Macedonia’s Political Parties Reach Deal to End Crisis

Abstract: SKOPJE, Macedonia — The four largest political parties in Macedonia have agreed in principle to early elections under a deal brokered by the European Union and the United States intended to resolve a political crisis that has consumed the tiny Balkan nation. Macedonia, which became independent in 1991 as part of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, has most recently been in the news for its harsh treatment of migrants passing through from Greece to reach central and western Europe. But the country, which has about 2.1 million people, has been agitated by a wiretapping scandal that emerged early last year. The scandal revealed widespread fraud in the electoral system, government manipulation of the media and the judiciary and improper surveillance of as many as 20,000 people, including journalists, judges, foreign ambassadors and activists. Under an agreement reached a year ago, the leaders of the four parties decided to allow a special prosecutor to investigate the wiretapping and, if necessary, bring criminal charges. But President Gjorge Ivanov threatened to scuttle that agreement in April by issuing a blanket pardon to anyone involved in the scandal . Thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Skopje, the capital, and other cities. On Wednesday evening, Johannes Hahn , the European Union commissioner who handles the bloc’s relations with southeastern Europe, and Jess L. Baily , the United States ambassador to Macedonia, announced a deal that in some ways resembles the last one. The deal sets an Aug. 31 deadline for the government to undertake measures to ensure the editorial independence of the public broadcaster; to clear out the electoral rolls; and to allow the special prosecutor to do his job. If those conditions are met, a caretaker government will be appointed, followed three months later by elections, most likely in December. “It’s our goal to make sure that what has been agreed upon will be actually implemented,” said Radmila Sekerinska, an official from the Social Democratic Union, or S.D.S.M., the largest opposition party. For Macedonia’s governing conservative party — the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party — the deal is an opportunity to claim a legitimate mandate; the social democrats had threatened to boycott the last two scheduled elections. In the country’s last elections, in April 2014, the conservatives won a plurality of the parliamentary vote, while Mr. Ivanov was re-elected with a slim majority. “We don’t want to schedule a date for early elections before making sure that S.D.S.M. is not going to guarantee its participation,” said Nikola Todorov, an official from the governing party. “We want to make sure that the crisis will end and that the people can freely decide whom are they going to give their support to.” Demijan Hadzi-Angelkovski, a member of the Protestiram movement, which has been organizing mass protests since April, greeted the new agreement with cautious optimism. “We must follow its implementation closely, to make sure that the crisis will indeed end,” he said.


Where the Bets Are Made at Aqueduct

Abstract: The mystique of thoroughbred racing (the bonnets, the juleps, “My Old Kentucky Home”) has always been a function of obscuring its roots in gambling, of playing down the sordid act of betting in favor of the cleaner, classier aspects of the track. While the jockeys and the horses always get attention, it’s the wagering, of course, that keeps the operation in the black. At Mutuel Bay 3, for instance, a cheerless betting parlor at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, it’s all about the money, as it should be. The room itself is no more than a stall with wooden partitions and a cheap linoleum floor, but upward of a quarter-million dollars — much of it in sweaty singles — is spent here nearly every afternoon. “In essence, it’s a bank,” said Les Savin, a silver-haired supervisor of gambling operations and, aptly enough, a former vice president at the Dime Savings Bank of New York. “There’s a cash flow, there are customers. The money comes in, and the money goes out.” While this is no doubt true, Bay 3, unlike most banks, is a dingy little space, roughly hewn and completely unadorned. From the front, it gives the familiar view of gambling clerks at open, sectioned windows. From behind, however, it’s a stripped-down Hollywood stage set: the walls are bare; the beams show in the ceiling; the wiring lies exposed. All the better, then, to concentrate on business, which begins each morning when the mini-dealer, a sort of in-house manager, draws the day’s “load” from the “box room” in the basement of the track. The mini-dealer doles out cash to each of the several clerks. The bundles are in increments of $850: a pack of twenties ($500), a pack of fives ($250), a pack of singles ($50) and a supply of quarters and dimes. A clerk’s view of the world is unimpressive: human beings from the rib cage to the eyebrows, spewing numbers in a ceaseless muttered string: “Four to place and show on 10.” “Ten across the board on 4.” “Trifecta box on 3, 5, 7.” The language here is coded and arcane and seems to grow more desperate at post time. The cycle is repeated every 28 minutes, before each race, from noon until 4 p.m. As clerks are not allowed to keep more than $5,000 in their tills (except for the large-bet window, with a $10,000 limit), they frequently “skim their boxes” to the mini-dealer during the day. At closing time, which is more or less 4:30, the money is recounted and the process reversed: earnings are sealed in plastic, embellished with a signature and sent back to the box room below. With so much cash involved — last year, Aqueduct had a handle of $86 million over 83 days — there are bound to be “those who try to beat you,” as Mr. Savin says. Common swindles include the “intentional miscall,” in which bettors try to change their horses after a race has started, and the classic “bait and switch,” in which a $10 bill, perhaps, is shown but a single is actually paid. For the most part, though, the money rolls in, pleasantly unimpeded. “A bank,” Mr. Savin said, gesticulating proudly. “Tellers, deposits, even withdrawals.” Except, it was suggested, that at this bank, one can easily lose one’s money. “Well,” he added with a frown, “that happens everywhere these days.”


In Fiji, Bainimarama’s Detour on the Road to Democracy

Abstract: SUVA, Fiji — Fiji’s military ruler sat behind an imposing wooden desk, deep in thought. This was the most attention he had given to any of the questions posed to him in the interview thus far, and he seemed to be struggling to find an answer. Finally, after a lengthy pause, he said that he could think of only one mistake regarding his seizure of power more than six years ago. “I wish I had done this in 2001,” he said. Fiji, a former British colony made up of about 330 islands in the central Pacific Ocean, has been without an elected government since Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, also known as Frank Bainimarama, took power in a 2006 coup. It was the country’s fourth putsch since independence in 1970, and he insisted that military rule was the only way to ensure an end to the spasms of political and ethnic violence that have so often destabilized the country. Mr. Bainimarama, who now eschews uniforms for civilian dress, carries the title of prime minister and describes his tenure as a cooling-off period before an eventual return to democracy. Mr. Bainimarama seemed to be keeping his word when, in January, he lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since he abrogated the Constitution in 2009. He then went further in March by announcing public consultations on the drafting of a new Constitution and a return to free elections by 2014, moves that were praised by Australia, the United States and other countries. But before the ink was dry on the order lifting emergency rule, Mr. Bainimarama had issued sweeping new public order regulations, which many say contain provisions harsher than the laws they replaced. Censors may no longer stalk newsrooms to vet stories before they are published, but editors still risk heavy fines and prison terms if what they publish is deemed objectionable. Political parties and labor unions can hold meetings, but they must first secure permission from the police. The effect has been chilling, as the cautious optimism surrounding the lifting of emergency law seems to have given way to plain old caution. Newspapers must print the names of their writers and photographers to reveal who is responsible for an article. “If you miss a byline or a photo caption you can face a $100,000 fine” — the equivalent of $55,000 — “or two years in jail. That should tell you all you need to know,” said a local journalist, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution against his news organization. “I think we’re in for a tough ride,” he said. A tough ride is a good description of recent Fijian history. In 2000, during the country’s third coup, ethnic Fijian nationalists held the country’s first Indo-Fijian prime minister hostage in Parliament for 56 days. Mr. Bainimarama narrowly escaped an assassination attempt during that episode, which saw the eruption of ethnic riots in the heart of the capital, Suva. It was in an attempt to quell that unrest, in 2006, that the military stepped in and removed the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. Mr. Bainimarama accused him of corruption and inflaming the racial tensions between native Fijians and the descendents of Indians brought in by the British to serve as cheap labor in the sugarcane fields. Members of the current government, and in particular its powerful attorney general, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, seethe over what they consider a lack of international appreciation for their accomplishments, which they say include one of the longest periods of relative economic and political stability in the country’s postindependence history. Instead, the British-led Commonwealth of Nations suspended Fiji’s membership in 2009, while New Zealand and Australia have each imposed travel, financial and other sanctions against those involved in the 2006 coup. Sitting in his spacious office in central Suva as the setting sun turned the bay outside his window from gold to deep red, Mr. Sayed-Khaiyum, who is Indo-Fijian, insisted that any criticism of the new regulations that took effect earlier this year is based on either a misunderstanding or the entrenched biases of neocolonialists. Eventually, he said, people will see that while the new regulations contain strong law and order provisions, the government has no intention of using them unless absolutely necessary. “The proof is in the eating of the pudding,” he said. Such reassurances, however, are cold comfort for critics of the government and those who claim to have suffered abuse at its hands. International rights monitors like Amnesty International have blasted Fiji for its human rights record, which allegedly includes the torture of prisoners and the arbitrary detention of activists and government opponents. Nowhere is the sense of fear this has engendered more evident than in the behavior of Fiji’s journalists. Not one would consent to be interviewed on the record, even though more than six months had passed since Fiji reinstated a free press. The only reporter who had agreed to speak for attribution sent an e-mail just days later asking that his name not be used out of fear of retribution. Although several Western diplomats said they were encouraged by the government’s promises to hold elections and write a new Constitution, they nonetheless expressed serious concerns that the credibility of its pledges to return to democracy was being undermined by the public order regulations. “Most of us don’t like the POAD” — the Public Order (Amendment) Decree, said a Western diplomat based in Suva, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocol. “It is certainly a vehicle they could use to silence dissent.” Netani Rika is not used to keeping silent. He is the former editor in chief of The Fiji Times, the country’s oldest newspaper, which was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s company, News Corp., until it was forced by the Fijian government to sell to a local owner in 2009. Mr. Rika, who in the early days of martial law defied the censors by leaving whole columns of his newspaper blank instead of running censored copy, left the job in 2010 after soldiers threw gasoline bombs at his home. No one has been charged over the incident, which he said had followed a telephone call from Mr. Bainimarama asking him to back off his criticisms of the government. “I’m not optimistic,” Mr. Rika said, sitting at the bar in the Defense Club, a colonial-era institution in Suva that serves as a gathering point for the capital’s elite. “A lot of what they’ve done and will do leading up to the 2014 elections is going to be superficial. “Unless some good people stand up, we’ll be left with those army guys who will morph into politicians,” he said. “And then they’ll be in power for 10 more years.” The question of who will run in the elections is a critical one. Mr. Qarase, who was ousted as prime minister in 2006, faces charges of corruption and abuse of office that many say are politically motivated. Mahendra Chaudhry, the prime minister held hostage in 2000, also faces corruption charges stemming from his time in office. Both may be disqualified from running for office if convicted, which would eliminate the two most popular alternatives to Mr. Bainimarama, who in the interview on May 29 would neither rule out nor commit himself to a run for office. Even if the elections proceed smoothly, Mr. Chaudhry said in an interview in his hilltop offices overlooking Suva, there is no guarantee they will result in the end of Fiji’s so-called “coup culture.” There are always scores that need to be settled. “Maybe this time what we need to take a look at,” he said, “is the role of the military.”

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Bombings Kill 23 in Sri Lanka

Abstract: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Bombs ripped through two passenger buses in Sri Lanka on Friday, killing 23 people and raising the specter of an increasing cycle of attacks on civilian targets. The government blamed the Tamil Tiger rebels for the attacks, which also wounded 67 people. The bombers struck two days after a bombing in Colombo, the capital, also aimed at civilians. The government attributed that blast, too, to the rebels, who have made such attacks a hallmark of their 25-year fight against Sri Lanka’s government. “This could be the start of a worsening cycle of targeting civilians,” said Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, an independent activist group. He said the attacks were probably a “tit-for-tat kind of retaliation” by the rebels, who accuse the military of killing ethnic minority Tamil civilians with mines and air raids. “The government must also be careful with its own operations,” he said. The government denies intentionally killing civilians. Rebels did not comment Friday on the attacks, but if they are responsible it would indicate an ability to strike deep inside government territory despite a maze of security checkpoints around the capital and its suburbs. The first bomb was detonated along a roadside about 7:35 a.m. in Moratuwa, a Colombo suburb, as a passenger bus went by, said a military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. It killed 21 people and wounded 47. A curfew, imposed in the area to allow security forces to search for suspected rebels, was lifted later in the day, he said. The explosion shattered the windows of the vehicle and peppered it with shrapnel. Hours later, a bomb tore through a bus in the hills of central Sri Lanka, east of the capital, killing two passengers and wounding 20 other people, said a police spokesman, Ranjith Gunasekara. After the first attack, President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for Sri Lankans to “remain vigilant against the forces of terror.” The rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for the Tamil minority. More than 70,000 people have been killed.

Sri Lanka
Bombs and Explosives
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam


Penguins Convert Penalty Shot in Topping Red Wings

Abstract: Chris Conner scored on Pittsburgh’s first successful penalty shot since 2007, Jordan Staal added his third goal in three games and the Sidney Crosby -less Penguins beat the injury-thinned Detroit Red Wings , 4-1, on Tuesday night. Conner made it 2-0 by going from his forehand to his backup to beat backup goalie Joey MacDonald between the pads 11 minutes 29 seconds into the first period, about eight minutes after Staal scored. He was awarded the penalty shot after being hooked by Kris Draper. “I kind of knew what I was going to do the whole time going in; you just have to execute and make it work,” Conner said. Pittsburgh had been 0 for 12 on penalty shots since Jarkko Ruutu scored against Toronto on Jan. 20, 2007, coincidentally with the same move that Conner used. Two of the N.H.L.’s best teams met for only the third time since facing each other in the 2008 and 2009 Stanley Cup finals — they split a pair of games last season — but a number of top names were missing. Crosby, the N.H.L.’s leading scorer, sat out a sixth consecutive game with a concussion. The Red Wings were without goalies Jimmy Howard and Chris Osgood, forwards Tomas Holmstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Danny Cleary and defenseman Brad Stuart. The All-Star goalie Marc-Andre Fleury made 36 saves. “Sloppy plays and mistakes and giveaways and the puck ended up in our net. It is disappointing,” said Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, who was selected an All-Star captain earlier in the day along with Carolina Hurricanes forward Eric Staal. FLYERS 3, CAPITALS 2 Andrej Meszaros scored 1:07 into overtime to bail out host Philadelphia after it blew a 2-0 third-period lead. The Flyers won only hours after they gave General Manager Paul Holmgren a three-year contract extension. LIGHTNING 3, BLUE JACKETS 2 Ryan Malone scored the only goal of a shootout in the fourth round and Steven Stamkos had two goals during regulation for host Tampa Bay. Lightning goalie Dwayne Roloson had 28 saves in regulation, and 4 more in the shootout for his 200th N.H.L. win. SABRES 2, CANADIENS 1 Jason Pominville scored a power-play goal 1:09 into overtime lifting host Buffalo. Montreal played much of the game minus forwards Max Pacioretty and Michael Cammalleri, who were injured. BRUINS 3, HURRICANES 2 Milan Lucic scored with 8:11 left and Tim Thomas made a season-high 43 saves to lead visiting Boston. AVALANCHE 4, CANUCKS 3 David Jones scored two goals, including the winner 2:52 into overtime, and Colorado snapped a four-game skid against Vancouver. PREDATORS 5, COYOTES 2 J. P. Dumont got his first hat trick in more than nine years and Nashville handed Phoenix its second home loss in as many days. IN OTHER GAMES Erik Johnson scored the go-ahead goal on a third-period shot that slowly trickled between goalie Jonathan Quick’s pads in St. Louis’s 2-1 victory over visiting Los Angeles. ... Bobby Ryan scored in the shootout to give Anaheim a 2-1 win in Ottawa.

Detroit Red Wings
Hockey Ice
Pittsburgh Penguins
Crosby Sidney
Staal Jared


Roddick Loses in Davis Cup

Abstract: LA JOLLA, Calif., Feb. 10 - Luck does not seem to be with Andy Roddick lately, and his first Davis Cup match of 2006 Friday was another example. Roddick, ranked third in the world, won the first two sets Friday afternoon against 82nd-ranked Andrei Pavel of Romania in their first-round match at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club before becoming sick. In the fourth set, Roddick received treatment for cramping in his right wrist after losing his serve in the opening game. Two games later, and again early in the fifth set, Roddick vomited on the court. Roddick put in a valiant effort in trying to reel in the opening point of the United States' series, or tie, against Romania, but he gave way to Pavel, 6-7 (2), 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-2, 6-4. The match lasted 3 hours 43 minutes. "My stomach was just in knots," said Roddick, who is 17-7 in Davis Cup singles action. "I felt fine physically, but then my stomach started giving me problems and I vomited. I felt like I had no fuel left after that. I just felt depleted." James Blake saved the day for the United States in the second match, beating Victor Hanescu, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-2. Mike and Bob Bryan will play doubles Saturday, probably against Pavel and Hanescu. After his match, Roddick walked off the court as the Davis Cup captain, Patrick McEnroe, put his arm around his shoulder. Roddick then received treatment, which included an intravenous drip. Pavel, acknowledging that Roddick became ill at the start of the fourth set, said he was happy about his victory, but did not take too much pleasure in beating an opponent who was obviously hurting. "It's about making the first point against the United States, one of the biggest nations in tennis," he said, adding, "Winning from 2-0 down, this is going to go in my record for sure, and in my good memories." Roddick stayed the course in the match, even though he was often forced to bend over in exhaustion after rallies in the final set. Roddick even did well enough in the fifth set to break Pavel when he was serving for the match at 5-2. After holding off two match points at 5-4, Roddick surrendered on the third match point, sinking a backhand into the bottom of the net. Roddick had a match point in the tie breaker in the third set, but Pavel took a risk on a defensive forehand lob that sailed over Roddick's 6-foot-2 frame. "I think that tie break was the key of the match," said Pavel, who improved his Davis Cup singles record to 28-11. "After that, he got a little bit tired. I saw that his body wasn't fit anymore."

DAVIS CUP
TENNIS
PAVEL ANDREI
RODDICK ANDY


Despite Odds, Cities Race to Bet on Biotech

Abstract: KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — Where a textile mill once drove the economy of this blue-collar town northeast of Charlotte, an imposing neoclassical complex is rising, filled with fine art, Italian marble and multimillion-dollar laboratory equipment. Three buildings, one topped by a giant dome, form the beginnings of what has been nicknamed the Biopolis, a research campus dedicated to biotechnology. At $500 million and counting, the Biopolis, officially called the North Carolina Research Campus , is a product of a national race to attract the biotechnology industry, a current grail of economic development. Cities like Shreveport, La., and Huntsville, Ala., are also gambling millions in taxpayer dollars on if-we-build-it-they-will-come research parks and wet laboratories, which hold the promise of low-pollution workplaces and high salaries. At a recent global biotech convention in Atlanta, 27 states, including Hawaii and Oklahoma, paid as much as $100,000 each to entice companies on the exhibition floor. All this for a highly risky industry that has turned a profit only one year in the past four decades. Skeptics cite two major problems with the race for biotech. First, the industry is highly concentrated in established epicenters like Boston, San Diego and San Francisco, which offer not just scientific talent but also executives who know how to steer drugs through the arduous approval process. “Most of these states probably don’t stand much of a chance to develop a viable biotech industry,” said Gary P. Pisano, a Harvard Business School professor and the author of “Science Business: The Promise, the Reality and the Future of Biotech.” “You can always get a few top people,” Mr. Pisano said, “but you need a lot of critical mass.” Second, biotech is a relatively tiny industry with a lengthy product-development process, and even in its largest clusters offers only a fraction of the jobs of traditional manufacturing. In the United States, only 43 biotechnology companies employ more than 1,000 people, according to BioAbility, a consulting firm in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. There is no guarantee that if a blockbuster drug materialized, it would be manufactured and marketed in the same place it was developed and tested. Joseph Cortright, an economist who has studied biotechnology clusters, gave the example of a promising anti-leukemia compound developed at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, where Mr. Cortright is based. “The economic impact in the Portland area is zero because the rights to manufacture and market this drug were owned already by Novartis,” Mr. Cortright said. But the race continues. The state of Florida and Palm Beach County used $510 million as bait for a research institute that will employ 545 people (and, officials project, spur the creation of 46,000 more jobs over 15 years). New York City has invested more than $45 million in bioscience infrastructure, and Kentucky matches federal research grants dollar for dollar. Cities like Shreveport, where public and private money have built the InterTech Science Park , remain steadfastly optimistic, though a biotechnology manufacturing center at the park was occupied for only six months in 2001 before the tenant went under. The building remains an asset, said Dennis Lower, the park director. The private sector’s willingness to invest in it helped persuade the state to invest $15 million in a second building. “Right now we have four companies that are interested in that building,” Mr. Lower said. “Three times in the last three years we have almost had a tenant in that building.” Some economic development officials say the value of a biotech cluster cannot be calculated in dollars alone. Larry Pelton, president of the Economic Development Council of St. Lucie County, Fla., said the millions that the state spent attracting the Scripps Research Institute to Palm Beach County started a chain reaction that brought a branch of the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies to Port St. Lucie. The institute received state and local incentives worth $32 million, plus a building and land. That helped St. Lucie County, which has grown quickly and needed more hospital beds, persuade Martin Memorial Health Systems to build a 300-bed hospital, Mr. Pelton said. The county’s research institutes have also enhanced science and math education and spurred creation of a charter school , he said. To build a viable biotech cluster, some areas have expanded the traditional definition of the industry beyond genetics to biofuels , agriculture, medical devices — even bioterrorism research. A good strategy capitalizes on a city’s existing strength, said Patrick Kelly, the vice president of state government relations for the Biotechnology Industry Organization , whether it is the presence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, a highly educated work force in Huntsville, or experience running clinical trials in the Research Triangle. In Kannapolis, the focus is on food and nutrition , not because of any expertise, but because of David H. Murdock, the health-obsessed billionaire who first envisioned the Biopolis. To attract seven of the state’s universities, including Duke and the University of North Carolina, Mr. Murdock, a real estate developer and owner of the Dole Food Company, persuaded the state to invest almost $30 million a year in rent and operating expenses. Local officials approved the sale of $168 million in bonds to pay for infrastructure improvements around the 350-acre campus — up considerably from an original estimate of $7 million, said John D. Day, the Cabarrus County manager. Mr. Murdock says he has spent half a billion so far on buildings, recruiting scientists, and equipment that includes the most powerful nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in the United States, which can help to study molecules. Though the buildings are still half-empty and construction is slower than anticipated, the campus has attracted senior scientists like Mary Ann Lila, who left the University of Illinois to head the Plants for Human Health Institute , a North Carolina State University effort. Dr. Lila says she has had inquiries from scientists worldwide. But some critics say the Biopolis is largely a real estate venture that can only increase the value of hundreds of additional acres Mr. Murdock owns in the area. “It’s a single large developer, with substantial deep pockets, with a very specific agenda that doesn’t necessarily align with the interests of the state,” said Doug Baker, the chief executive officer of Kryosphere , a Research Triangle company that stores biological specimens. Mr. Baker, whose company is considering expanding to Kannapolis, said the Biopolis could end up as an attractive, saleable asset for Mr. Murdock at the expense of other biotechnology clusters across the state. “It’s a very large mall,” Mr. Baker said. “I don’t see the organic qualities.”

Biotechnology
Economic Conditions and Trends
Local Government
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Medicine and Health
Science and Technology


Lawyers Protest Deportation of Illegal Immigrants to Haiti

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - Dozens of lawyers around the country joined forces on Thursday to protest the Department of Homeland Security's decision to continue deporting illegal immigrants to Haiti, an island nation plagued by political instability, violence and human rights violations. The lawyers filed motions in dozens of cases, asking immigration judges to stop the deportations because their clients' lives may be threatened. The State Department has warned Americans against traveling to Haiti, citing the lack of an effective police force and the presence of armed gangs engaged in kidnappings and violent crime. The lawyers, who held news conferences in Miami, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, said they were acting because homeland security officials had not given Haitians temporary protected status, which temporarily prevents the deportation of immigrants who cannot return to their native countries because of armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions. Immigrants from Burundi, El Salvador, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan have temporary protected status. The immigration lawyers involved in Thursday's protest said the situation in Haiti had been far worse than in those three Central American countries since a violent uprising and intense pressure by the United States forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004. The United Nations says it has documented widespread cases of unlawful arrests and has received credible reports of police involvement in executions and banditry. The State Department says more than 25 Americans were kidnapped in Haiti last year, and local authorities say that over Christmas, kidnappings peaked to as many as 12 a day. Travel is so hazardous in Port-au-Prince, the capital, that American Embassy personnel have been barred from leaving their homes at night. More than 10 United Nations soldiers have been killed, officials say. The lawyers want immigration judges to close the deportation cases until the situation in Haiti improves. Several lawyers said the legal strategy might not succeed on a broad scale because judges typically require assent from the government's lawyers before closing a case. But advocates for Haitian immigrants said they were trying to send the Bush administration a message and hoped that some judges would take action, even if it meant simply delaying decisions in deportation cases until Haiti stabilizes. "I don't think it makes sense for the United States to send people back to a country where such devastating human rights violations are occurring," said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project in Boston. "Those Haitian deportees face grave risk to their lives, and that's not acceptable." Candace Jean, a Miami immigration lawyer, said her clients were terrified of what they would experience when they returned to Haiti. "They're horrified," Ms. Jean said. "Many are going into hiding." Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the decision to grant temporary protected status was made in consultation with the State Department. Mr. Strassberger noted that many Haitian-Americans felt safe enough to travel to Haiti and that conditions in the country varied from place to place. The State Department, which ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members of embassy officials in Haiti last May, lifted the order several months later. But embassy officials have been told that dependents under 21 are still not permitted to travel to or remain in Haiti, the department said. "It's a tough decision," Mr. Strassberger said. "The country itself is in a desperate situation. But at this point the United States government feels that the situation can be corrected by providing more aid as opposed to providing temporary protected status." Karline St. Louis of Miami is hoping that officials will change their minds. Her husband, Kevin, who is being represented by Ms. Jean, expects to be deported any day. "I'm praying that something will change," said Ms. St. Louis, 27, who has a 4-year-old son. "There's a lot of kidnapping in Haiti, a lot of killings going on. It is very scary." Maggy Duteau, an immigration lawyer in New York, said she could not understand why Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Hondurans would be granted temporary protected status while Haitians would not. "How bad does it have to get before something is done?" Ms. Duteau asked.

HAITI
HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT
IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEES


As Foreclosure Nears, Home Fixtures Start to Vanish

Abstract: The author of the Craigslist posting in Las Vegas made no effort to disguise his or her intentions. “Stripping House — Before Foreclosure,” the ad declared, offering potential buyers the cabinets and countertops, the sinks and toilets, the doors, the appliances, the sprinklers. Even the palm and citrus trees in the yard were for sale, with a catch. “You dig,” the author advised. In Nevada and other states hit hard by the housing crisis, stripping fixtures and appliances from homes in foreclosure has become commonplace. Craigslist, the Web site for classified ads, functions as a bazaar where stripped items are sold openly. Often, the stripping is not done by strangers. It is done by the owner, just before the bank forecloses on the mortgage and takes the property back. If that seems like a situation tailor-made for the police, it is — at least in Arizona, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used Craigslist to arrest a handful of people for stripping homes and trying to sell the goods, charging them with felonies under a state fraud statute. In other parts of the country, however, the police are stymied. As it turns out, several troubled states, like Nevada, have no specific criminal prohibition against stripping fixtures from a property before foreclosure. Mortgage contracts do prohibit such behavior, requiring that homes be kept in good order. But violating those provisions is a civil matter, not a criminal offense. “If the homeowner sells the components to the house while they still own the house, that’s not a crime,” said Officer Bill Cassell, a spokesman for the Las Vegas police. So too in Florida, another state swamped by foreclosures. Several prosecutors and police agencies there said that unless laws were modified, such behavior would have to be sorted out between borrower and lender in civil court. Even in Arizona, which has an applicable law and where thousands of homes have been stripped, convictions are rare. There, to make a charge stick, law enforcement basically has to catch people in the act, said Julie Halferty, a special agent with the F.B.I. in Phoenix and head of a mortgage fraud task force. “This window of time can be quite short,” Ms. Halferty said in an e-mail message. “Once homes are abandoned, arguably any number of people can get access and strip the fixtures.” Statistics on foreclosure stripping are elusive, and experts disagree on just how widespread the practice is. Yet even those who play down the number acknowledge that the problem is serious, particularly in housing boom-and-bust areas like central Arizona, southwest Florida and the Las Vegas region. “Clearly it’s happening, and it’s happening with some frequency,” said John A. Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Banks are largely powerless to stop a homeowner determined to strip a property. Lenders can pursue such homeowners in court, but the expense and difficulty typically outweigh the gain. Though the efforts are scattered and feeble, law enforcement officials are trying in places to stop the practice. Last April, Randolph Guzman, 42, of Phoenix, was arrested while trying to strip appliances and fixtures from an investment home he owned, shortly before a bank was to hold an auction. Mr. Guzman posted an ad on Craigslist and found a married couple interested in buying the air-conditioners, kitchen cabinets, ceiling fans and a light fixture for $2,300. They met at the house, in Surprise, a distant Phoenix suburb, and Mr. Guzman accepted a down payment of $400 in cash. Then he was handcuffed and read his rights. The couple, he discovered, were police officers working undercover with the F.B.I. Mr. Guzman pleaded guilty to defrauding a secured creditor, a felony. If he completes 18 months of probation, the charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor, he will serve no jail time and pay only a few hundred dollars in court fees. David Michael Cantor, Mr. Guzman’s attorney, called his client’s offense minor when compared with the thousands of homes that have been thoroughly stripped by their former owners. “I understand why they want to crack down on this stuff, but Randy is small potatoes,” Mr. Cantor said. After the F.B.I. publicized the arrest of Mr. Guzman and a handful of others caught stripping homes, the number of ads for stripped goods on Craigslist in Phoenix dropped sharply. “That was our objective — to get the word out that stripping a foreclosed home is illegal,” Ms. Halferty said. (Craigslist does not vet the postings created by its users, and a spokeswoman, Susan MacTavish Best, said the site had not been contacted by law officials about ads for stripped merchandise. “One wonders how one would know the provenance of each fixture and appliance,” she wrote in an e-mail message.) The police in Las Vegas would like to follow the lead of those in Phoenix, but Nevada law hinders them. “We don’t have the tools to prosecute,” said David Roger, district attorney for Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. “It’s obviously an issue that the legislature should address.” Not all legal experts agree that existing law is insufficient, given that homeowners who strip a house are violating their mortgage contracts. General fraud statutes might be stretched to apply. Yet so far, few prosecutors or the police — dealing with budget cutbacks — are making arrests or bringing cases. The key to reducing the number of homes being stripped, experts suggest, lies not with the law but with lenders. “If banks focused more on prevention, everybody would be better off, particularly them,” said Kenneth Thomas, a banking consultant in Miami. Already, some indicators suggest that mortgage servicers are starting to delay the final step in a foreclosure — seizing the home — in part to limit the number of homes being stripped and vandalized. Yet for some areas, it is too late. In several Phoenix suburbs, the stripping of homes appears to have peaked, but not before taking a heavy toll. In Maricopa, a distant Phoenix suburb that had rapid growth before the crash, new developments were stripped one after another, often in the order they were built, according to Shawn Schlegel, a real estate broker who publishes a weekly community newspaper. “The same way they built the city is the same way the city got stripped out,” Mr. Schlegel said. “It’s gone through every neighborhood.” In Florida, the online trade in stripped goods is brisk, no doubt encouraged by the low profile of the police. As in most of the country, sympathy for banks is running low, and opportunism is running high. Some see an upside. Justin Cellini, 29, spent the last year being rejected by lender after lender in his quest for a home loan. Finally, with cash from relatives, he was able to buy a four-bedroom, two-bath house in Hollywood, Fla., that had been stripped by its former occupants. He paid $111,000. “I’m actually thankful that they stripped the house,” Mr. Cellini said. “It wound up costing me a lot less money in the end.” He has been refurbishing it on the cheap — by buying fixtures and appliances off Craigslist.

Foreclosures
Craigslist
stripping
Nevada
Florida
Vandalism
Housing and Real Estate
Crime and Criminals


2 Missing After Boat Overturns in Jamaica Bay

Abstract: Two people are believed to have fallen overboard in Jamaica Bay on Thursday morning when a 10-foot-long boat overturned near the eastern end of Far Rockaway, Queens, the authorities said. Students from Beach Channel High School apparently saw the boat capsize north of the Rockaway peninsula about 10 a.m., they said. The students dialed 911, and two responding Coast Guard rescue boats found the boat, which was white and green with a flat bottom. But the emergency responders were unable to immediately locate any people, said Petty Officer Third Class Barbara L. Patton, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. A daylong search by the Coast Guard, assisted at times by the Police and Fire Departments, turned up nothing. The search was ended at 6 p.m. Petty Officer Patton said the water temperature was 40 degrees when the boat capsized. “The conditions of the sea, at the time, were two-foot chop with winds from the north-northwest, at 12 miles per hour,” she said. Fire Department workers and a Police Department helicopter crew took part in the search, according to the Coast Guard. Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, said she could not confirm that students witnessed the capsizing. But according to school safety officials, she said, police and fire officials were “on the scene responding to a small boat that capsized with passengers.” She said the school, at 100 Beach Channel Drive, is near the water and the entrance of the Cross Bay Bridge. Petty Officer Patton said the Coast Guard searched the water between Kennedy International Airport and Barren Island, an area covering about five miles by two miles. She said the crews did “repeated searches” of the same locations, taking into account the currents and possibilities for drift. Petty Officer Patton said that a complex survivability model used by the Coast Guard indicated that someone’s chances of surviving in the water would end about 1:30 p.m., but that the Coast Guard continued its search well after that. “We never use that as a set deadline,” she said of the model. “We are continuing to give people a fighting chance. We are still searching; that has not changed.” Oddly, the police initially came across a second capsized boat in the area, but determined it to be a derelict covered in “marine growth,” the Coast Guard said.


Party Switching Lifts G.O.P., but It’s No Guarantee of Election Victory

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the managing editor of The Texas Tribune, writes a regular column. State Representatives Aaron Peña of Edinburg and Allan Ritter of Nederland ditched the Democrats last week, surrounded by grinning Republicans who gathered at a packed news conference to welcome them into the party and to claim a Texas House supermajority for the G.O.P. Now the Republicans’ job is to hold those two seats — one on union turf and the other in a corner of the state that’s allergic to elephants. Mr. Ritter is following a strategy that has worked for others. Mr. Peña, meanwhile, is challenging the political history of his part of the state. Over time, some switchers have prospered. In 1983, Phil Gramm, then a Texas congressman, changed to the Republican Party, resigned his seat and ran for re-election so voters could ratify his transformation. That raised his profile, laid the table for a successful run for the United States Senate in 1984, and is still the gold standard for how to switch and duck voters’ charges of opportunism and misrepresentation. Rick Perry, a Democratic legislator, switched parties in 1989 before his first statewide run in 1990. The governor wasn’t the first ex-Democrat to try running statewide as a Republican: Henry Grover, the G.O.P.’s gubernatorial candidate in 1972, was a former Democratic legislator who switched parties in the mid-1960s. Bill Archer, the former Texas legislator who went on to become a powerful chairman of the United States House Ways and Means Committee, left the Democrats two years after Mr. Grover. James Nowlin, now a senior federal judge in Austin, served as a member of both parties in the Legislature, too. United States Representative Ralph Hall, Republican of Rockwall, switched from the Democrats after he was redistricted into a Republican stronghold. But some switchers have suffered. Kent Hance, one of the losers in the 1984 Democratic Senate primary, flipped but didn’t quite catch the ring, losing a 1986 Republican primary for governor, making it to the Texas Railroad Commission and then losing another primary in 1990. He is now the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. United States Representative Greg Laughlin of West Columbia switched to the Republicans in 1995 but lost to Representative Ron Paul in the 1996 primary. Two Texas House members went from red to blue in the last 30 years, but both quickly drowned in Republican tides, according to the Texas Legislative Reference Library. Bernard Erickson of Cleburne won as a Republican in 1992 but lost a re-election bid when he switched to the Democrats before the 1994 cycle. Kirk England of Grand Prairie won as a Republican in 2006, switched and won as a Democrat two years later, and then lost last month to a Republican. Unlike Mr. Erickson, Mr. England hopes to run again. “How you weigh it is in the best interest of your district and of yourself,” Mr. England said of switching. Before last week, eight Democratic legislators had gone to the Republicans since 1980, each winning at least one election bearing the new standard. With Mr. Ritter and Mr. Peña on board, the switcher caucus will have five members left when legislators convene next month. Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville went red a year ago, elbowed his way through the Republican primary and cruised to re-election last month. Given the political climate, he looks like Einstein. Two other former Democrats — Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi and Warren Chisum of Pampa — won again and will start new terms next month. Success is all about reading the local voters correctly. Mr. Ritter’s southeast Texas district has been voting for Republicans, and he’s apparently acceptable enough (or lucky enough) that the G.O.P. didn’t challenge him this year. His switch may be a reasonable bet, in electoral terms, and he’s more likely to be treated favorably in new political maps being drawn in 2011. Mr. Peña’s map will be tricky. He’s from Hidalgo County, where no statewide Republican with Democratic opposition broke 40 percent last month. Republicans would like to shake the party’s weakness with Hispanic voters, and that’ll mean extra attention to the half-dozen Latino Republicans, including Mr. Peña, who made it into the House. But South Texas voters could trump the Republicans’ good intentions: Mr. Peña, unlike his fellow flipper, will enter 2012 as an underdog.

Elections
Texas
Republican Party
Ritter Allan
Pena Aaron
States (US)


Romney Leads in Ill Will Among G.O.P. Candidates

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — At the end of the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire this month, when the Democrats joined the candidates on stage, Mitt Romney found himself momentarily alone as his counterparts mingled, looking around a bit stiffly for a companion. The moment was emblematic of a broader reality that has helped shape the Republican contest and could take center stage again on Thursday at a debate in Florida. Within the small circle of contenders, Mr. Romney has become the most disliked. With so much attention recently on the sniping between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, the almost visceral scorn directed at Mr. Romney by his rivals has been overshadowed. “Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point. “What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said. Campaign insiders and outside strategists point to several factors driving the ill will, most notably, Mr. Romney’s attacks on opponents in television commercials, the perception of him as an ideological panderer and resentment about his seemingly unlimited resources as others have struggled to raise cash. Mr. Romney’s campaign contends that the hostility is driven by the fact that he has aggressively sought to win the early primaries, setting himself up as the chief antagonist, first, to Mr. Huckabee in Iowa and then to Mr. McCain in New Hampshire. Mr. Romney continues to be a mountain in the paths of both men, as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, to the nomination. A spokesman for the Romney campaign, Kevin Madden, said, “I think it’s largely driven by the fact that everybody’s taught to tackle the guy on the field with the ball.” But the New Hampshire debate was striking in that it amounted to a gang tackle of Mr. Romney, even though Mr. McCain was leading in polls in the state. “The glee the other candidates go after Romney with is really unique,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign bid in 2000 but is not affiliated with any campaign now. A senior adviser to Mr. Romney, Ronald C. Kaufman, pointed to his vast personal fortune and upstart status in the political world as breeding resentment. “They think he didn’t pay his dues,” said Mr. Kaufman, who argued that Mr. Romney had done so by working tirelessly in his campaign. In stark contrast to Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain seems to be universally liked and respected by the other Republican contenders, even if they disagree with him. Mr. Schnur used a schoolyard analogy to compare Mr. Romney, the ever-proper Harvard Law School and Business School graduate, to Mr. McCain, the gregarious rebel who racked up demerits and friends at the Naval Academy. “John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,” Mr. Schnur said. Although Mr. McCain has now started to draw some cautious challenges from Mr. Giuliani in Florida, he has a longstanding friendship with him, dating from 1998, when they first met. Mr. McCain also seems to have fallen into a mutual nonaggression pact with Mr. Huckabee, who has been almost fawning in his compliments for Mr. McCain and dripping with contempt when discussing Mr. Romney. Mr. McCain has drawn criticism as being excessively personal in striking back at Mr. Romney. So he has tried to play down any notion that he harbors special animosity toward him, saying he simply does not know him well. But Mr. McCain’s advisers, whose distaste for Mr. Romney is vivid, say Mr. McCain has been irked by what they perceive as misleading attacks and Mr. Romney’s willingness to say anything to be elected. “He doesn’t play by the same rules the rest of us do,” said Charlie Black, a senior McCain strategist. McCain aides were positively gleeful last week as they watched replays aboard their campaign bus of a heated back and forth between Mr. Romney and an Associated Press reporter who challenged an assertion about the influence of lobbyists in his campaign. Nevertheless, before he criticizes rivals, Mr. Romney often pauses to say that the man is a “friend,” and he seems to believe it. Mr. Giuliani endorsed Mr. Romney in his race for Massachusetts governor in 2002 and campaigned for him. Mr. Romney got to know Mr. McCain while running the 2002 Winter Olympic Games and went to Washington to seek federal money. Mr. Romney probably knows Mr. Huckabee the best, aides said, as the two were governors at the same time and ran into each other often through the Republican Governors Association and the National Governors Association. Paradoxically, sometimes the enmity between them appears to be the sharpest. Aides to Mr. Huckabee say he did not get to know Mr. Romney very well as a governor, finding him distant at meetings. The aides said they were also irritated that Mr. Romney did not call after Mr. Huckabee’s victory in Iowa. Mr. Romney shrugged off any tension with his rivals when asked about it. “You know,” he said, “in this process, people have a real battle for success. But I consider these guys friends.”

Romney Mitt
Republican Party
Presidential Election of 2008
United States Politics and Government


Norway’s Central Bank Cuts Interest Rate

Abstract: OSLO — Norway’s central bank reduced its main interest rate on Thursday for the second time in four months, sending its currency tumbling, and said it might lower rates more than previously anticipated in the coming year as growth prospects have weakened. Oil and natural gas companies, which generate a fifth of the Nordic economy’s output, have been canceling investments and laying off thousands of workers, preparing for an extended period of low crude oil prices. “The current outlook for the Norwegian economy suggests that the key policy rate may be reduced further in the coming year,” the governor of the bank, Oystein Olsen, said in a statement . “It is a new era for the Norwegian economy. We are no longer in a league of our own,” he said, adding that the bank did not discuss keeping rates at the same level. The Norwegian krone tumbled 3 percent against the euro, after markets were surprised by the move. Only six of the 18 economists polled by Reuters had expected a rate cut. The other 12 had all seen the bank keeping its main rate at 1 percent. “They cut the rate and are now saying that most likely there will be another cut before Christmas and most likely another cut in 2016,” said Frank Jullum, chief economist at Danske Bank Markets. “This was even more negative compared to what we had expected.” The central bank said growth in the economy was likely to remain low for a longer period than projected earlier, owing to the fall in oil prices through the summer. The bank has been performing a balancing act, however, as household debt in the country remains high and lower interest rates will not help tackle that problem.


For the Internet, New Connections With Peering

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — In a dimly lit chamber festooned with wires and hidden in one of California ’s largest data centers, Tim Pozar is changing the shape of the Internet. He is using what Internet engineers refer to as a “meet-me room.” The room itself is enclosed in a building full of computers and routers. What Mr. Pozar does there is to informally wire together the networks of different businesses that want to freely share their Internet traffic. The practice is known as peering, and it goes back to the earliest days of the Internet, when organizations would directly connect their networks instead of paying yet another company to route data traffic. Originally, the companies that owned the backbone of the Internet shared traffic. In recent years, however, the practice has increased to the point where some researchers who study the way global networks are put together believe that peering is changing the fundamental shape of the Internet, with serious consequences for its stability and security. Others see the vast increase in traffic staying within a structure that has remained essentially the same. What is clear is that today a significant portion of Internet traffic does not flow through the backbone networks of giant Internet companies like AT&T and Level 3. Instead, it has begun to cascade in torrents of data on the edges of the network, as if a river in flood were carving new channels. Some of this traffic coursing through new channels passes through public peering points like Mr. Pozar’s. And some flows through so-called dark networks, private channels created to move information more cheaply and efficiently within a business or any kind of organization. For instance, Google has privately built such a network so that video and search data need not pass through so many points to get to customers. By its very nature, Internet networking technology is intended to support anarchic growth. Unlike earlier communication networks, the Internet is not controlled from the top down. This stems from an innovation at the heart of the Internet — packet switching. From the start, the information moving around the Internet was broken up into so-called packets that could be sent on different paths to one destination where the original message — whether it was e-mail, an image or sound file or instructions to another computer — would be put back together in its original form. This packet-switching technology was conceived in the 1960s in England and the United States . It made delivery of a message through a network possible even if one or many of the nodes of the network failed. Indeed, this resistance to failure or attack was at the very core of the Internet, part of the essential nature of an organic, interconnected communications web with no single control point. During the 1970s, a method emerged to create a network of networks. The connections depended on a communication protocol, or set of rules, known as TCP/IP, a series of letters familiar to anyone who has tried to set up their own wireless network at home. The global network of networks, the Internet, transformed the world, and continues to grow without central planning, extending itself into every area of life, from Facebook to cyberwar. Everyone agrees that the shape of the network is changing rapidly, driven by a variety of factors, including content delivery networks that have pushed both data and applications to the edge of the network; the growing popularity of smartphones leading to the emergence of the wireless Internet; and the explosion of streaming video as the Internet’s predominant data type. “When we started releasing data publicly, we measured it in petabytes of traffic,” said Doug Webster, a Cisco Systems market executive who is responsible for an annual report by the firm that charts changes in the Internet. “Then a couple of years ago we had to start measuring them in zettabytes, and now we’re measuring them in what we call yottabytes.” One petabyte is equivalent to one million gigabytes. A zettabyte is a million petabytes. And a yottabyte is a thousand zettabytes. The company estimates that video will account for 90 percent of all Internet traffic by 2013. The staggering growth of video is figuring prominently in political and business debates like the one over the principle of network neutrality — that all data types, sites and platforms attached to the network should be treated equally. But networks increasingly treat data types differently. Priority is often given to video or voice traffic. A study presented last year by Arbor Networks suggesting that traffic flows were moving away from the core of the network touched off a spirited controversy. The study was based on an analysis of two years of Internet traffic data collected by 110 large and geographically diverse cable operators, international transit backbones, regional networks and content providers. Arbor’s Internet Observatory Report concluded that today the majority of Internet traffic by volume flows directly between large content providers like Google and consumer networks like Comcast . It also described what it referred to as the rise of so-called hyper giants — monstrous portals that have become the focal point for much of the network’s traffic: “Out of the 40,000 routed end sites in the Internet, 30 large companies — ‘hyper giants’ like Limelight, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and YouTube — now generate and consume a disproportionate 30 percent of all Internet traffic,” the researchers noted. The changes are not happening just because of the growth of the hyper giants. At the San Francisco data center 365 Main , Mr. Pozar’s SFMIX peering location, or fabric, as it is called, now connects just 13 networks and content providers. But elsewhere in the world, huge peering fabrics are beginning to emerge. As a result, the “edge” of the Internet is thickening, and that may be adding resilience to the network. In Europe in particular, such connection points now route a significant part of the total traffic. AMS-IX is based in Amsterdam , where it is also run as a nonprofit neutral organization composed of 344 members exchanging 775 gigabits of traffic per second. “The rise of these highly connected data centers around the world is changing our model of the Internet,” said Jon M. Kleinberg, a computer scientist and network theorist at Cornell University . However, he added that the rise of giant distributed data centers built by Google, Amazon , Microsoft, IBM and others as part of the development of cloud computing services is increasing the part of the network that constitutes a so-called dark Internet, making it harder for researchers to build a complete model. All of these changes have sparked a debate about the big picture. What does the Internet look like now? And is it stronger or weaker in terms of its resistance to failure because of random problems or actual attack. Researchers have come up with a dizzying array of models to explain the consequences of the changing shape of the Internet. Some describe the interconnections of the underlying physical wires. Others analyze patterns of data flow. And still others look at abstract connections like Web page links that Google and other search engine companies analyze as part of the search process. Such models are of great interest to social scientists, who can watch how people connect with each other, and entrepreneurs, who can find new ways to profit from the Internet. They are also of increasing interest to government and law enforcement organizations trying to secure the Net and use it as a surveillance tool. One of the first and most successful attempts to understand the overall shape of the Internet occurred a decade ago, when Albert-László Barabási and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame mapped part of the Internet and discovered what they called a scale-free network: connections were not random; instead, a small number of nodes had far more links than most. They asserted that, in essence, the rich get richer. The more connected a node in a network is, the more likely it is to get new connections. The consequences of such a model are that although the Internet is resistant to random failure because of its many connections and control points, it could be vulnerable to cyberwarfare or terrorism, because important points — where the connections are richest — could be successfully targeted. Dr. Barabási said the evolution of the Internet has only strengthened his original scale-free model. “The Internet as we know it is pretty much vanishing, in the sense that much of the traffic is being routed through lots of new layers and applications, much of it wireless,” said Dr. Barabási, a physicist who is now the director of Northeastern University ’s Center for Network Science. “Much of the traffic is shifting to providers who have large amounts of traffic, and that is exactly the characteristic of a scale-free distribution.” In other words, the more the Internet changes, the more it stays the same, in terms of its overall shape, strengths and vulnerabilities. Other researchers say changes in the Internet have been more fundamental. In 2005, and again last year, Walter Willinger, a mathematician at AT&T Labs, David Alderson, an operations research scientist at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey , Calif., and John C. Doyle, an electrical engineer at California Institute of Technology , criticized the scale-free model as an overly narrow interpretation of the nature of modern computer networks. They argued that the mathematical description of a network as a graph of lines and nodes vastly oversimplifies the reality of the Internet. The real-world Internet, they said, is not a simple scale-free model. Instead, they offered an alternate description that they described as an H.O.T. network, or Highly optimized/Organized tolerance/Trade-offs. The Internet is an example of what they called “organized complexity.” Their model is meant to represent the trade-offs made by engineers who design networks by connecting computer routers. In such systems, both economic and technological trade-offs play an important role. The result is a “robust yet fragile” network that they said was far more resilient than the network described by Dr. Barabási and colleagues. For example, they noted that Google has in recent years built its own global cloud of computers that is highly redundant and distributed around the world. This degree of separation means that Google is insulated to some extent from problems of the broader Internet. Dr. Alderson and Dr. Doyle said that another consequence of this private cloud was that even if Google were to fail, it would have little impact on the overall Internet. So, as the data flood has carved many new channels, the Internet has become stronger and more resistant to random failure and attack. The scale-free theorists, Dr. Alderson said, are just not describing the real Internet. “What they’re measuring is not the physical network, its some virtual abstraction that’s on top of it,” he said. “What does the virtual connectivity tell you about the underlying physical vulnerability? My argument would be that it doesn’t tell you anything.”

Data center
Cloud computing
Computers and the Internet
Computer security
Science and Technology


Driver Who Sped Around Manhattan in 24 Minutes Is Convicted of Reckless Endangerment

Abstract: A speedster who raced around Manhattan in a car and posted a video of the stunt online was convicted in absentia on Thursday of reckless endangerment. The driver, Adam Tang, 31, did not show up to court on Wednesday, when lawyers delivered their closing arguments. Justice Ann M. Donnelly of State Supreme Court in Manhattan issued a warrant for his arrest and revoked his $15,000 bail. He has 30 days to surrender to the court or he will be charged with bail-jumping, prosecutors said. Mr. Tang’s lawyer, Greg Gomez, declined to say where his client was or whether he would show up for sentencing on Dec. 8. Reached by email after the verdict, Mr. Tang likewise did not reveal his whereabouts, but said he foresaw the outcome. “It was a lost cause, so why bother fight against something that is rigged?” he wrote. Mr. Tang faces up to a year in jail for the conviction on reckless endangerment, and another 30 days for reckless driving. During the trial, Mr. Gomez contended his client might be guilty of speeding, but had never lost control of his car or put others in danger — in sharp contrast to the prosecution’s portrayal of Mr. Tang as a daredevil craving fame. “This is a simple straightforward case of someone so hellbent on breaking a record that he put the lives of people at risk and for what?” one prosecutor, Timothy Duda, said in his opening statement. “For his 15 minutes of fame.” On Aug. 26, 2013, just before dawn, Mr. Tang circled Manhattan in 24 minutes, weaving in and out of traffic in his BMW and reaching speeds of nearly 100 miles per hour at one point. He filmed the entire trip with a dashboard camera, then sped up the tape, inserted some electronic dance music and placed it on YouTube, using the name Afroduck. That videotape, which Mr. Tang voluntarily turned over to prosecutors, was the main evidence against him. Prosecutors used it to prove he had gone twice the speed limit for much of the drive and an expert on traffic safety, Robert Genna, cataloged a number of near misses in which Mr. Tang, a day trader from Canada who lives with his wife on the Upper East Side, could have caused a fatal crash. In interviews, jurors said Mr. Tang was clearly a skilled driver. Still, they were convinced that he had disregarded the safety of others, particularly as he sped across the Cross Bronx Expressway and raced down the crowded Harlem River Drive, toward the end of his circuit. There he tailgated cars and sliced in and out of lanes, cutting off other drivers. “I think what he did was wrong,” one juror, Anthony Feliciano, 43, said. “I don’t condone that. You want to drag race, go to a drag race track. Not on my public highway.” A second juror, Damascus Sookbirsingh, 61, said he at first was inclined to acquit Mr. Tang, because he had stopped at traffic lights and seemed to be an adept driver. But Mr. Sookbirsingh said other jurors persuaded him that Mr. Tang had taken unacceptable risks and that a message needed to be sent. “This is basically to set an example,” he said. For his part, Mr. Tang said in emails to The New York Times that he believed the original video demonstrated he had driven fast but not recklessly. On Wednesday, as the judge was issuing a warrant for his arrest, Mr. Tang posted the undoctored version of the video on his YouTube channel. (His real-time soundtrack was not electronic dance music, but WCBS-FM.) Prosecutors initially offered Mr. Tang a deal of six months in jail in return for pleading guilty to the top charge, his lawyer said. In an email on Nov. 1, Mr. Tang said the district attorney had been unreasonable in plea talks, seeking a jail sentence for what he considered to be traffic violations. He said he chose to go to trial because he faced not only a year in jail, but also deportation and the loss of his car. The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said Mr. Tang demonstrated “blatant disregard for our traffic laws” and placed lives at risk. “The city’s roadways are not a racetrack,” he said.

Manhattan
Adam Tang
Speed Limits Speeding
Driving Under the Influence DUI
Decisions and Verdicts
Traffic and Parking Violations
Car Crash


Discounters Fared Well in Quarter

Abstract: It’s bargain time in American retailing. Wal-Mart Stores and the TJX Companies said Tuesday that sales and profit surged during the first three months of the year as belt-tightening consumers flocked to their deeply discounted merchandise. Profits rose 7 percent at Wal-Mart, the giant discount chain, and by 20 percent at TJX, the owner of the cut-rate clothing retailers T. J. Maxx and Marshalls. But the slowdown in consumer spending is proving less kind to full-price retailers, like Macy’s, Nordstrom, J. C. Penney and Kohl’s, which are expected to report big declines in first-quarter earnings this week, according to forecasts from analysts. On average, those four retailers are expected to report a 50 percent decline in first quarter profit, predicted Bill Dreher, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. “People are cheaping out, and retailers that sell discretionary products at full prices are having a very tough time,” Mr. Dreher said. Those troubles will be a boon to shoppers: To clear all that unsold merchandise, stores are dangling deep discounts, said John D. Morris, a retail analyst at Wachovia Securities. By his estimate, markdowns are up 5 percent this spring compared with the period a year ago. Even luxury stores are cutting prices. This coming Thursday, Saks Fifth Avenue is offering discounts of $25 to $1,000 and Ralph Lauren is having a 20 percent off sale. Wal-Mart, the large retailer and a bellwether for the economy, cautioned that it was not immune to the economic slowdown. It predicted little, if any, growth in individual store sales during the current quarter. The chief executive of Wal-Mart, H. Lee Scott Jr., warned that “there are still uncertainties about the rest of the year.” During the first quarter, ended April 30, Wal-Mart’s profit increased 6.9 percent, to $3.02 billion, or 76 cents a share, from $2.83 billion, or 68 cents, in the period a year ago, as shoppers swarmed to its low-priced food, prescription drugs and electronics. Revenue increased 10.3 percent, to $95.3 billion, from $86.4 billion, the company said. After a period of experimentation with sleeker fashion and upscale merchandise, like skinny jeans, Wal-Mart has returned with a vengeance to low prices, the strategy that built it into the world’s largest retailer. This year, the chain slashed grocery prices by as much as 30 percent and it trumpeted the strategy in advertisements that asked consumers “What will you do with your savings?” Nobody at the chain predicted the downturn that settled in by late last year. But once consumers started pulling back, Wal-Mart was poised to benefit, perhaps more than any big chain. “Our business is even more relevant to our customers today, given the current economic pressures,” Mr. Scott said. “Wal-Mart is the undisputed price leader.” But in retailing, investors are focused on growth. Wal-Mart estimated its earnings would be 78 cents to 81 cents a share in the second quarter, possibly at the low end of analysts’ expectations. As a result, shares of Wal-Mart fell $1.37 Tuesday, to $56.65. It was an unusual dip for a stock that has been on a tear. Wal-Mart’s stock has risen by roughly $10, or about 22 percent, over the last six months, with investors wagering that the chain would benefit from a slowing economy. Its rivals did not fare as well. Macy’s shares have dropped by 15.5 percent, Target’s by 6 percent and J. C. Penney’s by 5.7 percent. Budget-minded clothing buyers are instead seeking out off-price chains like TJX, which said it earned $193.8 million, or 43 cents a share, in the first quarter, ended April 26, up from $162.1 million, or 34 cents a share. Sales rose 6 percent, to $4.36 billion, from $4.11 billion. Sales at stores open at least a year increased 3 percent. “We are very pleased with our performance,” said Carol Meyrowitz, the chief executive of TJX. Despite the strong results, the company said its gross margin did not meet its expectations, and that helped send its stock price down $1.49, to $30.65 TJX, which specializes in designer brands sold at deeply marked-down prices, said clothing sales and customer traffic in its stores exceeded its expectations. One reason is that department stores, struggling with slower business, are canceling orders for name-brand clothing, which is rerouted to stores like Marshalls and T. J. Maxx. TJX said consumers gravitated toward its dresses, shoes, and accessories. That is traditionally a business dominated by department stores like J. C. Penney, Macy’s and Kohl’s. But the appeal of department stores has dimmed, with consumers struggling to pay their bills. “We are hearing that dresses, shoes and accessories are very challenging categories for department stores,” said Mr. Morris of Wachovia. “That is where off-price chains like TJX can gain an edge.”

Sales
Retail Stores and Trade
Company Reports
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
TJX Companies Incorporated
Economic Conditions and Trends
Discount Selling


Self-Insurance Complicates Deal on Birth Control

Abstract: The Obama administration thought it had found a way to ease mounting objections to a requirement in the new health care act that all employers — including religiously affiliated hospitals and universities — offer coverage for birth control to women free of charge. It would make the insurers cover the costs, rather than the organizations themselves. But the administration announced the compromise plan before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk. Now, the organizations are trying to determine how to reconcile their objections to offering birth control on religious grounds with their role as insurers — or whether there can be any reconciliation at all. And the administration still cannot put the thorny issue to rest. “We’re all kind of waiting and seeing,” said Jim Liske, chief executive of the Prison Fellowship, a Christian charity that insures itself and objects to offering the morning-after pill to its employees. The administration has remained mostly silent on how self-insured institutions will be treated, other than to say that the details will be worked out in meetings with religious leaders in the days and weeks to come. “This policy will be developed collaboratively so that the ultimate outcome works for religious employers, their workers and the public,” an administration official said Wednesday. But some expressed skepticism that any satisfactory solution could be reached. “That’s quite a trick,” said Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director of “pro-life activities” at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has been among the most vocal critics of the birth control mandate. “Putting the obligation on the insurer and not the employer doesn’t help much if they are the same person,” he said. The Obama administration announced in January that it would require most health insurance plans to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as part of putting the federal health care law in place. Although the rule allowed churches to opt out for religious reasons, it did not extend the exemption to religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals or universities. The compromise plan, presented last Friday , has been embraced by some Catholic groups but opposed by others . Nicholas P. Cafardi, dean emeritus and professor of law at Duquesne University, a Catholic institution, said that President Obama gave the bishops exactly what they asked for. “The only serious issue left is self-insurance,” he said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. “But the Obama administration has said it wants to work with these organizations so they’re not required to violate their conscience. I’m sure they mean that in good faith.” Employers that self-insure provide health insurance directly to employees, paying the health care claims of their workers. Large employers often choose to self-insure because they can spread the risk across hundreds or thousands of workers. The option is often more economical and can allow an organization to tailor its plan to the specific needs of its employees. Many such employers contract with an insurance company to administer the plan. Nationwide, 60 percent of workers with health insurance were covered by a self-funded plan in 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey of employer health benefits. Among large employers, the number is even higher. Eighty-two percent of covered workers at companies of more than 200 employees had self-funded plans. Insurance industry experts and Catholic groups said they did not know how many religiously affiliated organizations self-insure, but they said the number was likely to mirror the national trend. Many of the organizations are large employers, including hospital systems and universities. Several religiously affiliated organizations already offer coverage for contraceptives to their workers, often to comply with state birth control mandates. Among these are Dignity Health, which was affiliated with the Catholic Church until this year, and Fordham University, which is run in the tradition of the Jesuit religious order. In a curious twist, several Catholic organizations have chosen to self-insure in recent years to avoid the requirements of the state mandates, said Michael Galligan-Stierle, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. “There’s been a promise to have a conversation, but we haven’t heard about when it’s going to be,” he said. “We’re waiting for that.” Now those who self-insure say they worry that they will find themselves caught between following the law and following their consciences. “It seems to me that they’ve given a pretty clear signal that we are going to have to do something different,” said Mr. Liske, of the Prison Fellowship, which employs 200 workers, 110 of them women. The organization views the morning-after pill as a form of abortion, which it opposes. And although Mr. Liske said he was heartened that the administration said it would work with groups like his to reach a solution, “anything that would put us in a situation where we would be directly or indirectly funding abortions would not be acceptable to us.” One interest group that is likely to keep a low profile in the public debate is the insurance companies. “They don’t want to get in the middle of this firestorm,” said Robert Laszewski, a health care industry consultant and former insurance executive. “You can’t please anybody. Who do you want to offend — women’s health advocates or the Catholic Church?”

Health Insurance and Managed Care
Birth Control and Family Planning
Religion-State Relations
Roman Catholic Church
Obama Barack


Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — In her two years at Google , Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company’s search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results. Now, along with her husband, Tom Costello, and a few other Google alumni, she is trying to upstage her former employer. On Monday, their company, Cuil , is unveiling a search engine that they promise will be more comprehensive than Google’s and that they hope will give its users more relevant results. “I think it will be better,” Mr. Costello said in an interview. “But there is no question that the public has to decide.” Cuil, pronounced “cool,” is only the latest in a long string of start-up companies that have been founded and financed with the goal of competing with Google, as well as Yahoo and Microsoft. (In June, Google accounted for 61.5 percent of search queries in the United States, while Yahoo held 20.9 percent and Microsoft had 9.2 percent, according to comScore.) Some of the most prominent include Powerset, which Microsoft recently bought, and Wikia, which was founded by Jimmy Wales, one of the creators of Wikipedia. So far, none have managed to make a dent in the search market. But some analysts say Cuil has potential, in part because of the pedigree of its founders. “This is the most promising thing I’ve seen in a while,” said Danny Sullivan, who has followed the online search business for more than a decade and is the editor of Search Engine Land . “Whether they are going to threaten Microsoft, much less Google, that’s another story.” Mr. Costello, a former researcher at Stanford, said that with 120 billion Web pages, Cuil’s search index is larger than any other. The company uses a form of data mining to group Web pages by content, which makes the search engine more efficient, he said. Instead of showing results as short snippets of text and images with links, it displays longer entries and uses more pictures. It also provides tools to help users further refine their queries. Google would not comment on Cuil and would not disclose the size of its own index. But in an e-mail statement, Google said that it maintained “the largest collection of documents searchable on the Web” and welcomed competition. Mr. Sullivan said he was unimpressed by Cuil’s claim that its index includes more Web pages, noting that that could mean users are “overwhelmed by a whole bunch of junk.” But he said that Cuil’s new approach to ranking pages and presenting results could prove to be a hit with some users. “If it turns out that they have good relevancy, I could see that the word of mouth” would bring Cuil some popularity, he said. Ms. Patterson left Google in 2006 to found Cuil. The new company has other prominent ex-Google employees, including Russell Power, who worked with Ms. Patterson on the large Google index, and Louis Monier, a former chief technology officer at AltaVista, a pioneering search engine. Cuil, which has about 30 employees and is in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised $33 million from venture investors .

Search Engines
Cuil
Google Inc
Computers and the Internet
Costello Tom
Patterson Anna


Convictions Reinstated in Mob Case

Abstract: The racketeering convictions of two retired New York City detectives who helped to kill at least eight men in their role as mob assassins were ordered reinstated on Wednesday by a federal appeals court. It ruled that a trial judge wrongly overturned the jury’s guilty verdicts two years ago. The decision means that the two highly decorated detectives — Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa — will now face sentencing for their convictions in one of the most spectacular cases of police corruption in city history. The two men seem certain to spend the rest of their lives in prison. In 2006, after they were convicted of racketeering conspiracy, the trial judge, Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court in Brooklyn, issued but did not officially impose life prison sentences for each man. Then, saying the five-year statute of limitations for racketeering had run out, the judge overturned the convictions despite what he called “overwhelming evidence” that the two men were “heinous criminals” who were guilty of the “most despicable crimes of violence and treachery.” But in a 70-page opinion released on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, concluded that Judge Weinstein’s view of the conspiracy was too narrow, and that it had continued to exist within five years of when the men were charged. Although murders and other serious crimes that the men were accused of occurred in Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s, prosecutors used more recent and less serious charges — money laundering and narcotics distribution in Las Vegas in 2004 and 2005 — to bring the earlier acts under the umbrella of an ongoing criminal enterprise. Judge Weinstein, in throwing out the men’s convictions, had found that the recent crimes were “singular, sporadic acts of criminality,” and could not be considered part of the earlier conspiracy, which included kidnapping, bribery and obstruction of justice. Because the older crimes dated back more than five years, the men, thus, could not be prosecuted for them. “The government’s case against these defendants stretches federal racketeering and conspiracy law to the breaking point,” Judge Weinstein wrote. Judge Weinstein had also decided that the earlier conspiracy ended when the two detectives retired and left the New York area and other co-conspirators were arrested. But Judge Amalya L. Kearse, writing for the appellate panel, said Judge Weinstein’s views of the criminal enterprise were too restrictive, given the evidence presented at the trial. For example, Judge Kearse said, even after the two detectives retired in the early 1990s, one gave his pager number to Burton Kaplan, a former associate of the Luchese crime family who was the government’s key witness and testified about the services that both detectives had provided to organized crime. She said the appeals panel concluded that the criminal enterprise had not ended before 2000, and thus the prosecution was not disallowed. Joining in the decision were Judges Robert D. Sack and Peter W. Hall. Benton J. Campbell, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, whose office had appealed the case, said: “We are gratified by the decision of the Court of Appeals reinstating the jury verdict against the two defendants, who can now be sentenced for the extremely serious crimes that they committed.” A police spokesman had no comment. Lawyers for each of the two men, who have been held without bond, did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. Prosecutors charged that the two men, who both joined the police force in 1969, had taken thousands of dollars to carry out the mob murders and to leak law enforcement information, disclosing the identities of witnesses and compromising investigations. In the first of the mob killings, in 1986, the two detectives, driving in an unmarked police car and using a siren, pulled a jeweler named Israel Greenwald over on a Long Island road, according to a government brief summarizing the trial testimony. The detectives told Mr. Greenwald that he was needed in a lineup concerning an automobile accident. They then drove him to a garage, where he was shot to death. Prosecutors said the detectives had first offered their services to Mr. Kaplan through a cousin of Mr. Eppolito’s who was also a mobster. Mr. Kaplan entered into an agreement with the detectives to pay them regularly. “The defendants were paid $4,000 a month for information, and tens of thousands of dollars for murders and kidnappings,” the government brief said. At the trial, the jury also found that the men murdered a capo in the Gambino family in his Mercedes-Benz on the Belt Parkway; and that they kidnapped a Staten Island man, put him in a trunk, and delivered him to another mobster who tortured him for hours before killing him. Judge Kearse, in the decision, cited the payments to the detectives as one factor that supported the prosecution’s view that the conspiracy spanned the entire period of the indictment, from 1979 to 2005. She said that the jury had been told the principal purpose of the enterprise, as the indictment charged, was to generate money for the detectives, through legal and illegal activities. Judge Kearse also noted that prosecutors had told the jury that the two men had “received money for each crime in New York, and they broke the law for money in Las Vegas.” Thus, she ruled, the jury could have inferred that the conduct was “sufficiently similar in purpose” to show that “the enterprise that began in New York continued to exist in Las Vegas.”

Organized Crime
Eppolito Louis J
Caracappa Stephen
Police Department (NYC)
Decisions and Verdicts
Appeals Courts (US)
Racketeering and Racketeers
Weinstein Jack B


MySpace Agrees to Lead Fight to Stop Sex Predators

Abstract: MySpace , the country’s largest social-networking Web site, has agreed with attorneys general of 49 states to take new steps to protect children from sexual predators on its site. It also agreed to lead a nationwide effort to develop technology to verify the ages and identities of Internet users, officials announced Monday. The agreement is the latest attempt by law enforcement officials nationwide to shield children from online dangers, including the risk of encountering inappropriate sexual content or receiving sexual advances through sites like MySpace and Facebook . The sites, increasingly popular among college, high school and even younger students, allow any Internet user to create a profile to display personal information and build networks of friends online. Richard Blumenthal , the Connecticut attorney general, announced the deal at a news conference in Midtown Manhattan , along with a MySpace executive and Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina . Also present were Attorney General Anne Milgram of New Jersey and the attorneys general of Pennsylvania and Ohio . Mr. Blumenthal said the voluntary agreement went further than the one struck in October between New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo , and the Facebook Web site. “It’s stronger, broader, a very significant step or even a milestone in making the industry aim higher to keep kids safer,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview. He cited steps in the new agreement to separate children’s profiles from those of adults and to seek ways to verify users’ ages — steps that he called for after the Facebook agreement, when he and Mr. Cooper had said that stronger measures were needed. Mr. Cuomo said the MySpace agreement built on Facebook’s acknowledgment that it bore responsibility for protecting users. “The Facebook agreement broke the ice,” he said. The most important new measure, Mr. Blumenthal said, is that MySpace will create and lead a task force to find ways to verify ages and identities online. The task force, which will receive input from competing sites, child protection groups and technology companies, will report back to the attorneys general quarterly and issue recommendations at the end of this year. Facebook, in its agreement with New York prosecutors, promised to respond more speedily to complaints about sexual messages and to warn users in stronger language that the site could not guarantee children’s safety. The new agreement with MySpace, signed by 50 attorneys general — the top prosecutors of the District of Columbia and every state except Texas , includes similar provisions, and more. “This is an industrywide challenge, and we must all work together to create a safer Internet,” Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer of MySpace, said in a statement. MySpace, which says it has about 70 million users, agreed to install safeguards that require an adult user to prove that he or she knows a child user in order to contact that child, for instance by typing in an address or phone number. Profiles of users under 18 will automatically be set to “private,” preventing casual browsers from seeing them. Parents who do not want their children using the site will be able to submit their children’s e-mail addresses to MySpace, which will prevent users of those addresses from creating profiles. MySpace will hire a contractor to identify and remove pornographic images and links to pornographic sites from its Web site. But for parents, none of these measures are foolproof, Mr. Blumenthal said. Children can create new e-mail addresses that their parents do not know about; adult strangers could obtain enough information about children to get past the site’s safeguards; pornographic links spring up as quickly as they can be removed. “No measure is a panacea,” Mr. Blumenthal said.

Myspace
Attorney general
Rape
Computers and the Internet