As Ebola Ebbs in Africa, Focus Turns From Death to Life

Abstract: MONROVIA, Liberia — Life is edging back to normal after the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. At the height of the epidemic, Liberians met horrific deaths inside the blue-painted walls of the Nathaniel V. Massaquoi Elementary School, as classrooms became Ebola holding centers and the education of a nation’s children, shuttered in their homes for safety, was abruptly suspended. Now, parents are streaming into the schoolyard once again, not to visit their stricken loved ones, but with their restless children in tow, to register for the start of classes in a delayed and shortened academic year. Eager to learn and to play with her friends again, Florence Page, 11, bounded ahead, brimming with pent-up energy, as her mother, Mabel Togba, paused to look warily into the school building through its padlocked metal screen doors. “They still haven’t told us that Liberia is free of Ebola, so I’m still afraid,” said Ms. Togba, 42. “But it’s better than to leave my children at home doing nothing.” New Ebola cases in Liberia, where streets were littered with the dead just a few months ago, now number in the single digits, according to the World Health Organization. In neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea, the other two nations in the Ebola hot zone, new cases have fallen sharply in the last month, dropping to fewer than 100 in a week at the end of January — a level not seen in the region since June. With a virus as deadly as Ebola, officials warn that the epidemic will not be over until cases reach zero in all three countries. But after nearly 9,000 deaths from the disease, the W.H.O. announced last week that it was focusing on a goal that had seemed out of reach for much of last year: ending the Ebola epidemic , no longer simply slowing its spread. Here in Monrovia, the capital, ambulances and body collection vehicles that once barreled through the streets are a rare sight. Soccer matches are now played throughout the city on weekend mornings. Buckets filled with chlorine water are gone from most entrances, or sit empty. People can be seen shaking hands once again, squeezing into taxis and touching during conversations, as the fear of the virus ebbs and Liberians slip back into their daily, tactile rhythm. Image A baby delivered in the West Point township of the city. Credit John Moore/Getty Images “We used to be afraid to touch our friends , but the fear is small, small now,” Patrick Chea, 19, said outside Mary Brownell Junior High School, where students horsed around as they cleaned up the schoolyard. Mr. Chea playfully placed his hand on the head of Sonnie Kollie, a 16-year-old girl — who promptly punched him on the shoulder. Experts are trying to understand how the disease, which has defied the ominous predictions of the world’s top infectious disease researchers, appears to be extinguishing itself with surprising swiftness. In September, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had projected that, by Jan. 20, the outbreak could reach 1.4 million cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone, but by that date only 21,797 were recorded in all three countries. While many have emphasized the enormous assistance hauled into the region by the United States and international organizations, there is strong evidence, especially here in Monrovia, that the biggest change came from the precautions taken by residents themselves. “Fundamentally, this is about the extent to which societies change their behaviors, how they change them, and the speed at which they change them,” said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations special envoy on Ebola, who made frequent trips to the hot zone at the height of the epidemic. “I believe for various reasons people in Liberia changed quickly and dramatically. I believe Sierra Leoneans changed quickly in some areas and less quickly in some areas.” When Ebola struck the densely crowded neighborhoods of Monrovia over the summer, the first time a capital city had faced Ebola’s full onslaught, the impact was devastating. Hundreds of new cases appeared around the country every week, hospitals collapsed or overflowed with patients, and sick people lay along the road, sometimes dying before help could reach them. Disease Watchdogs Reeling from the explosion of infections in August, volunteer Ebola watchdog groups sprang up in many neighborhoods, typically overseen by local elders and led by educated youths, drawing from a long history of community organizing to survive war, poverty and government neglect. With little or no outside help in the early months, the groups educated their communities about Ebola, a disease new to this part of Africa, and collected money to set up hand-washing stations at key spots. They kept records of the sick and the dead. Many also placed households under quarantine and restricted visits by outsiders. As the sick were turned away at the gates of treatment centers because of a lack of beds, people inside homes began protecting themselves better, covering their arms in plastic shopping bags as they cared for ailing relatives. The gear became known as Liberian P.P.E.’s, or personal protective equipment, a reference to the more impermeable suits worn by health workers. Image A wedding reception in Monrovia. Credit John Moore/Getty Images By mid-October, new cases in Liberia had dropped precipitously, to dozens from hundreds per week. A few clinics run by Liberians and international charities had opened, but the drop took place a solid month before any of the treatment centers built by the American military had even begun accepting patients. “Heroes emerged in every community,” said Dr. Mosoka Fallah, a Harvard-trained Liberian epidemiologist who often acted as a liaison between neighborhoods and the government. “The volunteer task forces may be the biggest reason behind the drop in October.” The international response has been vital as well, Liberian officials and community leaders said, greatly expanding diagnostic and treatment options for people stricken by the virus. Even if many of those beds appeared late and sat empty , they said, the sight of the world rallying to their side reinforced the importance of the epidemic and provided a psychological boost to a beleaguered population. “This was the first time in our nation’s history that we saw actual American boots on the ground,” said Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. “You can’t imagine the difference it made in the hopes of the people. It inspired them to do more.” In Sierra Leone, residents have also taken many matters into their own hands , criticizing their government and Britain, the country’s former colonial master, for a slow and disorganized response . Laid-off teachers tracked infections, some villages set up informal isolation centers, and residents in some neighborhoods set up blockades, taking the temperatures of those who entered. “The cavalry wasn’t coming,” said David Mandu Farley Keili-Coomber, the paramount chief from the Mandu chiefdom in Sierra Leone’s east. “We were the cavalry.” He said that the region’s chiefs enlisted the traditional leaders in the area and put together bylaws that barred residents from hiding their sick, interfering with health workers or carrying out traditional burials that increased the risk of spreading the disease by touching infected corpses. Image A fishing boat in Monrovia’s West Point township, which was quarantined for 10 days in August. Credit John Moore/Getty Images “We threatened that anybody who tried to do a traditional burial would be banished from the chiefdom,” he said. Health officials are still trying to figure out why Liberia, once the raging center of the epidemic, experienced such a big drop in cases so quickly, especially compared with its neighbors. Unlike in Sierra Leone and Guinea, some noted, Ebola cases in Liberia were disproportionately concentrated in the urban setting of Monrovia. Initially, experts believed that would make the conventional method of combating the virus — tracing the contacts of infected people and isolating them — much harder, as large crowds of people moved about freely. Trying to figure out who had touched whom seemed a mind-boggling task . But the urban setting, it turns out, may also have presented a key advantage: a more educated population that was quicker to adapt. Beyond that, the virus was right in the center of power , making it impossible to ignore. Resistance in Guinea By contrast, in Guinea, where the epidemic has been concentrated in rural areas, change has often been slow and resistance fierce, fueled by a history of tensions with the central government. It took months before some villages in Guinea — where residents have killed local officials proselytizing about Ebola, blocked roads and refused help from outsiders — began letting health workers enter, their resistance waning only after so many among them had died . Even in late January, more than a year after the epidemic started, three priests were assaulted and their car was set on fire in western Guinea by villagers who mistook them for Ebola awareness campaigners. More broadly, some experts pointed out that the surge in cases in Liberia also hit sooner, in August and September, forcing a strong response more quickly. In Sierra Leone, the surge came later, peaking in the fall, before plummeting this month. Image A Unicef worker assembling school kits intended to help prevent another Ebola outbreak. Credit John Moore/Getty Images Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the delayed drop in Sierra Leone’s cases simply reflected a delay in their climb. “It’s a mistake to say Liberia did better than Sierra Leone,” he said. “The explosion in Sierra Leone happened eight weeks later. It’s not that they’ve taken longer to control it. It’s that they took longer to get there.” Sampson Nyan, the commissioner of the West Point neighborhood in Monrovia, said that the new Ebola cases since last October mostly stemmed from lingering denial about the disease, which he and others said persists in small pockets. But even in West Point — the huge Monrovia slum that was placed under violent quarantine for 10 days by the government in August, leading to riots and the death of a 15-year-old boy — attitudes about the epidemic began shifting early. He said a change in behavior over the course of September bore fruit in the sharp drop in infections the following month. “You can create an E.T.U,” he said, referring to an Ebola treatment unit. “But if family members don’t want to carry a member to an E.T.U., there will still be a problem. When people started to change their attitudes, and call the Ministry of Health or an ambulance, the cases started going down.” In Parker Paint, a neighborhood in eastern Monrovia, the local volunteer watchdog group helped limit Ebola cases to just one — even though the community was surrounded by four neighborhoods with high rates of infection. Obediah Daykeay, 22, who studied computer science at a technical college and served as the watchdog group’s secretary, read up on Ebola at an Internet cafe and printed documents for the community. The group invited Dr. Fallah, the Liberian epidemiologist, after listening to him talk on a local radio station. But aside from that visit, and a contribution by a local politician enabling them to buy buckets and T-shirts, the local watchdog group was on its own during the height of the epidemic, raising awareness and instructing residents on the proper use of bleach and water. In September, as the epidemic widened, the group’s chairman, Jeremiah Fahnbulleh, 27, another technical college graduate, proposed two measures that many communities would adopt in one form or another: outsiders would not be allowed to spend the night in Parker Paint; and residents leaving Parker Paint for more than two consecutive nights would be placed under quarantine upon their return. Standing under a mango tree next to his family home, a transistor radio at his side, Mr. Fahnbulleh said he came up with the idea after listening to the radio during a sleepless night. “The thought came to me that Ebola came from one place to another, from house to house, from community to community,” he said. “Listening to the radio, I got to know how people got infected.” ‘The Sun Is Shining’ Today, as Liberia’s Ebola cases can be counted on one hand, the end of the epidemic appears in sight to many. “The sun is shining,” said Deborah R. Malac, the United States ambassador to Liberia. Recently, she was in Barkedu, Lofa County, one of the hardest-hit communities in rural Liberia. A town of 8,000 people, Barkedu had endured more than 1,000 Ebola deaths. Whole families were wiped out as Ebola tore through the town, where the mostly Muslim population observed local traditions like washing the bodies of the dead. But Ebola has not been in Barkedu for more than 90 days, she said. And the protective bubble that Liberians had erected around themselves to avoid touching others and possibly become infected had dissolved. “The ladies were dancing, we were all much closer together,” she said. “It was much more normal, and I wasn’t really particularly concerned that someone might touch me.” At the Mary Brownell Junior High School in Monrovia, many Liberian parents have re-enrolled their children despite their lingering fears of Ebola. Classes, originally scheduled to resume on Feb. 2, are now expected to start in mid-February. Joseph Garway, 46, came to register a son. He has three children, but he now also takes care of four more: the children of a cousin who, along with his wife, died of Ebola last August. “We are worried, but still we want our children to go back to school,” he said. “If we don’t do that, our children will be left behind, and the country will not be well.” Felicia Koneh, who wakes up at 3 a.m. to bake shortbread and sells her goods on the streets or in schools, saw her daily sales of $16 fall to $6 during the height of the epidemic. In the last couple of months, though, they have risen slowly to $12, and Ms. Koneh hoped that the reopening of schools would lift her sales further. “Little by little,” she said, “things are returning to what they were like before Ebola.”

Ebola
Liberia
Sierra Leone
Guinea
WHO
CDC


Big Ben to Fall Silent During Renovation

Abstract: Big Ben, the iconic clock in London that has kept time for 157 years, withstood two world wars and become a symbol of the British capital, will fall silent for several months as part of a much-needed refurbishment program that is projected to last for three years, the British government said on Tuesday. The problems facing Big Ben are profound: Maintenance teams have identified problems with the clock’s hands, mechanism and pendulum that threaten its ability to function properly, according to a Parliament statement. They also found leaks, erosion, severe rusting and cracked masonry in the tower itself, which does not meet fire safety guidelines. The government also said an elevator would be installed to improve access in the tower and complement its 334 stone spiral steps. The project will cost an estimated $42 million. While Big Ben is used as a nickname for the clock, strictly speaking, it is the main bell inside the clock, and it also often refers to Elizabeth Tower, at the north end of the Houses of Parliament. The clock as a whole is called the Great Clock and sits atop the tower. The Keeper of the Clock, Steve Jaggs, said in a statement that the project would “balance value for money with Parliament’s custodial responsibility to the building as well as to those visiting and working in the Elizabeth Tower.” “This project will enable us to give one of Britain’s most famous landmarks the T.L.C. it so desperately needs and deserves,” he said. The repairs are scheduled to begin in early 2017, and that means the bells will not toll for a while. (The government did not specify at which point during the project they would stop chiming.) It also means that the tower will be sheathed in scaffolding for three years, although the government has said that the clock will continue to keep time as long as it is running and that one of its four ornate faces will be visible at all times. What will not keep running, though, are popular tours of the tower, which will be canceled for the full duration of the project. It is not the first time that the clock has silenced its mighty bong. The bells stopped for roughly nine months in 1976 while repairs were made and again in 2007 for six weeks of maintenance, the government said. The last extensive conservation work at the tower was done between 1983 and 1985. Big Ben is not alone in its disrepair. A report released last year cataloged a long list of structural woes plaguing the Parliament complex, of which the clock tower is a part, including leaky pipes, dangerously out-of-date wiring, asbestos and a rodent infestation. The price tag for those repairs was estimated at $6.2 billion. They are projected to begin in the early 2020s, the government said , and are separate from the refurbishment of the clock tower. Tom Brake, a member of Parliament and a spokesman for the House of Commons Commission, said in a statement that the clock tower, a Unesco World Heritage site, was “a symbol of the U.K.’s democratic heritage.” “We have a duty to ensure that it is safeguarded for future generations to appreciate, just as we owe it to our predecessors to restore their masterpiece to its former glory,” he said. “While these works are much needed in the short term, they will also ensure the long-term future and sustainability of Big Ben.”

London
Historic preservation
Watches and Clocks
Restoration and Renovation


Medifast Uses Normal People in Weight-Loss Ads

Abstract: THE three largest weight loss companies offer contrasting approaches to slimming down, but when it comes to marketing, they are identical in one way: they all hire celebrity endorsers. The current roster of famous pound-shedders includes Jennifer Hudson for Weight Watchers, Marie Osmond for Nutrisystem and Valerie Bertinelli for Jenny Craig. Now another weight loss company, Medifast , is introducing an advertising campaign that eschews celebrities. A new commercial opens on a woman named Kimberley Vandlen, who is overweight, standing in a kitchen speaking to a woman whose back is to the camera. “You look beautiful, you do,” says Ms. Vandlen, choking back tears. “You look so beautiful.” After text flashes on the screen that says, “Kimberley discusses weight loss,” the camera shifts to face the other woman, and new text appears on the screen: “With herself.” That woman, it turns out, is also Ms. Vandlen, but almost 50 pounds lighter — and radiant. Voice quavering, the thinner Ms. Vandlen says, “This is all you.” Her two versions, thanks to crafty editing, face each other in the same frame and appear to converse in real time. Heavier Ms. Vandlen: “I never thought I could look like that. Thank you.” Thinner Ms. Vandlen: “Thank you for wanting it.” The commercial, which closes with the tagline, “Become yourself,” is by Solve , an independent advertising and branding agency in Minneapolis. It will be introduced on television and online on Jan. 1, along with spots featuring two other Medifast dieters — another woman and a man — conversing with thinner versions of themselves. Aimed primarily at women aged 35 to 64, the commercials will run widely on networks including A&E, Lifetime and the Food Network. Print ads will appear in publications including People, Better Homes & Gardens and Cooking Light. “We just feel like people don’t connect as much with celebrities,” said Brian Kagen, chief marketing officer of Medifast. “Because they know that perhaps the celebrities also may have had a personal trainer or a personal chef, which normal people don’t have.” Medifast, which declined to reveal how much it would spend on the campaign, spent $25.5 million on advertising in the first nine months of 2012, behind Jenny Craig, with $39.5 million; Weight Watchers, with $200 million; and Nutrisystem, with $208.4 million, according Kantar Media, which is owned by WPP. The new campaign was set in motion in the fall of 2011, when the agency, with the help of a casting director who specializes in finding nonactors for commercials, began seeking consumers who wanted to lose weight. (Ms. Vandlen has in the past auditioned for commercials, but had never been cast in one, and her Medifast spots, like others in the campaign, were unscripted.) Along with compensation, the brand offered free Medifast portion-controlled food products, which are integral to the program, along with the telephone and online consultations with dietitians and nutritionists available to typical Medifast customers. Four people were selected, and were first filmed before they started the Medifast diet at a private home in Studio City, Calif., in January 2012. All were filmed speaking to a Medifast nutritionist, and were directed to converse with the nutritionist as if they were speaking with their future, thinner selves. Of the four subjects, the three that lost the most weight were called back to the same house in September. Right before filming began, each was for the first time shown footage from the interview recorded in January. “They put the computer in front of me, and I said, ‘I can’t believe you’re going to do that,’ ” Ms. Vandlen said in a recent interview, recalling seeing the footage of her prediet self. “I broke down in tears,” she said, “because I remember ‘that’ girl, and I remember how badly she was feeling and not wanting to get up from the couch or play with my daughter because my knees would ache or ankles would ache.” When the cameras began rolling, she and the nutritionist swapped places, and this time the nutritionist fed Ms. Vandlen her own words back to her so that she was, effectively, having a conversation with her heavier self. All of the commercials were shot and edited to leave no trace of the nutritionist, only the dieter at different weights. “Some of it was hard to watch,” said John Colasanti, the chief executive of Solve, about being on the set. “To watch these people bare their souls, you felt like kind of a voyeur.” Mr. Colasanti added that, while the weight loss was certainly evident in the commercials, the dieters were chosen based on their passion for trimming down for health and emotional reasons beyond vanity. “To think about weight loss as something that’s going to be added to your life rather than deducted from it was sort of the germ of the idea,” Mr. Colasanti said. “It isn’t what you lose, it’s what you gain.” Jay Jacobs , who lost 181 pounds competing on the 11th season of “The Biggest Loser,” and who is also a managing partner of the Shurn Group, a wellness branding firm, reviewed the new Medifast commercials and was impressed. “I think they’re brilliant because they feel authentic,” Mr. Jacobs said. “They didn’t feel staged, they didn’t feel trite — they were all very believable, and that’s what’s going to make them resonate with people.” John LaRosa, research director of Marketdata Enterprises, a market research company in Tampa, Fla., lauded Medifast for ignoring what he called the “follow the leader” mentality of celebrity marketing by weight loss companies. Mr. LaRosa reviewed the new campaign, which he called clever. “It’s going to be a campaign that gets some notice and gains some traction,” Mr. LaRosa said of the new Medifast commercials. “And it cost them a hell of a lot less because they don’t have to pay celebrities millions of dollars.”

Weight
Celebrities
Diet and Nutrition
Medifast Inc
Advertising and Marketing
Obesity


Global Warming - Climate Change - Nudge

Abstract: Before I unveil my plan to combat global warming using mood rings and glowing lapel pins, let me explain the scientific rationale. Everyone talks about the future weather, but so far nobody has done much about it, not even the many people and politicians convinced that climate change will be a serious problem. This situation comes as no surprise to the behavioral researchers who have been studying the human brain’s penchant for making dumb choices. We can’t even prepare properly for something as straightforward as our own retirement. We’ll put in long hours shopping for a cellphone or a television set, but we’re too busy to agonize over pension plans: in one study, most people spent less than an hour choosing theirs. We’re not good at making immediate sacrifices for an abstract benefit in the future. And this weakness is compounded when, as with climate change, we have a hard time even understanding the problem or the impact of our actions today. But we also have peculiarities that could be useful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With the right prompting, we’ll make sacrifices for the common good and perform acts of charity that we’d never do for any amount of pay. We’ll reform our behavior strikingly to conform with social norms. We’ll even make astute cost-benefit judgments if we get simple, clear feedback — that’s why cars come with idiot lights. We need the right nudge, to borrow the title of the new book applying the lessons of social psychology and behavioral economics to everything from health care to climate maintenance. The authors of “Nudge,” Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, agree with economists who’d like to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by imposing carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade system, but they think people need extra guidance. “Getting the prices right will not create the right behavior if people do not associate their behavior with the relevant costs,” says Dr. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics. “When I turn the thermostat down on my A-C, I only vaguely know how much that costs me. If the thermostat were programmed to tell you immediately how much you are spending, the effect would be much more powerful.” It would be still more powerful, he and Mr. Sunstein suggest, if you knew how your energy consumption compared with the social norm. A study in California showed that when the monthly electric bill listed the average consumption in the neighborhood, the people in above-average households significantly decreased their consumption. Meanwhile, the people with the below-average bills reacted by significantly increasing their consumption — not exactly the goal of the project. That reaction was avoided when the bill featured a little drawing along with the numbers: a smiling face on a below-average bill or a frowning face on an above-average bill. After that simple nudge, the heavy users made even bigger cuts in consumption, while the light users remained frugal. Mr. Sunstein and Dr. Thaler suggest applying those principles with something more sophisticated than smiley faces. A glowing ball called the Ambient Orb, programmed to change colors as the price of electricity increases at peak periods, has been given to some utility customers in California, who promptly reduced their usage by 40 percent when the ball glowed red in peak periods. Another gadget, the Wattson, which changes colors depending upon how much electricity a house is using, collects data that can be displayed on a Web site. Clive Thompson, a columnist for Wired, has suggested that people start displaying the Wattson data on their Facebook pages, an excellent idea that I’d like to take a little further. I’d like to see a new green fad for electronic jewelry with real-time displays of carbon footprints. These could be mood rings, bracelets, lapel pins or anything else that could change color depending on how much electricity you use, how much gasoline your car burns, how much you travel. The displays might change color from red to yellow to green as a carbon footprint diminishes. (There might even be a little glowing footprint on it.) The green might be a dim shade for those who have bought carbon credits to offset their energy use, but a much brighter shade for those who’ve reduced emissions to below-average without having to buy the credits. Of course, it would be a chore to set up monitors for energy use, but plenty of greens are willing to give lots of time to the cause. Some are accused of being religious zealots — global warmists. But one of the advantages of religion is that it inspires people to acts of selflessness for the common good. Why not reward devout conservationists by letting them display their virtue? This would be a strictly voluntary system — climate contrarians could either ignore it or proudly wear their flashing red lapel pins — and it would cost taxpayers nothing. But by encouraging people to find the most efficient ways to conserve energy, this nudge might do more good than some of the expensive subsidies being handed out in Congress. Besides putting the enthusiasm of greens to practical use, this fashion statement might also inject some realism into the debate about global warming. Once you start keeping track of all the energy you use, you begin to see the difficulties of making drastic reductions — and the difference between effective actions and ritual displays. Installing a solar-powered hot-water heater or a windmill at your place in the country is not going to erase the carbon footprint of maintaining and traveling to a second home. Recycling glass bottles and avoiding plastic bags at the grocery store will not offset your car’s emissions. Switching to a Prius will not undo the effects of frequent air travel. A couple of international trips can be worse for your carbon footprint than driving a Hummer for a year. If the delegates to future conferences on climate change are expected to wear illuminated symbols of their energy consumption, they won’t be visiting any more spots like Bali. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First, with your help (go to tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com ), we have to work out the details of this device, starting with what it should measure and what it would be called. The Green Lantern is an obvious name, but there may be trademark problems. GreenGlow? Eglow? Enudge? The Nudgie? Further research is clearly needed.

Global Warming
Carbon Dioxide
Air Pollution
Nudge (Book)


Children of Argentina’s ‘Disappeared’ Reclaim Past, With Help

Abstract: Grandmothers, an old saying goes, are angels in training. If so, one contingent that has had a great deal of practice can be found in Argentina. The chief pursuit of these women is more temporal than celestial. With focused anger, they have spent more than three decades seeking to unravel and, when possible, correct one of the more shocking human rights outrages of modern times. This installment of Retro Report , a series of video documentaries chronicling major news stories of the past and their abiding consequences, delves into the theft of babies by the military junta that ruthlessly ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Those were the years of the dirty war, as it was called. Thousands upon thousands of Argentines — at least 10,000 and possibly as many as 30,000, according to some human rights groups — became los desaparecidos, the disappeared. “Desaparecido” was a word that politically attuned people around the world came to recognize instantly, even if they spoke almost no Spanish. Men and women whom the junta deemed leftist subversives were abducted by death squads, most never to be seen again. They were routinely tortured in secret detention centers and then murdered, their bodies cremated or buried in mass graves or dropped from airplanes into the Atlantic Ocean. The junta described its victims as terrorists, but its definition was, to put it mildly, expansive. “One becomes a terrorist not only by killing with a weapon or setting a bomb, but also by encouraging others through ideas that go against our Western and Christian civilization,” the junta’s leader, Jorge Rafael Videla, said in 1977. He died two years ago in a Buenos Aires prison, where he had been serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity . Video The story of one man’s search for his identity after his parents disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship. The junta’s brutality had a twist: Some of the kidnapped women were pregnant. A few had small children. The pregnant captives were kept alive only long enough to give birth. Then, as described in a 2004 article in the Harvard Women’s Law Journal, the junta embarked on “an unprecedented and systematic plan to steal and sell the babies of its victims.” The mothers were killed. Many fathers were, too. And the babies — about 500 of them, in a widely accepted estimate — were handed or sold to military families and to others considered “politically acceptable.” Birth certificates were falsified. The infants’ true identities were effectively erased. In some instances, they went to the very people who had killed their parents. As this nightmare unfolded, two Argentine rights groups came into being in 1977: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers and the grandmothers of a central square in Buenos Aires. Every Thursday, they marched in silent protest around the plaza. The mothers sought to learn the fates of their dead children, the grandmothers the whereabouts of their stolen grandchildren, known as los desaparecidos con vida, the living disappeared. Not everyone was even aware at first that a grandchild existed. One such abuela was Estela Barnes de Carlotto , a school principal. She knew that the eldest of her four children, Laura, had disappeared toward the end of 1977. Only later did she learn that her politically active daughter had been pregnant. Laura was murdered after giving birth to a boy in June 1978. Still later, Ms. de Carlotto found out that the baby’s father was another activist, Walmir Montoya. He, too, was killed, and his remains were not identified until 2009. Ms. de Carlotto, who turns 85 on Oct. 22, joined Las Abuelas in 1979 and became its president 10 years later. Her story is central to the Retro Report video. Identifying and finding missing grandchildren turned into her life’s mission, with every success representing one more blow against the murderous junta. “Each case,” she has said in interviews, “is a triumph of truth over lies, horrors and deceit.” Yet as stolen babies were tracked down one by one, 113 of them by May 2014, the search for her own grandchild proved futile. Then, suddenly, in the summer of 2014, there was a turnaround. Genetic testing proved conclusively that a musician, Ignacio Hurban, was Laura’s child. Given Ms. de Carlotto’s national prominence, the discovery was a triumph that resonated emotionally across Argentina. Video Flavia Battistiol has turned to social media in hopes of being reunited with the sibling who disappeared in 1977, when the military junta ruled Argentina. Mr. Hurban had long wondered if he was truly the biological son of the couple who reared him from infancy, farmers who had received him in 1978 from a powerful landowner with ties to the junta. He did not seem like them at all, either in appearance or in cultural interests. A year ago, on his 36th birthday, he learned that he had in fact been adopted. Wondering if he might be one of the living disappeared, he had a blood test. After the results confirmed his parentage, making him the 114th grandchild to be identified, he changed his name to Ignacio Montoya Carlotto. Since then, three more such identifications have been made, bringing the total to 117. Forensic genetics, the key to discovering many of the lost grandchildren, has proved an indispensable human rights tool. Advances in DNA analysis make it possible to match a person with his or her biological grandparent; that has been happening in Argentina since 1984. In 1987, the National Bank of Genetic Data was created there, the first of its kind in the world, and it now stores several hundred family profiles. Roughly 10,000 young adults (babies snatched during the dirty war are typically now in their mid- to late 30s) have had themselves tested for possible matches. In that manner, dozens of them have found their biological grandparents. In part because of the Argentine experience, international accords now recognize certain fundamental human rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child , approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, asserts that nations must “respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity,” a requirement that extends to one’s name and family relationships. In 2006, the General Assembly affirmed that a “forced disappearance” that is part of a systematic attack on a civilian population qualifies as a crime against humanity. The identification of abducted Argentine babies has not been without pain. Some children, on discovering their true identities, have resisted leaving the only parents they know. Also, some adoptive parents have been criminally charged, with the couple who reared Mr. Montoya Carlotto now also facing that risk. His newly found grandmother, focusing on such couples in general, told Retro Report, “Without exception, they have to be brought to justice.” Then again, some grandchildren are comforted to learn that they were not abandoned by their biological parents, as they long believed. “Initially, most victims experienced psychological shock when their true identity was revealed,” Dr. Victor B. Penchaszadeh, a once-exiled Argentine geneticist who returned home several years ago, wrote this year in The Journal of Community Genetics. But in time, Dr. Penchaszadeh said, “knowledge of the truth, painful as it was, was emotionally liberating from the perversity, lies, concealment and violence that in many cases had surrounded their rearing.” Ms. de Carlotto vowed to continue the search for those still missing and “for truth and justice.” She will do this, she said, “while I have life in me.” But she is well aware that the clock is ticking. Grandmothers may be angels in training. But unlike celestial messengers, they are not immortal.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


American Charged in Haiti Had Some Troubles in Idaho

Abstract: MERIDIAN, Idaho — The leader of the group of Americans charged on Thursday with abducting children in Haiti is an Idaho businesswoman with a complicated financial history that involves complaints from employees over unpaid wages, state liens on a company bank account and lawsuits in small claims court. The leader, Laura Silsby, defaulted last July on the mortgage on a house in an unfinished subdivision here in Meridian, a suburb of Boise, according to the Ada County Tax Assessor’s Office. Yet in November, Ms. Silsby registered a new nonprofit, the New Life Children’s Refuge, at the address of the house, which she bought in 2008 for $358,000. New Life Children’s Refuge is the name of the orphanage Ms. Silsby and the nine other Americans charged in Haiti said they had planned to establish in the Dominican Republic. Ms. Silsby lost the house in Meridian to foreclosure on Dec. 7, records show, and it now stands empty, with signs in the yard promoting a foreclosure sale. “I get mail for her all the time,” said LaChelle Bohner, who lives two doors down from the house. Ms. Bohner said the mail included collection notices. Ms. Silsby and her business, Personal Shopper , which provides shopping services for Internet customers, have faced multiple legal claims. According to state records and officials, Personal Shopper has been named 14 times in complaints from employees over unpaid wages. Among the reasons cited by the employees for having not been paid were “no money for payroll” and “fully investor funded and investors have been hit hard by the economy.” Employees won nine of the cases, forcing Personal Shopper to pay nearly $31,000 in wages and $4,000 in fines. The Idaho Department of Labor initially put liens on a company bank account to get the money. “They didn’t like that so they said: ‘How much do we owe? We’ll pay it,’ ” said Bob Fick, a spokesman for the department, adding that unpaid wage complaints were not uncommon. State officials said Personal Shopper had paid all the wage claims upheld by the state. But another former employee has sued Personal Shopper in civil court. A jury trial is set for Feb. 22 over a claim by the employee, Robin Oliver, that Personal Shopper owes her more than $22,000. A lawyer for Ms. Silsby said Thursday that he could not comment on the case. One of the people awarded unpaid wages was Chris Holmes, who said he was not surprised that Ms. Silsby had run into trouble in Haiti. Mr. Holmes, who did database work, said Ms. Silsby often showed a “lack of forethought,” shifting business models to suit the investors who kept the company afloat. “She would come up with an idea on Wednesday, and on Friday there would be a new idea that was 180 degrees different,” Mr. Holmes said. In 2006, Ms. Silsby received a Femtor Award for “Businesswoman of the Year”; the awards are sponsored by the eWomenNetwork, a group that promotes women and their businesses. Ms. Silsby, who has young children in Idaho, was divorced in 2007. She and her former husband lived in Meridian, but public records were not clear about where she currently resides. The offices of Personal Shopper, in an office park in Meridian, have been shuttered this week, with mail dating to at least last week stacked on the floor. Clint Henry, pastor of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, where five of the Americans charged in Haiti attend services, said Ms. Silsby had attended his church for about two years. “You wouldn’t find any finer Christian people than these people,” Mr. Henry said in an interview earlier this week.

Haiti
Idaho
Orphans and Orphanages
Kidnapping
Earthquakes
Silsby Laura


Britain Haunted by Risk of Flooding

Abstract: LONDON — Britons are used to griping about the rain, but a series of major floods in recent years has prompted some to ask how ready the nation is to cope with the rising sea levels and increase in storms that are expected to come as the climate warms. After Hurricane Sandy exposed how poorly prepared much of the U.S. East Coast was for an extremely severe storm, British flood experts say their nation would most likely fare somewhat better. But with budgets tight and the likelihood of further big floods growing, they say officials must stay focused on strengthening defenses, retreating from vulnerable areas where necessary, and protecting infrastructure like power plants and hospitals. Severe floods have struck frequently around Britain in the past decade and a half, with particularly damaging deluges caused by heavy rain and swollen rivers in 2000, 2007 and 2012. “These have been floods on a large scale and have been damaging floods, but they haven’t been on a catastrophic scale,” said Jim Hall, a professor of climate and environmental risk at the University of Oxford. “On that kind of a scale, we’re still really untested.” Further complicating matters, the frequency of serious droughts is also expected to rise. Last year, parts of the country were stricken simultaneously by flood and drought, with underground reserves of water depleted by months of dry weather even as heavy rainfall swamped the surface. Hurricane Sandy, which paralyzed parts of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, came just a few months before the 60th anniversary, in January, of a storm surge in 1953 that killed more than 300 people in Britain and more than 1,700 in the Netherlands. Memories of both should nudge Britain to examine its readiness, experts said. “Hurricane Sandy was a wake-up call around coastal flooding,” said Pete Fox, the head of strategy and investment at the U.K. Environment Agency. He said that British officials meet regularly with representatives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and are seeking to learn lessons from the devastation caused by the hurricane, particularly about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like hospitals and transportation networks. By all accounts, London is much better placed than New York to weather an extreme storm and coastal surge. New York sits on the coast, its harbor open to the sea, and it was flagged as facing serious and worsening flood risk by a report in 2008 from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. London, on the other hand, lies a few dozen miles inland, and its biggest exposure is through surges of the tidal River Thames. Moreover, the movable steel gates of the Thames Barrier, built after the flood in 1953, were designed to withstand a once-in-a-thousand-year storm. “We actually raise the barrier far more often nowadays,” Mr. Fox said. “That in itself is a signal of the changes and extremes in our weather that we are seeing.” Even with the barrier, the capital remains vulnerable to the flooding of the many tributaries of the Thames and to street floods that hit when heavy rainfall overwhelms urban drainage systems, Mr. Fox said. Poor drainage was blamed for floods that devastated the northeastern city of Hull in 2007 and experts say the risk remains high in many British cities, where sewers and pipes are often more than 100 years old. Upgrades are underway on a piecemeal basis around the country, funded by water companies and the local authorities, but the water industry regulator, Ofwat, said no national plan had been prepared for a wholesale modernization of water infrastructure. David Crichton, a flood expert and adviser in Scotland, said the cost for a nationwide upgrade would be prohibitive. Coastal areas are also vulnerable. In some places, the authorities have chosen to let the sea retake uninhabited areas, hoping new wetlands will provide a natural barrier and ease pressure on populated zones. On the Blackwater estuary in southeast England, for example, sea walls were broken down in 2002 to let a former farm become salt marsh. As well as cutting flood risk, the local Essex Wildlife Trust said the new wetlands provide a home to wading birds, 14 kinds of fish and plant species like sea lavender. Opening up new parkland alongside rivers and letting waterways that have been artificially straightened return to their original, winding paths can also lessen the impact of floods. While hard defenses like walls and flood gates will always be necessary, “it’s expensive and in some places technically unfeasible to keep building river defenses higher and higher,” said David Tickner, the chief adviser on fresh water at the British section of the conservation group WWF. “That’s a lot of concrete. It’s a lot of money.” The Environment Agency says spending on the construction and maintenance of flood defenses will have to rise to £1 billion, or $1.5 billion, a year by 2035, from £570 million now. Another worry is flood insurance. Insurers are seeking government help to keep policies affordable for those in high-risk areas, as part of talks to extend an existing public-private deal beyond its scheduled expiration in June. Failure to reach an agreement could put insurance out of reach for as many as 200,000 households, the industry has said. The floods in 2007 left some parts of Britain under six feet, or 1.8 meters, of water, killing 13 people and costing the economy an estimated £3.2 billion. After the disaster, a review led by Michael Pitt, a local government official and infrastructure planning expert, warned that the risk of more severe events was growing. He urged the government to implement a list of recommendations, including limiting construction in flood plains and getting utilities to better protect power substations. “Not all of them have been followed up, and I still have some doubt with respect to our capacity to cope with a very large” flood, said Mr. Hall, of Oxford. While work has been done to protect water treatment plants and other key infrastructure, the London Underground and many hospitals remain vulnerable, he said. Because of population pressure, “we’ve built more on flood plains than anybody feels really comfortable with,” noted Mr. Fox, of the Environment Agency. The government is spending nearly £300 million on 93 separate flood defense efforts that start construction this year, while funding from the local authorities and the private sector has contributed £148 million since 2011, the agency said. Nonetheless, Mr. Fox acknowledged, money “is a challenge for all publicly funded programs” in times of austerity. The benefits are clear, though. Mr. Fox said a £38 million program to protect Carlisle, in northwest England, after severe flooding in 2005, paid for itself in one night of heavy rainfall in 2009. Politically, however, it is hard to win funds for projects that guard against future hazards rather than providing immediate benefit, Mr. Hall noted. “Investing in flood defenses is an investment in risk reduction, and that is sometimes a harder case to make,” he said.

Flood
Hurricane Sandy
Environment
Great Britain
Emergency Response and Preparedness


Rival Confirms Bid for Australian Port and Railroad Operator

Abstract: HONG KONG — The Australian port operator Qube said Thursday that it had formalized an offer to buy Asciano, another Australian port and railroad operator, for about $6.3 billion. Qube, as part of a consortium that includes the New York-based Global Infrastructure Partners, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and CIC Capital of China, offered 6.97 Australian dollars, or about $4.90, in cash, plus one Qube share for each Asciano share. That amounts to about 9 billion Australian dollars. The consortium made a nonbinding proposal in November , after Asciano agreed in August to be acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, a Toronto-based investment firm, for $6.6 billion. Asciano said then that its board unanimously recommended Brookfield’s bid, although it was not clear whether regulators would approve that deal. The board said on Thursday that it was considering the latest bid from Qube, but it added that it continued to unanimously favor Brookfield’s offer. Under the terms of the latest bid, Qube would buy all of Asciano’s Patrick container terminals business and half of the ports operations business. Patrick operates container terminals in the four largest container ports in Australia, and shareholders would have to vote on whether to divide the business after completion of the deal. The consortium would own the rest of Asciano. “We know Asciano’s Ports businesses better than any other potential owner,” Maurice James, Qube’s managing director, said in a news release. “The ports are a core element for Qube to provide customers seamless coverage through Australia’s international trade supply chain.” Qube said it expected the deal to provide between 30 million dollars and 50 million dollars in savings over the next two to three years. Asked about the involvement of CIC Capital, a subsidiary of China’s sovereign wealth fund, Mr. James said in a conference call: “All three are long-term infrastructure investors and we’re very encouraged by their involvement and commitment to that project. It should be noted that they won’t have any involvement in the port business. They will remain on the rail side.” In December, Australia defended its decision to lease part of a port to a Chinese company. In 2015, there were 1,328 deals in Australia worth about $118 billion, according to data from Dealogic. About $27 billion of that went into deals involving transport and logistics. Shares in Asciano closed 4 percent higher after the news, while Qube stocks initially dropped but ended the day up 3.81 percent.

Australia
Railroads
Qube
Asciano
Global Infrastructure Partners
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners
China Investment
Mergers and Acquisitions


Donald Trump Says He Might Meet With Putin Before Inauguration

Abstract: Donald J. Trump suggested on Monday that Hillary Clinton was too “tough” in her language about Russia, and said that if he won the election, he might meet with President Vladimir V. Putin before being sworn in. Mr. Trump made the remarks in an interview with the conservative radio host Michael Savage, who repeatedly affirmed Mr. Trump’s recent claims that the mainstream media was attempting to thwart him. Mr. Trump told Mr. Savage that the United States’ current leadership, as well as Mrs. Clinton, was too aggressive against Mr. Putin. “They insult him constantly — I mean, no wonder he can’t stand Obama and Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Trump said, calling the tensions a “very serious problem.” “It is the worst situation that we’ve had with Russia since the end of the Cold War, by far,” he said. Mr. Trump added that “she shouldn’t be talking so tough” about Russia, and he suggested, as he has repeatedly in recent months, that Russia could be an ally in fighting the Islamic State. “We have Putin, who has no respect for Obama at all — doesn’t like him, and doesn’t respect him,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Savage, calling the difficulties “a really catastrophic situation here, I’ll be honest with you.” He added, “If I win on Nov. 8, I could see myself meeting with Putin and meeting with Russia prior to the start of the administration.” Democrats have often assailed Mr. Trump for his comments about Mr. Putin, whom he has characterized as a stronger leader than President Obama. Mr. Trump, who has declined to make his tax returns public, has denied that he has business interests in Russia. But he has also refused to acknowledge that the United States intelligence officials have attributed the hacking of the Democratic National Committee to Russian hackers who they said must have had the approval of the Kremlin’s top leaders. But beyond the potential meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump did not offer a strategy for dealing with Moscow.

Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Russia
Michael Savage
2016 Presidential Election
Barack Obama
Vladimir Putin


Norway Divided by Citizen Wealth Tables

Abstract: OSLO — It’s the moment nosy Norwegian neighbors have been waiting for — the release of official records showing the annual income and overall wealth of nearly every taxpayer in the Scandinavian country. In a move that would be unthinkable elsewhere, tax authorities in Norway have issued the “skatteliste,” or “tax list,” for 2008 to the media under a law designed to uphold the country’s tradition of transparency. It is Norwegians’ way of keeping up with the Johansens — from fishermen on the western fjords and Sami reindeer herders in the north to members of the committee that awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. To non-Scandinavians, it would seem to be a gross violation of privacy. The tax list stirs up a media frenzy, with splashy headlines revealing oil-rich Norway’s wealthiest man, woman and celebrity couple. The data shows that the former cross-country skiing great Bjoern Daehlie, who has eight Olympic gold medals, also has plenty of cash — 29.3 million kroner, or $5.4 million. The actress and director Liv Ullmann, for instance, earned $17,300 in Norway, and has a wealth of $2.5 million. Income earned or kept abroad, or otherwise in some sort of tax shelter, is not included. Many media outlets use the tax records to produce their own searchable online databases. Defenders of the system say it enhances transparency, deemed essential for an open democracy. “Isn’t this how a social democracy ought to work, with openness, transparency and social equality as ideals?” the columnist Jan Omdahl wrote in the tabloid Dagbladet. He acknowledged, however, that many treat the list like “tax porno” — furtively checking the income of neighbors or co-workers. Critics say the list is actually a threat to society. “What each Norwegian earns and what you have in wealth is a private matter between the taxpayer and the government,” said Jon Stordrange, director of the Norwegian Taxpayers Association. Besides providing criminals with a useful tool to find prime targets, he said the list generates playground taunts of my-dad-is-richer-than-your-dad. “The children of people with low wages are being teased about it in the schools,” Mr. Stordrange said Thursday. “People with low salaries are being met with comments at the grocery store, ‘How can you live on these low wages?”’ A 2007 survey by research group Synovate revealed that only 32 percent of the Norwegian public wanted the tax list published, and 46 percent were against it. The most recent law in addressing the issue, in 2007, emphasizes that “first and foremost, it’s the press that can contribute to a critical debate” on wealth and the elaborate tax scheme that, along with the country’s oil wealth, keeps Norway’s extensive — and expensive — welfare system afloat. The country of 4.8 million people had the third-highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, behind Denmark and New Zealand, according to the latest statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Since the latest tax data was released Wednesday, national media have scrambled to analyze it, building top-10 lists and graphic breakdowns of income differentials between sexes, age groups and residences. So who’s Norway’s richest man? The tobacco mogul Johan Henrik Andresen, worth $2 billion, has surpassed last year’s No. 1, the industrialist Kjell Inge Roekke, according to Dagbladet. Andresen now owns the Ferd investment group, whose assets include the Elopak packaging company and ski wax maker Swix Sport. Mr. Roekke is chairman of Aker ASA, a holding company in the fishing, construction and industrial sectors. Norway’s richest woman is the stock market investor Tone Bjoerseth-Andersen, whose wealth of $107 million placed her behind 24 men, the paper said. Most other Europeans, including residents of Britain, Italy and the Netherlands, have very different attitudes toward transparency and privacy and would be horrified at such a setup. Last week, the Spanish government for the first time released information on how much each cabinet member is worth, but data on ordinary citizens is still private.


A Smuggled Girl’s Odyssey of False Promises and Fear

Abstract: EL PARAÍSO, Guatemala — The smugglers advertised on the radio as spring bloomed into summer: “Do you want to live better? Come with me.” Cecilia, a restless wisp of a girl, heard the pitch and ached to go. Her stepfather had been murdered, forcing her, her mother and four younger siblings into her aunt’s tiny home, with just three beds for 10 people. It was all they had — and all a smuggler needed . He offered them a loan of $7,000 for Cecilia’s journey, with the property as a guarantee. “I gave him the original deed,” said Jacinta, her aunt, noting that the smuggler gave them a year to repay the loan, with interest. “I did it out of love.” The trip lasted nearly a month, devolving from a journey of want and fear into an outright abduction by smugglers in the United States. Freedom came only after an extra $1,000 payment, made at a gas station in Fort Myers, Fla., as her kidnappers flashed a gun. Now in Miami, Cecilia, 16, is one of more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors who have come to the United States illegally from Central America in less than a year. Though the number of new arrivals has been declining, the Obama administration says it is determined to “confront the smugglers of these unaccompanied children,” and the “cartels who tax or exploit them in their passage.” But breaking up these networks will be difficult. Behind the surge of young migrants showing up for a shot at the American dream is a system of cruel and unregulated capitalism with a proven ability to adapt. The human export industry in the region is now worth billions of dollars, experts say, and it has become more ruthless and sophisticated than ever, employing a growing array of opportunists who trap, rape and rob from the point of departure to the end of the road. Thousands of migrants are believed to be kidnapped and abused every year while going through Mexico. Others, like Cecilia, are held for ransom in the United States, and officials across the region lament that the ugly business of human smuggling keeps getting uglier. Especially here in Guatemala, smugglers, or “coyotes,” have grown increasingly adept at marketing themselves to poor families, drumming up hopes with false depictions of American immigration policy, then squeezing their prey with death threats, demanding payment through bank loans or property titles. The result, visible throughout mountain villages like this one, is a relentless cycle with departures that ebb and flow but never seem to end. In this self-perpetuating system, the seeds of future migration have already been sown in the debts of the past and present. Cecilia’s inability to send money home right away led her pregnant mother to try to make the journey herself a few weeks later in a desperate bid to save the house, only to fail. Now she owes a coyote, too. Other family members will follow, her relatives say, repeating the pattern of debt, extortion and additional risk. One relative’s failure to cross the border or earn enough money up north prompts another departure, then another. “It’s a pyramid scheme,” said David Stoll, an anthropologist at Middlebury College who has studied migration in Guatemala. Once coyotes and families realize they are about to lose money or a house, he added, “the only way they can recoup their losses is by passing the game on to those below them.” A Marketplace for Leaving Nebaj, the municipality that includes El Paraíso, sits in a small green valley deep in the Guatemala highlands, an eight-hour drive from the capital on rough roads that zigzag through lush canyons. This is the land of the Ixil, indigenous Mayans famous for weaving bright red skirts — and for being the victims of a scorched-earth military campaign that killed thousands in the 1980s during Guatemala’s civil war. The region has been sending people north for years, often with loans. In the hillside villages all over Nebaj, stories of land lost to coyotes and banks are common. Many families spend years struggling, with debts passed on like poisoned inheritances. Local lenders often lay out the initial payments. But if they are not paid back right away, they often threaten violence, forcing many families to borrow from Banrural, the main bank in rural Guatemala, or from cooperatives and credit unions, all of which happily advertise credit on billboards above the rural area’s muddy roads. Many families have come away with nothing more than regrets. “Sometimes I think my father just wasn’t thinking through the consequences of leaving,” Magdalena Raymundo, 25, said in a dirt-floored shack she shares with her husband in Acul, a village outside Nebaj. She and her mother still owe nearly $13,000 for a trip her father and brother took in 2006. Threatening to evict the family, “bank collectors come by every few weeks asking for money,” she said. Everyone here seems to know that going to the United States is a gamble with dangerous odds. But many go anyway because some win, and they tend to show it — like the owner of a new concrete house with an enormous American flag painted on the front, just a short walk down a muddy path from Ms. Raymundo’s home. The banking system encourages the risky behavior. Jorge Gúzman, the manager at one of two Banrural banks in Nebaj, said loans are more likely to be approved if the family applying has a relative up north sending back money. The loans are supposed to be for construction or farming improvements, but Mr. Gúzman said “most people are not honest about why they are borrowing.” He acknowledged that a lot of the money had been used to pay for additional journeys north. During the recession a few years ago, that led to more losses for the bank. But in the past year or two, he said, the bank’s portfolio had stabilized, allowing for more lending. And with more money in play, coyotes have come calling. Their ranks have multiplied, many here say, because it’s the best job around. One trip often pays more than a teacher’s annual salary. “This migration was prompted by a growing business, of the coyotes,” said Luis Fernando Carrera Castro, Guatemala’s foreign minister. “They saw a business opportunity, and they convinced people in Central America that somehow the laws of the United States were going to allow them to stay.” Their advertising in Nebaj could be heard openly on the radio. It could be seen in the market, where women in jeans handed out business cards with phone numbers for coyotes who came to town once or twice a week. Cecilia, who did not want her full name or the full names of her relatives used — to avoid trouble with American authorities and the people her family owes in Guatemala, knew the journey was risky. Her cousin, Ana, 21, who lives in the same house, had already tried and been deported, twice. But Cecilia and her family believed the smuggler’s proposal. “I thought when I got to the United States they would give me papers — the coyote said that,” she said. So early one morning in May, Cecilia put five pairs of pants and five shirts in a backpack and set off, walking up the dirt trail leading away from the home that paid her way. The coyote or one of his lackeys — they were all strangers, reachable only on cellphones that were shut off after two weeks — picked up Cecilia later that day, along with a half-dozen others. What followed, Cecilia said, was a five-leg, three-week journey with a rotating cast of opportunistic guides. First, she rode a bus to the Mexican border. Then another set of coyotes took them through Mexico, again by bus, often failing to give them any food — a common tool to maximize profit — until they reached the town of Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen, Tex. There, for about a week, she said, she was kept in a warehouse with as many as 100 people until they crossed the Rio Grande in a small boat and eventually landed at a house in or near McAllen. About 85 people, most of them men, squeezed into three bedrooms. The shades were drawn, and the new guides were gruff, rummaging through the migrants’ belongings while they slept. “They took all our money from us,” Cecilia said. She handed over her last 500 Mexican pesos (about $38). After about a week, another coyote took a small group to begin the treacherous walk through the desert in Brooks County to avoid the Border Patrol checkpoints on the roads. The thorns stuck to her legs. The dry air sapped her strength. “I saw two dead people in the desert,” she recalled. “There was hardly any food or water. The coyote had food for himself, but not for us.” At one point a car came and picked them up. They squeezed in, seven of them, and drove for an hour, following signs to Houston. The new coyote started calling her biological father, Jacinto, who had only recently reappeared in her life. “Where’s the money?” the coyote asked. Jacinto was confused. He had gone to the United States as a young man, working as a gardener in Miami, but had been back in Guatemala with a second family for more than a decade. “The man said if they don’t pay they are not going to let us out,” Cecilia said. Migrants as Commodities It is a common scheme. Even as thousands of children have presented themselves to American border officials in recent months, many smugglers are holding onto others for extortion. In July, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was rescued from a Central Florida motel after a smuggler decided he wanted more money from his uncle and took off with the children in a van. The smuggler was later arrested. In March, 115 migrants were rescued from a stash house in Houston after a woman said she had paid a smuggler $15,000 to bring her daughter and two grandchildren to Chicago, but that they were being held against their will until an additional $13,000 was paid, according to a federal indictment . American law enforcement officials note that the culprits in these cases and others probably had nothing to do with the original smuggler the migrants signed up with. While a generation ago coyotes were typically local figures with trusted employees, smuggling is more decentralized now, making it easier to expand and harder to stop. “If this was hierarchal, you could take out the top, target the leadership, and it would be simple to take out the organization,” said Brian Moskowitz, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Houston. “Because it’s loose affiliations of cells and networks which form, break up and change alliances, it’s very difficult.” Kidnapping has become systemic. A 2011 report from Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights cited 10,000 abductions in six months, leading many advocates to estimate that 20,000 people a year are abducted in Mexico on their way to the United States. In some cases, women are used as currency to pay for passage through areas controlled by drug cartels. The cartels generally require each coyote to sell at least one woman into prostitution every two months in lieu of his monthly fee, according to Óscar Martínez, a Salvadoran journalist who investigated smuggling rings for his book “The Beast.” And in the United States, the exploitation continues. Smugglers sometimes buy migrants for $100 or $200 each, then extort relatives to make the money back. Children at the Border The number of children crossing the U.S. border alone has doubled since last year. Answers to key questions on the crisis. “They rent a house, gut it, throw down a few mattresses, and then when aliens get there, take their shoes, clothes and put them in a room,” said Sean McElroy, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Houston. “And usually, you will walk into a bedroom and see 20 people sitting on hands and knees, sometimes tied up with zip ties and with burlap sacks over their heads.” In June, Homeland Security began Operation Coyote, leading to 540 smuggling-related arrests and the seizure of more than $950,000 in suspected smuggling payments from 504 bank accounts, as well as 56 vehicles. Experts welcomed the effort, but said that it had touched only a tiny piece of the trafficking industry. In most cases, especially in Central America and Mexico, smugglers still operate with impunity. $1,000 for Her Freedom Few migrants or their families ever call the police. In Cecilia’s case, her mother, frantic after not hearing from her daughter for weeks, took cash from a lender, hoping to make it to the United States to find her daughter and repay the original loan. But she lost everything at the Mexican border when a coyote robbed her and refused to bring her north because she was pregnant. Jacinto was now considered responsible for the debts, but he said he had no way to pay. Cecilia said her captor became more aggressive, prompting her to play her final card: a telephone number in her pocket. Before she had left, her father had given her the home number of a Miami human rights activist whose lawn he had occasionally cut as a teenager in the United States. He had not seen the family — the Maríns — in years. “I get this call, and it’s a girl saying, ‘It’s Cecilia. Can you help me? They won’t let me out unless we pay money,’ ” said Ms. Marín, who did not want her full name published because of security concerns. “I said, ‘Who is Cecilia?’ ” The coyote got on the phone and made the terms clear: He wanted $500 immediately, and someone had to come to Houston to retrieve the girl. Flabbergasted, Ms. Marín explained to the coyote that she did not know her. A series of calls later, Ms. Marín realized that Cecilia was her former employee’s daughter. She eventually agreed to pay the $500, and the man agreed to drive east. But every time he crossed another state line, he called and demanded more, raising the price for Cecilia’s release to $1,700 by the time he reached northern Florida. “It was clear that if we did not comply, she would wind up in a brothel,” said Ana Reyes, Ms. Marín’s family friend who fielded most of the phone calls. The more Ms. Marín thought about the proposition, the angrier she became. “It’s vile blackmail,” she said. But she agreed to meet in Naples, about two hours’ drive from Miami. Ms. Reyes, her toddler, Ms. Marín and Ms. Marín’s sister and niece all piled into a car to rendezvous with the smuggler. On the ride to Naples, the women rehearsed what they would tell the police if they were arrested. “I had no choice,” Ms. Marín thought. “They would prostitute her. What was I supposed to do? Leave her?” Along the way, they exchanged several phone calls with the man, who needed directions. He could not spell the names of the street signs and kept calling an unknown conspirator seeking authorization for price changes. The trip ended off Interstate 75, near a Circle K convenience store, where Ms. Marín and her entourage encountered a red Jeep Cherokee with temporary license plates. There were two men in the car. The driver was middle-aged and wore glasses. He lifted his shirt to show the firearm tucked in his waistband. He wanted $1,500, but Ms. Marín had brought only $900. Her sister scraped together another $100 from her purse. “When he showed the gun, I was so mad,” Ms. Marín said. “I said, ‘Look, sir, I don’t know her. I did not hire you. Take her!’ When he saw my rage, he said, ‘You don’t know her?’ ” “ ‘No, I don’t,’ ” she answered. “ ‘I am going to lose money on this, but O.K.,’ ” he said. He took the $1,000 and let Cecilia out of the car. She carried nothing. Her bag, her clothes were gone. All she had was lipstick, in her front pocket. Over the next few weeks, Cecilia’s father would be threatened by the lender; her mother would give birth, adding another child to the crowded house that might soon be seized; and Cecilia would learn that her dreams of sending home $1,000 a month were unrealistic. But by the smuggler’s accounting, there on the side of the road, Cecilia had been well served. “You have to be thankful,” he said. “We treated her well.”

Guatemala
Central America
Children
Mexico
Florida
Illegal Immigration
Kidnapping and Hostages
Texas


Sheathing Planes in a New Skin to Repel Frost and Ice

Abstract: De-icing aircraft with chemicals is expensive, environmentally unfriendly and time-consuming, as stranded passengers during winter blizzards may be well aware. For the last decade researchers have been exploring the possibility of building planes with hydrophobic, or water-repellent, materials that would not require de-icing. But now, researchers from M.I.T. report that this approach is flawed. Although a surface might be water-repellent, it may not be ice- or frost-repellent. Their findings appear in the journal Applied Physics Letters . “Water can go directly from a vapor stage to a solid state,” said Kripa Varanasi the study’s lead author and a professor of mechanical engineering at M.I.T. “When ice forms this way — typically called frost — on a super hydrophobic surface it can pretty much coat up the entire surface.” The result is a surface covered in frost that is no longer hydrophobic, but incredibly hydrophilic, or water-attracting, he said. Dr. Varanasi believes that frost buildup can be better controlled by creating a surface with nanoscale texturing. The technology would have applications outside aviation as well. Wind turbines tend to collect large amounts of ice, and aside from introducing significant drag and reducing performance, a spinning turbine can hurl out large chunks of ice that can cause serious damage. The real challenge lies in creating an ideal texture that deflects unwanted frost formation and is also durable and scalable, Dr. Varanasi said.

Ice
Nanotechnology
Science and Technology


A Scoop or Two, and Candy Too

Abstract: THERE are enough sweets at Milk and Cookies Ice Cream Parlor to carry sugar-craving children through to Halloween. Cookie dough, bubble gum and cotton candy are among the 40 flavors of Sedutto ice cream sold by the cup or cone ($3 for 6 ounces, $3.50 for 8 ounces, $4 for 12 ounces), with candy toppings at 50 cents each. (Sugar-free ice cream and low-fat frozen yogurt are the same price.) For those who prefer “toppings” — Snickers, M & M’s and gummy bears among them — mixed in with the ice cream, the shop has a station for that (with one ingredient, $4 for 6 ounces, $4.50 for 8 ounces). There are egg creams ($1.75 for 12 ounces), smoothies ($3.25), malteds ($3.25), banana splits ($5.50) and ice cream cakes ($18 for an 8-inch cake). The ice cream parlor takes up just half of the colorful space. Across from the counter is a country-style general store decorated with red gingham curtains, wagon wheels and haystacks and stocked with baskets of dolls and small toys for sale. More than 100 bins of candy line the wall where jellybeans, licorice, red hots and gumballs can be scooped into brown paper bags and carried off for $2.49 for a quarter-pound and $3.99 for a half-pound. The year-old sweet shop was opened by Lenny and Gina Jaworowski, the owners of the eight-year-old Milk and Sugar Cafe, a popular restaurant across the street. They sold the ice cream parlor in August so they could concentrate on their restaurant and catering business. The new owners, Darren and Susan Cusanelli, plan to offer princess- and pirate-themed birthday parties for children in a rear room of the store. Milk and Cookies Ice Cream Parlor, 36 West Main Street, Bay Shore; (631) 969-2665. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.


Russia Oil Giant Selling Assets

Abstract: MOSCOW — A refinery went to the Chinese. A stake in a Siberian oil field went to BP. And a large regional oil company widely expected to be gobbled up by Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant, remained on the balance of a government agency instead. With a powerful ally of President Vladimir V. Putin at the helm, Rosneft has for more than a decade grown rapaciously inside Russia and abroad, as a company coming to symbolize the wealth and might of Russia during the oil boom. But that changed this year. Rosneft, though still the world’s largest publicly traded oil company when measured by production, has been unloading assets while struggling to pay down debt. “The government is really facing tough times,” said Ildar Davletshin, an energy analyst at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow investment bank. The average price of Ural blend oil, the main Russian export grade, was $97 a barrel last year, but it has averaged just $57 in the first half of this year, and has been selling for even less this fall. Starting this summer, some analysts have been seeing a pivot away from the economic model of recent years, when political allies such as Rosneft’s president, Igor I. Sechin , led large state companies toward a new emphasis on efficiency and even competition. Though it is too early to gauge the seriousness of this shift, the effects are already being felt in the oil industry. Mr. Sechin, once an unassailable figure in Russian politics and, like Mr. Putin, a former Soviet intelligence agent, has suffered slights that whittle away at his stature. So far this year, however, there has been only one high-profile, politically hued dismissal of an executive in the industry. After the regional oil company Bashneft was renationalized last year after a legal battle, the asset was not immediately amalgamated into Rosneft, as expected. Then, Rosneft was refused bailout funds to repay debt; it has been forced instead to shed assets and offer China equity stakes in Siberian petroleum projects, something Russia had resisted until now. Rosneft and the China National Chemical Corporation traded in September a stake in a refinery under construction in the Russian far east for shares in refineries inside China, a deal that transfers to the Chinese the up-front investment in the Russian refinery. “They have to adjust the old model,” Mr. Davletshin said. “The old model was based on the large state companies. I doubt Putin will change this in the middle of the crisis. But if they use this model, they have to ensure it works,” and does not drain money from state coffers. Just two years after buying BP’s joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, in what was seen as another step toward the consolidation of the industry in state hands, Rosneft turned around this spring and sold a 20 percent stake in the Taas-Yuryakh field in eastern Siberia to BP. In August, the company formally rescinded its request for a bailout from one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, leaving it few options but to divest itself of assets. Rosneft executives say its strategy is “deleveraging” the debt taken on in the TNK-BP purchase. About $25 billion of syndicated loan debt to large Western banks, including Barclays and Bank of America, comes due in the next six months. Back in a high oil price environment, BP sold its TNK-BP joint venture here at a price that valued reserves at about $4.50 per barrel. Then this year, it paid about $2 per barrel for its share in the new field. Having sold dear and bought cheap from Rosneft, BP’s president in Russia, David Campbell, said at the signing ceremony in St. Petersburg in June, “I’m pleased we have been able to conclude this transaction.” There’s no such pleasure being expressed by the Russian government over what senior officials are now openly suggesting is bungled management of the large state enterprises, though Rosneft has not been singled out. After the president of the Russian railway monopoly, Vladimir I. Yakunin, another longtime associate of Mr. Putin and reputed former K.G.B. agent, resigned , the economy minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, said the railroad management had returned to “the realm of reality.” Executives were no longer asking for a 140-billion-ruble, or $2 billion, bailout, and could cut costs instead, Mr. Ulyukayev said. The government, said Alexander Abramov, an economist at the Higher School of Economics, is grappling with the problem of its own making of the past decade in forming gigantic, inefficient state monopolies, a hallmark of Mr. Putin’s economic policies. Not surprisingly, waste and inefficiency flourished. Rosneft’s capitalization is now less on the London Stock Exchange, about $38 billion, than the $56 billion the company paid for the TNK-BP subsidiary two years ago. Rosneft, in a statement, drew attention to the company’s exceptionally low production costs from currently pumping fields, and high profit margin. Rosneft’s outlay of $3 per barrel produced is the lowest among major oil companies, for example. “The company is constantly working on boosting efficiency,” Rosneft said in the statement. Rosneft shares rose slightly this year, while international competitors fell as much as 27 percent, for Shell. Under Mr. Sechin, the company said, reserves grew 40 percent and the company has made a profit for the past 13 consecutive quarters. The longer outlook is less certain. Output is projected to fall by 1.1 percent this year in the start of a long, slow slide not only for Rosneft but the oil industry as a whole, as onshore fields in Siberia are peaking and declining. Before tensions flared in the Ukraine crisis, Rosneft had planned to stabilize output by taking the industry offshore. Sanctions have indefinitely delayed those plans. For now, the company says its strategy to keep Russia in oil is to drill more intensively in already producing fields in western Siberia. “We reached a decision, so as not to lose market share, to correct the business plan toward pumping from already active fields,” Mr. Sechin told Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev at a meeting in August. Mr. Sechin told Mr. Medvedev he would also shake up the leadership of underperforming subsidiaries. Rosneft will pay about $23 billion less in taxes this year compared to last because of the oil price collapse, unseating Rosneft as the country’s largest taxpayer. Gazprom has again assumed that role. Rosneft will be treading water at best to hold its current output volumes. “Flat would be a real good result” for the coming year, Mr. Davletshin said.


Construction Site Offers Fleeting Glimpse of the Civil War Past

Abstract: FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — The first bullet surfaced just after lunch. As Jon Tucker sifted soil through a screen in September, a corroded lead slug jiggled into view amid the sand and ash excavated from a pit just a few feet from a fenced-off sidewalk and rushing traffic. Mr. Tucker waved to his supervisor, Taft Kiser, the lead archaeologist on the site, and held up the bullet for him to see. It would not be the last time. Hundreds of artifacts followed, along with the contours of a buried cellar holding a rich trove of Civil War history sealed since a ferocious 1862 battle in this Virginia city, which today lies just beyond the suburbs of Washington. The discovery amid construction of a courthouse was unexpected. But the site has astonished historians and archaeologists for another reason: it represents a “time capsule,” in the words of Mr. Kiser, a rare snapshot in time, undisturbed through more than a century of urban construction around it. Since then, the crew’s shovels and trowels have scraped away cinders and sand to reveal the basement’s contents: Dozens of bullets. Buttons from Union jackets. Shards from whiskey bottles. A metal plate from a cartridge box. Chinstrap buckles. Tobacco pipes. A brick fireplace and charred floorboards. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” said Mr. Kiser, 53, as Brynn Stewart, the project manager, nodded beside him. With the project paused, the team raced to document what they concluded was the basement of a building set afire shortly after the Battle of Fredericksburg. The timing was opportune because the battle’s 150-year anniversary is in December, and Fredericksburg has been preparing to mark the sesquicentennial. “No one, of course, calculated that, but it is a pleasant happenstance that most of us in our lifetimes won’t ever see again,” said John Hennessy, a National Park Service historian. Such sites are a kind of archaeological Brigadoon, the fictional Scottish village that appeared once a century. They come unexpectedly amid construction, scientists and historians have only a brief period to document them, and then construction resumes, destroying the site. Most archaeological artifacts today are unearthed because of development, said Joe B. Jones, the director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. “Until people start breaking ground, only then do people realize what they’ve got there, and everybody’s got to scramble to find a way to deal with it in a responsible way,” he said. In Fredericksburg’s case, city planners hired Mr. Kiser’s firm to investigate the historical significance of the property chosen for the $35 million courthouse complex, as they would require a private developer to do in a historic district. There was no expectation that the investigators would find anything. When the archaeologists initially checked city records, they were unable to find any indication that a building had been on the propery before 1886. “We’re ecstatic about what we found,” said Robert K. Antozzi, the city’s coordinator for the courthouse project. “Now we have a major expansion of the story of Fredericksburg, and that’s really exciting.” Shortly into the dig, the crew discovered a sandstone cellar wall — a clue that something was preserved below. When they dug at another location, it found a brick wall flush against the sidewalk on Princess Anne Street, which runs through downtown. The dig revved from a sleepy investigation into a dash to extract as much information as possible. The crew also discovered an 18th century well and latrines across the site, where livery stables once stood. The near-perfect preservation of the site has helped to paint a vivid portrait of the aftermath of the battle, when Ambrose Burnside, the general of the Union forces, tried to take the city from the Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, as Union forces forged toward Richmond. In the lead-up to the battle, Burnside showered the city with artillery to dislodge Lee’s forces. There was door-to-door street fighting — a Civil War rarity — and evidence that federal troops rampaged through the city, looting and vandalizing. When Burnside’s forces charged on Dec. 13, Lee’s forces were perched on the heights above the city. They easily repelled the Union soldiers, inflicting terrible casualties. Afterward, Union soldiers likely sheltered anywhere they could, including in the basement Mr. Kiser’s crew discovered. There, the soldiers would have opened tins of food and warmed themselves around the fireplace. They broke out whiskey bottles, and smoked tobacco pipes. As they entered the basement, they were probably told to empty their rifles to prevent accidental discharges, which resulted in a pile of ammunition on the floor. The next day, the Union generals ordered their troops to fall back across the Rappahannock River, and Joseph Hooker, a major general, told officers to check houses for Union troops who had taken shelter. At some point, fire engulfed the building, which collapsed into the cellar, sealing in its contents. The fire’s date is unknown, but the building probably burned soon after Union soldiers abandoned it, perhaps because of Confederate artillery. A photo taken the following spring suggests that the building was gone. Almost 150 years later, Mr. Kiser, a burly man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a ponytail, bounded around the site, suggesting last-minute spots for the crew to investigate. As a reminder of the urgency, a backhoe hulked nearby, ready for the project to restart. Mr. Tucker passed a plastic bucket containing shards of pottery and clay roof tile to Mr. Kiser for inspection, and then a pewter button a few moments later. “That is going to be 18th or early 19th century,” Mr. Kiser said, turning the button over in his calloused hands. The project historian, Brian Schools, was still studying the layers of dirt for anything that might still lie below, and another crew member was sketching the brick wall. But the dig was winding up. Over the weeks, the crew had worked at a breakneck pace to find everything that it could before time ran out. “Thirty-minute lunches,” Mr. Kiser joked. “You don’t want to lose something because you decided to have a second cup of coffee.”

Archaeology
Fredericksburg (Va)
Civil War (US) (1861-65)
Historic Buildings and Sites


In Cable TV Dispute, Time Warner Sends Viewers to the Web

Abstract: In the midst of a contract dispute with a local broadcaster last week, Time Warner Cable did something that was until recently unthinkable: it told its customers to hook up a computer to their television and watch their favorite shows using the Internet. The suggestion was meant as a slap at LIN TV , which owns 15 stations — all affiliates of the national networks — that were, until Thursday, retransmitted to Time Warner Cable’s customers in 11 markets. As part of a contract renewal, LIN TV is seeking a subscriber fee for each cable customer. But Time Warner bristled at the prospect of paying for material “that’s available over the air for free — and now available online for free,” said Alexander Dudley, a company spokesman. Rather than confronting viewers with blank screens on the disputed channels, Time Warner Cable told people how to circumvent LIN TV. The company made a video showing how to watch programs on the Internet, and on Thursday — the same day the LIN TV stations were cut off — posted it to the Time Warner Cable Web site. (In place of the channels, viewers saw a graphic with the Web address for the video, Mr. Dudley said.) In the tutorial, a friendly female narrator makes it sound effortless. “Here’s all you need: a broadband Internet service like Road Runner, an audio cable and a video cable,” she said, showing various inputs and outputs. “Simply go to the network’s Web site and choose your favorite program,” the video continued, recognizing that almost all prime-time programs are now streamed online within a day of their TV premiere. Some — but not most — of the sporting events and local newscasts are also available online. Meanwhile, LIN TV had already taken a precautionary slap at Time Warner Cable. In mid-September it issued a news release suggesting that if Time Warner Cable did remove its signals, viewers could switch to a competitor. The two it named were the Dish Network, a satellite TV service, and Verizon’s FiOS TV, a telecommunications service. Vincent Sadusky, chief executive of LIN TV, which is based in Providence, R.I., said Time Warner Cable’s actions were odd because “every other significant pay-TV provider” had reached agreements with his company. “The amount of time viewers have spent consuming video on the Web is a very small fraction of the time they spend watching TV, and we don’t believe watching some network programs online will satisfy viewers that can no longer watch our local broadcast channels on Time Warner,” Mr. Sadusky said. BRIAN STELTER

Time Warner Cable Incorporated
Lin TV Corporation
Computers and the Internet
Cable Television