in Bangkok near the prime minister’s office compound. The police moved in as the total number of full-time protesters dwindled sharply to about 5,000 from more than 150,000 late last year, according to police estimates. The police later withdrew, allowing demonstrators to occupy the street again. By evening, tents were re-erected in the area. The police also retreated from another protest site after hundreds of demonstrators refused to leave.


Crane Repairing Cathedral Topples

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A 500-ton crane erected to allow workers to repair the earthquake-damaged National Cathedral toppled over on Wednesday, injuring the operator and damaging two nearby buildings and several cars. The cathedral’s communication director, Richard Weinberg, said it was not known if the cathedral, which has been closed since the 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck on Aug. 23, could reopen in time for Sept. 11 memorial events scheduled to begin Friday and to include a televised concert and remarks by President Obama on Sunday night. The accident occurred as the operator was lowering the crane after spotting lightning as he was loading steel onto a cathedral tower, Mr. Weinberg said. The crane flipped over, damaging the gift shop and grazing another building that houses the diocesan staff. No one inside was injured. The cause of the collapse is under investigation. A spokesman for the city’s Fire and E.M.S. Department said it was unclear whether the thunderstorms that pelted the city Wednesday were a factor.

Earthquakes
Derricks and Cranes
Accidents and Safety
National Cathedral (Washington DC)


Kamais and Yamauchi Are Winners at New York Half-Marathon

Abstract: On a distinctly perfect day for running, the expectations were as cloudless as the spring sky. Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, the world’s most decorated distance runner, took his place on the starting line in Central Park for the NYC Half-Marathon on Sunday morning. He had never lost on American soil, and his competitors seemed to be angling for second place. Deena Kastor, the top American distance runner, was ready to set a brisk pace in the 54-degree air — a delightful contrast to the previous four sweltering NYC Half-Marathons held in the summer. But running rarely follows the obvious path. On this sparkling Sunday — enjoyed by a record 11,494 finishers — three elite athletes surprised even themselves to emerge from the shadows of the sport’s pillars. Gebrselassie was in first place just past Mile Marker 8 when he shockingly pulled off to the side of Seventh Avenue near 53rd Street, struggling to breathe through his asthma and a head cold. Kenya’s unheralded Peter Kamais, just a step behind Gebrselassie, passed him on his way to an uncontested victory in 59 minutes 53 seconds . “I was not expecting to win,” Kamais said with a grin. Gebrselassie said he was disappointed. “I don’t know how to solve this problem,” he said about the asthma, which he has had for eight years. Kastor charged into the lead from the beginning and established the pace for a women’s course record. But the veteran Mara Yamauchi of Britain broke it. She passed a fading Kastor at the 11 ½-mile mark on the West Side Highway, storming to first place in 1:09:25, 18 seconds faster than the 2006 record set by Catherine Ndereba. Kastor was second, in 1:09:43. “After the first mile, I was thinking this was going to be a rubbish race,” Yamauchi said, laughing, at the finish line at Chambers Street. So much for expectations. When Kastor started slowing from her 5:09 pace after the race exited the park around Mile 8, “I suddenly woke up, and thought, maybe she did go out too fast,” Yamauchi said. By the time Kastor ran by Chelsea Piers with less than two miles to go, she heard a telltale sound growing louder. “The little pitter-patter of her steps were different than the long loping strides of the men passing me,” Kastor said of Yamauchi. Yamauchi had the benefit of hearing steps behind her most of the race, too — from Madaí Pérez of Mexico, who finished third, in 1:09:45, just 10 months after giving birth to her second child. Kastor, 37, and Yamauchi, 36, spent the worst part of 2009 dealing with foot injuries but appear to be peaking at the right time. In five weeks, they will race the London Marathon, where Kastor won in 2006 and Yamauchi finished second last year. Kamais, 33, won his first half-marathon Sunday, finding his distance legs after success on the track and road races. After the 6.2-mile loop in Central Park, “I knew I could win,” he said. He will take home his $20,000 winner’s check to his four children at home in Eldoret, in Kenya’s Rift Valley. His countryman Moses Kigen Kipkosgei outsprinted Mohamed Trafeh of the United States for second place, crossing the line in 1:00:38. Trafeh was six-hundredths of a second behind. Trafeh, 24, who went to Duarte, Calif., from his native Morocco when he was 14 and became a naturalized United States citizen two years ago, had a promising cross-country career in high school. He left the University of Arizona after two years and is for now his own coach and agent. But the last week may change that. He won the 15-kilometer championship last Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla., to gain entry into New York’s race — his half-marathon debut. Trafeh was able to stay with the leaders’ pace of 4:43 in Central Park and acknowledged that he was a little happy to see Gebrselassie pull off the course. Gebrselassie tried to run again — “to get some oxygen,” he said — and re-entered the race in fifth place. But he went to the medical tent in Mile 9. The dust bothered his asthma as it did in the 2007 London Marathon , when Gebrselassie pulled out after 18 miles. Gebrselassie still owns the NYC Half-Marathon course record (59:24), which he set in 2007, and the world marathon record (2:03:59), set at the Berlin Marathon in 2008. “I respect Haile very much,” Trafeh said. “Anybody can win, anybody can have a bad race. We’re not machines; we can’t do our top all the time.”

Running
Marathon Running
Gebrselassie Haile
New York City
Yamauchi Mara


Plan to Separate Food Waste Will Expand

Abstract: Within the next year, New York is preparing to roll out an ambitious plan to get residents and businesses to separate their food waste from other trash — initially on a voluntary basis — as they do their paper, metal, glass and plastics. But already, more than 180 cities and local governments in 18 states offer curbside pickup of food scraps. Now, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Monday the expansion of the city’s pilot program for food waste recycling, those communities may offer lessons to New York as it tries to catch up. Some cities charge for collecting trash but pick up food scraps and recyclables for free. Some require that residents separate their food waste for composting, others hold contests and develop ad campaigns to encourage voluntary participation. And the most determined municipalities are moving toward less frequent garbage collection as they steer residents away from the conventional black trash bin, according to a recent survey by BioCycle , a magazine that promotes recycling. In many places, apartment buildings have proved the biggest challenge, recycling officials said. Many residents refuse to come all the way down to a garage or basement to dump their scraps, so space for bins must be found at least on some floors. Buildings must also devote staff to removing the waste every day, or at least keep it out of sight, to avoid putting off the squeamish. “Once it was easy, and they realized that we were picking it up every day so it didn’t get disgusting, it’s become very successful,” said Linda Corso, general manager of the 169-unit Cathedral Hill Apartments in San Francisco. Food waste recycling in San Francisco started on a voluntary basis and became mandatory in 2009. But that city gives buildings and homeowners an extra incentive to separate their food scraps — it charges for collecting trash but not for recyclables, though that will change next month, as the city begins charging a nominal fee for recycled materials. In New York, local taxes cover waste collection no matter how much trash residents generate, though the city issues fines for not recycling. Bloomberg administration officials say recycling food waste, the single largest component of residential trash, could save the city about $100 million a year in landfill fees and transportation costs. On Monday, at the Morningside Gardens apartments in Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg announced details of the planned expansion of the pilot food waste recycling program already going on in schools, residences in the Westerleigh section of Staten Island, and select high-rises in Manhattan. This fall, he said, food waste will be collected in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and next spring, it will begin in more areas of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. By 2014, the mayor said, the program should reach more than 100,000 households, up from a few thousand now. “Our job is to do as much as we can and give the building blocks and the tools to the next administration and give them some concrete examples of what works and what doesn’t,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference. He also introduced a series of “Recycle Everything” ads that will soon be appearing around the city. San Francisco, where the three-bin setup — green for compostables, blue for recyclables and black for trash — has become ubiquitous, has about a dozen trash inspectors who fan out into neighborhoods in the morning before the collection trucks arrive to flip lids and look into trash cans to see if the right waste is making it into the right bin. The inspectors write up report cards and, in a style that may not go over well in New York, return to knock on doors to talk about what residents did wrong or well. They have yet to impose fines. “We find that education has the effect we’re looking for,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, a spokesman for the San Francisco Department of the Environment. Recycling food helps reduce the environmental and economic costs of using landfills by turning leftovers into compost and, increasingly, into biogas to generate electricity and fuel trucks. Some in the waste industry say it is just a matter of time before cities will be selling the waste, rather than paying to get rid of it. San Francisco has a goal of zero waste — the point at which more than 90 percent of all waste goes to reuse rather than to landfills and incinerators — by 2020. The city is already diverting 80 percent of its waste, Mr. Rodriguez said. But San Francisco has about 125,000 single-family homes, 9,000 apartment buildings and 16,000 commercial properties, compared with New York’s more than three million residential households alone. Will it work here, too? Officials everywhere seem optimistic. “There’s no magic bullet,” Mr. Rodriguez said, “but certainly New York can do it.”


Fence Jumper Caught at White House

Abstract: The Secret Service on Wednesday night apprehended a man who had gotten over the fence at the White House and onto the North Lawn. Two dogs helped stop the man, Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Md., who was unarmed. He was injured and taken to a hospital. The dogs were injured and taken to a veterinarian. Charges are pending. The incident occurred more than a month after a man got over the fence and through the front door of the White House, sparking an investigation of the Secret Service and the resignation of the director.

White House
Secret Service
Dominic Adesanya
Washington DC


An Election Gone Wrong Fuels Tension in Kabul

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The inauguration of a new Parliament in just weeks threatens to worsen ethnic tensions and instability and to drive an important part of President Hamid Karzai ’s political base into the arms of the insurgency, Afghans and foreign officials warn. Despite numerous obstacles, NATO and American officials had pushed strongly for parliamentary elections in September , gambling that a successful vote would show progress in the war and new growth in Afghanistan ’s democracy. Instead insecurity, disaffection and fraud, particularly in the south, left the country’s largest and most important ethnic group, the Pashtuns, with sharply reduced representation. The results have been vigorously disputed for three months and have pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. Now a range of Afghan officials and losing candidates say the election could have much the opposite effect from what many here had hoped. Seating the new Parliament, they warn, could fuel the insurgency and even the kind of ethnic strife that might lead to civil war. “Step by step Pashtuns will say we are not represented, the government does not care about us, our people are not in government, and step by step they will join the enemy,” warned Jamil Karzai, a former member of Parliament and cousin of the president. He is among a group of some 80 losing candidates who are challenging the results. Many, particularly among the Pashtuns, are demanding a recount or that the election be annulled, saying the results have been manipulated to create a new Parliament heavily weighted toward northern ethnic minorities. Mr. Karzai has tried to stay aloof from the dispute. Under pressure from the election commission and Western governments, he announced last week that the Parliament would be seated as planned on Jan. 20, an apparent acceptance of the results, even though they reduce his support in Parliament among his fellow Pashtuns. Still, his chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, said Mr. Karzai was responsive to the complaints of some candidates of “fraud, misconduct and miscounting,” as well as the greater concern of widening ethnic divisions. “For the past 10 years, one of the major achievements was that every group felt they had an equal share in the state structure and that should not be disrupted,” Mr. Daudzai said in a telephone interview. Mr. Karzai has sent the complainants to his attorney general, who has already passed their case to the Supreme Court. “We trust the Supreme Court will be responsive to their complaints,” Mr. Daudzai said. He suggested that a verdict that brought a recount or adjustment to some of the results might answer concerns of fraud and the larger issue of Pashtun disenfranchisement. But few believe the Supreme Court can deliver satisfaction at this late hour, and two government officials said Mr. Karzai knew the Parliament was past remedy. Already the suggestion that the Supreme Court, which rules on constitutional issues, could override the Independent Election Commission, which operates under the electoral law, has led the attorney general and election officials to trade threats. A number of losing candidates are also blaming the president for allowing a decline in Pashtun influence, and warn that there is little hope for Afghanistan to achieve peace and security without incorporating the Pashtuns, who form most of the ranks of the Taliban . The Pashtuns, who make up about 46 percent of the population, have traditionally ruled the country, but have become increasingly alienated from the government as war has engulfed their regions and they have been squeezed between Taliban insurgents and NATO and government offensives. Under such conditions few Pashtuns were able or cared to vote, but they will see the reduction of Pashtun seats as one more slap in the face, Parliament members and officials warned. The Pashtuns have lost at least 26 seats in the new Parliament — dropping from 120 to 94 in the 249-seat lower house, according to Mirwais Yassini, a legislator. Others say the number is even lower. Several predominantly Pashtun provinces and some important tribes have little or no representation in the new Parliament, a situation that flies in the face of NATO’s strategy of winning over the Pashtuns by increasing their stake in the government. “It is difficult for Karzai, and for NATO, too,” said one senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “For the country it is not good.” Part of the problem was created by the aftermath of Mr. Karzai’s own fraud-ridden presidential election in 2009. The fear of a repeat of such fraud led the newly appointed election commissioner, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, to ban many of the most insecure areas from holding elections for Parliament. As a result, many of the Pashtun areas and tribes hit hardest by the insurgency could not vote. One is the powerful Khogiani tribe, which populates four districts in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan, parts of which have taken up arms against the government. No elections were held in the Khogiani areas, and they now have no representative in Parliament, said Abdul Ali, a Khogiani tribal elder. “This situation has created a very negative impact among the Khogiani and the province as a whole,” he said, and reinforced the perception that the people who did win won by fraud or by paying off election officials. Election observers have reported irregularities throughout the election process and across various provinces. But the 80 candidates who have lobbied the president have specific complaints of unexplained last-minute changes in the figures of the election commission under Mr. Manawi, a former member of the Supreme Court and an ethnic Tajik. They accuse him of anti-Pashtun bias. Election observers say that Mr. Manawi, whether intentionally or not, did lose control of the process to some extent. Several candidates said they had been approached by people claiming a connection to Mr. Manawi’s office and offering to inflate a candidate’s numbers for a bribe of $200,000. One candidate from Logar Province who said he could not pay such a sum found himself suddenly pushed out of the running. Government officials said they had even had candidates consulting them as to whether they should pay the bribes. Mr. Manawi has denied any connection to bribe taking. Pashtuns are blaming Mr. Karzai for appointing Mr. Manawi in the first place. Mir Wali, a former legislator from Helmand Province who was expected to be re-elected, has election commission documents that showed him leading several weeks ago, only to be overtaken suddenly in the counting by virtual unknowns. “The outcome of this will be very dangerous,” Mr. Wali said. “Karzai has made a historical mistake, and the Afghans will be reading this mistake for 100 years from now.” He and other candidates warned that if they were not heard, Pashtuns would resort to violence and that the ethnic divisions could lead to civil war. The concern is such that the powerful governor of Nangarhar, Gul Agha Shirzai, came to Kabul to talk to the president about building a movement to bring the Pashtuns together to contain their disaffection. He suggested that more Pashtuns should be brought into the government to counter their lack of presence in Parliament. “This is a big problem,” he said in an interview. “The Pashtuns will find their way. When it is time to be united, they will come together.”

Elections
Afghanistan
Taliban
Politics and Government
Pashtun (Ethnic Group)
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Karzai Hamid
Shirzai Gul Agha


Telemundo Seeks Spanglish Speakers, Aiming for New Viewers

Abstract: Telemundo has long trailed its rival Univision in their competition for Hispanic television viewers in the United States. But as the number of second- and third-generation Hispanic-Americans skyrockets, the perennial runner-up is embracing a new strategy — English-language subtitles and Spanglish — to attract deep-pocketed viewers and the advertisers who covet them. The new approach, reflecting the changing dynamics of Hispanics across the country, can be seen in the network debut of the Cuban-born television personality Cristina Saralegui as the host of a Sunday variety show, and in a crop of new telenovelas intended to reflect the sensibilities of acculturated Hispanics. In each case, the programs will feature a sprinkling of English and be available with English subtitles — something not as readily found on the competing Univision. As Telemundo’s president, Emilio Romano, put it after joining the network in October, his goal is to “focus on a more acculturated, more bilingual” audience, without alienating the core Spanish-dominant viewers. “If you think about Telemundo as a narrower broadcast network, you quickly get to the place where, like all broadcast networks, your mandate must be to go for the widest possible audience,” said Lauren Zalaznick, the chairwoman of entertainment and digital networks and integrated media for Telemundo’s parent company, NBCUniversal. Bilingual Hispanics, defined as speaking English more than Spanish or Spanish and English equally, are 82 percent of the United States Hispanic population, according to a report released this year by Scarborough Research, a consumer research firm. This group has more disposable income than the more Spanish-speaking recent immigrants, with 12 percent of acculturated Hispanic families earning $75,000 to $100,000 a year, the study said. Telemundo’s efforts to capture viewers in that category speaks to a larger goal within NBCUniversal under the new ownership of the nation’s largest cable provider, Comcast Corp. As a cable and broadband provider, Comcast foresees Hispanics driving growth in new cable subscriptions, an otherwise mostly flat business. The 2010 Census results showed more than half the total population growth in the United States from 2000 to 2010 was because of the increase in the Hispanic population. In 2010, Hispanics accounted for 50.5 million people residing in the United States, up from 35.3 million a decade ago. The change in demographics has been noted by advertisers, who have flocked to Spanish television in growing numbers. In the 2011-12 season, advanced advertising sales at Telemundo spiked 25 percent from the previous year to more than $400 million, and the price that advertisers pay per 1,000 viewers doubled, according NBCUniversal. Advertisers also may be attracted by the fact that Hispanics watch more TV as a family, with Spanish-speaking grandparents often gathered around the TV with their predominantly English-speaking grandchildren, according to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. Shows that incorporate both languages and cultures can hook multiple generations. “You may have a home full of generations with different perspectives,” said Roberto Orci, chief executive of Acento, a Los Angeles-based advertising agency aimed at Hispanics. Telemundo hopes to capitalize on that with Ms. Saralegui, who came to the network after more than two decades as Univision’s daytime queen. Known as “Oprah Winfrey with salsa,” her mix of saucy, Spanglish celebrity interviews and girl talk is seen as central to Telemundo’s plans. The platinum blonde’s “Pa’lante con Cristina” made its debut on Oct. 9, and attracted 1.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Univision’s Sunday-night “¡Mira Quién Baila!” — a Spanish-language take on “Dancing With the Stars” also available with English closed-captions — averages 3.9 million viewers. On an average night, Univision has 3.8 million viewers compared with one million for Telemundo. Unlike her Univision show, in which Ms. Saralegui gabbed about cheating husbands, eating disorders and plastic surgery and largely featured stars from Mexican telenovelas, her Telemundo show aims to draw both Spanish-speaking stars and mainstream Hollywood celebrities. “If Tom Cruise wants to sell ‘Mission Impossible 4,’ ” Ms. Saralegui said, “then he has to go to Spanish-speaking viewers, and I hope he jumps on my couch.” Some guests will speak English on the show, with simultaneous translation, she said. In addition to “Pa’lante con Cristina,” the network’s Miami-based Telemundo Studios is shooting “Una Maid en Manhattan,” a telenovela based on the 2002 Jennifer Lopez movie. The soapy drama will be available with English subtitles. “Más Sabe el Diablo” (“The Devil Knows Best”), which concluded in early 2010, also took place in New York and was available with English captions. In next year’s lineup of telenovelas, there will be “Caidas del Cielo” — a “Charlie’s Angels”-inspired drama — and “Físico o Química” — about the complicated relationships at an urban high school. In addition, Telemundo’s bilingual crossover Web site targets English-dominant Hispanics, and its sister network Mun2 (pronounced moon-dose or “worlds” in Spanish) is aimed at young Hispanics who speak English outside the home. Telemundo is receiving promotional help from sister networks. Ms. Saralegui appeared on NBC ’s “Today” show. The women of “The Real Housewives of Miami” went on Telemundo’s morning show “Levántate.” Jencarlos Canela, the lead in “Más Sabe el Diablo,” sang the Spanish-language theme song in Universal Pictures’ hit animated feature “Hop.” Even with the new corporate mandate, getting Telemundo celebrities on “Today” is not easy. Many household names among Spanish-speaking viewers do not have the crossover clout to carry a segment on the country’s most-watched morning show. That is why as soon as Joshua Mintz, Telemundo’s head of entertainment, heard that Univision had not renewed Ms. Saralegui’s contract and that she was free to negotiate a new deal, he went to her Miami home and discussed coming to Telemundo. “In our market, there aren’t a lot of icons or long-lasting figures,” Mr. Mintz said. Ms. Saralegui, 63, was editor in chief at the Spanish-language Cosmopolitan magazine before breaking into TV with her ubiquitous daily “El Show de Cristina.” In 1992, CBS Television Stations gave Ms. Saralegui an English-language , “Cristina.” It ended after 13 weeks of disappointing ratings. (Jorge Insua, a spokesman for Ms. Saralegui, said the show was always intended as a trial and ended because of disagreements about budget.) As part of the multiseason Telemundo deal, Ms. Saralegui insisted on creative control, which included having the freedom to speak a mix of Spanish and English and to host Hollywood stars and Top 20 musicians like Michael Bublé and Beyoncé, even if they are not Hispanic. “In my house, we speak Spanglish to the dogs, to the grandchildren, to the kids. My kids are American,” Ms. Saralegui said. “That’s what’s happening in the U.S. now versus when I started and it was the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in New York and the Mexicans in Los Angeles. Now, we’re all mixed up from 23 countries.”

Telemundo
Univision
Television
Hispanic-Americans
Spanish Language
National Broadcasting Co
Saralegui Cristina


Lawyer in Pornography Case Is Spared Jail

Abstract: BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Heaping blame on a church in Greenwich for trying to hide the fact that its longtime musical director had child pornography on a computer, a senior federal judge on Monday sentenced a lawyer who took part in the cover-up to home confinement for six months. “What could you have been thinking?” Judge Alan H. Nevas of Federal District Court said to the lawyer, Philip D. Russell, who took apart the computer and pulverized the hard drive days before federal agents came looking for it. The church, Christ Church, an Episcopal church, hired Mr. Russell, whose family worshiped there, as its lawyer in October 2006, shortly after an employee found images of naked boys on a laptop used by Robert F. Tate, its longtime musical director. Church officials, on the advice of Mr. Russell — a criminal lawyer and a former assistant district attorney in the Bronx — did not report the matter to law enforcement, allowing Mr. Tate to resign and remove items from his apartment on church grounds before leaving town. Nonetheless, federal investigators learned of Mr. Tate’s departure on their own and found evidence that Mr. Tate had overlooked, including images of boys posing with whips, collars and other sado-masochistic objects. Mr. Tate, 65, pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography and is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 31. He faces up to 10 years in prison. After the hearing, Eugene Riccio, a new lawyer for the church, said that until Monday’s hearing church officials had no idea of the extent of Mr. Tate’s crime. Judge Nevas said he had “never, ever seen” such a sexual abuse history as Mr. Tate’s, “going back 30 years, involving trips overseas, and bringing child prostitutes” to the parish and church grounds. “It turns your stomach,” he said. The judge chided Mr. Russell forgoing overboard in trying to help the church handle the problem internally. “They wanted it to go away,” the judge said. Mr. Russell apologized “for what happened” and said, “It’s my responsibility and no one else’s.” Initially charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, Mr. Russell, 49, pleaded guilty in September to essentially failing to report a felony, but he still faced the possibility of three years in prison. Although the judge said he was “deeply offended that a member of my profession could have acted so irresponsibly,” he said Mr. Russell did not deserve prison in light of his “years of good service.” For now, Mr. Russell has voluntarily relinquished his license to practice law.

Decisions and Verdicts
Christians and Christianity
Pornography and Obscenity


Robin Domeniconi of the Elle Group, on Challenging

Abstract: This interview with Robin Domeniconi, senior vice president and chief brand officer for the Elle Group, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant .  Q. How do you hire? A. I don’t look at résumés at all. Because they absolutely don’t tell me how somebody’s going to work for me. How many times have you been set up with someone on a date, who seems great and wonderful, but there’s no chemistry whatsoever? And that’s exactly how I feel about résumés. I really work from the gut. I’m impulsive. Q. So let’s say you’re interviewing me. How does that conversation go? A. I will try to find out what kind of life you’ve had, where you’ve come from, what challenges you’ve had to overcome. I really don’t care about your successes as much as I care about your failures, and what you learned from them, and how you did that. Q. What are the qualities you’re looking for? A. Confident. A quick study. You don’t necessarily need to know the business we’re in, as long as you understand what you’re bringing to the business. I hired someone when I launched Real Simple who had never worked in magazines. I wanted to build Real Simple as a brand, and this person came from Polaroid, and they knew how to build brands. So I want to know that they know how to do what they do, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in our industry. So I look for that ability to be a quick study. Q. What else? A. Adaptable. Flexible. Not afraid of change and risk. Because in today’s marketplace, everything can change tomorrow. We could be working on something today, and tomorrow may come and we’ll say: “You know what? This is not going to work.” It’s just changing so quickly. Q. Can you talk more about how you find out if a job candidate has those qualities? A. You ask questions. But, more importantly, you listen for the questions they ask you. I get as much from the questions you’re going to ask me, and your curiosity, and what you want to know, than the questions I’m going to ask you. Because you may have answers, and you may know what you want to sell me on. Q. Give me some examples of good questions you’ve heard. A. Some of the good questions are: “What’s working for you right now? And what’s not working for you? If you bring me into this company to do this, what is it that you want me to accomplish, short term and long term?” Any questions that have to do with understanding my expectations of success and outcomes are, to me, a really good way to judge someone’s ability to be flexible and move into a new environment. Q. How long does it take you to decide whether to hire someone? A. I would say that I can tell within the first five minutes whether they’re going to fit into this environment. And by then I’ve already felt the energy — the way they come into my office, the way they shake my hand, the way they sit down, the way they’re easy with the conversation. I’ll find out whether the functionality and the expertise are there, but in the first five minutes, I know whether this person’s going to be good here. I want someone who’s candid, who’s very willing to be open. To me, the willingness to be open takes a lot of courage, because you’re displaying your vulnerability. I find that if you’re willing to be open, to expose your vulnerability, you’re going to succeed with me. Because I don’t have all the answers, and you shouldn’t think that you have all the answers. So we need to be open with each other. Q. How do you create a culture of openness with your staff? A. I’m not shy about saying to them: “I don’t understand how to do this. I have this idea. But you’ve done this before. How does this work?” And this might be with someone who works, maybe, three levels below me. It doesn’t matter. Because I know once I understand something, I can guide it. And that’s basically what my role is — to guide the ship. I also have dyslexia. A lot of times, people will say things that I don’t understand. I am never embarrassed to ask them to repeat what they’ve said. It’s a vulnerability that you show. I once had an editor say to me, “You’re the best publisher I’ve ever had because you’re not afraid to show your vulnerability.” And I think it offers a sense of humanity and humility to the entire team. And, so, once they see that, they know I’m not some unapproachable C.E.O. or president. I’m not, and I’m willing to trust that you’re O.K. with that. I have enough confidence to do that. I would like you to have enough confidence, too. Q. What qualities are a turnoff for you? A. If you’re intimidated by me, and if you’re nervous, it usually doesn’t work with me. Because I’m very intense, and I’m very passionate. And if I’m picking up this pen, and I’m telling you this is blue — and I say: “We could sell the heck out of this blue pen. So go get your team. Let’s sell this blue pen.” — I don’t want you walking out of my office saying: “She’s crazy. This pen is yellow. Why is she saying it’s blue?” I will change on a dime. But until you convince me, with facts or with opinion, that I’m wrong, I will be passionate about my decision at the time. If you’re too intimidated to challenge me, it won’t work, because we can’t succeed like that. I need you to be able to challenge me. I want to be challenged. I want to be able to encourage debate, so we can arrive at the right decision. Q. If you could ask job candidates only two or three questions to decide whether to hire them, what would they be? A. One would be: “Why do they want to come work here? ” And the other would be: “How’d you grow up? Tell me about your life growing up.” I find that the ability to face adversity and overcome it shows that you can really move in this environment today. I love people who have worked hard and come up from nothing to make it in this world. They’ve got some street smarts. They’ve got some real tenacity to be able to move forward. When I grew up, it was really hard for me because of my dyslexia. You have to work that much harder to just stay above water, to be just average in your grades. So if someone tells me that they had to overcome some kind of learning challenge, or that they came from a family who moved around all the time, I’ll want to hear more about that. I also love someone who comes from a family that’s very solid, that has seven kids, and they’re all still really close. There are just different things you can get out of it. It’s mostly how they tell the story and what they stop and point out. Q. What were the most important leadership lessons you’ve learned over the course of your life? A. The ability to not be afraid to say what you believe in, and to challenge even your boss. I’ve always worked for bosses who’ve wanted me to challenge them. If I haven’t been able to challenge my boss, then I’m not learning. And so I want people to challenge me, and not be afraid to, so that they can learn, too. I’m willing to change my ideas, and my decisions. But I need you to be passionate, and to have facts, and to have an opinion behind it. Otherwise, I’m going to believe mine is the right one, even though it may not be. Another thing that I’ve learned — and I think most of my success with my teams has been built around this — is the idea that none of us own anything. We all are here together. So even if you’re in P.R., or you work in sales or print or digital, or whatever it may be, we are all here, as a group, to work together. So you have to be able to finish each other’s sentences. You have to be in this together. We want the same outcome. One lesson I learned is from a phrase I picked up called M.R.I. It means the “most respectful interpretation” of what someone’s saying to you. I don’t need everyone to be best friends, but I need to have a team with M.R.I. Q. Can you elaborate? A. You can say anything to anyone, as long as you say it the right way. Maybe you need to preface it with: “I’m just curious, and I want to understand what you’re saying better. Right now, my point of view is quite different. So can you help me understand why you don’t want to do this, or why you wanted to do this?” If you get people talking and challenging each other, you’re going to have the ability to arrive at the right decision so much quicker and so much easier. I just make it so it’s a human environment. I’m not going to motivate by fear, but I’m going to motivate by saying: “Let’s win. This is going to be so much fun to figure out. Let’s figure it out together.” I guess my management style is very much about like imagining we’re all children and really vulnerable. Because we are. We’re all vulnerable, and we all are really human. We have all this stuff inside of us that we’ve carried with us. So if you have compassion for that, and you understand that, and you know someone’s smart, then you need to make an effort to understand why they may behave the way they behave. I think everyone should open their closet and show the skeletons. Q. What would say if you were asked to speak to a group of young entrepreneurs about building a culture at a company? A. I could boil that down to two words. One is trust. You need to trust everyone you work with — and it goes into personal relationships, too — because the only thing that creates jealousy, the only thing that creates fear, is that you’re not trusting or understanding something. Communication is the second one. If you can communicate what your fears are, your challenges are, and if you trust that the people you work with all want the right outcome, then the environment is going to create itself. It really does. If you have complete and utter trust in somebody, you’re going to really be able to be vulnerable. It all comes down to that. It all comes down to trusting that you’re going to be O.K. with what I’m going to say, and me trusting that you’re going to be O.K. that I made a mistake, as in: “You know that risk we took? We failed. We lost money here. But this is what we learned, and you’re going to be O.K.” You’ve got to trust me, and I’ve got to trust you.

Elle Group
Hiring and Promotion
Careers and Professions
Domeniconi Robin


Florida: Former Mosque Leader Says Padilla Traveled for Study

Abstract: The former leader of one of the mosques Jose Padilla attended while living in Florida testified that Mr. Padilla traveled to Egypt in 1998 to study Islam and the Arabic language, contradicting the government’s accusations that Mr. Padilla traveled to participate in terrorist activities. The former leader, Raed Awad, who was imam of Masjid Al-Iman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from 1995 to 2000, said he issued the plane ticket for Mr. Padilla through a travel agency he owned at the time. The ticket was bought with money donated by mosque members, Mr. Awad told jurors. Mr. Padilla and his co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun, 45, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 44, are accused of participating in a “North American support cell” that prosecutors say provided money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad.”

Florida
Islam
Arabic Language
Padilla Jose
Terrorism


Shanghai Schools Push Students to Top of Tests

Abstract: SHANGHAI — In Li Zhen’s ninth-grade mathematics class here last week, the morning drill was geometry. Students at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College were asked to explain the relative size of geometric shapes by using Euclid’s theorem of parallelograms. “Who in this class can tell me how to demonstrate two lines are parallel without using a proportional segment?” Ms. Li called out to about 40 students seated in a cramped classroom. One by one, a series of students at this medium-size public school raised their hands. When Ms. Li called on them, they each stood politely by their desks and usually answered correctly. They returned to their seats only when she told them to sit down. Educators say this disciplined approach helps explain the announcement this month that 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai outperformed students from about 65 countries on an international standardized test that measured math, science and reading competency. American students came in between 15th and 31st place in the three categories. France and Britain also fared poorly. Experts said comparing scores from countries and cities of different sizes is complicated. They also said that the Shanghai scores were not representative of China, since this fast-growing city of 20 million is relatively affluent. Still, they were impressed by the high scores from students in Shanghai. The results were seen as another sign of China’s growing competitiveness. The United States rankings are a “wake-up call,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education. Although it was the first time China had taken part in the test, which was administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, the results bolstered this country’s reputation for producing students with strong math and science skills. Many educators were also surprised by the city’s strong reading scores, which measured students’ proficiency in their native Chinese. The Shanghai students performed well, experts say, for the same reason students from other parts of Asia — including South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong — do: Their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation. Public school students in Shanghai often remain at school until 4 p.m., watch very little television and are restricted by Chinese law from working before the age of 16. “Very rarely do children in other countries receive academic training as intensive as our children do,” said Sun Baohong, an authority on education at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “So if the test is on math and science, there’s no doubt Chinese students will win the competition.” But many educators say China’s strength in education is also a weakness. The nation’s education system is too test-oriented, schools here stifle creativity and parental pressures often deprive children of the joys of childhood, they say. “These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests,” Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the test results were announced. “For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.” In an interview, Mr. Jiang said Chinese schools emphasized testing too much, and produced students who lacked curiosity and the ability to think critically or independently. “It creates very narrow-minded students,” he said. “But what China needs now is entrepreneurs and innovators.” This is a common complaint in China. Educators say an emphasis on standardized tests is partly to blame for the shortage of innovative start-ups in China. And executives at global companies operating here say they have difficulty finding middle managers who can think creatively and solve problems. In many ways, the system is a reflection of China’s Confucianist past. Children are expected to honor and respect their parents and teachers. “Discipline is rarely a problem,” said Ding Yi, vice principal at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College. “The biggest challenge is a student who chronically fails to do his homework.” While the quality of schools varies greatly in China (rural schools often lack sufficient money, and dropout rates can be high), schools in major cities typically produce students with strong math and science skills. Shanghai is believed to have the nation’s best school system, and many students here gain admission to America’s most selective colleges and universities. In Shanghai, teachers are required to have a teaching certificate and to undergo a minimum of 240 hours of training; higher-level teachers can be required to have up to 540 hours of training. There is a system of incentives and merit pay, just like the systems in some parts of the United States. “Within a teacher’s salary package, 70 percent is basic salary,” said Xiong Bingqi, a professor of education at Shanghai Jiaotong University. “The other 30 percent is called performance salary.” Still, teacher salaries are modest, about $750 a month before bonuses and allowances — far less than what accountants, lawyers or other professionals earn. While Shanghai schools are renowned for their test preparation skills, administrators here are trying to broaden the curriculums and extend more freedom to local districts. The Jing’An school, one of about 150 schools in Shanghai that took part in the international test, was created 12 years ago to raise standards in an area known for failing schools. The principal, Zhang Renli, created an experimental school that put less emphasis on math and allows children more free time to play and experiment. The school holds a weekly talent show, for example. The five-story school building, which houses Grades eight and nine in a central district of Shanghai, is rather nondescript. Students wear rumpled school uniforms, classrooms are crowded and lunch is bused in every afternoon. But the school, which operates from 8:20 a.m. to 4 p.m. on most days, is considered one of the city’s best middle schools. In Shanghai, most students begin studying English in first grade. Many middle school students attend extra-credit courses after school or on Saturdays. A student at Jing’An, Zhou Han, 14, said she entered writing and speech-making competitions and studied the erhu, a Chinese classical instrument. She also has a math tutor. “I’m not really good at math,” she said. “At first, my parents wanted me to take it, but now I want to do it.”

Shanghai (China)
Tests and Testing
Education (K-12)


Terror Trial Nears End as Defense Rests Case

Abstract: GUANTÁNAMO BAY , Cuba — Defense lawyers for Salim Hamdan , Osama bin Laden’s former driver, rested their case on Friday after less than two days, bringing testimony to a close in the first American war crimes trial since World War II. The lawyers ended their case with written submissions from two former senior operatives of Al Qaeda held here, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the 2001 attacks. The statements were intended to bolster the claim that Mr. Hamdan was only a low-level employee with no involvement in terrorism. In his submission, Mr. Mohammed, who described himself as “the executive director of 9/11,” said Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, was too “primitive” to take part in planning terrorism attacks. “He was not fit to plan or execute,” Mr. Mohammed said in answers to questions from Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers. “But he is fit to change trucks’ tires, change oil filters, wash and clean cars.” Closing statements are scheduled for Monday, and the panel of six military officers hearing the case could begin deliberations that day. Mr. Hamdan is charged with providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. He faces a maximum sentence of life. Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers presented only a brief defense, some of it in a courtroom closed because of national security rules. But during the two-week trial they tried to suggest, by cross-examining prosecution witnesses, that their client was little more than a low-wage worker. Mr. Mohammed and Walid bin Attash, a second accused former senior Qaeda operative, answered questions submitted by defense lawyers, but said they would not voluntarily appear at the military tribunal. They are being held in the detention camp at the United States Navy base here awaiting trial on charges of coordinating the 2001 attacks. In his responses, Mr. bin Attash, 30, said Mr. Hamdan “did not play any role in any planning.” Mr. bin Attash was a veteran mujahedeen fighter who lost part of his right leg in a battlefield accident in 1997. American officials say that in addition to a role as a coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. bin Attash was the top deputy of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the chief planner of the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors. Mr. Mohammed’s comments included a familiar tone of derision toward Americans. He wrote that anyone who thought that everyone affiliated with Al Qaeda was involved in terror attacks “is a fool.” He portrayed Al Qaeda as a network that includes professionals as well as workers like cooks and drivers and has business operations in many parts of the world. He suggested that Americans’ understanding of the organization was simplistic. Mr. Mohammed’s statement did not spare the feelings of Mr. Hamdan. According to the English translation of his remarks in Arabic, Mr. Mohammed wrote that Mr. Hamdan “was not a soldier, he was a driver. His nature was more primitive (Bedouin).” He added that Mr. Hamdan was only “looking for Osama bin Laden’s money.” Because of security restrictions, the government had for many months barred defense lawyers from meeting with former senior Qaeda leaders held here. The written answers filed Friday were the product of a complex arrangement ordered by the military judge that gave the lawyers limited access to detainees who could back up Mr. Hamdan’s claim that he was not involved in terrorism. The defense lawyers did not say whether they believed that the panel would be persuaded by the detainees’ descriptions or angered by the comments of the two men who acknowledged close ties Mr. bin Laden.

Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Hamdan Salim Ahmed
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)


G.M.’s Profit Falls 41% on Losses in Europe

Abstract: DETROIT — General Motors vowed Thursday to accelerate changes at its troubled European division after a loss in the region dragged down the company’s profit by 41 percent in the second quarter. G.M. said its net income in the quarter fell to $1.48 billion, from $2.52 billion in the same period a year earlier. While the company’s North American and Asian businesses posted strong results, it lost $361 million in Europe compared to an operating profit of $102 million a year ago. The European business, which centers on the struggling Opel brand, has been hemorrhaging money for a decade. Now, with the auto market on the Continent in its worst tailspin since the mid-1990s, the brand is damaging the health of the entire company. That is leading some analysts to question whether Opel can survive the expected brutal shakeout in Europe. G.M.’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, conceded Thursday that the automaker had not moved quickly or decisively enough to fix its European problems. “In the past, we haven’t moved fast enough to fix things that we can control,” Mr. Akerson said in a conference call with analysts and journalists. “But that’s changed.” Last month, G.M. replaced the top echelon of its European management team, including its chief executive and chief financial officer. The company is gearing up to cut costs there, primarily in its white-collar ranks. And like other auto companies in Europe, G.M. is grappling with how to reduce production to match steadily shrinking demand. But so far, G.M. has refused to publicly discuss its turnaround plan for Opel or set a target for when it can make money in Europe. Investors are losing patience and have driven the company’s stock price to new lows in recent weeks. On Thursday, shares closed down 2.6 percent at $19.14. One industry analyst, Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley, said in a research note that investors viewed G.M. with “a mixture of confidence and uncertainty,” particularly with regard to Europe. Even G.M.’s dealers in the region are calling for a new approach to solving its problems. “It’s time for a real turnaround plan,” said Jaap Timmer, chairman of Euroda, the Opel dealers’ association. G.M. nearly sold Opel three years ago before its reconstituted board decided to keep the business because of its integral role in the company’s global product programs. Two of the directors who championed the decision to retain Opel were Mr. Akerson and Stephen J. Girsky, the board’s vice chairman. Now both are admitting that a turnaround in Europe has been far tougher than anticipated. Mr. Girsky, who took over last year as head of Opel’s supervisory board, said in a statement Thursday that the company needed to wring more costs out of Opel while at the same time trying to bolster revenue in a deteriorating market. “We are working hard on improving variable profit which includes reducing product cost, selling more cars and generating higher profit margins,” he said. “We are working hard on reducing internal redundancies and bureaucracies and realizing growth opportunities.” G.M. has named a former outside consultant, Thomas Sedran, as Opel’s interim chief executive, and recruited two executives from the rival German automaker Volkswagen to take over its top finance and marketing posts. But changing management and cutting costs won’t help restore Opel’s battered brand image anytime soon. A headline on Wednesday in the Bild newspaper, which has the largest circulation of any German daily, illustrated the depth of the problem: “Why should anyone buy a loser brand?” The turmoil within the company has been obvious to European consumers. “You can’t avoid hearing about it — it’s everywhere,” said Horst Kerkmann, a 52-year-old resident of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, who is considering buying a compact Opel wagon for his one-man business, which does maintenance and light construction. He said he considered Opel cars to be reliable and long-lasting. He said he would probably decide whether to buy an Opel or a competitor like Peugeot according to which dealer offered him the best leasing terms. G.M.’s North American business continues to thrive, posting $2 billion in operating profits in the second quarter. But globally, the company’s revenue fell to $37.6 billion, compared to $39.4 billion in the second quarter of 2011. G.M.’s European woes are threatening to stifle its overall comeback since emerging from a government-financed bankruptcy in 2009. The company has not reported an annual profit in Europe since 1999. The company remains the fourth-largest carmaker in the European Union by volume, ahead of Ford and Fiat. But its market share slipped to 8.4 percent from 8.8 percent in the first six months of 2012. A price war has broken out among European car manufacturers after the total market shrank by nearly 7 percent in the first six months of the year, leaving most companies with factories operating below capacity. Adding to the pressure, Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, has also been discounting models and gaining market share. The company is increasingly dominant in Europe, commanding nearly 24 percent of the market, including its Audi, Skoda and Seat brands. Even BMW, which has added to the pressure on Opel and with lower-priced models, has been discounting its entry-level 1 Series cars. “Consumers are feeling insecure,” Norbert Reithofer, the chief executive of BMW, said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “The auto market is suffering from the European debt crisis .” In such an environment, it is difficult to see how G.M. can restore Opel to profit soon. One possibility, suggested by union leaders and some analysts, is to export more cars from Europe to America. Opels share parts with other G.M. models. And the Buick Regal, made in Canada, is nearly identical to the Opel Insignia made in Rüsselsheim, Germany. “The problem is not the brand but what G.M. does with it,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Center of Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Shuttering the business is not an easy option either. The company employs 38,000 people in Europe, half of them in Germany. The dealer network in Germany alone employs another 30,000. Any major cuts would face huge resistance from political leaders and labor unions, which have a legal right in Germany to be consulted on job reductions. G.M. is negotiating with workers on a plan that would probably call for closure of a factory in Bochum, Germany, after production of the current version of the Zafira minivan ends around 2016. But that would probably still leave G.M. with too many factories. Opel is also expected to trim executive staff at its headquarters in Rüsselsheim, near Frankfurt. But the company has said little about cost cuts and instead insisted that it could regain market share with planned new models like the Adam, a sporty compact that it hopes will be able to compete with the BMW Mini and Fiat 500. Mr. Timmer, the chairman of the dealers’ association, said that many buyers were delaying purchases because they were worried about the European economy. As they did in the United States, sales could return when people become more confident, he said. “I think the same thing will happen here,” he said, but added, “don’t ask me when.”

General Motors
Automobiles
Company Reports
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Opel Adam AG


U.S. Splits Opening Davis Cup Matches With Chile; Nadal Returns

Abstract: The United States split its opening Davis Cup matches against host Chile, with Andy Roddick winning the opener and John Isner losing a five-set marathon. Paul Capdeville gave Chile a big lift by rallying to beat Isner, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5), 6-4. He had the only break in the next-to-last game of the 4-hour-21-minute match when a tired Isner netted an overhead smash. Roddick opened with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 win over Nicolas Massu. The doubles in the best-of-five series is Saturday, with the reverse singles Sunday. ¶ Rafael Nadal celebrated his return from a thigh injury with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Ruben Bemelmans, giving Spain a 2-0 lead over host Belgium in a Davis Cup match. The top-ranked Nadal was dominant in his first competitive match since injuring the leg during his loss in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. Fernando Verdasco beat Xavier Malisse, 6-4, 6-3, 6-1, to put Spain ahead in the best-of-five series. nadal

Davis Cup
Chile
Tennis
Isner John
Roddick Andy
Nadal Rafael


Isaac’s Vestiges Bring Midwest Rain

Abstract: The remnants of Hurricane Isaac , the slow-moving storm that disrupted the Republican National Convention and flooded towns along the Gulf Coast, brought much-needed rain to the Midwest on Saturday, along with scattered reports of tornadoes. The center of the storm was tracking east across Missouri and was bound for Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Although thousands of people remained displaced or without power in hard-hit parts of Louisiana, the storm had faded significantly and was bringing more relief than anguish, soaking dry fields and refilling low creeks. Tornadoes were spotted in parts of eastern Missouri and western Illinois, but there were no reports of injuries or damages. Forecasters said the slow pace of intermittent rainfall made flash flooding unlikely as the storm curled across the drought-scarred parts of the Midwest.

Rain
Weather
Gulf Coast (US)
Midwestern States (US)
Hurricane Isaac (2012)


Pirates and Their Top Pick Are Said to Be Near a Deal

Abstract: The Pittsburgh Pirates and Pedro Alvarez appear to have resolved their contract dispute in an agreement that would give Alvarez more money and a major league contract, a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations said Tuesday. Under the deal, which has not been completed but could be announced as early as Wednesday, the Pirates would pay Alvarez at least $6.4 million and as much as $8 million over four years, depending on when he is placed on the major league roster. The dispute between the Pirates and Alvarez, the Vanderbilt third baseman who was the No. 2 pick in this year’s amateur draft, began shortly after the Aug. 15 signing deadline. Although all sides have said that Alvarez agreed to a $6 million signing bonus and a minor league contract around midnight on Aug. 15, the parties disagreed over exactly when he gave his approval and whether Major League Baseball broke any rules by extending the deadline past midnight without receiving the necessary approval from the players union. Alvarez, who grew up in Upper Manhattan and attended Horace Mann, a private school in the Bronx, later refused to sign the contract, and the union filed a grievance with Major League Baseball. The union argued that by extending the deadline, baseball violated the terms of a 2006 labor agreement. Major League Baseball, in turn, had argued that the arbitrator had no jurisdiction over minor league contracts. Despite being the No. 2 pick, Alvarez’s initial deal with the Pirates was less than that of catcher Buster Posey, who was chosen fifth and reached an agreement with the San Francisco Giants for a $6.2 million bonus. After Alvarez failed to sign his contract, the Pirates’ president, Frank Coonelly, said in a statement that Alvarez’s agent, Scott Boras, had asked to renegotiate the contract for more than $6 million. The arbitrator heard testimony earlier this month, and the hearing was scheduled to continue Tuesday. However, because negotiations were under way and a settlement was possible, the hearing was postponed, said Gregory Bouris, a spokesman for the union. He and others, including Boras and spokesmen for the Pirates and for Major League Baseball, declined to comment on specifics of the talks. News of the possible deal was first reported by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. If Alvarez and the Pirates agree to a new deal, the union’s grievance will probably be dropped, the person with direct knowledge of the talks said.

Pittsburgh Pirates
Major League Baseball
Baseball
Alvarez Pedro


Players Named in the Mitchell Report Are Unlikely to Be Punished

Abstract: None of the roughly 90 players named in the Mitchell report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs will be suspended or fined in an agreement taking final shape between Major League Baseball and the players union, according to two lawyers familiar with the matter. When George J. Mitchell issued the report in December, he made 20 recommendations on how baseball should deal with performance-enhancing drugs. He urged that no players named in the report be disciplined, arguing that such proceedings “will keep everyone mired in the past.” In recent weeks, as the union and baseball tried to reach an agreement on which Mitchell recommendations to adopt, the question of discipline became an issue. Even though Commissioner Bud Selig had given Mitchell the assignment, Selig was reluctant to accept Mitchell’s notion that no player should be punished. The union’s position was that if it was going to accept Mitchell’s recommendations for a tougher drug-testing regimen, baseball should agree with his recommendation that no one be disciplined. “The union wasn’t going to stand for it,” one of the two lawyers familiar with the talks said. “Bud wanted some type of discipline, but it does not appear he is going to get that.” A spokesman for baseball declined Thursday to comment on the negotiations. Fewer than a dozen players named in the report appeared to be in danger of being suspended because most of the violations cited came before 2004, when punitive testing for performance-enhancing drugs was instituted. Both sides have tentatively agreed to increase the year-round testing of players for drugs and to create an overseer of the drug-testing program. Under the current system, baseball and the union each appoint two representatives to a health policy advisory committee, which oversees the testing program with an administrator. That administrator can be removed at the behest of the union or baseball. The new overseer will be given numerous protections from dismissal and will be appointed for a fixed period. In addition, the health policy advisory committee will no longer have any role with drug testing. Baseball has adopted other recommendations made by Mitchell that it believed did not require union consent. Those steps included the establishment of an investigative unit to look into tips about the possible use of performance-enhancing drugs. The work of investigators led to the suspension of a top minor league prospect for the Atlanta Braves for using human growth hormone, a lawyer familiar with the matter said. On Tuesday, Jordan Schafer, a center fielder for the Braves’ Class AA affiliate, received a 50-game suspension. Baseball, like other professional sports, does not test for H.G.H., so the only way that Schafer could be linked to H.G.H. was through an investigation. Previous links of players and H.G.H. have come through investigations by law enforcement authorities. The lawyer familiar with Schafer’s suspension said baseball received no help from authorities.

Major League Baseball
Baseball
Human Growth Hormone
Steroids
Mitchell George J


Patient Is Held After Fire at South Korea Hospital Kills 21

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — A fire broke out at a hospital annex in South Korea early Wednesday, killing 21 people and injuring seven others and further rattling a country still traumatized by a recent ferry disaster . The police were holding a patient in connection with the fire. The police said 20 of the dead were elderly patients, many of whom had been hospitalized for dementia or stroke complications. A nurse on night duty was also killed. The fire started on the second floor of a two-story annex to Hyosarang Hospital in Jangseong, in southwestern South Korea. The police in Jangseong said they had detained a patient with dementia who was suspected of starting the fire. The fire broke out in a room shortly after the patient, in his early 80s, was seen entering it on the hospital’s closed-circuit TV footage, the police said. The second floor of the annex housed 34 long-term patients, most of them in their 70s and 80s, when the fire broke out. All first-floor patients were safely evacuated. South Korean television footage showed firefighters performing CPR on patients they had rescued. Seven patients were injured, six of them seriously, raising fears that the death toll could rise. The national news agency Yonhap reported that some of the dead patients were found with their hands tied to their beds. It also said bars had been placed on the windows of the second-floor rooms to prevent patients with dementia from falling out. A police officer in Jangseong said that he could not immediately confirm the news report but said that the victims appeared to have died of smoke inhalation. The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his office’s policy, said many of the patients could not move on their own. Lee Hyong-seok, the head of the hospital, knelt and bowed before cameras on Wednesday, apologizing for the accident. He said he was checking the report that some of the patients had been tied to their beds. The country has been on edge since a ferry with 476 people aboard, including 325 high school students, sank off southwestern South Korea on April 16, leaving more than 300 people dead or missing. On Monday, seven people were killed after a fire swept through a five-story bus terminal in Goyang, just northwest of Seoul. The series of accidents has eroded confidence in the country’s public safety measures. Another fire believed to have been arson forced hundreds of people to flee a Seoul subway station on Wednesday. Seoul Metro, the operator of the subway, said a fire broke out in a subway car just as the train was pulling into Dogok Station in southern Seoul. The police said they were questioning a man in his 70s for a possible arson charge. The fire was put out by subway officials, and no death or serious injury was reported.

Fires
South Korea
Hospital
Dementia
Arson