Ohio to Offer Paper Ballots in March

Abstract: CINCINNATI — All 57 counties in Ohio that still use the touch-screen voting machines that were found to be unreliable in a statewide study must provide paper ballots to any voters who request them for the presidential primary in March. The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer L. Brunner, issued the directive on Wednesday night as part of an effort to restore confidence in the state’s voting systems, which the study found to be vulnerable to computer hackers and other saboteurs using devices as rudimentary as magnets and personal digital assistants. The study recommended that by the November presidential election all counties replace touch-screen machines with paper ballots. Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Ms. Brunner, called the directive “an interim step” to give voters concerned by the study “another option.” The counties were also ordered to provide secure containers for the ballots and private areas for voters to fill out the paper forms. Ms. Brunner, a Democrat, who was elected in November, pledged to reform voting after her predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, came under fire for simultaneously overseeing the 2004 election and serving as co-chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio.


How U.S. Changed Tack on Egypt - WikiLeaks Archive

Abstract: WASHINGTON — It was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first meeting as secretary of state with President Hosni Mubarak , in March 2009, and the Egyptians had an odd request: Mrs. Clinton should not thank Mr. Mubarak for releasing an opposition leader from prison because he was ill. In fact, a confidential diplomatic cable signed by the American ambassador to Egypt , Margaret Scobey, advised Mrs. Clinton to avoid even mentioning the name of the man, Ayman Nour, even though his imprisonment in 2005 had been condemned worldwide, not least by the Bush administration. The cable is among a trove of dispatches made public by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks that paint a vivid picture of the delicate dealings between the United States and Egypt, its staunchest Arab ally. They show in detail how diplomats repeatedly raised concerns with Egyptian officials about jailed dissidents and bloggers, and kept tabs on reports of torture by the police. But they also reveal that relations with Mr. Mubarak warmed up because President Obama played down the public “name and shame” approach of the Bush administration. A cable prepared for a visit by Gen. David H. Petraeus in 2009 said the United States, while blunt in private, now avoided “the public confrontations that had become routine over the past several years.” This balancing of private pressure with strong public support for Mr. Mubarak has become increasingly tenuous in recent days. Throngs of angry Egyptians have taken to the streets and the White House, worried about being identified with a reviled regime, has challenged the president publicly. On Thursday, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Mubarak as a partner but said he needed to undertake political and economic reforms. In an interview posted on YouTube, Mr. Obama said neither the police nor the protesters should resort to violence. “It is very important,” he added, “that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances.” It is not known what Mrs. Clinton said to Mr. Mubarak in their first meeting, at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik. But she set the public tone afterward, when she was asked by an Arab television journalist about a State Department report critical of Egypt’s human rights record. “We hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding that Mr. Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, were friends of her family, and that it was up to the Egyptian people to decide the president’s future. The cables, which cover the first year of the Obama presidency, leave little doubt about how valuable an ally Mr. Mubarak has been, detailing how he backed the United States in its confrontation with Iran, played mediator between Israel and the Palestinians and supported Iraq’s fledgling government, despite his opposition to the American-led war. Privately, Ambassador Scobey pressed Egypt’s interior minister to free three bloggers, as well as a Coptic priest who performed a wedding for a Christian convert, according to one of her cables to Washington. She also asked that three American pro-democracy groups be granted formal permission to operate in the country, a request the Egyptians rejected. However effusive the Americans were about Mr. Mubarak in public, the cables offered a less flattering picture of Egypt’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak. During a visit to the Sinai, one reported, she commandeered a bus that had been bought with money from the United States Agency for International Development and that had been meant to carry children to school. Egyptian state security was concerned enough about American activities in Sinai, according to another cable, that it surreptitiously recorded a meeting between diplomats and members of a local council. Yet many more of the cables describe collaboration between the United States and Egypt. In her 2009 visit, Mrs. Clinton was trying to revive the moribund peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Mubarak was central to this: the cables detail his efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israelis and the militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as American pressure on him to curb the smuggling of weapons to Hamas from Egypt through tunnels. Mrs. Clinton was also laying out Mr. Obama’s rationale for engaging Iran — an overture, the cables report, that Mr. Mubarak predicted would fail. A May 2009 cable before Mr. Mubarak’s first visit to the Obama White House noted that Egyptian officials told a visiting American diplomat, Dennis B. Ross, that “we should prepare for confrontation through isolation.” Like other Arab leaders, Mr. Mubarak is depicted in the cables as obsessed with Iran, which he told American diplomats was extending its tentacles from “the Gulf to Morocco” through proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. He views these groups — particularly Hamas, a “brother” of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood — as a direct threat to his own rule. In a meeting with General Petraeus on June 29, 2009, Mr. Mubarak said the Iranian government wanted to establish “pockets” of influence inside Egypt, according to a cable. General Petraeus told him the United States was responding to similar fears among Persian Gulf states by deploying more Patriot missiles and upgrading its F-16 fighter jets stationed in the region. Despite obvious American sympathy for Mr. Mubarak’s security concerns, there is little evidence that the diplomats believed the president, now 82, was at risk of losing his grip on power. The May 2009 cable noted that riots over bread prices had broken out in Egypt in 2008 for the first time since 1977. And it said the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood had prompted the government to resort to “heavy-handed tactics against individuals and groups.” But the cable, again signed by Ambassador Scobey, portrayed Mr. Mubarak as the ultimate survivor, a “tried and true realist” who would rather “let a few individuals suffer than risk chaos for society as a whole.” “During his 28-year rule,” the cable said, “he survived at least three assassination attempts, maintained peace with Israel, weathered two wars in Iraq and post-2003 regional instability, intermittent economic downturns, and a manageable but chronic internal terrorist threat.” Another cable, dated March 2009, offered a pessimistic analysis of the prospects for the “April 6 Movement,” a Facebook-based group of mostly young Egyptians that has received wide attention for its lively political debate and helped mobilize the protests that have swept Egypt in the last two days. Leaders of the group had been jailed and tortured by the police. There were also signs of internal divisions between secular and Islamist factions, it said. The United States has defended bloggers with little success. When Ambassador Scobey raised several arrests with the interior minister, he replied that Egypt did not infringe on freedom of the press, but that it must respond when “people are offended by blogs.” An aide to the minister told the ambassador that The New York Times, which has reported on the treatment of bloggers in Egypt, was “exaggerating the blogger issue,” according to the cable. American diplomats also cast a wide net to gather information on police brutality, the cables show. Through contacts with human rights lawyers, the embassy follows numerous cases, and raised some with the Interior Ministry. Among the most harrowing, according to a cable, was the treatment of several members of a Hezbollah cell detained by the police in late 2008. Lawyers representing the men said they were subjected to electric shocks and sleep deprivation, which reduced them to a “zombie state.” They said the torture was more severe than what they normally witnessed. To the extent that Mr. Mubarak has been willing to tolerate reforms, the cable said, it has been in areas not related to public security or stability. For example, he has given his wife latitude to campaign for women’s rights and against practices like female genital mutilation and child labor, which are sanctioned by some conservative Islamic groups. Still, Mr. Mubarak generally views broader reforms as an invitation to extremism. “We have heard him lament the results of earlier U.S. efforts to encourage reform in the Islamic world,” said a cable, noting that he often invoked the shah of Iran — a secular leader who came under pressure from Washington, only to be replaced by an even more repressive, hostile government. Even the private encounters with Mr. Mubarak have layers of sensitivity. While Mrs. Clinton was advised to steer clear of mentioning Ayman Nour, the cable signed by Ambassador Scobey suggested she might broach the topic of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American author and critic of Mr. Mubarak who fled Egypt after being found guilty of defaming the country. “If you have any one-on-one opportunity with President Mubarak,” the ambassador wrote, “you may wish to suggest that annulling these cases and allowing him to return to Egypt would also be well received by the new administration.” It is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton did so.

Classified Information and State Secrets


Euro, Clawing Its Way Back, Hits 3-Month High

Abstract: PARIS — As recently as March, the dollar was looking so strong against the euro that the only question seemed to be how soon the eurozone currency would sink to parity. But the euro has been on a rebound, and on Thursday, it reached a three-month high against the American currency, rising above $1.14. What happened, and what do recent fluctuations say about the American and eurozone economies? “The original argument for the dollar strengthening was one of divergence,” said Alan Ruskin, head of foreign exchange strategy at Deutsche Bank in New York. While things developed largely as expected on the side of the European Central Bank, he noted, the American narrative has not held up as well. The euro, used by 19 countries, began falling in the second half of last year after alarm about deflationary pressures pushed the European Central Bank toward a policy of quantitative easing . The central bank has committed to buying 60 billion euros, or about $67.6 billion, worth of bonds each month through September 2016. That central bank program, which has the effect of driving down yields on eurozone government bonds, sent investors scurrying to capital markets in the United States in search of higher returns, especially because the Federal Reserve had been expected to begin moving to raise interest rates from near zero. That wave of dollar-buying helped to drive a big rally the American currency, which gained sharply against most of its counterparts. But the euro, which fell as low as $1.0458 on March 16, has been clawing its way back. On Thursday it was trading at $1.1415, up 0.5 percent on the day and the highest level since February. The euro is not the only currency rising; the dollar has given up ground more broadly, losing about 5 percent of its value against a basket of currencies over the same period. Mr. Ruskin said that the dollar’s rally began to lose steam after officials of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policy-making body, pointedly noted at their March meeting that American exporters could be hurt by a strong currency. But even before that, Mr. Ruskin said, weaker-than-expected economic data had begun to undercut the case for the Fed to increase key lending rates. Another factor behind the change of direction is that the yields on many European government bonds, which had fallen into negative territory amid fears that deflation would take hold, have begun to spike higher, making short-term European assets more attractive and encouraging capital to flow back into the euro. For example, the yield on the German 10-year bond, a eurozone benchmark, which fell nearly to zero last month, stood at more than 0.7 percent. (Yields move in the opposite direction of prices.) The fall in the euro, which makes it easier for exporters to compete overseas, is one of the factors — along with lower oil prices and lower interest rates — that economists have cited for the eurozone’s relatively strong first-quarter growth. If the euro continues gaining, it might sap some of that energy. Two reports released on Wednesday set off a new round of dollar-selling. First, data from Eurostat, the European statistical agency, showed that the eurozone economy greatly outpaced the United States economy in the first quarter, growing at a 1.6 percent annualized pace. The American economy registered a 0.2 percent gain in the period, but revised figures are expected to show that it actually contracted. Second, a report from the Commerce Department showed that retail sales were flat in April, confounding expectations of a gain. Taken together, the data made it appear unlikely that the Fed would tighten monetary policy before the autumn, at the earliest, economists say. Phyllis Papadavid, a senior foreign exchange strategist at BNP Paribas in London, warned against looking to Europe for an explanation of the dollar’s downturn. Despite some positive signs, she said, the Continent’s economy remains in the doldrums, with high unemployment likely to continue weighing on growth. “It’s a broader dollar move that we’re seeing in the light of the disappointing data out of the U.S.,” she said. “This isn’t a euro move.” Momentum currently favors euro buying, Ms. Papadavid said, but she added that she expected the United States economy to pick up steam in the second quarter, eventually bringing the dollar back into favor. For all the volatility in the market, the euro has a long way to go before it reaches its levels of May 2014, when it was trading above $1.39, and Ms. Papadavid said there was little chance of its reaching that level anytime soon. “I’d be very, very surprised to see that kind of move,” she said.


Decade-Long Night Curfew to Be Lifted in Baghdad

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Seeking to normalize life in the embattled capital, Iraq’s prime minister said on Thursday that the authorities would lift a nighttime curfew in Baghdad that has been in force, with some interruptions, for over a decade. The prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, also barred unauthorized gunmen from entering four Baghdad neighborhoods and ordered the removal of checkpoints from some roads, seeking to counter the atmosphere of armed siege that has persisted in the city since the United States invasion in 2003. Mr. Abadi’s spokesman, Rafid Jaboori, said the order to lift the curfew came after diminishing threats to Baghdad since the summer, when there had been fears that it would be overrun by the Islamic State, which seized parts of northern Iraq beginning in June. It was also an effort by Mr. Abadi to make good on pledges to “make life easier for Iraqis in liberated areas,” Mr. Jaboori said. The dangers, however, have persisted. At least 26 people have been killed in bombings in the past week, including from car bombs that went off in a busy market. The United Nations said this week that at least 256 civilians were killed last month in the Baghdad governorate, which includes areas beyond the capital’s heavily reinforced security checkpoints. The lifting of the curfew, which is scheduled to begin on Saturday, also appeared to be an attempt by the government to show that it was making progress in the battle against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, at a time when its security forces are facing competition from Shiite militias fighting around the country. As they have pushed the Sunni militants from the Islamic State back in several areas, the militia leaders — who are allied with the government but operate largely under their own authority — have sought to portray themselves as Iraq’s most effective fighting force.

Iraq
Haider al-Abadi
Curfew
Baghdad
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State


Poker, a Game of Skill, Is Not Truly Gambling, a Judge Rules

Abstract: The game was Texas Hold ’Em. About $300 bought a place at the table in the back room of a warehouse on Staten Island, where waitresses floated around with food and drinks and the play lasted until breakfast. The pot went not to the luckiest among them but to the most deft — the player who could guess his opponents’ intentions and disguise his own, make calculated decisions on when to hold and fold, and quickly decide how much to wager. That, anyhow, is how one federal judge saw it from his chambers in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn. In a ruling that goes to the heart of what it means to play poker, Judge Jack B. Weinstein tossed out the conviction and vacated the indictment of the man who ran that gambling business. The judge’s reason: poker is more a game of skill than a game of chance, so game operators should not be prosecuted under the federal law the prohibits running an illegal gambling business. “The most skillful professionals earn the same celestial salaries as professional ballplayers,” he wrote in the exhaustive 120-page ruling that detailed the history of poker in the United States. The decision comes as state courts across the country are grappling with whether playing poker defies the law. No federal court had ever ruled directly on whether poker constituted gambling. The United States attorney’s office, which was reviewing the decision, did not say whether it would appeal the case. The Poker Player’s Alliance, an organization that works to decriminalize poker and that filed an amicus brief in the case, released a statement lauding the decision. “As we worked for years defending players against vague gambling laws, we have patiently waited for the right opportunity to raise the issue in federal court,” John Pappas, the executive director of the organization, said in a statement. “Today’s federal court ruling is a major victory for the game of poker and the millions of Americans who enjoy playing it.” Lawrence DiCristina ran the warehouse where the games took place — that was not in dispute — taking 5 percent of each night’s pot to cover the cost of his staff and profit for himself. He was arrested last summer, charged with operating an illegal gambling business, of which he was convicted in July. He faced up to 10 years in prison. But Mr. DiCristina’s lawyer, Kannan Sundaram, a public defender, said poker was not a game of chance and therefore not subject to the law. He called an expert witness, Randal D. Heeb, an economist, statistician and poker player in national tournaments, who testified in a special hearing about the skill involved. Judge Weinstein put off ruling on the issue until after the trial, allowing the jury to render its verdict first.

Decisions and Verdicts
Poker (Card Game)
Gambling
Weinstein Jack B


World Cup 2014: Luis Suárez Apologizes for Biting Giorgio Chiellini

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Uruguay striker Luis Suárez has issued a public apology for biting an opponent in a World Cup match last week, his third on-field biting incident since 2010, and pledged that there will “never again” be a similar incident. “After several days of being home with my family, I have had the opportunity to regain my calm and reflect about the reality of what occurred during the Italy-Uruguay match,” Suárez said in a statement posted on his Twitter account. “The truth,” he continued, “is that my colleague Giorgio Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me. For this: I deeply regret what occurred. I apologize to Giorgio Chiellini and the entire football family. I vow to the public that there will never again be another incident like” this. Chiellini appeared to accept the apology, via his Twitter account, writing to Suárez in English: “It’s all forgotten. I hope FIFA will reduce your suspension.” It is unclear what Suárez’s apology will mean for a possible appeal of the punishment handed down by FIFA after the incident: a suspension for nine international matches; a ban from all football-related activities, including games for his English club team, Liverpool; and a fine of $100,000 Swiss francs, or about $112,000. Uruguay has filed notice that it will appeal the punishment given to Suárez, and it has until Sunday to file its appeal in writing. But there is no timetable on when FIFA’s appeals committee will take up the matter. The statement is a direct contradiction of Suárez’s position immediately after the Italy game, when he said he had fallen into Chiellini but had not bitten him. The apology could also be a move to repair Suárez’s image and ease a possible transfer. While his ban means he cannot play for any team until October, he is allowed to negotiate a transfer to a new club — news media reports have had him on the way to Barcelona — during this summer’s transfer window. When he was suspended in 2010 for biting an opponent in a Dutch league game, Suárez issued an apology in a video posted on his Facebook page. He served a seven-match ban, but his Dutch club, Ajax, sold him to Liverpool just as it ended. In April 2013, Suárez was again accused of biting an opponent, Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic, during a Premier League game. That incident prompted a 10-game ban, and another apology — through the club and on Twitter — for what he called “inexcusable behavior.” Liverpool’s managing director, Ian Ayre, said at the time, “"His behavior is not befitting of any player wearing a Liverpool shirt and Luis is aware that he has let himself and everyone associated with the club down.” Liverpool has made no comment on the current biting incident.

Luis Suarez
2014 World Cup
Soccer
Uruguay


Alabama Player Is Arrested

Abstract: Tuscaloosa County jail records show that Alabama running back Kenyan Drake was arrested and was being held on $1,000 bond on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing government operations. A Tuscaloosa police spokesman said Drake’s vehicle was parked in a crime scene where a shooting had taken place. The spokesman said that Drake, who will be a junior this year, went through crime scene tape to get to his vehicle.


Scarred Riverbeds and Dead Pistachio Trees in a Parched Iran

Abstract: POUZE KHOON, Iran — The early-morning sun meagerly brightened the gloom of this sad township, a collection of empty, crumbling houses along a highway through the dusty desert landscape in southeastern Iran . Until a decade or so ago, Amin Shoul would come here every year to help his father harvest pistachios, the nuts that are as much a symbol of Iran as caviar. Now, with the last reserves of groundwater tapped out, the family’s grove and the seemingly endless fields beyond it are filled with dead trees, their bone-colored branches a deathly contrast to the turquoise sky. Mr. Shoul, 32, a journalist, said he and his family had moved away years ago, leaving the house to squatters, unemployed laborers living off meager government stipends — and even they had started to leave. “I don’t see how we can ever return to the past,” he remarked, matter-of-factly. As Iran emerges from isolation after signing a nuclear agreement with the West, attention has focused on its business relations, particularly in the oil and airline industries. But Iran needs expertise in a number of areas, including the environment. Most pressing in that regard is its impending water crisis. Image Amin Shoul inspected his family's dead pistachio trees in the dried-up grove near Pouze Khoon, Iran. Credit Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times Iran is in the grip of a seven-year drought that shows no sign of breaking and that, many experts believe, may be the new normal. Even a return to past rainfall levels might not be enough to head off a nationwide water crisis, since the country has already consumed 70 percent of its groundwater supplies over the past 50 years. Always arid, Iran is facing desertification as lakes and rivers dry up and once-fertile plains become barren. According to the United Nations, Iran is home to four of the 10 most polluted cities in the world, with dust and desertification among the leading causes. In Zanjan, northwest of Tehran, the historic Mir Baha-eddin Bridge crosses a riverbed of sand, stones and weeds. In Gomishan, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the fishermen who once built houses on poles surrounded by freshwater now have to drive for miles to reach the receding shoreline. In Urmia , close to the Turkish border, residents have held protests to demand that the government return water to a once-huge lake that is now the source only of dust storms. More than 15 percent of the approximately 150,000 acres of pistachio trees in the main producing area in Kerman Province have died in the last decade or so. A nationwide network of dams, often heralded by state television as a sign of progress and water management, is adding to water shortages in many places while helping deplete groundwater. In Isfahan, the once-iconic Zayanderud River is now a dusty scar the size of the Seine snaking through the city, because officials were forced to divert its water to the desert city of Yazd. In Tehran, officials barely managed to keep the water running this summer as reservoirs shrank to dangerously low levels. Subsidies for water and electricity encourage overconsumption in urban areas. Isa Kalantari, a former minister of agriculture, warns that more than half of Iran’s provinces could become uninhabitable within 15 years, displacing millions of people. As in drought-stricken California, agriculture accounts for about 90 percent of water consumption in Iran. And here, matters are not helped by the prevalence of crude, centuries-old irrigation methods and other wasteful practices. Where there are no longer rivers and lakes to be tapped, desperate farmers and municipalities are turning to dwindling groundwater supplies. Drillers report that they are increasingly coming up dry, even at depths of more than 600 feet. When they do find water, they say, it is often polluted with heavy metals and arsenic, released as the drill bits break through sediment. Video There is something strange going on in Isfahan, where the water under the famous Bridge of 33 Arches has disappeared. The changing landscape is all too visible in Kerman Province. In a not-so-distant past, the area was a beltway of green stretching for hundreds of square miles, using groundwater to produce grain and pistachios. Now, the sun bakes treeless plains that are increasingly giving way to deserts. During storms, the dead trees lose their branches, turning them into stumps, while the dust swirls about in ever-growing quantities. In the dead pistachio grove, a rare rainstorm recently left white lines in the red soil. “Salt and other things,” Mr. Shoul said — residue from the contaminated water brought up by wells that sucked the last remaining groundwater years ago. He said he had kidney stones, as do many others in the region: a result, he said, of their drinking water from the taps. “The irony,” he said, “is that I have to drink even more water to reduce the pain.” Just over 50 miles north, in the city of Sirjan, decisions long postponed have begun to impose themselves on local officials, forcing them to make difficult choices in allocating scarce water supplies. Wedged between two newly built neighborhoods of five-story apartment buildings, a convoy of water trucks waited in line to fill their 5,000-gallon tanks. Under a deal with the local water management company, up to 400 of these trucks a day draw water from the city’s main well and head to the Golgohar iron mine , the largest such mine in the Middle East. It employs over 7,000 people, many of them from Sirjan, and a water shortage has compounded an already difficult situation brought on by collapsing iron ore prices. Image A farmer watering his young pistachio trees by flooding the field. The centuries-old irrigation method is wasteful since most of the water evaporates quickly. Credit Credit: “It is internationally unprecedented to carry water with tankers, but we have no other way,” Naser Taghizadeh, chief executive of the Golgohar Iron Ore Company, told the local Negarestan news outlet. “If water is not taken to the complex, projects are stopped, and many people will lose their jobs.” Residents have objected and even staged a sit-in, but the tankers keep coming for the water, kicking up clouds of fine dust as they drive off. The drivers, often from the city, say they are scorned by their neighbors. “We need to feed our families too,” one of them, Saaed Salimizadeh, said. “When the water runs out, it will run out for all of us. We have to choose between jobs and drinking water.” Sirjan is by no means alone in its water shortages. In surrounding Kerman Province, 1,455 of 2,064 village reservoirs have dropped below levels needed to sustain the population, according to the local water management agency. The semiofficial Mehr news agency reported in July, citing local statistics, that 541 villages were dependent on tanker deliveries for their water. It is not just water levels that are declining. “The quality of the water has decreased dramatically, as have the levels of the underground water,” Akbar Mahmoud Abadi, a deputy at the local department of the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad in Sirjan, said in a written reply to questions. “The condition is very worrisome.” Image An orchard of dead trees near the village of Pouze Khoon. Until a decade ago, the pistachio groves were green. Now there is no rain and the groundwater is almost all gone. Credit Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times Kerman Province remains one of the largest producers of pistachios in the world, but its irrigation methods are frequently outdated. In one field, a farmer, Ismael Alizadeh, opened an eight-inch water pipe during the middle of the day, under the burning sun, flooding a field of pistachio trees. “We have always done it like this,” he said with a shrug. Soheil Sharif, a major producer in the area, said other farmers had ridiculed him when he installed a $600,000 drip irrigation system in his 90-acre pistachio grove a few years ago. But now his farm is green, while others around it have dried up. He blamed the government for keeping energy and water prices low, saying that he paid only $270 a month for his electricity bill, covering his huge pump and 20 employees. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “And while we have no water, its price is also dirt cheap.” His investment has paid off, Mr. Sharif, 44, acknowledged. “I have bought myself another 15 years,” he said as he walked among freshly picked pistachio trees. That is just enough to last to his retirement. “After that,” he said, “this place, like everything else here, is done for.”

Iran
Drought
Water pollution
Agriculture
Water
Desert
Irrigation
Nuts
Kerman Province


Maine to Consider Warnings on Cellphones

Abstract: BOSTON — Maine legislators this month will take up the question of whether cellphones sold in the state must contain warnings that they may cause brain cancer , despite a lack of scientific consensus on the issue. State Representative Andrea M. Boland , a Democrat from Sanford, is pushing for the state to become the first to require cellphone manufacturers to put warnings on packaging, like those on cigarettes . Ms. Boland said she was convinced from what she had read that the radiation from cellphones increased the risk of brain cancer when held at the ear, especially in children under 18. She said she was swayed by a 2006 study by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life that showed a correlation between brain tumors and heavy cellphone use, and by a recent report by a retired engineer and consumer advocate, Lloyd Morgan, that compiled research showing that cellphones can lead to an increased risk of brain tumors. Ms. Boland filed the bill in October, and a committee voted to hear it this month, a time typically reserved for emergency legislation. David Loughran, a spokesman for the State Senate president, Elizabeth H. Mitchell , said the legislation was accepted as an emergency because there are over 900,000 cellphones in the state, “and if there’s a need to put these warning labels on them, doing it sooner rather than later is probably better.” Despite this, Ms. Mitchell will not take a position on the bill until she sees “a more complete picture of the information” surrounding the issue, Mr. Loughran said. Gov. John Baldacci , a Democrat, also has not taken a position on the bill. In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to introduce an amendment this year requiring that cellphone packages in the city display the amount of radiation a phone emits. “The mayor believes that cellphone safety is the next frontier,” said Brian Purchia, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. If Maine enacts a law on cellphone warnings, it would be the first of its kind in the United States, where an estimated 276.6 million people use cellphones, according to CTIA — the Wireless Association , the leading industry trade group. Some countries including France and India recommend limiting exposure to cellphone radiation. The debate over the safety of cellphone radiation has been brewing for years, and there is a great divide on the issue. The National Cancer Institute says on its Web site that studies have not shown “any consistent link between cellular telephone use and cancer,” but cautions that “scientists feel that additional research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.” The World Health Organization said in 2005 that studies had found “no convincing evidence of an increased cancer risk” from cellphones or their towers. But while many are awaiting the release of a more extensive study overseen by the W.H.O., The Daily Telegraph in London reported in October that the study would conclude that people who used their cellphones for 10 years or more were at an increased risk of developing brain cancer. In July, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute , sent a memo to staff members warning them to limit their cellphone use and to use hands-free sets in light of a “growing body of literature linking long-term cellphone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer.” Five months later, however, a Danish study reported that the rates of brain cancer in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden had remained stable from 1974 to 2003. The report was published Dec. 3. The industry maintains that cellphones are safe. The Federal Communications Commission , on its Web site, says that while government agencies are monitoring the latest scientific studies, “there is no scientific evidence to date that proves wireless phone usage can lead to cancer or a variety of other health effects, including headaches, dizziness or memory loss .” John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA — the Wireless Association, said in a statement that “the peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices do not pose a public health risk.” Renee Sharp, director of the California office of the Environmental Working Group , a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that is assisting San Francisco in drafting its guidelines, said companies should be required to disclose how much radiation their cellphones emit. The group has published on its Web site the amount of radiation certain cellphones emit. “We’re urging the federal government to take a look at current radiation standards,” Ms. Sharp said. In Maine, Democrats have a large majority in the House, and Ms. Boland said she was receiving support from fellow Democratic legislators for her measure. She said she used her cellphone “a lot less” than she used to, and now only on speakerphone or with an earpiece. “The main thing is that the warning labels get on there, and when people go to purchase something, they have a heads-up that they need to really think about it,” Ms. Boland said. “This is a big important industry, and it’s a small modification to assure people that they should handle them properly.”

Cellular Telephones
Cancer
Labeling and Labels
Maine


UConn Rolls, Though Only After Temple Threatens

Abstract: Moriah Jefferson had 25 points, 8 assists and 8 steals to help No. 1 Connecticut beat a stubborn Temple team, 85-60, on Sunday in Philadelphia for the Huskies’ 61st straight victory. Breanna Stewart added 24 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists and 6 blocks for the Huskies (24-0, 13-0 American Athletic Conference), who have won 101 straight games against unranked teams. UConn has victories in 278 of its past 279 games against opponents outside the Top 25, the lone blemish coming against St. John’s on Feb. 18, 2012. For the most part, those games have been over by the half, with UConn routing overmatched opponents by nearly 44.7 points a game. Temple would not go down quietly. The Owls (17-8, 11-3) outscrapped the Huskies, diving for nearly every loose ball, and were not intimidated by a team that had beaten them by 55 points a month ago. Temple cut UConn’s lead to 6 points in the third quarter on a layup by Feyonda Fitzgerald but could get no closer as UConn pulled away. ARIZONA STATE 63, STANFORD 61 Sophie Brunner hit a shot at the overtime buzzer to give No. 9 Arizona State (22-4, 13-1 Pacific-12) a victory at No. 13 Stanford (20-6, 10-4). Brunner scored the final 4 points of the game and finished with 14. OKLAHOMA 74, TEXAS 56 Vionese Pierre-Louis scored 17 points, and No. 21 Oklahoma won at home against No. 6 Texas (22-2, 11-2 Big 12). Kaylon Williams added 13 points and 7 rebounds for the Sooners (17-7, 8-5). NOTRE DAME 90, MIAMI 69 Arike Ogunbowale scored 18 points, Brianna Turner had 15 points and 6 blocks, and No. 3 Notre Dame (24-1, 12-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) beat No. 19 Miami (21-5, 9-4) at home for its 17th straight win. MARYLAND 79, N’WESTERN 70 Shatori Walker-Kimbrough had 27 points, and No. 5 Maryland (23-3, 12-2 Big Ten) held off Northwestern (14-12, 3-11) on the road. OHIO STATE 77, PENN STATE 63 Ameryst Alston hit eight 3-pointers and finished with 26 points as No. 7 Ohio State (21-4, 13-1 Big Ten) beat host Penn State (9-16, 4-10), its ninth straight win. OREGON STATE 72, UTAH 53 Jamie Weisner scored from deep and on slashing drives and tied career highs with 27 points and 4 steals as No. 8 Oregon State (22-3, 13-1 Pac-12) cruised to a victory at home over Utah (14-11, 6-8). FLORIDA STATE 94, U.N.C. 63 Adut Bulgak had 19 points and 14 rebounds for her sixth double-double of the season, leading No. 10 Florida State (21-4, 11-1 A.C.C.) to a home win over North Carolina (14-13, 4-8). Men IOWA 75, MINNESOTA 71 Peter Jok scored 27 points, and Jarrod Uthoff had 24 points, 15 rebounds and 6 blocks to help No. 4 Iowa (20-5, 11-2 Big Ten) hold off Minnesota (6-19, 0-13) at home. MICHIGAN STATE 88, INDIANA 69 Denzel Valentine had 30 points and 13 assists, Matt Costello scored a career-high 22 points and had 11 rebounds, and No. 8 Michigan State (21-5, 8-5 Big Ten) beat visiting Indiana (20-6, 10-3). N. CAROLINA 85, PITTSBURGH 64 Brice Johnson scored 19 points to lead a dominating offensive performance that helped No. 9 North Carolina (21-4, 10-2 A.C.C.) win at home against Pittsburgh (17-7, 6-6). ARIZONA 86, U.S.C. 80 Gabe York scored 17 points, and No. 17 Arizona (21-5, 9-4) moved into a tie for first place in the Pac-12 with a home victory over No. 23 Southern California (18-7, 7-5). MIAMI 67, FLORIDA ST. 65 Sheldon McClellan scored 20 points, and No. 12 Miami fought off a second-half rally by visiting Florida State (16-9, 6-7 A.C.C.). Reed had 14 points and Angel Rodriguez 11 for the Hurricanes (20-4, 9-3). SYRACUSE 75, B.C. 61 Tyler Lydon scored 10 of his 20 points during a game-breaking run midway into the second half, carrying Syracuse (18-8, 8-5 A.C.C.) past host Boston College (7-18, 0-12) for its fifth straight win. STONY BROOK 59, N.H. 58 Jameel Warney rejected Jaleen Smith’s last-second layup with his eighth block to preserve a home victory for Stony Brook (22-4, 13-0 America East) over New Hampshire (15-10, 8-4). The Seawolves have won 18 straight.

College basketball
University of Connecticut
Temple University


1985: Television Transformed 1.0

Abstract: The telephone gave us a long-distance voice. Radio took away the wires; television added pictures. But the real revolution occurred well before all of that: In one fell swoop, the telegraph allowed messages to travel not at the pace of a man on a pony or a speeding locomotive but at the velocity of an electron. In like fashion, the colossal library of Netflix may be impressive, but the videocassette recorder was a revolution. The rest, which a reeling industry is still trying to sort out, is digital gravy. It is orthodoxy to say that television, in 2015, is in the midst of radical change. We can watch a bewildering amount of material at will, and portable devices let us do so outside of the home. What’s more, a significant increase of highbrow programming now defies the old idea of television as the “idiot box.” Yet for all the advances that online distribution and digital technologies have brought, the real revolution came about 30 years ago. By 1985, viewers could see a show after it had aired, and their choices had increased greatly. They could watch a hand-held TV at the beach, and some shows had already started to exhibit serious artistic ambitions. Image Blockbuster Video, MTV and the programs “Moonlighting” and “Hill Street Blues” were all part of the TV revolution. The heart of today’s transformation of television is storage. Viewers have access to vast quantities of programming, according to their tastes and schedules, stored on DVRs, DVDs, on-demand cable and satellite channels, and online services. Not so very long ago, if you wanted to see “Citizen Kane,” you had to hope for a retrospective screening at an art house, or wait until it played on television. In 1977, the tens of millions of people who saw “Roots” had no choice but to stay home for eight consecutive nights and watch the broadcast on ABC. The introduction of the home videocassette recorder was the medium’s most important sea change. Now people at home could record and collect movies and television shows and watch them when they pleased. By 1985, more than 20 percent of American homes had a VCR, twice the number from the previous year. In 1985, the first Blockbuster Video opened. Blockbuster was a rental franchise, which, like the neighborhood stores before it, made it possible to watch thousands of movies and TV shows without having to record them off the air in the first place. Setting the timer on a VCR was a little harder than it is on a DVR, and driving to Blockbuster to rent and return tapes was a lot harder than clicking on a title on Hulu, but 30 years ago the big step had been made. If they took the trouble, viewers had control over what they saw and when. Storage capability catalyzed demand for inventory. Although in the mid-1980s, the extensive repertory that online services have today did not exist, radically increased choice was already a property of the evolving medium. Cable television was adding lots of channels and content alternatives. ESPN made its debut in 1979, CNN in 1980, MTV in 1981. Fewer than 20 percent of American homes had cable in 1980. That more than doubled by 1985. Even portability, one of the glories of today’s new media, was making inroads 30 years ago. Although Sony’s miniature Watchman never took off in this country — it could not connect to cable and it could not play tapes — it provided a dress rehearsal of sorts for what it would be like to carry a TV around in a purse. Much has been said about how digital technologies have ushered in a new “golden age” of television, especially now that Netflix and Amazon Prime are offering classy original shows like “House of Cards” and “Transparent,” and now that auteurs like Woody Allen are signing up to do online series. Once again, however, this process started in the 1980s. By fall 1985, broadcast schedules, spurred by cable competition, included a growing number of prestige programs that broke from standard TV fare featuring flying nuns and talking horses. The network lineups that season included business-as-usual silliness like “The A-Team” and “Knight Rider.” But they also included series like “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere” and “Moonlighting” — shows that began to present literate, serialized stories in complex cinematic styles. Within a few years, pedigreed film directors like Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Penny Marshall, David Lynch, Tim Burton and Oliver Stone were all doing work for television. The TV revolution took a lot more effort to enjoy three decades ago. You needed to check listings, set timers and rewind tapes. And some things — HDTV, social media interaction, cats playing pianos — would not arrive for another decade or two. Many of the required elements of change, however, were already in place. As we look upon images of Pluto or Mars sent from 21st-century spacecraft, we might wonder how we ever got to the moon and back with nothing but the stodgy technology of 1969. We might also recognize that the real transformation of television had already begun in those quaint, analog days before the Internet.

TV
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Movies


Uganda: Supreme Court Bans Refunds of Bride Price

Abstract: Uganda’s top court on Thursday banned the practice of refunding bride price — normally livestock given by the groom to his bride’s family — when a marriage ends in divorce. The Supreme Court agreed with activists that paying bride price undermines women’s dignity but upheld the practice nonetheless. Still, Leah Nabunnya, a spokeswoman for the Mifumi Project, a Ugandan group behind the case, said the decision was a victory. She said studies by her group showed that many women were stuck in abusive marriages because divorce meant their families would be obligated to refund the bride price.

Uganda
Divorce
Women and Girls
Marriage
Legislation


New Winds at an Island Outpost

Abstract: STANDING behind the cramped counter of Los Guarinos, his bodega in Washington Heights, Joel Olivo deals not in big money but in small change. Jolly Ranchers candies, at a nickel apiece, are among his biggest sellers. Los Guarinos also sells cold beer and cigarettes, but on most days it is sweetness that prevails there. Neighborhood children ask for chocolate bars, and an arcade game in the corner fills the bodega with an electronic lullaby. In Mr. Olivo’s establishment, in a modest storefront on Amsterdam Avenue near 161st Street, gambling is discouraged. Yet there is a running bet in the store that is a sign of changing times in this neighborhood: How many years will it take for Dominicans, who have dominated Washington Heights for decades, to become the minority there, and for whites to become the new majority? Some of Mr. Olivo’s customers and friends say five years. Others predict seven. “I say 10 years,” Mr. Olivo said. This is not your ordinary gentrification story. Washington Heights, the densely developed square mile that extends from 155th Street to roughly Dyckman Street, and from river to river, is to Dominicans what Harlem has been to blacks: a cultural capital with deep symbolic meaning. But over the past few years, this neighborhood of five- and six-story prewar apartment buildings has grown wealthier, hipper and better educated. As the neighborhood has changed, a growing number of its Dominicans have moved to University Heights, Morris Heights and other neighborhoods in the west Bronx; some have left the city altogether. The wager at Los Guarinos is a lighthearted take not only on this exodus, but also on the questions it raises about the future of Washington Heights as a working-class Dominican stronghold. The Dominican migration, powered by rising rents and other costs, is scattering families and friends who lived in the neighborhood for generations. This reshuffling is also fueling an uptown real estate boom, widening the gap between rich and poor, and realigning Dominican political power in the city. The shifts have even inspired an Off Broadway musical. Mr. Olivo is confident about his prediction as to the neighborhood’s future. “I know I’ll win,” he said, “because everyone is moving.” But he does not believe that he will be around to collect. “The rent,” he explained, “will kick me out.” • Washington Heights has welcomed immigrants for a century. The Irish arrived in the early 1900s. European Jews, among them the family of Henry Kissinger, flocked there to escape the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, around the time that affluent African-Americans like the jazz musician Count Basie migrated up from Harlem. By the 1950s and 1960s, so many Greeks lived in Washington Heights that the neighborhood was known as the Astoria of Manhattan. Even as that label gained currency, Cubans and Puerto Ricans were beginning to move in. The ’80s and the ’90s, however, belonged to the Dominicans. Bremilde Ramos, a 29-year-old waitress with dark hair and a bright smile, remembers the summers: old men playing dominoes on tables on the sidewalk, the packed streets transformed into playgrounds. She also remembers the scary times, like the day in 1999 when a man was shot and killed inside her building on West 162nd Street. And she remembers that one apartment operated as a makeshift brothel. Yet Ms. Ramos, who, like thousands of her fellow Dominicans, immigrated to Washington Heights with her family as a child, also recalls the vibrancy amid the grime. “You felt like you were in your own,” she said. “This was your own little country, you know, so many Hispanics were around.” New York has many Hispanic enclaves, but only in Washington Heights did the size, density and visibility of the Latino population create a kind of sixth borough. From this high perch, visitors often wonder if they have accidentally stumbled into the 31st province of the Dominican Republic. Those visitors can pass a barbershop on 181st Street and see a customer who happens to be the nephew of Joaquín Balaguer, a former president of the Dominican Republic. They can find not only Dominican merchants, but also Dominican doctors and Dominican lawyers. The red, white and blue Dominican flag flies from fire escapes, streetlights, even Pepsi trucks. One morning in 2004, the local streets erupted with noisy political debate as thousands of voters cast their ballots for president. But the focus was not on Bush and Kerry. It was on Mejía and Fernández, candidates for the Dominican presidency. The vote represented the first time that Dominicans living abroad could vote in a Dominican presidential election. ‘Rich Folks and Hipsters’ The recent transformation of Washington Heights is reflected not only on the streets but also on the stage. “In the Heights,” a charming little musical that opened last month at 37 Arts, on West 37th Street near 10th Avenue, offers a snapshot of a neighborhood in flux. “When this whole city is rich folks and hipsters,” a bodega owner wonders, “who’s going to miss this raggedy little business?” The owner of a hair salon announces that she is moving her shop to the Bronx, where rents are cheaper. When another character learns that the bodega is shutting for good, he screams: “This is the end of an era!” The line is intended as a joke, but seven miles north of the theater, in the shops and restaurants of Washington Heights, the words resonate less cheerfully. Signs of change, many small but telling, fill the streets. You can still get a crispy chicken empanada for $1 at 181st Street and Audubon Avenue, where Jose Castillo has been selling them from a pushcart for nearly a decade, but you can also buy an $8 goat cheese tartine a half-mile away at In Vino Veritas, on St. Nicholas Avenue. While some tenants still pay $600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, others pay triple that. In a sense, the neighborhood is becoming two neighborhoods, even down to its name. Old-timers call it the Heights; newcomers, particularly those who log onto www.washington-heights.us , refer to Washington Heights and its northern neighbor Inwood as WaHI, in a kind of SoHo-speak. The corner of 181st Street and Audubon Avenue still bustles noon to night with flashes of rapid-fire Spanish conversations and bursts of merengue blaring from passing cars. But the signs of change are increasingly visible. New residents can enjoy live jazz Thursday nights at Plum Pomidor on Broadway. They can visit the Starbucks on 181st Street. At the elegant Hispaniola restaurant a few doors down from Starbucks, they can dine on miso butterfish with steamed rice for $28. Ms. Ramos, the waitress, sees fewer Dominican mom-and-pop stores and more chain stores. Mr. Olivo can now count among his Dominican customers six people who moved to the Bronx. And when Ms. Ramos visits her mother’s building on 162nd Street, she notices more non-Hispanic white faces. Her best friend, who used to live on the same floor, has moved to the Bronx. Others have migrated to Florida. “The neighborhood was one way, and now you look and you don’t know anybody,” Ms. Ramos said. “Everybody’s gone.” A new set of census-based numbers, prepared by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, illustrates the neighborhood’s gradual change, while offering signs that the Dominican presence remains strong. From 1990 to 2000, the Dominican population in Washington Heights and Inwood soared, from about 88,000 to nearly 117,000. But in the following five years their numbers dropped slightly, to fewer than 113,000. During those same five years, the total number of Latinos in the area also fell, from about 165,000 to 155,000, while the number of non-Hispanic whites increased from fewer than 29,000 to more than 30,000. Laird Bergad, the center’s director, described the decrease of Dominicans as statistically insignificant, possibly a reflection of a small drop in the area’s overall population. Dominicans, in fact, increased as a percentage of the total population in Washington Heights and Inwood, from 43 percent in 1990 to 53 percent in 2005. What the census figures do clearly show, however, is a sharp decline in the number of foreign-born Dominicans in the area. In 1990, 89 percent of Dominicans in Washington Heights and Inwood between 15 and 44 years old had been born in the Dominican Republic. Ten years later, that figure was down to 78 percent. In 2005, it was 67 percent. “This is unmistakable evidence that immigration has slowed,” Professor Bergad said, pointing out that this trend casts a shadow on one of the most important roles of Washington Heights — as Dominicans’ main portal into New York. However, with the area buffeted by that shift and by the influx of wealthier residents and the migration of Dominicans to the Bronx and elsewhere, it is hard to surmise what the future face of Washington Heights will be. These trends come vividly to life in the experiences of Ms. Ramos. Nearly two years ago, she moved to the South Bronx with her boyfriend and her 8-year-old son. She would have preferred to stay in Washington Heights, but her new home, a two-bedroom brick town house at Boston Road and Third Avenue, cost only $416,000. Half a mile from the building where her mother still lives, a three-bedroom condo was recently on the market for $1 million. Ms. Ramos likes her new home. The neighborhood is calm, and there’s a bus stop just two blocks away. But she misses her old place in the Heights, especially the way it used to be. “It’s very, very quiet,” she said of her old building now. “People just pass by you and you don’t even notice them because they keep to themselves.” Bilingual Karaoke Not everyone sees the changes in Washington Heights as a threat to its Dominican identity. One person who is confident that the neighborhood will remain a Dominican stronghold for decades to come is Josephine Infante, executive director of the Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation in the Bronx. Although a growing number of Dominicans live in her borough, she notes that they are spread out, and that there is no concentration of Dominican stores, restaurants and hair salons. “That’s why everyone goes to Washington Heights,” Ms. Infante said. “There’s an aroma. There’s something there that’s very special.” Politically speaking, too, Dominicans in the Bronx are barely visible. Even though the Dominican population, at 213,000, is not too distant from the Puerto Rican population of 300,000, the borough has no elected Dominican officials. “You have this kind of Puerto Rican political machine right now in the Bronx that’s pretty formidable,” said Angelo Falcón, president and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy, a New York-based research and advocacy group. But in the opinion of Adriano Espaillat, who has represented Washington Heights since he was elected the first Dominican member of the State Assembly in 1996, the Dominican political base in the neighborhood remains strong despite the exodus to the Bronx. In the 2005 Democratic primary, for instance, the turnout among registered Democrats in the average election district citywide was 15 percent; in Washington Heights it was roughly 24 percent. “Our voting power in the Heights is very strong compared to some of the other emerging communities,” Mr. Espaillat said. In income, however, Washington Heights looks very different from how it once looked. In 2005, the median household income for non-Hispanic whites in Washington Heights was $56,300. For Dominicans, it was just $32,800. In that same year, 35 percent of non-Hispanic white households earned $75,000 to $200,000, compared with just 12 percent of Dominican households. “The old question of class is still present,” Professor Bergad said, “and nothing highlights that better than this question of income distribution.” Perhaps surprisingly, these disparities do not appear to be stirring tensions between Dominicans and whites. The sidewalk menu at L’Fonda restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, for example, which used to be entirely in Spanish, now lists some items in Spanish (“salcocho”) on one side and in English on the other side (“Dominican-style soup”). At Coogan’s, a restaurant and bar on Broadway at 169th Street, Tuesday and Saturday nights feature bilingual karaoke. Coogan’s, in fact, has become something of a bridge between the two sides. Owned by a pair of gregarious Irish-Americans, David Hunt and Peter Walsh, the bar is a gathering spot for politicians and even sponsors an annual race called the Salsa, Blues and Shamrocks 5K Run, which this year kicks off, rain or shine, at 9 this morning. Battling the Landlords But good will doesn’t extend to every corner of the neighborhood, especially when most of its 200,000 residents are renters and relations between tenants and landlords are increasingly strained. Raysa Castillo, a lawyer who represents many Washington Heights tenants in housing court, says, as do many housing activists and community leaders, that some landlords make cosmetic improvements to their buildings to justify rent increases, then try to evict those unable to pay. The advocates also say some landlords falsely accuse tenants of violating leases, or drive out tenants by letting their apartments deteriorate. In response, Roberta Bernstein, president of the Small Property Owners of New York, an advocacy group, said that building owners who go to the trouble and expense of taking tenants to court often do so for legitimate reasons. “If they’re dragging tenants into court, it’s because they’re not paying rent,” said Mrs. Bernstein, whose group includes a number of Washington Heights landlords. “I won’t deny that there’s some bad owners, but there’s also some bad tenants.” Nevertheless, Ms. Castillo finds the broad housing picture, typical of modern gentrification, to be disheartening. “We are experiencing something totally different than what was experienced by the Greeks, Irish, Cubans and Puerto Ricans who were here,” she said. “The majority of our folks are not leaving because they’re doing better. The majority are leaving because they cannot afford rent.” In 2004, for instance, more than 15,000 eviction notices were filed in housing court for tenants in Washington Heights and its northern and southern neighbors, Inwood and Hamilton Heights, said Mr. Espaillat, the assemblyman. The next year, he said, the number climbed to more than 19,000. Ms. Castillo, who lives on Cabrini Boulevard at 187th Street, has seen such economic struggles firsthand. The buildings in the few blocks around her home were once full of blue-collar Dominicans, she said, but many of those neighbors have left in search of cheaper housing. As for the Dominican families who remain, she said she knew precisely who they are and where they live. How could she know all those names and locations? Because she can count those who remain on one hand. Five.

Housing
Manhattan (NYC)
Population
Real Estate


National Briefing: South: Georgia: Prosecutor Sues Judge

Abstract: A prosecutor is suing the judge overseeing the capital murder trial of a man accused in a rampage that began in an Atlanta courtroom, seeking to resume jury selection and questioning whether the judge should be removed. Repeated delays in the trial “create an emergency situation,” District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr. of Fulton County said in a complaint to the Georgia Supreme Court. The trial has been continuously bogged down in friction with the state public defender’s office over fees and expenses for lawyers representing the defendant, Brian Nichols, in the 2005 shootings.


Israel, a Medical Marijuana Pioneer, Is Eager to Capitalize

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israeli scientists began their pioneering research to isolate the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana with a 10-pound stash seized by the Tel Aviv police. That effort, in the 1960s, helped propel Israel to the vanguard of research into the plant’s medicinal properties and lay the foundations for a medical marijuana industry. Now the nation’s burgeoning pot business, backed by an unlikely coalition of farmers, lawyers, scientists, entrepreneurs and the country’s ultra-Orthodox health minister, is going mainstream — and eyeing markets abroad. Marijuana, or cannabis, is still classified as a dangerous drug in Israel and remains illegal for recreational purposes. But the government is also at the forefront of efforts to develop and expand the fast-growing medical marijuana industry and make Israel a major center for it. Recent government efforts to regulate medical marijuana will make it more accessible and available by prescription at pharmacies. The government has also appointed a committee to examine the possibility of Israel becoming one of the few countries to allow exports, although the destination for products remains unclear. The Volcani Center, the Ministry of Agriculture’s research organization , is building a national institute for medical marijuana research. The chief scientist’s office of the Ministry of Economy has infused millions of shekels into innovative marijuana companies, much as government investment helped fuel the Israeli tech boom in the 1990s. The government is also setting standards for the cultivation, storage and use of medical marijuana. “It is almost unprecedented,” said Tamir Gedo, the chief executive of Breath of Life Pharma, an Israeli company permitted to grow medical cannabis and make and distribute products. “It seems the government is working faster than the private industry.” The reforms spearheaded by the Health Ministry, which is led by Yaakov Litzman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, open up licensing for an unlimited number of growers, up from eight farms. The list of doctors trained and authorized to prescribe marijuana is to be expanded and research encouraged. The reforms, which were approved by the government in the summer, were formulated in cooperation with the Ministries of Agriculture, Justice, Internal Security and Finance. “I cannot say that I am in favor of cannabis,” Mr. Litzman said at a business conference last month, reflecting concerns that medical marijuana could trickle into the recreational market. But Mr. Litzman said he would even support the idea of export so long as revenues went to the Health Ministry, adding, “There is a lot of pressure on me.” Some of Israel’s more traditional medical institutions and associations are still averse to joining the party, a wariness that marijuana advocates put down to a lack of knowledge. The police worry about leakage into the recreational black market, and some Israelis are concerned that export, if allowed, would stigmatize the country as one that dealt primarily in arms and drugs. About 25,000 Israelis, in a population of 8.5 million, hold permits to use medical marijuana to ease symptoms of cancer, epilepsy and other diseases, but that number is expected to grow rapidly. So far, medical marijuana has been distributed by the growers through special dispensaries or by home delivery. The Health Ministry’s written protocols on the matter, known as the Green Book, have generated international interest. “We wrote this because we couldn’t find it in other countries,” said Dr. Michael Dor, a family physician and senior adviser to the Health Ministry’s medical cannabis unit . “Now everybody is asking about it.” The ministry has approved dozens of clinical trials, Dr. Dor said, adding, “If we don’t do it right here, the specialists will go abroad with their knowledge, and we have wonderful knowledge here.” Raphael Mechoulam, now a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his colleague Yechiel Gaoni first isolated the main compounds, including the psychoactive ingredient — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — with the marijuana supplied by the Tel Aviv police. When administrators at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where Professor Mechoulam was conducting his research, first called the police with the request, he recalled in an interview, “they asked if I was trustworthy.” Professor Mechoulam, 86, has continued his research in his current post, focusing on the compounds in the brain that make the active components of marijuana work. He is also a consultant for the Ministry of Health and collaborates with research groups around the world. “Medicinal cannabis has to follow medical lines of thought and development and modern medical routes” in order to produce proper drugs, he said. Pointing to an international paucity of clinical trials, he said, “Israel has more than the United States at the moment, which is ridiculous.” In the United States, medical marijuana programs exist in many states but remain illegal under federal law. Professor Mechoulam is also a member of the advisory board of Breath of Life, whose products, according to Mr. Gedo, the chief executive, are made according to pharmaceutical best-practice protocols. “We are working as a pharmaceutical company, not a cannabis company,” Mr. Gedo said. Breath of Life is participating in a dozen clinical trials, including one based on cannabinoids, the chemical compounds in marijuana, for autism in children with the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. According to Mr. Gedo, several American companies are conducting trials in Israel based on Breath of Life’s active pharmaceutical ingredients. Teva Israel, a subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., recently announced a distribution and cooperation agreement with Syqe Medical, a Tel Aviv company that developed an inhaler for administering marijuana in precise doses. The dose can be tailored to each patient like a standard medical treatment, which experts say should reduce or eliminate the objections of reluctant physicians. Two international medical marijuana conferences have taken place in Israel this year. At the Cann10 conference in Tel Aviv in September, speakers discussed science, medicine, technology and commerce. Purveyors, some in white lab coats, displayed their wares. A grower called PharmoCann displayed rows of sealed plastic vials containing strains of flowers undergoing testing with names like Blue, Train Wreck and Voodoo Child. Israelis have been producing products with varying degrees of THC for years. Another company at the Cann10 conference, Cannabliss, makes medical marijuana oil and other nonsmoking products, works with a professor of immunotherapy and bone marrow at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and supplies the hospital’s medical marijuana dispensary. “We hope the market will open up in the world as soon as possible,” Moshe Ihea, Cannabliss’s founder and chief executive, said. “First we have to open up the people.” He added that he had discovered the medicinal benefits after he suffered a leg injury during an army exercise. Saul Kaye, a pharmacist and the chief executive of iCan: Israel-Cannabis, a venture fund and technology incubator for start-ups driving the global medical marijuana industry, said this “could be another incredible economy for Israel.” He added, “There’s a national consciousness for cannabis that you cannot ignore.”

Marijuana,Pot,Weed
Medical Marijuana
Israel
International trade
Hadassah
Shaare Zedek
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries
United Torah Judaism


2 Years After Girls’ Deaths, D.C.’s Welfare System Is Still Under Scrutiny

Abstract: WASHINGTON — It has been nearly two years since a woman killed her four daughters and lived for months with their decomposing bodies. In the furor that followed, the child welfare system that was blamed for not preventing the deaths has drastically improved, city officials said this week. But questions remain about whether the improvements go far enough in fixing an agency that has been under federal court oversight for two decades. “The city’s child welfare system continues to struggle with serious problems,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights , an advocacy group that filed a federal lawsuit against the Child and Family Services Agency in 1989. Ms. Lowry cited persistent troubles providing adequate services to children, finding appropriate foster homes and providing court-ordered training to child welfare workers. As of this March, she said, the city was still failing to meet 42 of 68 specific requirements for reform mandated by the court. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said Tuesday that the agency had made great strides. “The district’s safety net is stronger now than it has ever been — and getting stronger,” Mr. Fenty said, citing speedier investigations and the reduced caseloads of social workers, two areas cited by city investigators as contributing to the failure to prevent the girls’ deaths. The agency was plunged into turmoil after Banita M. Jacks was found living with the corpses of her daughters, ages 5 to 16, when deputy federal marshals served an eviction notice at her home in southeast Washington. The family had had repeated contact with the family services agency before the children were killed. Flooded by a 400 percent increase in active clients because of publicity over the Jacks case, the agency also lost about 25 percent of its social workers after the scandal, including six fired by the mayor for failing to address complaints about Ms. Jacks, and others who decided to quit. An April report by the city inspector general cited a lack of follow-through and coordination among city agencies as the reason the girls were not saved. “Multiple entities worked effectively, but largely obliviously to each other’s efforts, to put in place many of the elements necessary for the family to sustain itself,” the report said. “Yet, no single organization seemingly had the full perspective necessary to see and follow the family’s progress, and intervene when these elements of self-sufficiency began to destabilize.” The Jacks family was supposed to receive monthly visits based on its housing placement, but it never did, the report said. Education officials failed to follow through when the girls dropped out of school. In response to the report, lawmakers began debating legislation to create a centralized database to better track cases involving at-risk youth and troubled families. But its passage is far from certain. Critics say the proposal compromises privacy, adds unnecessary bureaucracy and, with a price tag of roughly $10 million, is too expensive. Washington’s attorney general, Peter Nickles, said the child welfare agency had already made vast improvements. The city has hired social workers to replace those that left, Mr. Nickles said, and the agency is at near capacity — 95.5 percent — in the number of social workers it needs. That places the agency well within national standards for the number of cases assigned to each worker, he said. The agency has also reduced the backlog of cases to fewer than 20, from more than 1,700 over a year ago. In July, Mr. Nickles filed a motion to end court oversight of the agency. The agency has made sufficient progress, he said, and court involvement makes recruiting new leadership difficult. But not everyone is convinced that the agency is ready. In response to Mr. Nickles’s motion, Children’s Rights filed its own motion asking that the city be held in contempt for failing to make sufficient improvements. In May, Judith W. Meltzer, who was appointed to track the child welfare agency by the federal judge in the case, Thomas F. Hogan, said the agency was still failing to offer adequate care for abused and neglected children. Of the 2,237 children in foster care in the district, 60 percent had been there for 24 months or more at the end of last year, and almost 600 had been in the system for five years or more, Ms. Meltzer said. The agency has made progress, Ms. Meltzer added, especially in reducing the backlog of investigations under its new director, Roque R. Gerald. Judge Hogan has yet to decide whether the city should be held in contempt or released from court oversight.

Washington (DC)
Child Abuse and Neglect
Jacks Banita M
Children and Youth


Baby’s Latest: Going Diaperless, at Home or Even in the Park

Abstract: When Jada Shapiro decided to raise her daughter from birth without diapers, for the most part, not everyone was amused. Ms. Shapiro scattered little bowls around the house to catch her daughter’s offerings, and her sister insisted that she use a big, dark marker to mark the bowls so that they could never find their way back to the kitchen. “My sister wasn’t a huge fan,” she said on Thursday. But “elimination communication,” as the diaper-free method of child-rearing is called, is finding an audience in the hipper precincts of New York City. Ms. Shapiro, who is a doula, a birth and child-rearing coach, says it is practically now a job qualification to at least be able to offer diaper-free training as an option to clients. Caribou Baby, an “eco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store” on the border of artsy Greenpoint and Williamsburg, has been drawing capacity crowds to its diaper-free “Meetups,” where parents exchange tips like how to get a baby to urinate on the street between parked cars. Parents are drawn to the method as a way of preserving the environment from the ravages of disposable diapers, as well as reducing the laundering of cloth diapers and preventing diaper rash. Many of them like the thought that they are rediscovering an ancient practice used in other cultures, though they tend to gloss over the fact that many of those cultures had never heard of Pampers. But mostly, they say, they like feeling more in touch with their babies’ most intimate functions. “I think for a lot of parents, the motivation is just to be more in tune with what their kids’ needs are,” Adriane Stare, proprietor of Caribou Baby and herself a diaper-free mother, said on Thursday, about a week after holding her most recent meetup. Another meeting was written about on Thursday on the news Web site dnainfo.com; the next is May 14. Ms. Stare said she “E.C.’d” her oldest son, Damien, who is now almost 4, and is doing it again with her second boy, Loren, who is almost 4 months old. Ms. Stare watched for cues that meant her baby needed to go to the bathroom or was going to the bathroom, like a certain cry or squirming or a grimace. Then, she began associating those cues with her own noises, like “sss,” or grunting. After a while she could make those noises — the elimination communication — to the baby while holding him over the toilet or the sink for perhaps 20 seconds, and he would go to the bathroom on command or refuse if he was not ready. Image Greg Stare carrying Loren at his wife’s store. They use a technique known as elimination communication with their boys. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times There are misses, she admits, but even cleaning up a small mess on the floor is easier, she says, than laundering diapers. Some pediatricians are skeptical that children under a year old are actually capable of controlling their own toileting behavior. “I’ve certainly heard in other countries that they do toilet train babies earlier,” said Dr. Robin Jacobson, chief of outpatient pediatrics at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. “But from what I’ve heard it’s at about a year of age, not at two months of age.” Toilet training, she said, is a matter of conditioning, “just like Pavlov’s dog,” but in the United States parents begin talking about it around 18 months, with most children being potty-trained around ages 3 or even 4. The diaper-free mothers said it was rare for their babies to go without diapers all the time. They usually put them on at night and for trips to stores, restaurants and the like, though not necessarily for naps or going to the park, where it is easier to go on the ground or behind a tree. But their children often have been weaned of their diapers by 18 months. Asked whether the practice was a health hazard, Jean Weinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City health department, said: “Really, the only infectious disease problem at hand has to do with hand washing. Otherwise, it’s just a general sanitation issue.” Ms. Shapiro, a founder of Birth Day Presence , a childbirth education studio in Park Slope and SoHo, said most clients laughed when they heard about elimination communication, but one or two in every group signed up. At three weeks, her daughter could hold her bowel movements until she was put over the bowl, she said. “I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people putting their baby over the sink,” she said. One client took her baby and her bowl to a party, held her naked baby over the bowl, “and she just did it at this person’s party in the corner, but obviously they were close friends,” Ms. Shapiro said. Still, even the most ardent practitioners observe some limits. “I don’t think you can walk down Fifth Avenue and just let your baby poop on the sidewalk,” she said.

Babies
Potty Training
Diaper
Parenting
Motherhood
Fatherhood
Hygiene
Sustainable living
NYC


Fast Response to ‘Brexit’ News: A Pop-Up Paper Finds Success in Britain

Abstract: The morning after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Matt Kelly ducked into a coffee shop on a graffiti-lined street in the trendy East London neighborhood of Shoreditch. The clientele lining up for their lattes, normally silent and aloof, had been drawn into an animated discussion about the vote and its consequences. The mostly 20- and 30-somethings, some from a variety of technology start-ups clustered nearby, seemed united in their dismay over the results. “It kind of dawned on me: Here was an audience that was so clearly identifiable and passionate,” said Mr. Kelly, a longtime British newspaper executive who is now chief content officer of Archant , a large British newspaper group. “If there ever was a time for launching a new newspaper, this is it.” Less than two weeks later, in early July, The New European , a weekly print newspaper, hit newsstands nationwide. The paper, conceived as a finite, monthlong experiment, is now going into its 11th week after proving a surprisingly profitable hit with readers. The New European, published by Archant, is part of a broad experimentation taking place in print. As publishers large and small struggle at a time of rapid digital transition, print is a costly challenge for the industry. In recent years, many large publishers have opted to scale back or exit print altogether. Others have tried to bolster its allure by packaging print with digital offerings, or using print to showcase exclusive content. Some midsize publishers have focused on portfolios of smaller-scale titles that can be produced using the same infrastructure of presses, distribution and marketing networks. Those economies of scale can significantly reduce the marginal costs — and the risks — of developing new print products. How ‘Brexit’ Could Change Business in Britain Britain has started the clock on leaving the European Union, and will be out of the bloc by March 2019. Here is how “Brexit” has affected business so far. Archant had the size and distribution network — it is Britain’s fifth-largest regional newspaper publisher by revenue and by circulation — and staff. So it decided to experiment with what it calls pop-up publishing. “It’s a very encouraging demonstration that even in print, a smart publisher can pivot and say, ‘We’re going to try something different,’” said Jane Singer, a professor of journalism and innovation at City University London . By keeping its start-up costs low and its ambitions modest, The New European has thus far managed to avoid the fate of some prominent failures in the British newspaper market. Trinity Mirror , one of Britain’s largest media groups, began an aggressive marketing campaign when The New Day came out this year. But the print-only paper never approached the 200,000 daily readers it sought, and it ceased publication after just 10 weeks . The CN Group , a regional publisher, tried something similar, but that also folded, having lasted barely a month. Both experiments, aimed at general-interest audiences, failed to capture enough demand from readers and advertisers to justify their publishers’ relatively modest initial investments. Image Journalists at work on The New European. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times By contrast, The New European was conceived as a niche publication. The publisher targeted the 48 percent of Britons who voted on June 23 to stay in the European Union — a potential audience that included about 16 million like-minded readers. Since it was meant to be short-lived, Archant avoided spending huge sums on market research or publicity campaigns. “We never set out to actually create a long-term brand,” said Jeff Henry, Archant’s chief executive. “The way we structured it was to make money on a four-week run.” The first edition, priced at 2 pounds, or about $2.65, sold more than 40,000 copies in Britain and generated significant social media attention as readers rushed to share images of their papers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The New European’s compact format, bold typography and photo-heavy layout are a deliberate effort to replicate the look and feel of popular Continental newspapers like the French daily Libération and Die Tageszeitung in Germany. Its front pages promote meaty essays by well-known British intellectuals, politicians and business leaders. The articles themselves are mixed with cartoons, infographics and lighter features on European sports, travel and culture. Each week, the back page – Page 48 — is devoted to Europhile quizzes and trivia. One issue included “48 Farage Facts,” a catalog of awkward anecdotes and quotes from Nigel Farage , the former leader of the pro-leave U.K. Independence Party. Image Front pages of The New European, which comes out weekly. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times Archant’s business plan for the newspaper is driven principally by cover sales. In the last few weeks, it has extended its newsstand presence to Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and Switzerland. While the company hopes that broader reach will increase The New European’s appeal to advertisers, the publication’s open-ended future — Archant commits to only four issues at a time — has made it a difficult sell with some companies interested in longer campaigns. In late August, Archant also experimented with an online auction for some of its premium ad space. But while more than 60 British and European companies participated, the bidding failed to generate significant additional revenue, the company said. Industry watchers have nevertheless been encouraged by The New European’s staying power. “The New European has absolutely shown a way forward for print publishers to sample whether a new product works,” said Steve Dyson, a media consultant in Birmingham. Mr. Dyson said he could envision successful pop-up titles linked to popular political or social movements, or major sporting events like last month’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. He and others also pointed to the success of The National , a Scottish newspaper started by Newsquest, a Gannett subsidiary, after Scotland’s failed 2014 referendum on independence from Britain. That publication was also planned as a short-term, print-only project produced by staff members of another Newsquest paper, the Glasgow-based Sunday Herald . Image Jeff Henry is the chief executive of Archant, which publishes The New European. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times Its fervently pro-independence stance found an audience of as many as 60,000 daily readers, although that number has since dwindled to around 15,000. Still, subscription and newsstand sales are enough to sustain a small dedicated staff as well as a website that, in addition to Scottish politics, offers sports, culture and international news. The success of The New European suggests that, for all the industry’s evangelizing about the need to embrace a digital future, publishers have yet to exhaust the possibilities of print. “It’s very counterintuitive, but print can sometimes be more agile than digital,” Mr. Kelly said. “If you are a newspaper business and already have a distribution mechanism and a team of designers, it is actually a very simple process, whereas if you want to do a bespoke digital product, that is much more involved.” Moreover, “print is a very visible format,” Mr. Kelly said. “You can’t go around London with your laptop open and say, ‘Look at me, I’m reading The New European.’” So far, The New European, like the rest of Britain’s newspaper industry, has managed to ride a wave of demand for news about the so-called Brexit, which could fade in the coming months as the initial shock of the vote wears off. “Brexit has the risk of becoming extremely boring in reality,” said Nick Tjaardstra, a deputy director of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in Frankfurt. Negotiations over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union could drag on for years, Mr. Tjaardstra noted, and to remain relevant to its niche audience, The New European would eventually need to broaden its coverage to include other topics of interest. That’s if it continues at all. Mr. Kelly insists that Archant holds “no sort of sentimental attachment” to The New European as a brand. “It needs to earn its keep,” he said. “The whole point of pop-up is that you are prepared to kill the product.”

The New European
Brexit
Archant
Newspaper
Great Britain
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
EU


Doping Inquiry Haunts Spanish Sport After a Decade

Abstract: MADRID — After 10 years, one of the worst doping scandals in Spain continues to haunt the country’s athletes. Operation Puerto, a 2006 investigation that exposed a doping network involving some of the world’s top cyclists, refuses to go away as a local court slowly continues the process of deciding whether hundreds of confiscated blood bags should be destroyed. The announcement about the fate of the blood bags, which could stir up another scandal if identities of previously unscathed athletes are revealed, was expected last year, but it has been delayed, upsetting some Spanish athletes and local sports officials, who say the absence of closure on the case has further damaged the country’s image in the fight against doping. “Whenever there has been people talking samples being destroyed, I think for Spanish sport, that’s terrible news,” the tennis player Rafael Nadal said. “Everything should be transparent, and the people that do wrong things should pay for it and people that do the things right should be better off. They should have a clean image.” Nadal’s comments came not long after he had to deal with unproven doping accusations made against him by a former French minister. To defend his integrity, Nadal filed a defamation lawsuit against his accuser and asked the International Tennis Federation to make all of his antidoping test results publicly available. “There has to be complete transparency in sport,” said Nadal, who will be Spain’s flag-bearer at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “When things are not done the right way, they should be public. If not, we’re going to be speculating about unnecessary things, which is going to damage the image of the sport and sportsmen.” The president of the Spanish Olympic committee, Alejandro Blanco, said that the longer it took for a decision on the blood bags to be announced, the worse it would be for Spanish sports and local athletes. “Operation Puerto caused horror to our sport and to the image of the country,” Blanco said. “We’ve been dealing with this for 10 years, and it feels like it could be another 20. That can’t happen. It’s upsetting.” It does not help that the World Anti-Doping Agency two months ago declared Spain to be “noncompliant” with its codes because it did not make required legal changes in connection with doping. Spain was unable to form a government after elections last year, so its Parliament has been unable to update the country’s antidoping legislation to match the revised WADA regulations. Spain’s top sports official said the government had done its part by asking for the blood bags to be released, but noted that the court’s decision must be respected. Miguel Cardenal, president of the country’s Higher Sports Council, said Spain had made significant progress in the fight against doping despite the setbacks with Operation Puerto and the noncompliance ruling by WADA. “I think that for the last few years, the public perception is that Spain does not tolerate doping,” Cardenal said. “Operation Puerto happened several years ago. The same result would have probably happened in other places, because at the time countries did not specify doping as a crime as they do now.” Operation Puerto came to light when police seized coded blood bags from the Madrid clinic of a doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, who worked with several top cyclists. In a trial in 2013, he was convicted of endangering public health and received a suspended one-year prison sentence for improperly performing blood transfusions on athletes. In addition, Fuentes’s sports medicine license was withdrawn for four years. Another defendant, a former cycling team director, was sentenced to four months in jail but also did not serve time. Both appealed. More than 50 cyclists were originally linked to the case, and among the few eventually suspended were the former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich, the Spanish Vuelta champion Alejandro Valverde and Ivan Basso, who later confirmed that his blood was among the frozen samples found in Operation Puerto. Fuentes said during the trial that he had also worked with athletes from other sports, but Judge Julia Patricia Santamaria said Fuentes did not have to mention anybody who was not implicated in the cycling case. The judge also ordered the destruction of the blood bags and other evidence, citing privacy laws, a decision that outraged the sports community at the time. Spain’s antidoping agency, the International Cycling Union and WADA were among the entities that appealed to have the blood bags released to be re-examined. The Madrid court handling the case had said a verdict was reached late last year and a decision would be made public by the end of March. But since then, there has been no announcement, and no new timetable on when the decision will be announced. The court said it took time because the case had a complex appeals process, with several parties involved. The delay has caused further speculation and increased criticism about Spain’s handling, even now, of doping.

Doping
2016 Summer Olympics
World Anti-Doping Agency
Rafael Nadal
Spain
Biking