Marines in Helmand Try Soft Touch to Win Over Afghans

Abstract: BOGRABAD, Afghanistan — Abdul Salam, an elder in this impoverished Afghan village, rose to meet the approaching Marines and Navy corpsman. Behind him, his mosque had a new concrete floor and two windows. Last month, before the Marines paid him to refurbish it, the mosque was windowless and had a dirt floor. The Marines’ investment, $1,200 to pay for building materials and labor, was part of an outreach effort intended to reduce violence in Helmand Province. Following the emphasis on a more assertive counterinsurgency approach mandated last year by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, here on some of the country’s most dangerous ground, infantry units are using this winter to try a soft touch. In the province’s lower Nawa District, many conventional missions for now are a low priority. Airstrikes and high-explosive artillery fire are in disfavor. Even mortar fire is rare. Instead, in places where it is able, the infantry is sending patrols to enter into development contracts with local men. The ambition is to use local labor to build bridges over canals, shore up irrigation systems, repair water gates or small dams and, in the most determined contest of influence against the Taliban, renovate mosques. The effort rests on a simple premise: to fight the Taliban, money may be more effective than guns. “We’re trying to buy a little peace,” said Capt. Paul D. Stubbs, commanding officer of Company W, First Battalion, Third Marines, which operates in this area. Eight Marine-financed mosque projects are in the works in Company W’s area, including the one with Abdul Salam. A dozen more are on a list of anticipated projects. “Mosques are the big thing right now,” said Petty Officer Third Class Mark H. Funk, during a work inspection at Abdul Salam’s house of worship. On the same patrol, the petty officer checked three bridges in varying stages of completion, looked in on a canal-dredging project and sought the owner of a small shop to offer him a microloan. In all, the company has spent $50,000 on 20 projects since early December, and committed another $50,000. It anticipates spending $200,000 on as many as 75 projects by late spring. The Marines have few illusions about what they are doing. They offer a part-time-jobs program to engage in a tug of war for loyalty, hoping to pull some local men toward neutrality before warm weather returns and fighting most likely intensifies. The program is not flawless. The Marines assume that the Taliban skim a fraction of the money. They have watched one elder, Abdul Majid, cheat them. They gave him wheat seeds and fertilizer to distribute to farmers to plant instead of poppies, the predominant crop here. Abdul Majid sold the sacks in the bazaar. Then he denied it. “I did not sell that wheat,” he told Petty Officer Funk on Wednesday. “If I did, cut off my hand.” He held out his arm dramatically. The Marines appeared frustrated with the performance, but said they were inclined to give him a second chance. Abdul Majid also has a mosque. They want to restore it, for reasons beyond appeasing Abdul Majid. Helmand Province is far from secure. It remains a Taliban stronghold. Many areas have a limited American presence, and where Marines are working, the insurgents are watching. An ambush, a suicide attack or a hidden bomb is a constant risk. Even near the Marines’ main outpost in lower Nawa, Combat Outpost Sullivan , the insurgents are quietly bold. The Taliban have threatened local people who have worked with the Americans. And last fall, they lured two community council members to a meeting at which a leading Taliban member pledged to reconcile with the government. At the meeting, both council members were killed. To counter the insurgents, Captain Stubbs has at his disposal a full suite of infantry arms. Artillery, attack aircraft and helicopter gunships are on call. So far he has focused on other tools. “Our best weapon system is money,” he said. Counterinsurgency theory rests in part on a basic formula. The forces opposing the insurgents must first clear an area to provide security, then hold the area, and then try to improve living conditions. Advocates of counterinsurgency tactics call this the inkblot approach: services and infrastructure spread from small areas outward, like an ink stain spreading across a fabric. For First Battalion, Third Marines, the engagement work of Company W is intended to show to local Afghans that working with the Americans can benefit rural areas. “We’re trying to expand the blot effect,” said Maj. Rudy Quiles, the civil affairs officer for the battalion. “Our primary mission was to spread the gains to outlying areas.” The lower Nawa District appears to be partly cleared, allowing attempts at development. But the true state of the insurgency is unknown, and the question of whether development will work in the longer term here remains unanswerable. In recent months, the area where Company W patrols has not had intensive fighting. The Marines caution that the decline in violence does not necessarily signal success. The Taliban’s fighters may be focused on other districts, or concentrated in Marja, a nearby population center where the American and Afghan governments have no presence. The decreased pace of fighting may also reflect a winter lull, a pattern common in many contested areas. Company W’s officers said that whatever the reason for the decline in fighting in their area, it provides opportunity. While the cool weather holds, the Marines can focus on entering into contracts with local men, simultaneously seeking allies and improving their intelligence picture in the event fighting resumes. On Thursday, a forward air controller, Capt. Nicholas L. Majka, arrived at the outpost with a briefcase full of Afghan currency, the equivalent of $25,000. It was payday for contractors. Money for each project is disbursed in phases — first to buy building materials, then as work proceeds and laborers need to be paid. A final payment is made after the job is completed. Captain Majka is a pilot and was trained to direct airstrikes. He said in areas where it is possible to meet with local elders, distributing money was more cost-effective than dropping precision-guided munitions. The fight is not just against armed insurgents, he said, but also against the messages they spread. “When we started to look at the intelligence reports and the interviews with detainees, one of the things we kept hearing was that ‘the Marines are here to usurp our religion,’ ” Captain Majka said. Once the Marines understood the Taliban’s message, he added, “We made mosque refurbishment a large part of our campaign.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


What Causes a Super Blood Moon?

Abstract: A rare astronomical phenomenon Sunday night will produce a moon that will appear slightly bigger than usual and have a reddish hue, an event known as a super blood moon. It’s a combination of curiosities that hasn’t happened since 1982, and won’t happen again until 2033. A so-called supermoon , which occurs when the moon is closest to earth in its orbit, will coincide with a lunar eclipse, leaving the moon in Earth’s shadow. Individually, the two phenomena are not uncommon, but they do not align often. Most people are unlikely to detect the larger size of the supermoon. It may appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter, but the difference is subtle to the plain eye. But the reddish tint from the lunar eclipse is likely to be visible throughout much of North America , especially on the East Coast. “You’re basically seeing all of the sunrises and sunsets across the world, all at once, being reflected off the surface of the moon,” said Dr. Sarah Noble, a program scientist at NASA. Stargazers are excited. Though the celestial show will be visible by simply looking toward the sky, the Intrepid Museum in New York will host a free viewing from its perch at Pier 86 on the Hudson River with astronomers and high-powered telescopes on hand. The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York will be holding several free events in the city, including at the High Line , offering telescopes and binoculars for better views. “People can ask questions, and we can answer the questions right there,” said Marcelo Cabrera, the club’s president. The eclipse will begin at 9:07 p.m. Eastern time, as the Earth’s shadow moves across the moon, according to the association . At 10:11 p.m., the entire moon should be in the Earth’s shadow, at which point it will adopt the reddish color. It will remain fully in the shadow until 11:23 p.m., and the eclipse will end at 12:27 a.m. If time or attention spans run short, Mr. Cabrera suggested looking up just before the moon descends fully into the Earth’s shadow at 10:11 p.m., as it turns color. Dr. Noble said such events tend to get more people interested in astronomy, as it creates an opportunity to take children outside and get them looking up at the sky. “It leads to conversations about what else is up there,” she said.


Wal-Mart Reports Slower Growth

Abstract: By Bloomberg News Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest retailer, said yesterday that June same-store sales in the United States rose 1.2 percent, the slowest monthly growth rate since April 2005. The company had predicted an increase of 1 percent to 3 percent. The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., plans to issue final June results on Thursday. Wal-Mart wants its more affluent shoppers who purchase basic goods like toiletries to buy electronics, home goods and clothing, including the Exsto men's line, which is being introduced this month. It will overhaul 1,800 stores by the middle of next year to make them less cluttered and to improve the restrooms and changing rooms. "When you're a store the size and bulk of a Wal-Mart and you want to make these kinds of changes, it isn't necessarily that easy," David Heupel, a portfolio manager for Thrivent Investment Management's $265 million large-cap fund in Minneapolis, said before the monthly sales report. The stock fell 54 cents, to $48.17, Friday. Since its 2005 low in September, the stock has rallied 13 percent.

Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated
Retail Stores and Trade


Tamil Lawmaker to Lead Opposition in Sri Lanka

Abstract: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — An ethnic Tamil lawmaker was officially selected to lead the opposition in Sri Lanka’s Parliament on Thursday, becoming the first member of the island nation’s largest minority to hold the post in more than three decades. The speaker of Parliament, Karu Jayasuriya, recognized the 82-year-old Rajavarothiam Sampanthan of the Tamil National Alliance as leader of the opposition during a legislative session. Mr. Sampanthan’s party emerged as the largest opposition group after parliamentary elections last month, with 16 seats in the 225-member chamber. President Maithripala Sirisena’s United People’s Freedom Alliance won 95 seats, but it formed a coalition with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government after the vote on Aug. 17. Addressing the unicameral legislature as only the second Tamil opposition leader since Sri Lanka attained independence from Britain in 1948, Mr. Sampanthan pledged to work with other parties to provide an effective counterweight to the current government. “We will oppose the government on all issues where it is necessary. We will support the government in all issues where such support is justified,” he said. “We will be loyal to this country and the people of this country.” Analysts said that his appointment signaled significant progress in the efforts at reconciliation between the Tamils and Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese population after a bloody 26-year civil war ended in 2009 . “It sends a powerful message,” said Gehan Gunatilleke, research director at the think tank Verité Research in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. “Ethnic relations have improved notably since Jan. 8,” he said, referring to the date of the election this year in which Mahinda Rajapaksa, the former president known for brutally crushing the Tamil rebellion, was defeated. The Tamil National Alliance, a coalition of moderate Tamil parties, has taken up the cause of equal rights for the minority since the civil war ended. Mr. Gunatilleke said that Mr. Sampanthan’s appointment would bring the Tamil National Alliance into the political mainstream, encouraging its members to view issues through a broader, national lens. But Sinhalese-dominated opposition parties will have to work with Mr. Sampanthan’s party, a task that could prove difficult given Sri Lanka’s history of ethnic conflict. Mr. Rajapaksa is from a hard-line faction of the United People’s Freedom Alliance that rejects the unity government and has declared itself to be in the opposition. The faction opposes the Tamil National Alliance’s calls for greater devolution of power to the north and east of the country, where most Tamils live, and for an international investigation of allegations of war crimes during the final stages of the war. “The greatest opposition to Mr. Sampanthan will come from within the opposition ranks,” Mr. Gunatilleke said.

Sri Lanka
Rajavarothiam Sampanthan
Tamils
Legislature
Sinhalese
Tamil National Alliance
United People's Freedom Alliance
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Maithripala Sirisena
Ranil Wickremesinghe


Storms Cut Through Midwest, Killing 5

Abstract: ST. LOUIS (AP) — Residents across the middle of the country began to clean up on Saturday after powerful storms splintered homes, knocked out power to thousands and killed at least six people. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed Friday in Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and West Virginia, prompting several state-of-emergency declarations. Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri declared a state of emergency throughout the state. Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky declared an emergency in central and southeastern sections of the state, and Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia made the same declaration for six counties in his state. Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois declared three southern counties disaster areas. More than 63,000 customers of the Illinois utility company Ameren still had no electricity Saturday, the company said. Two people were killed near Poplar Bluff, Mo., when wind knocked a tree onto their vehicle. In Dallas County, Mo., a man in his 70s had a fatal heart attack after he and his wife were sucked from their home by a tornado and thrown into a field 75 to 100 feet away, said the county emergency management director, Larry Highfill. The man’s wife was hospitalized in fair condition. A 54-year-old woman was killed in southeastern Kansas in a mobile home that was blown off its foundation. And in central Kentucky, officials blamed a tornado with winds of 120 miles per hour for the deaths of two people whose bodies were found near a mobile-home community. Some homes were evacuated Saturday in southern West Virginia because of flooding, said Paul Howard, the state director of homeland security operations. Winds in southeastern Kansas also reached 120 m.p.h., destroying the New Albany United Methodist Church, the town’s post office and at least one house, the authorities said. Major damage also was reported to a high school in Cherokee, Kan. The National Weather Service said it received multiple reports of tornadoes across Missouri. The Weather Service confirmed that at least two tornadoes touched down Friday in Greene County in southwest Missouri. The county’s Office of Emergency Management counted three homes and a business destroyed, with nearly 300 homes, 29 businesses and 13 schools damaged. In southern Illinois, the storm system peeled siding and roofs off homes and other buildings, blowing out car windows and tearing up trailer parks. Capt. Mark Black of the Carbondale Township Fire Department said that he was not sure if a tornado had touched down in his area but that the “winds were just amazing — they were howling and the siding on the trailers was flying through the air and there was a pretty hard rain.” In Dallas County, seven people were hurt as wind destroyed 35 homes and damaged many others, state emergency management officials said. Mr. Highfill said all the damaged homes were in the same path, a hint that a tornado was to blame. Dozens of houses and other buildings were destroyed or damaged in Madison County in central Kentucky. “It sounded like an airplane taking off, but I knew it wasn’t,” said Lonnie Hall, a resident of Richmond, Ky. “The wind started picking up, and I yelled to everyone, ‘Let’s go to the basement.’ ”


Money Is Fast; Winning Takes Time

Abstract: Money can buy talent, but it cannot buy time. On the last weekend before Christmas, Barcelona completed its full set of trophies in 2009 by winning the Club World Cup in the United Arab Emirates. It took a goal from Lionel Messi, who was nurtured in the Barça academy from adolescence, to score the winner in overtime. Back in Europe, the two clubs that between them have spent, or squandered, $750 million trying to buy rapid success, went their different ways. Real Madrid overwhelmed Zaragoza, 6-0, in the Spanish league in the Santiago Bernabéu to show that its glittering individuals can, given time, gel. Manchester City, the English club that had passed from Thai to Abu Dhabi ownership in the past two seasons, also won, 4-3, at home to Sunderland. But the sensation wasn’t the game, it was the cowardly way the club waited for the fans to leave the stadium and then posted a notice on its Web site: “Change of Manager at City,” it was headlined. It went on: “Manchester City F.C. can confirm that it has today terminated the contract of Mark Hughes.” Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the chairman appointed to run the club on behalf of the Abu Dhabi royal family, issued a statement on the Internet that said: “A return of two wins in 11 Premier League games is clearly not in line with the targets that were agreed and set. Sheik Mansour and the Board felt there was no evidence that the situation would fundamentally change. “This is a particularly difficult announcement given the personal investment over the past 15 months.” With that reference to the cash investment, Mubarak’s statement announced that the Italian Roberto Mancini had agreed to be City’s new manager. The grapevine knew this two weeks ago, but journalists were dismissed as rumormongers and told to stop trying to undermine the unity of the sheiks and their club. Hughes’s last acts as coach were to drop from his line-up Robinho and Emmanuel Adebayor, two of the most expensive misfits thrown into his team pool. He won the match with them frozen out and then addressed the players behind the locker -room door. He told them he had been fired. He apparently urged them to carry through the mission he was set, to make City a top-four team in England so that it qualifies for the Champions League next season. When Hughes left the room, to walk silently past the media messengers waiting for a post-game press conference, a delegation of those players, led by the goalkeeper Shay Given and the midfield defender Gareth Barry, went to the boardroom. They tried to confront Mubarak and Garry Cook, the chief executive, but were told the coup was irreversible. Players who were persuaded to join by Hughes were in effect reminded that this is now Abu Dhabi City — and, as some of the highest-paid players in the global sport, they will play for whomever Abu Dhabi appoints. The owners know a great deal about money, and a little about soccer. Their new man, Mancini, played briefly in England, but has coached only in Italy. His three Serie A titles as Inter Milan coach owe much to the willingness and wealth of Inter’s oil-baron owner, Massimo Moratti — but the Moratti family is steeped in soccer. Two of Inter’s titles were handed to it after Juventus and A.C. Milan were punished for illegal contacts with referees during Italy’s 2006 match-fixing scandal. Hughes may get full compensation for the 18 months that remained on his £3 million, or $4.8 million, a year contract. Mancini has reportedly agreed to a similar salary, plus a £1 million bonus if City qualifies for the Champions League, and another £1 million for each major trophy the team might win. He inherits the team Hughes tried to blend, and in January can spend more Arabian wealth during the mid-season transfer window. Expect some Italian blood to arrive, because the new coach will require players he trusts. A month back, Mancini might have replaced Manuel Pellegrini as Real Madrid coach because the new “galacticos” were taking too long to click. The romp Saturday eases the pressure and the impatience in Madrid. Pellegrini said after the game: “It’s difficult to jump to conclusions in soccer. The scoreboard suggests a perfect match. We’ve tried different formations and we’re within two points of Barcelona, whose great performance lends even more merit to ours, because we are keeping up with them.” Keeping up over half a season during which Madrid had borrowed to buy Ronaldo, Ricardo Kaká, Karim Benzema, Xabi Alonso and others for sums that even Abu Dhabi has yet to match. They probably will do so, whether Mancini is their man, or their stop-gap until Guus Hiddink, José Mourinho, or even Arsène Wenger can be tempted by the scale of spending that the Arabian royals can throw at their “project.” In all of this, one Englishman so far survives the cull. Cook, hired as City’s chief executive by Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister who briefly owned the club, oversaw the hiring and firing of Hughes. Once a Nike brand manager, Cook boasted that he had to convince Hughes about paying £32 million for the inconsistent Robinho on the day Abu Dhabi acquired the club. “I talked about this a lot to Mark and he sort of understands,” Cook said at the start of this year. “We are building a global empire here, we need a superstar.” In the same news conference, Cook disparaged stalwart City heroes because, he said, their names “do not roll off the tongue in Beijing.” Hughes wanted to go step by step, building a team of proven players in the Premier League — and later add foreign superstars. “Mark’s a homegrown lad, very old school,” Cook said. “He’d rather sign players he knows. He doesn’t like the unknown because it takes him out of his comfort zone.” What Cook said was more about what he understands: the brand rather than the sport. Some day, perhaps soon, the sheiks might conclude that they have removed the wrong man.


De Blasio Looks Toward Sweden for Road Safety

Abstract: STOCKHOLM — Across this Scandinavian capital of graceful cyclists and speed-regulating shrubbery, cabbies who drive Volvos and pedestrians who look over their shoulders before jaywalking, a simple figure rules: Zero. It is the number of people permitted to die in Swedish traffic, according to national law. For nearly two decades, every rising barrier and reduced speed limit has been tailored to this seemingly impossible goal, of eradicating traffic deaths and serious injuries, and its guiding premise: Every inch of street space must anticipate, and accommodate, human error. While roadway deaths have not been eliminated, the country’s rate of fatalities has been whittled down to an international low. Now its approach faces perhaps its stiffest test: the streets of New York City. In a bid to reverse generations of roadway unruliness, Mayor Bill de Blasio has put the strategy, known as Vision Zero, at the forefront of his transportation and policing agendas, targeting 2024 as the first year with no traffic deaths. But in a city of 800 languages, nearly 14,000 taxis and 8.4 million potential traffic rants, street safety promises to be a complicated import. Surface similarities between New York and its European counterpart, like bike lanes, pedestrian islands and a well-developed transit system, tend to wither on closer examination. Image Morning traffic in Stockholm. Sweden has imposed sweeping reforms on road construction with relatively little conflict. Credit Jonathan Nackstrand for The New York Times Pillars of the Swedish model include the reduction of default speed limits and the expansion of automated enforcement. Each requires the approval of state lawmakers in New York, who have yet to embrace the ideas widely. Roundabouts, a major traffic tool in Sweden, are difficult to imagine on the high-density streets of Manhattan, transportation experts say. The term does not appear in the de Blasio administration’s Vision Zero Action Plan, released in February. In New York, the addition of planters and lawn chairs along pedestrian plazas drew snickers. In Sweden, potted vegetation is a traffic tool, placed on local roads to slow down drivers on straightaways. In Stockholm, when the rare car horn sounds, the drone borders on polite, more of a gentle suggestion than a throbbing demand. While Sweden’s population — more than 9.5 million — is only slightly larger than New York’s, the country has imposed sweeping reforms involving road construction, pedestrian protections and other policies with relatively little conflict. The Swedish Parliament adopted Vision Zero in 1997 as the national foundation for all road safety operations, heeding the calls of transportation planners who warned that the country’s traffic strategy was ill equipped for the next century. The result has been a sort of social contract between state and citizen: If residents follow the most basic traffic laws, engineers can design roads to guard against all fatalities. “You should be able to make mistakes,” said Lars Darin, a senior official with the Swedish Transport Administration, “without being punished by death.” Last year, 264 people were killed, less than half the number in 1997. The fatality rate in Stockholm, 1.1 deaths per 100,000, is less than one-third of New York City’s rate. The national rate, 2.7 deaths per 100,000, is the lowest in the world, according to transportation officials. The Swedish reputation for prudence seems to have seeped into the lexicon. Those raised in the Vision Zero age use the phrase “typical Swede” as something of a playful insult. “It’s like you’re too safe, you’re too afraid of everything,” Johanna Brundin, 20, said of the term, as a group of cyclists swept past her along the city’s Djurgarden waterfront. “I like being a Swede.” On many city streets, the speed limit has dipped below 20 miles per hour. In suburban areas, median barriers have proliferated, separating two-way traffic on high-speed corridors. Officials say the barriers and roundabouts have in fact increased the potential for crashes, vehicle damage and minor injuries for some users. The trade-off: The sight of serious crashes at these locations has all but disappeared. In a departure from most American traffic safety approaches, including New York City’s, Swedish authorities have generally dismissed the effects of education or enforcement on pedestrian safety. They were critical of the blitz of jaywalking tickets during Mr. de Blasio’s early months in office and efforts by the New York Police Department to distribute cards with safety tips in areas with a recent history of fatal crashes. “Design around the human as we are,” said Claes Tingvall, the director of traffic safety at the Swedish Transport Administration and a godfather of the Vision Zero plan. Where Pedestrians and Bicyclists Are Injured, and Why Mayor Bill de Blasio’s goal of eliminating pedestrians’ deaths on New York streets will have to overcome a volatile mix of harried drivers, fast-moving bikers and distracted walkers. Though traffic deaths have fallen in many areas of the world, in large part because of improvements in emergency care and vehicle safety, places that have adopted Vision Zero-style programs have reported disproportionate success. According to the New York City plan, fatality rates in American states with Vision Zero policies, including Minnesota and Utah, fell at a pace more than 25 percent quicker than the national rate. In New York, amid a flurry of street adjustments under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, traffic deaths have decreased by about 26 percent since 2001. Last year, according to the city’s Transportation Department, 290 people were killed. The department has been in contact with the Swedes, holding phone briefings with Vision Zero experts and meeting in person with some who were visiting New York, though no one from the administration has traveled to Sweden to look at the strategy firsthand. Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, emphasized that while her international peers were a useful resource, New York was “definitely not going to be Stockholm.” “You want to think carefully about culture change,” Ms. Trottenberg said. “New York City is one of the more remarkable pedestrian cultures in the world.” The city’s plan has called for improved precinct-level police enforcement of speeding rules, the widening of parking lanes and the placement of “black box” data recorders in taxicabs. Mr. Tingvall of the Swedish Transport Administration called the set of proposals “very impressive.” In recent weeks, the city has also unveiled a series of “arterial slow zones,” reducing the speed limit to 25 m.p.h. from 30 in designated areas, among other changes. Street overhauls that provoked significant community turmoil under Mr. Bloomberg, like the expansion of bike lanes, appear less politically divisive when framed in the context of public safety. Image Traffic signs. Credit Jonathan Nackstrand for The New York Times At the city’s urging, state lawmakers recently approved the addition of 120 speed cameras in New York City school zones, bringing the total to 140. Sweden has more than 1,100. Sweden has also installed a congestion-based toll plan, similar to the one championed unsuccessfully by Mr. Bloomberg, that has reduced traffic volumes by 20 percent in the target areas. Its safety effects are twofold, officials say: better cycling and walking conditions, with fewer cars on the road, and increased revenues to pay for major road improvements. At least some Swedish vigilance seems to predate Vision Zero. About 20 years ago, a now-defunct program allowed some homeowners to decide where speed bumps would be installed. The result: a hump every 20 meters in some neighborhoods, and some very slow trips home. A veteran taxi driver, Nabil Bellar, 42, said he had never been asked to speed up. “They say, ‘I have time, you don’t need to stress,’ ” he said of his typical passenger, as he waited outside Stockholm Central Station. Others appreciate the country’s zeal for traffic safety only in hindsight. In 1998, Mr. Tingvall said, a driver who had survived after crashing into a newly constructed barrier sent the transport administration a cake. For Nicklas Carlson, 32, an anthropology student at Stockholm University, clarity arrived as he sat in the back seat of a New York taxi in 2009, after his cabby left the vehicle to shout at a rival on the road. “In broad daylight!” Mr. Carlson marveled. “This would never, ever happen in Sweden.”

Roads and Traffic
Biking
Bill de Blasio
Sweden
NYC
Car Crash
Fatalities,casualties


China Tests New Controls on Twitter-Style Services

Abstract: BEIJING — China ’s biggest Internet companies are testing new controls on some local alternatives to Twitter to prevent them from becoming channels for the proliferation of content the authorities dislike. The measures highlight the trouble with efforts by the government to cultivate homegrown sites akin to Twitter and Facebook, both of which it blocked last year, even as it bolsters mechanisms to police Internet traffic and curb unregulated expression online. China’s 420 million Internet users are well accustomed to the daily handiwork of the state’s vast yet shadowy censorship apparatus, like shuttered blogs, dead links and inaccessible Web sites. Less common, though, is the widespread tinkering many have detected on new Chinese microblogging services in the past week. Several major Internet portals, including QQ and Sina, home to China’s most popular microblog platform so far, along with the Web arm of People’s Daily, said their Twitter-style services were in “testing mode” this week. Two others, NetEase and Sohu, also suspended microblogging services, for maintenance, they said. By Thursday, microbloggers on Sina, which claims to have amassed 20 million users since it began in August, found that they could not post working links to any foreign-based Web sites. One media editor who has 22,000 followers on his microblog wrote that users could not even search his name. The rival site Sohu appeared to be particularly affected. After going down for maintenance from Friday of last week to Monday, its microblog service offered no search function at all. Users were also unable to publish links to any sites outside of Sohu. Links to other sites, when posted, failed to materialize. Influential liberal intellectuals and public interest lawyers also saw their blogs and microblogs on Sohu, and to a lesser extent on Sina, unplugged on Wednesday and Thursday. One of them, Yao Yuan, posted a list of 61 names of blogs shut on Sohu to another blog of his, on Sina, calling the event the July 14 massacre. Sina later erased that post. An activist lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, grumbled that his first post to his latest Sohu blog was purged within five minutes. “Sohu, since when did you become so timid?” he wrote on Twitter, which some Chinese continue to use, relying on proxy services to evade China’s fire walls. Other bloggers reasoned that Sohu was acting to appease officials. In telephone interviews, people speaking for several of the affected sites denied tightening controls. They said their services had undergone constant testing ever since they began operating. But they had no clear explanation for why they had not noted so previously. “This isn’t really news; it’s a daily event,” said one person in charge of microblogging service at Sina, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Employees at two other portals, however, said the latest tweaking was in response to direct pressure from Chinese Internet authorities to bolster their systems for monitoring content. “I cannot give you any details, but you understand the situation in China,” said one, a ranking editor at Sohu, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal. “These products are still new to China. So when problems occur that affect their stability and dependability, we have to make adjustments to improve the stability of the products.” The authorities permanently blocked Twitter and suspended a private Chinese equivalent, Fanfou, in July last year, after ethnic violence rocked the northwestern region of Xinjiang . But hoping to nurture more competitive media, Beijing has allowed microblogging on trusted domestic sites, which employ swarms of technicians and monitors to enforce propaganda orders. Officials and state media are also taking advantage of the new tools, part of a parallel drive to better react to public opinion. But government research institutes have repeatedly warned of the threat of hostile forces in China and abroad exploiting social networking sites to fan public unrest. Chen Tong, chief editor at Sina, acknowledged at a conference last month that controlling content on microblogs was a “very big headache.” Hu Yong, a new media specialist at Peking University, said: “All along, there have been problems netizens discuss and news they spread that the government doesn’t like. So for the government to ramp up management of microblogs is completely predictable.”

China
Twitter
Computers and the Internet
Social Networking (Internet)
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)


Israel: Tensions Mount in West Bank

Abstract: An Israeli mother and three children were seriously injured in a car crash in the West Bank on Thursday after stones thrown by Palestinians apparently hit their vehicle, the police said. Several other vehicles were also hit. Tensions have increased in the West Bank recently, with Palestinians protesting against hardship and Israeli actions in Gaza, and in support of Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the Hebron area on Tuesday. Israeli authorities said the soldiers were chasing Palestinians who had thrown a firebomb when they were attacked by and opened fire.


Discovery Dates Seafaring 100,000-Plus Years Ago

Abstract: Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected. That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures. Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats. Even more intriguing, the archaeologists who found the tools on Crete noted that the style of the hand axes suggested that they could be up to 700,000 years old. That may be a stretch, they conceded, but the tools resemble artifacts from the stone technology known as Acheulean, which originated with prehuman populations in Africa. More than 2,000 stone artifacts, including the hand axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of Crete, near the town of Plakias, by a team led by Thomas F. Strasser and Eleni Panagopoulou. She is with the Greek Ministry of Culture and he is an associate professor of art history at Providence College in Rhode Island. They were assisted by Greek and American geologists and archaeologists, including Curtis Runnels of Boston University. Dr. Strasser described the discovery last month at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America . A formal report has been accepted for publication in Hesparia, the journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, a supporter of the fieldwork. The Plakias survey team went in looking for material remains of more recent artisans, nothing older than 11,000 years. Such artifacts would have been blades, spear points and arrowheads typical of Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. “We found those, then we found the hand axes,” Dr. Strasser said last week in an interview, and that sent the team into deeper time. “We were flummoxed,” Dr. Runnels said in an interview. “These things were just not supposed to be there.” Word of the find is circulating among the ranks of Stone Age scholars. The few who have seen the data and some pictures — most of the tools reside in Athens — said they were excited and cautiously impressed. The research, if confirmed by further study, scrambles timetables of technological development and textbook accounts of human and prehuman mobility. Ofer Bar-Yosef, an authority on Stone Age archaeology at Harvard, said the significance of the find would depend on the dating of the site. “Once the investigators provide the dates,” he said in an e-mail message, “we will have a better understanding of the importance of the discovery.” Dr. Bar-Yosef said he had seen only a few photographs of the Cretan tools. The forms can only indicate a possible age, he said, but “handling the artifacts may provide a different impression.” And dating, he said, would tell the tale. Dr. Runnels, who has 30 years’ experience in Stone Age research, said that an analysis by him and three geologists “left not much doubt of the age of the site, and the tools must be even older.” The cliffs and caves above the shore, the researchers said, have been uplifted by tectonic forces where the African plate goes under and pushes up the European plate. The exposed uplifted layers represent the sequence of geologic periods that have been well studied and dated, in some cases correlated to established dates of glacial and interglacial periods of the most recent ice age. In addition, the team analyzed the layer bearing the tools and determined that the soil had been on the surface 130,000 to 190,000 years ago. Dr. Runnels said he considered this a minimum age for the tools themselves. They include not only quartz hand axes, but also cleavers and scrapers, all of which are in the Acheulean style. The tools could have been made millenniums before they became, as it were, frozen in time in the Cretan cliffs, the archaeologists said. Dr. Runnels suggested that the tools could be at least twice as old as the geologic layers. Dr. Strasser said they could be as much as 700,000 years old. Further explorations are planned this summer. The 130,000-year date would put the discovery in a time when Homo sapiens had already evolved in Africa, sometime after 200,000 years ago. Their presence in Europe did not become apparent until about 50,000 years ago. Archaeologists can only speculate about who the toolmakers were. One hundred and thirty thousand years ago, modern humans shared the world with other hominids, like Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis. The Acheulean culture is thought to have started with Homo erectus. The standard hypothesis had been that Acheulean toolmakers reached Europe and Asia via the Middle East, passing mainly through what is now Turkey into the Balkans. The new finds suggest that their dispersals were not confined to land routes. They may lend credibility to proposals of migrations from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain. Crete’s southern shore where the tools were found is 200 miles from North Africa. “We can’t say the toolmakers came 200 miles from Libya,” Dr. Strasser said. “If you’re on a raft, that’s a long voyage, but they might have come from the European mainland by way of shorter crossings through Greek islands.” But archaeologists and experts on early nautical history said the discovery appeared to show that these surprisingly ancient mariners had craft sturdier and more reliable than rafts. They also must have had the cognitive ability to conceive and carry out repeated water crossing over great distances in order to establish sustainable populations producing an abundance of stone artifacts.

Archaeology and Anthropology
Greek Civilization
Crete (Greece)


White Sox and Orioles Split Games Rescheduled After Riots

Abstract: Chris Sale struck out 12 hitters in seven and two-thirds innings to lead the Chicago White Sox to a 3-2 victory Thursday over the host Orioles, who rebounded for a 6-3 win in the second game of a doubleheader that was a product of rioting in Baltimore last month. The doubleheader was scheduled after games on April 27 and 28 were postponed because of riots near the ballpark after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of spinal injuries sustained while in the custody of the police. The third game of that series was played without fans in the stadium. An announced crowd of 18,441 showed up Thursday. Sale (4-2) dominated the Orioles in the opener, allowing four hits and no walks. He was pulled after raising his pitch count to 120 with strikeouts of Caleb Joseph and Everth Cabrera. “My main objective today was to fill in innings and get as deep as I could into the ballgame,” Sale said. Zach Duke struck out Manny Machado on a checked swing to end the eighth, and Machado was ejected for arguing the call. After Tyler Flowers hit a run-scoring grounder in the ninth to give Chicago a 3-0 lead, Duke added two more strikeouts in the bottom half before Delmon Young singled and Chris Davis homered. Jake Petricka then struck out Travis Snider for his first save. The White Sox arrived from Toronto for the doubleheader and departed for Houston after the games. “It was supposed to be an off day for us,” Manager Robin Ventura said. He added, “We’re all tired.” The nightcap featured a matchup of rookie right-handers. Chris Beck (0-1) made his major league debut for the White Sox, and Mike Wright (2-0) was starting for the third time after scoreless appearances against the Angels and Miami. Wright’s spotless E.R.A. vanished on his fifth pitch, when Adam Eaton hit a solo homer to center. Beck got off to a similar start, allowing a triple to Machado, the leadoff hitter, and an R.B.I. double to Davis. Wright went five innings, allowing three runs and six hits. Adam LaRoche hit a two-run homer in the third for Chicago. RED SOX 5, RANGERS 1 Eduardo Rodriguez threw seven and two-thirds scoreless innings to become the youngest Red Sox starter to win on the road in his major league debut since 1967, and Boston beat the Rangers to spoil Josh Hamilton’s first home game back in Texas. Rodriguez, 22, was already the youngest Red Sox pitcher to make his debut on the road since Roger Clemens at age 21 in 1985. Billy Rohr was 21 when he won in his debut on April 14, 1967, at Yankee Stadium. Boston went ahead to stay when Mookie Betts had an R.B.I. single in the fifth off Nick Martinez (4-1). Hanley Ramirez, who was the designated hitter with the slumping slugger David Ortiz getting a night off, led off the sixth with his 11th homer to make the score 2-0. Hamilton was 2 for 4, lining a double into right field on the first pitch he saw from Rodriguez in the second inning. He added an R.B.I. single in the ninth, on another sharply hit ball to right, to end Boston’s shutout bid. URIBE IN SIX-MAN TRADE The Los Angeles Dodgers dealt third baseman Juan Uribe to the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday in a six-player trade that was initially blocked. Los Angeles also sent the right-hander Chris Withrow to the Braves for infielder Alberto Callaspo, the left-handers Eric Stults and Ian Thomas, and the minor league right-hander Juan Jaime. Uribe, 36, was batting .247 with one home run and six R.B.I. . He became expendable after losing his starting job to the veteran Justin Turner and the rookie Alex Guerrero, who was hitting .313 with eight homers in 83 at-bats. A CATCH IN A CARDINAL’S RETURN Jon Jay was the St. Louis Cardinals’ center fielder and primary leadoff man when he went on the 15-day disabled list with a wrist injury. When he returns, probably Friday, it might be more of a job share because of the emergence of Randal Grichuk. The 23-year-old Grichuk, acquired from the Angels after the 2013 season, is batting .308 in limited duty and has played all three outfield spots. MONTREAL SEEKS GAMES The mayor of Montreal has asked baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, to consider playing three or four regular-season games in the city next year. Mayor Denis Coderre met with Manfred in New York. Coderre said at least a half-dozen teams had expressed an interest in playing there in 2016. Montreal was home to the Expos from 1969 through 2004. The team then moved to Washington and became the Nationals.


Skeleton Points to Early Leprosy in England

Abstract: A 1,500-year-old skeleton suggests that leprosy may have spread to England from Scandinavia. The bones of the male skeleton show changes consistent with the disease, scientists have found, including a narrowing of the toe bones and damage to the joints. DNA and isotope analyses confirm the leprosy diagnosis and suggest that the man was originally from southern Scandinavia, possibly the region that is now Denmark. The strain of leprosy he carries dates to the fifth or sixth century A.D. “We didn’t expect to find leprosy at this early stage in Britain,” said Sonia Zakrzewski, a bio-archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England and one of the study’s authors. She and her colleagues reported their conclusions in the journal PLOS One. The skeleton was discovered in Great Chesterford in Essex, England, during the 1950s. The findings make a strong case for researchers to revisit museum collections and perform DNA analyses on skeletons that were discovered long ago, Dr. Zakrzewski said.

Leprosy
PLoS One Journal
DNA
Great Britain
Scandinavia
Skeleton
Bone


U.S. Said to Be Weighing Public Pricing of Derivatives

Abstract: DAVOS, Switzerland — United States regulators are considering forcing investment banks to make public markets in some of the more exotic financial instruments that have plunged in value in the last six months, the head of the New York Stock Exchange said Friday. Duncan L. Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext, said the exchange had been approached by officials from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department about providing a way to disclose both quotes and trades in the derivative instruments, like collateralized debt obligations. Those instruments are now traded over the counter, and the only market in them is often made by the investment bank that created them. The value of some of them has plummeted as the credit squeeze tightened, angering holders. “One day it is worth 90. The next day it is worth 22,” Mr. Niederauer said of some derivatives. “People wonder if it really went to 22 overnight.” Catherine R. Kinney, the NYSE Euronext president, added, “There is a lot of pressure on the regulators from pension funds to price these.” Mr. Niederauer said the consideration of such a move was at an early stage, and he did not know whether action would be taken. He said the exchange had said it would be willing to arrange to disclose quotes and transactions. If such quotes were forced, and if trades were required to be reported, it could enable investors to see how similar instruments were trading, providing some sense of value and exposing differences in the valuations by various dealers. It could also cause embarrassment for banks, particularly if they had not marked down securities they owned to the level at which they were prepared to buy them. “You may not be able to force liquidity,” Mr. Niederauer said, “but you could force transparency.”

New York Stock Exchange
Securities and Exchange Commission
Stocks and Bonds
Securities and Commodities Violations
Pensions and Retirement Plans
United States
Davos (Switzerland)


Am I a Size 4? 8? 10? Tackling a Crazy Quilt of Sizing

Abstract: In one store, you’re a Size 4, in another a Size 8, and in another a Size 10 — all without gaining an ounce. It’s a familiar problem for many women, as standard sizing has never been very standard, ever since custom clothing gave way to ready-to-wear. So, baffled women carry armfuls of the same garment in different sizes into the dressing room. They order several sizes of the same shirt online, just to get the right fit. Now, a handful of companies are tackling the problem of sizes that are unreliable. Some are pushing more informative labels. Some are designing multiple versions of a garment to fit different body shapes. And one is offering full-body scans at shopping malls, telling a shopper what sizes she should try among the various brands. “For the consumer to go out and navigate which one do I match with is a huge challenge, and causes frustration and returns,” said Tanya Shaw, an entrepreneur working on a fit system. “So many women tie their self-esteem to the size on the tag.” As the American population has grown more diverse, sizes have become even less reliable. Over the years, many brands have changed measurements so that a woman who previously wore a 12 can now wear a 10 or an 8, a practice known as “ vanity sizing .” In men’s clothes, the dimensions are usually stated in inches; women’s clothing involves more guesswork. Take a woman with a 27-inch waist. In Marc Jacobs ’s high-end line, she is between an 8 and a 10. At Chico’s, she is a triple 0. And that does not consider whether the garment fits in the hips and bust. (Let’s not get into length; there is a reason most neighborhood dry cleaners also offer tailoring.) Ms. Shaw, the entrepreneur, is chief executive of a company called MyBestFit that addresses the problem. It is setting up kiosks in malls to offer a free 20-second full-body scan — a lot like the airport, minus the pat-down alternative that T.S.A. agents offer. Lauren VanBrackle, 20, a student in Philadelphia , tried MyBestFit when she was shopping last weekend. “I can be anywhere from a 0 at Ann Taylor to a 6 at American Eagle,” she said. “It obviously makes it difficult to shop.” This time, the scanner suggested that at American Eagle, she should try a 4 in one style and a 6 in another. Ms. VanBrackle said she tried the jeans on and was impressed: “That machine, in a 30-second scan, it tells you what to do.” The customer steps into a circular booth, fully dressed. A wand rotates around her, emitting low-power radio waves that record about 200,000 body measurements, figuring out things like thigh circumference. Next, the system matches the customer’s measurements to clothes in its database. MyBestFit currently measures clothes from about 50 stores, including Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and Talbots . Customers then receive a printout of the sizes at each store that ought to fit the customer best. The retailers pay a fee when they appear in the results, but they cannot pay to be included in the results; the rankings are based solely on fit. (The company saves the data, with ID numbers but not names, and may give aggregate information to retailers as feedback.) Don Thomas, who manages the Eddie Bauer store at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia, said the system was helpful to shoppers. “Nine times out of 10, if left on their own, they will choose the wrong size pant,” he said. With a printout, “if it says they’re a 4 or a 6, they’re a 4 or a 6, generally. So it’s really good for the customer who’s time-starved, which we all are.” Ms. Shaw says there are plans for 13 more scanning machines in malls along the East Coast and in California by the end of the year. The sizing variations are a big contributor to $194 billion in clothing purchases returned in 2010, or more than 8 percent of all clothing purchases, according to the National Retail Federation . The scanners are a modern solution to an old problem. Studying dress sizes in Vogue advertisements from 1922 on, Alaina Zulli, a designer focusing on costume history, found clothing sizes have been irregular for decades. A woman with a 32-inch bust would have worn a Size 14 in Sears’s 1937 catalog. By 1967, she would have worn an 8, Ms. Zulli found. Today, she would wear a zero. Plenty of people have tried to address these arbitrary sizes. Advocating a labeling system called Fitlogic over the last few years, an entrepreneur, Cricket Lee, discovered just how difficult it is to change manufacturers’ approach to size. Her labeling system divides women’s bodies into three shapes, straight, hourglass or bottom-heavy, and a Fitlogic label carries both the standard size and the shape. Ms. Lee did tests in the mid-2000s with manufacturers like Jones Apparel and retailers like Nordstrom . But retailers said consumers had trouble grasping the concept. “The manufacturers were so afraid of producing more than one fit in the very beginning,” she said. Still, she said, she will soon try to sell the sizing system again. Some brands are taking their own approaches to make the fitting room less demoralizing. Mary Alderete, vice president for women’s global marketing at Levi’s, said, “When we try on 10 pairs of jeans to buy one, the reason you feel bad is because you think something’s wrong with you.” Last fall, the company introduced Curve ID, a line that offers three styles, depending on how rounded a woman’s backside is — slight, demi and bold. (Levi’s is now testing a fourth style, called supreme curve.) Each of the three styles includes about 29 fits and colors, and dozens of sizes. Ms. Alderete said the company had sold more than one million pairs of the Curve jeans. Marie-Eve Faust, the program director of fashion merchandising at Philadelphia University, called the Levi’s effort “a good start.” “The next step is to have the major players sit together, manufacturers, retailers, brands, and say ‘This type of label should be appropriate for all of us. Let’s standardize,’ ” she said. Dr. Faust said she had been discussing a new kind of label that takes into account the wearer’s shape, but expected retailers to bristle. Still, Dr. Faust said, change is needed. “It would be nice just to take the pant, look at the label and say, ‘That should fit me,’ ” she said.

Fashion
Label
Retail
Women and Girls
MyBestFit


Cease-Fire Between Israel and Hamas Takes Effect

Abstract: CAIRO — Under intense Egyptian and American pressure, Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas halted eight days of bloody conflict on Wednesday, averting a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip without resolving the underlying disputes. With Israeli forces still massed on the Gaza border, a tentative calm descended after the announcement of the agreement. The success of the truce will be an early test of how Egypt ’s new Islamist government might influence the most intractable conflict in the Middle East . The United States, Israel and Hamas all praised Egypt’s role in brokering the cease-fire as the antagonists pulled back from violence that had killed more than 150 Palestinians and five Israelis over the past week. The deal called for a 24-hour cooling-off period to be followed by talks aimed at resolving at least some of the longstanding grievances between the two sides. Gazans poured into the streets declaring victory against the far more powerful Israeli military. In Israel, the public reaction was far more subdued. Many residents in the south expressed doubt that the agreement would hold, partly because at least five Palestinian rockets thudded into southern Israel after the cease-fire began. The one-page memorandum of understanding left the issues that have most inflamed the tensions between the Israelis and the Gazans up for further negotiation. Israel demands long-term border security, including an end to Palestinian missile launching over the border. Hamas wants an end to the Israeli embargo. The deal demonstrated the pragmatism of Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi , who balanced public support for Hamas with a determination to preserve the peace with Israel. But it was unclear whether the agreement would be a turning point or merely a lull in the conflict. The cease-fire deal was reached only through a final American diplomatic push: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred for hours with Mr. Morsi and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon , at the presidential palace here. Hanging over the talks was the Israeli shock at a Tel Aviv bus bombing — praised by Hamas — that recalled past Palestinian uprisings and raised fears of heavy Israeli retaliation. After false hopes the day before, Western and Egyptian diplomats said they had all but given up hope for a quick end to the violence. Tellingly, neither Israel nor Hamas was represented in the final talks or the announcement, leaving it in the hands of a singular partnership between their proxies, the United States and Egypt. There were immediate questions about the durability of the deal. Hamas, which controls Gaza, has in the past not fulfilled less formal cease-fires by failing to halt all missile fire into Israel by breakaway Palestinian militants. Neither side retreated from threats to resume the conflict if the deal fell through, and both said they had only reluctantly agreed under international pressure. In a televised news conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared that some Israelis still expected “a much harsher military operation, and it is very possible we will be compelled to embark on one.” But he said that in a telephone conversation with Mr. Obama earlier in the evening, “I agreed with him that it is worth giving the cease-fire a chance.” He added that he had reached an undisclosed agreement with Mr. Obama to “work together against the smuggling of weapons” to Palestinian militants, for which Mr. Netanyahu blamed Iran . Khaled Meshal , Hamas’s top leader, thanked Iran for its military support in a triumphal news conference in Cairo. “This is a point on the way to a great defeat for Israel,” he said. “Israel failed in all its objectives.” He suggested that the West had come to Hamas and its Islamist allies in Egypt pleading for peace. “The Americans and the Europeans asked the Egyptians, ‘You have the ear of the resistance,’ ” he said, using the term Hamas prefers to describe itself and other Palestinian militants fighting the Israeli occupation. “Egypt did not sell out the resistance as some people have claimed. Egypt understood the demands of the resistance and the Palestinian people.” The agreement postponed the resolution of the most contentious issue: Israel’s tight restrictions on the border crossings into Gaza under a seven-year-old embargo imposed to thwart Hamas from arming itself. The one-page “understanding” regarding the cease-fire called for “opening the crossing and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods,” but it also said that “procedures of implementation will be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the cease-fire.” But however fragile the cease-fire may be, the deal itself may be a turning point for Egypt’s Islamist leaders, in both their relations with the West and their role in the region. Since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak — a reliable ally of Washington and Israel — many in the West have been worried about how Egypt’s leaders might respond to the next confrontation that pits their allies in Hamas against Israel. As a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood ’s parliamentary bloc, Mr. Morsi often railed against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and praised Hamas for rejecting the Western-backed peace process in favor of armed resistance. Advisers to Mr. Morsi acknowledged that the latest Gaza battle had put them in a bind, caught between the electorate’s anger at Israel and Mr. Morsi’s own vows — to Egyptians and the West — to encourage peace in the region. “If he responds fully to public opinion, he risks what we have been trying to do for peace and stability in the region,” said a senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks. When the test came, several American diplomats said, Mr. Morsi chose pragmatism over ideology, working closely with Washington to bring the antagonists to the table. American officials and Mr. Morsi’s advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said both the Egyptian president and Mr. Obama had given the other room to manage the demands of their domestic constituencies. They spoke by telephone at least six times during the week of fighting, officials said. Mr. Morsi had looked past Mr. Obama’s repeated statements of support for Israel’s right to self-defense, while Mr. Obama did not object as Mr. Morsi publicly blamed the Israelis for both instigating the conflict and then using excessive force. But behind the scenes, the Americans pushed the Israelis toward a truce and Mr. Morsi pressured Hamas, as the parties all acknowledged on Wednesday. Essam el-Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s top foreign policy adviser, said, “I think that the United States from the first moments was trying to find an end to the bloodshed.” “Yes, they were carrying the point of view of the Israeli side, but they were understanding also the other side, the Palestinian side,” he said of President Obama ’s role. “The sincerity and understanding was really very helpful.” Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority ’s commissioner for international relations, who was in Cairo during the early stages of the talks and met with key players, said the published agreement was intentionally kept “as vague and as general and as concise as possible to avoid problems and misunderstandings.” Egypt’s role in the cease-fire remains unclear, Mr. Shaath said. “How much Egypt can really take the responsibility of a total sealing of the borders not to allow a bullet to come through, above or below?” he said. Although the memorandum of understanding did not clarify how Gaza’s borders might be opened, Egyptians, Israelis and Americans briefed on the talks said that Egypt had broached the possibility of expanding the traffic of people and goods at Rafah. Egypt has historically resisted a broader opening of the crossing, and Israel enforces its embargo on the other sides of Gaza, fearing that it would face an influx of refugees or end up with responsibility for the impoverished enclave. Israel also fears that an open border crossing would become a conduit for weapons. But the people briefed on the talks said the Egyptians were considering restoring something like a previous arrangement, under which the Palestinian Authority and the European Union would operate the border crossing to provide Israel and Egypt some measure of security. The arrangement might also force Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to work together. Mr. Morsi’s advisers say they are intent on reconciling the rival factions. After the agreement was announced, the White House said, Mr. Obama called Mr. Morsi and each thanked the other.

Israel
Gaza Strip
Hamas
Palestinians
Hillary Clinton
US Foreign Policy
Egypt
Mohamed Morsi
Barack Obama


Effort Begins for More Say on Directors

Abstract: Annual shareholder meetings are supposed to allow a company’s owners to change troubling governance practices such as outsize executive pay or directors who neglect their fiduciary duties. In reality, however, most of these meetings and the shareholder votes that are cast at them give outside investors little say on oversight of a company’s board. That is because the current director election system in the United States allows board members to win or hold their seats even if they do not receive support from a majority of shareholder votes cast. Weary of what they see as a dysfunctional dynamic, a band of institutional shareholders is mounting the first push ever at 75 United States companies to allow investors to hire and fire directors directly. The plan is intended to bring greater accountability to corporate boardrooms and eliminate some of the “clubby” aspects for which they have been criticized. Leading the drive is Scott M. Stringer , the New York City comptroller and a Democrat, who oversees five municipal public pension funds with $160 billion in assets — much of it invested in the kinds of companies his effort will target. His office will submit a proposal at each of the 75 companies, asking the company to adopt a bylaw allowing shareholders who have owned at least 3 percent of its stock for three years or more to nominate directors for election to the board. Among the 75 companies targeted by Mr. Stringer are eBay, Exxon Mobil, Monster Beverage and Priceline. None of the companies commented on the comptroller’s shareholder proposal. As an institutional investor overseeing public pension funds, Mr. Stringer has put forward similar shareholder proposals at companies in the past. Frustrated by the slow pace of change, however, he said he decided to enlist the help of other large shareholders and to broaden the effort to include more companies. “The bottom line is, friends still put friends on boards,” Mr. Stringer said in an interview Wednesday. “My job as a long-term investor is to make sure that these companies truly represent the interest of share owners.” The effort by the New York City pension funds will focus on companies that have been unwilling to change practices in three areas: board diversity, climate change and executive compensation. Companies with no women as directors or those with little or no ethnic diversity were identified, along with companies whose shareholders had recently expressed dissatisfaction with executive pay practices but had done nothing to address them. On climate change, more than a third of the companies identified by the shareholder group are in the energy industry. The proposals will be put to shareholder votes at the companies’ annual meetings in the coming months. While the companies would not be required to adopt the bylaw even if a majority of shareholders voted for it, advocates say the boards would be more likely to go along with the idea if it won strong support from shareholders. Working with Mr. Stringer’s office to drum up support are officials at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System , the nation’s largest public pension fund. Calpers said it would hire a proxy solicitor to discuss the proposal with other institutional shareholders. “We view this as a five-year project and will be back again and again as needed,” said Anne Simpson, senior portfolio manager and governance director at Calpers. “But making the commitment and getting an alliance formed on this issue is so important.” Public pension overseers in other states, including Connecticut, Illinois and North Carolina, are also supporting the effort. The push for greater shareholder participation in director elections comes more than four years after Congress directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to write a rule giving investors more say in the boardroom. The S.E.C. approved such a rule in 2010 but it was challenged in a lawsuit by the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. A federal court in the District of Columbia vacated the rule in 2011 on procedural grounds, and the S.E.C. has not taken up the issue again. In spite of this loss, a handful of companies have instituted bylaws allowing shareholders to nominate directors in recent years. At the urging of institutional shareholders, Chesapeake Energy, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon and Western Union now let investors submit board nominations if they have held at least 3 percent of the stock for over three years. Still, most companies resist giving shareholders the right to nominate directors. Management of Oracle , the software giant, recommended that shareholders vote against such a proposal at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday in Redwood City, Calif. Nevertheless, the proposal received support from 45 percent of the votes cast, a considerable result given that Lawrence J. Ellison , the company’s founder and chairman, owns 26 percent of the stock. While still rare in the United States, the right to nominate directors is available to investors holding shares in many companies with headquarters overseas. Norges Bank Investment Management, overseer of Norway’s $850 billion pension fund, is enthusiastic about Mr. Stringer’s proposals. “We appreciate that a U.S. shareholder is now taking the initiative to implement this reform,” said Thomas Sevang, a Norges Bank spokesman. “In our private dialogues with U.S. companies, we have consistently encouraged their directors to demonstrate leadership on this governance reform and propose proxy access at terms they believe are appropriate for their company.” One argument the pension funds said they would use in support of their plan is that companies giving investors a greater role in the selection of directors appear to have greater market values than those that do not. That was the finding in an August report from the CFA Institute, an association of standard-setters for investment professionals. The institute analyzed academic studies on the issue and said that most concluded higher shareholder wealth and improved board performance resulted from greater shareholder involvement in the director election process. For those who worry that giving shareholders access to corporate boardrooms will let them hijack the process, the CFA study found otherwise. Investors in countries allowing direct involvement in director elections used it sparingly, the analysis concluded. In Britain and Australia, for example, shareholders have nominated directors on average fewer than 10 times annually over the last three years. “By targeting companies across an array of industries, we intend to bring systemic reform to United States boardrooms,” Mr. Stringer said. “This is our right as long-term shareholders.”

Board of directors
Shareholder Rights
Scott M Stringer
NYC
Companies
CalPERS
Oracle
Lawrence J Ellison


Using Carbon-Dating to Determine People’s Age

Abstract: Q. Is it true that because of radiation, people born after about 1950 can’t be carbon-dated? A. Forensic scientists say that cold war radiation makes it easier to make a close estimate of the birth date of someone living since the middle of the last century. “The rationale behind using radiocarbon analysis is that aboveground testing of nuclear weapons during the cold war (1955-1963) caused an extreme increase in global levels of carbon-14, which has been carefully recorded over time,” wrote the authors of a study published in May 2010 in the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. The decrease since such testing ceased has also been tracked. The study used both radiocarbon dating of tooth enamel and analysis of the conversion of aspartic acid in teeth from 41 deceased Swedes. “Radiocarbon analysis showed an excellent precision,” the researchers said, with an overall absolute error of 1 year, plus or minus 0.6 of a year. A federally financed study of various tissues from American cadavers with known birth and death dates, made available online in 2009 by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, said carbon could also help determine death dates, as the radiocarbon content of tissues is fixed at death. Accuracy depended on the year of measurement, with precision highest for the 1960s and 1970s and progressively decreasing. “Barring future nuclear catastrophe, it would be reasonable to expect the method could be used for year-of-birth determinations for people born within the next one or two decades,” the researchers said. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Carbon Dating
Nuclear Tests
Forensic Science
Science and Technology


Sylvia Hassenfeld, Philanthropist From Hasbro’s Founding Family, Dies at 93

Abstract: Sylvia Hassenfeld, the matriarch of the founding family of Hasbro, the maker of G.I. Joe, Mr. Potato Head and the Transformers, who became a path-making philanthropist and one of the first women to head a major international Jewish aid organization, died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Ellen Hassenfeld Block. From 1988 to 1992, Mrs. Hassenfeld was the first female president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a relief group founded in 1914 to provide social services and refugee assistance for persecuted Jews around the world. During her tenure, she took a hands-on role in negotiating the resettlement of Jews leaving the disintegrating Soviet Union, providing help for Jews remaining in former Soviet bloc states like Romania and Hungary, and arranging the 1991 airlift to Israel of 14,000 Jews from war-torn Ethiopia. She was also the first president of the organization to support the expansion of crisis assistance programs to non-Jews. In 1989, the organization helped to arrange a series of charter flights that ferried some of the most severely injured victims of the 1988 Armenian earthquake to Tel Aviv and Haifa for treatment and rehabilitation. Nonsectarian agricultural aid was also sent to Ethiopia in the late 1980s. Mrs. Hassenfeld was the widow of Merrill L. Hassenfeld, who ran Hasbro — founded in 1923 by Mr. Hassenfeld’s father, Henry, and his uncles Hillel and Herman — in the ’50s and ’60s. Their son Stephen took over the company after Merrill Hassenfeld’s death in 1979. It was the world’s fifth-largest toy company at the time, but had become the largest by the time he died in 1989. Another son, Alan, led Hasbro, which is still under the family’s control, until 2008. While she served for many years as a member of the board and was involved, as the mother of three children, in the early test-marketing of many Hasbro products, Mrs. Hassenfeld was mainly occupied by philanthropic work, her daughter said. She served as national chairwoman of the women’s division of the United Jewish Appeal and vice chairwoman of the Jerusalem Foundation. She also had leadership roles in national and international Jewish organizations like the United Israel Appeal and the Jewish Agency for Israel. After her son Stephen’s death, she took a leadership role in the Hasbro Children’s Foundation, a nonsectarian humanitarian organization that he founded in 1984 to help poor and homeless children, and was instrumental in creating the Stephen D. Hassenfeld Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at N.Y.U. Medical Center. In a separate campaign, she donated $50 million toward development of a children’s hospital at the medical center, now known as NYU Langone, to be named the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. It is scheduled to open in 2017. Sylvia Grace Kay was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 19, 1920, the only child of Sophie and Joseph Kay. Her father was a hosiery manufacturer. After marrying Merrill Hassenfeld in 1940, she moved to Providence, R.I., where Hasbro has its headquarters, and where she would live for most of her life. The family also had homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and Manhattan. Besides her daughter, Ellen, and her son, Alan, Mrs. Hassenfeld is survived by three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.


Williams Defeats Sharapova to Win French Open

Abstract: PARIS — Serena Williams has tried to master French, as she has finally mastered the French Open again. So after she had served five aces in her last seven service points to beat Maria Sharapova, 6-4, 6-4, in Saturday’s final, and had gone down on her knees and put her head to the clay in celebration, Williams kept up her recent habit of making her postmatch remarks to the crowd in the local language. “I’m incredible,” she said in French. That is probably not what she meant to say. But for accuracy, if not for her command of a second language, it is hard to argue with the sentiment. And it is now possible to make the case that she has a chance to become the greatest women’s player in tennis history. Williams seized one of the few achievements that had eluded her — a second French Open, to match the one she won in 2002, a tennis lifetime ago. At 31, she has won 16 Grand Slam singles events, and appears nowhere near finished, given that she is 74-3 since crashing out of here last year in the first round. “I definitely — I want to go out in my peak,” Williams said in response to a question about whether she had contemplated retiring now. “That’s my goal. But have I peaked yet?” After she dropped one set in the two weeks at Roland Garros, that is a terrifying question for the rest of the women’s tour to ponder. Williams is one of only four women to win each of the Grand Slam tournaments in the Open era at least twice — Chris Evert, Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova are the others. And the most daunting aspect of the accomplishment is this: if nobody could stop Williams on clay, easily her worst surface, who will do it when she gets to Wimbledon’s grass or the hardcourt at the United States Open? And what might have been if she had not had ankle and back injuries at the Australian Open, where she lost in a quarterfinal? This was the first time the top two seeds had met in the Roland Garros final since 1995. Sharapova, the defending champion, played well, putting up a much better fight than most had predicted, given that Williams holds a 14-2 career edge over her and has not lost to Sharapova since 2004. But Sharapova forced Williams to play excellent defense, and in the first set, she even broke Williams’s serve, the most devastating threat in the game. Sharapova led the set, 2-0, before Williams won four games in a row. Then she and Williams were at 4-all. Image Serena Williams defeated Maria Sharapova in straight sets. 1 / 7 No one’s best is good enough right now if Williams is having a good day. And Williams was having a good day, particularly because she was able to capitalize on her serve — she had three aces in the final game, including her fastest of the day, at 123 miles per hour, on match point — and, after a shaky start, to control her forehand. Williams said she went for so many aces in the final game because she was so nervous that she did not think she could hit ground strokes. But Sharapova pointed to that ninth game of the match as a turning point, when Williams broke her serve to take the lead with a whipped crosscourt forehand. Sharapova said: “I’m nitpicking here, but these are moments against her that I feel that I should be able to take, because then she has no pressure going in and serving and being up a break, you know, at 5-4, and, you know, serving harder than David Ferrer when he gets to the final of Roland Garros.” Williams, who was booed by fans here in 2003, has grown increasingly comfortable on clay and in this city since she began working with Patrick Mouratoglou, a Paris-based coach, after last year’s disaster — so much so that she said she thought she was a Parisian. That her titles at Roland Garros came so far apart, or that the second came at an age when many players contemplate retirement, is a testament not only to her abundant talent but also to her remarkable will. Williams acknowledged Saturday that her first-round loss last year to Virginie Razzano still rankled her, although it also convinced her that she had nothing to lose, so she could relax. She spent the last two weeks on a mission, dropping the lone set in the quarterfinals to Svetlana Kuznetsova — the only match in which Williams even whiffed the potential for defeat. After she dusted off Sara Errani in the semifinals as if she were a hitting partner in a warm-up, Williams was so focused, so impatient to get on to the next match, that she announced that reporters’ questions were becoming redundant and that she wanted to move on. While Williams said she was more relaxed during this French Open, she was, for the final, more tightly wound than she had been before, and it showed. She had 21 unforced errors. “I think my winning appetite was really high,” Williams said. “I think due to that, I may have not played as well as I played in other matches in this final as I did before. So I think I put maybe a little pressure on myself; because of that, I maybe made a lot of mistakes that I didn’t make in other rounds. But also, with that being said, it really got me through a lot of tough points that I knew I needed to win.” Williams said she did not realize the victory was her 16th Grand Slam title until the former player Fabrice Santoro told her on court during the postmatch interview. She wants more, and she will now go into Wimbledon as the heavy favorite to win her sixth championship there. That is also where Sharapova first upset Williams, in 2004, when Sharapova was a teenager having a breakthrough — and as it turns out, long before Williams played the finest tennis of her career. “I’m really relaxed,” she said. “I really enjoy every moment that I’m out there. I always said that I felt like I have never played my best tennis. I have said that for years, that I feel like I can always do better and play better, and I have always wanted to reach that level. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to get there.”

French Open
Serena Williams
Maria Sharapova
Tennis


Thomas Hagan, Killer of Malcolm X, Granted Parole

Abstract: After being turned down for parole 16 times, Malcolm X ’s only confessed assassin is about to gain his freedom. Thomas Hagan has been held since moments after shots rang out in the Audubon Ballroom in 1965. He has been on work release for more than two decades, but he still spends two days a week locked up at the Lincoln Correctional Facility on West 110th Street in Manhattan. On March 3, however, on his 17th try, Mr. Hagan was granted parole, the State Division of Parole said. His final release date is tentatively scheduled for April 28. The news was reported Thursday on The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog. Mr. Hagan, who turned 69 in jail on Tuesday, was a militant member of the Nation of Islam on Feb. 21, 1965, when Malcolm X was shot while giving a speech at the Audubon, in Washington Heights. Mr. Hagan, then known as Talmadge X. Hayer, was captured by the crowd and shot at and beaten before being rescued by the police. Two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (then known as Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (then Thomas 15X Johnson), were also charged with the murder. They maintained their innocence. Mr. Hagan did not, testifying at his trial in 1966 that he was responsible for the murder and that his co-defendants were innocent. All three men were sentenced to 20 years to life. Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices (not Mr. Aziz or Mr. Islam) decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite” who had “gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest with a shotgun, he and another man fired several more rounds at him. Mr. Aziz was paroled in 1985, and in 1998 was named by Louis Farrakhan to be chief of security for the Harlem mosque that Malcolm X once headed. Mr. Islam was paroled in 1987. Mr. Hagan, who earned a master’s degree while in prison, according to a 2008 profile in The New York Post, was placed on work release in 1988. In 2008, he was spending his free days with his wife and children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and working in a fast food restaurant. “I’ve been incarcerated for 40 years, and I’ve had a good record all around,” he told The Post. “I don’t see any reason for holding me.”

Malcolm X
Hagan Thomas
Murders and Attempted Murders
Probation and Parole


Supreme Court to Hear Cases of Drug-Sniffing Dogs

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Every dog has its day, but not every dog has its day in court. Aldo, a German shepherd, and Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever, are exceptions. The Supreme Court plans to hear their cases on Wednesday. The basic question in both cases, said Orin S. Kerr , a leading expert on the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search, is this: “What do you think of a dog’s nose?” It is surely a marvel. But is it also, as the Supreme Court has suggested in previous cases, essentially infallible? The great thing about dogs trained to sniff out drugs and other contraband, the court has said, is that they cannot invade human privacy because their noses reveal, as Justice John Paul Stevens put it in 2005 , “no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess.” As the prosecutors in Franky’s case wrote , “anything else that the dog smells remains private.” But there is reason to doubt that dogs are, as a brief for two groups of criminal defense lawyers put it , “binary contraband detectors.” Justice David H. Souter, in a dissent from the 2005 decision , cited a study showing “that dogs in artificial testing situations return false positives anywhere from 12.5 to 60 percent of the time.” “The infallible dog,” he wrote, “is a creature of legal fiction.” There is a growing body of evidence to support that view. Last year, The Chicago Tribune analyzed three years of data from suburban police departments and found that alerts from dogs during roadside encounters led to drugs or paraphernalia just 44 percent of the time. For Hispanic drivers, the rate was 27 percent. Prosecutors say that does not prove anything. The drugs may have been exceptionally well hidden, they say, or there may have been lingering odors from drugs no longer present. “When you enter the kitchen and smell popcorn, the fact that some has already eaten all the popcorn and put the bag outside in the trash takes nothing away from the fact that you accurately smelled popcorn in the kitchen,” they wrote in Aldo’s case , Florida v. Harris, No. 11-817. The case illustrates the difficulty of separating false signals from real ones. In 2006, Aldo alerted his human partner to the presence of chemicals used to make methamphetamines in the pickup truck of Clayton Harris, who had been pulled over near Bristol, Fla., for driving with an expired license plate. A few weeks later, the same law enforcement team pulled Mr. Harris over again, this time for a faulty brake light. Aldo again signaled the presence of drugs. But this time, the police officer found no contraband. It may be, of course, that Aldo may still smelled an old smell. But there are more problematic possibilities. “Some dogs as more accurate than others, and, like people, dogs have good days and bad days,” Mr. Harris’s lawyers told the justices . Dogs sometimes issue false alerts when they smell other dogs, the brief said, or when they are prompted, perhaps subconsciously, by their handlers. Most important, according to a brief by some 50 law professors specializing in the Fourth Amendment , dogs do not smell drugs as such but rather molecules that are also present in the odors of lawful substances. Cocaine, for instance, shares a component with snapdragons and petunias. Heroin shares one with vinegar and old aspirin. Ecstasy has something in common with lice repellent. The Florida Supreme Court was not convinced that Aldo was reliable and ordered that the evidence he found be suppressed . The same court also threw out the evidence in Franky’s case, Florida v. Jardines, No. 11-564. The question there was whether police may use dogs to sniff for drugs outside of homes. The sanctity of the home is at the core of what the Fourth Amendment protects. But there, too, the Supreme Court has drawn distinctions between methods that can only detect contraband and more general intrusions. In 2001, for instance, the court limited the use of thermal-imaging devices to peer into homes. The problem, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, was that the devices could detect not only heat lamps used to grow marijuana but also “at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath.” Perhaps dogs are different. Perhaps they really are binary contraband detectors capable of finding only illegal substances. Is that reason enough to let them sniff around our front doors? In a 1984 dissent , Justice William J. Brennan Jr. foresaw a day when “canine cocaine connoisseurs” would “roam the streets at random, alerting the officers to people carrying cocaine.” The date of the dissent was fitting, and Justice Brennan’s forecast was not fanciful. The authorities in Virginia and North Dakota have recently announced plans to sweep through housing complexes with dogs to sniff for drugs.

Supreme Court
Dogs
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Fourth Amendment (US Constitution)
Search and Seizure


Pirates Complete Sweep of Marlins

Abstract: Russell Martin’s pinch-hit single in the 10th inning lifted the host Pittsburgh Pirates over the Miami Marlins, 5-4, on Thursday for their fifth straight win. The Pirates, with the best record in the major leagues, swept a three-game series. ■ Ethan Martin earned his first major league win, Cody Asche hit his first home run and the Philadelphia Phillies routed the visiting Chicago Cubs, 12-1.

Baseball
Pittsburgh Pirates
Phillies
Chicago Cubs
Miami Marlins


Horrors of Eritrea Met With a Shrug

Abstract: PARIS — Thousands of Eritreans flee their homeland each month, many arriving in Europe to an uncertain welcome, with hundreds dying in the process. Biniam Simon, a 43-year-old journalist in exile, has a message for Eritreans back home who are considering the journey. Stay home. “We always ask people to stay home because escaping is not the solution,” said Mr. Simon, whose daily broadcasts are beamed back home on Radio Erena, an independent radio station based here. “The government is the problem, and leaving doesn’t solve it.” Mr. Simon’s message comes as more and more Eritrean migrants make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. Last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, Eritreans accounted for 23 percent of the 170,100 migrants who arrived in Italy by sea — an astonishing proportion for a young country on the Horn of Africa with a population of 6.3 million. It is not hard to understand why the exodus from Eritrea has been running at an estimated 5,000 a month. In a devastating report issued June 8, a United Nations commission of inquiry confirmed that Eritrea has one of the worst records of human rights abuses anywhere in the world. Since it declared independence after a 1993 referendum, Eritrea has been ruled by one man, President Isaias Afwerki, who when asked when he would hold the country’s first election, said “never.” Its judiciary and news media are firmly under his control; torture and sexual violence are rampant; and its young people are conscripted into national service of indefinite duration. Mr. Simon was himself conscripted in 1994, and many of those with whom he served are still locked into the system of forced labor, 21 years later. When he found himself, as a journalist, under investigation on spurious charges, he was able to make a dash for freedom in January 2007 with the help of the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders. Two years later, he set up Radio Erena, which now has four journalists in Paris and a network of 14 correspondents reporting from several countries. Radio Erena’s daily two-hour broadcast — covering a range of cultural and political news — regularly seeks out migrants to tell their harrowing stories, but still Mr. Simon urges those at home to stay. “When the young people leave, old people and children are left on their own, with no one to support them,” he said. “The family is collapsing. And looking at the bigger picture, there are no young people left to oppose the government.” Mr. Simon prides himself on being an independent journalist, a title that to him means simply telling the truth, something that is impossible to do inside Eritrea. “It is a dictatorship,” he said flatly. “I don’t have to be in the opposition to say that.” The plight of Eritrean migrants made headlines in France this month after the police broke up encampments in central Paris, dispersing almost 400 people, many of them Eritreans, and many of them on their way to Britain. Radio Erena covered these events, but to Mr. Simon, who has been tracking the Eritrean migration for years, they barely count as news. “We are more focused on the people in Sudan, Ethiopia and Libya who are in a much worse situation,” he said. Besides the 357,000 Eritreans now living in United Nations-administered refugee camps in neighboring Sudan and Ethiopia, there were 34,400 Eritreans in Israel as of last March, with 464 living in detention centers under conditions ruled unconstitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court. The hardship of exile and the trauma of the exodus are an old story for Radio Erena, which began with coverage of the kidnapping of Eritreans by criminal gangs in the Sinai desert. The drowning of 366 Eritreans off the Italian island of Lampedusa in October 2013 helped focus attention in Europe, but Mr. Simon is still battling widespread indifference. “No big country is paying attention to put pressure on Eritrea,” he said. “The lack of interest is a big issue. When you say you are a radio for Eritrea, people lose interest because nobody cares. It is sad.”

Europe
Eritrea
Refugees,Internally Displaced People
Human Rights