Fall in Egyptian Pound Weighs Heavily on the Ill

Abstract: CAIRO — In the tiny village of Nagaa al-Khalasab on the outskirts of the Upper Egyptian city of Aswan, the parents of 11-month-old Butheyna Ali Khalil have struggled to acquire medicine to treat her hepatitis C. As a wave of pharmaceutical shortages has swept across Egypt, exacerbated by a steep drop in the pound, the family has had to rely on the good will of friends for a sporadic supply of black-market Silymarin tablets to treat their daughter. Her condition, meanwhile, has worsened, and access to the medicine is becoming more difficult. “All I can do is pray to God because I cannot do anything else,” said her father, Abdel Maksoud Khalil. “I am helpless.” Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C in the world, according to the World Health Organization, which estimates the level of infection at 15 percent of the population, with 165,000 new cases every year. Most commonly caused by coming into contact with contaminated blood, untreated hepatitis C can develop into liver cancer. Mr. Khalil lost another daughter, Rodiana, seven months ago to acute bronchitis after he could not find the right medicine to treat her. “We have dropped from the thoughts and care of everybody,” he said. It is a story that is all too familiar throughout Egypt, where the poor struggle within a system that gives them little access to affordable public health care while the well-off can pay for generous private medical services. In the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, a steep devaluation in the Egyptian pound, and the lack of hard currency, makes it more difficult to import expensive drugs because the law requires them to be resold at a fixed price. Egypt’s total pharmaceutical market has been worth about $3.4 billion, but more than 40 percent of that was reliant on imports, making a currency devaluation a financial hurdle for companies. There is a shortage of an estimated 400 different drugs, some of which are considered lifesaving, said Alaa Ghannam, the director of the health care program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo. These include treatments for cancer, diabetes and hepatitis C, but also nonprescription items like Zantac for stomach ulcers. “Up until now, we have managed to find some alternative but not with the same quality,” he said, referring to generic products. Egypt’s fixed drug-price system has made it increasingly difficult for pharmaceutical companies to cope with a sharp fall of the local currency against the dollar this year, and executives say most companies are losing money. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the country’s pharmaceutical market is dominated by the private sector, which supplies most of these medicines. But as the Egyptian pound has depreciated, so has the ability of these companies to meet demand. But large multinational pharmaceutical companies say they have long-term commitments to supply the retail market. In a country where the government’s allocation to health care is less than 5 percent of the budget — lower than in most Middle Eastern countries — shortages are an additional strain on Egyptians who are already struggling with fuel and food shortages, rising unemployment and a deteriorating security situation. Doctors and executives in the industry say it is a policy problem that requires immediate government intervention and increased government funding. While the government is allocating 27.4 billion Egyptian pounds, or $4 billion, to health care in the 2012-13 budget, an increase of 18 percent from the previous financial year, underinvestment in the sector has left many hospitals understaffed and without enough beds and equipment to treat patients. Shops selling medical equipment, like wheelchairs and surgical knives, exist predominantly for patients to purchase supplies that a nearby public-sector hospital may not have. It is not unheard of for poorer Egyptians to bring their own bedsheets to the hospital. “We are lacking so many simple medicines, for example Zantac, which is supposed to be used in the emergency room,” said Mohammed Saad, a doctor at a hospital in Damanhur, a city in Lower Egypt. Medicines that are not subsidized by the government are often too expensive for the poor to purchase. Subsidized insulin, for instance, costs as little as 6.5 Egyptian pounds but would normally cost 50 to 60 pounds — beyond the reach of the poorest patients — if it were not part of the welfare program. Pharmaceutical companies operating in Egypt say they have not stopped importing drugs or manufacturing them in the country but are trying to negotiate price increases of some drugs to counteract losses. “Short term, we’re actually making a loss because until you are applying and obtaining a price increase you have to basically accept you are operating at a lower level of margin,” said Nabil Daoud, the director for regions including Turkey, the Middle East and Africa at the pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly. Since prices are controlled by the government for all medication, he said, “whatever growth you generate ends up getting eaten.” Meanwhile, negotiations at a ministerial level are under way to ease the impact of the currency shortage. The Ministry of Health is putting pressure on the Ministry of Finance to secure funding for pharmaceutical companies to plug the gap in hard currency. Ehab Yousef, an Egypt-based general manager at the Swiss health care company Hoffmann-La Roche, said that there were “ongoing discussions” and that there was a “new Ministry of Health decree to revisit the price of some products which suffered from the currency devolution for a considerable period of time.” “Hopefully the economy will improve for Egypt,” Mr. Yousef said. “Otherwise we will need the Ministry of Health to understand that securing hard currency for medicines is important.” Adding to this pressure, successive downgrades of Egypt’s sovereign bond rating to below investment grade status have scared international suppliers who no longer accept letters of credit from drug makers. Importers were originally given as much as six months to settle bills, but now immediate payment is demanded, executives in the industry say. Egypt’s credit rating has been lowered to junk or near-junk status by the three largest ratings agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. But as the Ministry of Health lobbies to secure more funds and most imports are suspended, Egyptian families have had to adopt more desperate measures to acquire medication. Two months ago, Khalil Radwan contacted friends in Germany and Saudi Arabia in an attempt to find the right medicine for his wife Salwa’s fast-advancing brain tumor. He managed to pay for three small boxes, all he could afford, but by the time they arrived, she had died. “We did our best, but there is no doubt that there are people responsible,” Mr. Radwan said. He pointed a finger not only at the government’s failure to address the declining health care system, but also to the escalating political stalemate that has contributed to the collapse of the Egyptian economy.

Egypt
Pharmaceuticals
Shortages
Price
WHO
Hospital
Economy
Health Insurance
Emergency medicine


Paterson Tells Congress That States Need a Rescue Package, Too

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Governors David A. Paterson of New York and Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey added their voices Wednesday to the growing support for a second federal economic stimulus package , saying state governments would face devastating cutbacks if they did not receive assistance soon. Appearing before separate congressional committees, they said that their states, like many others, had already moved to address budget deficits. Their actions alone would not be enough, they said. “We are cutting all we can,” Mr. Paterson told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Therefore, we feel that targeted, sensible actions by the federal government will provide relief for us now.” Speaking to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mr. Corzine implored, “We need federal help to get through these tough times.” Their remarks increased the pressure on the federal government to include money for state governments in the next round of economic stimulus legislation, pointedly putting the requests of the executives of two of the nation’s most populous states on the record. Later, at a joint news conference, Mr. Paterson and Mr. Corzine called for assistance to support infrastructure projects like bridges and roads, and for assistance to prevent social programs like unemployment insurance from running out of money. “The federal government ignores state and local governments at serious peril,” Mr. Corzine said. The type of legislation they called for would probably be in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. Congressional Democrats have said they would like to see such legislation approved quickly, but there is doubt that President Bush would agree. Mr. Paterson’s appearance on Capitol Hill came a day after he warned that the state deficit over the next three and a half years was expected to be $47 billion. He has called on state lawmakers to put forward ideas on how to reduce the state budget in preparation for a special legislative session he has called for Nov. 18. In written testimony he submitted to the committee, Mr. Paterson was even more pointed, criticizing the federal government for not preventing the current economic upheaval and for its lack of attention to the states. “I firmly believe that if it took only two weeks for the federal government to find $700 billion to bail out Wall Street and bank executives,” he said, “then we ought to be able to find a fraction of that amount to help preserve essential services at the state level.” He added, “The results of federal inaction could be devastating in every corner of our nation.” In the written testimony, Mr. Paterson repeatedly invoked the economic damage resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that the threat to New York’s economy was in many ways far more severe now than it was then. He said New York and other states were on the verge of finding themselves unable to provide essential social services like unemployment benefits and food stamps and needed federal assistance. “Just like the financial services industry, we need a partner in the federal government in order to help stave off an impending calamity.”

Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Paterson David A
States (US)
Corzine Jon S
United States Politics and Government
House of Representatives


Sippy Sippy Coffee Top

Abstract: Dear Diary: Scene: Dyker Park Bagels, 86th Street, Brooklyn (in Dyker Heights). While ordering my morning coffee, I asked for the spillproof top, calling it a “sippy lid.” The guy behind the counter says to me: “You know, all the women call it a ‘sippy lid.’ All the men call it a ‘travel top.’”

Coffee
Dyker Heights Brooklyn
Containers and Packaging


Merged Inquiries Could Mean One Big Problem for U.S.C.

Abstract: A report that the N.C.A.A. has merged its inquiries into two former star athletes for the University of Southern California could indicate that investigators are focusing their attention on whether the university lost control over its athletic program, legal experts and lawyers involved in the cases said Friday. Since 2006, the N.C.A.A. has been investigating whether Reggie Bush, now a running back for the New Orleans Saints , and his family took as much as $300,000 in cash and goods from a would-be marketing agent while he was playing for Southern California. Last year, similar charges surfaced about O.J. Mayo, who played basketball for one season for the Trojans before being drafted in 2008 by the Memphis Grizzlies. Bush and Mayo have each denied the allegations. The investigations had been proceeding separately until the N.C.A.A. recently decided to combine them, according to lawyers for Louis Johnson, a former Mayo associate who has said that Mayo received thousands of dollars in cash and other gifts from an event promoter while he was in high school and college. Johnson’s lawyers, Anthony V. Salerno and David Murphy, said in a telephone interview Friday that officials with the Pacific-10 Conference told them earlier this week that the N.C.A.A. had combined the Bush and Mayo investigations. The lawyers’ revelations were first reported Thursday by The Los Angeles Times. “This suggests to me that the investigation is heating up,” Salerno said. Spokesmen for the N.C.A.A., the Pac-10 and the university declined to comment Friday. Brian Watkins, a lawyer involved in the Bush case, also said on Friday that he has learned that the N.C.A.A. is pursuing a single investigation of the university. Watkins represents Lloyd Lake, who is suing Bush over the cash and goods that Lake alleges he lent Bush and his family as part of a sports marketing deal that fell apart. “I do understand that that has happened,” Watkins said of the merged inquiries, although he said N.C.A.A. officials have never explicitly told him that was true. Speaking of the Bush and Mayo cases, Watkins said: “I believe there’s substantial evidence on both sides of violations, and I think it’s opening up a bigger can of worms. The question was whether or not the university knew or should have known, and I think the new case, the Mayo case, is more evidence of an institutional failure.” If investigators conclude that the university ignored warning signs or should have known about wrongdoing, it could face serious consequences, including forfeiting games, returning championship money, losing scholarships or being banned from postseason play. Paul H. Haagen, a Duke law professor and co-director of the university’s Center for Sports Law and Policy , said the combined investigation might be a matter of bureaucratic housekeeping. Even so, Haagen said: “If I were the counsel for U.S.C., this is worrisome. It raises the possibility that there are systemic problems, and if there are systemic problems, then the penalties are more serious.”

University of Southern California
New Orleans Saints
Basketball
National Collegiate Athletic Assn
Colleges and Universities
Amateur Athletics
College Athletics
Football
Bush Reggie
Mayo O J


In Vietnam, the Skies Are Filling

Abstract: HANOI — Vietnam’s fledgling airline industry is poised for a boom as local competition heats up with fleet expansions, new routes and planned share offerings that are set to make it one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Even as the local economy chugs along at about 5 percent growth, its slowest pace in 13 years, demand for domestic air travel is growing by double digits. That is translating into a surprisingly robust new source of business for Boeing Airbus and regional aircraft makers like Mitsubishi Aircraft, Bombardier and Embraer. The International Air Transport Association expects Vietnam to become among the world’s fastest-growing markets next year for international and domestic passengers and freight. The country’s Aviation Department expects 15 percent growth in domestic passengers this year, more than double last year’s rise of 7 percent. Though starting from a low base, Vietnam’s carriers will bolster their fleets in the next few years, doubling or tripling them to serve a domestic market of 90 million people and tourist arrivals growing on average 20 percent annually. VietJet Aviation Joint Stock, Vietnam’s first private airline, agreed last month to a provisional order for as many as 92 Airbus jets worth $9 billion at list prices. The low-cost carrier is aiming for a stock market listing in either Hong Kong or Singapore in 2015 to fund the expansion, which would start with flights to Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and South Korea and eventually include other destinations in China and in Russia, Australia and beyond, said its managing director, Luu Duc Khanh. “Further it could be the United States, where four million people of Vietnamese origin live. They’re waiting for VietJet anxiously,” Mr. Khanh said. VietJet plans to double its fleet by 2015 to 20 jets, and is speeding up work to get three joint ventures in the air, including one with an undisclosed carrier in Myanmar and another already agreed to with KanAir of Thailand, to operate in early 2014. The bold expansion of VietJet after less than two years in business could raise the stakes not only at home but also in Southeast Asia’s fast-growing low-cost market, which is dominated by AirAsia of Malaysia and Lion Air of Indonesia. Those ambitious plans may have shaken the state-run flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines, or VNA, into expediting its long-awaited initial public offering and fleet expansion. VNA dominates the local market and will increase its fleet by 28 percent to 101 aircraft by 2015. It has been preparing for an initial public offering in the second quarter of 2014. “The project is right on schedule,” said its spokesman, Le Truong Giang. VNA’s fleet includes both Airbus and Boeing jets, and the airline has ordered the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350. According to Boeing, VNA has orders for eight 787s and 11 more through leasing companies. The airline also has its hand in the low-cost market through a stake in JetStar Pacific, a joint venture with Qantas Airways of Australia. JetStar plans to more than triple its fleet of five Airbus A320s to 16 in the next few years, a spokesman said. The airlines and industry experts say the growth potential comes mainly from Vietnam’s topography and what Mr. Khanh of VietJet called a “fortune location.” Vietnam is 1,650 kilometers, or 1,025 miles, long; its biggest cities and tourist resorts are far apart; and it has poor road and rail infrastructure. It is also within a few hours of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand and China, and tourist arrivals are increasing, with 5.5 million in the first nine months of the year, a 10 percent rise from the same period in 2012. Mr. Khanh said expansion would be gradual, with the carrier taking delivery of between 5 and 10 Airbus jets each year until 2022. “It’s insufficient,” Mr. Khanh said. VietJet’s joint-venture plans were therefore a smart move, said Timothy Ross, an air transport analyst at Credit Suisse in Singapore. “I can’t imagine they have much on their balance sheet,” he said. “So in terms of building a new business, it’s far better to give away some of the potential upside and invest less.” JetStar has not been profitable and is likely to struggle as competition increases, Mr. Ross said, while VNA has not done itself any favors by delaying privatization. “We should have seen the Vietnam Airlines I.P.O. 3 to 5 years ago, but it sat on its hands,” he said. “Competition in the airline industry is inevitable.”


Sniff Test Doesn’t Prove Public Drinking, Judge Says

Abstract: The police in New York City wrote 124,498 summonses last year for drinking in public — far more than for any other violation. After having to adjudicate so many of these public drinking cases, a Brooklyn judge has decided he has had enough. The judge, Noach Dear , has signaled that from now on, he intends to hold the police to a highly impractical standard if they want to issue a summons for drinking alcohol from a cup: The police must prove that the beverage in question was alcoholic. The sniff test, he wrote, was not enough. Judge Dear made his intentions known in a written decision released on Thursday in a run-of-the-mill Criminal Court case: Julio Figueroa, 38, was cited for illegally drinking a cup of beer on a city sidewalk near his home in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn. It was not sufficient, the judge wrote, that a police officer had smelled the contents of Mr. Figueroa’s cup and detected beer. Nor was it enough that Mr. Figueroa had told the police officer that, yes, the liquid was indeed beer. In dismissing Mr. Figueroa’s case, Judge Dear wrote that the police should be required to adhere to a higher standard of certainty that the drink’s alcohol content exceeded 0.5 percent, the threshold under the city’s open-container law, before issuing a court summons. One way to do that, he suggested, would be for the New York Police Department to have a laboratory test conducted. Judge Dear made it clear that he hoped his interpretation of the city’s public drinking law would persuade the Police Department to reconsider its enforcement of the ordinance. In his experience, he wrote, the department singled out blacks and Hispanics when issuing public drinking summonses. “As hard as I try, I cannot recall ever arraigning a white defendant for such a violation,” wrote Judge Dear, a former city councilman who was elected to a judgeship in 2007. Judge Dear wrote that he had his staff review a month’s worth of past public-drinking summonses issued in Brooklyn, and found that 85 percent of the summonses were issued to blacks and Latinos, while only 4 percent were issued to whites. According to census data, Brooklyn’s population is about 36 percent white. “I am hereby recommending that the practices and policies of the N.Y.P.D. with respect to enforcement of the open container law be scrutinized and immediately stopped if found to be discriminatory,” he wrote. The decision of a single judge is not likely to change the ticket-writing habits of the 35,000-member department. The fine that the city collects from such tickets is low compared with the penalty for other offenses — $25 per ticket — but each summons offers the police an opportunity to check the person for warrants, which police officers say is one of the reasons that the police are so energetic about enforcing quality-of-life violations like public-drinking offenses. But the zeal with which the police seek out opportunities to write public drinking tickets has angered some New Yorkers, particularly residents of housing projects who in interviews have said they resent it when patrol officers demand to sniff the contents of any plastic foam or paper cup from which they are drinking. Mr. Figueroa said that on May 12, he poured a beer into a paper cup at his home and went for a stroll outside, stopping outside a bodega as a friend went inside. “It’s not like I was staggering,” said Mr. Figueroa, noting that that was his first beer of the evening. As he finished his beer, he said, an unmarked police car pulled up and three officers emerged, asking him what he was drinking. “I wasn’t going to lie,” Mr. Figueroa said. “They said they could tell it was beer by the way I was drinking it.” The episode did not end with a ticket. One officer searched a nearby trash can for evidence of a beer can or bottle, while another ran his name through a database for warrants. In the end, Mr. Figueroa was arrested on what the police said was an outstanding warrant, although he said he was later told that there was a mix-up and that he did not have one. Mr. Figueroa, a chef, said he was of Puerto Rican and Honduran descent. He said that he had received several public drinking tickets in the past, but that this was the first time he had ever been “put through the system.” He spent about 22 hours in jail before appearing before Judge Dear, who dismissed the case at the time, but issued the decision only this week. The judge pointed that without direct proof of the alcohol content of the beverage, citizens were at risk of getting a ticket for drinking nonalcoholic beer. “While the arresting officer’s professional training and sense of smell may be sufficient to support his conclusion that defendant was drinking beer,” he wrote, “such does not support the conclusion that the beer contained more than one-half of one percent of alcohol by volume.”

New York City
Blacks
Dear Noach
Decisions and Verdicts
Alcoholic Beverages
Discrimination
Brooklyn (NYC)
Police Department (NYC)
Hispanic-Americans
Figueroa Juan


In First Live Interview, Britain’s MI5 Chief Seeks More Powers to Fight Terrorism

Abstract: LONDON — The head of Britain ’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, appealed on Thursday for broader legal powers to deal with advances in technologies and what he described as a more diffuse and serious terrorist threat. The appeal has been made before . What was unusual this time is that it was made in the first live media interview ever given by an MI5 director. The BBC interview, on Radio 4 , was more noteworthy for taking place than for what the director, Andrew Parker, actually said. He and counterparts at MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, have broken with tradition before to give public testimony before Parliament and made many of the same points. They emphasize, as Mr. Parker did on Thursday, that the intelligence agencies report to the government and to Parliament, gather information widely but in a targeted fashion, and see their jobs as defending British lives and liberties, not in violating them. Mr. Parker said he shared the fears of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, about terrorism suspects’ “going dark,” a term that refers to changes in technology that make it more difficult to legally intercept communications and prevent attacks. He said increasing online data encryption meant that the police and intelligence agencies “can no longer obtain under proper legal warrant the communication of people they believe to be terrorists.” “It’s in nobody’s interests that terrorists should be able to plot and communicate out of the reach of any authority,” Mr. Parker said. “We’re focused on the people who mean us harm. We’re not about browsing through the private lives of the citizens of this country. We do not have population-scale monitoring or anything like that.” He said that the threat level in Britain remained at “severe,” meaning that an attack was “highly likely,” given the chaos in the Middle East. Mr. Parker repeated his call for social media companies and technology companies, like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and communications providers, to help the intelligence agencies. He said such companies, many of them American, had what he called an ethical responsibility to come forward if they had concerns about their users and any possible involvement in terrorism. Terrorist groups, he said, “are using secure apps and Internet communication to try to broadcast their message and incite and direct terrorism amongst people who live here who are prepared to listen.” The revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, of wide-scale electronic surveillance have prompted criticism of the intelligence services and fears that rights to privacy have been subverted. The Conservative government is preparing legislation that is expected to give the police and security officials new powers, and may extend oversight over them to the judiciary. The interview with Mr. Parker seemed partly designed to win public support for the proposals. It also seemed timed to the release of a new critical report from David Anderson , a government-appointed “independent reviewer of terrorism” laws, warning that separate legislation to ban extremism could provoke a damaging backlash among Muslims. In his annual report, Mr. Anderson, a lawyer who is in his second three-year term in the job, said if the new laws were too widely drawn, they could play into the hands of people trying to encourage extremism and terrorism.

BBC
Andrew Parker
MI6
Great Britain
News media,journalism
Government Surveillance
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


South Koreans Visit Intel With Questions

Abstract: South Korean regulators have questioned some of Intel's employees as part of an investigation of its marketing and rebate programs, the company said yesterday. Officers from the Korea Fair Trade Commission were following up on an investigation begun in June when the agency requested documents related to local marketing practices, Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, said. "They paid a visit earlier this week and asked some questions consistent with previous inquiries," Mr. Mulloy said. "We cooperated with them then and will continue to cooperate." Intel is facing an antitrust lawsuit in the United States based on a complaint filed last June by a rival, Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif. European regulators investigating antitrust claims have also raided Intel offices, and the Japanese Fair Trade Commission last year told Intel to remove a clause from its contracts requiring PC makers to use its chips exclusively.


Night Vision Goggles For Young Nighthawks

Abstract: Do you have a child who is afraid of the dark? Here’s an $80 solution, from your local toy store. EyeClops Night Vision goggles ( www.jakkspacific.com ) use infrared L.E.D.’s that shine a wide beam of infrared light up to 50 feet away. The reflected light is invisible to the eye but not to the onboard camera, which displays the images in a single-eye viewfinder in stark monochrome. According to Nelo Lucich, the creator of the goggles and a vice president at the toy manufacturer Jakks Pacific, it was the affordability and brightness of the 17 L.E.D.’s that made this type of toy feasible at its price. Powered by five AA batteries that last about three hours, the entire device straps onto your head with thick rubber straps, like wearing a heavy mask and snorkel, giving you a look that is guaranteed to send the dog into the next room, and the cat up a tree. This could be great fun on Halloween — not only do you look creepy, but you can see where you’re stepping. WARREN BUCKLEITNER

Night vision goggles
Nelo Lucich
Eyes and Eyesight


Knicks Top Kings to Halt Skid at 6 Games

Abstract: SACRAMENTO — The celebration, if it could be called that, was muted: some fist pumps and grunts and some lazy high-fives. It was enough for the Knicks that they could finally, comfortably exhale, for the first time in 12 days. A six-game losing streak that threatened to ruin a new era was extinguished Wednesday night, as the Knicks overcame a slow start and bumpy finish to secure a 113-106 victory over the Sacramento Kings . Amar’e Stoudemire, who began the week by questioning his team’s fortitude, carried the Knicks with 27 points and 10 rebounds as he battled all night with the rugged rookie DeMarcus Cousins. Stoudemire helped put the game away with one critical sequence down the stretch, blocking Cousins’s dunk attempt at one end, then converting a dunk at the other for a 103-94 lead with 2 minutes 55 seconds left. “Definitely got to get used to this feeling,” Stoudemire said, adding, “We got to continue to keep this swagger, keep this mentality, and on to the next one.” The Knicks (4-8) had not won a game since a Nov. 5 victory over Washington. The swoon spawned discontent among fans and a lot of ire directed at Coach Mike D’Antoni. The win provided a pressure release before the Knicks close out the trip with games against the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippes. “We’re finding our sea legs a little bit,” D’Antoni said. “This is just one little inch forward.” Tyreke Evans, the reigning rookie of the year, led the Kings with 23 points. Cousins, the fifth pick in the June draft, had 15 points and 10 rebounds off the bench. Carl Landry had 21 points and 9 rebounds. But the Knicks used a revived shooting performance (52 percent) and gritty defense to turn back several rallies and control the last three quarters. Danilo Gallinari had his most complete game of the season, scoring 27 points, including a career-high 16 free throws (on 17 attempts). Gallinari seemed to find himself in the Rockies late Tuesday night, when he followed perhaps his worst first half with an electric second half against the Denver Nuggets. The performance seemed to boost his confidence and calm his nerves. Gallinari hit a pair of 3-pointers in a critical second-quarter run, but he also diversified his game, finding driving lanes and chances to get to the line. Twice, he pump-faked near the arc to draw fouls, earning five free throws from those two plays alone. “I was just trying to be aggressive and smart at the same time,” said Gallinari, who went 4 for 8 from the field (3 for 5 at the arc). In some ways, the Knicks’ resurgence began with a strong second half in Denver the night before, when they turned a potential rout into a tight game. They showed a similar resilience Wednesday night, after falling behind by 15 points in the first quarter. “We know that it’s not easy,” Gallinari said. “When you lose all these games, it’s not easy to get out of these kind of moments. The only way to get out is to stay together and try to play our game and be concerned in our game.” Despite the six-game losing streak, there was no sign of despair, or any sense that the Knicks were ready to let the season slip away. They pushed the pace as consistently as they have in any game this season. They dove for loose balls. They did not settle for long jumpers. It was a steady offensive performance against one of the league’s weaker teams. The night started out much more ominously. The Knicks missed their first six shots and 18 of 23 in the first quarter and fell behind by 15 points. That inexplicable start (14 points in the first quarter) was followed by an equally astounding recovery (40 points in the second). The Knicks hit 9 of their first 12 shots in the second quarter, including 3-pointers from Gallinari, Bill Walker and Toney Douglas. Within minutes, the 15-point deficit had become a 5-point lead. After some hideous recent shooting performances, the Knicks found their 3-point strokes, and more of a conscience in taking them. They went 4 for 10 in the half, a marked improvement over the 3-for-19 first half that sank them in Denver a night earlier. D’Antoni also started a new center, inserting Ronny Turiaf in place of Timofey Mozgov. Turiaf is probably the Knicks’ best interior defender and certainly their most active big man. His presence kept the Knicks’ energy level high. Gradually, the rotation is taking shape and an identity is emerging. “They’re tough kids,” D’Antoni said, “and they’re not going to quit. I don’t think they’ll quit any games. There’ll be some bad games, there’ll be some low moments, as we’ve already had. But it’s not because they don’t care or they’re not going to battle. They’ll grind it.” REBOUNDS Anthony Randolph did not play and appears to have fallen out of the rotation for now. With the Knicks struggling, Randolph’s mistake-prone play was deemed too great a risk. “I just told him right now this is all about the team, and I’ve got to go with my gut,” Mike D’Antoni said. “We’ll worry about individuals after we can get out of a hole a little bit.” The benching means that Randolph might not play against his former team, the Golden State Warriors, on Friday. “Things happen,” Randolph said. “It’s a long season, so you never know. I can become a part of it. We got a long way to go. But we got the win tonight, that’s all that matters.” ... Landry Fields’s 21-point, 17-rebound performance in Denver marked the most points and rebounds by a Knicks rookie since Patrick Ewing had 28 points and 20 rebounds against Atlanta on Nov. 16, 1985, exactly 25 years earlier.

Sacramento Kings
Basketball
New York Knicks
Stoudemire Amare
Gallinari Danilo
Evans Tyreke


Amazon’s Profit Rose 68% in Quarter

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon.com said Thursday that its first-quarter profit surged 68 percent, showing that consumers are even more comfortable opening their wallets to the online retailer as the economy slowly improves. Earnings were $299 million, or 66 cents a share, in the January through March period. The amount was 5 cents more than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected. Amazon had a profit of $177 million, or 41 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue rose 46 percent to $7.13 billion, well above the $6.87 billion analysts had expected. For the current quarter, Amazon expects revenue of $6.1 billion to $6.7 billion. That would be an increase of 31 percent to 44 percent over last year, but it also means Amazon’s revenue could fall below analysts’ expectations for $6.43 billion. Amazon shares fell $9.49 to $141 in after-hours trading, after finishing regular trading up $4.06 at $150.49. Earlier in the day the stock hit a high of $151.09, adjusted for splits. Revenue from books, CDs, DVDs and other media grew 26 percent to $3.43 billion. Electronics and other “general merchandise” revenue increased 72 percent to $3.51 billion. The first quarter ended right before the arrival of a major competitor to Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, the Apple iPad tablet device. Like the Kindle, the iPad can wirelessly download books. As in the past, Amazon declined to give details about Kindle sales. It reiterated that the device is Amazon’s best-selling product, but the meaning of that is unclear, given that the Kindle can be bought only on Amazon’s site. Amazon will start selling the Kindle at some Target stores this month.


When a Public School Shares Space With a Charter

Abstract: In a city where so many public schools are segregated by race and wealth, Public School 9 in Brooklyn is an exception. It has a substantial number of poor children, with about 75 percent receiving subsidized lunches. And because it is in a gentrifying neighborhood, Prospect Heights, the school also has a sizable number of yuppie children. The co-presidents of the parent-teacher organization are Nelly Heredia, a single mother with two children who is out of work, and Penelope Mahot, a married mother with two children who owns a product design company and a gift store. The mothers like the same things about P.S. 9: the principal, Sandra D’Avilar, makes herself available to parents; the school is full of experienced teachers; the parents’ groups are thriving; the children are learning; there are classes in art, music, theater and dance. The parents also share a concern: P.S. 9 ends at fifth grade, and the district’s middle schools are weak. “The middle school my older daughter goes to is nothing like this,” Ms. Heredia said. There is a middle school in the P.S. 9 building, M.S. 571, but it is low-performing, and on Dec. 6, the Department of Education announced plans to phase it out. That got P.S. 9 parents thinking. Why not use the soon-to-be-vacant space in their building to expand to eighth grade? “I talked to several people about the idea,” said Christina LaBrie, a lawyer who has two children at P.S. 9. But on Dec. 20, city officials unveiled a holiday surprise. The department said it planned to move a middle-grade charter school — Brooklyn East Collegiate, a member of the Uncommon Schools charter chain — into the space opening up at P.S. 9. In the four months since, P.S. 9 parents have fought City Hall, scoring a few upset victories. But they have also learned a hard lesson: once the mayor’s people set their sights on a location, the chances of successfully challenging a charter are slim. Supporters of district schools fear that once a charter moves in, it will take over the building. They resent being compared academically, when on average, charters in New York City have fewer poor, immigrant and special-education students. Even before the P.S. 9 parents got started, they were too late. To add a middle school, department regulations required P.S. 9 to have filed a letter of intent by April 13, 2010; the final application was supposed to have been filed by July 15, 2010. A classic Catch-22: There was no reason to apply until space was available, but by the time space was available, it was too late to apply. When the department proposes adding a school to a building, it must create a plan for the shared spaces: the cafeteria, gym and library. It was the department’s plan for the library that galled P.S. 9 parents most. The parents had spent the previous two years rebuilding that library, which had been closed for years and was in bad shape. They had won $450,000 in grants to be used for the library, thanks to Councilwoman Letitia James and the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz. A parent who is an architect, Ilya Azaroff, and another who is an interior designer, Kiki Dennis, prepared renovation plans. A freelance copy editor, Maria McGrath, spent months figuring out which books to save and which should be discarded because they were out of date. Last fall, the library finally opened. A few months later, the department unveiled its building usage plan: The new P.S. 9 library would be available to the charter school for 6 hours 45 minutes a week; P.S. 9 would get its library for 4 hours 30 minutes. If ever there were a metaphor for the balance of power between district public schools and charters under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, it is the charter’s extra 2 hours 15 minutes of library time. A chain like Uncommon Schools, which operates 22 charters, has a big advantage. When it applies to expand, it does not have to limit itself to a school zone or a particular building. It has far more money and staff members for developing new schools than does a district principal. Besides the $13,527 per student in public money the charter receives, Uncommon Schools also receives millions of dollars in corporate donations from, among others, the Broad, Walton and Jack Kent Cooke foundations. According to its most recent tax filing, from 2008, the charter chain has five executives making between $162,427 and $191,109 and another five between $106,833 and $132,844. The P.S. 9 principal has parent volunteers. District schools are so outgunned that Advocates for Children, a nonprofit organization, has posted a do-it-yourself kit on its Web site for parents fighting a co-location battle. When the Uncommon Schools principals go to public meetings, they speak passionately about their schools and bring along buses full of children and parents dressed in charter school T-shirts. District principals would not dare. They are scared to death that there will be repercussions if they challenge the department. The P.S. 9 principal would not even come to the phone to say, “No comment.” “She’s afraid of what they’d do to her,” said Ivana Espinet, a parent. A department spokesman said there was no favoritism, that the charter was chosen because of Uncommon’s excellent middle-school test scores and ratings. It is true about the test scores and ratings. The chain’s three middle schools that have been operating long enough to have ratings get all A’s on the department report cards. One of those schools, Williamsburg Collegiate, ranks in the 99th percentile among city middle schools. Two Uncommon elementary schools have been operating long enough to have ratings. Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant got a C and an A on its last two report cards; Leadership Preparatory School got a B the year it was rated. P.S. 9 got a C and an A the last two years. Comparing a district school with a charter can be apples and oranges. Charters have more freedom to push out troublesome students. In 2008, Kings Collegiate suspended 46 percent of its students. In 2008, the Kings fifth grades had 81 students; when those children moved up in 2009, there were 55 sixth graders. A spokeswoman for Uncommon Schools said that only a small part of the reduction was due to attrition; most can be explained by students’ being held back for lack of academic skills. In 2008, P.S. 9 suspended 1 percent of its students. In 2008, P.S. 9 had 76 third graders; the next year, it had 76 fourth graders. P.S. 9 has more children who are poor or foreign-born or have special educational needs than the two Uncommon elementary charters. For a month, P.S. 9’s parents prepared to present their case to the Panel for Educational Policy. The mayor appoints a majority of the panel, and it functions as his rubber stamp. “We actually believed we could win,” said Faye Rimalovski, a parent. They did not. The parents thought that was it. But three weeks later, Ms. LaBrie, the lawyer, found the do-it-yourself co-location kit and realized they could appeal. The deadline was 10 days away. Ms. LaBrie knew nothing about education law; she is an immigration lawyer. But by using the kit and getting help from other parents, she wrote a brief. It was due March 5, a Saturday. The parents filed the following Monday. Three city lawyers prepared a response brief. The charter was represented by Carrie E. Flynn, an education specialist for Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, a firm of 75 lawyers. Ms. Flynn argued that the parents’ brief should be thrown out because it was late. The state education commissioner, David M. Steiner, rejected her argument, saying that if a deadline fell on Saturday, Monday was fine. On March 31, the commissioner ruled that the city’s shared-space plan was inequitable. P.S. 9 won. Ms. Rimalovski, who had worked in corporate public relations, put out the word, and the news spread across the city. The victory may be short-lived. The commissioner directed the mayor’s three lawyers to make revisions and file a new plan. If accepted, the charter will move in. Last week, the city posted a revised proposal for the shared space. P.S. 9 would get almost four full days of library time. The charter is reduced to 4 hours 30 minutes. M.S. 571 is also involved. Though it is being closed, the phase-out will take three years. The middle school will shrink each year as its students go on to city high schools. Under the old plan, M.S. 571 got two full days in the library; under the new plan, it gets five hours a week. The children of M.S. 571 — who are the poorest, with the lowest test scores, and do not have three city lawyers, 10 executives making over $100,000 or even one volunteer immigration lawyer — lost the most time.

Charter Schools
Uncommon Schools
Advocates for Children
Education (K-12)
Prospect Heights (NYC)
Education Department (NYC)


Rewriting the War, Japanese Right Attacks a Newspaper

Abstract: SAPPORO, Japan — Takashi Uemura was 33 when he wrote the article that would make his career. Then an investigative reporter for The Asahi Shimbun, Japan ’s second-largest newspaper, he examined whether the Imperial Army had forced women to work in military brothels during World War II. His report, under the headline “Remembering Still Brings Tears,” was one of the first to tell the story of a former “comfort woman” from Korea. Fast-forward a quarter century, and that article has made Mr. Uemura, now 56 and retired from journalism, a target of Japan’s political right. Tabloids brand him a traitor for disseminating “Korean lies” that they say were part of a smear campaign aimed at settling old scores with Japan. Threats of violence, Mr. Uemura says, have cost him one university teaching job and could soon rob him of a second. Ultranationalists have even gone after his children, posting Internet messages urging people to drive his teenage daughter to suicide. The threats are part of a broad, vitriolic assault by the right-wing news media and politicians here on The Asahi, which has long been the newspaper that Japanese conservatives love to hate. The battle is also the most recent salvo in a long-raging dispute over Japan’s culpability for its wartime behavior that has flared under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s right-leaning government. This latest campaign, however, has gone beyond anything postwar Japan has seen before, with nationalist politicians, including Mr. Abe himself, unleashing a torrent of abuse that has cowed one of the last strongholds of progressive political influence in Japan. It has also emboldened revisionists calling for a reconsideration of the government’s 1993 apology for the wartime coercion of women into prostitution. “They are using intimidation as a way to deny history,” said Mr. Uemura, who spoke with a pleading urgency and came to an interview in this northern city with stacks of papers to defend himself. “They want to bully us into silence.” “The War on The Asahi,” as commentators have called it, began in August when the newspaper bowed to public criticism and retracted at least a dozen articles published in the 1980s and early ’90s. Those articles cited a former soldier, Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have helped abduct Korean women for the military brothels. Mr. Yoshida was discredited two decades ago, but the Japanese right pounced on The Asahi’s gesture and called for a boycott to drive the 135-year-old newspaper out of business. Speaking to a parliamentary committee in October, Mr. Abe said The Asahi’s “mistaken reporting had caused many people injury, sorrow, pain and anger. It wounded Japan’s image.” With elections this month, analysts say conservatives are trying to hobble the nation’s leading left-of-center newspaper. The Asahi has long supported greater atonement for Japan’s wartime militarism and has opposed Mr. Abe on other issues. But it is increasingly isolated as the nation’s liberal opposition remains in disarray after a crushing defeat at the polls two years ago. Mr. Abe and his political allies have also seized on The Asahi’s woes as a long-awaited chance to go after bigger game: the now internationally accepted view that the Japanese military coerced tens of thousands of Korean and other foreign women into sexual slavery during the war. Most mainstream historians agree that the Imperial Army treated women in conquered territories as spoils of battle, rounding them up to work in a system of military-run brothels known as comfort stations that stretched from China to the South Pacific. Many were deceived with offers of jobs in factories and hospitals and then forced to provide sex for imperial soldiers in the comfort stations. In Southeast Asia, there is evidence that Japanese soldiers simply kidnapped women to work in the brothels. Among the women who have come forward to say they were forced to have sex with soldiers are Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos, as well as Dutch women captured in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony. There is little evidence that the Japanese military abducted or was directly involved in entrapping women in Korea, which had been a Japanese colony for decades when the war began, although the women and activists who support them say the women were often deceived and forced to work against their will. The revisionists, however, have seized on the lack of evidence of abductions to deny that any women were held captive in sexual slavery and to argue that the comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes out to make good money. For scholars of the comfort women issue, the surprise was not The Asahi’s conclusion that Mr. Yoshida had lied — the newspaper acknowledged in 1997 that it could not verify his account — but that it waited so long to issue a formal retraction. Employees at The Asahi said it finally acted because members of the Abe government had been using the articles to criticize its reporters, and it hoped to blunt the attacks by setting the record straight. Instead, the move prompted a storm of denunciations and gave the revisionists a new opening to promote their version of history. They are also pressing a claim that has left foreign experts scratching their heads in disbelief: that The Asahi alone is to blame for persuading the world that the comfort women were victims of coercion. Though dozens of women have come forward with testimony about their ordeals, the Japanese right contends it was The Asahi’s reporting that resulted in international condemnation of Japan, including a 2007 resolution by the United States House of Representatives calling on Japan to apologize for “one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century.” For conservatives, humbling The Asahi is also a way to advance their long-held agenda of erasing portrayals of Imperial Japan that they consider too negative and eventually overturning the 1993 apology to comfort women, analysts say. Many on the right have argued that Japan’s behavior was no worse than that of other World War II combatants, including the United States’ bombing of Japanese civilians. “The Asahi’s admission is a chance for the revisionist right to say: ‘See! We told you so!’ ” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. “Abe sees this as his chance to go after a historical issue that he believes has hurt Japan’s national honor.” The Asahi’s conservative competitor, The Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s highest-circulation newspaper, has capitalized on its rival’s troubles by distributing leaflets that highlight The Asahi’s mistakes in reporting on comfort women. Since August, The Asahi’s daily circulation has dropped by 230,797 to about seven million, according to the Japan Audit Bureau of Circulations. Right-wing tabloids have gone further, singling out Mr. Uemura as a “fabricator of the comfort women” even though his article was not among those that The Asahi retracted. Mr. Uemura said The Asahi had been too fearful to defend him, or even itself. In September, the newspaper’s top executives apologized on television and fired the chief editor. “Abe is using The Asahi’s problems to intimidate other media into self-censorship,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist who helped organize a petition to support Mr. Uemura. “This is a new form of McCarthyism.” Hokusei Gakuen University, a small Christian college where Mr. Uemura lectures on local culture and history, said it was reviewing his contract because of bomb threats by ultranationalists. On a recent afternoon, some of Mr. Uemura’s supporters gathered to hear a sermon warning against repeating the mistakes of the dark years before the war, when the nation trampled dissent. Mr. Uemura did not attend, explaining that he was now reluctant to appear in public. “This is the right’s way of threatening other journalists into silence,” he said. “They don’t want to suffer the same fate that I have.”

Japan
Asahi Shimbun
World War II
Shinzo Abe
Prostitution
Human trafficking
Freedom of the press
Women and Girls


Kerry Rejects Delaying South Korea Exercise

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Secretary of State John Kerry rebuffed North Korea’s demand that the United States and South Korea briefly delay a joint military exercise this month so that it does not coincide with the scheduled reunion of families separated by the Korean War. If held, the reunions would signal a significant thaw between the two Koreas. North Korea argues that exercises raise tensions, while American and South Korean officials view Pyongyang’s latest demand as part of its longstanding effort to undermine the United States’ military commitment to South Korea. Mr. Kerry’s comments came during the first stop of a multination trip to Asia meant in part to solidify efforts for dealing with North Korea and its increasingly sophisticated nuclear weapons programs. His arrival in South Korea came on the heels of a White House announcement on Wednesday that President Obama will visit South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines in April, part of the administration’s continuing efforts to direct more of its attention to Asia as China rises. The joint military drills with South Korea are supposed to begin on Feb. 24. In a news conference with his South Korean counterpart, Mr. Kerry said that it was not “appropriate” to link humanitarian issues with North Korea’s security demands. “The family reunification is a matter of human rights,” Mr. Kerry said. “There is no legitimate excuse for linking the two.” Yun Byung-se, South Korea’s foreign minister, also rejected the North’s demand. “On that, South Korea and the United States have no difference at all,” he said. There was no immediate response from North Korea, and it was unclear whether the family reunions, scheduled for Feb. 20-25, would still take place. North and South Korea were to begin a second round of high-level talks on Friday to discuss the issue. Robert Carlin, a former State Department official, asserted in the online publication 38 North that the fact that North Korean officials had proposed that the exercises be delayed a couple of days, and not canceled, was a sign that Pyongyang had been interested in exploring “various compromises” on the issue. Mr. Obama’s visit to the region will take place amid increased tensions between South Korea and Japan that experts say have hampered efforts by the United States to forge a united front with its Asian allies against North Korea and in its diplomacy toward China. Mr. Obama had deferred plans to visit Malaysia and the Philippines in October because of the United States government shutdown. Now that the trip has been rescheduled, visits to Tokyo and Seoul have been added to the itinerary. At the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Kerry, who also met with President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, urged the South and Japan to “put history behind them” and heal their rift. Mr. Yun, however, blamed Japan for the problems. “Some Japanese political leaders have made a lot of historically incorrect remarks,” said Mr. Yun, whose country was colonized by Japan in the 20th century. “And so these leaders must look at history as it is, and they must be very sincere.” Relations between Japan and South Korea have been sour for months, but they were aggravated recently by the visit of the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to a shrine that commemorates the more than two million Japanese war dead, including convicted war criminals. Many in South Korea view such visits as proof that Japan has not fully owned up to its imperial past. American officials witnessed how rapidly the already tense relations between Japan and South Korea deteriorated under Mr. Abe and Ms. Park when Chuck Hagel, the United States defense secretary, visited Seoul in September. When Mr. Hagel appealed to Ms. Park to improve relations with Japan, she denounced Mr. Abe’s “total absence of sincerity” and urged the defense secretary to use his “influence so that Japan will make the effort necessary to earn the trust of its neighboring countries.” At the time, some American officials expressed frustration with South Korea, but Ms. Park has continued to refuse to hold a summit meeting with Mr. Abe. Mr. Abe’s visit to the war shrine also drew American disapproval. On Friday, Mr. Kerry is scheduled to fly to Beijing to seek China’s help in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. Mr. Yun said that North Korea had recently been sending “mixed signals,” on one hand calling for dialogue, and on the other continuing to work to expand its nuclear and missile programs. In addition to discussing North Korea in Beijing, Mr. Kerry plans to address climate change and China’s claims to maritime territories long claimed by other countries in the region. China’s increasingly assertive moves to establish its claims have raised tensions in East and Southeast Asia. On Saturday, Mr. Kerry is to head to Indonesia, where he will deliver a speech on climate change.

South Korea
Seoul
John Kerry
North Korea
Military
Park Geun-hye
US Foreign Policy


Rewriting the Law on Automated Cellphone Calls

Abstract: ALMOST everyone with a landline has felt the annoyance of picking up the phone and realizing that a call is not from a friend or a family member but rather is a prerecorded message delivered by a software-robot. Currently, cellphone users are protected from these “robocalls” if they haven’t consented to receive them, but some industry groups are pushing for a clearer path to making those calls. Since 1991, federal law has protected cellphones from the reach of two kinds of automated calling equipment. One blasts out prerecorded messages to thousands of numbers simultaneously. The other dials many numbers in quick succession, and, if a human answers, signals a customer service representative to come on the line (a telltale moment of dead air signals one of these calls). Telemarketers cannot make prerecorded calls to either residential landlines or cellphones, unless the recipient has provided express consent or has a business relationship with the caller. For commercial calls that do not involve an explicit sales pitch, the law extends special protection to cellphones: automated equipment cannot be used unless the recipient has provided consent. “Consent” is not hard to secure. Current law assumes that it is given by the act of providing one’s phone number, even if it was just for a one-time home delivery or was mentioned in reply to a clerk’s spoken question. This allows automated cellphone calls that may not be especially welcome, like a “customer satisfaction” survey administered entirely by robo-software, or robo-messages about an overdue payment. The Federal Communications Commission has been working on a draft of a stricter rule defining consent. Businesses might be required to secure the customer’s consent in writing or from a box clicked online if automatic calling equipment will be used to call the customer’s cellphone in the future. The American Bankers Association, the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals and other trade groups want to prevent the F.C.C. from strengthening the consent requirement. They are backing a bill in the House, H.R. 3035, that they say would clarify issues of consent surrounding automated calls. The lobbyists try to argue that the protections extended to cellphones in 1991 were necessary only because the per-minute cost of receiving calls was high. Those costs have fallen greatly since then — so, they argue, there is no need to continue to treat cellphones differently. It’s not quite that simple, however. For someone with a flat-rate wireless plan, receiving an unwanted robocall does not incur a cost measured by the minute. But as more consumers use their phones less for actual calls and opt for prepaid plans, there’s a visible cost for every minute of use. Separately, there is the harder-to-calculate cost of having one’s personal space invaded by a robocaller that one never wished to summon. The bill is opposed by the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform, Consumer Watchdog, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and other consumer advocates. Currently if consumers would like to receive robocalls on their cellphones, they can give their consent, without need of a new law. Brad Herrmann, president of Call-Em-All , a company in Frisco, Tex., near Dallas, said: “I’ve seen other companies in the industry say, ‘We currently can’t send informational calls to cellphones.’ I disagree — we do it every day. The current law is clear.” Call-Em-All provides automated voice and text messages; schools are among its primary clients. The company is able to notify all parents of a snow day, for example, to whatever number they give to the school. This sort of service is not what comes to mind, however, when Mr. Herrmann tells people that he’s in the “automated calls” business. “They think two things: telemarketing or political calls,” he says. CHURCHES, P.T.A.’s, sports leagues, clubs and associations also use Call-Em-All. Mr. Herrmann says his company, founded in 2005, makes six million automated calls a month. A robocall to a cellphone about a scheduled softball game that has just been rained out is welcome. A robocall to the same cellphone from a debt collector may not be. One sees why some businesses would like to keep the bar defining consent as low as possible. If they mishandle consent, they could face costly legal exposure. Sallie Mae, the giant lender to college students, faced a class-action lawsuit last year brought by plaintiffs who claimed that from 2005 to 2010 they had received robocalls to their cellphone numbers without prior express consent. The lender has offered to settle for $19.5 million; the court has not made a final ruling. (A Sallie Mae spokeswoman, Patricia Nash Christel, said, “We have denied vigorously all claims asserted against us and cannot comment further on pending litigation.”) Cellphones are an immeasurable convenience. But the fact that the phones go wherever we go means that unwanted calls of any kind feel far more intrusive than calls that came in to the home number (for those who remember home numbers). The banks’ last nifty idea for consumers was a monthly charge for debit cards. Their fight to block stronger protection of our cellphone numbers is just as consumer-friendly.

Telemarketing
Federal Communications Commission
Cellular Telephones
Law and Legislation


Out for Milk, Brooklyn Father Is Fatally Stabbed

Abstract: A 44-year-old married father of two who left his family’s Brooklyn apartment Saturday night to buy some milk died after being stabbed on his return home and collapsing in his father’s arms, the police said yesterday. The police did not disclose a motive, and said that the victim, Anthony J. Senisi, may have walked into a dispute that had nothing to do with him. There had been no arrests yesterday afternoon, but the police said that a man, whom they identified as Mejia Cinto, 19, was wanted for questioning in the case. Mr. Senisi’s parents said yesterday that their son, who had a son, 11, and a daughter, 16, had most recently worked as a plumber, was well liked and had lived in the neighborhood all his life. He and his family lived in an apartment in the building where his parents lived. “He was the best boy in the world,” said his father, Anthony B. Senisi, 77. “He never did wrong to anybody.” The attack occurred shortly before 11 p.m. at Brighton Sixth Street and Brighton Fourth Terrace in Brighton Beach near the family’s apartment, the police said. Mr. Senisi was stabbed once in the chest. “He came right to me and said, ‘Daddy, call the police, someone hit me,’ and he fell into my arms and I let him down,” the elder Mr. Senisi said. The younger Mr. Senisi was pronounced dead at Lutheran Medical Center shortly before midnight, the police said. “He’s a good boy,” said his mother, Eleanor Senisi. “He works and makes his money and doesn’t bother anybody. I don’t understand how this happened. I have no idea.” Mr. Senisi previously worked as a truck driver and a letter carrier for the Postal Service, his father said. A brother, Joseph, is on the New York police force. “He doesn’t deserve to die,” Mr. Senisi’s father said. “He’s a special boy. He’s an angel. I told the priest giving his last rites, ‘I give up.’ There’s no mercy. God turned against me today.”

Murders and Attempted Murders
Brooklyn (NYC)
Crime and Criminals


Decision Looms on Xayaburi Dam, Its Impact Still Unclear

Abstract: HOUAY SOUY, Laos — The Mekong River is so brown with silt as it passes this impoverished village, it could be called liquid dirt. For millions of people downstream this is the color of life: the Mekong, teeming with hundreds of species of fish and rich in minerals, has for centuries been the lifeline of villages and towns stretching from the rocky rapids of Tibet to the lazy meanderings of the river in the Vietnam delta. On Tuesday the four countries that share the lower reaches of the Mekong River will announce whether they agree to the construction of a controversial dam, a decision that could forever alter the character and natural diversity of one of the world’s longest and most bountiful rivers. The proposed dam, known as the Xayaburi for the province in Laos where it is located, is a test case for a 1995 agreement signed by Laos, Thailand , Cambodia and Vietnam to share the river’s resources — its fish, water and the minerals carried by the silt that fertilize the soils of places like the Mekong Delta. The agreement, which called for a process of consultation on actions affecting the river, was seen as a major step toward greater cooperation for countries that a few decades ago, during the Vietnam War, were often at odds. But Laos appears to be undermining the spirit of that cooperation. All four countries retained the right to build dams with or without agreement by neighboring countries. And here at the proposed site of the Xayaburi Dam, work has been under way since November. The area is teeming with trucks and hundreds of workers who have cleared an access road, built barges and set up concrete mixing facilities. China, which was not part of the cooperation agreement, has already built four dams closer to the river’s source. Yet the dam in Laos is considered by many as pivotal because it could affect fish migration patterns and kick off the construction of at least five other dams already slated for the lower reaches of the Mekong. Studies by experts on Xayaburi’s environmental impact are filled with apprehension and criticism, doubts that may be the seeds of future conflicts between countries sharing the river. Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who heads the Senate’s Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, last week criticized the dam project for what he called a failure to meet international standards. He predicted that a lack of coordination between the countries that share the Mekong would have “devastating consequences.” “The United States and the global community all have a strategic interest in averting regional conflict by preserving the health and well-being of the more than 60 million people who depend on the Mekong River,” he said in a statement. The news media in Vietnam, which normally hew to the government’s line, have been unusually critical of the project. Farmers in the Mekong Delta fear that an accumulation of dams on the river could reduce the volume of water that reaches Vietnam, exacerbating the problem of saltwater seeping into farming areas from the sea. A report published by the head office of the Mekong River Commission , the organization set up to coordinate dam projects on the river, described “fundamental gaps in knowledge” about how migratory fish would be affected by the dam. Experts hired by the commission estimated that the dam would curtail the migrations of anywhere from 23 to 100 species of fish. It described as “ineffective” a device proposed by the Thai construction company carrying out the project to allow fish to bypass the dam. And it said there was a “strong possibility” that one of the river’s most distinctive species, a giant catfish that can exceed the weights of several full-grown men, would become extinct. But perhaps most striking is the commission’s estimate that the dam’s ability to produce electricity will be severely compromised within a few decades because the dam’s reservoir will fill up with silt. (The plan calls for a generating capacity of 1,285 megawatts, enough to power a small or medium-size city; most of the electricity will be sold to Thailand under an agreement already signed between the dam’s builder and a Thai utility company.) “It is expected that under proposed operating conditions, the reservoir would effectively lose about 60 percent of its capacity due to sedimentation after 30 years,” the commission’s report says. Thus, critics say, the dam will have permanent consequences for life in the river, including possible extinction of larger species, but may only produce several decades of electricity. The Laotian government has responded to questions and criticisms about the dam with a stout defense of the project. The dam, which is situated between steep hills and will span a distance of about eight football fields, will have the same impact as a “natural waterfall,” the government said in response to the report by the Mekong River Commission. Embracing hydropower will alleviate the need for “big power plants which cause a lot of pollution,” the government said. “Hydropower project development which is a green energy shall be strongly promoted and supported,” it concluded in its response. Landlocked and sparsely populated, Laos is counting on revenues from hydropower to help lift the country out of poverty and finance government programs. The government says it plans to become “the battery” of Asia with a total of 70 hydroelectric projects, 10 of which are already in operation. The Xayaburi Dam would take seven years to build. CH. Karnchang, the Thai construction company carrying out the project, refused to allow a reporter to visit the proposed dam site. But it was possible to reach it by chartering a boat and walking several kilometers along the river bank. In villages near the dam site people seem divided about the project. The government has proposed moving people who live in villages that will be flooded by the dam’s reservoir to a spot farther upstream and says it will provide electricity, which they currently do not have. But some villagers said they were told their new dwellings would not be along the riverbank. “The government has already told us three times that we need to move out,” said Sripan Sukaew, a fisherman who lives in this village overlooking the dam site. “I’ve been fishing since I was born. This is better than working as a day laborer in Bangkok.”

Xayaburi
Laos
Mekong River
Vietnam
Thailand
Cambodia
Levees and Dams
Environment
Fish and Other Marine Life
Hydroelectric Power


Deutsche Fires 2 as Possible Inquiry Looms

Abstract: Two executives have been fired at Deutsche Bank as prosecutors consider whether to open a criminal inquiry into surveillance measures conducted against board members and a shareholder advocate. The executives fired were Wolfram Schmitt, head of investor relations, and Rafael Schenz, German security chief, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. The person was not authorized to speak on the record and declined to be named. The bank had ordered an internal review of possible violations of privacy laws in May, after several cases came to light. On Monday, the data protection agency for Hesse, the state where Deutsche Bank is based, said it had forwarded the case to state prosecutors in Frankfurt, after reviewing a preliminary report by the independent law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which had been hired by the bank to conduct the review. Doris Möeller-Scheu, a prosecutor and spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, said the office had received a “very big dossier” and would need about three weeks to decide whether a criminal investigation was warranted. Ronald Weichert, head of media relations at Deutsche, said the bank could not comment until the report on its internal investigation was finished. In May, the bank issued a statement saying that it had “learned about possible violations which occurred in past years of the bank’s internal procedures or legal requirements in connection with activities involving the bank’s corporate security department.” The dismissal of Mr. Schmitt stems from the case of Michael Bohndorf, a shareholder with a history of litigation against the bank who was known to ask critical questions at its shareholder meetings. After a shareholder’s meeting in 2006, Deutsche Bank hired private investigators to spy on Mr. Bohndorf, posing as vacationers to rent his house in Ibiza and trying to establish a link between him and Leo Kirch, a media tycoon who had waged a legal battle against the bank accusing it of provoking the collapse of some of his companies. Around that same time, private investigators tested the security measures that Deutsche’s chief operating officer, Hermann-Josef Lamberti, took to protect himself from being tracked and bugged. Detectives tried to plant a GPS device on his car and to smuggle an inactive listening device into his house with a flower delivery.

Deutsche Bank AG
Crime and Criminals
Detectives (Private)


Red Bull Picks Driver

Abstract: Daniel Ricciardo will replace Mark Webber at Formula One world champions Red Bull next year, the team announced. He will team with Sebastian Vettel.


California Rugby Team’s Demotion Is a Blow to the Sport in the U.S.

Abstract: When the United States team arrives in New Zealand for rugby’s World Cup next September, it is likely that several of its members will be past or present players from the University of California, Berkeley . The highly successful California Golden Bears rugby squad has been in existence for 128 years, and since 1980 it has won 25 national titles, 21 under its current coach, Jack Clark . During that time, dozens of Cal players have gone on to play for their country, and a handful have proved good enough to play professionally in Britain, elsewhere in Europe and in Japan. But that rich history was not enough to spare Cal rugby from being downgraded to a varsity club sport , a newly created status that recognizes its achievements but places it below the intercollegiate level and makes it no longer eligible for university financing. Although not much may change for Cal rugby on a daily basis — it still will play its familiar opponents, have the same coach and, it hopes, once again be a favorite for the national title — the move came as a blow to those who have fought for years to raise the sport’s profile in the United States. “It’s the oldest sport on campus,” said Mike MacDonald, who played at Cal from 2000-4, winning four national titles. He has made 60 appearances with the United States team and now plays for Leeds Carnegie in the English Premier League. “The amount of history and the amount of respect that it gains from that alone, not to mention the type of person that it produces, that coupled with the amount of support we have had from alumni in the past, it was very shocking.” The decision to designate rugby as a varsity club sport was one of the sweeping changes to the athletic department announced in September by the university’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau. The university will cut five sports from its current lineup of 29, saving an estimated $4 million a year and keeping it in compliance with Title IX , the federal law that requires schools and colleges receiving federal money to provide the same opportunities for women as they do for men. Aside from rugby’s reclassification, men’s baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, and women’s lacrosse will be cut from the intercollegiate program at the end of this academic year. The decision was met with outrage by supporters and students of these programs, but the university said it had to do so to deal with a state budget crisis. The move had to be made in the face of “unprecedented financial challenges” that had resulted in hundreds of layoffs and a reduction in classes across the campus, said Dan Mogulof, the university’s executive director for public affairs. “The chancellor just felt it was unsustainable to continue to provide athletics with an excess of $10 million a year in order to meet its expenses.” Mogulof added: “The chancellor determined that by 2014 the university could not provide more than $5 million a year to support the athletics operating cost, and we had to come up with a package that would not only meet the financial targets that he set but would also leave us in full compliance with federal Title IX legislation.” Clark, the coach, who also played for the Bears and the national team, argues that rugby has been one of the more financially sound programs because of its supporters and alumni fund-raising, and endowments, something Mogulof disputes. Clark said he thought rugby was being downgraded because of Title IX. “We’re a team of 60 young males in the program, so that head count hurt us,” he said. “I knew that once we cut a women’s sport we were going to be in trouble, and I was just hoping that we didn’t cut a women’s sport. “But Title IX is not meant to be a calculus where men’s teams get eliminated to improve ratios. My view of Title IX was to increase women’s opportunities, and that’s not what we are doing here.” Clark concedes that apart from an administrative change — he will soon report to the vice chancellor for administration, instead of the athletic director — and the requirement that rugby be financially self-supporting by 2014, little will change in terms of the competitions the Bears will be involved in, the facilities they will use and the services available, although they will have to pay for some of those services once they lose intercollegiate status. But Clark is adamant that that is not why rugby supporters are fighting to retain the team’s status. “This is not about winning shiny goblets,” he said. “Intercollegiate status to us is not about just winning; it’s about the validation that comes with being an intercollegiate sport. We’re fighting for that credibility. We’re fighting for that validation. I don’t imagine there will be much difference in the brand or standard of our rugby.” Collegiate rugby in the United States is not governed by the N.C.A.A. , but by individual universities and by USA Rugby , the sport’s national governing body, along with local rugby unions. Teams do not compete in the traditional sports conferences. Clark and his players are dealing with all the uncertainty just as a new nationwide college rugby competition will be introduced this spring. The competition, a partnership of USA Rugby and the 31 teams involved, will be divided into four conferences, with matches in April and May. The top two teams from each conference will qualify for national playoffs in May. Todd Bell, the USA Rugby director of college rugby, said the new competition was an important step for the growth of the sport in the United States. “For the first time we have teams from all over the country competing in a single season toward the playoffs,” Bell said. “We see that as an opportunity to compete intercollegiately at a national level and hopefully build the recognition of rugby as a sport through some of the more recognizable college names in the country like Cal, Texas A&M and Notre Dame, while at the same time providing a high-level competitive opportunity for other great programs like Life and St. Mary’s and Central Washington. “While it may never become an N.C.A.A. championship sport, we would like to see it become the most recognizable non-N.C.A.A. sport that competes collegiately in this country.” But Clark sees no reason rugby cannot become an N.C.A.A. sport. “I’d be happy to have as much American athletic validation as possible, but it’s important that we’re strategic,” he said. “It’s not pie in the sky, N.C.A.A. or bust. That would be irresponsible of us as rugby stakeholders in America. But it’s important that we charter a course for N.C.A.A. inclusion.” He said that while the new national competition was a step in the right direction for rugby in the United States, playing in the established conferences, like the Big Ten, the Pacific-10 and the Southeastern Conference, would be the best path to becoming part of the N.C.A.A. “If the goal is solely to be sanctioned as one of those N.C.A.A. sports, the premier league might be helpful in a way,” Clark said, “but it probably wouldn’t be the purest way there.”

Rugby (Game)
College Athletics
University of California Berkeley
Athletics and Sports
National Collegiate Athletic Assn
Clark Jack


A Lesson of Genealogy: Looks Can Be Deceiving

Abstract: I am not a big fan of reality TV, but I will confess that I am a loyal viewer of the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” series. The show chronicles the adventures of the crews of several crabbing boats of the Alaskan fleet as they pursue red king crabs on the Bering Sea. What fascinates me, and I suspect other viewers, is the vicarious experience of watching the crews working for long stretches in unimaginable conditions. I know that this landlubber would not last an hour on any boat as it heaved in 30-foot seas, let alone while hauling 800-pound crab pots on an ice-covered deck, in 60-mile-an-hour winds, for 20 to 30 hours straight. That’s definitely not for me. My crab-catching is limited to plucking hermit crabs the size of golf balls off the sands of some quiet Florida beach in 80-degree weather. One might think that not only is there no comparison between my beachcombing and the dangerous business of Alaska crab fishing, but that the two kinds of crabs involved have very little in common. The typically diminutive hermit crabs have to contort their bodies into abandoned snail shells, while the four- to nine-pound red king crabs , the largest of the more than 100 species of king crabs, freely prowl the ocean bottom in search of worms, clams, mussels, starfish and other prey. Looking at those monsters of the deep, safely steamed on your plate at Red Lobster, one might think that such tasty beauties would be more closely related to other crabs on the menu, like stone crabs, than to the largely inedible hermit crabs. But think again. DNA evidence links king crabs to hermit crabs more closely than to any other crabs. In fact, it is now very clear that the majestic king crabs evolved from a hermit crab ancestor. The genetic link between the two crabs was first detected by Professor Cliff Cunningham, now at Duke University, and colleagues almost two decades ago. In a new article to appear in the journal Systematic Biology, Professor K. H. Chu and colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan Ocean University and the Australian Museum in Sydney, have strengthened that genetic link and shown that hermit crab ancestors also gave rise to so-called squat lobsters, free-living crabs with a lobsterlike form that are not directly related to lobsters. The surprising stories of king crab and squat lobster evolution from hermit crab ancestors are examples of a frequent lesson in the era of DNA-based genealogy — looks can be deceiving. Very dissimilar forms can evolve from a given type of ancestor, and similar-appearing forms can evolve entirely independently from unrelated ancestors. As different as the hermit and king crab body forms appear at first glance, when one looks more closely at some details of their anatomy and behavior, some features can be seen that reflect their relatedness and help us to imagine how a small, contorted shell-toting hermit evolved to be king. For example, many hermit crabs have a soft, asymmetrical coiled hindbody that allows them to fit into the right-handed twisted shells of their mobile homes. In the evolution of the king crab, this hindbody has become shortened and folded flat under the front part of the body. Nevertheless, traces of this asymmetry can be seen in the king crab hindbody. Furthermore, asymmetric hermit crabs usually have a larger right claw, as do king crabs. We can also better picture how a shell-toting hermit ancestor eventually gave rise to large free-living king crab by considering the lifestyle of the coconut crab. This species can reach up to 9 pounds and is the largest land-dwelling arthropod. In fact, it is a member of the hermit crab superfamily. While the adult crabs are free-living and hard-bodied, juvenile coconut crabs have a soft hindbody and live within the snail shells. The two life stages of this one species demonstrate that the shift from shell-toting hermit to large king would not be as complicated as it might first appear. Another well-established example of deceptive looks in the animal kingdom involves the rock hyrax, elephant and manatee. Glancing at the modern forms of these mammals, one would hardly suspect that they are very closely related. The hyrax, weighing 8 to 10 pounds and resembling a guinea pig, lives among rock crevices in Africa and parts of the Middle East. It hardly seems possible that is could be close kin to the 10,000-pound, trunk-swinging African elephant or the aquatic manatee. But again, DNA evidence makes it crystal clear that these species, which belong to three different orders, all belong to one larger group known as the Paenungulata that arose from a common ancestor that lived in Africa roughly 60 million years ago. Each group — the hyraxes, the sirenians (manatees and dugongs) and the elephants, is the other groups’ closest living relatives. Those close relationships are also reflected in specific features of the animals’ anatomies and behavior. For example, if one looked closely at males for their testicles (not that I recommend doing so, particularly for elephants), one would not find them. The testes are inside the abdomen in each group. The animals also share common details in their tongues, hooves and some skeletal features. In addition, all have very long gestation periods; the hyrax’s is seven to eight months, which is exceptional for a relatively small mammal. While the evolutionary relationships here are surprising, it should be no surprise that the first naturalist to appreciate how looks could trick us was Charles Darwin. One stroke of his genius in “On the Origin of Species” was to begin the book with a discussion of domesticated animals, like the pigeons he had bred for many years. Darwin noted the great disparities among the English carrier, short-faced tumbler, pouter, fantail and other breeds. He suggested that these many birds, “if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told they were wild birds, would certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species.” Yet, Darwin pointed out, they were all descended from the rock pigeon. This observation then laid the foundation for Darwin’s explanations of the connections between the great diversity of forms on the planet — connections that continue to surprise us 150 years later as biologists now mine the DNA record of life.

Crabs
Evolution
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
Science and Technology