Losses at Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s Biggest, Could Be $900 Million

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan ’s largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million — three times previous estimates — heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic in Afghanistan, according to American, European and Afghan officials. The extent of these losses make it clear that keeping the bank afloat — something the government has said it is determined to do — would require large infusions of cash from an already strained budget. Banking specialists, businessmen and government officials now fear that word of Kabul Bank ’s troubles could prompt a run on solvent banks, destroying the country’s nascent banking system and shaking the confidence of Western donors already questioning the level of their commitment to Afghanistan. The scandal has severe political and security implications. Investigators and Afghan businessmen believe that much of the money has gone into the pockets of a small group of privileged and politically connected Afghans, preventing earlier scrutiny of the bank’s dealings. The spotlight on how political and economic interests in Afghanistan are intertwined threatens to further undermine President Hamid Karzai’s government. The bank is also the prime conduit for paying Afghan security forces, leaving the American military, which pays the majority of the salaries, looking for new banks to process the $1.5 billion payroll. As Afghan regulators struggle to find out where the money went, many officials and international monitors concede that the missing millions may never be recovered, raising questions of how the losses could be replaced to keep the bank from failing. Afghan officials and businessmen have said the money was invested in a real estate bubble that has since burst in Dubai, as well as in dubious projects and donations to politicians in Afghanistan. Millions of dollars have yet to be traced, and some of the money seems to have gone to front companies or individuals and then disappeared. The Afghan Central Bank and American officials are conducting their own parallel investigations, but the problems are so serious that the International Monetary Fund has not yet renewed an assistance program to Afghanistan that expired in September, threatening an essential pillar of support to a government reliant on international largess as it battles a nine-year insurgency. Many donor countries may have to delay aid to Afghanistan because of their own requirements that money go only to countries with I.M.F. programs in good standing, Western diplomats said. Several officials described the bank as “too big to fail,” referring to its role in paying the salaries of hundreds of thousands of government employees. While Afghan and American officials depict a crisis far worse than has been made public, State Department cables released by WikiLeaks show that Afghan and Western regulators were aware of many of the problems, but were most focused on the problem of terrorist financing, rather than the fraud scheme that was the main problem at Kabul Bank. A stream of complaints about the bank’s practices — many of them the problems that now threaten the bank’s survival — are dutifully recorded in the cables, but diplomats, at least in 2009 and early 2010, seemed not to have realized the profound effect they could have on the financial system as a whole. Although other banks here have had questionable loan practices, so far it is only Kabul Bank — where what amounts to an enormous fraud scheme was conducted over a period of years — whose troubles are sending tremors through the Afghan business community and worrying Western donors. Deloitte, a top United States accounting firm that had staffers in the Central Bank under a United States government contract over the last several years, either did not know or did not mention to American authorities that it had any inkling of serious irregularities at Kabul Bank. Deloitte was not responsible for auditing the bank’s books; a spokesman for Deloitte did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview this weekend, Mahmoud Karzai , President Karzai’s brother and a prominent investor in the Kabul Bank, said that the new president of Kabul Bank, Masood Musa Ghazi, told him in the last several days that there were approximately $800 million in loans still outstanding. These are potentially unrecoverable. Mr. Karzai said Mr. Ghazi told him that of that $800 million, the bank’s new management has negotiated agreements for the repayment of about $300 million, but little has been repaid. Mr. Ghazi, who was appointed after the Central Bank forced a change in the bank’s management last fall, did not respond to phone calls or e-mails seeking comment, nor did anyone at Afghanistan’s Central Bank. Kabul Bank has extensive links to senior people in the Afghan government. In addition to Mahmoud Karzai, other shareholders included Haseen Fahim, the brother of the first vice president, and several associates of the family from the north of Afghanistan. Afghan officials said the bank poured millions into President Karzai’s election campaign. It is the loans and personal grants made by the bank to powerful people, including government ministers, that could prove the most explosive, Western and Afghan officials said. “If people who are thought to be clean and who were held up as ‘good’ by Western countries suddenly are caught with their fingers in the till, it will cause questions from donors,” said a Western official in Kabul. “They will say, ‘Why are we here?’ ” Mahmoud Karzai said that he believed the bank’s former chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, was responsible for the problems at the bank, saying that he often moved large amounts of money out of the bank on his own, with no oversight. Mr. Farnood could not be reached for comment on Sunday, and has declined to comment in the past. Mr. Karzai and Mr. Farnood were previously business partners, but had a falling-out over the operation of Kabul Bank. While he was in charge, Mr. Farnood had total control over what loans were made and what money was moved out of Kabul Bank, Mr. Karzai said. He said he was told by the bank’s managers that Mr. Farnood took about $98 million out of Kabul Bank to finance the purchase and subsequent operations of Pamir Airways, a small passenger airline in Afghanistan. In a cable from Sept. 26, 2009, posted by WikiLeaks, American diplomats said that competitor airlines complained that “Kabul Bank is using its deposit base to subsidize Pamir Air without its depositors’ knowledge in an attempt to drive competitors out of business.” Mr. Karzai said that Mr. Farnood had been given space at Kabul Bank, where he was supposed to be helping the new management find the bank’s missing money. “I think the bank is working with him to figure out what happened to the money, because he knows whom he lent it to and he knows where it is,” Mr. Karzai said. A spokeswoman for the United States Treasury Department in Washington declined to comment on the American inquiry. “The situation of Kabul Bank is extremely serious,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “What you can observe is that the loans were either to fictive operators who did not exist or they were for investments outside the country.” “Some were loans or personal grants to people linked to one shareholder or another shareholder,” the diplomat said. According to businessmen in Kabul, loans were made to people who were fronts for the real beneficiaries. “Sometimes they would bring a loan document to someone who was a gardener or a cleaner and just ask them to sign it, and they would pay him 500 Afghanis and the person could not read or write more than his name,” said a prominent businessman here with ties to the banking community. “Then, when the new bank managers go to look for the money, they go to the gardener’s house and they look around and they see there is nothing worth $100, and they have no idea where the money went.” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy in Kabul, said that officials were working closely with the Afghan government, the I.M.F. and the World Bank. “Corrective action in response to any instance of abuse, poor banking practices or fraud is essential for public and international confidence in Afghan financial institutions and the development of Afghanistan’s financial sector,” she said. In Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province , a Kabul bank branch has been shut down for a week because employees transferred $1.3 million to Mr. Farnood, who was removed last fall for mismanagement. In Kabul, the Ministry of Finance is putting out bids for a new bank to pay the salaries of the security forces, which previously had been paid exclusively through Kabul Bank, according to Col. John Ferrari, the head of training programs for NATO’s training mission here. Military officials say that none of the $1.5 billion in payroll for the Afghan Army and the police has been reported missing. But concerns over the possibility that the bank could fail was one factor prompting the ministry to seek other banks to process payroll, Western officials said. A WikiLeaks cable from last February suggested that payments were often delayed so the bank could make money on the overnight interest rates. In a Feb. 13, 2010, cable, Kabul Bank is described as “the least liquid bank operating in Afghanistan” and its difficulty in raising cash was so great that it took “more than two days to process withdrawals and has delayed paying government employee salaries by two weeks in order to place those funds in overnight accounts to collect interest.”

Kabul Bank
Afghanistan
Banking and Financial Institutions
Karzai Mahmoud


Science in the Quest to Ease Figure Skating's Strains

Abstract: NEWARK, Del. — Melissa Bulanhagui is a highly ranked figure skater, but two years ago her right ankle failed her. She sprained it twice and tore a ligament, each time during one of her favorite jumps, the triple lutz. Other skaters have suffered similar injuries, and now science is studying why, aiming to help skaters meet the sport’s physical challenges without sacrificing their health. For one study, Ms. Bulanhagui (pronounced BULL-en-hayg-ee), 18, and other skaters tape to their shins devices called tibial accelerometers, which measure the force of the impact when skaters land a jump. “A lot of the impacts are really high, 90 to 100 G’s,” said Kat Arbour, a skater turned graduate researcher at the University of Delaware . “If you hit your head that hard, I don’t think you’d survive.” But she said study results suggested that the issue was not jumping itself, but how well jumps were executed. “If someone is really proficient, they seem to be able to modify their technique to decrease the impact, use muscles differently to absorb that shock,” she said. The accelerometer study is part of a flowering of research on safety and performance. And it is no coincidence that such research is growing at a time when figure skating, a year-round pursuit for competitive skaters, emphasizes athleticism and endurance more than ever before. Adjustments to international judging guidelines in 2003 made skating “much more physically and mentally challenging,” said Mitch Moyer, senior director of athlete high performance for United States Figure Skating, which is sponsoring the accelerometer study and others. Each skill in a performance now receives specific points, requiring more focus. And skaters no longer have an incentive to perform all jumps early in a program before they tire — now, jumps done later earn extra points. “People said, ‘Oh, it’s an art,’ but the reality is it’s a very taxing sport,” said Michelle Provost-Craig, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Delaware. “Many skaters end up with stress fractures, knee problems and hip problems at a fairly young age.” Research could inspire new training recommendations concerning issues like off-ice conditioning and limiting repetitions of jumps during practice. United States Figure Skating now has a sport sciences and medicine director, who works with scientific researchers and helps coaches monitor skaters’ health more closely and pace workouts. “Coaches are paying a lot more attention to these things,” said Mr. Moyer, who said some concerns were set off by a “trend of hip issues” with skaters like the Olympic champion Tara Lipinski , whose hip injuries required surgery at 18. “I hear a lot more buzz out there — ‘you need to stop jumping, you’ve done enough today.’ ” Scientists are looking at skating from every angle — biomechanics, physics, muscle conditioning, body fat, oxygen consumption, exercise-induced asthma . Ms. Arbour, of the University of Delaware, has skaters, wearing swimsuits and nose clips, climb into the “bod pod,” an egglike capsule measuring fat and muscle composition. A “bone densitometer” analyzes bone density, which tends to increase with frequent impacts. “If it’s low, they are at risk for stress fractures in the legs and lumbar spine,” she said. “If it’s too high, they are at risk for osteoarthritis because the cartilage is taking a lot of shock absorption.” With Professor Provost-Craig, Ms. Arbour also outfits skaters with “a crazy dungeon thing that goes over the mouth and nose,” measuring oxygen and carbon dioxide in air skaters expel. Science is even filtering into recreational skating, with the development of synthetic ice, intended to broaden appeal and year-round interest. But most research concerns competitive skaters. Some researchers are interested, for example, in the sport’s effects on younger skaters, said Mr. Moyer, because “kids develop differently at different ages. If somebody’s injured at 14, was it because of what they were doing at 9 or 10, or at 14?” Professor Provost-Craig plans to study whether certain jumps generate such physical impact that younger skaters should delay learning them. “A lutz might put more loading on a young skeletal developing frame than a toe loop,” she said. “They may choose, especially during a growth spurt, not to teach a new jump with extensive loading characteristics.” Some research focuses on training and equipment. James Richards, senior biomechanist for the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Delaware, designed a skate boot to provide flexibility for pointing toes and maneuvering feet. Current boots are stiff for support, “comparable to a cast,” said Kelly Lockwood, an associate professor of physical education and kinesiology at Brock University in Ontario , preventing the ankle from absorbing enough impact. Professor Richards’s boot, hinged around the ankle, allowed flexibility but fell apart after about a month, he said. And skaters and coaches thought it unattractive. “People were willing to give it a try if it was helping in impact and injury,” Mr. Moyer said. He said that Alissa Czisny, currently the national champion, wore the boots for a while, but that she and others “became frustrated with some of the challenges.” He hopes the accelerometer study will indicate whether “one type of boot design or blade design could maybe reduce the stress load.” Professor Lockwood has studied something more rudimentary: how skate blades are sharpened. A blade’s bottom is not flat, but grooved to create two edges that grip the ice. A study with the National Hockey League of groin injuries found that “more than 50 percent of them are due to skate sharpening, way too deep a hollow” in the blade’s groove, which can give a player too much traction instead of allowing easy gliding, she said. Sharpening, it turns out, is hard to do well, and sharpeners who earn respect from skaters and coaches have become scientists of sorts, too. George Knakal, a 79-year-old retired cabinetmaker turned sharpener in Norwalk, Conn., pays zealous attention to several factors, including the concavity of the blade. “For a new skater, I make it nearly flat because a little kid is very awkward and you want to give them something that will slip so when they fall they don’t get hurt,” he said. Training when not on ice is another matter altogether, and theories differ about what off-ice conditioning is best. “It’s a sport where you’re doing contradictory things,” said Deborah King, associate professor of exercise and sport sciences at Ithaca College. “Running or cycling or stair-stepping to improve aerobic capacity — does that translate really well on the ice, or is it better to do something more specific to skating? Do you need a lot of strength training in the gym or training to do the motion while rotating?” Professor Provost-Craig said skaters should not “bulk up” from strength training because “if they increase girth of shoulders, hips or thighs, that’s going to decrease rotational spin.” One recent invention for off-ice training is a block of wood topped with rubber, slanted to approximate angles of skaters’ blades on ice. Wearing skates on the block, skaters assume different positions. “It will freeze-frame any on-ice technique and mimic as close as you possibly can the requirements for balance, that sensation of shifting your weight against momentum,” said its creator, David Lipetz, a physical therapist who is trying to get coaches and skaters to use the device. Professor Provost-Craig’s oxygen mask readings help gauge the aerobic conditioning skaters need, measuring their “VO2 max,” she said, “oxygen their muscles are consuming” as they skate to increasingly fast music . More is better, improving endurance, for example, to do jumps later in performance. Professor King analyzed jumps in a different way. Studying Olympic skaters, she determined that on triple jumps, they went no higher than on double or single jumps — rather, they rotated faster by pulling in their arms, making their bodies compact. That guides one of Professor Richards’s more elaborate projects. With sophisticated motion-capturing cameras and computer programs, he mimics skaters’ positions during jumps and calibrates the effect of altering angles of the head, torso, arm and leg. Consider Emma Phibbs, a 22-year-old pairs skater looking to make a comeback after scaling back skating in college. Recently, researchers affixed 38 quarter-size stickers — made from golf ball markers, children’s alphabet beads and reflective tape — all over Ms. Phibbs’s body and sent her skating. Doing triple toe loops and double axels, she wobbled on some landings, occasionally falling. Rink-side, Professor Richards’s computer displayed an outline of Ms. Phibbs, construed from the reflective stickers. “Her left arm is higher than her right arm — she’s got to lean to one side to compensate,” he said. Breathless from jumping, Ms. Phibbs reviewed the computer images. “With my elbow and my trunk being off, my landing will be off and I’ll two-foot it,” she said. Then Tom Kepple, a researcher, displayed an animated avatar of Ms. Phibbs’s jump attempts, calculating that she rotated only 314 degrees. With a few keystrokes, he tucked the left arm in. “That adds 40 degrees more of revolution,” he said. “If she brought the left leg in a little straighter? You pick up 10 or 15 degrees rotation. But if she brings her leg in too much, the jump goes bad.” Such analysis works “not just for technique, but also for injury prevention,” Mr. Moyer said. “You can see what your result is going to be before you try it.” That could make a difference for skaters who must train aggressively enough to master moves but not aggressively enough to hurt themselves. “I always tell my athletes that they’re going to be injured at some point in their career, so it’s more about management of that and also trying to have a minor injury instead of a major injury,” said Tom Zakrajsek, who coaches top skaters. “I have certain jump limitations and restrictions — I always have to pull back my skaters from repetition of jumping.” In Delaware , after the scientists opined on Ms. Phibbs’s body position, she got back on the ice. “I focused on keeping my elbow down, and my landings were a lot more solid,” she said. “It definitely proved itself.”

Figure skating
University of Delaware
Sports medicine
Science and Technology


The Gofer’s Expanding Portfolio

Abstract: Sergio Kletnoy was trapped in traffic and running behind schedule. As the executive assistant to Joanna Coles, the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, Mr. Kletnoy had spent the day scheduling a December lunch for Ms. Coles, booking her business trip to Boston and accompanying her to Chelsea, where she made a speech before an online financial group while he held her purse. In a free moment, he had interviewed the singer Betty Who for Cosmopolitan’s blog and arranged for Ms. Coles to meet her as well. Now he was urging the driver to swiftly return them to Hearst’s Midtown headquarters. The timetable was tight. Ms. Coles had to dive into the premiere of Rebel Wilson’s new TV show “Super Fun Night” while Mr. Kletnoy waited to interview the actress for the blog. In a few hours, Mr. Kletnoy would head out to see the singer Lorde perform before interviewing her the following day. “It feels like her Duracell battery will never, ever, ever stop,” Mr. Kletnoy, 36, said of Ms. Coles. “Joanna goes 150 miles an hour and sometimes it’s hard to catch up.” He paused, contemplating his own place in the fast-paced New York media world: “A year from now,” he said, “there may be a cooler executive assistant to take my spot. So I don’t take it for granted.” Mr. Kletnoy’s experience reflects the evolving role of magazine assistants, who for years have been defined by the stinging indignities they endured at the hands of the industry’s most imperious editors — famously brought to life in the 2003 book “The Devil Wears Prada” and the subsequent film adaptation. Image Sergio Kletnoy performs tasks for Joanna Coles, the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, but his job at Cosmopolitan goes well beyond the administrative. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times There are still bosses like Miranda Priestly in the magazine world, barking at minions to book tables at the Lambs Club or having them trail behind them carrying half-eaten tuna sandwiches. But as magazines deal with new financial challenges, including budget cuts that have trimmed the staff, few editors can afford to squander the employees they have left on tasks like hanging up their coats when they swoop into the office. True, fetching coffee may never completely disappear from the job description, but assistants like Mr. Kletnoy have been empowered in part because they are part of a more connected generation. The modern assistant has an understanding of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that time-stretched (and old school) magazine executives lack, and increasingly they are assuming responsibility for spreading the magazine’s message, and brand, across social media. Richard David Story, the editor in chief of Departures, hired Lauren Weisberger after she worked as an assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. He later encouraged Ms. Weisberger to write about her experiences at the magazine, which led to her best-selling book, “The Devil Wears Prada.” Mr. Story said that when interviewing potential assistants, “I ask the same, old-fashioned questions, I look at the same, old-fashioned qualities.” But he nevertheless sees fundamental differences in the qualities he is looking for now as opposed to years ago. He might still ask job candidates how they would feel about picking up a vanilla skim latte, assuming he would do the same for them in return, but added, “I need somebody completely up and running in the 21st-century style, with all the digital and social media bells and whistles.” Image Mr. Kletnoy is Ms. Coles’ blogging, tweeting assistant at Cosmo. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Mr. Kletnoy, who has worked for Ms. Coles since 2007, first at Marie Claire, seems to thrive in this role. At Cosmopolitan’s 38th floor offices, he dutifully completes his administrative tasks while he blogs, tweets and poses for photographs with the celebrities who pass through. While Mr. Kletnoy humors Ms. Coles’s love of Cyndi Lauper, he insisted she meet a more current performer, the pop singer Ellie Goulding, when she arrived in the United States for a tour and more recently with the 14-year-old singer Madison Beer. He also provided the music mix Jennifer Lopez listened to during her fashion shoot for the October cover. Ms. Coles can be tough and demanding, and Mr. Kletnoy says that managing her schedule of 15 to 20 appointments a day can be a nightmare. “I book her so far in advance that when we actually reach that week, she’ll say: ‘You know what? This can be moved,’ ” he said. “It’s definitely the biggest part of being an executive assistant.” Scheduling aside, Ms. Coles expresses disdain for the kind of mistreatment featured in “The Devil Wears Prada.” She started her career in newspapers, where assistant positions were trimmed from budgets years ago. She never worked as an assistant and has clear ideas of what personal and professional demands are appropriate. In a pinch, she said, she has asked Mr. Kletnoy to babysit her sons, but paid him for it and doesn’t consider that part of his job. “Inevitably personal life flows from work life,” Ms. Coles said. “I’m not an abusive employer. It’s something I find repulsive.” Dominique Lemoine, the 27-year-old assistant to James Oseland, the editor of Saveur and a judge on “Top Chef Masters,” performs predictable tasks like cleaning the office refrigerator. But she also writes articles for Saveur’s website and has written short pieces for the print magazine (she has one in the next January/February issue). She said that while she sometimes makes restaurant reservations for Mr. Oseland, he has never asked her to get coffee or pick up lunch. Image Mr. Kletnoy posing with the singer Madison Beer, 14. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times “He is very respectful,” Ms. Lemoine said. She added that the only way she identifies with “The Devil Wears Prada” is in “yearning to write more.” Mr. Oseland said he never wanted Ms. Lemoine to feel like he did when he was a young intern, working for the production team on the 1988 film “Dracula’s Widow” and performing menial tasks like buying cookies for the crew. “It’s not only what goes around comes around,” Mr. Oseland said. “It’s also a simple business decision. I don’t want to have somebody who is so essential to the basic functioning of my life feeling resentful.” One assistant who ended up feeling resentful is Melanie Neuman, 32, who has a master’s degree in bioengineering but wanted to transition into an industry with a stronger support network for women. In 2011 she began working for three senior executives at Condé Nast. She said that she was treated professionally by two of them, but the third was a different story. Ms. Neuman said that she could rarely leave her desk because her boss believed a caller should never have to leave a voice mail message. She said she was allowed to leave only to go to Starbucks to retrieve a “quad soy venti wet cap” or to the cafeteria to get her boss lunch. Image A scene from “The Devil Wears Prada.” Credit Barry Wetcher/20th Century Fox She reached her breaking point, she said, when “I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom without screaming obscenities and yelling” because of the possibility that important phone calls would be missed. She eventually reached an agreement to leave the company in May. A Condé Nast spokeswoman said in a statement: “The company does not comment on individual employee matters. Condé Nast has been an employer of choice throughout its history including being named recently as one of LinkedIn’s 100 Most In-Demand Employers in the world.” Mr. Kletnoy started in the music business — where assistants are possibly treated even worse than in magazines — and performed his own share of denigrating tasks. After emigrating to New York City in 1989 from Ukraine, he worked his way up through Motown Records, Sony, Arista and Virgin. But his career in music, he said, was marked by midnight phone calls asking him to change hotel rooms or to find a new chauffeur because a musician disliked the chauffeur. “In music, they feel like you’re lucky to be here,” he said. “I remember getting thanked only two or three times over the years.” In 2006, Mr. Kletnoy was “so burned out dealing with musicians” that even the film “The Devil Wears Prada” couldn’t scare him away from the magazine business. “I like a challenge,” he said. As he stood close to Ms. Coles at the Rebel Wilson premiere, he talked about how it might be fun someday to be an assistant to a fashion designer. It’s a particular interest — he writes for the fashion blog Daily Front Row . For now, though, he is sticking with Ms. Coles. “I’ve never had a boss where I’m respected like Joanna respects me,” said Mr. Kletnoy. “In life, you have to do what feels right for you.”

Sergio Kletnoy
Joanna Coles
Cosmopolitan
Magazine
Jobs
Social Media
Careers and Professions


Art That Walks a Fine Line Between Reality and Illusion

Abstract: In “The Republic,” Plato uses an allegory of prisoners chained in a cave watching shadows on a wall to suggest that the things we believe are real are often only an illusion, a kind of puppet show of real life. To experience true reality we must escape from the cave of ignorance and into the clear light of day. “Shadow Show,” at Real Art Ways in Hartford, picks up in various ways on this metaphor. The curators — Elizabeth Keithline, a Rhode Island artist who originated the idea, and Kristina Newman-Scott, director of visual arts at Real Art Ways — have assembled the work of 16 artists exploring shadows and concepts of shadowing in contemporary culture. Exhibits range from installations that use actual shadows for visual effect to video art and elaborate conceptual pieces concerned with issues of surveillance, memory, perception and truth. That the majority of the artwork is installed in the dark is, I suspect, more an accident of curatorial selection than any nod to Plato, but it nonetheless adds an overall, welcome air of mystery. Entering this exhibition you feel as if you are stepping into an alternate universe, a place where nothing is entirely as it seems. Or maybe for the first time we begin to see the delicate nature of reality. Using digital animation software, Rupert Nesbitt creates realistic-looking video landscapes that move. An occasional distortion of perspective reveals that the imagery has no basis in reality, and that these are purely imaginative spaces, but most of the time you think you are looking at a real environment. Shadowy government activities are the subject of William Allen’s nine-panel text paintings examining the history, purpose and mythology around the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, a United States government structure near Bluemont, Va. Here, beneath a FEMA training base, is an underground operation designed to house government officials in case of a nuclear emergency. Humor is lacking from this show, with the exception of William Lamson’s one-minute animated video loop. It is made up of photographs of the artist lying face down in various suburban landscapes, that have been spliced together to make it seem as if his motionless body is sliding along the ground like some giant worm. Though it is sort of silly, the imagery is captivating. What I also like about this video is the way in which it plays with our willingness to respond positively toward that which we know isn’t real. This is in some ways the opposite of what Plato was talking about, for it involves a knowing appreciation of something clearly artificial — as if we are heading back into Plato’s cave just for the fun of it. Several artists in this show are interested in the idea of traces, evidence of things left behind in the landscape, or in the mind, or on the body. This is a popular theme in contemporary art but has a particular, even special relevance here. Perhaps most interesting among the works of this kind is a collaborative installation by an artist, Duncan Laurie, and an electrical engineer, Gordon Salisbury. It is installed in a darkened room off to one side of the exhibition. Inside the room is a rock hooked up to a device measuring energy waves, and a video of hallucinogenically pulsating signals that represent naturally occurring energy waves in plants and rocks. Whereas Mr. Laurie and Mr. Salisbury’s installation is all about picturing hidden energy flows, Olu Oguibe’s sculptural installation, “Buggy Memorial to the Unknown Child,” makes manifest complex human emotional states. This deeply personal work is all about the artist’s feelings surrounding the pointless death of his brother, at the age of 4, from dehydration after a routine attack of measles. Things half-hidden are the subject of Sam Ekwurtzel’s pair of video loops, a compilation of close-ups of photographs of television sets for sale on eBay. Mr. Ekwurtzel discovered that when the owners photographed their television sets to sell online, many inadvertently captured reflections of themselves and their living rooms on the reflective surface of the television screens. By cropping and blowing up these images the artist reveals a hidden world. There are many other interesting works here dealing with shadowy issues, ranging from street surveillance of random individuals in snapshot photographs by Erik Gould to the documentation of the noises and atmosphere of an airport lounge in an installation by Barbara Westermann. Like so many other artworks here, they zoom in on things that we look at but rarely see.


Combustible Conditions but No Unrest Yet in Uganda

Abstract: KAMPALA, Uganda — Fresh from fighting in the bush, Uganda ’s president, Yoweri Museveni, a former rebel commander, electrified the crowd at his inaugural address in 1986 when he declared that “the problems of Africa, and Uganda in particular, are caused by leaders who overstay in power.” He vowed never to be one of them. Now, after 25 years in office, he is running again. Voting began on Friday across the country in an election that could give Mr. Museveni, a close American ally whose relatively small nation gets hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, his fifth consecutive term as president. By all measures — polls, diplomatic analyses, even taxi-driver talk — he is expected to win. But while Uganda shares many of the same, combustible conditions that have fueled popular uprisings in the Arab world — grinding poverty, masses of jobless, students glued to Facebook and a leader who refuses to step down after more than two decades in power — few here expect widespread upheaval. In fact, the persistence of authoritarianism, whether through acceptance or a sense of helplessness to do much about it, seems to be the rule across much of sub-Saharan Africa, home to some of the most everlasting strongmen in the world: José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, in power since 1979; Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, also since 1979; Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, since 1980; Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Sudan, since 1989. And the list goes on. “There are two main reasons why we’re not seeing North Africa-style popular revolts in sub-Saharan African,” said Phil Clark, a lecturer in international politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. First, he argued, many sub-Saharan African countries are more divided ethnically, and such divisions “undermine the possibility of a mass social movement against the national leadership.” Second, and partly connected, is the loyalty of the army, which is often built from the president’s ethnic group and bolstered by corrupt spoils. “Museveni and Mugabe can rely on total commitment from the military,” Dr. Clark said. “The fear of violent military crackdowns keeps many Ugandans and Zimbabweans off the streets.” Many young urban Ugandans, who have been watching their Arab counterparts stage huge protests, seem to agree. “Ugandans have no unity,” said Charles Rollins, a 21-year-old university student, speaking about ethnic divisions. “That is why we are different.” Robert Lugolobi, executive director of Transparency International’s Uganda chapter, argued: “People here are too tribal. Uprisings happen, but they happen by tribe.” In September 2009, dozens of young Ugandans were killed by the security forces in intense rioting in Kampala, the capital. They were members of the Baganda ethnic group and furious that Mr. Museveni’s government was trying to curtail the powers of their traditional king. The government cracked down harshly, and few expect the Baganda to riot again like that anytime soon. Of course, ethnic divisions alone do not explain the notable lack of anti-authoritarian protests in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Yemen has long suffered serious tribal conflicts, but that has not stopped demonstrators there from demanding an end to the authoritarian rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In Egypt, protesters across religious, ideological and class lines all descended on Tahrir Square to oust President Hosni Mubarak. Here in Uganda, many young people support Mr. Museveni, who is credited with turning the country around. Over the past few days, they have packed shoulder to shoulder at rallies, waiting patiently under a punishing sun, some of them waving hilarious posters of the mzee, or old man, as the president calls himself, with his face superimposed on an Incredible Hulk-like body. “Mzee, our freedom fighter,” the slogan goes. Mr. Museveni, who was born in 1944 — official documents do not provide an exact date — has tried to cultivate a folksy, avuncular image, often appearing at campaign rallies with his wife, Janet, and decked out in a wide-brimmed planter’s hat. Even among detractors here and abroad, he is not usually spoken of in the same breath of, say, Mr. Mugabe, who is widely blamed for transforming a once prosperous country into one of the world’s poorest . Uganda’s agricultural-based economy stands in stark contrast to that, growing steadily over the past few years, by a respectable 6 or 7 percent. Oil is on its way, 200,000 barrels per day, starting as early as next year, which could increase growth much more. Mr. Museveni’s message, printed on ubiquitous yellow T-shirts, is peace and security, and Uganda has come a long way on that front. In the 1970s, it was haunted by a dictator, Idi Amin, notorious for beating people to death with his own hands. In the 1980s and 1990s, the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized the countryside, slicing off lips and hacking away at villagers. Today, Kampala is reasonably safe — definitely much safer than Nairobi, in neighboring Kenya — and the rebels have been pushed out of the country. This stability carries some costs, though. Mr. Museveni’s opponents and Western analysts accuse him of running a vast and corrupt patronage system and abusing human rights. This month Human Rights Watch said the Ugandan police had rounded up civilians who complained about corruption . His government has threatened to execute gay people , though a bill in Parliament calling for that has yet to be resolved. Seven others are running for president, and the problem for Uganda’s opposition, just like that in other African countries that are beginning to experiment with democracy, is that it is rudderless and divided. The stiffest competition Mr. Museveni faces is from his old comrade Kizza Besigye , a retired army colonel who has run twice before and lost, though he claimed fraud. Mr. Besigye, who seems to be a bit of a loose cannon on the campaign trail, predicted Egypt-style riots. (He has also intimated that Uganda was better off under Idi Amin.) He warned that Mr. Museveni’s government had “created these conditions of oppression and despondency, conditions of frustration, unemployment, that can lead to violence.” Ugandan human rights groups say that the leading political parties have organized young people into militias, a troubling sign. Another worry is if the election is close and the government tries to rig the results to stay in power, then people could rise up. That seemed to be the case in Kenya in 2007, plunging that country into a violent crisis. The unrest in North Africa and the Middle East has sent a few tendrils to other parts of Africa, though the relatively small protests in Sudan, Djibouti and Gabon were quickly crushed. The Ugandan security forces are out in force. On Thursday, the day before the election, squads of officers prowled the streets, swinging batons and carrying guns. Protests are one fear; a terrorist attack is another. Uganda has thousands of peacekeepers in Somalia, and Somali terrorists bombed crowds in Kampala last summer, killing scores . That seems to be the biggest question — whether this election will pass incident-free, not so much who will win.

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Supreme Court Ruling Counters Pennsylvania Judge on Recusal

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A judge may not hear an appeal in a death penalty case that he worked on as a prosecutor, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a 5-to-3 decision. The court also issued divided decisions in two other cases, ruling that Puerto Rico cannot try defendants in local courts for conduct already prosecuted in federal court, and that discharged juries may be called back in some cases to fix mistakes in their verdicts . Recusal The death penalty case concerned Ronald D. Castille, who was Philadelphia’s district attorney in 1986 when he authorized the capital prosecution of Terrance Williams. Mr. Williams and a friend, both 18, were accused of killing Amos Norwood, 56, with a tire iron. “Approved to proceed on the death penalty,” Mr. Castille wrote on a subordinate’s memorandum. Mr. Williams was convicted and sentenced to death. Later, when Mr. Castille was running for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he said he was reluctant to take a firm public position on the death penalty, fearing it would require his recusal from all capital cases. “I can certainly say I sent 45 people to death row as district attorney of Philadelphia,” he told a legal newspaper in 1993, adding that voters “sort of get the hint.” Mr. Williams was the first of those 45. In 2012, as the court’s chief justice, Mr. Castille denied a request from Mr. Williams’s lawyers that he disqualify himself from hearing an appeal based on claims of prosecutorial misconduct by the office he had led. Although a lower court had accepted the claims, Mr. Castille, about two weeks before he retired at the end of 2014, joined a unanimous decision reinstating Mr. Williams’s death sentence. In an interview , Mr. Castille said his role in the case as district attorney had been merely administrative. “I didn’t try the case,” he said. “I wasn’t really involved in the case except as the leader of the office.” On Thursday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Mr. Castille’s participation in the case required his recusal. “Chief Justice Castille’s significant, personal involvement in a critical decision in Williams’s case gave rise to an unacceptable risk of actual bias,” Justice Kennedy wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority decision in the case, Williams v. Pennsylvania, No. 15-5040. The court ordered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rehear Mr. Williams’s appeal. Justice Kennedy said the Constitution’s due process clause guarantees that “no man can be a judge in his own case.” In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “the majority opinion rests on proverb rather than precedent.” “The due process clause did not prohibit Chief Justice Castille from hearing Williams’s case,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “That does not mean, however, that it was appropriate for him to do so,” as recusal might have been required under state law and ethics rules. “It is up to state authorities — not this court — to determine whether recusal should be required,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate dissent, saying that “the specter of bias alone in a judicial proceeding is not a deprivation of due process.” How a Vacancy on the Supreme Court Affected Cases in the 2015-16 Term The empty seat left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death leaves the court with two basic options for cases left on the docket this term if the justices are deadlocked at 4 to 4. _____ Double Jeopardy In a narrow decision steeped in history, the court ruled, 6 to 2, that Puerto Rico is not a separate sovereign for purposes of the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause, which forbids subsequent prosecutions for the same crimes. The Supreme Court has said that the federal government and the states are independent sovereigns, meaning that the same conduct can be prosecuted separately in state and federal courts. Puerto Rico lacks such authority, the court ruled on Thursday in Puerto Rico v. Sánchez Valle, No. 15-108, addressing a deeply contested matter of politics and pride. The case concerned Luis M. Sánchez Valle and Gómez Vázquez, who were prosecuted on gun charges in local and federal courts in Puerto Rico. They pleaded guilty to the federal charges and asserted that they could not be prosecuted for the same crimes in local courts under the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause. Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court agreed. “Puerto Rico’s authority to prosecute individuals is derived from its delegation by United States Congress and not by virtue of its own sovereignty,” the court’s majority said. In an opinion affirming that judgment on Thursday, Justice Kagan said Puerto Rico does as a contemporary matter have many important attributes of sovereignty. Since Puerto Rico became a territory in 1898, she wrote, “the United States and Puerto Rico have forged a unique political relationship, built on the island’s evolution into a constitutional democracy exercising local self-rule.” But she said the legal test for analyzing the double jeopardy question was a historical one and that the commonwealth failed it. “For purposes of the double jeopardy clause, the future is not what matters — and there is no getting away from the past,” Justice Kagan wrote. “Because the ultimate source of Puerto Rico’s prosecutorial power is the federal government — because when we trace that authority all the way back, we arrive at the doorstep of the U.S. Capitol — the commonwealth and the United States are not separate sovereigns.” Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Alito joined the majority opinion, and Justice Thomas for the most part concurred in it. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, saying that the majority’s test was too narrow and mechanical, and that it failed to grapple with all of the historical evidence. _____ Discharged Juries The court also ruled, 6 to 2, that federal judges in civil cases may sometimes recall jurors they have discharged for further deliberations after discovering that their verdict did not make sense. The case, Dietz v. Bouldin, No. 15-458, arose from a car crash in Bozeman, Mont., in which all sides agreed that the plaintiff was owed at least $10,136. But the jury, apparently assuming that the sum had already been paid, awarded nothing. A few minutes after the jurors left the courtroom, the judge ordered them to come back for more deliberations, and they eventually awarded $15,000. Justice Sotomayor, writing for the majority, said that recalling the jurors had been permissible, though she cautioned that judges should be wary of long delays, ask whether jurors had spoken to outsiders, and not use the procedure if the verdict had given rise to “gasps, crying, cheering” and the like. In dissent, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Kennedy, said there should be a categorical rule against ever recalling discharged jurors. “After discharge,” Justice Thomas wrote, “the court has no power to impose restrictions on jurors, and jurors are no longer under oath to obey them.” “Jurors may access their cellphones and get public information about the case,” he said. “They may talk to counsel or the parties. They may overhear comments in the hallway as they leave the courtroom. And they may reflect on the case — away from the pressure of the jury room — in a way that could induce them to change their minds. The resulting prejudice can be hard to detect.”

US Constitution,United States Constitution


2 Wall Street Employees Charged With Insider Trading

Abstract: Ever since Michael Douglas declared that "greed is good" in the 1987 movie "Wall Street," the character he played, Gordon Gekko, has been the face of insider trading on Wall Street. But it was $2 million in profits made by a 63-year-old retired seamstress in Croatia that tipped off the Securities and Exchange Commission about an ambitious and unusually creative insider trading ring, investigators say. That lead culminated in the arrests yesterday of two junior-level employees at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. The seamstress, Sonja Anticevic, made more than $2 million -- a seventeenfold return -- on a two-day investment in options on Reebok International after the company announced last August it would be acquired by Adidas-Salomon and the stock surged 30 percent. Regulators say it was her nephew, David Pajcin, a 29-year-old former Goldman Sachs bond research analyst, who made the trades. They said he was working with Stanislav Shpigelman, 23, an analyst in Merrill Lynch's mergers and acquisitions department, and Eugene Plotkin, a 26-year-old Harvard graduate who was an associate in the Goldman Sachs bond research department until he was suspended yesterday. The three engaged in a scheme that Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, described as "one of the most extensive insider trading cases in this district in decades." Bail for Mr. Shpigelman and Mr. Plotkin was set at $3 million each; both remained in custody late yesterday. Mr. Pajcin was released on bail in November. Insider trading has long been a scourge of Wall Street. But, as described by prosecutors, the efforts by Mr. Plotkin, Mr. Pajcin and Mr. Shpigelman were notable for their brashness and far-reaching nature. One scheme was old-fashioned: Mr. Plotkin and Mr. Pajcin, who met as young bond researchers at Goldman, recruited Mr. Shpigelman to provide them with information about deals Merrill Lynch was working on. The three men also placed online ads and later recruited two employees who worked at a private printing plant in Hartford, Wis., where Business Week magazine is printed, according to investigators. According to the charges against two employees there, Juan Renteria, 20, of Milwaukee and Nickolaus Shuster, 24, now of Lexington, Tenn., stole advance copies of the magazine and gave Mr. Plotkin and Mr. Pajcin the names of stocks mentioned in the "Inside Wall Street" column, information which, if favorable, often sends the prices of those stocks up. Mr. Renteria was arrested yesterday; Mr. Shuster had been charged earlier. The defendants netted $6.4 million by trading on information about deals including Adidas-Salomon's acquisition of Reebok International and Proctor & Gamble's purchase of Gillette, the complaints say. The Business Week scheme was less profitable; the defendants made $345,000, the S.E.C said. Mark Schonfeld, director of the S.E.C.'s Northeast regional office, said the defendants contemplated other innovative ways to obtain insider information, including using exotic dancers to glean information from investment bankers. A dancer, Monika Vujovic, 23, of New York, allowed the defendants to set up an account for her in which illegal trades were made, according to the S.E.C. complaint, which charges her. Her lawyer, Mel A. Sachs, said he was confident that the accusations against his client would be favorably resolved in court. Mr. Plotkin and Mr. Pajcin met when the two worked together at Goldman Sachs in 2000. Mr. Pajcin left the firm five months after he started. In 2004, the two started to plot ways to obtain inside information, the complaint says. "He's an intelligent person with a depth of character that makes you wonder about these charges," a lawyer for Mr. Plotkin, Martin L. Schmukler, said. Mr. Plotkin met Mr. Shpigelman, when Mr. Shpigelman was trying to get a job on Wall Street. In July 2004, Mr. Shpigelman became an analyst in Merrill's mergers and acquisitions department. Mr. Shpigelman seemed aware that information about deals was secret, according to an e-mail message cited in the S.E.C. complaint. In response to a question about whether a deal he had mentioned was public, he wrote, "Yes, the offer is public. I would not be telling you, especially via e-mail, unless I wanted to chill with Martha in Connecticut for a little while," referring to Martha Stewart, who was convicted of obstruction of justice in an insider trading investigation. A lawyer for Mr. Shpigelman, Katherine L. Pringle, did not return calls for comment. Youth may have fueled the plotters' fearlessness. The three originally traded in their own accounts but later opened accounts in other people's names, simultaneously setting up a network of people around the world with whom they shared inside information in return for 50 percent of the profit. The S.E.C. named 13 of those people in its civil complaint, including Mikhail Plotkin, Mr. Plotkin's father. Even after the S.E.C. filed a complaint against Mr. Pajcin in August 2005, Mr. Plotkin continued to trade on illegal information from the Business Week printing plant. Both Mr. Pajcin and Mr. Plotkin also destroyed their computers and cellphones, but continued to talk about how to evade law enforcement efforts, according to the S.E.C. complaint. When, after fleeing to the Dominican Republic and Cuba, Mr. Pajcin returned to the United States to give a deposition, perhaps in an attempt to get his bank accounts unfrozen, he lied about his participation in both schemes, the S.E.C. complaint says. He was arrested soon afterward and charged with illegal insider trading. Mr. Pajcin's lawyer, Paul G. Lieber, did not return a call for comment. The case was first uncovered by the S.E.C. last year. Immediately after Adidas-Salomon announced it had a deal to acquire Reebok, sending Reebok's stock up 30 percent, the market surveillance department in Washington detected an unusual volume of trading in Reebok call options, which allow an investor to lock in a price to buy the stock. Within 24 hours, investigators traced the trading to Croatia and Ms. Anticevic. "Ms. Anticevic, it seemed, was either the most successful investor in the history of Wall Street or part of something more nefarious," Mr. Schonfeld of the S.E.C. said. Jonathan Kaye, a lawyer for Ms. Anticevic, denied that any insider trading took place. "This was done with research done from her nephew," he said. The investigation led to Ms. Anticevic's nephew, Mr. Pajcin, revealing the expansive efforts by Mr. Pajcin and Mr. Plotkin to find information and trade on it. Mr. Pajcin is cooperating with regulators. "These allegations, if true, represent a serious breach of trust and violation of Merrill Lynch's fundamental principles," said a Merrill Lynch spokesman, Mark Herr. "We do not tolerate or condone insider trading." A Goldman Sachs spokesman said the firm would continue to cooperate with the investigation. Neither firm is a target of investigators.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
THE GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC
MERRILL LYNCH & CO INC
SECURITIES AND COMMODITIES VIOLATIONS


Treasury to Cut Stake in A.I.G. in Share Sale

Abstract: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Treasury Department said on Friday that it expected to raise $5 billion from a sale of shares in the American International Group , cutting the government’s stake in the company to 55 percent. The insurer, which received multiple bailouts under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, intends to buy approximately $3 billion of the offering, which was priced by the Treasury at $30.50 a share, just below its closing price on Friday of $31.34 a share. The closing price was more than 9 percent above the $28.72 needed for the government to break even on its investment in A.I.G. The Obama administration has been unwinding its position in the politically unpopular bailout programs from the financial crisis. More than 300 small banks have yet to repay taxpayers. The Treasury Department said it would sell 163.9 million shares of A.I.G.’s stock, reducing its holding to 55 percent from 61 percent. The government hired Citigroup, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Securities and Morgan Stanley to coordinate the offering and said it expected to add other underwriters.

Treasury Department
American International Group Inc
Stocks and Bonds
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


One Man Is Killed and 3 Others Are Injured in Harlem Shooting

Abstract: A 25-year-old man was killed and three others were injured on Sunday afternoon in a shooting at a basketball court in Harlem, the authorities said. The four victims, whose names were not immediately released, were shot around 4:50 p.m. as they played a basketball game near 129th Street and Seventh Avenue, a police spokesman said. The 25-year-old was shot in the back and pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital Center. A 23-year-old man was struck in the head; another man, 20, was grazed in the head; and a third, 19, was hit in the leg. The three men were in stable condition at the same hospital. No arrests have been made, and the spokesman said the motivation for the shooting was unclear.

Deaths (Fatalities)
Murders and Attempted Murders
Harlem (NYC)
New York City


Karachi Heat Wave Death Toll Tops 650 During Ramadan Fast

Abstract: KARACHI, Pakistan — Karachi’s poor learned long ago to cope with the many adversities that afflict Pakistan’s most crowded and chaotic city, including flooding, street violence and political crises. But since a suffocating heat wave descended on Karachi three days ago, killing at least 650 people, they have found no respite and no escape. “It’s so hot,” said a security guard, Shamim ur-Rehman, 34, as he sat on a cot, looking beleaguered. “There is no fan, there is nothing. I can’t sleep at night or during the day.” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared an emergency on Tuesday as the death toll from the heat wave soared, with overwhelmed hospitals struggling to treat a surge of casualties and morgues filling to capacity. The army set up emergency treatment centers in the streets and the provincial government closed schools and city offices. The Edhi Foundation , which runs an ambulance service and Karachi’s largest morgue, said it had collected over 600 bodies in recent days. “The first to die were the people on the streets — heroin addicts, beggars, the homeless,” said Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman for the service. “Then it was the elderly, particularly those who didn’t have anyone to take care of them.” In many ways, the emergency is the product of a perfect storm of meteorological, political and religious factors in Karachi. Chronic shortages of water and electricity have exacerbated the impact of the heat wave, which has brought temperatures up to 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit, in a crowded city of 20 million people that is normally ventilated by a sea breeze. The health dangers are further exacerbated by the demands of the annual Ramadan fast, when most Muslims abstain from eating or drinking water during daylight hours. For most people, that means about 15 hours with no source of hydration — a factor that has particularly affected manual laborers and street vendors, who work outside under the sun. Dr. Seemin Jamali, head of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center emergency wing, said 272 people had died there from heat-related conditions, including dehydration. The smaller Abbasi Shaheed Hospital said 56 bodies had been brought in since Monday night. Officials said a majority of the victims were men over the age of 50, especially day laborers from lower-income groups. Although Karachi residents are used to dealing with other emergencies — stockpiling groceries, for example, during bouts of street violence — they seemed at a loss for how to manage the extended heat wave. The electricity shortages are the product of decades-long mismanagement of Pakistan’s national grid, and are often worse at dusk when many people are cooking in preparation for the end of the fast. Image En route to a hospital on Tuesday in Karachi, where extreme heat has killed hundreds. Credit Shakil Adil/Associated Press Not only do the power cuts make air-conditioning units and ceiling fans useless — they also reduce the water supply by shutting down pumps. Ice is in short supply and being sold for a premium in many neighborhoods. As the death toll rose over the weekend, many residents opted to stay indoors or to congregate at centrally air-conditioned malls. But that was not a choice for laborers, who make as little as $10 a day and try to keep themselves cool by wrapping wet towels around their heads to stave off the sun. Political anger over the crisis focused on the government of Mr. Sharif, who had pledged to reduce the energy crisis when he came to power two years ago. Syed Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh Province, which includes Karachi, blamed the federal government for failing to get better results from K-Electric, the private company that runs the city’s electricity supply. Mr. Sharif’s officials dismissed that criticism and tried to turn the blame back on Mr. Shah. Addressing Parliament in the capital, Islamabad, Khawaja Asif, the national minister for water and power, insisted he had no direct control over K-Electric. On the streets, people blamed politicians of all stripes. Over the past year, Mr. Sharif’s government has frequently appeared impotent during moments of crisis. By contrast, the powerful military, led by Gen. Raheel Sharif, has become an increasingly assertive force in public life. Amid the political finger-pointing, some news media commentators called on politicians to voluntarily cut off their own electricity and experience the hardship endured by ordinary people. Some journalists fell victim to the heat, too, like a cameraman who fainted during an official news conference in Karachi on Tuesday afternoon. Image A man and his son at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, on Tuesday. A heat wave, with temperatures reaching 113 degrees, has fallen during the Ramadan fast. Credit Akhtar Soomro/Reuters Most residents concentrated on escaping the suffocating heat. Television coverage showed residents fleeing their flats to seek shelter in the open streets. “We try and sit in the shade,” said Mohammad Yusuf, 32, a laborer who works on a moving crew with a pickup truck. “We went all the way near the port today and sat under a tree for three hours.” At Jinnah Hospital, Dr. Jamali said members of her staff had treated more than 5,000 patients from Saturday to Monday. The heat, not the fasting, was the principal factor in the deaths, she said. Although many continued to fast, others quietly allowed that they were unable to cope with the demands of their faith. Subah Sadiq, a fruit vendor and father of seven, said it was impossible to stand in the street all day without drinking. “This is the only way to survive,” he said. Even for those not fasting, staying hydrated is a challenge: Under Pakistani law, in public places, eating and drinking are illegal during Ramadan, although some clerics said their followers could break the fast if their health was in danger. Mr. Rehman, the building watchman, was refusing to give up. “As long as I have some life in me, and strong intentions, I will fast,” he said. One small glimmer of good news came from the weather service. Although hot weather is forecast to continue through this week, officials said, a small amount of rainfall was predicted for Karachi and surrounding cities for late Tuesday night.

Karachi Pakistan Weather Fatalities,casualties


Rebels Chase Congo Troops, as Fighting Kills U.N. Peacekeeper

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of soldiers from the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo fled across the border into Uganda on Friday, in an embarrassing retreat from rebel forces. A United Nations peacekeeper was killed in the fighting, the latest instability to hit the war-wracked eastern Congo. Ugandan troops immediately stripped the approximately 600 Congolese soldiers of their guns and ammunition and the Ugandan government was trying to figure out what to do with them. “They have been disarmed, and they are with us,” said Capt. Peter Mugisa of the Ugandan Army. “We will see how to handle that matter.” The unusual cross-border retreat was a blow to Congo’s troops, who have been bested several times in the past few weeks by a new rebel group called the March 23 Movement or M23. United Nations investigators and others have accused neighboring Rwanda of backing the M23 rebels , but Rwanda has vehemently denied this. Some diplomats in Nairobi said the connections were murky, and though Rwanda has supported Congolese rebels before, the evidence this time may not be so clear-cut. The M23 group emerged this spring when Congo’s government decided to act on a longstanding arrest warrant for Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, a former rebel leader who had briefly been part of the Congolese Army and who stands accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. The prospect of arrest set off a mutiny by General Ntaganda’s followers within the army, and since then, the M23 has seized a string of small towns. On Thursday and Friday, Congo’s Army clashed with the rebels around the town of Bunagana, on the Congo-Uganda border. By dawn on Friday, the rebels won and the soldiers from Congo retreated into Uganda along with several thousand refugees. During the exchange of fire, one Indian peacekeeper working for the United Nations in Bunagana was killed. Analysts say the M23 is not especially interested in trying to overthrow Congo’s government, but want to carve out a sphere of influence in eastern Congo, which is teeming with minerals, and use their territorial gains as bargaining chips. Similar rebellions have plagued eastern Congo for more than a decade. The American military has been working more closely with some Congo Army units in recent years trying to make them more professional and battle-tough, but the latest episode is a sign of the lack of training within the ranks. On Friday, two Congolese Army spokesmen declined to discuss recent events. One of them said that he was under strict orders not to speak to foreign journalists.

Congo Democratic Republic of (Congo-Kinshasa)


Traditional Exchanges Duel With Newcomers Over Trade Transparency

Abstract: While most people trading stocks at home imagine their orders zipping from their brokers onto one of the nation’s stock exchanges, almost none of the trades go anywhere near those public markets. In reality, most trades placed through online brokers like TD Ameritrade and Scottrade are sold to Wall Street firms, which accumulate and trade against tens of millions of these shares a day, rather than send them to a regulated exchange like Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange . The Wall Street firms then quickly flip them and turn an easy profit because they have more resources and market knowledge than mom-and-pop investors. The trading, which takes place away from the gaze of regulators and the public in what are known as the dark markets, has taken off in recent years and steadily eaten into the portion of all stock trading that takes place on the public exchanges. Now, though, the exchanges are fighting back by looking to create dark markets of their own. NYSE Euronext , the company that owns the exchange, is asking regulators to approve a new platform that would attract orders from ordinary investors and then divert them away from the normal exchange with the aim of getting the investor a better price. Nasdaq and the exchange company Direct Edge said they have similar plans in the works. The proposal looks like a technical tweak to help ordinary investors. But it has become the front line in a battle over what the nation’s stock markets should look like after nearly a decade of fragmentation has resulted in over a third of all stock trades occurring in the dark, up from 15 percent in 2008, according to Rosenblatt Securities, a brokerage firm. In the past, the exchanges have pushed regulators to force the dark markets to become better lit, but James Allen, the head of capital markets policy for the CFA Institute, said that with the new proposals the exchanges are acknowledging “that if you can’t beat them, join them.” In doing so, they are ready to take a turn away from the idea of stock exchanges as places where all investors come together in the open and on equal footing. “It could forever change what an exchange is and how it serves different factions of investors,” said Christopher Nagy, the founder of KOR Trading, a firm that advises exchanges and brokers. “This proposal essentially says maybe not all people are equal.” The regulators have until July 7 to decide on the New York Stock Exchange proposal, and it is far from certain that it will win approval. But industry insiders say that even if it is rejected, the plans are forcing regulators to decide how they will deal with the vast transformation of the nation’s stock markets in the last few years. Since a crucial regulatory change was made in 2007, the nation has gone from having two major stock exchanges to having 13 public exchanges, as well as dozens of trading platforms where stocks are traded away from the public eye. Regulators have not stood in the way of these changes, but they have expressed their discomfort with the complex current market structure, and their uncertainty about how to deal with it. Duncan L. Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext, said in a Congressional hearing last Wednesday that the operators of off-exchange trading platforms are under less stringent oversight than the exchanges. He said that regulators should either tighten the rules on dark trading platforms or let the exchanges look more like those platforms. The competition among platforms is credited with bringing down the cost of trading for investors of all types. But the fragmentation of the markets is also blamed for making the market infrastructure more prone to break down, as it did in the flash crash of May 2010, when stock prices plunged nearly 10 percent in 15 minutes. It happened again when the Nasdaq exchange botched the initial public offering of Facebook in May. The rise of the dark markets has also fed concerns about whether the prices of stocks can be manipulated more easily. The practice of diverting retail shares away from public markets and into financial firms is called “internalization.” Bernard L. Madoff is credited with inventing the practice in the early 1990s through his legitimate trading firm, which was on a different floor from his Ponzi investment scheme. Mr. Madoff realized that his firm had better indications of which way stocks were moving than did the retail investors. If his traders could see that shares in a particular company were about to tick up, they could quickly buy shares from a retail trader offering the shares at a slightly lower price and then turn around and immediately sell them for the higher price. The profits made it worth it to pay retail brokers to get the orders. The practice took off after a series of regulatory changes over the last decade made it easier to trade off exchanges and more expensive to trade on exchanges. Today, four firms — Knight Capital Group, UBS, Citigroup and Citadel — have made a business out of paying for retail trades and trading against them. These firms generally pay retail brokers 15 cents for every 100 shares they are sent to trade against, industry experts say. The internalizers were caught in the Facebook initial public offering. They paid to trade against all retail investors clamoring for Facebook shares, but when the Nasdaq exchange broke down just as trading opened, they were left holding the shares. Knight Capital has said it lost around $35 million in the incident. Some critics say that internalization is a problem because the payments the brokers receive are not passed along to the customers. The internalizers also create an incentive for retail brokers to send orders to the place where they can get the biggest payment, rather than the trading platform providing the best price. The retail brokers contend that the internalizers allow them to get the quickest and best execution for their customers. Exchanges have struggled to compete with internalizers because they are not allowed to trade at any price other than the publicly listed price, which is what ordinary investors see when they look at stock prices online. Internalizing firms and other players in dark markets can offer to provide a better price, even if it is just a fraction of a penny. The internalizers will execute the trade only if their market intelligence tells them that the market is about to move in their favor, allowing them to quickly flip the trade. If the internalizers don’t want to trade against the order themselves they usually circulate it to other brokers and dark pools. Only the hardest retail orders to handle — what the exchanges refer to as “toxic order flow” — make it to the exchanges. The NYSE Euronext plan would offer to segment retail orders into a sequestered area where registered firms could offer to trade at a price slightly better than the listed price. The orders to buy and sell would not be visible to the public. Nasdaq has not unveiled its plan but people with direct knowledge said it would look somewhat similar and involve a mini-auction any time a retail order came in. Some internalizing firms have expressed opposition to the plans of the exchanges. But the proposals have also come under fire from market watchers who worry about the direction the industry is taking. Mr. Allen of the CFA Institute, which represents investors, said he understands that the exchanges need to be able to compete, but he does not want to see them accelerate the movement of markets into the dark. “We want whatever comes out of this to be more transparent rather than less transparent,” he said.

New York Stock Exchange
NYSE Euronext
Stocks and Bonds
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry


Syracuse Holds On to Early Lead and Beats Georgetown

Abstract: SYRACUSE — With eight minutes remaining in Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Syracuse and Georgetown, the manager of the Carrier Dome came tapping on the shoulders of all the reporters on press row. “If Syracuse wins there’s a very good chance the students are going to rush the court,” he said. “So be ready for that.” With two minutes left, the reporters packed up their laptops. And with less than one to go, the herd of students in orange and blue took over the tables, grinning at the court in front of them. As paint-covered bodies hurdled through the bleachers, the message was clear: All is well in Syracuse again. A loss Wednesday night to last-place South Florida seemed the lowest of lows — improbable if not impossible to bounce back from. But the Orange (17-9 over all, 7-6 Big East) learned quickly that beating No. 8 Georgetown (20-4, 10-3) could alleviate all that pain. Even as the Hoyas sliced a second-half deficit to 5 from 19, Syracuse held on strong for a 77-70 victory in front of 31,327, the largest on-campus crowd this season. The Orange came out fighting, playing body-to-body defense against some of the most physical players in the conference. Syracuse held Georgetown to a season-low 22 first-half points and was fueled by a balanced offense similar to what the Orange displayed in a victory at Villanova on Feb. 2. The Orange led by 38-22 at halftime, having forced 12 Georgetown turnovers. Even when offensive problems hit during the latter half, Syracuse’s intensity never subsided. When the Hoyas cut the lead to 5, the Orange stormed back courtesy of a 3-pointer by the freshman forward Donte Greene. The sophomore guard Paul Harris led Syracuse with 22 points, sinking 7 of 8 free throws down the stretch. Greene added 18 and Jonny Flynn had 17. Jonathan Wallace led Georgetown with 26 points. MEMPHIS AIMS FOR PERFECTION Unless you have been living under a rock in the shape of a basketball, you know top-ranked Memphis is the lone unbeaten men’s team left in N.C.A.A. Division I. Through Friday’s games, there were still five teams that had yet to lose a conference game this season: Memphis in Conference USA, Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Cornell in the Ivy League, Davidson in the Southern Conference and Oral Roberts in the Summit League. Memphis is looking for its second straight 16-0 season in Conference USA. The last team to have back-to-back unbeaten conference seasons was Princeton in the Ivy League in 1996-97 and 1997-98. Winthrop of the Big South was the only other college to go unbeaten in conference play last season. There have been at least two teams to run the conference table every season since 2001-2, when only Kansas of the Big 12 did it. The last time there were not any was 2000-1. On the negative side, there were five teams through Friday’s games that had yet to win a conference game: North Florida in the Atlantic Sun, Northwestern in the Big Ten, Rice in Conference USA, Colorado State in the Mountain West and Oregon State in the Pacific-10. No team went winless in league play last season, although six managed only one conference victory. (AP) ROOM TO GROW U.C.L.A.’s Kevin Love knows he is not fooling anyone with his listed height of 6 feet 10 inches. Love, the 271-pound freshman sensation, insists he has always claimed to be 6-9. But with his shoes off, he has been measured at 6-8 ½. With shoes on, he is 6-9 ½. “The whole height thing is really overrated,” he said. “When it comes down to it, can you play or can you not play? I think I play like I’m 7 feet.” Now 19, Love said doctors told him he would continue growing until he is 21. “Sometime, I could really be 6-10,” he said. (AP)

Basketball
Syracuse University
College Athletics
Georgetown University


Malone Had Plan for a Role as Icahn Moved on Time Warner

Abstract: It turns out that John C. Malone was interested in capitalizing on Carl C. Icahn's planned proxy fight at Time Warner, as well. Mr. Malone, the media investor, applied to regulators to have a nonvoting 4 percent stake in Time Warner owned by his Liberty Media Corporation converted into voting shares a year ahead of schedule. In a news release, the company's incoming chief executive, Gregory B. Maffei, said the company was looking to "participate actively in key shareholder votes and actions." But Mr. Malone had hoped to get voting control of his shares while the proxy challenge was still on. "We did the filing before Icahn went away," said John Orr, a spokesman for Liberty. He would not say whether Liberty had any further proposals for Time Warner. The filing landed after last week's settlement between an investor group led by Mr. Icahn and Time Warner. In exchange for various concessions, including an increased share buyback and the appointment of two new independent directors, Mr. Icahn called off the planned proxy fight. Mr. Maffei said that the company was pleased with the steps taken by Time Warner, but looked forward to "additional actions." A Time Warner spokesman said the deadline had now passed for shareholders to nominate board members for the company's annual meeting in May, as Mr. Icahn had threatened to do in pursuit of a plan to break up the company. Liberty said it had applied to the Federal Trade Commission for the right to convert the shares ahead of a prohibition barring them from voting status until February 2007. The restriction was put in place a decade ago as part of the approval for the acquisition of Turner Broadcasting Systems -- in which Mr. Malone was a large investor -- by Time Warner. At the time, Liberty was a subsidiary of Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable television operator. Because Time Warner also operates a large cable television business, approval of the deal was contingent on Mr. Malone's having no say over Time Warner's affairs for 10 years. Liberty could have made the same request of the trade commission at any point after the successor to TCI was sold to the Comcast Corporation in 2003 and Mr. Malone ceased to play a role in the company. One person close to Time Warner suggested that Mr. Malone might be seeking leverage over the company for a future transaction with Liberty, although a Time Warner spokesman said none had been proposed. The only direct commercial interest between the companies is a joint venture that owns the Court TV television network. Liberty, which has a range of media interests and investments, is pursuing a strategy of becoming more of an operating company. Mr. Malone's tactics with Time Warner are reminiscent of the approach he took toward the News Corporation, another large media company that Liberty invested in. Liberty had been a nonvoting shareholder in that company, but Mr. Malone swapped his shares for an 18 percent voting stake in November 2004, causing a rift with his sometimes partner Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, who controls 29.5 percent of the company's votes. That prompted Mr. Murdoch to put in place a poison pill takeover defense to keep Mr. Malone from raising his stake. That pill is being challenged by other shareholders in Delaware Chancery Court. At a 4 percent voting stake, Liberty would be among the largest individual shareholders of the widely held Time Warner. Mr. Icahn and three hedge funds allied with him hold 3.3 percent. Separately, Fitch Ratings downgraded Time Warner's bonds one notch, from BBB+ to BBB, because of the additional debt the company is expected to take on from its newly planned $20 billion share buyback and its acquistion of Adelphia Communications. "Our actions really reflect the more aggressive financial tendencies of Time Warner and what we think is the heightened risk of further revisions to their capital allocation strategy," said Brendan Buckley, an analyst with Fitch.

TIME WARNER INC
LIBERTY MEDIA CORP
MAFFEI GREGORY
ICAHN CARL C
MALONE JOHN C
MERGERS ACQUISITIONS AND DIVESTITURES


After a Loss, Siblings Try to Reconnect

Abstract: Silence has settled where animated banter and familial laughter were once the norm. The dynamic between Jasmine Morales, 25, and the two siblings who live with her has been thrown off kilter. In September 2012, the three of them lost their mother, Iris Roman, who developed sepsis after having surgery to remove kidney stones. Ms. Morales said she was in the process of consulting with a lawyer about a lawsuit. The more pressing order of business for Ms. Morales, her half-sister Desiree Roman, 22, and her half-brother Johantzen Valdez, 18, has been mustering the strength to weather the past year and a half. Their loss further hampers lives that were already marred by poverty and mental illness. At age 13, Desiree Roman received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She takes medication, but said it had nonetheless been difficult to balance her health and her grief. “One minute I’m all happy and jolly, the next minute I’m creeping people out,” she said. “I try to be brave, but it doesn’t work.” Her dual conditions have left her unable to work, she said. Ms. Roman had been collecting monthly Social Security disability payments, but those were stopped recently after doctors decided that she was no longer disabled; she said she was trying to get them back. Neither of the other siblings in the household work, either. Mr. Valdez is in his senior year of high school, with hopes of going to college and studying business. Ms. Morales said she had been looking for a job for months. She left Hostos Community College, where she had been pursuing a degree in early childhood education, to commit herself to the search. “The only people who want me or have contacted me are people who want money for training,” she said. The family does not have the money to pay such costs. The family receives $499 in food stamps and $194 in cash each month. The monthly rent of $312 for their Bronx apartment is covered by public assistance. Their mother, with her own mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder, had not worked, but had encouraged her children’s sense of responsibility. “She didn’t raise us to rely on others,” Mr. Valdez said. “She kind of raised us to push forth and be yourself, by yourself.” Circumstances have made it hard for the siblings to follow that advice. All three siblings receive psychological counseling from East Side House Settlement, a nonprofit organization with programs serving children and families. All three admit that their once-strong bond has been worn away by sorrow. “Since my mom passed, we’ve been separated from each other,” Mr. Valdez said. They all agree that they prefer the solitude of separate rooms to communal gatherings, which remind them that something important is missing. However, brother and sisters do manage to come together on occasion, particularly on holidays and the anniversary of their mother’s death. “I want to feel more like a family and not roommates,” Ms. Roman said. On a recent visit to the home, an East Side House caseworker noticed that the apartment was lacking in furniture, and that what was there was broken. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, provided the siblings with $1,700 from the fund for new beds and living room furniture. There are two older siblings whom the three see regularly, as well as other family members they are not close with. Ms. Morales, Ms. Roman and Mr. Valdez each concede that it often seems as if it is three of them against the new world. “I fear us not being successful and relying on public assistance,” Mr. Valdez said. “I fear staying where we are and not becoming better.”


A Tablet for Children That Comes With Its Own Penguins

Abstract: GLENDALE, Calif. — DreamWorks Animation first captivated children in movie theaters. Then it branched into TV, piping cartoons based on hits like “Madagascar” and “How to Train Your Dragon” into homes through outlets like Nickelodeon and Netflix. Now DreamWorks has partnered with a technology company, Fuhu, on an even more immediate way to reach itty-bitty eyeballs, a highly coveted audience: a tablet computer for children that the studio will be able to program much like a cable channel. “We could push out a new character moment every day of the year,” said Jim Mainard, head of digital strategy and new business development for DreamWorks. DreamWorks and Fuhu, which makes the popular Nabi line of children’s tablets, plan to introduce the product, called the DreamTab, at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which starts Tuesday in Las Vegas. The tablets will be sold with a range of DreamWorks-branded accessories, including headphones, protective bumpers and carrying cases. An eight-inch version of the DreamTab will arrive in stores in the spring. Pricing is still being determined but it will be under $300, a Fuhu spokesman said. A 12-inch version is also planned. The partnership is a convergence of two business trends. With children as young as 2 or 3 now routinely using their parents’ iPads or smartphones — if the toddlers don’t already have their own — technology companies are racing to introduce gadgets made for smaller and smaller hands. Fuhu itself sold more than two million Nabis in 2013, and its tablets, which are primarily designed for children 6 to 11, now collectively deliver more than 20 million video streams a week. Entertainment companies have been surprised at how speedily children have taken to tablets, sometimes forgoing TV sets altogether. As a result, DreamWorks, Disney and their competitors are searching for ways to make it easier for users to find their characters on portable devices. Fuhu’s strategic goal with the DreamTab is differentiation — coming up with a way to persuade parents to buy its product over a competing one. DreamWorks is hoping to find a new way into the home, deepening its reputation as an innovative content creator and funneling more viewers to its programs and movies and selling more merchandise. “By teaming with DreamWorks to create a device that will have original content — original content that is automatically and frequently updated — we are not following consumers, we are getting ahead of them,” said Jim Mitchell, Fuhu’s chief executive. There are all sorts of branded tablets, of course. Fuhu in October introduced a special-edition Disney Nabi and Nickelodeon Nabi. But neither of those offered original and exclusive programming like the DreamTab will. Unlike some other tablets, the DreamTab will not lock children into a DreamWorks-only world. The studio’s video content and games are the most prominent, but users can also stream shows from Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. Nancy Bernstein, a movie producer who is in charge of creating what she calls “character moments” for the DreamTab, insists that the effort is not simply an advertising opportunity for the studio. Turn on the tablet, for instance, and penguins from the “Madagascar” franchise might greet you with a silly dance. Depending on how parents have set the timing controls, “Shrek” characters might appear in a skit to announce that it is time to power down. “All of this animation was custom-created,” Ms. Bernstein said in a demonstration at DreamWorks’s headquarters here. Some parents might disagree with her definition of advertising. Will dancing penguins make DreamTab users more interested in seeing “The Penguins of Madagascar” when it arrives in theaters next year? The studio, led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, would be naïve not to hope the answer is yes. The DreamTab will also have technology that allows it to communicate wirelessly with DreamWorks-made toys. For instance, a “How to Train Your Dragon” action figure might be used to unlock games and educational experiences on the tablet. (The studio’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2” arrives in June.) The companies will try to woo parents by including educational elements. In addition to original animation, DreamWorks will supply what it calls “educational artistic experiences”; some of the studio’s top animators will appear in videos to teach users how to draw characters like Po the panda or Toothless the dragon. To allow children to draw on the screens, each DreamTab will come with the same stylus technology that DreamWorks artists use to make movies. “We want to transform the way kids play, learn and grow through technology,” said Mr. Mitchell of Fuhu, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. The DreamTab’s technology is quite hefty. The devices will enable children to send instant messages and emails to their parents’ smartphones, for instance. Mr. Mitchell emphasized that his company had gone to “incredible lengths” to make the DreamTab compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act , a federal law that restricts the ways that companies collect information on children under 13. The DreamTab is not a toy. Switched into parent mode, it provides roughly the same computing power as an iPad, the companies said. “If you give a kid less, they will spot it immediately as less, and they won’t like it,” said Mr. Mainard of DreamWorks. “We wanted to give more.”

Children
Fuhu
Tablet computer
DreamWorks Animation SKG


News Corp. Has a Tablet for Schools

Abstract: For nearly two years, Joel I. Klein helped Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation weather a phone-hacking scandal at the company’s British tabloids with the promise that he would eventually be able to return to the role the company hired him for: to spearhead News Corporation’s new venture into the public school market. That day has finally come. On Wednesday at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Tex., Mr. Klein, the former chancellor of New York City schools and the current chief executive of Amplify, News Corporation’s fledgling education division, will take the stage for a surprising announcement. Amplify will not sell just its curriculum on existing tablets, but will also offer the Amplify Tablet, its own 10-inch Android tablet for K-12 schoolchildren. In addition to tablets and curriculum, Amplify will also provide schools with infrastructure to store students’ data. “When I left I was convinced of two things,” Mr. Klein said of his tenure as chancellor of New York schools. “If we didn’t see a dramatic technological change, we were not going to be able to move this country forward,” and “second of all, that the private sector had to get much, much more involved.” An early look at the Amplify tablet revealed a sleek touch screen with material floating against a simple background. If a child’s attention wanders, a stern “eyes on teacher” prompt pops up. A quiz uses emoticons of smiley and sad faces so teachers can instantly gauge which students understand the lesson and which need help. “We wanted to use the language of the Web,” said Stephen Smyth, president of Amplify Access, the division that produces the tablet, which is manufactured by Asus. At first, the tablet will be targeted at middle-school children. It uses what educators call a “blended learning” model that mixes technology with old-fashioned teaching. Amplify designed the tablet so that schools can provide each student with one to take home each night. Outside the classroom, children can use it to play games, like one in which Tom Sawyer battles the Brontë sisters. “There’s a huge opportunity if you can get kids excited about educational games,” Mr. Klein said. “You can change the learning curve.” In November, Amplify began testing its tablet in hundreds of public schools nationwide, and in December it explained the venture to investors. The introduction on Wednesday began a full-court press by Amplify’s sales force. A preloaded tablet, training and customer care (largely from former teachers) starts at $299, along with a two-year subscription for $99 a year. A higher-end Amplify Tablet Plus, for students who do not have wireless access at home, comes with a 4G data plan and costs $349. Amplify estimates that many school districts could use grants from the Education Department’s Race to the Top program, which brings technology and personalized learning to schools. “We understand technology and we understand education,” Mr. Klein said. “A lot of people who understand technology don’t understand education.” In the eight years Mr. Klein served as chancellor of New York schools, he pushed educators to adopt new technology, often drawing accolades and controversy along the way. He remains a prominent voice in education reform, and Amplify carries with it both his friendships and clashes with educators. “Joel was always talking about how to eliminate teachers and make it about a child in front of a computer screen,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. Image Joel Klein, a former New York City schools chancellor, leads a unit of News Corporation that makes this tablet for education. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times (“Did textbooks lead to larger classrooms and fewer teachers? No,” Mr. Klein says.) Now that he is in the private sector, some of Mr. Klein’s advocacy work presents a conflict, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Last year Mr. Klein wrote, with Condoleezza Rice, a Council on Foreign Relations report that called the state of United States schools a “grave national security threat.” He contributed $25,000 to a coalition that supported specific candidates for the Los Angeles Board of Education elections held on Tuesday. (A News Corporation subsidiary also contributed to candidates.) “You can’t at the same time go out and present yourself as a civic citizen talking about how public schools right now are horrible and then say, ‘Oh, I have a product that is going to make it better,’ ” Ms. Weingarten said. (She added that she saw “real potential” in devices designed specifically for schoolchildren.) Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Amplify, said, “Joel has long been a big supporter of education reform efforts” and “will continue to support candidates.” In the private sector, Mr. Klein, who also serves as an executive vice president of News Corporation, faces the challenge of being a part of Mr. Murdoch’s media conglomerate. The company still faces civil lawsuits related to phone hacking. Mr. Klein joined News Corporation in January 2011. In 2010, the company paid $360 million for a 90 percent stake in Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based company specializing in data and assessment tools for teachers. The crisis in Britain soon seeped into its new education business. In 2011, the New York State comptroller, citing “the significant ongoing investigations and continuing revelations with respect to News Corporation,” rejected a $27 million contract with Wireless Generation. “I’m very concerned about them tracking children or using their data because they’ve proven not to be very trustworthy on that,” Mr. Mulgrew said. Mr. Klein says challenges exist when any “high-visibility company” tries to work in the K-12 realm. “The company dealt with the phone-hacking thing with enormous praise from Lord Leveson,” he said, referring to an inquiry into British press ethics led by Brian Leveson. The Amplify Tablet enters a market crowded with competitors trying to tap into K-12 classrooms, which spend around $3 billion a year on traditional textbooks, according to the Association of American Publishers. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has a service called NBC Learn that uses material from NBC News. Apple has sold thousands of iPads to schools and analysts expect K-12 to become a larger piece of its business. Barnes & Noble and Amazon have both positioned their e-reader devices as options for schools. “In many ways Amplify is a start-up in this space,” said Jonathan D. Harber, chief executive of Pearson’s K-12 technology group. Pearson offers troves of digital curriculum but does not make its own tablet. This summer, when News Corporation splits into two separate publicly traded companies, Amplify will join the publishing division, which includes newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins, which will lend Amplify some of its content. Because of its investment in building the new business, the division will have an estimated $180 million in operational losses this year. Mr. Klein says he expects the Amplify tablets to eventually contribute 40 percent of the division’s revenue. Amplify’s curriculum, including video games as elaborate as anything played on an Xbox, is expected to contribute another 40 percent. “The ultimate goal of this is to turn students into readers,” said Damien Yambo, a producer on the Tom Sawyer game and a former public-school teacher in Detroit. The games, he added, must also compete with Angry Birds.

Joel Klein
Amplify Education
Tablet computer
K-12 Education
News Corp