N.H.L. Reaches Lucrative Telecast Deal in Canada

Abstract: In an agreement that will more than double its Canadian television revenue, the N.H.L. announced a 12-year, $4.9 billion deal Tuesday that gives Rogers Communications the exclusive rights to all national hockey telecasts in Canada beginning next season. Under the agreement, Rogers will telecast games nationally on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights. On a typical Saturday in the regular season, games will be shown on a dozen or more Rogers-controlled channels, including the cable network Sportsnet and the company’s Internet portal. Games will also be shown on CBC and the French-language network TVA through a licensing arrangement with Rogers. The value far surpasses the league’s expiring six-year agreements with CBC, the cable network TSN and the French-language cable network RDS, which total about $160 million per year. The money will be shared equally among the N.H.L.’s 30 clubs, 23 of which are based in the United States. Struggling American clubs like the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Florida Panthers will especially benefit from the influx of new Canadian revenue. The N.H.L. also has a 10-year, $1.9 billion deal with NBC for television rights in the United States, made in 2011. At a news conference in Toronto, Commissioner Gary Bettman called the agreement “historic and forward-looking.” N.H.L. revenue was already rebounding strongly from the lockout that wiped out the first half of the 2012-13 season, and the total could approach $4 billion this season. The league’s board of governors is expected to approve the deal (valued at more than 5.2 billion dollars Canadian) at its December meeting. “Sports content is a key strategic asset, and we’ve been investing significantly to strengthen our sports offering to Canadians,” said Nadir Mohamed, the chief executive of Rogers, who is retiring next month. Rogers’s effort to obtain the league’s Canadian rights continues the trend among media giants to buy the rights to sports properties for long terms and billions of dollars. The deals guarantee cash flow for professional leagues and college conferences and help the cable networks retain viewers and justify increases in subscriber fees. ESPN has a bulging portfolio of such deals, including an eight-year, $15.2 billion contract to show “Monday Night Football” and a $7.3 billion agreement to televise the new college football playoff system for 12 years. CBS and Turner share a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract to show the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. Rogers’s toppling of the old guard in televised Canadian hockey is reminiscent of the Fox Network’s audacious move to acquire its first N.F.L. contract in 1993. Fox agreed to spend $395 million annually, for four years, and displaced the incumbent, CBS, whose bid was about $100 million a year less. Soon after, some of CBS’s key football announcers, including Pat Summerall and John Madden, and some of its producers and directors moved to Fox. A similar exodus of talent is likely at the Canadian networks, with TSN no longer televising N.H.L. games and CBC’s role greatly reduced. “Hockey Night in Canada” telecasts on Saturday, begun in 1952, will remain on CBC, but through a licensing arrangement. Rogers will assume editorial control of the telecasts, including decisions on whether to retain Don Cherry, Ron MacLean and the other on-air personalities associated with the show. CBC will pay nothing to Rogers for rights to the Saturday night games but will receive no advertising revenue from the telecasts. As a public, taxpayer-supported entity, CBC has been criticized for spending large amounts for N.H.L. rights. “This may not be the ideal scenario, but it is the right outcome for Canadian hockey fans and is an acceptable adaptation to the role of the public broadcaster in the modern world of professional sports rights,” Hubert Lacroix, the chief executive of CBC/Radio Canada, said Tuesday in a memo to employees. Hardest hit by the deal is TSN, a sports cable channel owned by Bell Canada. Bell and Rogers combined to pay $1 billion two years ago to take control of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs of the N.H.L. and the Raptors of the N.B.A., leading to a perception the two companies would eventually share television rights. Once they are largely stripped of hockey, TSN and its French-language sister network, RDS, are likely to lose their status as essential sports channels for Canadians.

Canada
Rogers Communications
CBS
Gary Bettman
Ice hockey
TV
NHL
France


Klinsmann Invites 24 to U.S. Team’s Camp in Germany

Abstract: Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach of the United States men’s national soccer team, on Thursday released the 24-man roster that he will take to training camp in Frankfurt. The players are expected to report Sunday. The team will be preparing for an international friendly on March 5 against Ukraine. That game was moved this week from Kharkiv to the neutral site of Larnaca, Cyprus, because of the political unrest in Ukraine. The roster is dominated by players based in Europe who will be available on the only official FIFA international date before the start of the World Cup in June. Only three players — Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey and Edgar Castillo — play for teams in North America. In addition, Julian Green, a promising, 18-year-old striker for Bayern Munich, will participate only in the training camp. Green, who has an American father and a German mother, has yet to decide whom he will play for on the senior international level. “Having this Ukraine game is a huge opportunity, mainly for our European-based players,” Klinsmann said on USsoccer.com . “You want to give them a chance to show where they are at and what’s going on in their specific situation. It’s great to call in players like Oguchi Onyewu, Will Packwood — his first time to come in — Tim Ream, who is playing consistently well at Bolton; Danny Williams, who has now kind of made his way through at Reading and playing week in, week out; and Juan Agudelo, who is now in Holland.” It would be the first national team appearance for Packwood, a defender at Birmingham City, and Southampton goalkeeper Cody Cropper if they made the team for the Ukraine game and earned minutes in the match. For Ream, formerly a defender for the Red Bulls and now a regular starter at Bolton, it will be his first call-up since a 4-3 win against Bosnia-Herzegovina in August. Brek Shea is back with the team for the first time since helping the United States win the 2013 Concacaf Gold Cup title. And midfielder Jermaine Jones will be with the United States for the first time since his move from Schalke to Besiktas in Turkey. Up front, the hot foot belongs to Aron Johannsson, who has scored 22 goals in all competitions this season for AZ in the Netherlands. His former teammate Jozy Altidore, conversely, has struggled since his move to Sunderland, scoring only two goals in all competitions this season. Also re-emerging in the mix is Agudelo, who recently completed a transfer from Major League Soccer to Utrecht of the Netherlands. “We want to see them perform on the field, but also over four days, we have time to sit down with them for a cup of coffee and discuss their individual situations,” Klinsmann said. “We just want the players to understand that every week really counts, every week matters. We want them to pick it up with their club teams. Some players like John Brooks — he sits on the bench right now. Because of injuries he lost his starting spot, and has to fight his way back into the team. “So, the message to all the players is get a starting spot with your club team, to play week in, week out. Add to your schedule, on top of your club’s training, maybe one or two sessions a week on your own in order to get yourself a jump start when we go into World Cup preparation camp, because it’s going to be very demanding. The message also is that we are on top of them in terms of scouting them, watching them, knowing exactly what’s going on. We talk to their club coaches. It’s a lot of monitoring work that goes on now over the next two and a half months until we start preparation camp for the World Cup.” The roster: Goalkeepers Cody Cropper (Southampton/England), Brad Guzan (Aston Villa/England), Tim Howard (Everton/England) Defenders John Brooks (Hertha Berlin/Germany), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City/England), Edgar Castillo (Tijuana), Alfredo Morales (Ingolstadt/Germany), Oguchi Onyewu (Sheffield Wednesday/England), Will Packwood (Birmingham City/England), Tim Ream (Bolton Wanderers/England) Midfielders Alejandro Bedoya (Nantes/France), Michael Bradley (Toronto/M.L.S.), Mix Diskerud (Rosenborg/Norway), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim/Germany), Jermaine Jones (Besiktas/Turkey), Sacha Kljestan (Anderlecht/Belgium), Brek Shea (Barnsley/England), Danny Williams (Reading/England) Forwards Juan Agudelo (Utrecht/Netherlands), Jozy Altidore (Sunderland/England), Terrence Boyd (Rapid Vienna/Austria), Clint Dempsey (Seattle/M.L.S.), Julian Green (Bayern Munich/Germany), Aron Johannsson (AZ/Netherlands)

Jurgen Klinsmann
Soccer
US Men's Soccer Team
2014 World Cup


A Con Ed Map Tracks the City’s Power Failures

Abstract: When lights and air-conditioners went out in Yorkville and Bensonhurst during this week’s heat wave and thunderstorms, Consolidated Edison customers were able to track the utility’s efforts to restore power in real time online. That is, if they still had power (or a battery-powered laptop or other device). In any case, those who could go to the site found a map that Con Edison started on May 30 to show which neighborhoods and how many customers lost power, the cause of the power failure, and the estimated time until power would be restored. The data, updated every 30 minutes, is based on information called in by customers, emergency workers and Con Edison employees, among others. An algorithm that the company developed extrapolates from these complaints how many customers are affected. If, say, two customers on one street call to report lights out, the algorithm might deduce that the transformer serving that street was damaged. Because the company knows how many customers are served by each transformer, it can usually determine how many customers lost power. Information about the cause of the power failure — a downed cable, for instance — and the approximate time of the repairs is provided by crews on site. Visitors to the Web site see a list of neighborhoods that Con Edison serves. Some of the names, like Beekman and Hunter, correspond to names Con Edison assigns to its substations, rather than commonly used neighborhood nicknames (both are on Manhattan’s East Side: Beekman is south of Grand Central, and Hunter is near Hunter College). The map of Con Edison’s territory has different colored icons representing the number of customers affected in different locations. Red triangles signify a failure affecting more than 5,000 customers, orange triangles mean 1,001 to 5,000 customers are without power, and so on. Since June 1, about 6,000 people have visited the site 108,000 times. Some customers reported power failures via the site as well. This week, Con Edison said that 10 percent of its reports came online, up from 2 percent when the utility’s first online reporting system was set up in January last year. As a result, the company’s call center received fewer customer complaints this week than in a typical heat wave. And if it seems counterintuitive to create a system that requires power to communicate about power failures, John F. Miksad, Con Ed’s senior vice president of electric operations, said customers who did not have power at home checked the site while at work or used battery-powered devices equipped with wireless cards. Mr. Miksad said his team debated about how much information to include on the maps and opted not to show precise street addresses to avoid tipping off criminals. “Maybe we’re paranoid New Yorkers, but we didn’t want potential burglars to say, ‘Oh, all the alarms are out, let’s go there,’ ” Mr. Miksad said. The site is easy to navigate for anyone familiar with Google Maps, but there are hurdles to getting there. From Con Ed’s welcome page, click on the “Storm Central” button, then on “Outage Location Maps.” A map of the city appears. Visitors to the site can drag and zoom in and out of the map to see other parts of the city. There is a short delay before the map updates with the colored triangles showing the failures. If the mouse hovers over a triangle, though, a snapshot of that particular power failure appears. On Wednesday around 11 a.m., there were 880 customers without power in the Bronx and 343 in Queens. By 2:30 p.m., it was 340 in the Bronx and 67 in Queens. Manny Cancel, who helped create the map and site, said Con Edison studied similar sites used by Progress Energy, which has its headquarters in Raleigh, N.C., and two other utilities in Arizona and Nevada. New Jersey residents, including the more than 250,000 who lost power in northern counties like Essex and Bergen, were unable to browse their neighbors’ misery online, because the Public Service Electric and Gas Company does not have such a map. The company said on Thursday morning that it had restored power to 248,000 customers and that 7,700 — mostly in Tenafly, Englewood, Teaneck, Nutley, Newark and Belleville — remained dark and could be that way through Friday. The PSE&G Web site urged customers to use the phone to make complaints or report a failure: 1-800-436-7734.

Computers and the Internet
Blackouts and Brownouts (Electrical)
Consolidated Edison Inc
New York City


Watchdog Sees Corruption in State Theater Institute

Abstract: ALBANY — An obscure upstate theater group that receives far more state aid than any of New York’s world-renowned cultural institutions is rife with corruption, mismanagement, nepotism and possibly illegal conduct, according to a scathing report released on Tuesday by the state inspector general’s office. The 127-page report accuses Patricia Snyder, the longtime artistic director of the group, the New York State Theater Institute , of improperly using state money to enrich herself and her family, while the institute’s board and its chairman, David W. Morris, looked the other way or claimed ignorance. The report charges that Ms. Snyder treated the group as a personal fief: routinely doling out acting roles, directing jobs, production work and other benefits to herself and her family members. Ms. Snyder steered a total of more than $700,000 in payments to her husband, her two sons, her two daughters-in-law and to herself, the report said. Ms. Snyder hired E. Stewart Jones, one of Albany’s most prominent criminal defense lawyers, to represent her in response to the investigation. “This report is mean-spirited and monumental nonsense,” Mr. Jones said. “It reflects a significant misunderstanding of the theatrical arts, and it does not give credit to Patricia for the remarkable job she’s done to make this organization recognized not just across New York, but nationally.” The institute, which is based in Troy, N.Y., was established as a state authority. The state inspector general, Joseph Fisch, referred the case to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and the state’s Commission on Public Integrity to review whether civil or criminal charges were warranted. The report described nearly $500,000 in questionable expenses and a long list of improper perks, deception and potentially fraudulent practices — from extravagant international trips for the Snyder family to a Manhattan apartment that was leased by the institute but appears to have been reserved largely for the family’s use. It also spent $38,317 on chauffeured limousines and thousands of dollars on lavish meals, many with no discernible business purpose, the report said. Ms. Snyder was also accused of arranging for the institute to buy the theatrical rights to “Miracle on 34th Street,” then quietly transferring them to herself and one of her sons. Each of them reaped $38,000 in royalties, according to the report. “This is an outrageous misappropriation of public funds,” Mr. Fisch said in a statement. “A public authority is not a family business, not a family employment agency.” Ms. Snyder, in interviews with the investigators that were included in the report, defended her actions and swept aside concerns about her hiring practices. “You are getting into very dicey waters, artistically,” Ms. Snyder told investigators. “I will tell you, the arts community will be up in arms with this line of questioning. We are talking about artists.” Mr. Fisch’s report accuses Ms. Snyder of repeatedly lying to investigators during the roughly 20-month inquiry and even of backdating reimbursements after the investigation began to make it appear that she had made the payments years earlier. The institute was also accused of attempting to thwart the investigation by not providing documents requested by the inspector general, forcing investigators to personally visit the agency to retrieve records. Ms. Snyder was also accused of an unusual pension fraud scheme. While she collected a state pension and health benefits, the report says, she devised a scheme in which the institute financed additional pension plan and health benefits through a union called the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. She did so by having herself hired as a director on some shows, then misleading the union about her compensation, according to the report. In a response attached to Mr. Fisch’s report, the institute’s board said it was unaware of state laws preventing nepotism, even though Mr. Morris, its chairman, is a lawyer who told Mr. Fisch’s investigators that he had reviewed the state Public Officers Law. Ms. Snyder continued to regularly hire family members even after state nepotism laws were toughened in 2007, the inspector general’s report said. The board was described by Mr. Fisch as being unaware of some of Ms. Snyder’s most egregious spending practices. In a statement in the report, the board said that it “has never had occasion to question the integrity or honesty of the artistic director of her family,” even though Mr. Morris was questioned at length about the group’s hiring practices for a 2006 article by The New York Times that detailed nepotism and questionable spending practices at the institute. Mr. Morris said the board was “deeply concerned” about Mr. Fisch’s report and had taken some immediate steps, including terminating the lease on the institute’s Manhattan apartment and suspending future engagements with Ms. Snyder’s family members. “We hope this report is not used as a rationale to curtail the work of the Institute in its mission to bring theater to children throughout New York State,” Mr. Morris said in a statement. The institute received $3.1 million in last year’s budget. By contrast, the state spent a total of $3.7 million on grants to 294 others theater groups across New York. The institute was created in 1974 to perform in the Albany auditorium known as the Egg, part of the Capitol complex. The organization focuses on bringing theater to children, mostly upstate. Ms. Snyder, 69, has run it since it started. In 1992, the theater group left the Egg after a dispute, and it now performs nearby, at a theater on the Troy campus of Russell Sage College. It is organized as a public benefit corporation, deriving a majority of its budget from state aid. It long had the powerful former Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as a patron. Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed eliminating the institute’s funding; his proposal must be approved by lawmakers. The investigation was originally an offshoot of an inquiry by Mr. Fisch that began in 2007 into the New York Network, a state video production group that was run by Ms. Snyder’s husband, William F. Snyder. Mr. Snyder retired from the network amid that inquiry, which did not result in a report. But the Snyder family plays a broad role in the report released Tuesday. Ms. Snyder started an audiobook division of the institute that had paltry sales but regularly employed her family members. For instance, in 2007, the institute produced an audiobook version of “Hollowville,” a play written by her daughter-in-law, Mary Jane Hansen. Ms. Snyder’s son, William S. Snyder, composed the music and served as producer, while her husband, William F. Snyder, served as executive producer. The family members were paid $7,372 for a book that sold 30 copies for a total of $271. Mr. Jones, Ms. Snyder’s lawyer, called the nepotism accusations “bogus, because every single family member is nationally recognized in their field. They are better at what they do than anybody else is, or at least as good. To try to make something ugly about the talent these people represent is really destructive and mean.”

Theater
Nepotism
Art
New York State Council on the Arts
Ethics
Snyder Patricia
Frauds and Swindling


Giants’ Nicks Forged Close Bond With Manning at Academy

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Hakeem Nicks and Eli Manning of the Giants forged a friendship over cookouts of alligator, crawfish and fried quail. Nicks mostly abstained from eating at the barbecues. It was the conversation that mattered. In July, Nicks joined Manning on a four-day trip in Thibodaux, La., for the Manning Passing Academy , an offensive skills camp for high school players. The getaway brought them together, helping to bond a young playmaking wide receiver with a veteran quarterback who could use a big-play target. During the day, Nicks served as a counselor and played catch with Manning. By night, Nicks and Manning came together for group dinners before retreating to their dormitories at Nicholls State University, about an hour west of New Orleans. “Hakeem just fit right in,” Archie Manning, the father of Eli and a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints for 11 seasons, said in a telephone interview. “He just added a lot to our camp. Good guy, and everybody enjoyed him. He’s always got a little gleam in his eye and smile on his face.” By catching three touchdown passes, Nicks provided a glimpse of his off-season development in the Giants’ 31-18 win over Carolina on Sunday. Nicks, who also rolled his right ankle Sunday, has not been practicing most of this week, giving the Giants (1-0) reason for concern before facing the Colts (0-1). Still, the coaches are looking for Nicks, who showed explosiveness as a rookie in 2009, to show more consistency in his second season. (On Sunday, Nicks also tipped the first pass his way, which resulted in an interception). Nicks, the type of deep threat the Giants have been missing since the departure of Plaxico Burress, was drafted into an important position. “That’s something I want to do,” Nicks said. “That’s something that I’ve always done in my career in my past, been that big-target receiver coming deep down the field. I just want to get my game to that and bring it to the team the best way possible.” Manning invited Nicks and Steve Smith to join him for the camp this summer. Although Smith could not attend, he said he had seen the effect the trip had had on the relationship between Nicks and Manning. “It showed Eli he’s serious about football and that he wants to get better,” Smith said of Nicks. “I’ve seen him take it more seriously in the film room and get in here in the off-season.” When discussing certain plays at the camp, Manning would explain his thinking, then Nicks would share his thoughts. It helped their timing, which was important because Nicks missed practices during organized team activities and in training camp while recovering from knee and toe injuries. Off the field, Nicks and Manning watched sports in their rooms and shared insights into each other’s lives. Manning was shocked to hear that Nicks had had only one scholarship offer in high school. Nicks was shocked to see the type of food the Manning family served in New Orleans. The Cajun flavor was new to Nicks — “out of my bracket,” the North Carolina native said — but he enjoyed learning more about the area. “We got to hang out a little bit, and I showed him a little of the New Orleans scene,” Manning said. “He threw up one night, got his stomach upset from eating oysters.” So the relationship was not perfect, but trust was forged. Nicks, who was drafted in the first round by the Giants in 2009, left North Carolina after his junior season. He was known for his acrobatic catches, his oversize hands and his quiet demeanor, which is similar to Manning’s. “Hakeem always sat back in the back of our meeting room,” Charlie Williams, the wide receivers coach at North Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “He just observed everything, soaked it all in, listened.” Like Burress, Nicks is the X receiver, known also as the split end, in the Giants’ offense. The X receiver frequently represents the deep threat and often finds himself in one-on-one coverage, as Nicks did on his second and third touchdowns Sunday. “Whenever you’re facing one-on-one, it’s a good opportunity to have a huge gain,” Smith said. “When Eli sees that, he’s going to go there all the time because we feel confident that he’s going to make that play.” That confidence was built not just on the practice field here, but over Cajun dinners in Louisiana.

Manning Passing Academy
Football
Nicks Hakeem
Manning Eli
New York Giants


For Gay Immigrants, Marriage Ruling Brings Relief and a Path to a Green Card

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday to strike down the federal law against same-sex marriage brought a stunning improvement in the lives of Steven Infante, an immigrant from Colombia, and his American husband — less than an hour after the ruling was announced. Mr. Infante and his spouse, Sean Brooks, were on their way to an immigration court in Manhattan where Mr. Infante would face what might have been his last hearing before he would be deported from the United States. But just before they arrived, the couple’s lawyers heard the news from the Supreme Court. “I thought it must be good news, because they were screaming like a soccer game, ‘We won 5 to 4,’ ” Mr. Infante said, referring to the justices’ tally in ruling that the law, the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was unconstitutional. Instead of ordering Mr. Infante’s expulsion, the immigration judge examined the decision and cleared the way for him to remain in this country with his husband as long as he wanted, as a legal permanent resident. For gay Americans married to foreigners, the impact of the federal marriage act had been severe, leaving many living in fear that they could be separated from their spouses. After the Supreme Court invalidated the law, the change for many couples promises to be significant and swift. For most American citizens, it is relatively easy to obtain a permanent resident visa, known as a green card, for a foreign-born spouse. But because of DOMA, tens of thousands of citizens in binational same-sex marriages had not been able to apply for green cards for their partners. The immigrants ran out of options to remain here legally. Over the years, many couples chose exile, moving to countries that offered residency to same-sex couples. But with DOMA out of the way, lawyers said, no large obstacles remain in immigration law to prevent American citizens, and also immigrants who are already legal permanent residents, from starting to apply for green cards for their same-sex spouses. To make that clear, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed on Wednesday that her department would move quickly to adapt. “Working with our federal partners, including the Department of Justice, we will implement today’s decision so that all married couples will be treated equally and fairly in the administration of our immigration laws,” she said. Lavi Soloway, an immigration lawyer who has represented many same-sex binational couples, including Mr. Infante and Mr. Brooks, said, “There will be immediate tangible effects on the lives of lesbian and gay couples who have been struggling for a very long time.” Video The Times's Marcus Mabry on what married same-sex couples can expect after the Supreme Court's decision Wednesday that the law is unconstitutional. Mr. Infante and Mr. Brooks were among the first couples to see results of the DOMA decision. Mr. Infante, 34, had been living in the United States since 1999, and he met Mr. Brooks, now 46, almost a decade ago. They married in New York in 2011, one month after marriage became legal in the state. By then, Mr. Infante’s visa had expired, and immigration authorities denied his petitions to regain his legal status and placed him in deportation proceedings. For Mr. Brooks, a musician, “the end of the line was clearly in sight” for the couple’s life in this country as they headed to immigration court. After their turn of fortune, Mr. Brooks was almost speechless. “The relief,” he said, “and the hopefulness.” Many other Americans have already applied for green cards for same-sex spouses, and their applications were moving slowly through the bureaucracy while Obama administration officials waited to see what the Supreme Court would do. Mr. Soloway said that his office has 70 active applications for green cards for immigrants in same-sex marriages and that he expected to present dozens more in coming days. Immigration officials assured him on Wednesday that those applications would move toward approval if they were otherwise in order, he said. Mr. Soloway said he would also seek to close deportations of gay immigrants married to Americans. As a matter of policy, the Obama administration has not been carrying out deportations of immigrants in same-sex couples during the past two years, but the removal orders remained open. Beyond its immediate effects, the Supreme Court’s decision eliminated prohibitions against gay immigrants that have lingered in American immigration law since 1952. A law that year prohibited any openly gay foreigners from coming to live in the United States on the grounds that they were afflicted with a “psychopathic personality.” “In the 1950s, Congress said if you are gay you are not good enough to be an American,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a legal group that represents gay immigrants. “We are finally bringing 60 years of discrimination to a close.” But for Brandon Perlberg, a gay American lawyer living in London, the court’s decision evoked more complicated feelings. His partner, Benn Storey, is British. The couple met and lived together in New York, Mr. Perlberg’s home. But last year they moved to London because Mr. Storey’s visa was expiring. After the move, Mr. Perlberg was unemployed for nearly a year; he spent most of his savings. While his first emotion Wednesday was elation, he and Mr. Storey face difficult choices about whether to uproot again to return to the United States. “My life isn’t coming back to me,” Mr. Perlberg said. “Someone else is living in my home in New York; my job isn’t coming back to me.” At least, he said, “This gives us the choice, and there is a lot of respect in having a choice.”

Immigration
Supreme Court
US
Deportation
Defense of Marriage Act
Visas
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Decisions and Verdicts


That Bag Is Suddenly $15 Heavier

Abstract: ONCE upon a time, the music associated with air travel was the soaring theme from “Rhapsody in Blue,” which United Airlines licensed as its signature song in 1976. But today you might be hearing another tune in your head when you contemplate boarding an airplane — the ditty sung by the landlord Thenardier in the Broadway version of “Les Misérables:” “Travel is a curse, but here we strive to lighten your purse. ... Charge ‘em for the lice, extra for the mice; 2 percent for looking in the mirror twice!” All year, airlines have been falling over one another to raise fares and add fees — understandably, because they simply aren’t operating profitably when oil costs more than $130 a barrel. Recently, American Airlines upped the ante when it became the first major carrier to announce that it would charge a $15 fee for the first checked bag for most of its coach customers. That’s on top of the $25 that it and other airlines have already begun charging for a second bag. (Its new fee applies to tickets bought beginning today.) When American made its move, its competitors privately derided the idea as having the potential for creating more trouble that it was worth, in the form of longer lines — as people stop to pay fees — and added strains on cabin overhead bins. While the major airlines have marched in lock step all year on 13 successive fare increases and fees, none rushed to match the American first-bag fee. Finally, though, United Airlines and US Airways said last Thursday that they, too, would charge $15 for a first checked bag for most coach customers. (United’s plan took effect Friday for travel beginning Aug. 18; US Airways said the change would take effect for tickets booked beginning July 9.) Other airlines are now expected to follow. Fifteen dollars is one thing. But among the still-unknown costs associated with the fees are the amount of confusion and delays at the ticket counter, the gate and even in the cabin, because more passengers are likely to avoid checking bags and instead cram more stuff into their carry-ons. “The biggest unknown is what change there will be in customer behavior regarding roll-aboards, and what kind of a challenge that will be to fit them in the overheads,” said Mark Mitchell, American’s managing director for customer experience. At American, executives have heard loud and clear objections from flight attendants, whose jobs will become more burdensome as they police battles for bin space, especially as vacationing families load up. The good news, said Mark DuPont, American’s vice president for airport services planning, is that “about 75 percent of our June, July and August seat capacity has already been sold” to passengers whose advance ticket purchases will allow them to avoid the checked-bag charge. Still, American flies about 100 million passengers a year, and many of them will arrive at airports starting today to find possibly longer check-in lines. And as if there weren’t enough lectures from airport announcements and security screeners, American passengers will receive added ones about the new policy, as well as an extra once-over as they line up before security, where American employees will try to weed out passengers trying to sneak extra carry-ons through. In addition, “we’re going to enhance communication with the customer as they’re sitting in the lounge,” to go over procedures for stowing carry-ons and personal items once on board, Mr. DuPont said, adding that “before, you never heard any of this until you got on board the aircraft.” (You’ll also hear more instructions about overhead storage as you board the plane, he said.) The checked-baggage fees can be paid at terminal counters and kiosks, or outside at the curb, where American skycaps already are accustomed to handling transactions. To smooth that process, Mr. DuPont said, the $2 cash fee that American has charged for checking a bag with a skycap will be eliminated. TRAVELERS are about to see how smoothly this all works. Airline executives and flight attendants are clearly concerned about the potential for confusion and later departures. American, in fact, is adding employees to handle an expected increase in so-called gate checks — carry-on bags that have to be checked at the airplane door because the overhead bins are full. But, at least, passengers won’t be charged for that inconvenience.

American Airlines
Airlines and Airplanes
Luggage
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline


Jawbone Sheds Light on Divergence of Humans and Apes

Abstract: Scientists who study the divergence of humans from the other great apes have been stymied by a lack of evidence. It is thought that humans and chimpanzees split 6 million to 7 million years ago, and humans and gorillas a couple of million years before that. But almost no ape fossils from this period — the Late Miocene — have been found in Africa. So some scientists suggest that an interloper of sorts, an ancient ape from Eurasia, returned 10 or 11 million years ago to Africa and became the last common ancestor of humans and the African great apes. The discovery of a 10-million-year-old jawbone with teeth, in deposits of volcanic mud in Nakali, Kenya, may help put such thoughts to rest. Yutaka Kunimatsu of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the fossil, the first of such vintage to be found in the region since 1982, represents a new genus of great ape. They have named it Nakalipithecus nakayamai. The finding, together with the 1982 discovery, suggests that there were at least some large apes in East Africa preceding the human-gorilla divergence. The researchers say N. nakayamai resembles a slightly younger, less primitive fossil found in Greece that had been a prime interloper candidate. This suggests that, if anything, apes were dispersing out of Africa, not the other way around.


U.S. Prisoner in North Korea Gets Consular Visit

Abstract: Kenneth Bae, the Korean-American missionary incarcerated in North Korea for more than a year for what it called hostile acts, was visited by a Swedish diplomat on Friday, his family reported, as speculation grew that the State Department might send an emissary as early as next week to try to negotiate Mr. Bae’s release. Mr. Bae’s sister, Terri Chung, said in a telephone interview that the family also had been informed by the State Department that Mr. Bae, who had been in a Pyongyang hospital since the summer with serious health problems, had been transferred nearly three weeks ago to the penal work farm where he first began serving his 15-year sentence of hard labor. Ms. Chung said she did not know why her brother, 45, who suffers from diabetes, an enlarged heart, back pain and other problems, had been sent back to the work farm. She said the State Department had told the family of the visit by the diplomat from Sweden, which acts on behalf of American interests in North Korea. Ms. Chung said she had no further information on that meeting. In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, confirmed that the department had conveyed the information to the family and said it was “deeply concerned” about Mr. Bae’s transfer from the hospital. “We also remain gravely concerned about Mr. Bae’s health, and we continue to urge D.P.R.K. authorities to grant Mr. Bae special amnesty and immediate release on humanitarian grounds,” she said in a statement, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. The Swedish diplomat’s meeting with Mr. Bae came against a backdrop of an unconfirmed report that the North wanted to negotiate Mr. Bae’s release and had extended an invitation to an American diplomat who specializes in North Korea, Robert King, to come as early as next week. Ms. Psaki, at a briefing earlier Friday, declined to comment on the speculation about Mr. King. But she reiterated what she called the Obama administration’s longstanding offer to send Mr. King to North Korea. In August, the North abruptly canceled an invitation to Mr. King shortly before he was about to make the trip. A pro-North Korean newspaper in Tokyo, Choson Sinbo, which apparently was permitted to interview Mr. Bae after his meeting with the Swedish diplomat, quoted Mr. Bae as saying that he had been told Mr. King was coming as early as Monday or by the end of the month at the latest. “I heard that the American government proposed to send the Rev. Jesse Jackson,” Mr. Bae was quoted as saying. “But the North Korean government instead allowed the visit of the special envoy, Mr. King.” There was no way to corroborate the accuracy of the Choson Sinbo report. It came a day after President Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, publicly called on the North Korean authorities to free Mr. Bae. “His family wants him home,” Mr. Obama said. “And the United States will continue to do everything in our power to secure his release, because Kenneth Bae deserves to be free.” Mr. Bae was arrested in November 2012, tried and convicted of what North Korea’s authoritarian government called plotting to “destroy our system through religious activities against our republic.” A resident of Washington State, Mr. Bae was arrested after he entered the North through its northeastern city of Rason with a group of visitors. Using a tour business as a cover, he was trying to build a covert proselytizing operation in Rason, according to a videotaped sermon he gave at a St. Louis church in 2011. His family and the State Department have called for his release on humanitarian grounds, citing his health. North Korea has used Americans detained on criminal charges to secure visits by prominent American officials seeking their release, including two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

North Korea
Kenneth Bae
State Department


City’s Delayed Traffic Study to Guide Regulation of Uber Vehicles

Abstract: After coming under attack last summer from the ride-hailing app Uber, the de Blasio administration shelved a proposal to cap the number of Uber vehicles and undertook a study of the service’s effect on New York City traffic. The study was due by the end of November. But over six weeks after the deadline, the findings have yet to be made public. The city has been silent about the delay except to say that the administration will eventually propose recommendations for the for-hire vehicle industry. As the weeks passed, it became increasingly clear that the city was wrestling with how to frame the study’s findings and respond to Uber’s aggressive and sometimes defiant efforts to expand in New York. In proposing the cap, the city said the influx of thousands of Uber vehicles had added to traffic congestion in Manhattan, an assertion the company contested. At a breakfast event in Manhattan on Thursday, Meera Joshi, chairwoman of the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, referred questions about the study to City Hall. Ms. Joshi said she believed the study would be released “very soon.” The city led the study, she said, but the taxi commission provided information and some analysis. Asked by a reporter whether the city might try again to cap Uber, Ms. Joshi said that would depend on the study’s findings regarding congestion. “I think the city will be very, very dictated by what they find based on the traffic portion of the study that they’re doing,” she said. The study could be released as early as Friday, but it could be delayed yet again. The City Council has been working on legislation to regulate for-hire vehicles, including services like Uber and Lyft. Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in a statement that the city planned to put forward a “framework that addresses vital priorities, including expanding accessibility for the disabled and securing support for public transit.” Last summer, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, called on Uber and other companies to offer wheelchair-accessible vehicles and to contribute funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as yellow taxis do through a 50-cent surcharge. The traffic study cost about $2 million and was being led by the mayor’s Office of Operations with assistance from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and from Bruce Schaller, a former transportation official who served mainly during the Bloomberg administration, city officials said. As part of the study, Uber gave the city more data than it had previously provided, including the general locations where rides started and ended. New York City’s dispute with Uber over a cap drew national attention, driven by the company’s public relations offensive, but other states and cities have struggled with how to regulate the company. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission fined Uber $7.6 million for failing to report driver data. Workers have increasingly raised concerns over whether they should be considered employees instead of contractors, and Seattle voted in December to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to form unions . While the mayor’s office continues to work on its study, some City Council members have been drafting legislation on regulations for the for-hire industry, although they have not yet reached a final decision on the bills, City Council officials said. A cap on Uber vehicles is no longer part of the discussions, the officials said, but the Council is still considering whether to address surge pricing, a feature in the Uber app that charges higher fares during busy periods. Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit advocacy group for pedestrians and cyclists, said the City Council should wait to move forward on the legislation until the study is released. “It would be unwise to rush to some regulatory conclusion absent the study and some in-depth conversation and debate about it,” he said. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has said that he wants to create a statewide licensing system for services like Uber and Lyft, but he did not mention the companies during his State of the State speech this week. On Tuesday, two Democratic state senators introduced a bill aiming to divert some of the sales tax revenue generated from Uber and Lyft trips to benefit mass transit. Yellow taxi riders pay the surcharge to the transportation authority, but Uber riders do not pay the same fee, though they do pay sales tax. In November, the authority said it was losing about $10 million a year because of declining revenue from yellow taxis in light of Uber’s popularity. Matthew W. Daus, a former New York City taxi commissioner, said he expected the city would ultimately move to level the playing field for yellow taxis, which face more stringent regulations. “The big question is: How far will they go toward leveling the playing field?” he said.

Uber
Taxis
Bill de Blasio
Transportation
Roads and Traffic
Car Service
NYC


California Expands Availability of Abortions

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday expanded access to abortion in California, signing a bill to allow nurse practitioners, midwives and physician assistants to perform a common type of the procedure, an aspiration abortion, during the first trimester. Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire allow nurse practitioners to perform such abortions, which use a tube and suction, while several other states, including California, permit nonphysicians to provide drugs to terminate pregnancy. But the new California law goes further, allowing a wider range of nonphysician practitioners to perform surgical abortions. While other states have passed a tide of laws restricting abortion access, California has gone against the political tide. “We are trending in a different direction, and we’re very proud of it,” said Toni Atkins, the state assemblywoman who wrote the bill. “California has a strong history of support for reproductive health care for women.” She said women in rural parts of the state had trouble finding an abortion provider. “This is an issue of accessibility,” Ms. Atkins said. “California is a very large state, and more than half the counties don’t have an abortion provider.” Abortion opponents said the new law would endanger women’s health. “This bill trivializes what is taking place with abortion,” said Brian Johnston, director of the National Right to Life’s Western regional office. “It will massively expand the number of abortions and at the same time reduce safety. For those who say they care about women’s health, they’re doing the opposite, reducing the medical standards for abortion.” This is not the first time in recent years that California — where Democrats control all statewide offices and both houses of the State Legislature — has bucked national trends. Last year, while conservative state governments were enacting tougher qualifications for voting, Democrats passed a series of laws intended to make registration and voting easier than ever. But on the issue of abortion, California is the only state this year to have expanded access to the procedure. By contrast, 68 restrictions on abortion have been passed by states so far this year, according to Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that studies reproductive health issues. “California is moving in a direction to protect reproductive health, as other states across the country are passing abortion restrictions,” Ms. Nash said. Supporters of the bill pointed to a state pilot program at the University of California, San Francisco, which found that nurse practitioners, certified midwife nurses and physician assistants were able to provide the procedure just as safely as surgeons. During the pilot program, which began in 2007, some 8,000 aspiration abortions were provided by nondoctors. Complications rates for doctors and nondoctors were similar, below 2 percent in both cases. “This is a very safe procedure, and we now have a very large study to show that this does not compromise safety,” said Dr. Tracy Weitz, who led the study. “Most people saying it compromises safety actually have an agenda to make abortion illegal, which we know from decades of experience actually makes abortion unsafe.” “Hopefully this will give women more options early in their first trimesters, when we know abortion is safest,” Dr. Weitz added. “And the second trimester, when it is more complicated, will remain in the domain of physicians.” Governor Brown announced his approval of the bill along with several others related to women’s health care, including one that brings construction standards for clinics that perform abortions in line with those of other primary-care clinics.

California
Abortion
Jerry Brown
Nursing
Midwifery


Cellphone Industry Tries to Adjust to Slowdown

Abstract: Cellphone sales are falling, manufacturers have announced thousands of layoffs and wireless carriers are finding it harder to acquire and keep customers. It seems like another tale of “recession bites industry,” but there are signs that this downturn is masking something more fundamental: that the cellphone industry’s best days are behind it. Analysts and investors are beginning to ask whether the industry can continue growing. The challenge is both simple and daunting: how to expand when more than half of the six billion people on the planet already have phones. And even in developing countries where there are underserved markets, subscribers spend less on phones and services. Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, is one of the skeptics. “I don’t think anyone would argue that the salad days of the wireless industry aren’t over,” he said. He added that in terms of subscriber growth in North America, “we’re awfully close to saturation.” “It’s not correct to call this a cyclical problem,” Mr. Moffett said. “To do so suggests that after the recession, growth rates will bounce back. There’s no reason to believe that’s the case.” The industry’s tough news continued on Tuesday when Motorola announced its fourth-quarter earnings for 2008. The telecommunications equipment company, which is suspending its quarterly dividend, lost $3.6 billion in the fourth quarter, versus earnings of $100 million in the period a year ago. Sales were $7.14 billion, down 26 percent, from $9.65 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. Motorola sold 19.2 million cellphones in the quarter, down 53 percent from the period a year ago. It went from being the world’s second-largest maker of cellphones in 2007 to its fifth-largest. Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-chief executive, said the industry would grow after the recession, but how much and how quickly is the interesting question. “While it may not be possible to return to the explosive growth we’ve seen in wireless, there will be good, sustainable growth as data applications become essential,” Mr. Jha said. He said he believed that data — Internet and text messages — could assume the mantle of growth from voice communications. “Data can be similarly influential in changing people’s lives.” Nobody is looking at the cellphone industry and making comparisons with Detroit. There is little doubt that there are tens of billions of dollars to be made selling phones and providing services, particularly those involving data. The industry is pinning high hopes on a new generation of more powerful (and expensive) smartphones. AT&T activated 1.9 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, while Verizon added more than a million BlackBerry Storms. Over all, these devices make up about 10 percent of the domestic cellphone market and are considered likely to grow in popularity, driving people to upgrade and pay for more data to do things like download songs and send text messages. In the fourth quarter, for example, AT&T’s data revenue for each subscriber rose 27 percent, to $16.30, from about $12 a year earlier. Over the long term, the industry vigorously disputes the notion that it is anywhere near slowing down. “If there’s anything I can be extremely confident about, it’s that our customer base wants new phones,” said Denny Strigl, president and chief operating officer of Verizon, which owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless (the Vodafone Group owns 45 percent). Verizon and its chief rival, AT&T, each reported financial returns last week that hinted at challenges to sustained high levels of growth. Verizon Wireless gained 1.4 million subscribers, but that is down from 2 million a year earlier. AT&T gained 2 million subscribers, compared with 2.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. SprintNextel recently announced plans to eliminate 8,000 jobs. Some industry analysts say they believe the lure of data and the fancier phones that support it will not stop growth rates from falling over time. Over all in the wireless industry, “there’s ton of money being made, but it’s not going to grow as fast as people have experienced or as quickly as they’re relying on it to in the future,” said Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research. “All this talk about data and other services bringing a renaissance of growth is wrong.” One challenge for the long-term growth of smartphones is that they are expensive. The average selling price of the Apple iPhone is $600 (without the carrier’s subsidies) and the BlackBerry from Research in Motion costs $370, according to Broadpoint Amtech, a research firm. By comparison, the average selling price of phones made by Motorola and Samsung (companies with fewer smartphones in their inventory) is around $120. Analysts have little doubt that this price differential will fall over time. But that still means the cellphone industry is depending on consumers to upgrade to a significantly more expensive product in the years ahead. Smartphones are also smart in preventing their own obsolescence. As they are more dependent on software than hardware to stay up to date, a downloaded upgrade or new application (one that mobile carriers are eager to sell) can do for some of these new phones what used to require an entirely new device. Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, addressed this issue in 2007 when he introduced the iPhone, praising its adaptability when compared with more hardware-based competitors at the time. “What happens if you think of a great idea six months from now?” he asked about the other devices. “You can’t run around and add a button to these things; they’ve already shipped.” Smartphones notwithstanding, the number of handsets sold around the world has been falling in important regions — even before the recession. In Western Europe, around 191 million mobile phones were sold in 2007, a figure that fell to 171 million in 2008 and is projected at 165 million in 2009, according to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with the research firm Gartner. In the United States, people bought 176 million handsets in 2007, and 184 million in 2008. That number will probably remain flat this year, the Gartner analyst said. She said that Europe might provide some indication of where the United States was headed because, as highly populated as it is with phones, it is still slightly behind Europe. The toll seemed to blindside handset makers in the last quarter. Motorola said last month that it sold half as many phones in the fourth quarter than it had the year earlier, and announced 3,000 job cuts at its cellphone unit. In the fourth quarter, Nokia sold 113 million handsets, down about 15 percent from the period a year earlier. Samsung Electronics said worldwide cellphone demand might be down 10 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, new and more numerous competitors are fighting over that demand. The industry did not have to contend with Apple until two years ago. This year may bring a resurgent Palm with its Pre smartphone, as well as Dell, which is reportedly working on its own mobile device. “The macro environment is challenging and we believe will remain clearly so in 2009,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s chief executive, said recently in a conference call with investors to discuss the earnings. He added that he believed Internet-centric phones and mobile services would drive a new generation of growth. “It is clear that there is a tremendous opportunity to extend the value of the handset market through the integration of device hardware and Internet services,” he said. “This will drive the next wave of industry growth, and innovation will not stand still.”

Motorola Inc
Cellular Telephones
Company Reports
Wireless Communications


At Wealthy Schools, PTAs Help Fill Budget Holes

Abstract: EACH fall, parents at the Anderson School , a highly regarded K-8 on the Upper West Side for gifted and talented students, receive letters from the PTA emblazoned with the school’s elegant “A” logo. Though Anderson indulges in the usual trappings of public-school fund-raising — bake sales, book fairs, auctions — this letter is blunter: It urges parents to simply write a check. And it suggests an amount: This school year, it was $1,300. Ayda Gibson, 44, the mother of a first grader at the school, said she did not mind being asked. “If they don’t ask,” she said, “they won’t get.” Many parents, it would seem, agree with her. In the 2009-10 school year, Anderson’s PTA and a much smaller alumni group raised $1,001,302, putting the school in a remarkable category — the New York City public schools that raise amounts in the $1 million range annually. They are schools like Public School 6 on East 82nd Street, where big donors can have their children’s names engraved on plaques on chairs in the auditorium. Its PTA raised $973,518 last school year. Or P.S. 290 , also on East 82nd, a popular school widely praised for its writing program, where the PTA raised $949,759 in the 2009-10 school year. Or P.S. 87 , a coveted Upper West Side elementary a stone’s throw from the Museum of Natural History, where the parents’ association brought in $1.57 million in that same period: about $800,000 in fund-raising, the other $700,000 from the fees the association charged for the after-school programs. At a time when the city’s schools have had their financing cut by an average of 13.7 percent over the past five years, the money has buffered these schools from the hard choices many others have had to make. In a system where many parents’ associations raise no money at all, these schools have earned a special name among parents and school consultants: “public privates.” “Many now have amenities that can compete with private school offerings,” said Emily Glickman, the president of Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, a private-school admissions company, on the Upper East Side. These schools are in some of the city’s wealthiest ZIP codes, most of them in Manhattan , and their students typically garner top scores on statewide exams. (In 2011, at P. S. 290 , 88.9 percent of students were proficient in reading, and 92.9 percent demonstrated proficiency in math. The citywide averages for the subjects were 43.9 percent and 57.3 percent.) And in a system where money and race are inextricably intertwined, most of these schools serve populations with a far greater percentage of white students than the system over all, where about 15 percent of the students are white. P. S. 6, for example, is 70 percent white, as is P.S. 234 , a school in TriBeCa that also raises hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The city’s Education Department does not track how much individual PTAs raise. There is no central clearinghouse for this information, and parents are often reluctant to publicly share fund-raising numbers. To put together a list of the top-earning PTAs, The New York Times analyzed Internal Revenue Service filings posted on GuideStar , a research company that tracks nonprofit organizations and charitable giving. The information is not comprehensive, so there may be other schools that raised similar amounts that were not included. But it presents a snapshot of how some of the richest schools have fared. “These rich schools are semiprivate,” said Troy Torrison, 47, a creative director who has a third grader at P. S. 234, which raised $541,712 in the 2009-10 school year. The Taste of TriBeCa, a culinary festival with many of the neighborhood’s best-known chefs participating, provided a substantial amount. “These other schools are public, public with no extras,” he said. HOUSED in a shabby 1950s brick building, P. S. 87 does not look rich from the outside. But step inside a bustling third-grade classroom, and signs of the parents’ association’s efforts abound. One of the school’s teachers, Laura Fine, 30, pointed to three Mac computers, a printer, a 3-D digital projector, science kits, chess sets, new desk chairs, a dozen dictionaries and $28.70 hardcover writing guides that students keep in their desks. “They paid for all this,” Ms. Fine said of the parents’ association. “And some classrooms have four or five Macs.” The association pays for a fitness coach during recess and a chef to assist the one hired by the Education Department, and it keeps the comfortable, well-lighted library stocked with books and computers. To keep germs at bay, there are parent-financed eco-friendly hand-sanitizing machines on walls throughout the school. And the association is undertaking a schoolwide air-conditioner installation — at a cost of $4,000 a room. “We’re in a community that is very generous,” said Rachel Laiserin, 43, who is one of the school’s two parents’ association presidents. The Education Department prohibits parents from paying the salaries of full-time “core subject” teachers. Deidrea A. Miller, a department spokeswoman, said the rule existed to avoid the hiring of teachers who might lose their jobs the next year because a school PTA decided it no longer could — or wanted to — finance them. “It’s a financial issue,” she said. PTAs are permitted to pay for substitutes, aides, enrichment teachers and assistants, which many of the city’s wealthiest PTAs do readily. This year, the PTA at P.S. 199 on the Upper West Side spent close to $100,000 on a science and technology teacher. And PTAs at P. S. 6 and the Anderson School spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on teaching assistants to buffer students from the ballooning class sizes caused by budget cuts. Assistant teachers work with students on reading and writing, help with class projects and sometimes do lunch duty or bathroom patrol, depending on the school. But the financing goes beyond the classroom. At P. S. 290, the PTA has helped to pay for trips, including an overnight for fourth graders to a nature center in the Catskills. At P. S. 6, the PTA and its alumni foundation have helped defray the cost of a rooftop ecology center with an 800-square-foot greenhouse and a turtle pond. And in recent years, at P. S. 199, the PTA has financed sundry enrichment classes, automatic toilet flushers and September bedbug detection for every classroom. Last year, the school raised close to $500,000. Principals at these schools say their parents’ associations do more than collect money; they work in tandem with the administration throughout the year to come up with monetary solutions, routinely swapping items from one budget to the other so that principals can use money for full-time staff while the PTA covers the expenses allowed by the Education Department. In February, at the highly rated P. S. 89 in TriBeCa, whose PTA raised nearly $250,000 in the 2009-10 school year, the principal, Veronica Najjar, said she did not hesitate to approach parents when she wanted to buy several $600 iPads for the school’s lower-grade classrooms, hire a part-time office secretary to relieve the staff during what was expected to be a particularly busy registration season and enroll her teachers in a course on the new Common Core curriculum. According to PTA meeting minutes and her own account, the PTA voted and almost immediately wrote her a check. “I’ve never been told no by my PTA,” Ms. Najjar said. City officials say that kind of collaboration is unheard-of at most of the schools in the city. Elba Velez, a family advocate for District 10 in the Bronx , which includes the wealthy Riverdale neighborhood as well as some of the most segregated and poorest-performing schools in the system, says that at many of her schools, PTAs do not even ask parents for money. “For a variety of reasons, they make a decision not to,” she said. Presidents of parents’ associations at schools in high-earning areas describe this discrepancy as “complicated” and “tricky.” But many are unapologetic about advocating for their own children when the city has shaved, in some cases, up to $1 million from their schools’ budgets over the past five years. “There is no crime in wanting to give directly to your child’s education,” said Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, a PTA president at P. S. 199. THOUGH some parents say that poorer schools receive Title I financing — federal dollars allocated to schools serving large percentages of low-income children — giving them a lift that wealthier schools do not get, others dismiss that argument. “Title I money is restrictive,” said Yolanda Smith, a senior education analyst in the city’s Independent Budget Office . “It is only supposed to be used for activities specifically related to student achievement. By contrast, PTA money can be used to buy almost anything.” Dennis M. Walcott , New York City’s schools chancellor, said that he was well aware of “the disparity issue,” but he did not want to penalize parents for getting involved. Instead, he has worked through the Fund for Public Schools , a nonprofit group designed, in part, to support low-income schools. The fund has provided over 250 library grants of up to $10,000 each and has helped 70 schools upgrade their art spaces with grants of up to $20,000 each. Department officials say the city has also moved to curb inequities within the system through its budgeting process by instituting a “fair funding formula,” which was put in place, Ms. Miller, the department spokeswoman, said, to allow the city “to direct more resources to schools that need it the most.” Schools with higher-needs children have received more dollars for each child, but because of budget cuts, the city has not been able to make use of the formula fully. The year it was instituted, the budget office reported that students identified as needy received an average of $217 more than what they would have received under the old system. The Anderson PTA says it spends over $1,600 for each student. In some cities, like Portland , Ore., schools are required to share some of the money raised. Asked how they felt about pooling fund-raising money, some New York City parents’ association presidents were cautious. Ms. Laiserin, of P. S. 87, said she thought parents might consider some limited amount of sharing. But Rebecca Levey, her co-president, was not so sure. She stood in the school’s manicured garden — amid tulips, roses and wisteria — built with money acquired through Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer’s office and landscaped with parent dollars. The garden is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence adorned with an iron sun, a reminder of the school’s motto: “One Family Under the Sun.” “I think it’s very hard to raise money and not have control over how that money is spent,” Ms. Levey said.


Car Explodes Near Police Station in Algeria, Killing Officers

Abstract: ALGIERS (AP) — A suicide bomber blew up a car near a police station in a town east of here Wednesday, killing at least four officers and ripping off the building’s facade, witnesses said. The blast followed twin suicide bombings on Dec. 11, one at United Nations offices and the other at a government building, that killed at least 37 people here in Algiers, the capital of Algeria . A journalist and another resident in the city of Naciria said the car sped toward the police station and exploded. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety. The Interior Ministry said the attack killed at least four officers and wounded 20 people, including eight other officers. It provided no details other than to say that the bombing had been near the police station in the town, which is about 45 miles east of Algiers. Al Arabiya satellite television reported that a group known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had claimed responsibility for the attack. The group says it emerged from an alliance between the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden and an Algerian Islamist movement known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The suicide bombings in December, and others, have been claimed by the same group. Security forces have been on maximum alert since early this week, after three trucks were stolen in the Algiers region, the newspaper Liberté reported Wednesday. The vehicles included a fuel tanker, and officials feared that they might be used in suicide attacks, the report said. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has increasingly used vehicles packed with explosives to deliver its strikes. In July, a suicide bomber blew up a truck inside a military barracks southeast of Algiers, killing 10 soldiers. Two months later, at least 28 people died after an explosives-packed vehicle rammed into a coast guard barracks in the northern town of Dellys. The newspaper Le Soir said Wednesday that security forces had detained the mastermind behind the attacks on April 11 that hit the prime minister’s office and a police station, killing 33. The police picked up the 28-year-old suspect at his Algiers home overnight Saturday, the report cited an unidentified security official as saying. The official said the suspect chose the targets, recruited the suicide bombers and bought the substances used to make the explosives. Officials with national security forces declined to comment on the report. Algeria’s Islamic insurgency broke out in the early 1990s, when the army canceled the second round of the country’s first multiparty elections to prevent a likely victory by an Islamic fundamentalist party. Armed groups turned to force to overthrow the government; up to 200,000 people were killed in the violence. The insurgency then had been dying down, with militants’ ranks dwindling after military crackdowns and amnesty offers. But in late 2006, the main Algerian militant group began to wage larger-scale bombings and to go after foreigners — signs that Islamic fighters were regrouping.

Police
Algeria
Bombs and Explosives
Terrorism


DuPont’s Profit and Sales Surpass Expectations

Abstract: DuPont , the chemical maker, reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Tuesday and raised its 2010 earnings forecast as sales to the solar, auto and electronic sectors surged. The results reflect improving consumer demand in the United States and Asia, as well as DuPont’s ability to win market share, especially in the agricultural market, analysts said. DuPont said demand for car paint, electronic parts and genetically modified seeds were all strong in the third quarter, and the only area of weakness in its business was in the construction sector, which uses DuPont’s Tyvek house wrap. DuPont raised its forecast for 2010 profit to $3.10 a share from $2.90 to $3.05. Analysts had forecast $3.04. DuPont reported third-quarter profit of $367 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with $409 million, or 45 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of 34 cents a share. Total revenue rose 14.8 percent, to $7.7 billion, above analysts’ expectations of $6.72 billion. Although the results beat expectations, shares of DuPont, which is based in Wilmington, Del., fell 47 cents, or 1 percent, to $47.23. DuPont said revenue from the United States, which has typically lagged other regions, rose 17 percent in the third quarter. But Asian sales remained DuPont’s breadwinner and rose 31 percent, while Europe rose 9 percent. Volume rose 14 percent, while local selling prices increased 5 percent. Sales rose in all of DuPont’s’s six business units. For example, sales in its safety unit, which makes Kevlar bulletproof vests and Nomex, a heat-resistant material popular with firefighters, jumped 30 percent. DuPont spent aggressively on agricultural research in the quarter, and the loss in that segment widened to $181 million from $113 million.


Anti-Immigrant Party Rises in Sweden

Abstract: MALMO, Sweden — Jimmie Akesson, 31, looks more like an up-and-coming advertising executive than a seasoned politician. But Mr. Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, does not believe in a soft sell: He wants to cut immigration by 90 percent, and he thinks that the growth of Sweden’s Muslim population is the country’s biggest foreign threat since World War II. Sweden, which is seen by many people as a guardian of liberalism and tolerance, has never elected to Parliament a member of any party who campaigned openly against immigration. That could change in elections on Sunday. Opinion polls suggest that the Sweden Democrats will exceed the 4 percent threshold needed to reach Parliament. An alliance of center-right parties appears to have a narrow overall lead, according to the surveys, but the Sweden Democrats could hold the balance of power, something that could create a political crisis. That prospect has jolted a nation in which even some of Mr. Akesson’s fiercest critics now acknowledge that too little has been done to integrate immigrants. Political analysts also say that the rise of the populist right shows that Sweden is being buffeted by broad political currents familiar in other European countries. Mainstream politicians are taking this development seriously. “These kinds of parties, they thrive on uncertainty and political crises,” said Finance Minister Anders Borg, a member of the governing Moderate Party. “They need to create turmoil and crisis, so we will push hard to their voters: Is this really a responsible choice?” For most of the last century, Social Democrats dominated politics here, but in 2006 the center-right Moderates came to power under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. This time, the parties are standing as competing blocs: one from the center-right, led by the Moderates, and one from the center-left, led by the Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin, who in running for prime minister could become the first woman to hold that job in Sweden if she is elected. Though sidelined from much of the official campaign, the Sweden Democrats have nonetheless attracted attention. Their biggest coup involved a blunt 30-second advertisement that showed a white pensioner being overtaken by a group of Muslim women in burqas as they rushed toward a line for welfare payments. One station refused at first to broadcast the ad, before agreeing to do so with parts obscured. The ad generated enormous publicity and made the Sweden Democrats appear to be victims of censorship. In a televised debate on Sunday, Mr. Reinfeldt and Ms. Sahlin ruled out working with the Sweden Democrats if their coalitions did not win an absolute majority. But Mr. Akesson, speaking before the debate, said he thought the Moderates could find themselves in need of his party to form a governing majority. “I think now, if you look at the polls, it is not impossible for the right alliance to get a full majority,” he said. “But if they don’t, they need us to stay in government.” Mr. Akesson contended that his party could win as much as 8 percent of the vote. “We are quite confident,” he said. “We are underestimated in those polls. We have grown a lot since the last elections.” Though the party was created in 1988, it has grown slowly, recently building strongholds in southern Sweden in cities like Malmo and Landskrona. The populist right has been helped by structural changes in politics, analysts say. While mainstream parties, particularly the Social Democrats, could once rely on a strong core vote, loyalties are fading, said Jenny Madestam, a political scientist at Stockholm University. The collectivist, egalitarian ideas that have been associated with Sweden for decades are fading. The debate over immigration in Sweden mirrors the debate elsewhere in Europe, where economic pressures have exacerbated tensions over the role of Islam on the continent. “There is a general change in Swedish society,” Ms. Madestam said. “Social democratic ideas are losing their grip on Sweden, and we are getting more and more individualistic. These collectivist ideas are not so strong.” Ibrahim Baylan, the national secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, who came to Sweden from Turkey when he was 10, said the recession and unemployment were largely responsible for the rise of the populist right. “You find a lot of people who are young, without any job or education and without any hope of getting a job,” Mr. Baylan said. But he also said that it was harder to integrate immigrants than it once was. Many immigrants are arriving from poor nations, and some are illiterate in their own language and therefore face extra difficulties learning Swedish, Mr. Baylan said. “The opportunities are still very big in this country, but we have a situation that is totally different,” Mr. Baylan said. “The people coming here are less skilled than in the 1970s and 1980s.” At the main mosque and Islamic center in Malmo, Beyzat Becirov, who came to Sweden from Yugoslavia more than 40 years ago, said that most Swedes were welcoming, but that perhaps 2 to 4 percent of the population seemed to say “that economic problems are due to the Muslims.” He said there had been dozens of attacks on the mosque, including a serious fire in 2003. In one office, he pointed to a window with a bullet hole. As for Mr. Akesson’s Sweden Democrats, he said that their support was not substantial, before adding, “But Hitler’s support started small.”

Sweden
Elections
Immigration and Emigration


Study Refutes Claims on Pediatric AIDS Drug Trials

Abstract: An investigation into the participation of New York City foster children in clinical drug trials for H.I.V. and AIDS over a nearly 20-year period has found no evidence that any children died as a result of the trials or that the foster children were selected because of their race. In the late 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic intensified, the city’s child-welfare agency developed a policy to allow foster children to enroll in drug trials at a time when there were no approved treatments for children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS. Hundreds of children received medication in scores of trials conducted from the late 1980s to 2005. But after charges by a freelance journalist that children were put in trials without their parents’ knowledge and given medications known to cause death, some civil rights activists and City Council members expressed angry concern. As a result, in 2005 the city commissioned the Vera Institute of Justice, an independent nonprofit group, to investigate the claims. That study, which is to be released on Wednesday, determined that city officials had acted in good faith and in the interests of the children, many of whom were seriously ill. But it also found that the agency had not always followed its own protocols and kept poor records. After interviewing dozens of people involved in the trials and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of case files, documents and correspondence, the Vera Institute concluded that none of the 532 children in the trials died as a direct result of the medications. (Twenty-five children receiving treatment as part of the trials died during the trial years.) The report also found that foster children were not removed from their families by the city because a parent had refused to consent to a child’s treatment, as some had alleged. In addition, the study said that researchers did not specifically select foster children for enrollment in the trials. And while the foster children were overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, as some critics emphasized, that profile mirrored the demographics of children with H.I.V. infection in the city at the time. “When we read through an amazing volume of material, we found that Children’s Services were aware that this was a very sensitive issue for a lot of important historic reasons,” said Timothy A. Ross, the co-director of the project at Vera. “Children’s Services did research on the rules and regulations that applied, and developed a reasoned policy in the late 1980s,” he added. “The standard for enrolling kids in foster care that the child welfare agency used was higher than the federal standard.” However, the institute also discovered problems. “There were clearly breakdowns in the implementation of this policy,” Dr. Ross said. Sixty-four children participated in 30 medication trials that were not reviewed by a special medical advisory panel, as the city’s policy required. And 21 children participated in trials that the panel had reviewed but had not recommended. (In both cases, 13 of the enrollments occurred before the children were placed in foster care.) Moreover, the informed consent forms from biological parents or guardians were missing from the child-welfare files in 21 percent of cases, even though regulations and the city’s own policies mandated that they be kept, Mr. Ross said. The state’s Department of Health refused Vera’s request to review medical records, which might have included some additional consents. “We found a disturbing lack of medical consent forms,” he said. “In some cases we found handwritten consents instead of the official consent forms.” Mr. Ross added that such makeshift permissions violated both city policy and federal regulations. The commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, John B. Mattingly, said in an interview about the report: “In very general terms, it puts to rest the most egregious charges that were being made by a few people three or four years ago. No children were yanked from their homes. That is all completely false.” Liam Scheff, the journalist in Boston who first made the alarming charges about the trials, questioned that finding. “Now they admit that the children died, but, oh, it couldn’t have been the drugs,” Mr. Scheff said in an e-mail message. “How do they know? How do they tell the difference?” He said that the drugs in question had Food and Drug Administration warnings on them and that they had “caused permanent injury and painful death in adults who have taken the exact same drugs at normal prescribed doses. These children died, and countless others were made sick while taking these drugs, because of a diagnosis that is itself overly harsh, overly deterministic” and, he said, based on faulty H.I.V. testing technology. Mr. Mattingly said the agency had already taken steps to ensure that policies are properly enforced in any future clinical trials involving foster children. Today, no children are involved in medication trials. One change involved the revamping of the way the agency catalogues and maintains archived case records; an electronic system established in 2004 allows for prompt retrieval of all case files. Another new policy calls for more review by Family Court when a parent is not available to provide consent.

Foster Care
Medicine and Health
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)


On Talk Radio, Conservatives Are Energized

Abstract: Amid all the pressures on the radio industry, news-talk stations see an opportunity — and his name is Barack Obama . After eight years of playing defense for President Bush, the conservatives who dominate talk radio are back on offense. Hours after Mr. Obama’s election, the country’s most popular radio host, Rush Limbaugh , was talking about the “rebirth of principled opposition.” Sean Hannity , the second highest-rated host, quickly cast his afternoon show as the home of “conservatism in exile.” It is a lively time to be behind the microphone. One television talker, Joe Scarborough, is starting a radio show. Another, Bill O’Reilly , is ending his. Several of the supporting actors in this year’s Republican primary are showing interest in the medium, too. Fred Thompson , the “Law & Order” star turned presidential candidate, will begin hosting a two-hour show in March, as the syndicator Westwood One is expected to announce this week. Mr. Thompson’s show would take the place of Mr. O’Reilly’s. Rudolph W. Giuliani , the former mayor of New York City and a Republican presidential candidate, had been in negotiations with Westwood One for Mr. O’Reilly’s time slot, according to two people with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a deal was not struck. Mike Huckabee , the former Republican presidential candidate who now has a weekend program on the Fox News Channel, is trying radio as well, hosting short segments for ABC Radio beginning Jan. 5. While there are plenty of topics to talk about — and plenty of hosts willing to do the talking — nagging questions about the business remain. A sharp advertising downturn is limiting revenue for stations. And some hosts are worrying about the relevance of talk radio in a digital age. But radio, at least for now, still acts as a national megaphone for influential voices. This year, news talk ranked as the most popular radio format in the United States , surpassing country music for the first time ever. Forty stations have added news talk in the last year, for a total of 2,064 that use the format, up from about 1,500 a decade ago, according to the trade publication M Street. That means 2,064 stations need 24 hours of programming every day. Stations with tight budgets increasingly rely on programs from Premiere Radio Networks, ABC Radio Networks and other syndication companies. Five of the most popular syndicated names in news-talk radio — Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Hannity, Glenn Beck , Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham — signed new contracts in the last 12 months, all but guaranteeing that they will be rallying listeners for the duration of Mr. Obama’s four-year term. Mr. Limbaugh’s landmark contract, announced in July, promised a total of $400 million through 2016. With a Democrat in the White House, “the conservative hosts will have more fun. There’s no doubt about that,” said Gary Schonfeld, the president of the network division of Westwood One. But will listeners stay tuned? Talk radio usually “becomes a little less popular the year after an election,” said Maja Mijatovic, the vice president and director of national radio for the media buying agency Horizon Media. However, next year promises to be a unique one, with grim forecasts about the economy and renewed interest in the presidency. Advertisers and syndicators are expecting a busy year because of the incoming administration. “I think people are going to tune in more than ever,” Ms. Mijatovic said. Premiere Radio, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, is projecting a consistent audience from 2008 to 2009 as it signs on advertisers. “There’s more to talk about than there has been in a hundred years,” Charlie Rahilly, the president of Premiere, said. “There is something almost historical in nature in the news every single day.” Mr. Limbaugh, who is syndicated by Premiere, continues to command a much larger audience than any other radio host. According to Arbitron ’s spring 2008 ratings report, he reached 3.58 million listeners during an average quarter-hour, while the No. 2 host, Mr. Hannity, averaged 1.65 million. A middle tier of radio hosts helps fill the schedules of AM and FM stations. “Because you don’t have a commodity like music to rely upon, it is all up to the host,” said Carl Anderson, the senior vice president for programming and distribution at ABC Radio Networks. “They are on stage by themselves.” The talk-radio formula that Mr. Limbaugh pioneered two decades ago remains evident on the air today. Syndicators look for hosts who are entertaining, have a point of view and, as Mr. Anderson put it, show an ability to “connect with an audience.” Ask different syndicators and you will hear different claims about the “fastest-growing hosts” on talk radio. Westwood One cites its “ Dennis Miller Show,” which is syndicated in 200 markets and has a comedic bent. ABC Radio cites the rapid rise of its two-year-old “Mark Levin Show,” which now counts 175 affiliates. The shows are a less expensive alternative to the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the industry. With more stations converting to news-talk formats — perhaps with the hope that live talk cannot be displaced by an iPod the way music can be — the middle tier is where most of the movement is. The conservative commentator Monica Crowley is entering weekday syndication through the Talk Radio Network. The CNN anchor Lou Dobbs is signing new affiliates for a three-hour afternoon show. And Mr. Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” is hosting a radio version on WABC in New York. ABC Radio plans to syndicate it next year, beginning in Los Angeles at KABC. Mr. Scarborough, the former Republican congressman, did not enjoy his brief stint with Westwood One in 2005. But his MSNBC morning program, which replaced the TV simulcast of “Imus in the Morning” when Don Imus was fired for using racially charged language in 2007, resembles a radio show and attracted interest from radio networks earlier in the year. Mr. Scarborough expects his program to provide more political balance than some others. “We have been in an era where you’ve had Rush Limbaugh, followed by a lot of conservative talk show hosts that lacked his talent and sense of humor,” Mr. Scarborough said. “They decided that if they just read Republican talking points, they’d get a big audience. I think that world is coming to an end. You’re going to have to be entertaining like Limbaugh, but also allow people of all political stripes on the show.” Time will tell whether Mr. Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, can cross over to radio. “So far, I don’t think we’ve seen any TV personalities have success” on radio stations, Ms. Mijatovic said, “only the vice versa.” Indeed, two of the newest stars of TV talk, Mr. Beck, who left CNN for Fox News, and the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow , emerged after years on the radio. And then there are the politicians who would be radio hosts. Mr. Thompson will start on March 2, replacing Mr. O’Reilly, who has said that he needed to spend more time working on his top-rated Fox News program. (Mr. O’Reilly will continue to record daily “talking points“ segments for Westwood One affiliates.) The syndicators hope that boldface names will help retain listeners in a fragmented world of media. As Mr. O’Reilly said in an interview with The Daily News, the Internet turns listeners into producers, creating new competition. “So I have to be compelling enough to pull someone away from his own show — which means I have to give him something he can’t get on his own,” he said. Through the first three quarters of the year, network radio ad spending declined 3.5 percent from the same time in 2007, according to Nielsen. The radio industry, while still a $20 billion business, has been on a downward trajectory for years as consumers have spent less time listening. But talk still has an edge over other formats, Ms. Mijatovic said, because the listeners are engaged with the hosts “and don’t tune out.” The presidential election provoked talk about the relevance of talk radio, especially given John McCain ’s ascendance to the top of the Republican ticket despite adamant opposition from conservative hosts. At the same time, left-wing blogs are acting as a powerful counterweight to the right-wing radio opposition that flourished during the 1990s. In an opinion piece for USA Today this month, the radio host Michael Medved said he cherished the notion “that the last time a young Democrat took over the White House with gauzy visions of change, it produced a ‘Golden Age’ for right-wing talk,” referring to the presidency of Bill Clinton and the ascent of Rush Limbaugh, among others. But he expressed concern that talk shows have cultivated a “niche audience rather than the Republican mainstream.” Shows like Mr. Scarborough’s certainly are not seeking a niche audience, though. And longtime hosts like Mr. Limbaugh know that the incoming Democratic administration represents an opportunity to reassert talk radio’s relevance. The afternoon of Nov. 5, he was already nodding to it. In sports analogies, he told listeners: “I’m not ready to take the field for another game. I’m on the field. We have taken the field, and we’re getting ready. The game is begun.”

Radio
Barack Obama
Rush Limbaugh
Mike Huckabee
Politics
2008 Presidential Election
Rudolph W Giuliani
Fred Dalton Thompson
News media,journalism
Conservatism in the United States


Britain: Details on Royal Nuptials

Abstract: The bride will arrive by car and leave in a carriage, as befits a newly minted princess. Those details and others, like the procession route, emerged Wednesday about the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29 at Westminster Abbey. Prince Charles’s representative said that the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, would marry the couple and that Queen Elizabeth II is to host a reception at Buckingham Palace.

Weddings and Engagements
Great Britain
Prince William of Wales
Middleton Kate


‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Remains While Appeal Is Heard

Abstract: A federal appeals court will allow the military to continue enforcing the law restricting the service of openly gay men and women in the military while a lower court decision that struck the law down as unconstitutional is being appealed. A federal judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips , ruled on Sept. 9 that the “ don’t ask, don’t tell ” law violated the equal protection and First Amendment rights of service members, and wrote that it had a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services. On Oct. 12, s he ordered the military to stop enforcing the law nationwide. The Defense Department asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to allow the status quo to continue as the case made its way through the courts. It has narrowed its own process for dismissing openly gay people under the policy. Last month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit granted a temporary stay of Judge Phillips’s ruling while it considered the matter. On Monday, it released a broader stay. In the order , Judges Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and Stephen S. Trott wrote that they were expressing no opinion on the eventual outcome of the case. But they said the government’s request to block Judge Phillips’s injunction should be granted out of deference to the judgment of Congress and the military, and in light of the fact that decisions by four other federal circuit courts finding the law not unconstitutional were “arguably at odds” with Judge Phillips’s rulings. The third member of the panel, Judge William Fletcher, dissented, saying he would have preferred simply to block the military from dismissing anyone under the policy during the appeals. A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, Tracy Schmaler, said she would have no immediate comment. An official of the organization that brought the suit, the Log Cabin Republicans, said he was disappointed. “Despite this temporary setback, Log Cabin remains confident that we will ultimately prevail on behalf of service members’ constitutional rights,” said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the group. The case has been politically perilous for President Obama, who has said that he opposes the law and that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “will end on my watch.” His Justice Department, following the tradition of defending laws enacted by Congress as presumptively constitutional, has fought efforts to overturn the law and has said the military needs time to develop orderly policies for change. The department also noted that the administration did not support the law “as a matter of policy and strongly believes Congress should repeal it.” In Monday’s decision, the judges said the government had “persuasively” argued that Judge Phillips’s injunction “does not permit sufficient time for such appropriate training to occur, especially for commanders and servicemen serving in active combat.” The House voted to change the policy in May, but in September the Senate voted not to take up the bill. Richard Socarides, who served as a consultant to President Bill Clinton on gay issues, said: “While I’m sure the Justice Department is pleased to have their position affirmed with this temporary stay, the truth is the pressure is on Obama now more than ever to deliver on his promise of legislative appeal before the end of the year. On the eve of a right-leaning electoral landslide in the making, that will be a very tall order.”

United States Defense and Military Forces