Bush Will Use Address to Focus on Alternative Fuels

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - President Bush will renew a call for the development of alternative fuel for automobiles and promote the construction of new nuclear power plants in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, White House officials said Monday. After years of partisan arguments over the administration's efforts to open new parts of the country for oil and gas drilling, Mr. Bush will cast his discussion of nonoil sources of energy as an economic imperative for the United States and a national security necessity to reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The issues have been part of Mr. Bush's agenda for years, but never a top priority. He will use his address to refocus attention on them at a time when oil is selling at more than $68 a barrel, close to its all-time high, and Americans are worried about the cost of fueling their cars and heating their homes. White House officials said the address would contain no expensive policy initiatives at a time of growing deficits and when Congress would be focused on midterm elections. Mr. Bush will also use the address to announce new proposals in health care, fiscal policy and what White House officials are calling "American competitiveness," which includes investing in math and science and job training. White House officials said that Mr. Bush had practiced his speech Friday, Sunday and Monday morning in the White House theater, and that he was on the 23rd draft. They said that it was still being fact-checked, and that there would probably be last-minute changes to include developments on Iran and the Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last week. Mr. Bush hinted at the energy proposals in his address in an interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS News and talked about hybrid cars that use conventional fuels and battery technology as well as the possibilities of other fuels. "I agree with Americans who understand being hooked on foreign oil as an economic problem and a natural security problem," Mr. Bush said. He added that he wanted to advance the development of ethanol, the fuel that is made from corn, as well as the development of fuel made from the waste part of plant crops. "I'm convinced we could do that with a good push, a technological push," Mr. Bush told Mr. Schieffer. The Energy Department has high hopes for such a fuel made from plant waste, like corn leaves and stalks, or from wood or grass, using the cellulose, or woody material, instead of sugars. The technique would reduce the amount of land needed for ethanol and the amount of fossil fuel, like natural gas and diesel fuel, used per gallon of ethanol production. But research is still in the early stages and years away from the marketplace. Mr. Bush is unlikely to emphasize oil and gas exploration in his address. "What's interesting about this discussion is that he isn't talking about oil exploration at home," said one senior official with knowledge of the drafts of the speech. "Nobody wants to get bogged down in those arguments again," he said, a reference to the debate in Washington over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and projects that involve federal lands in the West. The proposals to promote alternative fuels and nuclear power are meant to build on the administration's energy bill, passed by Congress last summer, which requires, for example, that 5 percent of the nation's gasoline pool be ethanol by 2012. "The president is stepping on the gas on these policies," said Daniel Yergin, the author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power," and the founder of a consulting firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "He's increasing the focus, and that means increasing everything from research and development spending to regulatory reform." The president will also highlight recent initiatives that have removed some obstacles to building nuclear power plants in the United States. Mr. Bush has said for years that the nation has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970's, the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. There has since been a shift in opinion in the industry and among some environmentalists toward nuclear power, which is now safer than in the 1970's. The United States now gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, and this year electric companies are showing even more interest, partly because of the high price of natural gas, which a reactor could displace. But so far no company has ordered a new nuclear plant. It is unclear what Mr. Bush will say, if anything, about reducing demand for fuel. In the past, he has not favored any big changes in the regulations that govern automobile fuel efficiency. Mr. Bush is not prepared, officials say, to unveil a major project he hopes to announce in coming months involving the reprocessing of nuclear waste into new fuels, a project that the Japanese and Europeans have long been involved in but that has had mixed success at best. Democrats in the House of Representatives, reacting in advance to Mr. Bush's speech, said they would broadcast a commercial on the Fox News Channel that accuses the president and the Republican Party of favoring the oil, investment and pharmaceutical industries. The commercial shows lawmakers cheering Mr. Bush during earlier State of the Union addresses and asks, "What special interest will the Republican Congress rubber-stamp this time?"

BUSH GEORGE W
SPEECHES AND STATEMENTS
GAS (FUEL)
ATOMIC ENERGY


At Champions Trophy, All Eyes Are on the Skies

Abstract: LONDON — Britain’s notoriously fickle weather looms over the playoff stages of the Champions Trophy and threatens an anticlimactic conclusion. Three of the four matches in the final round of the pool stages, which finished Monday, were shortened by rain. And the forecast calls for rain Thursday in Cardiff, Wales, when India plays Sri Lanka in the second semifinal at Sophia Gardens, and Sunday in Birmingham, when the final is scheduled at Edgbaston Stadium. The forecast was a little better for the first semifinal in London on Wednesday, when England plays South Africa at the Oval, but there was still a chance of thunderstorms. The fear is that a tournament featuring the world’s great players will end instead with most people talking about Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis, the two English statisticians who devised a fair method for deciding rain-affected matches. In the event of complete rainouts, the semifinals will be awarded to the teams that won the preliminary pools, England and India. If the final is rained out, the trophy would be shared as it was in 2002, when India and Sri Lanka were thwarted by South Asian monsoons. Sri Lanka clinched the final semifinal spot Monday, and in the process ended Australia’s hopes of a Champions Trophy hat trick. Sri Lanka did it the tough way, qualifying by winning twice after losing its opening pool match against New Zealand. And it had to battle hard before beating the Australians by 20 runs. The best moment of a miserable tournament for Australia was its last. Its final pair, Clint McKay and Xavier Doherty, came up needing 62 runs for a victory and got more than two-thirds of the way there before McKay was caught and bowled by Sri Lanka’s Tillakaratne Dilshan. Australia, which needed to overtake Sri Lanka’s total of 253 in 29.1 of its 50 allotted six ball overs to advance, had been eliminated by then. But McKay and Doherty were playing for pride, and for Australia’s neighbor, New Zealand, which would have squeezed into the last four if Sri Lanka had lost. “It was great to see them battle it out, and it would have been nice to get a win,” said Australia’s affable captain, George Bailey, who admitted that “once those 29 overs had ticked over, we were resigned to the fact that it was over.” But there was nothing resigned about the way that McKay and Doherty, both specialist bowlers, battled. McKay’s anguish was evident when his effort was ended by Dilshan’s acrobatic catch, which set Sri Lanka’s players cavorting across the Oval’s playing surface. Sri Lanka has played in four of cricket’s last seven global finals and lost them all. “I will be desperate to win, but it is not just about big trophies,” said batsman Mahela Jayawardene, a veteran of all four of those finals. “We have to be desperate to win, whether it is a group match, a semifinal or a final.” Sri Lanka’s opponent, India, is the only team to advance with a perfect record. It was hardly under pressure, much less in danger of defeat, in any of its pool matches. “India are playing really good cricket,” said Jayawardene, who downplayed any significance to Sri Lanka’s victory in a warmup match against India before the tournament. “Its batting looks extremely strong, and we need to focus on that.” If any team is happier than Sri Lanka to have made the final four, it is South Africa. It has made a speciality of finding cruel ways of getting eliminated from global tournaments, usually in rain-affected matches. The way it was eliminated from the 1992 World Cup, after a brief rain delay turned a feasible target into an impossible one, was one of the injustices that led to the adoption of the Duckworth-Lewis system. In 2003, as host, it went out of the World Cup because its players had misread the Duckworth-Lewis calculations issued to them. But this time, South Africa was the beneficiary. Had rain started to fall one ball earlier in Cardiff on Friday night, West Indies would have beaten South Africa under the Duckworth-Lewis formula and progressed instead. That one ball resulted in the West Indian batsman Kieron Pollard being dismissed. It shifted the Duckworth-Lewis calculation so that the match was tied, and South Africa advanced. “I feel bad for West Indies; this is part of the game,” said South Africa captain AB de Villiers, who said his team “needed to be calm, and we were.” Hosts generally do not win cricket’s global titles; India’s World Cup victory in 2011 was the exception. Despite inventing modern limited-overs one-day cricket in 1963, England has yet to win a championship in the format. Fifty years into the format would seem a good time to break that pattern. But, weather permitting, it looks as if South Africa — which has the tournament’s biggest single weapon in paceman Dale Steyn — may be about to break its own tradition of failure in big tournaments and emerge as the champion.

India
Sri Lanka
England
South Africa
Cricket


Lauriane Visart, 27, Belgian Lawyer, Dies in Brussels Attacks

Abstract: Lauriane Visart was intent on using her law degree for the public good. Only four years out of law school, Ms. Visart, 27, had landed a job at the Union Nationale des Mutualités Socialistes, an association of organizations that offer Belgians health insurance to supplement their government-provided benefits. She specialized in public procurement contracts. As part of her legal education at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Ms. Visart participated in a student exchange with Laval University in Quebec. “She was an intelligent student,” recalled Marc Verdussen, a scholar of constitutional law at Université Catholique de Louvain, in a tribute on Facebook. “She was all smiles and bubbly enthusiasm.” Many Belgians got to know Ms. Visart — who was killed in a suicide attack on March 22 at the Maelbeek subway station in Brussels — after her father, Michel, gave a moving interview to the public broadcaster RTBF. “This is a pain, I think, that we cannot describe,” he said, while expressing empathy for the relatives of terrorism in Paris, Tunis and elsewhere. Mr. Visart recounted how he started to worry when his daughter’s colleagues called him on the morning of the attacks, not having heard from her. He tried to call her, and sent her a text message asking her to get in touch. He said it was a relief, in a sense, when the death was confirmed. “Lauriane had extremely strong values, which she defended with great distinction and determination, values such as justice, fairness, equality between the sexes, tolerance,” he said, calling her a person “of great integrity.” Asked if his daughter had a message to convey, Mr. Visart said he would not presume to speak for her. “But I’ll add this — and this is me talking — I think that building walls and exclusion, that fostering hate, that’s heading straight for disaster,” he said. “I have no anger, because first, Lauriane is gone, so now it is to the future that we must look. I say this in all sincerity,” Mr. Visart added. “It’s very hard, but I believe that life must continue.”


A Juicy Red to Chill

Abstract: Unaccountably, Éric Texier’s versatile Rhône portfolio has not yet found a large audience. Thus his basic 2005 Côtes du Rhône is underpriced. It costs $13.49 at Chambers Street Wines, 160 Chambers Street (West Broadway). This winsome, juicy red benefits from a slight chill, perhaps because three grapes in the five-grape blend are white. It will heighten the pleasures of steak au poivre, barbecue, lentil dishes and roasted root vegetables.


Piano Tuner Is Known as a Pro, and a Scold

Abstract: “Between you and me, a job like this is a pain in the neck,” the piano tuner said, surveying the aging Baldwin spinet before him. “It’s for little children and grandma,” he said of the piano, before softening and adding, “but it’s an O.K. instrument.” The tuner, Zinovy Pritsker, arrived at a family’s spacious Upper East Side apartment on Tuesday to get this hand-me-down, used only occasionally by the children, back into playing shape. For a piano tuned so infrequently, today’s work would go only so far, said Mr. Pritsker, 68, who, in his green wool overcoat and with his thick Russian accent and mustache, looks and sounds like the Soviet Army clarinetist that he once was. He carried a bulging leather suitcase full of piano tools. He flipped open the top of the piano and began the laborious loosening and tightening of string after string. He consulted an electronic tuning oscilloscope and tightened wavering, discordant pitches into true tones. The tuning would take two hours, he said, “but if I don’t do a perfect job, I no longer have a job.” In his 40 years working on pianos, Mr. Pritsker has tuned for some of the greatest jazz and classical pianists. He is affordable, at $100 for a typical tuning, but be advised that if your piano is crummy or neglected, the tuning might just come with a serious scolding. In these cases, Mr. Pritsker’s temperament can turn much less pleasant than that of the pianos he works on. For examples, let us turn to Yelp, the business evaluation site. Two of the three reviews for Mr. Pritsker describe his haranguing the customer about their horrendous pianos. One reviewer wrote that Mr. Pritsker — “my cranky Russian” — had tuned his old piano well. “But, oh, the abuse!” the reviewer wrote. “The way you’d lambaste me in your broken English.” Another reviewer described an “hourlong lambasting and barraging of verbal abuse” by Mr. Pritsker and his directive after the job: “Don’t ever call me again to tune a trashy piano!” Asked about the reviews, Mr. Pritsker stood firm. He recalled one of the pianos — “First of all, it was a piece of garbage” — and explained that playing on a bad piano is an insult to one’s God-given talent. A customer will neglect a piano and then expect a tuner to show up and, with a magical wave of the tuning lever, transform the thing into a great instrument, he said. “I’m not a magic man — I’m a technician,” he said. “I always tell it like it is, because I don’t want a bad name.” Mr. Pritsker, who works for many affluent piano owners on the Upper East Side, said even the wealthy and powerful are not spared his dressing down. For example, Mr. Pritsker tuned Lauren Bacall’s upright piano for many years and admonished her constantly to replace it. “But she liked him, because he wouldn’t take any mess from her,” recalled his son, Gene Pritsker, an accomplished composer who lives in Manhattan. Discussing his father’s intolerance for inferior pianos, the son laughingly referred to the “Soup Nazi” character from “Seinfeld.” “Being a perfectionist gets him into trouble sometimes,” he said. Zinovy Pritsker said he grew up in St. Petersburg, went into the Soviet Army at age 14, as a clarinetist in the military band, and went on to play with a respected opera company. But he fell in love with the few jazz recordings he could find behind the Iron Curtain, and a scratchy, reel-to-reel bootleg of Charlie Parker made him want to be a New York jazzman. As a precaution, he learned piano tuning at a large piano refurbishing factory, “so I would not have to drive a cab in New York,” he said. After moving here in 1978, he played in a big band and tuned pianos. He and his wife, Alexandra, raised their son and daughter in the housing projects of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Mr. Pritsker now lives in Coney Island, and still helps run a big band of mostly Russian musicians from Brooklyn. He enjoys his Russian vodka and smokes a pack of Marlboros a day. The couple drive from job to job. Since legal street parking is rare, Ms. Pritsker tends the car while he works. “But he won’t let me drive,” she said. “What can I do? He’s a perfectionist.” Ms. Pritsker sat in their car, double parked, on Tuesday, as Mr. Pritsker tuned the Baldwin. His blunt style comes from his devotion to music, and the art of tuning, he said. There is no room for fudging. “Ninety percent of piano tuners just do it for the money,” he said. “I’m a musician. I can’t do that.”


Rangers Lose Game and Their Cushion in the Race for the Playoffs

Abstract: Henrik Lundqvist called it painful, and it was — a 1-0 defeat to the San Jose Sharks that further imperiled the Rangers’ already precarious playoff situation. “This loss is so painful in so many ways,” Lundqvist said after stopping 28 shots and watching his teammates miss several great chances at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. “So many open nets. So many chances to get back in the game.” It hurt in other areas. An apparent tying goal scored by the Rangers was disallowed. Martin St. Louis, the Rangers’ trade-deadline acquisition from Tampa Bay, continued to make little impact despite 21 minutes of ice time, and now has two assists in seven games with the club. Most important, the Rangers’ grip on a playoff berth slipped continuously throughout the day. At the start of Sunday, the Rangers (36-29-4) had two playoff teams beneath them in the Eastern Conference. At the end of it, they were the last playoff team. Logan Couture’s short-handed goal at 11 minutes 48 seconds of the first period denied Lundqvist his 302nd career win, which would have broken the team record he shares with Mike Richter. San Jose goalie Antti Niemi stopped all 41 Rangers shots he faced, helping to extend his team’s winning streak to six games and pulling the Sharks even with the Anaheim Ducks atop the Pacific Division. The Rangers were also hurt by a number of point-blank saves from Niemi, and by one near miss in the second period when defenseman Ryan McDonagh, set up in front of an open net, could not get off a clean shot against Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Image Sharks goalie Antti Niemi stopped all 41 shots he faced. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times “Playing well doesn’t mean much at this point anymore,” said McDonagh, who also fanned at the side of an open net in the third period. “We could play bad and win a game and be happy with that. Right now, we’re simply not finishing, and we’ve got to pay a higher price to score goals.” One shot Niemi was credited with saving, but which perhaps he really did not, was Carl Hagelin’s wraparound with 3:15 left in the second period. Niemi seemed to have the puck trapped against the post under his right pad, but the play was reviewed. After a long delay, one replay seemed to show the puck disappearing from view as it slid over the goal line. But the judges in Toronto deemed the replay inconclusive, and the call stood: no goal. “It was pretty obvious on the video review that the puck was in, but in all fairness, the refs couldn’t see the puck,” said Hagelin, who scored three goals in the Rangers’ previous game, a 4-2 victory at Winnipeg on Friday. “That was the problem. The camera couldn’t get hold of the puck. It was just unlucky.” As in six of the last eight seasons, the Rangers are clawing for a playoff spot as the games dwindle to a precious few — 13, after the loss to San Jose. On Sunday morning, they were in third place in the Metropolitan Division, the last automatic playoff spot. But Philadelphia won early in the afternoon, knocking the Rangers into fourth place and the lower of two Eastern Conference wild-card spots, 3 points clear of the final playoff berth. Later in the afternoon, Washington won, shaving the Rangers’ margin to 2 points. Then the Rangers lost, surrendering the only goal when Mats Zuccarello lost control of the puck to Couture in the neutral zone during a breakout. Couture went around Brad Richards, the only man back on the power play, and backhanded a shot past Lundqvist. Detroit lost, 4-1, to Chicago on Sunday night, remaining 3 points behind the Rangers. “Right now, it’s about points,” Lundqvist said. “It’s not about playing great against good teams. It’s about finding ways to win, and we didn’t tonight.” The Rangers’ next game is Tuesday at Ottawa, followed by a Friday meeting at Columbus against the Blue Jackets, who are just ahead of them in the division standings. SLAP SHOTS The last time the Rangers met the Sharks was in San Jose on Oct. 8, a 9-2 shellacking in Game 3 of the season, and of Alain Vigneault’s tenure as the coach. “That’s a long time ago,” Vigneault said before Sunday’s game. “To tell you the truth, I try to forget that part of the season. We’re a different team now, playing good hockey.”

Rangers
Henrik Lundqvist
San Jose Sharks
Antti Niemi
Ice hockey


Phone-Hacking Case in Britain Takes Another Turn

Abstract: LONDON — Scotland Yard said Friday that it had sent a new file on allegations of phone hacking by the newspaper The News of the World to the Crown Prosecution Service, which reviews police files for possible criminal prosecutions. The newspaper, one of Britain’s most highly circulated publications, is owned by News International, part of Rupert Murdoch ’s global media empire. The prosecution service issued a terse statement saying, “We will consider the file, and advise the police in due course.” Legal experts said it was impossible to say whether Scotland Yard’s action in forwarding the file was a routine administrative measure or a likely preliminary to criminal charges. The development came eight days after Scotland Yard investigators questioned Andy Coulson , a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron. Mr. Coulson was editor of The News of the World in 2006, when the newspaper’s royal correspondent and a private investigator were arrested and jailed for involvement in accessing cellphone messages meant for members of Queen Elizabeth II’s family. The case was reopened by Scotland Yard in September after The New York Times Magazine published an article outlining how the phone hacking at the London tabloid was more extensive than The News of the World had admitted. The article quoted former employees of the paper as saying that the hacking, though illegal, had been condoned and encouraged by Mr. Coulson and other senior editors. The case has heavy political overtones in Britain, where Mr. Murdoch has broad influence because of his media holdings, which include The Times of London, The Sunday Times and Sky Broadcasting, in addition to The News of the World. With Mr. Coulson now at the heart of Mr. Cameron’s government as media director at 10 Downing Street, the political ramifications have been intensified. Mr. Coulson has said repeatedly that he had no knowledge of the hacking. Scotland Yard officers have also interviewed Sean Hoare, a former reporter for The News of the World, who was quoted in The Times article as saying that Mr. Coulson knew of the hacking. The News of the World dismissed those statements as unreliable, saying it had dismissed him over problems with drinking and drugs. Scotland Yard detectives interviewed Mr. Hoare under criminal caution, meaning that any statement he made could be used against him in a possible prosecution, his lawyer said in a statement. Mr. Coulson, however, was not questioned by the police under criminal caution, according to news reports here.

Wiretapping and Other Eavesdropping Devices and Methods

Scotland Yard (Metropolitan Police Service)


Indiana: Popcorn Maker Drops Chemical Under Scrutiny

Abstract: The Weaver Popcorn Company has switched butter flavorings, replacing a chemical linked to a lung ailment in popcorn plant workers. Weaver, based in Indianapolis, began shipping microwave popcorn a few weeks ago that contain no diacetyl, a chemical under scrutiny because of cases of bronchiolitis obliterans, a life-threatening disease often called popcorn lung. Mike Weaver, the company president, said his workers had experienced no such cases. Mr. Weaver said his company sold about 600 million bags of microwave popcorn a year.


E.U. Scolds Romania for Faltering on Reforms

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Romania was publicly criticized on Tuesday as lacking in commitment to fight corruption as the European Union released a report that also praised Bulgaria for the growing momentum behind its reforms. The document, from the European Commission, detailed how Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, were fighting rampant fraud, corruption and organized crime. In doing so, it outlined some of the reasons behind doubts about whether either country was ready to become part of the European Union, which now has 27 members. While Bulgaria’s government was complemented on its efforts to root out serious problems, Romania was told that its performance revealed “important shortcomings.” “Romania did not show sufficient political commitment,” the report said, “to support and provide direction to the reform process, and demonstrated a degree of unwillingness within the leadership of the judiciary to cooperate and take responsibility.” Until recently, European officials had been more concerned about the failings in Bulgaria. Only last week, a separate report on fraud underlined the fact that Bulgaria remained a serious problem. It showed that one in five E.U. farm subsidy payments was subject to fraud. Bulgaria and Romania have been under special scrutiny since they joined the Union because of concerns over high levels of corruption. The very public criticism of Romania provoked an immediate response from its president, Traian Basescu, who acknowledged shortcomings but said the European Commission had gone too far in saying Romania was not meeting its E.U. obligations. “I think the phrasing is unfair, and therefore I must react and show that Romania is meeting its commitments, that we are determined to see them through,” he said at a news conference, Reuters reported. The main reason for the severity of the commission’s language appears to be its anger at efforts in Romania to undermine the National Integrity Agency, which has been examining conflicts of interest and investigating people with unexplained wealth in Romania. Amendments approved by the Romanian Parliament made it impossible to do the work the agency was set up to do and broke a promise Romania made when it joined the bloc, the commission said. The action on the amendments represents “a significant step back in the fight against corruption and breaches commitments Romania has taken upon accession,” the report said. The report urged Romania to improve its judicial system and increase prosecution of high-level corruption and to improve the public procurement process. Similar recommendations were also made for Bulgaria, though they came accompanied by praise. “For the first time, we see real political will in Bulgaria to push through reform,” said Mark Gray, a spokesman for the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boiko Borisov, described the report on his country as the most positive so far from the commission. “But I also want to see where the criticisms are and prepare a plan to overcome them,” he added, according to Reuters.


American Takes Lead in Spain

Abstract: The veteran American rider Christopher Horner took the overall lead of the Vuelta a España in a mountainous 19th stage won by Joaquim Rodríguez on Friday. Entering the day in second place behind Vincenzo Nibali, Horner pulled away in the final uphill to turn a three-second deficit into a three-second lead with two days to go.

Christopher Horner
Vuelta a Espana
Joaquim Rodriguez
Biking


Italy Supports Pause in NATO Attacks in Libya

Abstract: ROME — Italy ’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said Wednesday that his government would support a suspension of NATO-led attacks in Libya in order to open an aid corridor to bring supplies to the country’s population, which he said was facing “a dramatic humanitarian situation.” But a temporary humanitarian pause in the NATO attacks would need broad approval from NATO itself, as well as from international bodies and from the rebels fighting Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Italian government added. Moreover, such a step “should not interfere with a political solution to the Libyan crisis” based on two conditions — that “Qaddafi must go” and that the country “should remain united and indivisible” — Maurizio Massari, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. Mr. Massari said the idea of allowing a pause in military operations in areas “where the humanitarian situation is today particularly difficult” had been discussed at a meeting in Cairo attended by representatives of the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League. He said that Italy would support any humanitarian initiative agreed to by the four international organizations and by Italy’s NATO partners. With the possibility that NATO mistakenly fired on a house in Tripoli over the weekend, killing as many as nine civilians, Mr. Frattini told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee that it was “opportune to ask for more detailed information” on NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya, “as well as a precise position on the dramatic errors that strike civilians, since this is clearly not NATO’s mission,” the ANSA news agency reported.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


War’s Chaos Steals Congo’s Young by the Millions

Abstract: RUTSHURU, Congo — Children die here from the same ailments that needlessly kill children all over Africa — malaria , diarrhea, measles , malnutrition — but on a vast and cataclysmic scale. The child mortality rate here in the most volatile eastern provinces is almost twice that of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, which already has the world’s highest rate, according to the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit organization that has documented the death toll here in a series of detailed mortality studies from 1998 to 2004. Though Congo’s civil war supposedly ended four years ago, and the nation’s first democratic elections in more than four decades are scheduled for Sunday, the fighting and chaos here continue to kill about 1,250 people each day, mostly from hunger and disease. In all, nearly four million people have died as a result of the conflict since 1998, almost half of them children under the age of 5, according to the International Rescue Committee. The stakes in the election are highest for those far too young to vote, but even the most optimistic candidates and international observers say there is little chance that the voting will stop the dying anytime soon. In a report released in July, Unicef described the death toll in Congo as a “tsunami of death every six months.” “It is fair to say that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the deadliest for children in the past 60 years,” said Richard Brennan, health director of the International Rescue Committee. “No other conflict has had the same levels of excess mortality, and children have borne a disproportionate degree of this burden.” About 30,000 children have been forced into militias, while untold thousands of girls have been raped, according to the Unicef report. Children labor in toxic conditions gold and diamond mines. Orphans choke the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, bedraggled platoons in Congo’s vast army of want. At the hospital here in the troubled province of North Kivu near the Rwandan border, where villages have been ravaged by war, the burden on children is on grim, daily display. One 2-year-old boy, Amuri, struggled to breathe on a hospital bed while doctors and nurses went through the motions — attaching one of the hospital’s scarce pulse-oximeters to his tiny index finger, placing an oxygen mask over his gasping mouth. But they knew it was too late. A few moments later, Amuri’s eyes rolled back in his head, his chest stilled and he was dead. “Bring something for us to wrap the boy,” a nurse called out. His mother, Maria Cheusi, realized that her son’s life had slipped away. He was the third child she would bury. “Mama, mama,” she cried, collapsing to her knees in a contorted pose. “My only son, my only son.” This is how the crisis in Congo kills, with the most banal weapons: a gantlet of hunger and disease that, here in the country’s unstable east, kills one in four children before the age of 5. The day Amuri died of measles, a boy sick with a treatable respiratory infection died, and so did an infant with tetanus, another easily preventable disease. The day before, it was malnutrition and malaria that stole two young lives. Mothers come to the Rutshuru Hospital to give birth, only to return later, sometimes walking for days from distant villages, bearing children weakened by hunger and disease. But too often, as in Amuri’s case, they simply waited too long, kept from health care by a complex web of violence and poverty that binds them to their villages, far from help. Mothers and children here are caught in a conflict that started in 1996, when a rebel group backed by Rwanda and Uganda invaded. In 1997, they overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime dictator of Congo, which he had renamed Zaire. The rebels then fell out with their benefactors in 1998, setting off a sprawling war that became the deadliest conflict since World War II and continues in scattered pockets throughout the east, despite a peace accord that was negotiated four years ago. The consequence is that a child dies in Congo almost every two minutes, mostly from preventable causes. At the hospital, an oxygen mask slipped off a boy named Musa as his jaw moved from side to side. His eyes were tiny slits, his sticklike limbs jerked. His mother, Susanna, said she had taken him to a traditional healer in her village, but when Musa’s health worsened, she finally carried him to the hospital. “I could not leave my other children,” Susanna said, explaining why she waited so long. “There is no one to take care of them.” It was too late for Musa. By the end of the day the boy would draw his last blood-choked breath. International aid organizations say there are simple steps that could help stem the tide of death among Congo’s children. The International Rescue Committee is running a program to train people to recognize and treat three common but potentially deadly diseases — malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea. Even the most illiterate of villagers, with a small amount of training and experience, can administer simple but lifesaving treatment. The program, along with an overall decrease in violence in the past two years, has halved the child mortality rate in some parts of eastern Congo, said Emmanuel d’Harcourt, an expert on child health at the International Rescue Committee. “It is not hopeless, and as security has improved we have chances to really make gains and save lives,” Dr. d’Harcourt said. To better reach those trapped in their villages, the hospital operates an ambulance service. Surprisingly, large swaths of this region have cellphone service, which means health workers at clinics can let doctors at the hospital know when they have a particularly grim case. But that is a mixed blessing — just because the clinic can inform the hospital of a sick child does not mean the ambulance will actually be able to come. The radius in which the ambulance can work serves as a useful yardstick for the security situation in the region. With Rwandan Hutu militiamen crawling through the jungles here, the ambulance must move with caution, no matter how dire the emergency. On a recent afternoon Olivier Caunes, the Doctors Without Borders physician who manages the hospital, set off for the village of Katwiguru, less than an hour’s drive on rutted dirt tracks. Along the way he explained how difficult it was to decide which calls to take, and when it was safe enough to pick up sick children. “Sometimes we get a call and we know from the condition of the patient that there is no way they can make it,” Dr. Caunes said. “So we have to conserve our resources and save those we can.” A few moments later, a man pushing a boy on a bicycle flagged down the ambulance. The boy, 11 years old and slender, had legs thick like elephant trunks. Dr. Caunes pinched his swollen ankles. “Edema,” he said. “And infection. It is not an emergency now, but it will be.” He told the man and the boy to get in. The heavy Chinese bicycle was tied to the roof rack. Arriving in Katwiguru, he was immediately met by mothers pressing sick children on him. One boy screamed and struggled to move his stiff limbs — he would earn a precious spot in the ambulance because Dr. Caunes suspected tetanus. A few others would make the cut: a little girl with malaria, a malnourished boy, a girl with an unexplained fever who seemed listless. In all, four children under the age of 5 got into the ambulance, along with the 11 year-old boy. True to eastern Congo’s grim arithmetic, by the end of the day one of the four children — the boy with tetanus — would be dead. The fate of those left behind — a few children showing signs of malnutrition not yet severe enough and others with unexplained fevers and diarrhea that were not yet life threatening — would have to wait until the ambulance came back. “The hardest part is choosing between the patients,” Dr. Caunes said. “They are all sick, and all need care, but we cannot take them all.” Some of the sickest children here arrive at birth, and they are often the hardest to help. The hospital has no ultrasound machine and no incubators for premature babies. In the maternity ward at the hospital, women lie two and three to a bed, with expectant mothers moaning in the suffocating heat through labor pains, and new mothers cradling their newborns. Esperancia Nyirasafari sat on the operating table awaiting an emergency Caesarean section, her body transmitted her terror wordlessly, with wide eyes that frantically searched the tiles, a fluttering heart that telegraphed fear pulsing in her neck. Bathed in the operating room lights she looked like a careworn Madonna. “O.K., it is time,” said Jean Rijs, a Belgian surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders at the hospital here, his words slicing through the operating room clatter. It was three months too soon for the baby. But it could soon be too late for Esperancia. Dr. Rijs suspected placenta previa, a blocking of the cervix by the placenta that would be dangerous anywhere in the world. Here, in this bare-bones hospital, there was no way to be sure other than to slice her open and deliver the baby. Dr. Rijs cut down the middle of her belly, following a scar from an earlier Caesarean section. He lifted a tiny infant from her womb, a little girl, and held her aloft by her feet. A few heart-stopping moments of silence passed, then the girl let out a tiny wail. He handed the miniature infant to the maternity nurse, who bundled her up and wheeled her away. The operation was messy. Esperancia was losing blood but only a pint of her type was available. Dr. Rijs stitched her up and hoped for the best. Esperancia made it through the night, and so did her daughter, who mewled beside an ancient, rumbling heater. Her tiny lungs struggled to get enough air. She weighed less than two pounds. But Esperancia was not ready to give up on the girl. “I buried one child already,” she said, a protective arm curled around her minuscule, whimpering daughter. “I cannot bury another. She may be small, but she will grow. She will live.” Dr. Rijs, asked what the girl’s chances are, had no such illusions. “Zero,” he said, making an O with his thumb and forefinger. “This operation was to save the mother. That is the best we can hope for.” In Rutshuru, doctors do what they can, hoping to put a finger on the merciless scale of life and death. Sometimes they succeed. Mugisha Massimango, 3½ years old, arrived in critical condition and badly malnourished, carried here by his father, Jean Paul. When he arrived he could not hold his head up on his reed-thin neck. His body was covered in sores caused by malnutrition. His breath was labored and his slender chest heaved. But mercifully for him it was not too late. With the help of a feeding tube and medicine, he was sitting upright, even smiling. His fifth birthday was still 18 months away, but for the moment he seemed likely to beat Congo’s grim odds. “This one we can save,” said Dr. Rose Ange, the pediatrician in charge of the children’s ward. “He is going to make it.”

Malaria
Congo (Formerly Zaire)
Medicine and Health
Children and Youth


U.N. Deal on Syrian Arms Is Milestone After Years of Inertia

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have agreed on a resolution that will require Syria to give up its chemical weapons, but there will be no automatic penalties if the Syrians fail to comply, officials said Thursday. The agreement, hammered out after days of back-room negotiations, is a compromise among the United States, its allies and Russia about how to enforce the resolution, which would eliminate Syria’s chemical arms program. But the deal, when approved by the 15 members of the Security Council, would amount to the most significant international diplomatic initiative of the Syrian civil war. It would also be a remarkable turn for President Obama, who had been pushing for a military strike on Syria just a few weeks ago before accepting a Russian proposal to have Syria give up its chemical arsenal. Western diplomats said the resolution would be legally binding and would stipulate that if Syria failed to abide by the terms, the Security Council would take measures under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter , the strongest form of a council resolution. Such measures could include economic sanctions or even military action. But before any action could be taken, the issue would have to go back for further deliberations by the Security Council, on which Russia, like the other permanent members, holds a veto. “This resolution makes clear there will be consequences for noncompliance,” Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday night. In an earlier Twitter message, Ms. Power said the resolution established a “new norm” against the use of chemical weapons. Mark Lyall Grant, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in another post that the resolution agreed to by the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — the five permanent members of the Security Council — would be “binding and enforceable.” The diplomatic breakthrough on Syria came as Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said progress had been made toward a resolution of the nuclear dispute between his country and the West, suggesting it could happen in a year. Mr. Zarif spoke optimistically after emerging from what he called a “very substantive, businesslike” meeting at the United Nations with representatives of the big powers. He also met face to face with Secretary of State John Kerry in one of the highest-level discussions between the estranged countries in years. Image Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, after talks with Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives of China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. Mr. Zarif said progress had been made toward a resolution of the nuclear issue with the West. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The entire 15-member Security Council began to discuss the Syria resolution agreed to by the permanent members of the Security Council on Thursday evening. A vote on the resolution could come as early as Friday, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters here Thursday night, as long as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, votes on its own Syria measure early Friday. A formal vote on the measure will not take place until the international organization that monitors compliance with the international treaty banning chemical weapons drafts procedures for inspecting and eliminating Syria’s vast arsenal of poison gas. The Syria resolution was a major milestone for the United Nations after years of largely unproductive discussions in the Security Council over the civil war in Syria, which has killed more than 100,000. Just three weeks ago, the Obama administration grew openly frustrated at the inability to win Russian support for military action against the government of President Bashar al-Assad after a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,400 people. Ms. Power complained then, “There is no viable path forward in this Security Council.” Now, the council has agreed to a provision in the resolution stating that “the use of chemical weapons anywhere constitutes a threat to international peace and security.” Syria, the resolution states, “shall not use, develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical weapons to other states or nonstate actors.” The measure notes that “in the event of noncompliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic,” the Security Council can decide to “impose measures under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter.” While Western diplomats were praising the new resolution, much will depend on how it is ultimately put into effect in a nation that is caught in a bloody civil war. According to the resolution, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the watchdog organization that polices the international treaty banning chemical weapons, or the secretary general of the United Nations would report any violations to the Security Council. The council would then discuss what measures to impose for Syria’s noncompliance. American officials have said they were pleasantly surprised by the completeness of the Syrian government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program, which was presented on Friday. Image Catherine Ashton, the chief foreign policy official of the European Union, after the meeting with Mr. Zarif on Thursday. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times But far more formidable challenges lie ahead. By November, international monitors are to inspect all of Syria’s declared sites, and equipment to produce and mix chemical weapons is to be destroyed, according to a so-called framework agreement that was negotiated by the United States and Russia this month and that is to be enforced by the new Security Council resolution. Syria’s entire arsenal is to be eliminated by the middle of 2014, according to that accord, a process that Mr. Assad has said could take a year. Skeptics worry that the process may become drawn out, as it was during the 1990s, when the United Nations sought to inspect Saddam Hussein’s arsenal in Iraq. Syrian compliance, they fear, may be only partial, and the Russians, they worry, may use their veto power in the Security Council to buy the Assad government more time. Proponents of the measure say Russia may be cooperative because it shares the West’s concern about maintaining zero tolerance for chemical weapons use. The diplomatic maneuvering over Syria came amid another drama at the United Nations. Mr. Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, emerged smiling from a meeting with six world powers late Thursday afternoon as American and European officials announced that negotiations on “details” would be worked out in Geneva next month. The meeting, led by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, took place with the five permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany. Mr. Kerry’s separate meeting with Mr. Zarif lasted 30 minutes. Ms. Ashton said she envisioned an “ambitious timetable” of next steps that would be discussed when the group meets in Geneva next month. The details, she said, will address what Iran needs to do, how soon, and how the international community can verify whether Iran is keeping its word. “Twelve months is a good time frame to think about implementation on the ground,” she said. “It was a substantial meeting,” she told reporters here, “a good atmosphere, energetic.” Her attempts in the past to negotiate a settlement with Iran, including a European proposal for a nuclear deal, had not been fruitful. She said Thursday that Iran could choose to respond to her last proposal or submit a new one. “The purpose of today was to set the tone and the framework,” she said. Mr. Zarif said Iran hoped to reach a détente “in a timely fashion” that would preserve its right to enrich uranium and convince the world that it is for civilian use. “Now we see if we can match our positive words with serious deeds,” he said. He said the “endgame” would be the lifting of all sanctions “within a short period of time.”

Syria
Russia
Iran
Mohammad Javad Zarif
UN Security Council
Biological and Chemical Warfare
Arab Spring
UN
Nuclear weapon


Even Workers Surprised by Success of Factory Sit-In

Abstract: CHICAGO — The word came just after lunch on Dec. 2 in the cafeteria of Republic Windows and Doors. A company official told assembled workers that their plant on this city’s North Side, which had operated for more than four decades, would be closed in just three days. There was a murmur of shock, then anger, in the drab room lined with snack machines. Some women cried. But a few of the factory’s union leaders had been anticipating this moment. Several weeks before, they had noticed that equipment had disappeared from the plant, and they began tracing it to a nearby rail yard. And so, in secret, they had been discussing a bold but potentially dangerous plan: occupying the factory if it closed. By the time their six-day sit-in ended on Wednesday night, the 240 laid-off workers at this previously anonymous 125,000-square-foot plant had become national symbols of worker discontent amid the layoffs sweeping the country. Civil rights workers compared them to Rosa Parks. But all the workers wanted, they said, was what they deserved under the law: 60 days of severance pay and earned vacation time. And to their surprise, their drastic action worked. Late Wednesday, two major banks agreed to lend the company enough money to give the workers what they asked for. “In the environment of this economic crisis, we felt we were obligated to fight for our money,” Armando Robles, a maintenance worker and president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represented the workers, said in Spanish. The reverberations of the workers’ victory are likely to be felt for months as plants continue to close. Bob Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted organized labor would be emboldened by the workers’ success. “If you combine some palpable street anger with organizational resources in a changing political mood,” he said, “you can begin to see more of these sort of riskier, militant adventures, and they’re more likely to succeed.” The tale of how this small band of workers came to embody the welter of emotions in the country’s economic downturn is flecked with plot turns from the deepening recession, growing anger over the Wall Street bailout and difficult business calculations. The workers were not aware, for example, that Republic’s owners had quietly set up a new company, Echo Windows LLC, incorporated on Nov. 18, according to records with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. And Echo had bought a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa. Company officials in Iowa declined to comment, but Mary Lou Friedman, the human resources manager at Echo, said in a telephone interview that the factory had 102 employees, all nonunion. And at the last minute of negotiations, according to Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, who helped moderate talks to resolve the standoff, and union officials, Republic’s chief executive, Richard Gillman, demanded that any new bank loan to help the employees also cover the lease of several of his cars — a 2007 BMW 350xi and a 2002 Mercedes S500 are among those registered to company addresses — as well as eight weeks of his salary, at $225,000 a year. The demand held up the settlement, which was reached only after Mr. Gillman agreed to back down. (Mr. Gillman said Friday that he had sought the money to offset a large bonus in 2007 that he had chosen not to accept.) In many ways, however, Republic was an unlikely setting for a worker uprising. Many workers interviewed, including some who had been at the plant for more than three decades, said they considered it a decent place to work. It was a mostly Hispanic work force, with some blacks. Some earned over $40,000 a year, including overtime, pulling them into the middle class and enabling them to set up 401(k) retirement accounts and buy modest homes. But after Mr. Gillman took over as owner in 2006, there were several rounds of layoffs, and the number of employees fell to about 240, from more than 500. The company had been affected by the declining housing market, and Mr. Gillman said it had also been affected by Chicago’s higher production costs. He said he had hoped to salvage the business by buying another manufacturer in Ohio, but was turned down by Bank of America. “This has been the worst week of my life,” he said. “I know many of those workers at Republic personally, and I put 34 years of my life into that business, and all my money, too. No stone was left unturned in our effort to save Republic.” By mid-October, the company had exhausted its $5 million line of credit with Bank of America, and the bank was refusing to lend the company any more money. “We declined to provide an additional loan because of the company’s dire financial conditions,” said Julie Westermann, a bank spokeswoman. Bank officials said Republic filed for bankruptcy on Friday. In mid-November, during a late-night vigil to see where the missing equipment was going, Mark Meinster, 35, one of the factory’s union organizers, broached the possibility of a sit-in with Mr. Robles, the president of the local, if the plant should be closed. Mr. Robles, 38, who had worked at the factory for eight years, said he was excited by the idea but also mulled the potential repercussions. “We’d basically be trespassing on private property,” he said. “We might get arrested.” Nevertheless, Mr. Robles told Mr. Meinster that he believed most workers would participate. In the coming days, the idea would take root among other union leaders. On Tuesday, Dec. 2, Barry Dubin, the company’s chief operating officer, delivered the final verdict to workers, telling them they would probably not be getting severance pay or be paid for accrued vacation days. Union leaders quickly moved to hash out details of an occupation. “We knew keeping the windows in the warehouse was a bargaining chip,” said Melvin Maclin, a groove cutter and vice president of the local. While some workers picketed Bank of America, others began attending to their own financial worries, with many liquidating their 401(k)’s. Others cast worried eyes on their meager savings accounts. On Friday, union officials met with company officers and learned the workers’ health insurance was being cut off. Later, with employees gathered in the cafeteria, Mr. Robles asked for a show of hands of how many would be willing to stay at the factory. All hands went up, with shouts of, “Sí, se puede!” — or “Yes, we can!” “I ain’t got no other choice,” Alexis McCoy, 32, a driver’s assistant, said later. “I have a newborn. I have to take care of my family.” Local politicians discouraged the police from arresting the workers. Exasperated company officials decided not to press the matter as the news media began arriving in droves. The workers organized themselves into three shifts and set up committees in charge of cleanup, security and safety. A sign was taped to a cafeteria wall banning alcohol, drugs and smoking. Negotiations involving the company, Bank of America and union officials began late Monday afternoon at the bank’s offices downtown. At the root of much of the discussions was the federal law requiring employees to be given 60 days’ notice, or that amount of severance, when plants close. Bank officials said it was not their responsibility as lenders to ensure that the company made these payments. They said later that they had been discussing closing the plant with the company as far back as July, giving it plenty of time to fulfill its obligations to its workers. Nevertheless, union officials argued that Bank of America had received billions of taxpayer dollars in the recent federal bailout, meant to free up credit to companies like Republic. “We never made the argument you have a legal responsibility,” said Mr. Gutierrez, who described bank officials as willing to be helpful almost immediately. “We said, ‘Will you make a corporate responsibility decision?’ ” Bank of America’s offer to lend the company roughly $1.35 million came on Tuesday, and additional help came from William M. Daley, the brother of Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase, which owned 40 percent of the window company and agreed to lend an additional $400,000. Mr. Gillman’s demands, however, became a major sticking point. “I’m not going to describe to you the words that were used when those issues were brought up,” Mr. Gutierrez said. Eventually, the parties agreed that the workers would be the only ones to benefit. They would be paid severance and for vacation, and receive two months’ health coverage. The company owners also agreed to come up with $114,000 to cover the payroll for their last week of work. When union negotiators returned to the factory on Wednesday evening with the agreement, the workers approved it unanimously. They emerged from the factory chanting, “Yes, we did!”

Republic Windows and Doors
Organized Labor
Layoffs and Job Reductions
Finances
Shutdowns (Institutional)
Factories and Industrial Plants
Chicago (Ill)


New York State Attorney General Takes Control of Inquiry Into Fatal Police Shooting

Abstract: The New York State attorney general’s office has taken control of an inquiry into the fatal shooting on Tuesday of an unarmed man in a wooded area in Westchester County by a New York City police officer. It is the first time the office of Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general, has done so in a police shooting since an executive order in July that requires his office to begin independent reviews of certain categories of civilian killings by police officers and, if the evidence warrants, present the evidence to a special grand jury. The inquiry began even before an autopsy of the slain man, Miguel Espinal, 36, was completed on Wednesday, or the two officers involved in the case had even been interviewed. Soon after the shooting, representatives from Mr. Schneiderman’s office arrived at the scene, off the Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers, to oversee the earliest gathering of evidence. Mr. Schneiderman’s office declined to say whether the officers had been interviewed as of Wednesday evening. “We will work with our partners in law enforcement to conduct a full and fair investigation, Eric Soufer, a spokesman for the attorney general, said. Westchester County officials said they had not yet received autopsy results from the medical examiner’s office. The New York Police Department will also conduct its own internal inquiry into the shooting. The initial police investigation was led by Westchester County’s public safety department. The department chief, George Longworth, is the brother of a New York City police union lawyer, Greg Longworth, who was an aide to Commissioner William J. Bratton when he first led the department in the 1990s. The executive order, issued by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, was a direct response to an outcry over the past year after fatal shootings and other deaths of civilians at the hands of police officers that did not result in indictments as a result of grand jury proceedings overseen by local prosecutors. The order itself made reference to the public concern “that such incidents cannot be prosecuted at the local level without conflict or bias, or the public perception of conflict or bias.” The shooting of Mr. Espinal represents the first big test of the new approach. The attorney general has begun one previous investigation , which is continuing, into the death of a 42-year-old woman, Raynette Turner, who was found dead in a Mount Vernon holding cell after she was arrested for stealing crab legs from a wholesale food store. Image Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general. His office will lead the inquiry into the killing of Mr. Espinal, who the police say was unarmed when he was shot. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Mr. Espinal died, the police said, from a single shot fired by a uniformed officer, Garthlette James, in a densely wooded park after a car chase and pursuit on foot. The initial police investigation did not reveal any witnesses to the shooting itself, which the New York City police said in a statement came “during a struggle” in which “one officer’s firearm discharged.” The confrontation began in the Bronx, after Officer James and his partner, Romeo Francis, tried to pull over a gray 2009 Nissan Z. The Nissan fled and the officers followed it into Westchester County. After losing sight of the car on the Saw Mill River Parkway, the police said, the officers next saw it coming toward them, traveling against traffic. The Nissan crashed into three cars and Mr. Espinal ran into the woods of Tibbetts Brook Park. A second man in the car, Akeem Smith, 25, was injured in the crash and arrested on the parkway, officials said. By Wednesday morning, Alvin L. Bragg Jr., who is leading the attorney general’s new unit, and two other lawyers had already been to the scene, along with several investigators, Mr. Soufer said. In all, the unit has roughly 15 lawyers and 20 investigators. The governor’s order requires the new unit to look at police killings of unarmed civilians, or killings where serious questions exist over whether the slain civilian was armed. If Mr. Schneiderman’s office decides there is enough evidence to pursue criminal charges in the Yonkers shooting, it would impanel a special grand jury to hear evidence, taking the matter out of the hands of Janet DiFiore, the county prosecutor whom Mr. Cuomo, a Westchester resident, recently nominated to replace Jonathan Lippman as chief judge of the State Court of Appeals. One critical piece of evidence will be Mr. Espinal’s autopsy, which could shed light on how close he was to Officer James when he was shot. The details of their confrontation, including whether Officer Francis saw any physical struggle leading up to the shooting, remained unclear on Wednesday. At the White Plains home of Officer James, who has been on the job in New York City for just under four years, two local police officers arrived at midday and told reporters he did not want to be bothered. Farther north, at a two-story house in Pine Bush, a woman who answered the door holding a baby said that her husband, Officer Francis, an eight-year veteran, was not home. She declined to speak further. A small, white windmill spun in the front yard.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Supermarket Explosion in Kabul Kills at Least 9

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Friday at a supermarket in the capital frequented by foreigners. They said the strike was aimed at killing the head of the private security company Blackwater. Employees of Blackwater, now called Xe Services, were in the area at the time, but neither they nor anyone they were protecting were killed or wounded, said Harry W. Clark, an adviser to the company. Instead the attack killed at least nine other people, including five foreign women, four of them Filipinos, said Afghan and Western officials, and at least one child. While the attack failed in its objective, it indicated a disconcerting level of Taliban surveillance even in Kabul, as well as the degree to which the company and other foreign security firms have become the object of Afghan animosity. The company has contracts in Afghanistan with the American government and has come to symbolize the heavily armed mercenary armies that work for foreigners, but particularly for Americans, in war zones. The Taliban singled out the company because “they are invaders and, secondly, they are protecting the invaders,” a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said after the bombing. The attack destroyed the entire first floor of the store, the Finest Supermarket, in a neighborhood heavily populated by diplomats and foreigners. Flames and smoke poured out of the building as people screamed and the police tried to cordon off the area, which is on a traffic circle about 100 yards from the perimeter wall of the British Embassy. The Canadian and Pakistani Embassies, guesthouses, and a number of residences used by foreign organizations are also nearby. In addition to the foreigners, four Afghans were also killed, said a senior Afghan security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Seventeen people were wounded. Western security contractors were known to frequent the store, sometimes wearing bulletproof vests. Their imposing appearance contrasted sharply with the lightly clad Afghans who throng outside selling cellphone cards. The store was also regularly used by some of the many Filipinos who have come to Afghanistan to work as contractors in food services and other areas helping NATO troops. Three people were detained at the scene, two after they were seen watching the store just before the explosion and videotaping it, police officials said in conversations overheard by a reporter from The New York Times. More than an hour after the blast, bodies were still being pulled from the rubble, including a small child wrapped in a makeshift cover of newspapers and a tarp. His smoke-blackened arm hung lifeless as a fireman loaded the body into a waiting truck. A boy covered in dust cried as he stood outside asking the police to help him get inside. “My sister and cousin went in to buy stuff,” said the boy, Mujebullah, 11. Mujebullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, said he had been inside the store when the bomb exploded. His sister was there to buy a pacifier for her infant son, whom she had left with relatives at home. Suddenly there was a huge explosion, shelves fell forward, the lights flickered and went dark. As foreign shoppers started to push their way out of the chaos, Mujebullah realized that his sister and cousin were missing. As one women’s mangled body was pulled out, a police offer asked him, “Is this your sister?” The tearful boy looked on, confused. “I can’t tell,” he said. Sometime later, as another woman’s body was pulled out, the boy’s father said, “This is her,” not indicating if it was his daughter or niece, one of whom was still missing. “This is your security!” the man wailed to the crowd as rescue workers and the police looked on. “You can’t even provide security in Kabul; how can you secure the whole country?” Attacks in the capital were frequent occurrences in 2008 and 2009, but they declined sharply last year. Coalition forces have cautiously credited the decline to their increased operations and surveillance across the eastern border with Pakistan, putting pressure on insurgent groups, including the Haqqani Network. The group is believed to have been responsible for some of the biggest attacks in Kabul, including bombings of the Indian Embassy, which killed more than 70 people in separate attacks in 2008 and 2009 . But insurgent inroads into this city appear to have picked up in the past several weeks. On Jan. 12 , a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up alongside a bus carrying Afghan intelligence officers, killing 2 people and wounding 36. A week earlier, a bomb hidden in a rice sack downtown killed a policeman and wounded two civilians. And on Dec. 19 , two militants wearing suicide vests and armed with machine guns and grenades attacked a bus carrying Afghan National Army officers, killing five and wounding nine.

Supermarkets
Afghanistan
Kabul (Afghanistan)
Bombs and Explosives
Afghanistan War (2001- )
International Relations


Dylann Roof Himself Rejects Best Defense Against Execution

Abstract: Twenty-two pages into the hand-scribbled journal found in Dylann S. Roof’s car — after the assertions of black inferiority, the lamentations over white powerlessness, the longing for a race war — comes an incongruous declaration. “I want state that I am morally opposed to psychology,” wrote the young white supremacist who would murder nine black worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015. “It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont.” Mr. Roof, who plans to represent himself when the penalty phase of his federal capital trial begins on Tuesday, apparently is devoted enough to that proposition (or delusion, as some maintain) to stake his life on it. Although a defense based on his psychological capacity might be his best opportunity to avoid execution, he seems steadfastly committed to preventing any public examination of his mental state or background. “I will not be calling mental health experts or presenting mental health evidence,” he wrote to Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court on Dec. 16, a day after a jury took only two hours to find him guilty of 33 counts , including hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations. At a hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Roof told the judge that he planned to make an opening statement but not call witnesses or present evidence on his behalf. The testimony presented by prosecutors during the guilt phase of Mr. Roof’s trial detailed with gruesome precision how he had plotted and executed the massacre during a Wednesday night Bible study in the church’s fellowship hall. It was less satisfying in revealing why he had done it. With his choice to sideline his legal team and represent himself, the second phase — when the same jury of nine whites and three blacks will decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison — may prove little different. Death penalty experts said it was exceedingly rare for capital defendants to represent themselves after allowing lawyers to handle the initial part of a case. Mr. Roof, who also faces a death penalty trial in state court, has not publicly explained his reasoning. But legal filings strongly suggest a split with his court-appointed defenders about whether to argue that his rampage resulted from mental illness. Mr. Roof’s lead lawyer, David I. Bruck , tried repeatedly to plant that notion during the guilt phase, knowing it might be his only chance. Because evidence of mitigating factors is supposed to be reserved for the penalty phase, Judge Gergel allowed him little leeway. In his closing argument, while acknowledging Mr. Roof’s guilt, Mr. Bruck managed to tell the jury that Mr. Roof subscribed to “the mad idea that he can make things better by massacring the most virtuous, kind and gentle people he could ever have found.” Mr. Bruck seeded his speech with words like “abnormal,” “irrationality,” “senselessness,” “delusional,” “obsession” and “perseveration,” a psychiatric term referring to the uncontrollable repetition of a particular response. Mr. Bruck, one of the country’s most experienced death penalty litigators, portrayed his 22-year-old client as a loner whose most meaningful relationship seemed to be with his cat; who staged hundreds of photographs of himself with no sign of friends; whose racial hatred was ignited by internet searches and not personal experience; who could not pinpoint during his confession to the F.B.I. how many he had killed, how long he had spent at the church or even what month it was; who had no escape plan and left suicide notes to his parents. “There was something in him that made him feel that he had to do it,” Mr. Bruck said, “and that is as much as he knows.” After receiving the results of a psychiatric examination in November, Judge Gergel found Mr. Roof competent to stand trial — meaning that he was capable of understanding the proceedings and assisting in his defense. At Mr. Bruck’s request, the judge scheduled a second competency hearing for Monday, but he signaled last week that he saw no reason to delay the penalty phase. The judge has repeatedly warned Mr. Roof against representing himself, including immediately after the verdicts, when he called it “a bad decision” and urged him to “fully appreciate the implications.” The warnings have had no discernible effect on Mr. Roof, who has until Tuesday to reverse his decision to relegate his lawyers to standby counsel. That status allows Mr. Bruck and his team to offer guidance, but not to question witnesses or make objections. Prosecutors plan a procession of grief, perhaps calling dozens of members of victims’ families to testify about the impact of the killings. The prosecutors are also likely to re-emphasize the considerable evidence of Mr. Roof’s premeditation and clearly articulated racial intent. Death penalty experts said the absence of mental health evidence to mitigate those aggravating factors could be decisive. “If the jury views Roof as evil and having made a knowing, intelligent choice to kill these innocent, churchgoing people in order to foment racial hatred, they are much more likely to impose the death penalty than if they believe him to be a young and severely mentally ill person who acted under delusional racist beliefs,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group. The Dylann Roof Trial: The Evidence Prosecutors and defense lawyers are introducing scores of exhibits in the federal trial of Dylann S. Roof, the self-avowed white supremacist who is accused of killing nine black people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Although the judge has forbidden the release of some exhibits, such as certain crime scene photographs, he has allowed many to be made public beyond the courtroom. It would take only one holdout on the jury, which consists of 10 women and two men, to spare Mr. Roof from lethal injection. Judge Gergel has ruled that the jurors can be told that prosecutors had rejected Mr. Roof’s offer, through Mr. Bruck, to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Many in Charleston were relieved by Mr. Roof’s conviction in light of the mistrial that had been declared 10 days earlier in the state murder prosecution of Michael T. Slager, the white North Charleston policeman whose fatal shooting of a black motorist in 2015 was captured on video. Even those who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, like the Rev. Joseph A. Darby, a presiding elder for the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, said it would seem bewildering for Mr. Roof to escape capital punishment. “That could very well be the end of the death penalty in America, because if there was ever justification for killing anybody, this is the case,” Mr. Darby said. There is no consensus among members of the victims’ families about Mr. Roof’s fate. When the Justice Department elected in May to seek the death penalty, it acted against the wishes of many and of the two women he had spared. Five relatives offered Mr. Roof a measure of forgiveness at a remarkable bond hearing two days after the shootings. But by law, those who testify now are prohibited from telling the jury what penalty they think he should receive. “It’s going to be extremely emotional, powerful testimony,” said John H. Blume, a death penalty expert who teaches at Cornell Law School, “and that emotion could implicitly and misleadingly indicate to the jury that some of these people want the death penalty when it’s not the case.” If Mr. Roof is sentenced to death, it will be the first time a jury has done so in a prosecution involving the federal hate crimes law , according to experts on capital cases. That statute, which was broadened in 2009, does not carry a potential death sentence, but Mr. Roof was also convicted of other crimes that do. A death sentence most likely would give way to a yearslong series of appeals (in which Mr. Roof could not represent himself). Among the issues could be the composition of the jury, given that Mr. Roof acted rather passively as his own lawyer when it was selected; the withholding of evidence on mental health and other mitigating factors; and Mr. Roof’s competence to stand trial and to represent himself. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Indiana v. Edwards that trial judges could insist on legal representation for defendants who are “competent enough to stand trial but who suffer from severe mental illness to the point where they are not competent to conduct trial proceedings by themselves.” Mr. Bruck and his team have argued in court filings that Mr. Roof, a ninth-grade dropout, “has no right to represent himself in a capital trial, and even less so at the penalty phase.” But in the 41 years since the Supreme Court recognized a Sixth Amendment right of self-representation for criminal defendants, in Faretta v. California , the court has never specifically narrowed that holding for death penalty trials, despite their complexity. Some death penalty opponents hope that Mr. Roof’s defiance will prompt the appellate courts to adopt a more rigorous standard for capital defendants. “Whether or not they’re legally insane, there’s certainly something mentally wrong with them,” said Peter D. Greenspun, a lawyer who was ousted by a defendant, John A. Muhammad, for part of a capital murder trial for the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area. He added, “To have a person like that make this kind of decision, it really calls into question, from a philosophical point of view, whether that person is in a position to understand their civil liberties.” Mr. Muhammad, who ultimately reinstated Mr. Greenspun, was sentenced to death in 2003 and executed six years later. “It’s something that Roof will likely regret,” Mr. Greenspun predicted of his choice to represent himself. “At some point down the road, he’s going to say, ‘What did I do?’ And there’s no going back.”


’80s Plot to Hit Giuliani? Mob Experts Doubt It

Abstract: For reasons that ought to be obvious, the leaders of the city’s organized crime families have never shown much fondness for federal prosecutors. And with a crime-fighter like Rudolph W. Giuliani — who boasts of applying particular zeal to organized crime cases while winning more than 4,000 convictions as the United States attorney in Manhattan from 1983 to 1989 — the Mafia might not even mind seeing him dead. But while a discussion along those lines was revealed during testimony in the trial of a retired F.B.I. supervisor this week, the proposition might not have been as simple as gathering the five family bosses for a show of hands on that ballot measure. “The Sicilian Mafia killed Italian judicial magistrates and police officers, and the American Mafia didn’t do that,” Andrew McCarthy, an organized crime prosecutor who worked with Mr. Giuliani, said in a telephone interview. “In the United States, their general M.O. was that killing prosecutors and cops could do nothing but bring harm.” To be sure, law enforcement was and is a dangerous vocation. In a 2006 report, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 40 percent of state prosecutors had received threats in the previous year. Three percent had been assaulted, as had 6 percent of their assistants. In cities with more than a million people, 84 percent of state prosecutors had received threats. The report did not address threats to federal prosecutors. A spokeswoman for the federal Department of Justice did not return calls, and a spokeswoman for the United States attorney in Manhattan declined to comment for this article. But the plot against Mr. Giuliani bears some scrutiny. It was revealed on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn during the murder trial of R. Lindley DeVecchio, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor. State prosecutors have accused him of revealing confidential information to his prized informer, helping to set up four killings. Amid Mr. DeVecchio’s voluminous investigative records, prosecutors found a typewritten note referring to a tip from his informer, Gregory Scarpa Sr. The note said that the family bosses were split 3 to 2 against the proposition of killing Mr. Giuliani, with the Gambino boss John J. Gotti and the Colombo boss Carmine Persico on the losing end. As news of the plot was reported yesterday, Mr. Giuliani seemed to take it in stride. As he runs for the Republican presidential nomination, his reputation for fighting crime in New York has been central to his campaign. In an interview on Mike Gallagher’s syndicated radio program, he joked about the bosses’ decision. “That was one vote I won, I guess,” Mr. Giuliani said, according to a transcript provided by his campaign. He added that threats had been common, saying: “I get some of them — they overlap a little, I get some of them confused. This specific one I probably had confused with another one.” But the plot, as described, drew some skepticism from experts on the Mafia, including former law enforcement officials. For one thing, assassinating a prosecutor would go against decades of tradition. American Mafia leaders have generally treated their organizations as businesses primarily concerned with making money. Killing law enforcement officials, in this view, would only draw unwanted scrutiny. In fact, mobsters who kill prosecutors have a history of ending up dead themselves. Back in the 1930s, the legendary Bronx gangster Arthur S. Flegenheimer, known as Dutch Schultz, was shot dead after plotting to kill Thomas E. Dewey, a state rackets prosecutor who went on to be governor. More recently, two associates of the Luchese crime family pleaded guilty in 1997 to the 1989 murder of Costabile Farace, a prime suspect in the killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. As Mr. McCarthy pointed out, if any prosecutor could prompt the Mafia to make an exception, it was Mr. Giuliani. He pursued simultaneous cases against all five families and their leaders, then boasted of his success. “This has been the Mafia’s worst year,” Mr. Giuliani said in 1987. “We keep making gains and they keep getting moved backward. If we take back the labor unions, the legitimate businesses, eventually they become just another street gang. Spiritually, psychologically, they’ve always been just a street gang.” But the details of the reported plot are curious. According to Mr. DeVecchio’s notes, Mr. Scarpa said the discussion took place around September 1986. At the time, Mr. Scarpa was a lowly soldier in the Colombo family, not likely to be invited to meetings of the top bosses. His source of information is generally surmised to be Alphonse Persico, who later engaged in a bloody struggle for control of the family. Mr. Persico and Mr. Gotti, the two supposed yes voters, were not great friends: Mr. Gotti supported a rival faction in the Colombo war. And in his own many trials, Mr. Gotti was not known to threaten prosecutors or judges. “I’m pretty sure he’s right on when he says Carmine Persico wanted to kill Rudy Giuliani,” said Jerry Capeci, who writes the authoritative Mafia Web site ganglandnews.com . “I find it difficult to believe that John Gotti would have gone along with the proposal.” In fact, the idea of any collaboration among the bosses in late 1986 strains credulity, experts said. At the time, Mr. Gotti had just reached the top of the Gambino family after organizing the killing of the boss, Paul Castellano, an act that could have impeded normal diplomacy for a while. But that was all back in the days before Mr. Giuliani’s prosecutions turned the mobsters against one another. Either way, his colleagues were not surprised to learn he had kept it to himself all these years. “As somebody who lives with threats, I can tell you the ethic of law enforcement is that we don’t talk about it,” Mr. McCarthy said. “The purpose of a threat is to intimidate, but if you talk about it, you kind of give them what they want.”

Organized Crime
Giuliani Rudolph W
Crime and Criminals
Presidential Election of 2008


Education Cuts Met With Strike in Spain

Abstract: MADRID — It was no mistake that university campuses proliferated during Spain ’s decade-long, construction-led boom years. Education and health care have long been two of the most prized — and seemingly sacred — parts of the European social model favored by Spain. Even as the economic crisis has spread through Europe, Spaniards had shielded social spending in those areas from the consequences. But now, with the government struggling to clean up public finances, education and health care spending have moved front and center of the battle over what, after all the austerity measures are put in place, will be left of the vaunted welfare state many Spaniards have also come to associate with European Union membership. On Tuesday, Spanish teachers went on strike in cities across the country by the thousands, seeking to defend the education sector against a package of spending cuts — €10 billion, or $12.7 billion — approved last week by Parliament as part of the government’s plan to meet its more stringent budget targets. The strike was the first ever coordinated by Spain’s five main teachers’ unions, across the whole of the state education sector, from nursery school to university. While the unions claimed that 80 percent joined the strike, the government put the level at 19.4 percent. Students held protests as well in Spain’s main cities, with a group of them also briefly blocking two highways around Barcelona during the morning rush hour. In Seville, students plan to occupy the city’s historic university building for several days to protest against the spending cuts. “Education is absolutely the last thing that should get squeezed because it’s absurd to try to make amends for the spending mistakes of the past by jeopardizing the prospects of the next generation,” said Ignacio Valero, an economics professor at the Complutense University, who stayed away from work and planned to join thousands of others on a protest march in central Madrid late Tuesday afternoon. For its part, the government insists that its education overhaul is not just a cost-cutting exercise but also an attempt to raise efficiency and quality. Regional governments oversee both education and health spending, and during the construction boom several new university campuses were often among their flagship projects. As a result, Spain has 79 universities, spread across 236 campuses and offering 2,413 different undergraduate degrees as well as 2,758 masters’ degrees. José Ignacio Wert, Spain’s education minister, recently compared unfavorably such statistics with those of California, which has about 10 million fewer inhabitants and by his count only 10 universities. “The problem of our education system is not fundamentally a problem of resources,” Mr. Wert told a parliamentary committee. “We are facing a situation of stagnation, if not regression in our education system, to which we must respond.” To back his arguments, Mr. Wert also noted that despite its huge spending on university infrastructure, Spain does not have a single university among the world’s top 150, according to the Shanghai ranking of world universities. Instead, the university dropout rate in Spain is 30 percent — compared with the European average of 16 percent — which he estimated to represent a lost investment in human capital worth €2.96 billion a year. In April, Mr. Wert set up a committee of independent advisers to help raise university standards. Yet he has also lambasted “the complete lack of flexibility” of Spanish students, even in the midst of another recession that has pushed youth unemployment above 50 percent. Only 7 percent of Spanish students move out of their home region to pursue university studies, compared with 68 percent in the United States and 52 percent in Britain. Teachers were also protesting against the government’s plan to extend their working hours and fill more classrooms, with schools encouraged to raise the number of pupils per class by 20 percent in the coming academic year in order to lower running costs. State universities will be allowed to raise fees by as much as 66 percent, a move that some education specialists are warning will shut out young people who have recently chosen to extend their studies rather than join the unemployment lines. “If young people cannot afford to study anymore, what else are they meant to be doing while this crisis drags on and makes it impossible for them to find work?” said María Angeles Márquez, 55, a civil servant in the national Education Ministry who said she fully supported the latest protests. Spain’s privately financed schools and universities stayed open on Tuesday. But there, too, some employees said that they were firmly opposed to allowing the government to cut for the first time state spending on education and health. Meanwhile, the health sector is facing even deeper cuts than education. This month, lawmakers approved a new payment system that will require patients to cover a larger portion of the cost of their state-subsidized medicine, depending on their income level. Pensioners will also have to pay as much as 10 percent of drugs whose cost had previously been fully covered by social security. “Access to education and health is among the basic rights of citizens and as such should be untouchable, whatever the state of the economy,” said José San Julián, the director of La Salle San Rafael, a Catholic school that is partly financed by the Madrid regional government and has 750 pupils. “If our politicians really have to make more cuts, they should start by lowering their own salaries.”

Strikes
Spain
Education (Secondary)
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Medicine and Health
Budgets and Budgeting
Organized Labor
Education (K-12)
Teachers and School Employees


For Hyperactive Children, a Special Place

Abstract: JESSE FEDERBUSH is a 6-year-old first grader with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In past Septembers — beginning with nursery school at age 3 — his school year did not start well. “Transitions are very hard for kids with A.D.H.D.,” said his mom, Lynn. “Jesse is a good boy and knows the rules, but in the heat of the moment he couldn’t control himself.” He’d blurt things out, his hands wandered, he got in trouble for pushing. “Play dates were a disaster,” Mrs. Federbush said. But this year, he’s off to a good start, is happy and likes school, and his mother thinks a big part of it is the day camp he attended for eight weeks in July and August. Run by New York University’s Child Study Center, the 11-year-old camp for hyperactive children uses a strict, highly structured behavioral model. In the course of a day, points are awarded for every little good thing the kids do (100 points for following rules at swimming; 25 for ignoring Joey screaming at arts and crafts; 10 for making eye contact in a soccer huddle), and points are subtracted for inappropriate behavior (20 for teasing; 20 for verbal disrespect; 10 for interrupting). So structured is the N.Y.U. Summer Program for Kids that Jesse’s group of 10 boys and one girl had an adult scorekeeper with them every minute of every eight-hour day, recording every point earned or lost for each child, writing up the results in a daily report card for parents, and entering the data into a computer at day’s end. And so, Mrs. Federbush knows, on July 31, Day 27 of camp, Jesse earned 2,905 good behavior points, including 390 at swimming, 390 at soccer, 360 at lunch, 380 during morning transitions between activities, but only 340 for afternoon transitions. If his point total were high enough by week’s end, he would get to go on a field trip; last summer, he behaved well enough to make four of six trips. The camp, located at the State University of New York Maritime College, in the Bronx, involves parents through regular Wednesday-night seminars. And last week, Mrs. Federbush went for a post-camp review to prepare her to work with the first-grade teacher at Jesse’s public school in Westchester. “The regular camp Jesse went to the year before, he was constantly in trouble,” Mrs. Federbush said. “The beauty of this camp — it catches them being good.” The N.Y.U. Summer Program is of one of about a dozen run by universities nationwide — including the original model at the State University at Buffalo. The camp grew out of a landmark federal study on hyperactivity by the National Institute of Mental Health in the early 1990s. In that study, 579 children ages 7 to 9 with A.D.H.D. were divided into four treatment groups: 1. those who received only medication; 2. those who went through an intensive behavioral program, including an eight-week A.D.H.D. camp, but took no meds; 3. those who took meds and went through a behavioral program, including the camp; 4. those whose parents arranged treatment in their local communities. The children were compared for attention span, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Groups 2 and 4 — the ones with no meds, and community care — scored poorest. There was no difference in terms of the three variables when it came to the two top-scoring options: meds alone versus the summer camp with meds. However, when results were examined more closely, researchers found advantages to supplementing medication with the camp experience, according to Howard Abikoff, the director of the N.Y.U. Institute for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity and Behavior Disorders. On average, kids who went through the behavioral treatment, including attending the camp, needed 7 fewer milligrams of medication a day — 32 milligrams of Ritalin compared with 39 milligrams for those on medication only. And that, says Dr. Abikoff, can mean fewer side effects like loss of appetite and sleep problems. Also, he said, when parents were asked to rate how their children were doing, 12 percent more children who had attended the camp received an excellent rating than those relying only on meds. “Not a huge difference, but not inconsequential,” said Dr. Abikoff. Roughly 5 percent of children — about two million in the United States — have an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, with boys outnumbering girls five to one. At the N.Y.U. camp, 43 of the 48 children were boys. About 90 percent (including Jesse) were on medication. A camp full of hyperactive kids takes lots of supervision; the children to staff ratio is 1.5 to 1, making it expensive: $9,300 for eight weeks. Twenty percent get scholarships. The children come from the city, New York’s suburbs and beyond. One camper’s family moved from Florida to New York for this summer. A camp where counselors are constantly rating children’s behavior (“Jesse, that’s minus 10 for interrupting”) could feel like Marine boot camp (“Jesse, you need to stop singing, or that’s minus 20”) in the wrong hands (“Jesse, you just lost 20 points for burping”). So N.Y.U. officials work hard at finding the right counselors. This year, they interviewed 320 people — mostly recent college grads — for 30 positions. “Tone is so important,” said Karen Fleiss, director of the camp and an assistant professor of child psychology at N.Y.U.. “It has to be done with a warm attitude of caring.” Which is why counselors spend a month in training before camp begins. (“Jesse, I love the way you’re raising your hand, 10 points for contributing and another 10 for validating Joey.”) The camp is so structured, Dr. Fleiss said, because hyperactive kids do best in a predictable environment where rules are clearly set out. At school, she said, they are often in trouble. At camp, they are constantly praised for doing the right thing no matter how small (“Jesse, what did Joey just say? Right, 10 points for paying attention”). The aim is to internalize doing right. It doesn’t always work. Some are so difficult, they are assigned an individual counselor all day. In Jesse’s group was another 6-year-old boy, with a dual diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder and A.D.H.D. Often, he was so out of control he had to be picked up and taken for a timeout. During one stretch he needed several 10-minute timeouts for refusing to take part in swimming, throwing out his lunch, cursing a counselor and jumping on kids. And through it all, his one-on-one counselor, Jill Neuman, hunted for reasons to praise him. (“Good job, you’ve served the last 30 seconds of your time out beautifully.”) “Medication helps,” said Dr. Abikoff, “but for children on the far end of the spectrum, treatment like the camp is often not enough.” For Mrs. Federbush — whose two older children do not have these issues — bringing the model home has helped. If Jesse gets dressed for school, gets in his P.J.’s in the evening and goes to bed nicely, she said, he gets to play Wii for 20 minutes. “He wants to please,” she said. At a young age, he is learning to help himself. At camp, they’re taught “positive self-talk,” which Jesse described this way: “If somebody does something you don’t like, you say something nice about yourself and you don’t say it out loud and that makes you feel better and you aren’t angry with the person.” As his mother said, not bad for 6.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder