Bronx Arts Museum Reaches Out to Borough Alumni

Abstract: The Bronx Museum of the Arts organized a V.I.P. luncheon in October that featured the actor Chazz Palminteri telling stories from his one-man show “A Bronx Tale,” eggplant Parmesan sandwiches made on Arthur Avenue, and even free shuttle service to and from Midtown Manhattan. The invitees were not art critics or collectors, but another group considered important to the museum’s future: those who once called the Bronx home. In a borough where many people do not have enough money to eat — let alone donate to a cultural institution — the museum has embarked on a campaign called “Back in the Bronx,” enlisting the help of well-known Bronx natives like Mr. Palminteri and the comedian Robert Klein, to build a base of former Bronxites similar to that of a school alumni network, drawing them back for a look at the economic and cultural progress of the hardscrabble borough they left behind. The luncheon drew 75 people, including Laurie Geronemus, who lives in Tuckahoe, N.Y., and had not previously heard of the museum. “My initial reaction was, ‘Why would anyone have a museum in the Bronx?’” said Mrs. Geronemus, 64, a retired elementary school teacher who grew up in a housing project in Highbridge. “I used to feel like I survived the Bronx, but I don’t feel that anymore. I feel like I’m part of a newer, more sophisticated Bronx.” Bronx leaders and residents have tried for decades to reclaim their borough from the lawless, burning streetscape of the 1970s that was later popularized in the movie “Fort Apache, the Bronx,” and that turned their home into a national symbol of urban decay. This month, the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., took offense after French politicians debated whether Paris had come to resemble the Bronx — and not as a compliment. “The tired, ancient stereotypes about the Bronx continue to unfairly cloud the minds of people as far away as Paris, France,” Mr. Diaz fired back in a statement. “We in the Bronx have had enough.” The Bronx still lags behind the rest of New York in many quality-of-life markers: crime, poverty, unemployment and education. But as Mr. Diaz and others are quick to point out, the borough has also rebounded in recent years with new development, including luxury boutique hotels, shopping malls, a Donald Trump-branded golf course, and soon a national ice sports center in a former armory in Kingsbridge. “The Bronx used to be a punch line,” said Mr. Klein, who is scheduled to perform at the museum in April. “It really is making a tremendous comeback.” The museum, founded in 1971, was initially housed in the county courthouse and later moved to its current building — a former synagogue purchased by the city — on the Grand Concourse. A new wing was added in 2006. Today, the museum serves as an unexpected repository of local art, education and culture. The museum, which has a $2.8 million operating budget, was once supported almost entirely by government funding. As that financing has shrunk in the past decade, museum officials have turned to corporations, foundations and, increasingly, private donors. This year, a $500,000 gift from the philanthropists and art collectors Shelley and Donald Rubin allowed the museum to offer free admission through 2015. But support for the art museum has not been an easy sell in the Bronx, where the annual median household income is $32,000 and even relatively modest membership fees — $50 for an individual — can seem like a splurge. Of its 350 members, only about 30 percent live in the Bronx. Holly Block, the museum’s executive director since 2006, said the museum had sought to strengthen its ties to residents by staying open late on Fridays and offering family art workshops, storytelling sessions and movie nights in a nearby park. In 2011, museum officials also put together a council of residents to serve as “cultural ambassadors” to the community and to advise them on public engagement. Ms. Block said the campaign sought to celebrate the collective experiences that make up a Bronx identity. For some in the past, she said, it might have been the smell of ethnic dishes in apartment buildings bursting with immigrants or the mix of hip-hop, jazz and Latin music heard on summer nights when the windows were thrown open. For Mr. Klein, 71, there are memories of playing stickball with his friends outside Woodlawn Cemetery in the 1940s and early 1950s, leaving scuff marks against the wall and stopping for the occasional funeral. In a joke that Mr. Klein tells, he says that when he went to college in upstate New York, all the cow pastures there brought out his inner-city Bronx: “I said, ‘My God, look at those Dalmatians!’” The “Back in the Bronx” campaign was conceived by Allison Chernow, the museum’s director of external affairs, who was inspired by a magazine of the same name . That magazine was started in 1992 by Stephen Samtur, a former Bronx high school teacher, after he organized a reunion of 1,100 current and former Bronx residents. Mr. Samtur, now 70 and living in Scarsdale, N.Y., said that many of them had never forgotten their Bronx years: strolls along the Grand Concourse, family shopping trips on Fordham Road, movie nights at the Paradise Theater. Soon Mr. Samtur was publishing the best of these personal histories. The magazine, which has 3,500 subscribers, is a nostalgic look at the Bronx and includes a popular free classified-ad section in which former residents can search for friends, neighbors and old flames. “There were a couple of marriages as a result of it,” Mr. Samtur said. “At one time, I thought it could be like a lonely hearts club.” Mr. Samtur said he gladly shared his Bronx expertise and contacts — including an email list of more than 25,000 past residents — with museum officials for their campaign. Every so often he receives calls from people asking if it is safe to return to their old neighborhoods. “In many cases, it’s nicer and cleaner now than when they were living there,” he said. For some, the Bronx connection has never been lost, no matter how far they have gone. Arlene Alda, 80, the wife of the actor Alan Alda, is scheduled to talk about growing up in the northeast Bronx at the museum’s next “Back in the Bronx” event in February. Though the Aldas raised their three daughters in the New Jersey suburbs, and later lived on Long Island and in Manhattan, Mrs. Alda said she returned often to the Bronx to visit family, friends and stops like Arthur Avenue and the New York Botanical Garden. Mrs. Alda recalled a dinner party in San Diego in the 1970s at which she was introduced to the scientist Jonas Salk. It turned out that he too was from the Bronx. “We talked for the whole evening as if we were long-lost friends,” Mrs. Alda said.

Bronx
Bronx Museum
Chazz Palminteri
Arlene Alda
Philanthropy
Ruben Diaz Jr
Jonas E Salk


Police Question Indian Guru and Find Arsenal in His Compound

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The police on Friday began questioning a self-styled Indian “godman” who was seized after security forces stormed his compound in northern India, where he had barricaded himself with about 15,000 followers for more than a week. An extensive cache of weapons was found inside, the police said, including ammunition stored underneath the “throne” from which he preached. The guru, Baba Rampal Maharaj, 63, who claims to be the reincarnation of a 15th-century mystic poet, was arrested on Wednesday after a violent clash at his 12-acre compound in the city of Barwala in Haryana State. His supporters, lining the ramparts, pelted police officers with stones as they tried to enter, at one point using a bulldozer to break down a wall. Scores were injured, and six of Mr. Rampal’s followers died under uncertain circumstances during the standoff. Mr. Rampal had repeatedly resisted summonses to respond to charges of murder and incitement to violence dating to 2006, failing to show up in court 43 times. His defense lawyer, who appeared in High Court in Chandigarh, the state capital, on Thursday, argued that Mr. Rampal had been unable to appear earlier because he was being held hostage inside his compound, or ashram. Mr. Rampal told reporters that allegations that thousands of people had been kept at the ashram against their will were false. “I never used women and children as hostages,” he told reporters. In remarks to India News, a local television channel, a male devotee said Mr. Rampal’s followers had been prevented from leaving the compound, even after the police had severed supplies of water and electricity. “They told us, ‘Now, Guru ji needs you,' ” the man said, using a Hindu term of respect. “ 'If you die for Guru ji, you will go to heaven.’ We started realizing that they were taking the law into their own hands. We started doubting what they were telling us.” The police have registered two cases of murder based on complaints from family members and are investigating what caused the six deaths, said Anil Kumar Rao, the inspector general of the police in the Hisar District, which includes Barwala. Postmortem examinations on the victims showed that two of them, both women, had broken ribs, though they appeared to have died from a pre-existing illness, said a medical official from the area, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Rao said searches of the compound had uncovered an extensive arsenal, including homemade bombs and firearms. Since Mr. Rampal’s arrest, journalists have roamed through the guru’s vast compound, where he would deliver sermons in a hall the size of two football fields, and bless followers across a barrier of bulletproof glass from a brocade-covered chair known as the throne. The police told reporters that the chair was attached to a hydraulic lift that enabled him to rise up from the basement, seemingly from nowhere, to the wonderment of his followers. As they exited the ashram, some followers described eccentric forms of veneration that were practiced inside. Two men told The Indian Express, a daily newspaper, that during his meditations, Mr. Rampal was bathed in milk , which was later collected and used to prepare kheer, a kind of rice pudding, which was then fed to his followers. “The fruit of his meditation is present in the kheer,” a man who identified himself as Krishnan told the newspaper. The police said the guru lived in a five-story house with “granite tiles, marble floorings, fancy grills, strong doors, well-equipped bathrooms with modern fittings, split air-conditioners, flat-screen TVs and even massage beds,” according to IANS, a news service. Gurus and mystics can be found throughout India , whose ashrams often include hospitals and schools within their walls. Many of them cultivate relationships with political leaders, who use them to mobilize voters during elections, and attract wealthy and influential patrons.

India
New Delhi
Baba Rampal Maharaj
Anil Kumar
Search and seizure
Kidnapping and Hostages


Battling for Customers, Selling Urban Livability in Every Cup

Abstract: SEATTLE — This city got caffeinated over the past couple of decades, buzzed on its rise in the pop culture as a symbol of hipster-geekster cool, but also on the real stuff: coffee. Like salt and pepper — or more aptly, cream and sugar — coffee and Seattle became an item, each word modifying and reinforcing the other, thanks mainly, of course, to Starbucks, the coffee giant that exploded around the world from here. Starbucks exported beans and brews, wrapping it all in a cool, earth-toned vision of Pacific Northwest life that may or may not have reflected reality. But what is it like to compete head-to-head, latte for latte, against Starbucks in the throne room itself? Ask Demi Larsen. She’s a 25-year-old manager at a Tully’s Coffee, a struggling local chain that positioned itself years ago as the alternative choice for Seattle coffee-heads — brightly lighted where Starbucks was dim, medium roast where Starbucks was dark. “Starbucks opened the conversation,” Ms. Larsen said in a Tully’s near the University of Washington. But where Starbucks has become a designer global brand, she said, Tully’s tried to hold its roots as a local joint where the coffee comes first. “I have my Coach bag and I have my Gucci sunglasses and I have my Starbucks coffee,” she said of the brand mentality. “And there is a Starbucks avoider we definitely get — ‘Are you guys owned by Starbucks? No? O.K., good. We can get our coffee then.’ ” Trying harder because you’re No. 2, though, is perhaps a better slogan than it is a business model. This month, Tully’s, which expanded to about 200 stores at its peak — mostly on the West Coast, from here down into California — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed many of its shops as it deals with rising costs, sour real estate decisions, relentless competition from the big kid on the block and perhaps the harsh reality that Coach and Gucci are hard to beat. Why Seattle became synonymous with coffee at all, to the degree that the glass windows of a 1970s-vintage Starbucks have become a downtown tourist photo-op, is a chicken-and-egg question if ever there were one. Did coffee become huge here because the place so needed stimulants — a chemical restorative to the gloomy damp — or was it on some level a marketing creation that became real over time by force of repetition? “The ‘idea of Seattle’ was, and is, an idea of urban livability that lives on in the DNA of every upscale coffee retailer, whether they think of it that way and acknowledge it or not,” said James Lyons, a senior lecturer in the English department at the University of Exeter in England and author of “Selling Seattle,” a book about how Seattle identity and Seattle products, from coffee to grunge music, was harnessed together for fun and profit. “Every time I see a new, independent coffee store opt for outfacing window seating, so you can sip your latte and watch the world go by, the store owes a debt to Starbucks and its origins in Seattle,” Dr. Lyons said in an e-mail. Tully’s president and chief executive, Scott Pearson, said that prices for coffee and dairy products have risen in ways that cannot be fully passed on to customers, and that store locations locked in before the great recession, when the economic future seemed as frothy as bone-dry cappuccino, have been hard to sustain in tougher times. The company will continue to operate, he said, and hopes to emerge from bankruptcy protection early next year. Starbucks, meanwhile, is not standing still waiting for the next challenger to step up. The company’s senior vice president for global coffee, Craig Russell, said that with recent renovations of stores around the world, the company is reaching back into its own past for echoes of how the first Starbucks felt 40-odd years ago, before anyone thought of it as Seattle institution. “They have a sensibility of the Pacific Northwest, but they’re locally relevant,” he said. “As an example, I might say, we have a store in France — part of it is made from barrel staves, from wine barrels.” As with any industry that carves its initials deep into a city’s psyche — entertainment in Hollywood, or big finance in New York — there are also places and companies here that have found niches beyond the swilling down of the coffee itself. Home Espresso Repair and Cafe, for example — a company started and staffed by former Starbucks employees — has two tables, a banged-up guitar on the wall and a back room full of home-brew machines being lovingly restored. Some are huge antiques from an era of brass and iron, with milk-frothers that look as if they could put out three-alarm fires. Others are compact and lithe, Scandinavian designs that could be art objects. “Some people think huge companies like Starbucks or Tully’s put a bad name on coffee,” said Shari Rainlyn, who repairs machines and makes coffee in the front. “Really, places like my shop wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the huge companies. Not that I go there to get my coffee on Saturday morning. I don’t.”

Coffee
Bankruptcies
Coffeehouses
Tully's Coffee
Starbucks Corporation
Seattle (Wash)


First Pull-Ups, Then Combat, Marines Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — How many pull-ups does it take to make a female Marine? The answer, starting next January: a minimum of three, the same number required of male Marines. If anyone thought the military’s decision to allow women into combat units would lead to exceptions for women when it came to fitness and physical strength, this is one service’s “gender neutral” answer — or at least part of the answer. Like the men, women will have to perform the exercises on the Marine Corps’s annual physical fitness test as “dead hang” pull-ups, without the benefit of the momentum from a lower-body swing. Like the men, women can do the pull-ups underhanded or overhanded, as long as their chins break the plane of the bar. The new requirement replaces the old “flexed arm hang” for women, in place since 1975, which had to be held for a minimum of 15 seconds. “The physical requirements of female Marines, commensurate with their roles, have increased greatly since 1975,” said Col. Sean D. Gibson, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va. “The pull-up is a better test of muscular strength.” But the new Marine Corps regulations are just part of a sweeping re-examination of fitness standards in the military that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s announcement last week ending the ban on women in combat only accelerated. As it stands now, service members face a gantlet of overlapping fitness tests throughout the vast sprawl of the American military, from initial ones that recruits have to pass to annual fitness (and weight) tests to specific physical requirements that must be met for combat jobs. The Pentagon says it will not lower standards for women, but is nonetheless reviewing the requirements for hundreds of what are called military occupational specialties to see if they actually match up with the demands of each job. Some combat jobs that might open to women may require them to meet only specific requirements rather than a wide range of fitness standards. “We’re going to ensure that our tank crewmen are fully capable of removing 50-pound projectiles from the ammunition rack and loading them into the main gun in a sustained manner in a combat situation,” said George Wright, an Army spokesman. But for now, the Army has no immediate plans to change its sex-adjusted recruitment and annual fitness tests, even though the Marine Corps, which tenaciously promotes itself as the most hard-bodied service, has started to toughen up its standards for women. But even for the pull-ups, the Marines are still making some exceptions. To get a perfect grade, women will have to do only 8, compared with the 20 required for men. “I don’t think it’s a very high bar,” said Capt. Ann G. Fox, a Marine Reserve officer who during her first deployment in 2004 worked with the Iraqi Army and who thinks women could do better if it was required of them. “I think the test should be the same as the men 20 pull-ups. People train to what they’re tested on.” That was the experience of Greg Jacob, who was a commander at the combat training school for enlisted Marines at Camp Geiger, N.C., and said that he asked his female trainers to do the same number of pull-ups as their male students, even though women were not required at the time to do pull-ups at all. “I saw women who could only do one or two pull-ups be able to bust out, over the course of four or five months, eight pull-ups,” he said. “And that was because they were training to that standard.” Mr. Jacob, now the policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network , an advocacy group that worked to end the female combat ban, acknowledged the physiological differences between men and women, but said they were overstated. “There are lots of men who don’t have the same muscle mass as other men,” he said. “There is physical diversity regardless of gender.” Many jobs in the military, he said, have nonnegotiable physical demands. “Whether you were a man or a woman, you had to throw a live grenade 15 meters,” he said. “If a woman throws the hand grenade 10 meters, it’s going to blow up in her face and kill her.” In the Army, no pull-ups are required of either men or women on the annual fitness test, but like the Marines, there are different standards for each sex. A 17- to 26-year-old man in the Army has to run two miles in 15 minutes, 54 seconds or less and do at least 42 push-ups; a woman in the same age group has to run two miles in 18 minutes, 54 seconds or less and do at least 19 push-ups. The requirements decrease as service members age, although a woman who is 62 or older in the Army still has to run two miles in 25 minutes or less. Marines, typically, raise the bar. A 17- to 26-year-old male Marine has to run three miles in 28 minutes or less on his annual fitness test; compared with 31 minutes or less for a female Marine of the same age. The Marines also require all men and women to pass an annual combat fitness test, even though until now women were not officially permitted in combat. The sex-adjusted test drills Marines in how to respond under fire. All of the tests pale in comparison with one of the most brutal male preserves in the military, the Marines’ 86-day Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., which is intended to screen and train potential infantry officers. The test makes extraordinary physical and mental demands on its participants. Last fall, two female officers went through the course as an experiment and failed, inviting questions — even though large numbers of men fail — of whether women were up to it. Gen. James F. Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, held out the possibility that they are. In comments to reporters in San Diego on Thursday, he said he had met with two more female officers who had signed up for the next Infantry Officer Course, starting in March. “It looks like they’re in great shape and they’re excited about it,” he said.

Tests
Pentagon
US Military
Women and Girls
US Marines


Sorghum Exporters Have Best Week in 20 Years

Abstract: Chinese demand for cheap animal feed helped fuel the best week of grain sorghum sales for exporters in the United States in nearly two decades. The Agriculture Department said exporters sold 584,324 metric tons of American sorghum in the third week of December, the largest weekly sale since 1995 and the second largest total since 1990. Sorghum has long been used as substitute feed by budget-conscious livestock and poultry producers, and, in China, to produce alcohol and other foods. (REUTERS)

Agriculture
China
Cereal
International trade
US


Perry and Keating Battle in Massachusetts House Race

Abstract: QUINCY, Mass. — Jeff Perry has a role model: Senator Scott Brown . Mr. Perry, a Republican state representative in Massachusetts, is running for an open House seat that Democrats have held for nearly 30 years. He is not just hoping to replicate Mr. Brown’s victory in the campaign for the Senate seat that had been held by Edward M. Kennedy, he is invoking Mr. Brown himself. Mr. Perry rarely makes a campaign appearance without mentioning Mr. Brown, who won more votes in the 10th Congressional District than anywhere else in Massachusetts. Mr. Brown has recorded advertisements for Mr. Perry, and endorsed him almost six months before the Republican primary. With a week before Election Day, Mr. Perry, who is thought to have the best chance of gaining a seat for Republicans in the state, is struggling to fend off accusations that he witnessed and covered up the illegal strip search of a teenage girl in 1991, when he was a police sergeant in Wareham, Mass. For weeks, Democrats have focused on the case in advertisements as the party grows increasingly nervous that its nominee, William R. Keating, the Norfolk County district attorney, who has held elected office since 1977, may not be able to overcome the headwinds facing his party. But the situation gained new intensity last week when the woman who was strip-searched broke years of silence to publicly speak out against Mr. Perry. Mr. Perry said last week he was unaware that the strip-search was taking place, even though a police investigation said that he was about 15 feet away. Mr. Brown, who served for eight years with Mr. Perry in the Massachusetts legislature, recorded a radio ad accusing Mr. Keating of running a negative campaign by focusing on the issue. The district, a crescent that runs from south of Boston through Cape Cod, has been represented by Bill Delahunt, a Democrat who is retiring after seven terms. Local Republicans have had high hopes for Mr. Perry. In his eight years in the legislature, he offered one of the state’s toughest illegal immigration measures and was one of two legislators to oppose Gov. Mitt Romney’s universal health care bill for the state. “Jeff has captured everyone’s imagination,” said Peter Cordeiro, a member of the Plymouth County Republican Committee, who has been trying to help Republicans reclaim the seat since former Representative Gerry E. Studds, a Democrat, won it in 1972. “This is the most exciting year since then.” The race is a test of Mr. Brown’s ability to sustain the energy among Republicans that led to his election in a state where Democrats have long dominated the Congressional delegation. “It has become fun to be a Republican,” said Paula Harris, who operates a financial consulting firm with her husband out of their home in Duxbury. “We have a small business, and we used to be afraid we’d turn people off if they knew. It’s liberating.” Mr. Perry has attracted a mix of Tea Party supporters, disaffected Democrats and closet Republicans, many of whom grew up in fiercely liberal households. New Republican offices are springing up around the 10th District. Statewide, the party has nominated strong candidates for lower offices, including state treasurer and auditor, for the first time in years. Mr. Keating knows the race is tight. His diminishing waistline — he has lost more than 20 pounds since he started campaigning — is evidence of a breakneck schedule in the final push before the election. “My wife doesn’t let me get out of the house without a muffin ,” Mr. Keating said during an interview at his campaign office last week. “But I can’t eat and talk to people.” Both the Republican and Democratic Congressional committees have invested over $500,000 each in the race and have sent aides from Washington to pitch in. The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent nearly $700,000 on advertising, almost $300,000 of which came in the last seven days. At the same time, outside conservative groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race. The American Action Network , a group organized by former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the senior policy adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, bought almost $900,000 in advertising in Boston less than three weeks before Election Day. Feeding off the energy of a crowd gathered at an early-morning reception held at the Chamber of Commerce in Plymouth, last week, Mr. Perry talked breezily about his plans for Washington. “On election night you have a big party,” Mr. Perry said. “Then you throw Nancy Pelosi out.”

Massachusetts
Elections
Perry Jeff
Brown Scott P
Republican Party
Political Advertising
United States Politics and Government
Delahunt Bill
Keating William R.


Iraqi Parties, After Meetings in Finland, Agree on Principles to Guide Further Talks

Abstract: BAGHDAD — After years of vicious fighting among Iraq ’s fractious groups and some incomplete attempts at reconciliation, a ceremony here on Saturday marked a tiny step forward, at least symbolically. The event was the result of several meetings in Helsinki, Finland, attended by a range of Iraqi politicians, as well as veterans from two other seemingly intractable conflicts, in Northern Ireland and South Africa, who have gone on to become political leaders. The meetings, organized by a professor from the United States skilled in conflict resolution, included all of the main Iraqi political parties. They produced a document, unveiled Saturday, that outlined several principles for Iraq that the parties agreed upon, a first step in a process that experts in reconciliation say could take decades. “Here you had them see how to deal with each other and there were a lot of people nodding, ‘We see what you’re talking about,’ ” said the professor, Padraig O’Malley of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, at a briefing last week. Despite the note of cautious optimism, there were signs of discord on Saturday. Several of those involved expressed frustration that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki seemed more intent on declaring the talks a success than in continuing to discuss significant disagreements. “There were many disagreements at the Helsinki conference and we thought this conference would be to discuss those points that we did not agree upon,” said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni politician. “When we came here, Maliki refused to talk about anything, just to have a meeting and a celebration.” Mr. Maliki has been eager to depict himself as one of the country’s only leaders who has brought people together, although a number of other Iraqi leaders have begun to try to reach across sectarian and ethnic divides. Mr. Maliki was not involved directly in the Helsinki discussions, but members of his Dawa Party were among the signatories. American leaders have consistently said that Iraq cannot truly move forward until its Sunnis, Shiites and other groups put aside their animosities, and until they take actions like passing an oil law aimed at spreading the country’s wealth more evenly. The Helsinki agreement, which was hammered out over meetings in September and April, was signed by 33 politicians from Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Turkmen, Communist and other parties. The document consists of 17 principles, as well as strategies to ensure compliance with those goals. The principles included a commitment to eventually limit arms possession to the government, respect for minority rights and opposition to international and regional influence in Iraq’s internal affairs. The agreement also included a pledge to integrate the so-called Awakening Councils, and others who have fought against extremists, into state institutions. Disagreements were clearly, if modestly, noted in the text of the document. Along with a principle declaring the unity of the Iraqi people came a note saying that several signatories had argued that the document should declare that Iraqis share an Arab and Islamic affiliation. That addition that would have been unacceptable to the Kurds, a different ethnic group. More ominously, several qualifications were appended to a statement about the banning of armed militias, which have driven so much of Iraq’s violence. As for what comes after this, Mr. O’Malley said, that is up to the Iraqi leaders. His goal was to at least get them talking. “They have to move to the next step, and that is setting up structures that can adequately monitor compliance with these principles,” he said. Attending the meeting in Baghdad were Martin McGuinness, a former commander of the Irish Republican Army and now deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, and Mac Maharaj, an associate of Nelson Mandela’s who once commanded an armed resistance group in South Africa and later became that country’s minister of transport. The inclusion of people who had been involved with armed groups like the I.R.A. was essential for the effectiveness of the talks, Mr. O’Malley said, just as it will be essential that all groups be invited to participate in negotiations at some point, even the homegrown Sunni extremist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “These people know each other,” Mr. O’Malley said. “They all have the same psychological disabilities. They are all dysfunctional in the same way. It’s like a meeting of addicts.”

Iraq
Politics and Government
Helsinki (Finland)
Summit Conferences
Islamic Dawa Party


American Skier Steven Nyman Takes Home an Improbable Victory

Abstract: The American Steven Nyman took advantage of changing conditions in Val Gardena, Italy, for an improbable win in a World Cup downhill that was shortened because of heavy snowfall and low visibility on Saturday. Nyman also won that race in 2006 — his only previous victory — but struggled with injuries in recent seasons. He started with the No. 39 bib, with the first 30 start positions reserved for the top-ranked skiers. “Weather is definitely a huge factor,” Nyman said. “On days like today, you just got to hope for good conditions and take advantage of it.” Rok Perko of Slovenia, another late starter, finished second, 0.19 of a second behind Nyman’s time of 1 minute 28.82 seconds. The downhill world champion Erik Guay of Canada was third, 0.24 back. The overall World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal finished fifth. The start of the race was delayed for more than two hours because of the weather, which also changed once the event began. With the start lowered to the super-G level, about 30 seconds were cut from the race. Dominik Paris of Italy took the early lead before about a 20-minute delay because of fog rolling in across the course. When the fog moved out, Guay put down a run that might have been good enough to win if the conditions had remained the same. But it stopped snowing the fog lifted even more, and all of a sudden, later starters had a chance. No man had won a downhill with such a high start number since Fritz Stribl wore No. 43 in Val d’Isère, France, in 1996. AMERICAN WINS IN SKELETON The American Katie Uhlaender won a women’s World Cup skeleton race in La Plagne, France, in 2 minutes 8.22 seconds. Lyndon Rush and Jesse Lumsden of Canada raced to their first World Cup two-man bobsled win of the season. Rush and Lumsden, a former Canadian football player, had a two-run time of 2:01.18. FOURTH STRAIGHT LUGE WIN Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt of Germany won their fourth consecutive luge World Cup event to maintain a perfect record this season. They clocked the fastest times in both runs in Sigulda, Latvia, to finish with a combined time of 1:25.104. The Austrians Peter Penz and Georg Fischler came in second, ahead of Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber of Italy. Earlier Saturday, Tatiana Ivanova of Russia ended Germany’s winning streak in the women’s competition, clinching her second luge World Cup victory and first of the season. Ivanova led after the first run and finished 0.039 of a second ahead of Natalie Geisenberger, who was fastest in the second run. Geisenberger tops the World Cup standings after four events. NORWEGIANS FINISH 1-2 Magnus Moan led a Norwegian 1-2 finish ahead at a World Cup Nordic combined event in Ramsau, Austria, to move to the top of the overall standings. It was Moan’s 3rd win of the season and 22nd over all. He was third after the jumping discipline and started the 10-kilometer cross-country 30 seconds behind Mario Seidl of Austria. Moan soon took the lead and finished in 22:53.6, beating Mikko Kokslien by 5.9 seconds. SUPER-G POSTPONED The women’s World Cup super-G race in Val d’Isère, was postponed because of poor weather conditions. It has not yet been decided when the race will be rescheduled.

World Cup (Skiing)
Alpine Skiing
Vonn Lindsey
Wendl Tobias
Svindal Aksel Lund
Arlt Tobias
Skiing
Nyman Steven


Crossroads of Antiquity Can’t Decide on New Path

Abstract: KIFL, Iraq — This small town, shaded by date palms on a bend of the Euphrates River, has been revered as a holy place for centuries — by Jews, by Muslims and, for periods of peace, at least, by both. “The old democracy,” as the local police chief put it. Kifl, in what was once Babylonia, has survived millenniums of war and natural disasters, exile and expulsion, the fall of empires and the ravages of a troubled modernity. It embodies Iraq ’s rich, layered past and might yet represent its future — if the country’s leaders could stop quarreling over it and its religious provenance. In the center of town — and in the middle of a dispute — is the tomb of Ezekiel, the biblical prophet who preached to the Jews in captivity under Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B.C. Somewhere near here is where, according to tradition and faith, he saw his visions of God. Leaders of the town and the province now have a more earthly vision, too: tourism. Iraq remains a country at war, and the town, dusty and strewn with litter — and, the other day, the burned wreck of a car — lacks a single hotel. Nonetheless, they dream of travelers of all faiths streaming through Kifl — Muslims, Christians and even the Jews, who lived and worshiped here until the last families left by 1951, “because of the problem of Palestine ,” said one of them, Zvi Yehuda. That has thrust the tomb , with its distinctive (and Islamic) conical dome, which dates from the 14th century, into a debate that mirrors Iraq as a whole as it emerges from dictatorship and war. It is a debate between the competing aims of historic preservation and modern development, between a multifaith history and the increasing sway of Islam, particularly the Shiite branch, whose clerics have their own designs for the site. “We can prove to the world that this place is one of the cultural places that promote civilization and peaceful coexistence between peoples,” said Qais Hussein Rashid, the director of the State Board of Antiquities, which oversees Iraq’s myriad ancient sites. He did not say it would be easy. Late last year the antiquities board began a project to restore the ancient center of Kifl, with the aim of earning a coveted designation as a World Heritage site by Unesco, joining three other places in Iraq: Hatra, Samarra and Ashur . The historic core includes not only Ezekiel’s tomb and the synagogue around it, but also a precariously leaning 14th-century minaret of a mosque long since destroyed, and a vaulted T-shaped bazaar built in the 1800s under Ottoman rule, when Jews and Muslims lived in relative tolerance, if not exactly harmony. All are at the center of Kifl’s redevelopment plan, still under consideration and very much contested. A copy of the plan, hanging on the wall of the mayor’s office, depicts modern hotels, restaurants, shops, parks, parking lots and even a boat launch on the Euphrates shore: Kifl in 2030. “We hope everyone who visits Iraq comes to Kifl,” said the mayor, Khalid Obeid Hamza. His ambitions are as grand as the Malaysian city he improbably cited, when asked, as the inspiration for the plans. “Kuala Lumpur,” he said. “It’s a very nice place.” The plan, like the restoration work, has been greeted with deep suspicion by Kifl’s residents, including the tailors, shop owners and restaurateurs who work in the covered bazaar. Last month Kifl’s residents staged a protest, fearing the redevelopment would force them out. “If it’s good for my work, but hurts others, I won’t accept it,” said a baker, Malik Ali, expressing fears that hotels and restaurants for tourists would ruin the town’s historic, albeit worn, charm. He then echoed a familiar Iraqi lament: “I wish the restoration work would start with electricity and water and sewage.” In fact, the restoration of the tomb and its environs had barely started before it came under attack. News reports early this year that the project aimed to turn Ezekiel’s tomb into a mosque, removing architectural details like carvings in Hebrew, provoked a fury in Israel and beyond. The reports were false — the carvings remain in place, as do the wooden balustrades that separated the men’s and women’s sections and a carved cabinet that once held the Torah — but the fears were not without some foundation. Modern plaster, including some with painted Hebrew words and designs, was removed, ostensibly to expose the original stone walls, which have their own designs. The Shiite council that administers mosques and shrines across Iraq has strongly objected to the restoration, for different reasons. Its leaders argued both that the initial work was shoddy and that the authorities should be more concerned with excavations to find an undiscovered — and possibly nonextant — mosque where Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, tarried in the seventh century before his murder in Kufa and burial in Najaf, just south of here. “They focus on historical matters,” the Shiite caretaker of the tomb, Sheik Aqil al-Ghraawi, said of the board’s officials and experts. “We focus on both the historical and the Islamic.” As it is throughout the region, history in Iraq is a battleground in which faiths seek precedence for modern-day claims. The earliest known references to the Jewish tomb date to the 10th century. Before the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Jews from across the region made pilgrimages to the site, staying in guest rooms that are now ruins. Muslims, too, revere the site as the tomb of Dhul Kifl, a prophet mentioned twice in the Koran who gave the town its name and who has long been assumed to be the same man as Ezekiel. Millions of Shiite pilgrims travel each year to the major holy sites of Islam here, including Najaf and Karbala. Associating Kifl with Imam Ali would put the town on the tourist map, as it were. The region’s governor, Salman al-Zargany, who has already clashed with the antiquities board over profiting from tourism at the ancient ruins of Babylon in Hilla, threw his support to the clerics. “Archaeology is a very nice cake,” said Mr. Rashid, the antiquities board director, “and everyone is taking a piece.” In June, Mr. Zargany ordered the local police to occupy the site in order to halt the restoration work. Despite repeated negotiations since then, the project remains suspended, though scaffolding now braces the leaning minaret, believed to be part of a mosque that once stood beside Ezekiel’s tomb. Two weeks ago, Mr. Rashid canceled the rest of the project’s budget for the year, a little more than $500,000, shifting the money to other projects. Mr. Zargany has taken a leave of absence amid a dispute with the region’s provincial council. Sheik Aqil, the caretaker, despite his fervent belief in the site’s Islamic origins, said that he had no intention of undermining its Jewish heritage. “It’s a Muslim’s duty to protect it,” he said during a tour of the tomb, interrupted by midday prayers. On the walls are old photographs of the Jews who once prayed here. “We take care of the Islamic and the Jewish,” he went on. “It is the history of all Iraq.” Mr. Yehuda, a Jewish historian who was born in Kifl in 1936, recalled the town through the nostalgic prism of childhood, capturing the reverence it seems to have always inspired. “It was a very small place, and filled with date palms,” he said in an interview at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel, where he is the research director. “The Euphrates, the colors of the waters. As a child, near our house, we have a horse, and we had a cow and we had milk. We had everything.” He welcomed the idea of Jews returning someday. “Not only Iraqi Jews, every Jew who wants to come, as it was in older times, when Jews came from everywhere to visit Ezekiel,” he said. “If the Iraqis want to do it, I think they will succeed.”

Iraq
Ezekiel
Religion and Belief
Historic Buildings and Sites
Kifl (Iraq)
Tombs and Tombstones


After Being Removed From Court, Loughner Is Ruled Incompetent

Abstract: TUCSON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Jared L. Loughner was not mentally competent to stand trial on charges that he opened fire at a constituent event for Representative Gabrielle Giffords in January, killing six and injuring her and 12 others. The ruling by Judge Larry A. Burns of Federal District Court suspends the court proceedings against Mr. Loughner while the suspect, who experts said has schizophrenia , undergoes treatment at a federal psychiatric facility in Springfield , Mo. Before the judge’s decision, Mr. Loughner disrupted the hearing with an outburst that prompted deputy marshals to carry him from the room. He will return to court on Sept. 21, when the judge will review again whether Mr. Loughner understands the 49 charges against him and can assist in his defense. It remains possible, legal experts said, that Mr. Loughner will never be found competent, and could remain in a psychiatric facility indefinitely, but prosecutors said they hoped the trial would resume. “Our goal has always been and always will be to go to trial,” said Dennis K. Burke, a United States attorney, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse. Mr. Loughner, 22, looked haggard when he walked into court in shackles. Shaved bald and standing erect during his first court appearance in January, he now has long sideburns and unkempt hair and walks stooped over. He rocked back and forth in his chair during the proceedings, buried his face in his hands midway through and interrupted the judge with an outburst. “Thank you for the freak show,” he appeared to say. “She died right in front of me. You’re treasonous.” Other witnesses heard him say, “Thank you for the free shot,” and court officials were reviewing the recording to confirm. A lawyer close to the case said that Mr. Loughner continued to believe he killed Ms. Giffords and that he has clashed with his lawyer, Judy Clarke , who told him the congresswoman survived a bullet wound to the head. Expecting that he might act out, security personnel were positioned within two feet of Mr. Loughner and quickly spirited him out of the room. He was escorted back moments later and told the judge he would prefer to watch on a television screen in an adjoining holding cell. Judge Burns’s ruling that Mr. Loughner was incompetent followed the recommendations of two experts, Christina Pietz, a psychologist who works for the Bureau of Prisons and was appointed by the prosecution, and Dr. Matthew Carroll, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Diego appointed by the judge. Dr. Pietz conducted 12 interviews with Mr. Loughner over nine hours. She found that his thoughts were random and disorganized and that he suffered delusions and offered nonsensical answers to her questions. She diagnosed schizophrenia. Similarly, Dr. Carroll found after five interviews over seven hours that Mr. Loughner experienced delusions, bizarre thoughts and hallucinations and appeared to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia , the judge said. Dr. Carroll considered whether Mr. Loughner was faking a mental illness but reported that he showed no signs of that, the judge said. Judge Burns said he reviewed the hours of videotaped interviews and agreed with the experts’ conclusions. “At the present time, Mr. Loughner does not have a rational understanding of these proceedings,” Judge Burns said, ordering him treated for up to four months. Paul G. Cassell, a criminal justice expert at the S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah , said psychiatric evaluations would continue to determine whether Mr. Loughner’s condition has improved. If the experts believe that Mr. Loughner can be rendered competent through psychiatric treatment, then he can be forced to take medications, said Mr. Cassell, a former federal judge. Forcing medication raises troubling issues for society, said Cynthia Hujar Orr, a lawyer in San Antonio who is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Is it ethical and proper to help someone regain competence just to go after them for a death penalty offense or a murder offense?” she asked. Mr. Loughner’s parents, Randy and Amy, who were in the courtroom, sobbed when the judge said experts believed the suspect’s mental health had been in decline for two years. Since his arrest, Mr. Loughner’s classroom outbursts at Pima Community College here, which expelled him, and his bizarre rantings on the Internet have come to light. Before court, prosecutors met with shooting victims to prepare them for the judge’s ruling and let them know that it could be years before Mr. Loughner is ever tried. The case of John W. Hinckley Jr. was mentioned, although he did stand trial for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982, a result that led to passage of a law narrowing the use of the insanity defense in federal courts. Mr. Loughner faces separate state charges, which will also be suspended until he is determined to be competent, officials said. “It is always better to hold criminals accountable, but we may not be able to go forward if the mental health issues are insurmountable,” said Kathleen Mayer, the deputy prosecutor in Pima County. “We do know he won’t be a threat to anyone anymore.” One of the dozen or so victims and their families who attended the hearing, Eric Fuller, who was hit by bullet fragments in his back that morning, said it was clear to him that Mr. Loughner was ill. “The mere appearance, very disheveled, very disorganized, you don’t have to be a professional psychologist to know the boy is disturbed,” Mr. Fuller said. Judge Burns said he had received two letters from Mr. Loughner since his arrest, both complaining about his legal representation. The judge told Mr. Loughner’s court-appointed lawyer, Ms. Clarke, that he did not intend to take up the issues raised in the letters because he considered them a consequence of Mr. Loughner’s mental illness. Mr. Loughner was arrested after being wrestled to the ground by bystanders at the scene of the Jan. 8 shooting in a grocery store parking lot where Ms. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was meeting with constituents. Mr. Loughner is charged with walking up to the congresswoman and shooting her, then turning his gun on others in the crowd. Among the dead were John Roll , a federal judge in Tucson , and 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green , both of whom were mentioned prominently in a speech that President Obama gave here shortly after the shooting. Ms. Giffords has been undergoing rehabilitation for a severe brain injury at a hospital in Houston . Doctors say she is making steady progress, and she recently traveled to Florida to watch her husband, Capt. Mark E. Kelly , pilot the space shuttle Endeavour on its final mission into space.

Gabrielle Giffords
Mental Health
Jared Lee Loughner
Decisions and Verdicts
2011 Tucson shooting
Larry Alan Burns


Interfaith Initiative Formed for Colleges

Abstract: The White House on Thursday announced a new initiative to encourage college students of different religions to collaborate on yearlong community service projects, like building homes or tutoring children. President Obama will send a letter to thousands of college presidents urging them to undertake what he calls “The President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge” during the 2011-12 academic year. He said in a video announcement that the purpose is to encourage cooperation among students of diverse religious beliefs — as well as non-believers. The initiative, which has no discrete government financing, was announced by the White House faith-based office and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Colleges and Universities
Religion and Belief
Faith-Based Initiatives
Volunteers and Community Service
Obama Barack


As U.S. Open Nears, Tennis Channel and Cablevision Battle

Abstract: The Tennis Channel has, for years, wanted to be carried by cable operators on their most widely available levels. In most cases, that means digital basic. Among those to resist that goal is Cablevision, whose three million customers in the New York City area would be valuable additions to the Tennis Channel, especially during the United States Open , which starts next week. Two years ago, Cablevision and the Tennis Channel engaged in a nasty public battle that lasted beyond the United States Open. The solution dissatisfied the network: Cablevision added the Tennis Channel to the channels on its digital sports tier. Rather than negotiate the deal directly with the Tennis Channel, Cablevision joined the National Cable Television Cooperative, a group of about 1,000 cable operators whose long-term contract with the network allowed it to be placed on sports tiers, which charge consumers extra fees. Ken Solomon, Tennis Channel’s president, called Cablevision’s move “fiendishly ingenious” Monday — and now wonders what Cablevision will do when the cooperative’s contract ends at midnight Sept. 3, six days into the United States Open and soon after the network’s Saturday night prime-time coverage ends. A new contract mandates that the cooperative’s members carry the Tennis Channel on digital basic or not at all. Solomon is hoping that Cablevision will comply with the new contract. “But I’m not confident it will happen,” he said. He is still stung by what he calls Cablevision’s use of a loophole — joining the cable cooperative to avoid broadly distributing the Tennis Channel and shifting it to the sports tier that he said attracted 100,000 to 135,000 of Cablevision’s subscribers. “It would be the height of hypocrisy to opt out of the N.C.T.C. contract because it’s no longer a loophole,” Solomon said. Opting out is any member’s option, said Dan Mulvenon, a spokesman for the cooperative. “I’m sure every member will take a hard look at new requirements and decide if they’re in or out,” he said, adding that he did not know how many members would expand the way they carry the Tennis Channel. Cablevision said in a statement that it was “hopeful that there will be a new agreement or an extended one” with the Tennis Channel. But, it added, “Under any scenario, Cablevision customers will see every important U.S. Open match on ESPN2, CBS and through the considerable online offerings of the U.S.T.A.” ESPN2 and the Tennis Channel share cable coverage of the tournament. The Tennis Channel’s schedule features eight days of action from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern and the weekend of Sept. 3 and 4 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Cablevision is not the only major cable operator in the New York City area that carries the Tennis Channel on a sports tier; Time Warner Cable and Comcast also do, which severely limits how many people can see the channel. But the enforcement bureau of the Federal Communications Commission last month gave the Tennis Channel reason to be hopeful by recommending that Comcast give the Tennis Channel much wider carriage that would equal what it gives to the two networks it owns, the Golf Channel and Versus. Comcast objected. Solomon said he was certain that his independent network would have many more subscribers if it were owned by Comcast or Cablevision.

Tennis
Cable Television
United States Open (Tennis)
Tennis Channel The
Cablevision Systems Corporation


Justine Henin Says She Is Retiring for Good With Elbow Injury

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — Justine Henin was still here in Australia last week, still in the midst of her latest comeback and still covering court and ripping her signature one-handed backhands with the natural grace and no-nonsense intensity that defined her game. But on Wednesday, Henin, one of the players of this century so far, announced that her tennis career was truly, definitively over at age 28 because of a right elbow injury that she aggravated at the Australian Open. In an open letter to the news media, distributed in French and English, she said she had undergone multiple medical examinations since her third-round loss in the Open. “The exams are clear and the doctors definitive,” she said. “My elbow is too damaged and too fragile for me to be able to continue to follow my passion and practice my profession at the highest level. “ Henin, a national icon in Belgium, won seven Grand Slam singles titles before her first retirement, which came abruptly in May 2008 when she was suffering from burnout and a desire to explore what else life had to offer. She returned to the game at the beginning of the 2010 season, reaching the final at the Australian Open. But the rest of her comeback season was not as reassuring, and at Wimbledon she injured her right elbow when she fell in a fourth-round loss to her Belgian rival Kim Clijsters. She spent the next few weeks deciding whether to risk surgery to repair the problem, but according to her longtime coach and confidant, Carlos Rodriguez, surgery would have forced her to miss another “year and a half realistically.” Henin decided to take her chances without surgery. She returned for the exhibition team event, the Hopman Cup, this month, then won two rounds in Melbourne before another longtime rival, Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia, beat her in an intense yet error-strewn match, 6-4, 7-6 (8). If Henin remains true to her word and her retirement this time, that will be the final score of her remarkable, often inspirational career in which her complete game, anticipation and athleticism often allowed her to get the better of more powerful, physically imposing opponents. “I am in shock, obviously, even if the struggles these last seven months had made me understand that perhaps one day I’d have to accept this,” Henin said in her letter. “Having considered it thoroughly and on the advice of my doctors, it’s time to bow to the evidence and accept that my career ends here, definitively, even though it’s tough, very tough when I was coming back with great desire. “I am sad,” she continued. “I had hoped for another kind of comeback and dreamed of another end.” After an early phase when her nerves infiltrated her game on big occasions, Henin matured into an intense competitor. In 2003 at the French Open , in a semifinal against Serena Williams, she refused to acknowledge after the fact that she had raised her hand to indicate that she was not ready to play when Williams was preparing to serve. She went on to win the title, her first at a Grand Slam, but she also inspired many that same year at the United States Open when she pushed herself to the limit against Jennifer Capriati in a grueling semifinal and then managed to recover in time to win the title the next day. In total, she won 43 singles titles, including four French Opens, one Australian Open and two United States Opens. Wimbledon, where she was twice a finalist, is the only hole in her Grand Slam résumé. Henin also finished the year at No. 1 in 2003, 2006 and 2007, and won the Olympic gold medal in singles in 2004. But statistics are limited when it comes to expressing Henin’s impact. She was a purist’s delight, and Martina Navratilova, one of the game’s great champions, once said that there were only two players in this era she would pay to watch: one was Roger Federer, the other Henin.


In ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Dear,’ a Hurt for the Elderly

Abstract: Professionals call it elderspeak, the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.” “People think they’re being nice,” said Elvira Nagle, 83, of Dublin, Calif., “but when I hear it, it raises my hackles.” Now studies are finding that the insults can have health consequences, especially if people mutely accept the attitudes behind them, said Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University , who studies the health effects of such messages on elderly people. “Those little insults can lead to more negative images of aging,” Dr. Levy said. “And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.” In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking . The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions. In her forthcoming study, Dr. Levy found that older people exposed to negative images of aging, including words like “forgetful,” “feeble” and “shaky,” performed significantly worse on memory and balance tests; in previous experiments, they also showed higher levels of stress. Despite such research, the worst offenders are often health care workers, said Kristine Williams, a nurse gerontologist and associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Nursing. To study the effects of elderspeak on people with mild to moderate dementia , Dr. Williams and a team of researchers videotaped interactions in a nursing home between 20 residents and staff members. They found that when nurses used phrases like “good girl” or “How are we feeling?” patients were more aggressive and less cooperative or receptive to care. If addressed as infants, some showed their irritation by grimacing, screaming or refusing to do what staff members asked of them. The researchers, who will publish their findings in The American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, concluded that elderspeak sent a message that the patient was incompetent and “begins a negative downward spiral for older persons, who react with decreased self-esteem, depression , withdrawal and the assumption of dependent behaviors.” Dr. Williams said health care workers often thought that using words like “dear” or “sweetie” conveyed that they cared and made them easier to understand. “But they don’t realize the implications,” she said, “that it’s also giving messages to older adults that they’re incompetent.” “The main task for a person with Alzheimer’s is to maintain a sense of self or personhood,” Dr. Williams said. “If you know you’re losing your cognitive abilities and trying to maintain your personhood, and someone talks to you like a baby, it’s upsetting to you.” She added that patients who reacted aggressively against elderspeak might receive less care. For people without cognitive problems, elderspeak can sometimes make them livid. When Sarah Plummer’s pharmacy changed her monthly prescription for cancer drugs from a vial to a contraption she could not open, she said, the pharmacist explained that the packaging was intended to help her remember her daily dose. “I exploded,” Ms. Plummer wrote to a New York Times blog, The New Old Age, which asked readers about how they were treated in their daily life. “Who says I don’t take my medicine as prescribed?” wrote Ms. Plummer, 61, who lives in Champaign, Ill. “I am alive right now because I take these pills! What am I supposed to do? Hold it with vice grips and cut it with a hack saw?’” She added, “I believed my dignity and integrity were being assaulted.” Health care workers are often not trained to avoid elderspeak, said Vicki Rosebrook, the executive director of the Macklin Intergenerational Institute in Findlay, Ohio, a combined facility for elderly people and children that is part of a retirement community. Dr. Rosebrook said that even in her facility, “we have 300 elders who are ‘sweetie’d’ here. Our kids talk to elders with more respect than some of our professional care providers.” She said she considered elderspeak a form of bullying. “It’s talking down to them,” she said. “We do it to children so well. And it’s natural for the sandwich generation, since they address children that way.” Not all older people object to being called sweetie or dear, and some, like Jan Rowell, 61, of West Linn, Ore., say they appreciate the underlying warmth. “We’re all reaching across the chasm,” Ms. Rowell said. “If someone calls us sweetie or honey, it’s not diminishing us; it’s just their way to connect, in a positive way.” She added, “What would reinforce negative stereotypes is the idea that old people are filled with pet peeves, taking offense at innocent attempts to be friendly.” But Ellen Kirschman, 68, a police psychologist in Northern California, said she objected to people calling her “young lady,” which she called “mocking and disingenuous.” She added: “As I get older, I don’t want to be recognized for my age. I want to be recognized for my accomplishments, for my wisdom.” To avoid stereotyping, Ms. Kirschman said, she often sprinkles her conversation with profanities when she is among people who do not know her. “That makes them think, This is someone to be reckoned with,” she said. “A little sharpness seems to help.” Bea Howard, 77, a retired teacher in Berkeley, Calif., said she objected less to the ways people addressed her than to their ignoring her altogether. At recent meals with a younger friend, Ms. Howard said, the restaurant’s staff spoke only to the friend. “They ask my friend, ‘How are you; how are you feeling?’ just turning on the charm to my partner,” Ms. Howard said. “Then they ask for my order. I say: ‘I feel you’re ignoring me; I’m at this table, too.’ And they immediately deny it. They say, no, not at all. And they may not even know they’re doing it.” Dr. Levy of Yale said that even among professionals, there appeared to be little movement to reduce elderspeak. Words like “dear,” she said, have a life of their own. “It’s harder to change,” Dr. Levy said, “because people spend so much of their lives observing it without having a stake in it, not realizing it’s belittling to call someone that.” In the meantime, people who are offended might do well to follow the advice of Warren Cassell of Portland, Ore., who said it irritated him when “teenage store clerks and about 95 percent of the rest of society” called him by his first name. “It’s the faux familiarity,” said Mr. Cassell, 78. But he mostly shrugs it off, he said. “I’m irked by it, but I can’t think about it that much,” he said. “There are too many more important things to think about.”

Elderly
Yale University
Research
English Language
Medicine and Health
Psychology and Psychologists


Michigan Governor Tells Congress He Was Misled on Flint Water

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Time and again, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan acknowledged in a tense congressional hearing Thursday that he had been aware of complaints about the drinking water in Flint, including from news reports his aides had emailed him. Yet he had accepted assurances, he said, that the problems were not severe. Democrats listening to his testimony were dubious. “Governor Snyder, plausible deniability only works when it’s plausible,” said Representative Matt Cartwright, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “You were not in a medically induced coma for a year.” The rebuke was one of the more caustic in an extraordinary turn on Capitol Hill: A sitting Republican governor appearing before a Republican-led congressional panel, answering wave after wave of questions about his administration’s role in the Flint water crisis — “the most glaring failure of government since Hurricane Katrina ,” as Representative Brendan Boyle, another Pennsylvania Democrat, described it. Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also came under fire, pressured by Republicans to accept responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply and sometimes shouted down as she deflected blame onto the State of Michigan. Both officials were repeatedly called on to resign, with Mr. Boyle saying it was Mr. Snyder’s “moral responsibility.” Over and over, Ms. McCarthy was admonished, “You just don’t get it.” In addition to the hearing, there are a series of investigations — criminal and administrative — into how the water supply for a city of nearly 100,000 people became tainted with lead, a crisis that was not acknowledged for months. But in a strange political reversal, Republicans who usually champion local rule cast most of their blame on the E.P.A., saying the federal agency bore at least as much responsibility as the state for keeping Flint’s residents safe. Democrats who champion the role of the federal government blamed the Snyder administration, and focused on the questions: What did Mr. Snyder know and when did he know it? “I kick myself every day,” Mr. Snyder said repeatedly as he testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, saying his mistake was trusting employees — “career bureaucrats, ” he dryly called them, and “so-called experts” — who consistently misinformed him that the city’s water was safe. The water contamination in Flint and the failings of government officials at all levels have cast a spotlight on water safety around the country and the problems that come with aging lead pipes. The state’s response has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, with Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton calling on Mr. Snyder to step down. Mr. Snyder said at the hearing, as he has before, that he did not learn that Flint’s water had dangerous levels of lead until Oct. 1, after a local pediatrician went public with findings that the number of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had risen alarmingly since the city changed its water supply the previous year. And he repeated that he did not learn about a spike in Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area until January, even though some county and state officials knew of it much earlier. Mr. Snyder also took shots at the E.P.A., which learned in April 2015 — a year after Flint switched to a new water source, the Flint River — that the city was not adding a chemical that would prevent its pipes from corroding and leaching lead. He pointed to emails suggesting that E.P.A. employees in the regional office in charge of Michigan were complicit with employees of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in keeping concerns about lead and lack of corrosion control quiet for months. “They were in regular dialogue,” he said of federal and state environmental officials. “We needed urgency, we needed action,” but they kept on talking, he said. Image Gov. Rick Snyder and Gina McCarthy of the Environmental Protection Agency. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times Republicans have long targeted the E.P.A. as a source of government incompetence and overreach. Ms. McCarthy, conceded that her agency had not responded quickly or forcefully enough when it learned that Flint had not taken the necessary corrosion control steps. But she said the E.P.A. had been fooled and foiled by the same state employees who misled Mr. Snyder. Much to the vexation of Republicans on the panel, she repeatedly refused to say the E.P.A. had failed, or that anyone in the agency should have been fired — including the regional administrator overseeing Michigan, Susan Hedman, who later quit after questions were raised about the handling of a whistle-blower, Miguel Del Toral, whose warnings about lead were not acted aggressively on and who later complained that he was punished for his actions. She also refused to say whether the outcome would have been different if the federal law setting standards for safe drinking water had been clearer. “I wish we had gone farther, I wish we had yelled from the treetops,” Ms. McCarthy told the committee. “But there is no way my agency created this problem.” Few new facts emerged from the four-hour hearing, nor did any minds appear to be changed about culpability. Perhaps most striking was that despite the partisan tone, Republicans sprinkled at least some criticism on Mr. Snyder, while Democrats chastised the E.P.A. for not responding more forcefully when it learned Flint had not added corrosion controls after switching to the river water. “The state has a big part of this blame, I’m not trying to excuse them whatsoever,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who is the chairman of the committee, although he spent most of his allotted time trying to force an unyielding Ms. McCarthy to acknowledge she had “screwed up.” Flint residents who attended the hearing — many of whom had traveled overnight by bus to get there — left shrugging their shoulders, unsure what to take from it. “I didn’t start off with a lot of high hopes,” said Melissa Mays, a resident who is a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the Snyder administration. “It’s a little more fire for everybody back home, because for the longest time we felt like we didn’t have a voice, we didn’t matter, nobody cared. And now we’re watching people care about what’s been happening.” After the hearing, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, said he remained determined to interview 15 current and former members of the Snyder administration who had so far rejected his invitation to do so. In particular, Mr. Cummings said he wished to speak with Dennis Muchmore, Mr. Snyder’s former chief of staff, who raised regular alarms about Flint’s water problems last year in emails released by the governor’s office. “It doesn’t end here,” said Mr. Cummings, who was among those calling for Mr. Snyder’s resignation at the hearing. Mr. Chaffetz deflected reporters’ questions about whether he would use his subpoena power to bring Mr. Muchmore before the committee. The day brought other headaches for Mr. Snyder: Standard & Poor’s lowered the outlook on Michigan’s credit rating to stable from positive, citing the costs of dealing with the Flint crisis, and also with a looming financial crisis affecting Detroit public schools. At the hearing, Democrats frequently made reference to Flint children who have been exposed to lead in their drinking water, and in one of the final exchanges of the hearing, Mr. Cummings asked Mr. Snyder what those children were supposed to learn from the government failures. “It’s one of the terrible parts of all of this,” Mr. Snyder replied. “There’s a question of trust in government, and there’s good reason for them to ask that question. And that’s going to take a huge amount of time to earn back, if it can be earned back.”

Michigan
Water
Rick Snyder
Gina McCarthy
Lead
Flint Michigan
EPA
Water pollution


More Texas Students Making Up Credits Online

Abstract: Brett Rusnock can follow his students’ every move on his laptop: how much time they spend on computers each day at Waltrip High School in Houston, their scores on quizzes and when they stop working. He even gets e-mail alerts when they toil at home into the wee hours. “I can play Big Brother a little bit with this,” Mr. Rusnock said. Mr. Rusnock is not a teacher. He is a grad coach, one of 27 in Houston monitoring thousands of students who take so called credit-recovery courses online. Like many other districts across the state, particularly those with high dropout rates, the Houston Independent School District offers these self-paced make-ups to any student who fails a class. In the spring and summer terms, 6,127 Houston I.S.D. students earned 9,774 credits in such courses, which are generally taken in conjunction with a full load of regular classes. About 2,500 more students are enrolled this fall. The program reflects a trend in Texas and nationally as school districts seek cost-effective ways to bolster graduation rates. But questions remain over whether the digital curriculum — which school districts buy from Apex Learning and other providers — offers the same quality of education as traditional courses. Little research exists on how much, or how little, students learn. The Texas Education Agency does not regulate credit-recovery courses or even track their proliferation, though the courses have expanded rapidly over the last decade. The Austin I.S.D. and the Dallas I.S.D. each reported educating about 4,000 students in credit-recovery courses last year. Pearson Education , makers of the popular credit-recovery software NovaNet, reported its use in 400 Texas schools. Robert Scott , the state’s commissioner of education, said he was concerned that some districts might be offering an easy way out of a rigorous curriculum, rather than an avenue back to regular classes. “Any tool that helps get kids credit toward graduation is certainly worth having,” Mr. Scott said. “But any time you’re accelerating education that quickly, there’s a concern that the quality of the content standards you’re going over will be lessened.” Apex Learning, Houston’s provider, supplies written tests in addition to the standard computer-based multiple-choice assessments, and school districts determine whether to use them. NovaNet does not provide such tests. The Austin I.S.D. uses its own written tests in combination with the company’s online curriculum; without this safeguard, students would be able to earn an English credit without writing a single sentence. Credit recovery is just part of a larger devolution in the traditional 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., lecture-and- textbook high school model, which educators increasingly acknowledge fails many children. Other trends include raising the maximum age for Texas high school students to 25. There has also been a rapid growth of “dropout recovery” charter schools that exclusively serve troubled teenagers. For accelerated students, the number of dual-credit classes taught in partnership with local colleges has increased. T. Jack Blackmon, who heads up the Dallas I.S.D. credit-recovery program, said the old model would continue to crumble. “It’s the vision for the future as far as I’m concerned: kids going at their own pace,” Mr. Blackmon said. “The traditional school is only good for about a third of the kids, the ones who want football or choir or social activities — kids who have the school bug. For the rest of them, it’s just standing in line, waiting for the factory model to give them an education. A lot of kids don’t want to wait in line.” Terry Grier, superintendent of the Houston I.S.D., expanded Houston’s credit-recovery offerings in January. He had successfully started similar classes in San Diego and in Guilford County, N.C. In those cases, the dropout rate was cut in half during his tenure, though credit-recovery was just one of the programs at play. One of Mr. Grier’s goals upon arriving in Houston last year was to make similar improvements. District officials put Houston’s dropout rate at 15.8 percent — higher than the self-reported rate in New York (13.5 percent), but lower than Indianapolis (29.8 percent) and Los Angeles (34.9 percent). The district prides itself on academic rigor and student support, provided mostly by grad coaches who make daily decisions about when students have mastered the material and how much time they should spend on a particular skill. Students in Houston take an average of 61 days to complete credit-recovery courses — about 26 days less than a typical semester-long course — and they are required to take written tests. Mr. Rusnock supervises statistical progress, but he also looks beyond the numbers and tries to divine learning. Students retake quizzes until they pass them, but if a student fails one three times in a row, it is up to Mr. Rusnock to decide how to proceed. Frequently, he will make a student stay on that lesson, but he assesses case by case. “We’re not producing cars here,” he said. In Houston, students can work from home or in a grad lab at their school. In Austin, every high school has a Delta credit-recovery lab. During a recent day at Austin High School, students got a heavy dose of one-on-one help. In a long, skinny classroom, about 40 computers lined cinder-block walls adorned with motivational sayings and posters, including one that showed a frog hanging halfway out of the mouth of a pelican, reaching its arms out to strangle the bird. The message was, never give up. Martha Louis, a 37-year teaching veteran, runs the Delta lab with the help of another teacher and two assistants. Twenty to 40 students drop by throughout the school day. Ms. Louis said that the classes were a great alternative for students who might struggle for a variety of reasons, but that they were not a replacement for traditional learning. Ms. Louis insists that students, even those working rapidly, must work methodically through the content. “They can’t just click-click-click-click-click and go straight to the quiz,” she said. “They have to take notes.” But students are permitted to use those notes on quizzes, which is a tremendous help to Monique Romero, a freshman. “I have trouble remembering,” Monique said, while she scribbled in her notebook about the Russian geography unit on her screen. Several students describe the courses as “easier,” a reference more to the method than to the material. Students end up in the Delta lab for various reasons. Krendon Reynolds, a junior, takes mostly advanced-placement classes. But he failed one of his classes, Krendon said, because he did not do the homework. “I’ve just got a lot of other things to do at home,” including a job, he said. In one extreme case, a 19-year-old who was a freshman last year earned enough recovery credits to become a senior this year. The student raced through economics in just four weeks, Ms. Louis said. Most take longer, but the main reason that all of them can move faster is because they have seen the material before; even though they got an F, they learned something. Quilson Norales, a senior at Yates High School in Houston, snoozed through Spanish — his native language — and failed. The Apex Learning version of the class took him only three hours to earn back the credit he had squandered during a semester’s worth of naps. Some grad coaches worry that such extreme examples might give other students the wrong impression. Mr. Rusnock said he tried to get across the message that passing the first time beat staring at the same material on a screen. Quilson seems to be getting it. As he slouched in a plastic chair and worked his way through his final English test, he vowed never to take another class twice. “I ain’t going through this again,” he said.

Texas
Dropouts
Graduation Rates
Apex Learning
Education (Secondary)
Computers and the Internet
Tests and Testing


On Night of Big Finales, ‘Office’ Rises and ‘Idol’ Falls

Abstract: On a busy night of finales for television favorites, “The Office” regained a little of its former glory, “Scandal” demonstrated it may have more glory to come and “American Idol” looked like a pale shadow of past glory. Even with “The Office” signing off for a last time, the big ratings news Thursday night was made by “Idol,” which ended a lackluster season — its 12th with a drop of more than 40 percent in the ratings. The numbers for “Idol” and “The Office” were somewhat preliminary because both ran past 10 p.m., and their best numbers most likely came after the measured hour. But by Fox’s own estimate of where “Idol” will end up, its finale will be down 42 percent in the category its advertisers most care about, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, from a 6.4 rating last season to a 3.7 this season. By current network standards a 3.7 in that viewing group is a solid number, especially for a 12-year-old show. But for the once mighty “Idol,” it is a precipitous fall. It wasn’t even the best rating of the night in that group, topped by the 4.4 scored by CBS’s comedy hit “The Big Bang Theory.” And over all, “Idol” shed more than seven million viewers compared with last year’s finale, with a total of 14.2 million viewers (by Fox’s estimate) down, from 21.5 million last season. Even more telling is the vertiginous drop from two years ago. That finale scored a 9.2 rating in the 18-49 group and attracted 29.3 million viewers. As for “The Office,” the finale, which ran 1 hour and 15 minutes, recorded a 3.0 rating in the 18-49 group, the show’s best in 16 months; no episode has been higher since November of 2011. The finale also averaged 5.7 million viewers, the best since January 2012. ABC’s “Scandal,” perhaps the hottest drama on television, had its best total viewer number ever, with about 9.1 million, and it matched its best rating ever in the 18-49 group, a 3.2.

American Idol
Ratings
TV
Fox Broadcasting
NBC


Expelled Yale Player Says Decision Was Unfair and Excessive

Abstract: Jack Montague, the captain of Yale ’s basketball team, who was expelled last month in connection with a sexual misconduct case, said in a statement through his lawyer on Monday that the university’s ruling was “wrong, unfairly determined, arbitrary and excessive by any rational measure.” The expulsion of Montague, 22, and the mystery surrounding the details of his case have partly overshadowed a historic season for the Bulldogs basketball team, the Ivy League champion, which advanced to the N.C.A.A. tournament this year after a 54-year wait. Yale will play Baylor in a first-round game Thursday afternoon in Providence, R.I. The team has been at odds with many students on campus over its continued support for Montague. There has been no public explanation of how the case was handled from anyone associated with Yale’s athletics department or its administration. According to the statement , released by Montague’s lawyer, Max Stern, through a public-relations firm, an independent investigator found that Montague and a female student had consensual sex in an earlier encounter. “The sole dispute is as to the sexual intercourse in the fourth episode,” the statement said. “She stated that she did not consent to it. He said that she did.” 2016 Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Bracket Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon are the top seeds in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. A panel of Yale’s University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct believed her side, the statement said, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” a finding then upheld by a dean and confirmed by the provost. A Yale spokesman continued to decline to comment on Montague’s specific case, citing federal confidentiality laws. In a statement Monday morning, the spokesman, Tom Conroy, did say that “where cases involve judgments about the witnesses’ credibility, all of the available corroborating or contradictory information is carefully weighed to determine who is telling the truth.” He also said that the accused was permitted legal representation throughout the process and that just one in 10 cases culminated in expulsion, while one in five resulted in no adverse finding and two in five resulted in a reprimand or probation. In an Ivy League postseason conference call with reporters Monday morning, James Jones, Yale’s coach, deflected questions about Montague. “I understand that this is a story for some people, but Yale has not been in the tournament” in a very long time, he said, adding, “We’re trying to focus on trying to play basketball games, and that’s our major concern and the only thing on our mind.” The female student has not spoken publicly. Montague left the team last month in what at the time was described by both sides as a leave of absence. The Yale team wore shirts with his nickname, Gucci, on them before a prominent game, with a player subsequently explaining that the action was meant to show support for the team’s “brother.” That prompted an outcry on Yale’s campus, with posters and chalkboards adorned with accusations that Yale’s team was supporting rape culture. The statement through Montague’s lawyer said that the charge against Montague had been filed by a Title IX official after the student reported the episode to a Title IX coordinator a year after the encounter. According to that statement, an independent investigator found that on the night in question, the female student “reached out to him” after they had parted, returning to his room and spending the night. “We believe that it defies logic and common sense that a woman would seek to reconnect and get back into bed with a man who she says forced her to have unwanted sex just hours earlier,” the statement said. Some Yale students said the case was especially provocative because of a lack of transparency. The mechanism Yale has put in place to handle sexual misconduct complaints emphasizes confidentiality to make students feel comfortable coming forward. If the students choose, the matter can also be settled without the involvement of law enforcement. Outside investigators are assigned to each case, and the cases are heard by members of the Yale professional community. The dean of Yale College makes the final decision. The findings remain confidential and are protected by privacy laws.

Yale
Jack Montague
Rape
College basketball


Cambodia Stampede Kills Hundreds

Abstract: PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — More than 300 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in a stampede at an annual water festival in Cambodia that the prime minister on Tuesday called the nation’s worst tragedy since the murderous Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago. Witnesses here in the capital said the stampede began Monday night when people panicked in a dense crowd on a small island close to the shore of the Bassac River. Hundreds of people tried to escape over a short suspension bridge. Many died of suffocation, were crushed underfoot, or were electrocuted by loose wires. Many drowned when they leapt from the suspension bridge into the water. The night was filled with the constant sound of sirens and, at the scene and in the hospital, with the wailing of people discovering dead friends or relatives. “This is the biggest tragedy in more than 31 years since the Pol Pot regime,” Prime Minister Hun Sen said in one of several television announcements through the night, referring to the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. Millions of people pour into the capital each year and line the river’s shores and islands in densely packed crowds for a boat race that is the climax of the water festival. The last boat race ended early Monday evening, the final night of the holiday, and a concert was being held on the island, called Diamond Island, a long spit of land close to the royal palace on the shore. There was no confirmation of the cause of the stampede, but Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said it began when what he said were one million people became “scared of something.” A military police investigator, Sawannara Chendamirie, who was at the hospital said it appeared that the panic began when some people began shouting that the bridge was collapsing. “I got information that when the incident happened, some people thought the bridge was falling,” he said. “They were so frightened.” “People were frightened that the bridge would break.” The police and rescuers had to fight their way through crowds, sometimes beating people with their belts to get through, according to reports from the scene. Video from the site showed scenes of horror with bodies lying here and there and frantic rescuers rushing among them. People searched, weeping, through the corridors of the hospital, where bodies lay on the floor wrapped in woven mats or under sarongs. Hospital workers threw white sheets over groups of bodies on the floor. White-coated hospital personnel hurried through rooms jammed with cots. One survivor, Chhin Chenda, 16, was lying on a cot at the hospital. She said, “At first we were frightened of an electric wire. After that I fell and people ran over me. People were stepping on me. I called out, ‘Please help me.’ ” She said her mother and a cousin died in the stampede. Relatives found the mother’s body at the hospital on Tuesday, but not the cousin’s. Another survivor, Meoun Ly Heang, 12, said he went to the island with his 22-year-old sister without permission from their parents because he wanted to watch the festival. They came from Kandal Province. When the panic began, he said, “I couldn’t move, my leg was stuck. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t move. My sister died. She could not breathe. She fell and people stepped on her.” The boy recalled his sister’s last words, “She was saying, ‘Please don’t step on me,’ ” he said. After the stampede, people staggered from the scene either alone or supported by rescuers. Some sat on the ground, holding their hands to their chests and breathing with difficulty. Other people carried bodies, both the dead and the badly injured, by their arms and legs; they knelt on the ground fanning those who were still alive or trying to perform CPR; they loaded the dead and badly injured onto flatbed trucks or the backs of motorcycles and packed them into ambulances. A doctor, Pok Somporn, said when he arrived at the hospital there were about 140 dead people and more than 100 people injured. “This is the first time this many have come to our hospital,” he said. This is the worst time for us.” Bodies were taken to a temporary tent morgue, outside the hospital. People were reaching through a window in the large tent and lifting sheets inside to search for people who had died. In the aftermath, the suspension bridge with its delicate fretwork was carpeted with the shoes and bits of clothes of those who had been crushed or fled.


9/11 Charity Is Run by 9 Siblings of Michael Lynch

Abstract: Michael Francis Lynch grew up as a son of the Bronx. He was raised in Throgs Neck, five blocks from the Long Island Sound, as the seventh of 10 children, and attended Cardinal Spellman High School, just off Boston Road. And when he became a firefighter in 1999, he was assigned to Ladder Company 32, just a few blocks from his high school. But on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Lynch was not working in the Bronx. Instead, he was in the midst of a rotation with Engine 40 and Ladder 35, in Manhattan, near Lincoln Center. Thirteen men from those units entered the World Trade Center, and a dozen of them, including Mr. Lynch, died there. One of the ways in which Mr. Lynch’s family has sought to assuage their loss is through a foundation that gives scholarships in his name. Countless such organizations were started after the destruction of the twin towers, but the Michael Lynch Memorial Foundation ( www.mlynch.org ) stands out, in part because it has expanded in scope as the years have passed and in part because it has been almost completely organized and run by family members. “The act that killed him was evil,” Mr. Lynch’s father, Jack, a retired New York City Transit worker, said on Saturday afternoon as he sat in his kitchen in Throgs Neck. “I felt that we had to find a good response to that evil.” Next to him, one of his daughters, Maureen Baker, a pediatric nurse who now lives in New Jersey, looked at a seating chart for the foundation’s annual dinner, which is to be held Monday night inside a banquet hall in the Chelsea Piers. “The weekend before the dinner is always a lot of work,” Ms. Baker said. “And this is the biggest dinner we’ve ever had.” As Ms. Baker fielded phone calls about the dinner, her mother, Kathleen, described how she called Mr. Lynch’s cellphone on the day of the attack but got no answer. That night, she was waiting for news of his whereabouts when a fleeting image of Michael appeared on the television screen, carrying a length of hose and looking grim as he walked into the south tower. Minutes afterward, the tower collapsed. His remains were found six months later, identified in part by the tattoo of a green Celtic cross on his left shoulder. The medical examiner eventually said that he was either carrying a woman or shielding her with his coat when the building gave way. His body was carried on a stretcher from the rubble pile by members of his family. The oldest and youngest of the Lynch children are separated by 15 years, but the age difference did not prevent them from doing things together: sharing newspaper routes, working as waitresses and busboys at the Throgs Neck Country Club, and organizing summer outings to Jones Beach. The children are spread out now, some living in New York, others in Florida, New Jersey or Ohio. But when they decided to form a foundation in their brother’s honor, there seemed to be no choice but to run it themselves and divide the duties. So Patrick, a yoga instructor and an opera singer in Manhattan, organizes the annual dinner; Kathleen, a lawyer in Buffalo, helped write the bylaws and incorporate the foundation; Frederick, who owns a door manufacturing company in Tampa, Fla., is the treasurer; Kevin, who has a printing business in Long Island, makes the invitations and an annual journal; and Thomas, an elevator repairman in Pearl River, N.Y., runs a yearly golf fund-raiser. The others, Maureen, Paul, John and Colleen, are part of a selection committee that reviews scholarship applications. Ms. Baker said the foundation gave out five $20,000 scholarships in its first year, and last year gave out 11. Contributions come in the form of checks from friends and from companies like Tyco or the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Over the years, Ms. Baker said, they have awarded 63 scholarships totaling $1.2 million. It is open to children of firefighters and victims of disasters that have occurred in the United States. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, typically show up at the annual dinners, the family said. Writers and historians like Diane Ravitch and David Halberstam, who wrote “ Firehouse ,” a book about Engine 40 and Ladder 35, have served as speakers. Mr. Lynch, the family patriarch, said he was gratified every year by the support of friends and strangers. However, he said, those good feelings are still tempered by a lingering sense of loss. “There’s always sadness but there’s also joy,” he said of his son. “He gave his life for someone else, and that’s a consolation.”

September 11 (2001)
Philanthropy
Scholarships and Fellowships
Fires and Firefighters