Obama Succeeds Globally, With Little Reward

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The foreign policy successes of President Barack Obama — most recently, the toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — are of only marginal value to his re-election struggle. The corollary is that Republican hopes earlier this year of a one-two punch against Mr. Obama — a soft economy and softness on national security, which were determinant in unseating another Democratic incumbent in 1980 — are diminishing. This time, they can only count on a one-punch, the economy. The administration’s stepped-up drone strikes and the killing of Osama bin Laden , Anwar al-Awlaki and a host of lesser Qaeda operatives makes an “easy on terrorism” charge a tough sell. Colonel Qaddafi’s demise after a U.S.-backed air campaign ties the bow on that campaign issue. Moreover, most of the Republican presidential candidates, apart from the libertarian Ron Paul and the former Utah governor, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., are in the camp of the neoconservatives, the architects of the Iraq war. These advocates of an aggressive and expensive foreign policy are out of sync with U.S. political opinion and economic realities. The Republican foreign policy traditionalists on the model of Henry A. Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III seem absent. Witness the reaction to the president’s decision to withdraw all forces from Iraq by year’s end. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, called it “an astonishing failure” that risked all the gains of the past decade; Governor Rick Perry of Texas accused Mr. Obama of putting political expediency ahead of sound military security and “judgment.” Herman Cain simply said it was “dumb.” They all insist on keeping a residual force. The reality is the troop withdrawal timetable was crafted by President George W. Bush three years ago. As a candidate, in 2007, then-Senator Obama vowed to carry out the plan more rapidly. Americans, by overwhelming margins, want to get out of a war that has cost more than $800 billion and 4,500 American lives, while arguably strengthening the position of Iran, now a greater threat to the United States than Iraq ever was. Further, while the administration may not have negotiated very well, the Iraqis were adamant that any small remaining U.S. force wouldn’t be immune from local laws or prosecution as are U.S. troops stationed elsewhere. Imagine the reactions of politicians who worry about any U.S. forces being under control of a U.N. command if an army private fighting 10,000 miles away were to be prosecuted by an Islamic court. The neocons argue that a presence in Iraq is essential and that modern history shows that such a commitment must be long term. Otherwise, they say, Iran threatens to dominate the region. This argument was challenged by Robert W. Merry, the editor of National Interest, a foreign policy journal. “The threat of growing Iranian dominance over Iraq is real,” Mr. Merry said in a recent article. The neocons, he said, “should have considered it before they beat the drums for an Iraq invasion that would inevitably upend the centuries-long balance of power between the Persians and the Mesopotamians.” The notion that greater Iranian influence could be checked with a residual force of 5,000 U.S. troops “borders on the ludicrous,” he says. The next drumbeat will be to oppose a significant drawdown in Afghanistan, which is clearly designated as “Obama’s war.” There is some Republican division: Mr. Paul and Mr. Huntsman have called for a speedy withdrawal, while Mr. Romney has been, at various times, both more dovish and more hawkish than Mr. Obama. Most neoconservatives envision a larger and longer-term U.S. presence. The declining public support for such an endeavor is likely to accelerate after the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, recently let slip that in any conflict with the United States, he would side with Pakistan. This wasn’t a throw-away line. It was made days after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and David Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A., on a visit to Islamabad, warned Pakistan that if it didn’t take action against terrorists, the United States would act on its own. Mr. Karzai then sought out a Pakistani television network to deliver this broadside. Similarly, the neoconservatives proudly claim that the Arab Spring resulted from Mr. Bush’s aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East; they are less than pleased, however, when that outcome produces more Islamic, anti-Israel regimes. As welcome as Colonel Qaddafi’s overthrow is to most Americans of all political persuasions, the new regime’s vow to implement Shariah, or Islamic law, is unsettling. By focusing on the need for a more aggressive foreign policy — one that won’t command popular support — Republicans may be muddying other, credible criticisms of Mr. Obama’s efforts in the international arena. It would be fair to say that the White House is usually reactive and that its foreign policy team, more than most previous administrations, considers any action first for its political and personal effect on Mr. Obama; the discussion of the merits of a policy tend to come second. Protracted decisions are depicted by the White House as a result of thoughtful deliberations. To outsiders, they seem to reflect more this political cost-benefit analysis. Afghanistan is a prime example, as captured in Bob Woodward’s best seller, “Obama’s Wars.” There are specific policies that are open to legitimate criticism; a case can be made the administration dropped the ball on the Middle East, squandering any possibilities of a breakthrough on the Israeli-Palestinian front. None of this will much matter to the electorate 53 weeks from now. As noted by Richard N. Haass, an assistant secretary of state under Colin L. Powell and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations: “It’s hard to imagine more than a handful of voters pulling the lever on the basis of foreign policy.” Yet, he adds, the lack of voter interest in foreign affairs will have important implications, because the next president will face real national security challenges. “We’re going to elect a governor in chief,” Mr. Haass says, “rather than a commander in chief.”

Obama Barack
Qaddafi Muammar el-
Presidential Election of 2012
bin Laden Osama
Awlaki Anwar al-


Stabbing of Israeli Woman in West Bank Suggests Shift in Violence

Abstract: TEKOA, West Bank — In a charity store packed with used clothing on the edge of Tekoa, a Jewish settlement in the beige hills of the southern West Bank, Michal Froman, 30 and pregnant, was shopping on Monday when a Palestinian teenager walked in. He hesitantly picked up a piece of clothing and asked the price. Ms. Froman asked if she could help him, but he suddenly pulled out a knife, stabbing and wounding her, according to a local resident who arrived seconds later. The attack took place as a funeral convoy was making its way to Jerusalem for the burial of Dafna Meir, 38, a mother of six who was fatally stabbed on Sunday at the entrance to her home in Otniel, a settlement to the south. The attacks in Tekoa and Otniel suggest a shift in the recent surge of violence, during which Palestinians have attacked Israeli soldiers, police officers and civilians, usually using knives, cars and guns as weapons. Most of the previous attacks took place on the streets of Jerusalem, in cities around Israel, or along roads and at military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. Now, it appears that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are also targets. Since Oct. 1, Palestinian assailants have killed more than 20 Israelis, an American student and a Palestinian bystander. More than 150 Palestinians have been killed during the same period, many of them after they attacked or tried to attack Jews, and others during protests and clashes with the Israeli security forces. The assaults inside the settlements also recalled a shocking attack in 2011 when two Palestinian teenagers stabbed five members of the Fogel family to death in their beds in the northern settlement of Itamar. Most of the world considers the settlements illegal and an obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel says their fate should be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, but the peace process has long been stalled. Many Palestinians have cited a July arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in the West Bank village of Duma as a factor contributing to the recent wave of violence. Two young Jewish extremists who were living in West Bank settlement outposts have been charged in that attack. The United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, praised the progress made in the Duma case on Monday, but harshly criticized the Israel’s settlement policy and what he described as its lax enforcement policy in the West Bank, saying that “too much vigilantism” by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank “goes unchecked,” he said, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz . Speaking at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Mr. Shapiro added, “At times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Jews and another for Palestinians.” Amid the fraught tangle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tekoa, a mixed community of Orthodox and secular Jews perched on the edge of the Judean desert a few miles from Bethlehem, has an unusual reputation for tolerance. Following the vision of its chief rabbi, Menachem Froman , who counted Yasir Arafat as a friend and who died in 2013 , many of Tekoa’s residents say they seek to live in peaceful coexistence with their Palestinian neighbors. Ms. Froman, who was injured on Monday, is married to one of the rabbi’s sons. Image The body of an Israeli woman who was fatally stabbed a day earlier at the entrance to her West Bank home in the Jewish settlement of Otniel, during her funeral on Monday. Credit Ronen Zvulun/Reuters Eviatar Kanotopsky, 36, had just arrived at his yoga studio, opposite the secondhand clothing store in Tekoa’s small industrial zone, when he heard Ms. Froman and two other women running out, screaming. “Michal had blood on her shoulder,” he recalled a few hours later, sitting in his studio in a sheepskin coat, his head wrapped in a turban. He described Tekoa as “a spiritual place.” “I am not afraid. It’s a matter of personality. My wife is afraid,” Mr. Kanotopsky said. “On the other hand, I say to myself, the stabber was a young kid. It’s not that all the villages around here attacked us. But fear has an effect, like in the rest of the country.” Amichai Solomon, 40, a preschool teacher here, said: “Personally I find it quite ironic that Rabbi Menachem Froman’s family has to endure this sort of random act of violence against innocents. It is a family that is all about peace and dialogue and living together.” Ms. Froman’s husband, Shivi Froman, told the Israeli news site Ynet what his wife had told him about the boy who stabbed her. “She felt that more than he wanted to kill her, he wanted to die,” he said. “They must be taught life, and we must fight without confusion against the envoys of death and the culture of death.” In another case that shocked Israelis, two schoolboys from Tekoa, Koby Mandell, a son of immigrants from the United States, and his friend Yosef Ishran were bludgeoned to death with stones in a cave near the settlement in 2001, during the second Palestinian intifada. John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, condemned “in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attacks over the past two days against Israeli civilians.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel rejected Mr. Shapiro’s remarks, calling them “unacceptable and incorrect,” and accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting violence in the West Bank. Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which sits in opposition in the Israeli Parliament, excoriated Mr. Netanyahu for the deterioration in security for Israelis, saying: “In Israel there is no functioning prime minister. There is a prime minister only interested in surviving.” Mr. Lieberman, who lives in the neighboring settlement of Nokdim, was speaking in front of the shop where the attack took place on Monday, and said he had come as a concerned resident of the area. The assailant in the Tekoa attack on Monday was about 15, according to Israeli news reports, and had entered the settlement through a hole in its perimeter fence. He was shot and wounded by security personnel, the military said, and taken to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, where he is under arrest. Ms. Meir, who was buried in Jerusalem, was a hospital nurse and a mother of six, including two foster children. At least three of her children were in the house at the time of the attack, but they were unharmed. The search for her killer continues. Ms. Meir’s oldest daughter, Renana, 17, who witnessed the fatal stabbing, eulogized her mother. “It’s hard to believe we will not laugh anymore,” she said. “We won’t argue anymore. We won’t sit and have tea together at midnight. It’s hard to believe you won’t escort me to the wedding canopy, or to the army induction center, or to the maternity ward.”

Palestinians
West Bank
Israeli settlement
Murders and Homicides


Lawyer for Officer Moreno Makes Closing Arguments in Rape Case

Abstract: Consciousness. A foggy memory. The lack of physical evidence. Those were the three main points reiterated on Friday by the lawyer for a police officer accused of raping a drunken woman he had been called to help. In nearly four hours of closing arguments in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, urged jurors to acquit his client, Police Officer Kenneth Moreno , because the case was littered with doubt. He emphasized that the woman was conscious, walking on her own and talking, as seen on surveillance footage showing Officer Moreno and his partner, Franklin Mata , escorting her into her East Village apartment building. The prosecution’s theory of rape is that the woman was physically unable to consent because she was too drunk. “If she’s not unconscious, not physically unable to communicate, you can stop,” Mr. Tacopina told the jurors, referring to his belief that there was no need to deliberate beyond that point and reach Officer Moreno’s testimony that there was no sex between the two. “The fact of the matter is she wasn’t physically helpless at all.” Prosecutors accused Officer Moreno of raping the woman while she lay face-down and dazed on her bed, while Officer Mata, also charged with rape, stood guard. But then Mr. Tacopina turned to the no-sex argument. The prosecution failed to present physical evidence, offering not so much as a hair of Officer Moreno’s, left behind in the woman’s bed, he said. That “they don’t find one hair is impossible” if the woman’s story were true, he said. “It’s impossible.” Semen or lubricant also were not found in the woman or on her bed, Mr. Tacopina said. “The lack of DNA in this case is death,” he said. “No semen and no lubricant and no injuries means no sex.” Mr. Tacopina also tried to show jurors that the certainty the woman portrayed on the witness stand belied the uncertainty of statements she made in the days after she said the attack occurred in December 2008. A few days after she said she was attacked, he said, the woman told an investigator that on the night in question, a taxi driver assisted her out of his car. That turned out to be untrue, Mr. Tacopina said. “She’s actually creating things in her mind that weren’t accurate, that are not true,” he said. Mr. Tacopina also emphasized investigators’ notes in which the woman’s friends said she told them she “believed” or “thinks” she was raped. “Her memories from that morning were vague and piecemeal,” Mr. Tacopina said. “Whatever limited, skewed memories she had, she tries to connect the dots.” That led her to solidify in her mind an inaccurate narrative, he said. Mr. Tacopina did not address Officer Moreno’s account on the witness stand that the woman came on to him and that he resisted her advances. “To me, it was something that speaks for itself,” he said outside the courthouse. He did, however, tell the jury that his client was sincere despite aggressive cross-examination from a prosecutor. He said that Officer Moreno’s comment on cross-examination that he does not “kiss and tell” was a sign that he was an ordinary person. “He’s not a very sophisticated guy,” Mr. Tacopina said, adding that his client was “maybe a bit of a simpleton.” Closing arguments are scheduled to continue on Monday with Officer Mata’s lawyer and then the prosecution.

Sex Crimes
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Moreno Kenneth
Mata Franklin L
Tacopina Joseph
Police Department (NYC)


Andy Pettitte Rejects Yankees’ Offer, Making Return Uncertain

Abstract: In some ways, Andy Pettitte is no different from the dozens of other free agents to start the new year without a team. Players all over baseball are waiting for better offers, and teams are searching for bargains. But Pettitte is not like other players, and the Yankees are not like other teams. Pettitte has pledged his loyalty to the Yankees, and the Yankees have spent lavishly this winter at a time when many clubs are scaling back. A reunion seemed inevitable at the start of the off-season, but now it is uncertain. Pettitte has rejected the Yankees’ one-year, $10 million offer, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations, and there is no standing offer for now. Pettitte could return because some in the Yankees’ hierarchy want him back. But in a winter of aggressive activity, the Yankees have been unwilling to bend for Pettitte. As an eight-year, $180 million deal for first baseman Mark Teixeira becomes official with a news conference Tuesday, the awkward Pettitte drama plays out in the background. The offer to Pettitte represented a 37.5 percent decrease from his $16 million salary last season. Pettitte considered the offer for weeks, then met with General Manager Brian Cashman in Texas after the winter meetings last month. Pettitte might wonder why the Yankees offered a pay cut at a time when they spent a combined $243.5 million on C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett. If he is, though, Pettitte has not said so. Reached by The New York Times on Dec. 3, he said he wanted to return but was leaving the matter to his agent, Randy Hendricks, who did not respond to e-mail messages Monday. Derek Lowe is still available in free agency, and after the Yankees’ stealth pursuit of Teixeira, anything seems possible. The fifth spot in the rotation probably belongs to Phil Hughes for now, but the easiest answer is to retain Pettitte. He led the team in innings despite pitching with shoulder pain, going 14-14 with a 4.54 earned run average. At 36 and a father of four, Pettitte has taken a year-to-year approach to his career. The Yankees let him take his time in deciding whether to exercise a one-year option after the 2007 season, and he waited until early December, just before the release of the Mitchell report . Pettitte did not tell the Yankees that he might be included in the report, which said he had used human growth hormone. Pettitte admitted his use and the Yankees supported him publicly. But his performance suffered in the second half of the season, when he usually gets stronger, and he admitted his distracting off-season might have been a factor. In a way, though, such honesty has always been part of Pettitte’s appeal; his sincerity and earnestness have made him a fan favorite. In an interview in September, Pettitte forecast a quick negotiation, even though he knew it might not be wise to do so. “Obviously anyone else would say, ‘I’ll go wherever I want to,’ because people want to try to get the most money,” Pettitte said before a Yankees-Angels game in Anaheim, Calif. “But, I mean, I’m not going anywhere, you know what I’m saying? The Yankees know me enough, it’s not like I’m going to hold out. I guess if I had spent all my money or whatever, it might be different. But it’s not about that, really, anymore.” Pettitte also said he would discuss his future with his family, so the possibility exists that he will simply retire. Yet those who have talked to Pettitte, including Manager Joe Girardi, have been under the impression that he wants to play for the Yankees. “He’s still excited about coming back,” Girardi said on Dec. 18, adding that Pettitte was enthusiastic about the Yankees’ roster moves. For Pettitte to be part of the team again, though, one stubborn party must back down.


Behind the Scenes at ‘Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs’

Abstract:
In a brightly lit production studio at the American Museum of Natural History in February, 12 artists were hard at work, heads down, eyes focused. In one corner, a sculptor was shaping clay to create a cat-size flying reptile, a rhamphorhynchus , using a tracing of the animal’s footprints that had been captured in a stone trackway excavated in Utah. In a back room, in hazmat suits and respirators, a team of three was building another kind of a pterosaur, as the flying reptiles are known: a nine-foot-long tropeognathus from foam, fiberglass and epoxy around an aluminum frame. But in the center of it all was the big daddy — the 28-foot-long quetzalcoatlus , with a wingspan as wide as a fighter jet and a crested head the size of a canoe. As the star of the museum’s latest show, “Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs” opening on April 5, he has had four artists assigned to him full time since December. Hannah Rawe , a sculptor, was seated next to the foam-filled animal, scratching what were supposed to be tiny hairs into its huge shoulder. At one point, she stopped to ask her boss where the hairs should end and smooth skin should begin. They emailed Alexander Kellner , one of the two curators of the show, a paleontologist at the Museu Nacional in Brazil. Stop at the wrist, he instructed them. And so Ms. Rawe did. Since the fall, Ms. Rawe and all 55 members of the museum’s exhibitions team have been working closely with curators, paleontologists and scientific consultants to get their creations — down to a hair — as close to reality as possible. In addition to painters and sculptors, there are computer animators, graphic designers and filmmakers. These three floors in this part of the museum complex — the Power House, where the coal fires were once stoked to heat the entire museum — are where art meets science. Where theory becomes reality. Image Building Pterosaurs Down to Their Hairs, William Henry Harrison’s Killer, Medical Device Loopholes A new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History will feature great reptiles that soared over 60 million years ago; historians may be dead wrong about what killed the shortest-tenured American president; how safe are the medical devices in use in hospitals and doctors’ offices?
Subscribe to the Podcast » With each changing exhibition, including “Darwin,” “Whales: Giants of the Deep” and “The Power of Poison” and now this pterosaurs show, scientists translate their concepts for the visual realm. And artists patiently tease out the minutiae of science from experts in the field. “It’s kind of like the Santa’s workshop of the museum,” said the museum’s spokesman, Roberto Lebron, about the fifth-floor exhibitions studio. “These are the people who put it all together.” For the past 90 years, artists and sculptors — known as museum preparators — have labored in this room. The taxidermy for the museum’s famous displays and dioramas were done here in the 1930s. Hanging high on the studio walls are antlers, fish and casts of animal faces from old specimens, as well as one black-and-white photo of workers scraping an elephant hide for the Akeley Hall of African Mammals . From Idea to Exhibit Those animals still fill the museum’s halls, frozen in time. But these days, the beehive of activity inside the studio never seems to end. There are usually two special exhibitions each year, with work on one starting just as work on another is ending. The creation of each show begins in much the same way, with executive-level museum administrators learning from, and hashing out ideas with, the curators of each exhibition — this time, Dr. Kellner and Mark A. Norell , head of paleontology for the museum, who has curated more shows than anyone else on staff. Dr. Norell, one of the stars of the paleontology world, spends half his time traveling the globe, acquiring fossils in places like China and Romania, and the other half explaining to the staff what to do with them. Early on, the curators decide which animals they want to include. An architectural model is made of the show to figure out what will go where. “The process is kind of like making a film,” said Dr. Norell, seated in his rounded office in one of the museum’s brownstone turrets overlooking Central Park West near West 77th Street. “You have an idea, then the smaller pitch, then the shooting script, deciding how everything’s laid out, what objects and artifacts to use, what the look and feel of the show is going to be; then you start building your models.” Dr. Norell and his fellow scientists work closely with the artists to come up with drawings for each specimen. Together they decide what the creature will look like, based on fossils and research materials, then what position it will be in: soaring, flapping, mouth open, mouth closed. The color of a long-extinct animal can sometimes be determined by melanosomes — intercellular bodies that might be preserved in the fossils. Minute amounts of chemical residue that hint at color are also sometimes present. Based on discussions and research, the artists make their sketches, which Dr. Norell must approve, usually with some back and forth. Then the team starts building. Image From left, Hannah Rawe, Jack Cesareo and Tom Doncourt prepared a model for the exhibit. Credit Roderick Mickens/AMNH A few exhibitions staff members have biology backgrounds and do much of their own research. Jason Brougham , who is working on a diorama for the coming show, researched the pterosaurs and fish that would be included, as well as the plant life from the early Cretaceous period . He helped advise many of the other artists on anatomy. While most of the staff was still working on the “Power of Poison” exhibition this summer, Mr. Brougham was already immersed in prehistoric flying reptiles and their environment. He worked closely with John Maisey , a paleontologist on staff, who has dug in Brazil’s fossil-rich Romualdo Formation. Mr. Brougham studied biology as an undergraduate, switched to scientific illustration, then got his master’s in fine art, studying painting. At the museum his past creations include replicas of the human brain and twisting brass models of genome protein folds. “I came to New York to be a big-shot painter,” Mr. Brougham said. “But I took a day job here and totally fell in love with scientific art, reconstructing extinct animals. I really found my calling. It’s great at cocktail parties: a billionaire hedge-fund manager and a 5-year-old both want to talk to you with equal interest.” For the diorama, Mr. Brougham also worked closely with Dr. Kellner, using a thalassodromeus skull fossil from which they extrapolated what the rest of the animal might have looked like. They examined a similar pterosaur specimen, tupuxuara, to piece together the body. “Most of the questions that we actually get from artists, the answer is, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Dr. Kellner said. But the more research that’s done, the closer their guess can be on an animal that’s been extinct for 66 million years. “In art you can do whatever you want,” Dr. Kellner said. “You have an expression of how you feel about a certain subject. But in paleo art, you don’t have that liberty. You must try to present the reconstruction of those animals the best way that you can based on true scientific evidence.” Image Rebecca Meah, principal preparator, added finishing touches to a tropeognathus model. Credit Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Together, he and Mr. Brougham reconstructed the muscle groups, then placed the eye and soft tissue, including a crest and big gullet, where they should be. The artists at the museum use not only fossils to determine what the animal might have looked like, but also anything and everything else that might help. In the quetzalcoatlus work space, there were photographs of modern birds — a Marabou stork and a crane — and even a photo of a raw chicken cut and splayed open to help envision the musculature. The curators watch the process closely, touring the work space every few days or, if they’re away, receiving photos of the progress and offering tweaks and suggestions. There is a weekly meeting to discuss the show’s progress. A Moving Target Sometimes, changes in science happen so quickly that an artist’s creation must be considerably altered. For instance, Michael Habib , a consulting scientist who specializes in the aeronautics of pterosaurs, was about to publish a new paper, and he suggested all the bodies of the models be slimmed down. The feet of Quetzalcoatlus underwent major changes as well: Five toes per foot were edited down to four; they were shortened and the toenails removed. Changes on the fifth floor were then communicated to the multimedia artists two floors down so that their work — which included an interactive digital flying pterosaur — would match. Rather than being frustrated by the constant changes to their creations, most of the artists seem proud to be working to get things exactly right. Tom Doncourt, an artist and a former cabinetmaker who made the original sketch of the quetzalcoatlus for the show based on a skeleton already in the museum, said that the challenge of fast-changing information was not unique to prehistoric reptile science. The Hall of Human Origins, built in the 1990s, was quickly made out of date by anthropological discoveries, he said. “Sometimes it’s obsolete the minute we finish it,” said Mr. Doncourt, now a senior principal preparator at the museum. The “ Dark Universe ” show in the planetarium had to be adjusted as well. Midway through production last year, a higher-resolution map of the cosmic microwave background was released. The new data was integrated into the show. Image Claws for a model. The exhibitions team has worked with paleontologists on details for months. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times “Occasionally,” said Dr. Kellner, “once you have it done, everything is fine, everyone is happy. But then a year later someone makes a new discovery. This is why we paleontologists are never going to be out of a job.” Mick Ellison , who has worked with Dr. Norell for 24 years, photographing fossils and reconstructing animals from them, said he did not like relying on previous drawings because there was no telling how accurate they are. Mistakes, he said, can be passed down from artist to artist, year after year. For the “Whales” exhibition last year, Mr. Ellison, a senior principal artist, used a jawbone to recreate an entire Andrewsarchus , a long-extinct land-dwelling relative of the whale. “It was this big hairy beast that had always looked this certain way that was completely inaccurate if you looked at the fossil,” Mr. Ellison said. “It didn’t look anything like this image. But everybody copied this image. Discovery Channel, all these dinosaur movies.” So Mr. Ellison tries not to take anything for granted. “It’s pretty satisfying if you can get close to something that’s true,” he said. Mr. Ellison, who studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and worked as a medical illustrator, has taken anatomy classes to help him recreate creatures great and small. For the quetzalcoatlus wing he created for the show, Mr. Ellison used an old-school trick to get it just right: the grid method, which dates back to the Renaissance. He placed the huge wing bone model on a giant piece of graph paper and numbered each square so that the finished product — the filled-in wing — would fit the bone exactly. He then went new-school and composed the drawing on the computer. But the wing and the matching computer file were so large that the computer kept freezing. So he broke the file in two. Most people, he said, think art and science are two different worlds. “I used to think they were very separate, but they’re actually very similar. You have to be creative and you have to be observant.”

Pterosaur
American Museum of Natural History
Paleontology
Mark A Norell
Replicas
Hannah Rawe
Jason Brougham
Alexander W.A. Kellner


Iran Fighting Proxy War in Iraq, U.S. Envoy Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Iran is engaging in a proxy war with the United States in Iraq , adopting tactics similar to those it has used to back fighters in Lebanon, the United States ambassador to Iraq said Friday. The remarks by the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker , reflected the sharper criticism of Iran by President Bush and his top deputies over the past week, as administration officials have sought to trace many of their troubles in Iraq to Iran. Mr. Crocker said in an interview that there had been no substantive change in Iranian behavior in Iraq, despite more than a year of talks between the Bush administration and Iran over how to calm Shiite-Sunni tensions in Iraq. He said that the paramilitary branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was continuing to direct attacks by Shiite militias against American and Iraqi targets, although he offered no direct evidence. Asked if the United States and Iran were engaged in a proxy war in Iraq, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t think a proxy war is being waged from an American point of view.” But, he added, “When you look at what the Iranians are doing and how they’re doing it, it could well be that.” While Bush administration officials have long denounced what they have described as Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Mr. Crocker’s language was unusually strong, reflecting fresh concern about what he described in Congressional testimony this week as Iran’s role in supplying militias with training and weapons, including rockets used in recent attacks on the Green Zone, in Baghdad. The Bush administration is trying to exploit any crack it can find between the largely Shiite, pro-Iranian government of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and Iran’s Shiite government. On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that Iran’s role in supporting radical Shiite militias in recent clashes with Iraqi security forces had been an “eye-opener” for the central government in Baghdad. “I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and support to these groups,” Mr. Gates said. “I would say one of the salutary effects of what Prime Minister Maliki did in Basra is that I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran’s activities inside Iraq.” From Mr. Bush down, administration officials this week have been turning up the volume on Iran. Administration officials said that Iranian support for Shiite militias became increasingly evident late last month during the indecisive Iraqi operation to wrest control of Basra from Shiite militias, in addition to the rocket attacks on the Green Zone. Administration officials have long accused Iran of supporting Shiite militias in attacks on American forces in Iraq. The difference now is that administration officials are trying to convince the Iraqi government that Iran may not be the ally it thought, and is behind attacks against Iraqi government forces. That is a harder sell, given that Iran has supported Iraq’s government. Mr. Bush this week accused Iran of arming, financing and training what he called “illegal militant groups.” He said that Iran had a choice, and hinted that the United States would try to sow distrust between the governments of Iran and Iraq, if Iran did not stop backing the attacks. “If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq,” he said Thursday. “If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.” Mr. Gates, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said that Iraqi officials were starting to pay heed. “They have had what I would call a growing understanding of that negative Iranian role, but I think what they encountered in Basra was a real eye-opener for them.” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the assessment that Basra offered evidence to counter statements that Iran was decreasing its efforts in Iraq. “As far as I’m concerned, this action in Basra was very convincing that indeed they haven’t,” the admiral said. In addition, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, told reporters on Friday that while the Iraqi police and army troops had established security through most of Basra, “several significant neighborhoods are not under control of the Iraqi security forces.” Combating the Shiite militias in those enclaves of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, will be “a months-long operation,” he said. Iran remains one of the Bush administration’s stickiest foreign policy issues, and Washington is battling Iran on multiple fronts, as administration officials struggle to find a carrot-and-stick approach for influencing Iranian behavior. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the United States would consider new incentives or sanctions as part of its battle to get Iran to rein in its nuclear ambitions. She said she did not anticipate a new push just yet, but said that “we will always continue to consider refreshing both tracks,” referring to the administration’s two-track approach of sanctions if Iran continues to enrich uranium and incentives if it stops. Russia and China have been urging major powers to sweeten the incentives package, but thus far the United States has balked. During the interview, Mr. Crocker accused Iran of meddling in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza, in addition to Iraq. He also faulted Iraq’s Arab neighbors for refusing to help, noting that a promised Saudi Arabian Embassy had yet to materialize. “The Arabs are basically missing in action,” Mr. Crocker said. He said that while Saudi Arabia had helped in American attempts to rein in the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, Sunni governments in the Middle East needed to establish more of a diplomatic presence in Iraq, which Bush officials believe would further legitimize the American-backed Iraqi government. “It’s one of those things that have been in process for a long time,” Mr. Crocker said of the promised Saudi Embassy. “They’ve sent a delegation to scout out property. But somehow it never quite gets done.”

Iran
United States International Relations
United States Armament and Defense
Iraq
Crocker Ryan C
Shiite Muslims


2010 Long Island Weather Set Stage for Fine 2011 White Wines

Abstract: Mother Nature made it nearly impossible to produce disappointing Long Island wines last year. The outstanding vintage set the stage for especially rewarding white-wine drinking this year, when the 2010s will be released. Reds will mature in oak barrels for two or more years. The rising quality of dry and off-dry whites (as well as cabernet franc, a red) has challenged the hoary notion that the East End is chiefly merlot country. Ambitious sparkling wines are also catching on, and alluring French-style rosés, which flatter maritime cuisine, are proliferating. Local vintners are striving to create signature wines by defining and transmitting their terroirs: the mix of soils, topography and climate that gives wines particular characters. Chardonnays, sauvignon blancs and rieslings that experience minimal intervention in winemaking and are reared in steel tanks and neutral barrels can express terroir nicely. New oak can mask it. Top-notch wineries like Bedell Cellars , Channing Daughters , Macari Vineyards , Shinn Estate Vineyards and Wölffer Estate Vineyard seem particularly attuned to the specifics of terroir. Their cellar methods seem to be adjusting to those specifics. There is a tier of less prominent producers whose 2010 wines are also likely to be inviting. It includes Anthony Nappa Wines , Bouké Wines , Clovis Point Wines , Comtesse Thérèse , Diliberto Winery , Jason’s Vineyard , Mattebella Vineyards , McCall Wines , Onabay Vineyards , Roanoke Vineyards , Suhru Wines and Waters Crest Winery. The new year brings the industry a potential downside. State budget constraints may prevent the New York Wine and Grape Foundation , a trade association, from subsidizing the Long Island Wine Council , a trade group, at the current level of almost $24,000. That kind of cutback would force vintners to spend more of their own money on marketing, raising the prospect of higher prices.

Wines
Long Island (NY)
Bedell Cellars
Channing Daughters Winery
Macari Vineyards
New York Wine and Grape Foundation
Long Island Wine Council


Sanyo’s Xacti HD1010 Video Camera

Abstract: Sanyo’s Xacti HD1000 was one of the first compact cameras to shoot high-definition video. The latest in the line, the HD1010, includes a slow-motion mode and a slick face-tracking feature. This $799 camera, due next month, weighs nine ounces and is a little bigger than a cellphone. It has a 2.7-inch display and 10X optical zoom lens, and can record video directly to an SD or SDHC memory card; it can record up to 87 minutes of video on a single eight-gigabyte card. When video is not so crucial, the camera takes four-megapixel still images as well. The HD1010 can take 300-frames-a-second video for better slow-motion playback. Its “face chase” technology allows users to track a field of 12 faces at a time, ensuring that the entire party stays in focus. Image stabilization adds security for those with shaky hands. A docking station, included, can link the camera directly to a high-definition TV or computer through various cables. Best of all, there’s a “simple” mode that allows anyone — even toddlers and the unsteady — to get a good shot. JOHN BIGGS

Cameras
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
Computers and the Internet


Once Again, .500 Slips From Mets’ Grasp

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — The final step to reaching the podium of mediocrity has been fleeting for the Mets . For the third time in less than a week, the Mets sought to reach the elusive .500 mark, only to be thrust backward. A pair of base-running mistakes led to the Mets’ demise this time, enabling the Pittsburgh Pirates to beat the Mets on Monday night, 3-1 , as the teams split a four-game series at PNC Park. But while they played even during this series, the Mets have found it more challenging to level their overall record. Since April 9, the Mets (32-34) have spent all of 24 hours at .500. They have not been at .500 since May 20, when they were 22-22 , and five times this year, they have attempted to reach that mark from a game behind, only to go 1-4. “It’s important,” Jose Reyes said. “We want to play .500 or better. When you play below .500, it means you don’t play too good. So we want to get to the .500 mark, and even better. We’ve had a couple opportunities to get there and let it get away.” Manager Terry Collins said he was not concerned about the team creating a self-imposed mental hurdle about the .500 mark. He explained that if his players had simply executed better, especially on the basepaths, they might have had a different result. “We had two base-running mistakes, and it ended up costing us perhaps the ballgame,” Collins said. “We didn’t execute, and that’s ultimately what it will take.” In fact, much of the outcome of this game was determined by plays in the dirt. In the first inning, Jose Tabata, the Pirates ’ left fielder, was allowed to stay on third base after he was tagged out because the second-base umpire Jerry Layne ruled that Reyes had interfered with him after he rounded second base. Mike Pelfrey, who was backing up third at the time, said he thought it was the right call, but Collins argued it. Nevertheless, Tabata stayed put, briefly, then scored on a single by Neil Walker. With the Mets trailing in the fifth, 1-0, Daniel Murphy was picked off second base when Pelfrey failed to make contact on a bunt attempt. Murphy broke for third too early and could not scramble back. It was the second time on the trip a pitcher failed to get down a bunt attempt and a base runner was caught. In the first game of this series, Josh Thole was caught in a rundown after Dillon Gee failed to get down the bunt. Then, in the bottom of the fifth, Brandon Wood hit a home run off Pelfrey (3-5), who allowed two runs and four hits in seven strong innings. Pelfrey, however, was outpitched by Paul Maholm, who allowed three hits and two walks in seven shutout innings. The score remained 2-0 as the game moved to the eighth, when the Mets ran themselves into more trouble. This time, it was the rookie Lucas Duda who made the mistake. After Ruben Tejada led off with a walk and Duda singled to right, the Mets had runners at first and third and nobody out. Reyes hit a sinking line drive to left field that Tabata appeared to trap off the turf. Duda had broken all the way to second, and when Tabata came up with the ball and it was ruled a catch, Duda did not have time to get back to first and was doubled up. Duda’s base-running mistake was not mimicked by Tejada, who tagged up and scored easily. Trailing by 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth, the Mets allowed an insurance run. Manny Acosta loaded the bases by allowing three singles, and Tim Byrdak walked Walker to make it a two-run game. INSIDE PITCH The Mets announced that Johan Santana, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, felt soreness in his left shoulder June 3 and has not thrown off the mound since then. General Manager Sandy Alderson said Santana was still not at the place where a pitcher would be at the beginning of a spring training, so his return would not come until at least August. Santana is expected to get back on the mound at the end of this week, and if he can throw two or three times without feeling pain, he would begin a process that should mirror a typical six-week spring training. But Alderson and Terry Collins both said that Santana would dictate his own pace, and that there is no guarantee he would come back at all this season. “Ultimately, when he feels right, he’ll pitch,” Collins said. “We can only hope that it comes in July maybe, or August or September. But we hope he comes back. And if not, if he’s ready next spring, we’re going into spring training with a pretty good pitcher on our team.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Pittsburgh Pirates
Pelfrey Mike
Reyes Jose


Player Sees Tour Finale as Golden Opportunity

Abstract: ORLANDO, Fla. — Not long ago, the last official money event on the PGA Tour was known as the Fear and Loathing Open by touring pros trying to secure playing status for the next year by finishing in the top 125 in earnings. The nickname now seems quaint and a bit overwrought. In an era when a tour player who finishes inside 150 on the list will probably earn $500,000 and get in 15 Tour events and however many Nationwide Tour events he can play in the next year, the fear factor is not what it used to be. And while this year’s season finale includes the usual battle for players on the bubble, it also has a subplot of genuine hope real enough to move all but the most hardened cynic. Playing here in the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney World is Erik Compton, the 28-year-old pro who five months ago received his second heart transplant and whose recent play has been almost, well, fictional. “Obviously, it’s a very fitting event, the Children’s Miracle Network,” Compton said of the sponsor organization that funds a network of 170 children’s hospitals in North America with private donations from individuals and corporations. “Considering everything that I’ve been through, I kind of know what the kids are going through because I’ve been there.” Two weeks ago Compton squeaked through the first stage of the tour’s qualifying school by shooting a final-round 68 to make up seven strokes and advance with the rest of the top 23 from Crandon Park Golf Course near Miami to next week’s second of three stages. Then, in a tune-up for this event, he shot a course-record 65 at Old Palm Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a regular haunt of prominent tour regulars. Those efforts attracted the attention of PGA Tour tournament directors like Kevin Weickel of the Children’s Miracle Network, who offered Compton an exemption this week, and network news reporters like ABC’s Jeffrey Kofman, who interviewed Compton last week. His competitors and friends on the tour also took note. One of his pals, Brad Adamonis, is 120th on the money list and battling to maintain the tour playing privileges he earned for the first time this year. “It’s unbelievable,” Adamonis said, smiling and shaking his head. “Third heart. It’s amazing. I think being able to use a golf cart certainly helps him out. He probably wouldn’t be able to play if he didn’t have a golf cart, and, you know, I don’t know if he feels 100 percent yet. But here he is. It’s pretty unbelievable.” It seems unbelievable to everyone except Compton. He was granted an exemption by the PGA Tour to use a golf cart until March, “which hopefully will change in the next few months as I get stronger,” he said. He said he already felt strong enough to talk some trash on the practice range with his fellow University of Georgia graduate Bubba Watson, the tour’s longest hitter, about who can hit the ball farther. After getting a new driver from a manufacturer’s representative on Monday, Compton was going back and forth with Adamonis about how he was now hitting the ball 20 yards farther than his friend. Smiling slyly, Compton said, “You know, because I’ve got some weight back on and don’t really look like I’ve had any kind of problem, I find myself having to apologize to guys, you know, like, ‘Dude, I’m sorry I’m hitting it past you, but I really did have a heart transplant five months ago.’ ” Not that he is trying to incite anyone. It is just that Compton has never lacked confidence. As he begins to feel better each day, he is buoyed by the exhilaration of simply being alive. And he wants to make the most of every minute. “I mean, I’m just dumb enough to think that I could win the tournament,” he said, laughing again. “I thought going into Q school, I should win that tournament. I feel like I have a really good golf swing. I feel like I can putt the ball just as good as anybody. If my stamina is good and I can control my emotions, I just don’t see why not.” Adamonis said he does not doubt it. He was playing with Compton in a Nationwide Tour event last year in Boise, Idaho, when Compton inexplicably made a quintuple-bogey 9 on a hole to miss the cut by a stroke. At the time, Adamonis said he thought, “What an idiot.” Compton went home and had a heart attack two days later. Had the attack occurred while he was playing in Idaho, he might not have made it to the hospital as quickly as he did in Miami. On Tuesday, six months after the transplant, Compton allowed himself a flight of fancy. “I mean, if I won this week, what would the headline be?” he said. It may have the word miracle in it somewhere.


Cuban Slugger Brings Promise and Risk to the Plate

Abstract: During this year’s World Baseball Classic, Cuba’s Jose Dariel Abreu hit a grand slam against China that was positively jaw-dropping. Abreu, a powerfully built right-handed hitter, loaded up on his back leg, waited on a curveball and hit a towering drive halfway up the outfield stands. Thirty major league front offices were surely paying attention. Last month, Abreu defected from Cuba, the latest player to leave the nation to pursue a major league career. Yasiel Puig’s electric summer in Los Angeles for the Dodgers and Yoenis Cespedes’s success with the Oakland Athletics the past two seasons have helped to fuel the hype surrounding Abreu’s imminent arrival in the majors. It is possible that when Abreu does sign, his deal will be the richest of any Cuban defector, topping Puig’s $42 million. “There is more and more interest in the Cuban players all the time,” said the agent Jaime Torres, who represents Puig. “Look how well they are doing.” Still, Abreu is a player who has spent his career hidden from most major league scouts and has essentially been competing against hard-to-evaluate opponents. He could be the next great Cuban star, or merely the beneficiary of a bull market for Cuban players. There is little certainty either way. Abreu, 26, stands 6 feet 3 inches and weighs 250 pounds. He is a first baseman with ample power, but also a sharp batting eye and the ability to hit for a high average. The numbers he put up in Cuba’s Serie Nacional are staggering. Image Abreu is expected to sign a lucrative contract though it is unclear if he can successfully adapt to the majors like the Athletics’ Yoenis Cespedes. Credit Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images In the 2009-10 season, Abreu rose to stardom when he hit .399 with 30 home runs, 76 runs batted in and a .555 on-base percentage. The next year he had one of the best seasons in the history of the Cuban league, batting .453 with 33 home runs and 93 R.B.I. in only 66 games (he missed 23 with bursitis in his shoulder). His past two seasons have been similarly prodigious. At the World Baseball Classic this year, he was 9 for 25 with 3 home runs in 6 games. Abreu is often called a four-tool player, missing only the speed of his countrymen Puig and Cespedes. Scouts have compared him to Ryan Howard because of his size and easy power. Peter Bjarkman, who covers the Cuban league for baseballdecuba.com, said Abreu had the look of a young Mark McGwire. Adding to his value, Abreu will be part of a relatively thin free-agent class in the major leagues. So far, the San Francisco Giants have expressed interest, as have the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles. The Mets, still looking for an impact hitter at first base, would also make an intriguing landing spot. Ike Davis, once thought to be the Mets’ first baseman of the future, spent time at Class AAA Las Vegas this season and was recently shelved with an oblique injury. Neither of his replacements, Lucas Duda and Josh Satin, inspires much confidence as a long-term solution. Abreu could be a quick — albeit expensive — fix should General Manager Sandy Alderson decide he is up for a somewhat risky bidding war. But Abreu is hardly a guarantee at the major league level. An international scout for one major league team said that Alfredo Despaigne and Frederich Cepeda, outfielders on the Cuban national team, were more dangerous hitters. An international scout for another team said that major league clubs could not afford to make a mistake when spending big on a first baseman, since it is a traditional power position filled by players who bat in the middle of the lineup. In other words, the scout said, the same money that could be used to sign Abreu might be better spent in the acquisition of one of the many established first basemen “you already know can hit big league pitching.” Image It is possible that when Abreu does sign, his deal will be the richest of any Cuban defector, topping the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig’s $42 million. Credit Stephen Dunn/Getty Images Neither scout wanted to be quoted by name discussing a player his team might end up bidding on. Bjarkman noted that Abreu’s prodigious numbers came in a league that is leaking talent, as more and more players leave the country. Some pitchers in Cuba, he said, throw between 80 and 85 miles per hour, which is almost akin to batting practice in the majors. “His numbers in the Cuban league are great, but they came against some very mediocre pitching,” Bjarkman said. “For the national team, he dropped off a bit. If there is a question, it’s whether he can adjust as quickly to the better pitching as the Cuban players who have been so good in the majors.” Sigfredo Barros, a baseball writer for the Cuban newspaper Granma, said: “Sometimes it can be very hard to tell with the Cuban players. Not everyone can be Puig.” Right now, Abreu is working to establish residency in Haiti so he can legally work in the United States. If he came directly he could work immediately, but he would have been subject to the amateur draft and deprived of his lucrative free agency. In addition, Major League Baseball’s new interpretation of regulations from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control means Abreu will face a longer wait before he is cleared. In the past, Cuban defectors needed only to prove permanent residency in a country outside Cuba. Now baseball requires players to petition the Foreign Assets office, a process that can take several months. Praver Shapiro Sports Management, which has handled other Cubans like pitcher Livan Hernandez, will represent Abreu. Last summer, the agency negotiated a nine-year, $30 million contract for another Cuban client, Jorge Soler, who signed with the Chicago Cubs. Abreu is expected to have a showcase for scouts in the Dominican Republic this month, at which point the hype will probably grow. Where it leads remains to be seen.


Scores Die in Avalanches on Afghan Mountain Pass

Abstract: SALANG PASS, Afghanistan — Rescuers atop this treacherous mountain pass dug through piles of snow on Wednesday to extract more bodies from cars, buses and trucks buried in snow as the death toll from possibly the worst series of avalanches in Afghanistan ’s history climbed to 166. Officials are predicting that they will find more victims. On just one stretch of the buried highway, at a place known as Pul-i-Khaki, the authorities had dug out 150 bodies, frozen in their final agonies. The rescue teams piled the bodies five to a police pickup truck and took them down to a makeshift helipad to be flown out. The director of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority, Abdul Matin Adrak, said that 300 injured people had been recovered and that 67 were in critical condition. But even in this snowy roadside graveyard, there were tales of improbable survival, like that of a 31-year-old taxi driver named Sher Muhammad. A storm had already begun on Monday when Mr. Muhammad started up this pass over the Hindu Kush mountain range in his maroon Toyota sedan, with four paying passengers. The heavy rains and ferocious winds loosened mountainfuls of snow, setting off 17 avalanches along a nine-mile-long stretch of the highway. By 9 p.m. Monday, Mr. Muhammad had reached a point just 1,000 feet below the tunnel at the top of the 12,000-foot pass, and it would prove to be the worst place of all. There was a noise like thunder and what felt like a blast, and Mr. Muhammad later told his brother that he remembered only clutching the steering wheel as the car rolled down the mountain and landed on its roof, snow piling over it. The heavily traveled highway, which links Kabul to northern Afghanistan, had been packed with traffic, and officials estimated that 100 or more vehicles had been buried on this one stretch, some of them after tumbling 500 yards down the slope. Within an hour, Mr. Muhammad’s family knew he had not made it over the pass, and they began calling his cellphone, only to get an out-of-service message. Mr. Muhammad was alive and conscious in the darkness of his buried Toyota; one of his passengers had been thrown out, and three others were injured. It took him until 3 a.m. Tuesday to find his cellphone, turn it on and call home. As he and hundreds of others lay buried, rescuers began arriving by helicopter and on foot. “We’ve had many avalanches here,” said the Parwan Province police chief, Maulana Sayedkhili. “This is the worst one ever.” Rescuers from the nearest village found a bus that had been buried, with just the rear bumper sticking out, according to one of the villagers, Azizullah (who, like many Afghans, has only one name). They started digging and found 14 people still alive, those in the back of the bus, closest to the surface. Piled beneath them were 40 dead passengers. In another car, officials found a dead woman and her seven children, all still alive. At least four other children were reported to have lost their parents in the avalanches. The governor of Parwan Province, Basir Salangi, estimated Wednesday that 50 vehicles remained buried. “There are still a lot of cars under the snow,” he said. He stamped his foot. Then he stamped it again. “It sounds hollow, there’s probably one here, too.” Rescue workers began digging there with shovels, the only tools they had, and not many of them; there were at least five workers for every shovel. They soon struck the metal of a roof. It was Wednesday afternoon, two full days after the avalanches began, before heavy equipment finally reached this point. Mr. Muhammad’s brother, Baryalai, 24, reached the pass on Tuesday. He had been on the phone all night as his buried brother tried to guide him and other family members to where he was. The car was 100 yards from the entombed bus. Just a single wheel of his taxi protruded from the snow. “The snow was blowing so hard we couldn’t even see it,” Mr. Baryalai said. “He was saying exactly where he was, he knows this road really well.” Hours passed before they found the car, and Mr. Muhammad wanted to say farewell to his family, his wife and 6-year-old son, but Mr. Baryalai said he would not allow it. “I said, ‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ ” he said. Mr. Baryalai dug out a door and pulled his brother and two survivors out. One of the passengers had already died. It was 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 13 hours after the car had been swept off the road. Mr. Muhammad was paralyzed from the waist down, apparently from frostbite. “At least he’s alive,” his brother said.


New V.A. Secretary Says Hiring Spree Is Needed to Meet Patient Demand

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The new secretary of Veterans Affairs said Monday that the department needed to hire “tens of thousands of new doctors, new nurses, new clinicians” — emphasizing the significance of a shortage of employees who are directly involved in treating patients, a factor many experts said was a main driver in the waiting-list scandal that rocked the agency this year. Yet the new secretary, Robert A. McDonald, a former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate six weeks ago after the resignation of Eric Shinseki in May , acknowledged that it would be difficult to fill many of those slots. “I am worried about our ability to recruit and retain talent,” Mr. McDonald said at his first news conference at the department’s office in Washington. “The issue now is, we have to find the people.” Mr. McDonald broadly outlined other plans to fix the department’s problems, but he did not offer many specifics or go much beyond remedies that had already been outlined by the deputy secretary, Sloan D. Gibson, in the weeks after Mr. Shinseki’s departure. In addition to hiring more doctors and nurses, Mr. McDonald pledged to flatten the department’s hierarchical structure; to continue to eliminate benchmarks that had created unintended incentives to manipulate waiting-time data; to transform what some officials called a vindictive and retaliatory management culture so that it “embraces constructive dissents and welcomes critical feedback”; and to take steps to make it easier for veterans to receive care. In response to a question, Mr. McDonald even gave a room full of journalists his cellphone number. All that may prove less difficult than finding the new doctors and nurses the department needs to handle the demand from service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from aging veterans of Vietnam and previous wars. At the same time, the department must still fill both existing vacancies and new positions created by a $17-billion plan approved by Congress this summer to stabilize the agency. The precise number of clinician slots the department already has the money to fill is not clear. In July, the department told Congress that it had almost 36,000 “clinical provider vacancies” — including more than 9,000 registered nurse vacancies and almost 4,000 physician vacancies. Over all, there were almost 46,000 vacancies across the entire veterans health care system, a vacancy rate of 15.5 percent. In some parts of the country, the shortage of doctors and nurses has been acute, and the department will have to compete in a tough job market to recruit talent. In Phoenix, for example, where a waiting-list scandal at a department medical center exploded into a national controversy, a whistle-blower, Dr. Sam Foote, has attributed long wait times to a doctor shortage. As recently as two years ago, Dr. Foote has said, as many as 15,000 veterans in Phoenix were waiting to be assigned to a primary care doctor because theirs had left or they were new to the system.

Veteran Affairs
Robert A. McDonald
Veteran
Hospital
Doctor
Nursing
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Health Insurance
Sloan Gibson
Phoenix


Before Accusations, Uber Was a Boon for Indian Women

Abstract: NEW DELHI — There is never a bad time to state a plain fact. Uber is a greater friend of urban women in India than the government ever was. Over the past several months, women have taken to the smartphone app with enthusiasm. They grade the drivers and convey to Uber their compliments — and their complaints about bad manners and body odor. Many rate the Uber experience higher than sitting in their own chauffeur-driven cars because the relationship between the driver in front and the female employer in back is often filled with the chauffeur’s melancholic stories about the health of his children, which lead to requests for loans and time off from work. And there is the issue of his judgmental gaze at her clothes and ways. Also, as he spends most of his day playing cards with other drivers, he passes on a considerable amount of information about his employer — information that is sometimes tapped by the neighbors. Uber’s drivers, on the other hand, are transient and have no incentive to whine. And, until Friday night, they were considered very safe. An Uber driver told me that they were considered so safe that boyfriends “could drink and dance with” their girlfriends “all night and didn’t have to drop them home — they just put them in Uber.” All that changed on Friday night. A young woman in New Delhi has alleged that she was raped by an Uber driver. After her complaint, the police could not figure out how to contact a human from Uber until an officer downloaded the app and used it to hail a car. He asked the driver to take him to Uber’s office. It would be hours before the police got any useful information. The man accused of rape was eventually detained. It turned out that he had been accused of the same crime at least twice before, but was acquitted in one case and granted bail in the other. Most of Uber’s cabs in India are run through third-party contractors who own and manage fleets of cars. They are required by Uber to check their drivers’ backgrounds, a process that mostly involves procuring a certificate from the police stating that the person in question has no criminal record — a largely meaningless exercise because such certification is routinely obtained through bribes of less than $10. I spoke to several Uber drivers who said their “police verification” was bought in this manner. Some said their backgrounds were not checked at all. Video In January, The New York Times interviewed Uber’s C.E.O., Travis Kalanick, about the ride-sharing company’s business practices, including liability in accidents. Credit Credit Jack Atley for The New York Times The driver accused of rape had a police certificate that said he was “not involved in any criminal offense as per the records of” one police station in New Delhi. The police have said that the certificate was forged. Even if it were genuine it would not surprise anyone in India. A rapist’s best ally is the corrupt government official. The government may be complicit in this alleged crime, but it has pretended that the problem is an app. On Monday, the Delhi region’s Transport Department banned Uber and its Indian clones and declared their operations in the National Capital Region illegal on various grounds. But I have been riding in Uber cabs since the ban was announced, and even as I write this column on Tuesday the cars are available. One driver showed me a text message on his mobile phone that he said was from Uber. The message asked him not to lose faith in the service “in these difficult times” and said Uber would continue to operate. Uber is staying put, and by making it illicit, the government has probably relieved it of the pressure to ensure the safety of its users. India’s best-known economics writer, Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, told me that Uber “is a company that does not have a moral compass, but it does serve the society.” For many years, until the recent arrival of radio cabs, taking a taxi or an auto-rickshaw in India was an act of accepting defeat. The customer was often cheated and the drivers were unruly. So in India, unlike in some American and European cities, Uber does not have to contend with nostalgia. It has been, in a way, a liberator. Follow Manu Joseph, author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook .

Uber
Taxis
Chauffeurs and Drivers
Delhi India


Former Cowboy Dies

Abstract: The former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Godfrey Myles died after having a stroke. He was 42. Myles’s cousin Requel Gibson said that Myles died Friday morning. Myles, a Miami native, played for the University of Florida from 1987 to 1990. He was a team captain and made the all-Southeastern Conference team his senior year. He was selected by the Cowboys in the third round of the 1991 draft. He played six years with the team, earning three Super Bowl rings. He retired after the 1996 season.

Football
Dallas Cowboys
Deaths (Fatalities)
Myles Godfrey


Solar Meets Polar as Winter Curbs Clean Energy

Abstract: Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy. This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine. So in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. “At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee,” said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota. As concern has grown about global warming , many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide — their carbon footprints — by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery. In January 2007, a bus stalled in the middle of the night on Interstate 70 in the Colorado mountains. The culprit was a 20 percent biodiesel blend that congealed in the freezing weather, according to John Jones, the transit director for the bus line, Summit Stage. (Biodiesel is a diesel substitute, typically made from vegetable oil, that is used to displace some fossil fuels.) The passengers got out of that situation intact, but Summit Stage, which serves ski resorts, now avoids biodiesel from November to March, and uses only a 5 percent blend in the summertime, when it can still get cold in the mountains. “We can’t have people sitting on buses freezing to death while we get out there trying to get them restarted,” Mr. Jones said. Winter may pose even bigger safety hazards in the vicinity of wind turbines. Some observers say the machines can hurl chunks of ice as they rotate. “It’s like you throw a plate out there and that plate breaks,” said Ralph Brokaw, a cattle rancher in southeast Wyoming who has 69 wind turbines on his property. When his turbines ice up, he stays out of the way. The wind industry admits that turbines can drop ice, like a lamppost or any tall structure. To ameliorate the hazard, some turbines are painted black to absorb sunlight and melt the ice faster. But Ron Stimmel, an expert on small wind turbines at the American Wind Energy Association, denies that the whirling blades tend to hurl icy javelins. Large turbines turn off automatically as ice builds up, and small turbines will slow and stop because the ice prevents them from spinning — “just like a plane’s wing needs to be de-iced to fly,” Mr. Stimmel said. Mr. Brokaw says that his turbines do turn off when they are too icy, but the danger sometimes comes right before the turbines shut down, after a wet, warm snow causes ice buildup. From the standpoint of generating power, winter is actually good for wind turbines, because it is generally windier than summer. In Vermont, for example, Green Mountain Power, which operates a small wind farm in the southeastern part of the state, gets more than twice the monthly production in winter as in August. The opposite is true, however, for solar power . Days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky during the winter, ensuring less power production. Even in northern California, with mild winters and little snow, solar panels can generate about half as much as in the summer, depending on how much they are tilted, according to Rob Erlichman, chief executive of Sunlight Electric, a San Francisco solar company. Operators of the electrical grid do not worry much about the seasonal swings, because the percentage of production from renewable energy is still so low — around 1 percent of the country’s power comes from wind, and less from solar panels. In addition, Americans use slightly less electricity in the winter than in the summer because air conditioners are not running. This is especially true in sunny areas, so solar panels’ peak production matches the spikes in demand. But as renewable energy becomes a bigger part of the nation’s power mix, the seasonable variability could become more of a problem. Already, power developers are learning that they must make careful plans to avoid the worst impacts of ice and snow. Trey Taylor, the president of Verdant Power, which has put small turbines in the tidal East River in New York City and plans more for the St. Lawrence River in Canada, said that ice chunks could slide over one another “like a deck of cards,” pushing ice below and harming turbines. That may rule out parts of otherwise promising sites like the Yukon River in Alaska, he said. Kevin Devlin, the vice president for operations of Iberdrola Renewables, a wind developer, said that winter was probably the hardest time of year to maintain turbines, because workers must go out in snow and ice. Occasionally, he said, the turbines will shut down or set off alarms if it is too cold, and workers must brave the elements to fix them. For homeowners, the upkeep of their power sources can also be a bother. Mr. Stankevitz keeps his panels tilted 40 degrees or higher, but they still become covered with snow — and experts say that if even one cell in a panel is covered, the panel will not produce power. On the other hand, the panels can get extra power from sunlight reflected off nearby snow. And like other electronic gear, solar panels work better when cold. Mr. Stankevitz said that on some rare winter days, when the Minnesota sky is clear, the weather is freezing and the sun is shining brightly, his panels can briefly churn out more electricity than they were designed to produce, more than on the balmiest days of summer.

Environment
Energy and Power
Weather
Solar Energy
Snow and Snowstorms
Biofuels
Wind


U.S. Plans to Put Advisers on Front Lines of Nigeria’s War on Boko Haram

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal — The Pentagon is poised to send dozens of Special Operations advisers to the front lines of Nigeria’s fight against the West African militant group Boko Haram, according to military officials, the latest deployment in conflicts with the Islamic State and its allies. Their deployment would push American troops hundreds of miles closer to the battle that Nigerian forces are waging against an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians in the country’s northeast as well as in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. By some measures, Boko Haram is the world’s deadliest terrorist group. The deployment is a main recommendation of a recent confidential assessment by the top United States Special Operations commander for Africa, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc. If it is approved, as expected, by the Defense and State Departments, the Americans would serve only in noncombat advisory roles, military officials said. Even as President Obama has drawn down the large American armies sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, he has relied heavily on Special Operations forces to train and advise local troops fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and to carry out clandestine counterterrorism missions. Already, about 50 American commandos are advising fighters battling the Islamic State in eastern Syria. Scores more in a new, secret kill-or-capture unit are hunting Islamic State militants in Iraq. The Pentagon has offered to send American advisers with Iraqi brigades on the battlefield instead of restricting them to bases inside Iraq. Dozens of American commandos are conducting surveillance missions in Libya and counterterrorism missions in Somalia. “Rather than entangle U.S. combat forces on the ground, help build the capacity of regional forces to tackle their countries’ security challenges,” said Jennifer G. Cooke, Africa director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who visited Nigeria last month. “Training and advising and perhaps imparting the lessons we learned the hard way is a good thing.” Since taking office last year, Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has vowed to pursue a military campaign against Boko Haram more vigorously than his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. His shake-up of the military high command and new cooperation with neighboring countries has proved effective. Mr. Buhari, a former general, has boasted of the military’s successes in wresting control of a huge portion of terrain from the group, declaring a “technical” victory late last year. But while the military has killed or captured thousands of militants and put an end to raids of villages by dozens or more fighters, the group has still carried out suicide attacks at a relentless pace in Nigeria and neighboring countries. “Despite losing territory in 2015, Boko Haram will probably remain a threat to Nigeria throughout 2016 and will continue its terror campaign within the country and in neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad,” James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee in Washington on Thursday. To help combat this threat, Mr. Buhari has embraced American assistance, ending several years of tense relations that sank to new lows in 2014 when the United States blocked the sale of American-made Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria from Israel, amid concerns about Nigeria’s protection of civilians when conducting military operations. Groups like Human Rights Watch say the Nigerian military has at times burned hundreds of homes and committed other abuses as it battled Boko Haram and its presumed supporters. Image A Nigerian Army soldier in Lagos last year. Credit Stefan Heunis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States responded sharply at the time, accusing Washington of hampering the country’s effort to defeat Boko Haram. American officials also expressed hesitancy about sharing intelligence with the Nigerian military, fearing their ranks had been infiltrated by Boko Haram, an accusation that further infuriated Nigerian leaders. In December 2014, Nigeria canceled the last stage of American training of a new Nigerian Army battalion that was to take the lead in fighting terrorists. Those days now seem over. This month Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the State Department’s top diplomat for Africa, announced that the suspended training for the Nigerian infantry battalion would resume soon. Nigeria will provide the ammunition. Two weeks ago, Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, hosted Nigeria’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin, at the American headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. “To contain Boko Haram, working together is a priority,” General Rodriguez told his visitor. About 250 American service members have deployed to a military base in Garoua, Cameroon, where United States surveillance drones flying over northeastern Nigeria are sending imagery to African troops. Drone photos recently helped the Nigerian Army avoid a major Boko Haram ambush, according to a senior American intelligence officer. Another breakthrough occurred late last year when General Bolduc, a Green Beret with multiple Special Forces tours in Afghanistan, visited Nigeria. When officials there asked for assistance, General Bolduc quickly sent an assessment team to conduct a 30-day review. Among the team’s main recommendations was to position “small dozens” of Special Forces in Maiduguri, a major city in the northeast on the edge of the conflict, to help Nigerian military planners carry out a more effective counterterrorism campaign. British special forces are already assisting in the city. (The American military now maintains only a tiny intelligence cell in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.) Nigerian military officials have embraced the recommendations and are drawing up detailed requests, American officials said. Just last fall, life seemed to be turning back to normal in the areas near Maiduguri, which for years had been the epicenter of Boko Haram’s activities. But after a major military operation uprooted the militants from nearby villages they had seized, many fighters have returned to Maiduguri to launch repeated suicide bombing operations in the city or in villages on the outskirts that have caused dozens of deaths. At the end of last year, fighters attacked the city with rocket-propelled grenades and several suicide bombs. Residents say they eye one another with suspicion, especially women wearing religious gowns, fearful that explosives may be hidden underneath. These relentless attacks have put more pressure on Nigeria and its neighbors to marshal their forces against a common enemy. After taking office last year, Mr. Buhari began forging relationships with the presidents of neighboring countries to establish information-sharing and to build trust between his nation and Niger, Cameroon and Chad. But grouping the four nations together to share information and untangling decades of mistrust among them have proved harder. A regional task force established by the countries last year has largely stalled amid lingering distrust and differing views about the threat. Less than half of the task force’s $700 million budget has been raised, and sinking oil prices have hurt the economies of Chad and Nigeria, Ms. Cooke said in congressional testimony this week. Still, working together has yielded victories. Earlier this month, the Cameroonians teamed up with the Nigerian military as part of a joint operation on Nigerian soil just across the border in the far north, killing more than 160 Boko Haram fighters, dismantling a logistics hub for the fighters and destroying explosive devices, according to officials there.

Boko Haram
Nigeria
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
US Foreign Policy
Terrorism
US Military
Muhammadu Buhari
US Special Operations Command
Donald C. Bolduc


Pope Benedict Meets Saudi King at Vatican

Abstract: ROME, Nov. 6 — Pope Benedict XVI and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia clasped hands at the Vatican on Tuesday in the first official meeting between a pope and a Saudi monarch, who is entrusted to protect Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad and the center of the Islamic world. The two met for half an hour, speaking through interpreters, in a conversation that a Vatican news release said had been cordial and had covered the “value of collaboration between Christians, Muslims and Jews for promoting peace” and “the necessity of finding a just solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other themes. Marco Politi, the Vatican correspondent for the Italian daily La Repubblica and a biographer of Pope John Paul II, said, “I think it is extraordinarily important that an official communiqué from the Vatican and an important Islamic state like Saudi Arabia mentions ‘cooperation’ between Christians Muslims and Jews — not dialogue but cooperation.” The meeting, presaged by an upbeat front-page article in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper, was also a clear attempt by the Vatican to repair damage done by the pope’s 2006 statement on Islam, which the Arab world had seen as insensitive if not incendiary. In a speech in Regensburg, Germany, in September 2006, Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who called Islam “evil and inhuman.” The comment led to protests in Islamic nations, and prompted some Islamic states to recall their Vatican ambassadors. Firebombers attacked churches in the West Bank and Gaza, gunmen killed an Italian nun in Somalia, and the pope was threatened. The Vatican expressed “deepest regrets” but said the remark had been misinterpreted in a way that “absolutely did not correspond” to the pope’s intentions. The article in the Vatican newspaper seemed to open the door for a diplomatic initiative toward Islam and the Middle East. It said the meeting with Abdullah was “of great importance.” “In a world where the boundaries have become day by day more open, dialogue is not a choice but a necessity,” it said. The article also acknowledged that some weeks ago Pope Benedict had received a letter from 138 Islamic religious leaders from 43 nations, appealing for more dialogue between Christians and Muslims. As the weeks went by with no response, some scholars here had complained that the pope seemed slow to address an important appeal. The Vatican allayed those fears on Tuesday. The meeting represents a triumph of sorts for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and especially for Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Cardinal Tauran, who previously served the church in Lebanon and Syria, is familiar with the Middle East and has promoted greater contact with Islamic states. But official statements issued Tuesday did not mention establishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, and it was not clear that the topic was even discussed. In May, the United Arab Emirates became the latest Islamic country to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican, the Vatican newspaper said. One reason the Vatican wants to forge diplomatic relations in the Middle East, or at least increase its diplomatic influence there, is the presence of significant Roman Catholic populations in predominantly Muslim countries. Almost all are guest workers from elsewhere. The Vatican noted that 1.5 million Christians are in Saudi Arabia, the majority of them Catholics from the Philippines. The State Department has criticized Saudi Arabia for religious intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims. “Charges of harassment, abuse and even killings at the hands of the Muttawa (religious police) continue to surface,” the department said in a report issued this year. But little sign of tension was evident Tuesday. The pope gave the king a 16th-century engraving of the Vatican and a gold medal with his seal. The king gave the pope a sword, telling him it was “made of gold and precious stones.” In 1999, long before becoming king, Abdullah met Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, who also met other prominent Muslim leaders, including, in 1999, Mohammad Khatami, a moderate cleric who was president of Iran.

Rome (Italy)
Benedict XVI
Abdullah
Roman Catholic Church
Cardinals (Roman Catholic Prelates)
Islam