A Hidden Toll on Employment: Cut to Part Time

Abstract: The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago. The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy. Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation. “I either stop eating, or stop using anything I can,” said Marvin L. Zinn, a clerk at a Walgreens drugstore in St. Joseph, Mich., who has seen his take-home pay drop to about $550 every two weeks from about $650, as his weekly hours have dropped to 37.5 from 44 in recent months. Mr. Zinn has run up nearly $2,000 in credit card debt to buy food. He has put off dental work. He no longer attends church, he said, “because I can’t afford to drive.” On the surface, the job market is weak but hardly desperate. Layoffs remain less frequent than in many economic downturns, and the unemployment rate is a relatively modest 5.5 percent. But that figure masks the strains of those who are losing hours or working part time because they cannot find full-time work — a stealth force that is eroding American spending power. All told, people the government classifies as working part time involuntarily — predominantly those who have lost hours or cannot find full-time work — swelled to 5.3 million last month, a jump of greater than 1 million over the last year. These workers now amount to 3.7 percent of all those employed, up from 3 percent a year ago, and the highest level since 1995. “This increase is startling,” said Steve Hipple, an economist at the Labor Department. The loss of hours has been affecting men in particular — and Hispanic men more so. Among those who were forced into part-time work from the spring of 2007 to the spring of 2008, 73 percent were men and 35 percent were Hispanic. Some 28 percent of the jobs affected were in construction, 14 percent in retail and 13 percent in professional and business services, according an analysis by Mr. Hipple. “The unemployment rate is giving you a misleading impression of some of the adjustments that are taking place,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist of Wachovia in Charlotte. “Hours cut is a big deal. People still have a job, but they are losing income.” Many experts see the swift cutback in hours as a precursor of a more painful chapter to come: broader layoffs. Some struggling companies are holding on to workers and cutting shifts while hoping to ride out hard times. If business does not improve, more extreme measures could follow. “The change in working hours is the canary in the coal mine,” said Susan J. Lambert of the University of Chicago, a professor of social service administration and an expert in low-wage employment. “First you see hours get short, and eventually more people will get laid off.” For the last decade, Ron Temple has loaded and unloaded bags for United Airlines in Denver, earning more than $20 an hour, plus generous health and flight benefits. On July 6, as management grappled with the rising cost of fuel, Mr. Temple and 150 other people in Denver were offered an unpalatable set of options: they could transfer to another city, go on furlough without pay and hope to be rehired, or stay on at reduced hours. Mr. Temple and his wife say they cannot envision living outside Colorado, and they probably could not sell their house. Similar homes are now selling for about $180,000, while they owe the bank $203,000. So Mr. Temple took the third option. He reluctantly traded in his old shift — 3 p.m. to midnight — for a shorter stint from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. He gave up benefits like paid lunches and overtime. His take-home pay shrunk to $570 every two weeks from about $1,350, he said. Mr. Temple’s wife, Ali, works as an aide at a cancer clinic, bringing home nearly $1,000 every two weeks, he said. But collectively, they earn less than half of what they did. Suddenly, they are having trouble making their $1,753 monthly mortgage payment, he said. They are relying on credit cards to pay the bills, running up balances of $2,700 so far. Gone are their dinners at the Outback Steakhouse. Mr. Temple recently bought cheap, generic groceries from a church that sells them to people in need. “That’s the first time in my life I’ve had to do that,” he said. “We are cutting back in every way.” Mr. Temple has been searching for another job, applying for a cashier’s position at Safeway and a clerk’s job at Home Depot, among others. But the market is lean. “I’ve applied more than 20 times, and I haven’t had a single call back,” he said. His search is constrained by the high price of gas. “I can’t afford to go drive my truck around and look for a job,” he said. So Mr. Temple has done his search online — until he fell behind on the bills, and the local telephone company cut off Internet service. On a recent day, he bicycled to a Starbucks coffee shop with his laptop for the free connection. The growing ranks of involuntary part-timers reflect the sophisticated fashion through which many American employers have come to manage their payrolls, say experts. In decades past, when business soured, companies tended to resort to mass layoffs, hiring people back when better times returned. But as high technology came to permeate American business, companies have grown reluctant to shed workers. Even the lowest-wage positions in retail, fast food, banking or manufacturing require computer skills and a grasp of a company’s systems. Several months of training may be needed to get a new employee up to speed. “Companies today would rather not go through the process of dumping someone and hiring them back,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “Firms are going to short shifts rather than just laying people off.” More part-time and fewer full-time workers also allows companies to save on health care costs. Only 16 percent of retail workers receive health insurance through their employer, while more than half of full-time workers are covered, according to an analysis by Ms. Lambert, the University of Chicago employment expert. The trend toward cutting hours in a downturn lessens the pain for workers in one regard: it moderates layoffs. Many companies now strive to keep payrolls large enough to allow them to easily adjust to swings in demand, adding working hours without having to hire when business grows. But that also sows vulnerability, heightening the possibility that hours are cut when the economy slows and demand for goods and services dries up. “There’s a lot of people at risk in the economy when they keep the headcount high and they only have so many hours to distribute,” Ms. Lambert said. “It really is a trade-off for society.” Goodyear Tire has in recent months idled work for a few days at a time at many of it factories, as the company adjusts to weakening demand. At one plant in Gadsden, Ala., workers expect they will soon lose a week’s wages to another slowdown — something Goodyear would neither confirm nor deny. “People are scared,” said Dennis Battles, president of the local branch of the United Steelworkers union, which represents about 1,350 workers there. “The cost of gas, the cost of food and everything else is extremely high. It takes every penny you make. And once it starts, when’s it going to quit? What’s going to happen next month?”

Layoffs and Job Reductions
Labor
Wages and Salaries


Testimony of 4 Admitted Terrorists Gives a Rare View of Al Qaeda

Abstract: There was a British man who nearly became the second shoe bomber and took his orders directly from Osama bin Laden. There was a man from Long Island who, after dropping out of the United States Army during training, traveled to Afghanistan to fight American troops alongside the Taliban. And there were two high-school classmates from Flushing, Queens, who trained at a terrorist camp in Pakistan and returned to the United States with orders to stage suicide attacks on New York City subways during rush hour. This was the cast of characters that took the stand as cooperating witnesses for the government in the trial of Adis Medunjanin, a Queens man who is accused of participating in the subway bombing plot, which federal officials have called one of the most serious threats to American security since the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury hearing the case in Federal District Court in Brooklyn is expected to begin its deliberations on Monday. Mr. Medunjanin faces up to life in prison if convicted. A rare terrorism trial stemming from a credible plot that was days away from being executed has yielded the even rarer spectacle of admitted terrorists testifying for the government they had sworn to fight — and against one of their own. The testimony of the four men — Zarein Ahmedzay, Saajid Badat, Bryant Neal Vinas and Najibullah Zazi — was interspersed with moments of tears, conviction and regret, and provided a detailed and unusually human window into a normally secretive world, as each man described the journey that led him to the cusp of committing mass murder on behalf of Al Qaeda . Though there are limits to what can be extrapolated from their personal tales, common themes emerged. They were all young Muslim men living in the West who were influenced by the fiery preaching of radical clerics: most often by Anwar al-Awlaki, who called on all Muslims to take up arms. All of them traveled to the Middle East to fight against American troops in protest of what they viewed as the occupation of Afghanistan. They were all recruited to terrorist training camps, where they were told by Qaeda leaders that their passports made them far more valuable as suicide bombers back home, and they all struggled with the moral implications of their actions as they prepared to kill as many people as possible. All four men pleaded guilty: three are testifying in the hope of leniency at sentencing, while the fourth, Mr. Badat, was released early from a prison in Britain in exchange for his cooperation. Mr. Zazi said he hoped to get “a second chance.” The government has highlighted the cooperation of four convicted terrorists as a sign of its success in undermining groups like Al Qaeda by using the threat of punishment to get their members to turn on one another, in much the same way as prosecutors took on the mob in an earlier era. “As you apply a law enforcement model to these cases, people always cooperate,” said Anthony S. Barkow, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in terrorism cases and now works in private practice. “It took a long time in organized crime; it is taking less time with national security.” On the stand, the men professed their Islamic faith but distanced themselves from the Qaeda leadership, which one man said had “brainwashed” him and another accused of using young religious fighters as pawns. Their appearances in a usually sleepy courthouse in the heart of Brooklyn — which went unnoticed by the families who played each day in the park outside — have been used by some as evidence that the United States justice system was well positioned to handle terrorism cases. “The federal courts are not just about providing due process and protecting defendants’ rights,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who focuses on national security. “There is an information-producing function that allows the public to see how terrorists act and how the government acts to prosecute these terrorists.” He added, “That’s something that we lose when we deal with more secretive processes like military commissions .” The testimonies of Mr. Badat and Mr. Vinas were unrelated to the 2009 subway bombing plot that was the subject of Mr. Medunjanin’s trial. Instead, they were called as expert witnesses about Al Qaeda to corroborate facts about terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The camps Mr. Badat described encountering in 1999 — situated in major cities, with feasts, singalongs and even sporting events — seemed to bear little resemblance to the secret, mud-walled facilities encountered by Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi a decade later. Mr. Badat, the British man who was prepared to board a plane with a bomb sewn into his shoe before backing out of the plot in 2001, testified by video to his role in the conspiracy. He described his radicalization as a “gradual process,” which accelerated when he became friendly with people who had taken up arms to fight for Islamic causes. “It was almost the glamour factor of it drawing me in,” Mr. Badat testified. “So it was my desire then to go and at least acquire some training in taking up arms.” For several of the witnesses, friendship played a large role in their radicalization. Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi, who pleaded guilty in the subway plot, described listening to radical lectures together on a single iPod , with one man using the left earpiece and the other the right. Mr. Zazi cried when talking about his love for the former high-school classmate against whom he was testifying. Mr. Badat agreed to cooperate with the British and American governments on the condition that he never have to testify against a good friend from London who had introduced him to violent jihad. When it came time to carry out their attacks, each of the witnesses withdrew or failed. Mr. Badat decided not to board the plane and dismantled the bomb in his shoe, keeping the components under his bed for two years until his arrest. Mr. Vinas, who decided he would rather carry out a suicide mission than deal with altitude sickness in the mountains of Afghanistan, was ultimately ruled out because Qaeda leaders did not think he had enough religious knowledge. The plot of Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi was derailed by law enforcement, but it had already been downsized because Mr. Zazi had lost a page of his bomb-making notes. Other details emerged that provided insight into the thinking of the Qaeda leaders to whom the men answered. Mr. Ahmedzay recalled being cautioned against planning overly ambitious attacks on the scale of Sept. 11 because such attacks so often failed. “If you can’t make a big bomb, do something smaller,” he recalled the leaders saying. “Other missions have failed because they tried to do a big thing.” Just going into a crowded area and shooting people, Mr. Ahmedzay said he was told, was better than nothing.

Terrorism
Medunjanin Adis
Zazi Najibullah
Ahmedzay Zarein
Badat Sajid
Vinas Bryant Neal
Al Qaeda
Witnesses
New York City


N.F.L. Will Use IPads to Expand In-Game Concussion Testing

Abstract: “Where are we?” “Who did we play in the last game?” “What is the date today?” Those are some of the questions N.F.L. players are asked after they are hit in the head during a game. Next season, they are coming to an iPad. The mandatory postinjury sideline concussion assessment tool, instituted for the 2012 season along with a baseline test done during physicals at the start of preseason, will now be used in app form by all 32 teams, a method that was tried by a handful of teams in a pilot program last season. The hope is that being able to compare the results of a baseline test and a postinjury test side by side in real time will speed diagnosis and help doctors and trainers recognize when a player should be removed from a game. The league also plans to have independent neurological consultants on the sideline during each game to assist the team physician in diagnosing and treating players. The players union, which had pushed strongly for independent doctors to be on the sideline, said it was encouraged by the technological advance the new test represented, but it still had questions about how much power the independent consultants would have to make decisions about players. The union wants the independent sideline concussion experts to have almost exclusive authority in detecting concussions and administering tests, in part because it believes team doctors are often busy attending to other injured players, while the concussion experts are there for one reason. “If you’re busy and didn’t see the play, how do you know you need us?” said Dr. Thomas Mayer, the union’s medical director. “This is a big enough issue we need an extra set of eyes, an extra judgment.” The postinjury test is quick — it takes about six to eight minutes — and shares many elements with the baseline test to allow a comparison that might indicate a decline in function. Both include a section on the players’ concussion history and a 24-symptom checklist; players are asked to score themselves on a scale of 1 to 6 in categories like dizziness, confusion, irritability and sleep problems. Both note any abnormal pupil reaction or neck pain. There is a balance test and a concentration test, in which players, who are usually brought to the locker room to be evaluated, are asked to say the months of the year in reverse order, to recite a string of numbers backward and to remember a collection of words three times. Then they are asked to recall them again, without warning, at least five minutes later. The words and sequence of numbers may be changed from test to test, so players cannot memorize them from a previous test to mask concussion symptoms — a fact that has annoyed players, according to Dr. Margot Putukian, the director of athletic medicine at Princeton University Health Services and a member of the N.F.L.’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee. On the postinjury tests, there is one different element: a series of five questions designed to test orientation and glean how confused a player might be at that moment. They are: Where are we? What quarter is it right now? Who scored last in the practice or game? Did we win the last game? Those questions, known as Maddocks questions, were developed in the 1990s by an Australian doctor who worked with players in Australian rules football. “What the application does, when you are evaluating the athlete, you actually see — as they are doing their word recall — his baseline,” said Putukian, who added that it was her understanding that team doctors would administer the tests. “He was able to remember 15 out of 15 words, and now he’s having trouble giving you five back right away? Maybe he’s only able to remember two? It gives you real-time information.” The tests are far from perfect tools for diagnosing concussions. Some doctors are concerned the N.F.L. tests are trying to reduce concussion evaluation to ticking items off a checklist, a problem Putukian acknowledged, emphasizing the importance of having doctors familiar with the players evaluate them. Last season, Jets running back Shonn Greene took a hit to his helmet in a game and walked unsteadily back toward the huddle before quarterback Mark Sanchez sent him off. Greene later returned to the game, and the Jets said he had passed concussion tests given in the locker room. Also last season, San Francisco quarterback Alex Smith took a hit that caused blurred vision, but he remained in the game for several plays and completed a touchdown pass before being removed. He was subsequently found to have a concussion. While he was out, the backup Colin Kaepernick took over, and Smith effectively lost his starting job. “I think we have to be careful,” Putukian said. “The tool, it’s not the be-all, end-all. There are going to be athletes who have concussions that this tool does not pick up. It’s not a perfect test. Nor is there one. We don’t have one that is a perfect test.” She added: “Athletes may take this and perform this test and do fine on it. But you may know the athlete, athletes will stumble through it — ‘Yeah, we played the Seawhawks’ — you know they are struggling. It’s not bang, bang, bang. They’ll give you the right answers, but they are struggling. If you know that athlete, you say: ‘I know you passed the test, but I know you. You’re not O.K.’ ”

Concussion
Football
Medical test
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
iPad


P.S.G. Equals a Record

Abstract: Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored twice as French champion Paris St.-Germain beat Rennes, 4-0, to equal its record point tally for a season with three games left. P.S.G. has 89 points to match its total of two seasons ago.

Soccer
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Paris St-Germain FC Soccer Team


Elmont's School Success Is a Lesson to Others

Abstract: ELMONT - EVERY January, the Dutch Broadway Elementary School in Elmont holds a pep rally with high-kicking cheerleaders and rousing rounds of school songs. But instead of pumping up the school's basketball team before a big game, the pep rally is held to inspire the school's fourth graders before they take the state English test. Songs in past years have included "I'm a Believer," "I've Been Working on My Writing" and "At Dutch Broadway, We're Prepared." Walter Aksionoff, the school principal, said he started the pep rallies a few years ago as a way to counter the anxiety that comes with the state tests. "We didn't want any child going in thinking that this was a make-or-break test," he said. "This makes them feel at ease about the whole thing and helps them prepare mentally for it." It apparently has worked. The percentage of fourth graders at Dutch Broadway performing at or above grade level in English increased to about 86 percent last year from a low of 47 percent in 1998. Math scores followed suit, reaching 98 percent last year, up from 60 percent in 1998. The pep rally is unique to Dutch Broadway, but it is just one piece in a package of reforms the Elmont school district has instituted throughout all six of its schools -- all elementary schools -- since the late 1990's. Districtwide test scores reflect the same success Dutch Broadway has experienced, with district math scores increasing by 25 percentage points since 1998 to 95 percent performing at or above grade level, and reading going up by 37 percentage points, to 87 percent at or above grade level. (Statewide, 85 percent performed at or above level in math and 70 percent in reading.) State Assemblyman Thomas Alfano, whose district includes Elmont, was so impressed by the substantial increases in the test scores that he took the Assembly Task Force on Successful Schools to Elmont in early December. "There are many lessons that can be learned from Elmont and hopefully replicated elsewhere," Mr. Alfano said. The diversity of the student population in Elmont is very similar to that of many neighborhoods in New York City, he said, with children coming from dozens of countries and speaking some 70 languages. "Elmont is a very working-class community," he said. "If we can see what we're doing right in Elmont, maybe we can make things better in Brooklyn and Queens or other places that are struggling." The district, which shares a border with Queens, has about 4,000 students, many of them recent immigrants from the Caribbean and India. The district spends roughly $10,000 a pupil each year, significantly lower than the state average of $13,000 and Nassau County's average of $17,000. Al Harper, the superintendent of the school district, attributed its success to "a truly collaborative effort where we have gotten everybody, all the stakeholders, on the same page and working toward the same goal." That effort includes teachers who are willing to come in early or stay late to offer special tutorials, administrators who carefully analyze test data and then guide teachers to work more effectively with students, and parents who rearrange schedules to make sure their children receive the additional help they need. Mr. Harper, who is a former high school principal and is in his first year as superintendent, said that his predecessor, Dr. Maria Palandra, "noticed that our scores were not where they should be about six years ago" and worked with other administrators and faculty members to change the district's course. Some of the programs the district instituted are like those that Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has instituted or plans to introduce in New York City schools, including mentoring programs for teachers and after-school tutoring sessions taught by teachers to struggling students. But other programs go further, like early-morning tutorials that are open to all students and Saturday academies where children can learn Spanish, French or Urdu and receive remedial help from college professors. "We totally revamped our enrichment program so that we can expose as many students as possible to higher learning of all different types," said Aubrey Phillips, the school board president. "This way we can try to reach each child at their own level." Hundreds of students stay after school or wake up early on Saturdays to attend these enrichment programs, which include foreign language instruction, writers' workshops, drama clubs, robotics, a jazz band and special tutoring with teachers from Hofstra and Adelphi Universities. On the academic front, the district created a curriculum map for each grade that shows teachers precisely what skills students should be working on in every subject at any given time of the year. The map ensures continuity among the district's six schools. "We have taken the state standards, identified the key ideas that need to be taught at every grade level, come up with appropriate materials and paced the instruction through the year to maximize instructional opportunities," said Lynne Stucchio, the district's director of curriculum and instruction. Elaine Mitchell, a second-grade teacher and president of the Elmont Elementary Teachers' Association, said that some teachers had complained that the map was too confining and did not allow enough creativity in teaching, but that most are very comfortable with it. "They take input from teachers as we go through every phase of the map," she said. "And it really just tells you what you need to teach, it doesn't tell you how to teach it." Administrators and teachers now also do much more analysis of test data to determine how to adjust their teaching methods. Mr. Aksionoff, the principal at Dutch Broadway, used the state social studies test as an example and said, "Let's say 35 kids got question number eight wrong, we'll look at the question and say: 'What are they asking? Is it history, geography? Or is it the language of the question that might have tripped them up?' " Some children may have trouble understanding questions that have a double negative, he said, so teachers can work on better explaining that type of sentence structure. Sandra Smith, the president of the Interschool Council of PTA's in Elmont and a parent of a former pupil at Dutch Broadway, credited the early-morning and after-school tutorials for the district's improved test scores. "Being in a blue-collar community, a lot of time parents couldn't afford to hire a tutor, so when this came along and they realized they were able to get tutoring from licensed teachers at no additional cost, they jumped at it," she said. Ms. Smith said that many parents think there generally is too much emphasis on testing, but they know that the requirements do not come from the local school district. "Parents are mad at the state and federal governments for applying so much pressure on kids and at such young ages," she said. "We're lucky that we have people in our district who think creatively and who are doing what is necessary to stay out in front." Keisha Paul, a sixth grader at Dutch Broadway, said she remembers being nervous about the English test when she was in the fourth grade. But at the school pep rally two years ago, she laughed hysterically when Mr. Aksionoff shouted that the children should "Go for a four!" -- the highest level attainable on the test -- and ripped open his jacket to reveal a giant 4 on his shirt. "It was fun and it made me feel like I didn't have to worry about it," Keisha said. "It made me feel like it wasn't a test anymore."

LONG ISLAND (NY)
TEACHERS AND SCHOOL EMPLOYEES


Study Says Pregnant Women in India Are Gravely Underweight

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Her first child survived eight months before succumbing to pneumonia; her second was stillborn; her third, delivered in a rickshaw, gasped for an hour before dying. When she got pregnant for a fourth time, Juhi, a woman from a South Delhi slum who uses only one name, was spotted by a local health worker and taken to a mobile clinic. A doctor diagnosed severe anemia, gave her iron pills and begged her to eat more. Juhi listened, and gave birth to a boy, Muhammad Sultan, who has survived his first birthday — a huge milestone in a country with about one-sixth of the world’s population but one-third of all newborn deaths. “My in-laws were telling me they would get my husband married to someone else, because I couldn’t have a healthy baby,” Juhi, 26, said in an interview. “That’s why we left our village. But now my mother-in-law is happy with me.” The poor health of children in India , even after decades of robust economic growth, is one of the world’s most perplexing public health issues. A child raised in India is far more likely to be malnourished than one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe or Somalia , the world’s poorest countries. Poor sanitation and a growing tide of drug-resistant infections also affect nutrition. But an important factor is the relatively poor health of young Indian women. More than 90 percent of adolescent Indian girls are anemic, a crucial measure of poor nutrition. And while researchers have long known that Indian mothers tend to be less healthy than their African counterparts, a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that the disparity is far worse than previously believed. By analyzing census data, Diane Coffey of Princeton University found that 42 percent of Indian mothers are underweight. The figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 16.5 percent. Ms. Coffey calculated that the average woman in India weighs less at the end of her pregnancy than the average woman in sub-Saharan Africa did at the beginning, an astonishing finding. Image A premature infant in Gurgaon, India. The poor health of children in India, even after decades of economic growth, is a perplexing public health issues linked to their mothers’ relatively poor health. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times “In India, people are richer, better educated and have fewer children than those in sub-Saharan Africa, so it’s really surprising that Indian children are shorter and smaller than those in sub-Saharan Africa,” Ms. Coffey said in an interview. “But when you step back and look at the state of Indian mothers, it’s not such a surprise after all.” Research has shown that genetics play no role in the size differences, leaving environmental factors as the only explanation, Ms. Coffey said. The reasons for Indian mothers’ relatively poor health are many, including a culture that discriminates against them. Sex differences in education, employment outside the home, and infant mortality are all greater in India than in Africa. “In India, young newly married women are at the bottom of household hierarchies,” Ms. Coffey said. “So at the same time that Indian women become pregnant, they are often expected to keep quiet, work hard and eat little.” Mothers also suffer from the same sewage-borne infections that so often kill their babies, made endemic by the primitive sanitation in much of the country, Ms. Coffey said. “It is likely that infectious disease is responsible for a signification portion of India’s pre-pregnancy underweight problem,” she said. Dr. Shella Duggal, Juhi’s doctor at the mobile clinic, said that almost every pregnant woman she treats in her visits to Delhi’s slums is severely anemic. Parasites, spread by poor sanitation and dirty water, are a crucial reason, she said. “So the first thing we do is deworm them and give them iron supplements,” Dr. Duggal said. “And then I tell them to eat.” It is a prescription many of her patients find difficult to carry out, she said. “These mothers are the last persons in their families to have food,” Dr. Duggal said. “First, she feeds the husband and then the kids, and only then will she eat the leftovers.” Juhi said she was trying to eat better. “I would like to have one more child,” she said, with a mixture of sadness and hope.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America


V.C.U. Point Guard Eric Maynor Has Final Shot at Unfinished Business

Abstract: RICHMOND, Va. — When Eric Maynor was a child, he often played basketball on a dirt court near his family’s mobile home in Raeford, N.C. He would stay there until sundown, literally leaving defenders in his dust. On that dirt court, white sneakers did not stay that color, and washing up was a postgame ritual. So when Maynor went to his father’s recreational league games, he was drawn to the shiny hardwood floor the way other children were drawn to cartoons. During halftimes, he ran to his father, George, a correctional officer, and asked if he could have a basketball. “Then you’d hear the people in the stands saying, ‘Who’s that little kid making all those shots?’ ” George Maynor said, laughing. “Whenever he made one, his eyes would get so big.” Maynor, Virginia Commonwealth’s senior point guard, now plays in front of N.B.A. scouts rather than the families and friends of rec league players. A two-time Colonial Athletic Association player of the year, he is averaging 22.4 points and 6.2 assists. He will help make the 11th-seeded Rams (24-9) a popular choice to pull off a first-round upset in the N.C.A.A. tournament when they face sixth-seeded U.C.L.A. (25-8) in an East Region game Thursday. In V.C.U.’s opening-round game against Duke two years ago, Maynor made a 17-footer with 1.8 seconds left to send the No. 11 Rams to a 79-77 victory over the No. 6 Blue Devils. In June, Maynor is expected to become the first C.A.A. player selected in the N.B.A. draft since Old Dominion’s Cal Bowdler was taken 17th over all by the Atlanta Hawks in 1999. “Obviously, he has blossomed,” said Ryan Blake, the N.B.A.’s assistant director of scouting. “He’s shot the ball a lot better this year, and his strength is the way he handles the ball and his ability to dish it.” That ability developed out of the spotlight. Raeford has a population of fewer than 4,000, and it may be best known as the home of the North Carolina turkey festival. Maynor worked for the city’s parks department for several summers, tending to Little League fields and operating the clock during youth basketball games. During those games, it was a struggle for him to stay off the court. In junior high school, he began playing in pickup games with his father and his older brother, Rodney. In those games, where Maynor was told he should never call a foul, he developed the high-arching teardrop shot that opponents now struggle to defend. Even though he became one of the top high school players in North Carolina, few college teams from major conferences seemed to notice. Clemson, Florida State and Wake Forest sent letters, and Maynor said that was where those courtships ended. “It frustrated people close to me that wanted me to go to a big-name school,” Maynor said. “But all I thought about was going somewhere and playing for four years.” Maynor committed to Virginia Commonwealth, but after his freshman season, Coach Jeff Capel was hired by Oklahoma. Maynor considered transferring until his father encouraged him to wait until V.C.U. picked a new coach. When Anthony Grant was hired after spending 10 seasons as Billy Donovan’s lead assistant at Florida, Maynor knew little about him but plenty about the Gators, who had just won the 2006 national championship. “I told Eric we were going to win championships, and we were going to do it right,” Grant said. “There was going to be hard work involved, but we were going to have the most fun he’s ever had playing basketball.” Maynor stayed, and in his sophomore season he scored 9 consecutive points in the final 2 minutes 22 seconds of the C.A.A. final, leading the Rams past George Mason and into the N.C.A.A. tournament. That was followed by his game-winner against Duke. “I always thought I could play on the level of an A.C.C. team,” Maynor said. “When I get a chance to play against teams like that, teams that didn’t really look at me, I really turn it up a notch.” Maynor considered declaring for the N.B.A. draft after V.C.U. did not reach the N.C.A.A. tournament last season. But he met with his father and Grant, and realized he wanted to graduate and have one more chance on a college court. “I think Eric had some unfinished business from last year,” C.A.A. Commissioner Tom Yeager said. “And as far as his draft status goes, it appears his stock has improved.” Most draft experts predict Maynor will be selected in the mid-to-late first round. Maynor will focus on that after this season ends, which he hopes will not happen too soon. “We’ve been able to accomplish a lot,” he said. “But we’re not done.”

NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Basketball
Virginia Commonwealth University
College Athletics


Europe’s Recovery Nearly Stalled in the Fourth Quarter

Abstract: Europe’s economic recovery almost ground to a halt in the last quarter of 2009, according to data released Friday, capping a week of worries about the ability of some countries to deal with their outsize budget deficits. Gross domestic product in the 16-nation euro area increased by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with the third quarter, according to an initial estimate from Eurostat, the European Union ’s statistics agency. The same tepid rate was recorded for the 27 members of the European Union as a whole. France was essentially the only bright spot, increasing 0.6 percent in the quarter, driven in large part by consumer spending and inventory changes, its national statistics office, Insee, reported. Analysts said the main reasons for the softening in European growth were the weak labor market, retrenchment by companies and patchy consumer spending. The anemic recovery is still being supported by government stimulus programs, now under siege in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal because of growing nervousness in financial markets about government debt. Last month, the International Monetary Fund forecast growth in the euro zone this year at 1 percent. “If Europe posts 1 percent growth this year, that would be considered a great success,” said Alfred Steinherr, research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. “But that’s not enough to prevent unemployment rising or help private demand.” Most economists do not expect Europe to slide back into recession, but few expect it to keep pace with the rest of world. In the United States, gross domestic product increased at an annualized rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, equivalent to about 1.4 percent above the previous quarter. In China, the economy is expanding so rapidly that the central bank announced measures on Friday to require banks to set aside more reserves in a bid to limit credit. It was the second such move by the Bank of China in less than five weeks aimed at slowing the economy. During the third quarter, the euro zone economy grew 0.4 percent. For the year, gross domestic product contracted 4 percent in the euro zone and 4.1 percent in the European Union. Mr. Steinherr said Europe now faced a fundamental quandary after having failed to resolve deep-seated competitive issues that took root during the financial crisis. Market forces and the constraints of European fiscal agreements are imposing the “wrong policy mix,” he said, pushing several countries to try to cut their deficit spending at a time when it is needed most. “Temporary fiscal deficits have replaced private demand,” Mr. Steinherr said, “but it’s hard to see private demand coming back in 2010 or 2011.” One benefit of the current disarray over budget deficits, however, is that it has led to a weaker euro. That should help stimulate demand for additional European exports, something that could lift production and perhaps ease the pain of fiscal retrenchment. In Germany, which has the largest European economy, G.D.P. was flat in the fourth quarter after an expansion of 0.7 percent in the third. The Federal Statistics Agency in Germany said that the “only positive contribution was made by foreign trade,” while consumption and investment declined. No further breakdown of the German data will be available until Feb. 24. Aline Schuiling, an economist at Fortis Bank, said the stabilization in Germany “reflects some payback for the sharp expansion in the third quarter.” During that period, growth was helped by strong gains in fixed investment, which appear to have fallen away. “We think the economy will embark on a moderate growth path from the start of this year,” Ms. Schuiling added. In France, with an economy that trails only Germany in the euro zone, inventories contributed 0.9 percent to economic growth, while the domestic demand added half a percentage point. For the whole year, growth in France declined 2.2 percent. The Dutch economy also expanded, by 0.3 percent against the third quarter. The Italian economy contracted 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter, after an expansion of 0.6 percent in the previous quarter, the national statistical agency Istat said. G.D.P. contracted 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter from the period a year earlier. The Greek economy remained in recession, shrinking by 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter, according to Eurostat, while Portugal’s output was unchanged after two solid quarters. To the east, the economies of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania also shrank. On Thursday, data showed that Spain, hit especially hard by a housing slump, remained in a recession. For some, the trends suggest that the European economies might diverge further this year. “It’s becoming increasingly likely that we will see growing G.D.P. differentials between the northern and southern part of the area,” said Marco Valli, the chief Italian economist at UniCredit Research in Milan.

Economic Conditions and Trends
Europe
European Union
Recession and Depression
Gross National Product (GNP)
International Monetary Fund


Bruins’ Second Line Overcomes Adversity to Crush the Islanders

Abstract: The Boston Bruins’ worst period was also their most productive in a win over the Islanders. After a dominant first in which the visiting Bruins scored only once on 18 shots, they overcame sloppiness in the second and scored three times en route to a 6-3 victory Monday night. The second line of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Reilly Smith combined for three goals and six assists to power a Bruins offense that has scored 12 goals in two games. Kyle Okposo, moved off the top line, had a goal and two assists for the Islanders, and Frans Nielsen and Michael Grabner also scored. The Islanders lost their third straight (0-2-1) heading into their outdoor game at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday against the Rangers. Kevin Poulin made 30 saves. “We played well but didn’t bury enough chances,” Okposo said. “We have to get over this loss and come back strong against the Rangers.” Marchand, who had a goal and three assists, said: “We’re expected to do a job out there. We got contributions from every line. That’s how we win games and what makes us so tough to play against.” The Bruins have had trouble with the Islanders this season, dropping the first two meetings before avoiding a series sweep. Boston, which has won four of five (4-0-1), is not used to a speed game. The Islanders used that element to offset the bigger Bruins, who took four leads before putting the Islanders away. “It wasn’t the type of game that we like to play,” said Bergeron, who had a goal and an assist. “They are a team that likes that. That run-and-gun type of game is not really our style.” Loui Eriksson, Carl Soderberg and the hulking defenseman Zdeno Chara added goals for the Bruins. Chad Johnson, in goal in place of Tuukka Rask, made 34 saves. Chara’s goal 8 minutes and 12 seconds into the third made it 6-3 and chased Poulin from the net in favor of Evgeni Nabokov, who came off the injured list earlier Monday after his second groin injury. The goal was the 500th N.H.L. point for Chara, chosen by the Islanders in the third round of the 1996 draft. PENGUINS 3, SABRES 0 Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 24 shots for his fourth shutout and Chris Kunitz and Deryk Engelland scored second-period goals, helping Pittsburgh defeat visiting Buffalo. Kunitz scored his 26th goal, Engelland his fourth. Tanner Glass scored his first goal in 26 games, an empty-netter that sealed it for the Penguins, who won for the 15th time in 16 games at home. AVALANCHE 4, STARS 3 Alex Tanguay scored the winning goal early in the third period and Semyon Varlamov made it stand up for Colorado against host Dallas. Colorado led twice, but both times, Tyler Seguin scored to tie the game for the Stars. Seguin, the Stars’ leader with 23 goals, had not scored in 13 games. He also had an assist on Jamie Benn’s first-period goal. Varlamov made 41 saves. HURRICANES 3, BLUE JACKETS 2 Jordan Staal scored the tiebreaking goal with 5:55 remaining to help host Carolina rally for a win over Columbus. Eric Staal scored twice in the third period as the Hurricanes erased a two-goal deficit for their fourth consecutive victory. Anton Khudobin made 22 saves.

Ice hockey
Bruins
Islanders
Carolina Hurricanes
Blue Jackets
Pittsburgh Penguins
Buffalo Sabres


When Bankers Fear to Act

Abstract: Where is the next J. P. Morgan ? In times of market crisis, the safest course for any one market participant may be the riskiest course for the entire market. If everyone wants to sell, prices can go in only one direction. In past financial crises, it has fallen to someone — regulators, investment banks or even a single banker — to organize collective action and avert disaster. Such moves involved persuading people to take steps that seemed to go against their own private interests. Buy stocks when everyone wants to sell? Lend money to a bank in danger of failing, when your own bank might need the money tomorrow? Join with others to buy securities from a desperate seller, rather than try to maximize your own profits from his precarious position? It goes against the basic principle of markets, that your job is to look out for yourself. But all those things have happened in the past. Unfortunately, nothing like them is happening in the current crisis. In 1907, Morgan demanded that presidents of New York trust companies — then a type of second-class bank — act together to save one of their own, the Trust Company of America, from a bank run. The presidents, wrote Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr in their book, “The Panic of 1907,” were “convinced that it was their primary responsibility to conserve their assets in order to survive the financial storm that was swirling around them.” Morgan said that would simply assure that all would fail, one by one. Morgan, then the dominant figure in American finance, called the presidents to a Saturday meeting in his library — and locked the door. Not until dawn Sunday did he let them out, after they had committed the needed cash. In 1987, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, it appeared that the crash of the previous day was going to get worse. Market makers had little capital and less appetite to risk it, and one by one trading in the shares of major companies was halted because there were no buyers. In Chicago, the futures market was talking about halting trading in stock index futures because there were not enough stocks trading to know what the futures were worth. That changed when two major brokerage firms — Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers — sent word to the New York Stock Exchange floor that they would buy any stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 if their orders were needed to keep the shares trading. Just after that word was sent, the market turned around. In 1998, when a possible hedge fund failure seemed to threaten the financial system, it was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that called in all the major financial institutions and organized a bailout. But efforts to organize concerted action this time have been limited. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has sought to get agreements in two areas — renegotiating mortgages and putting together a fund to deal with one of the early manifestations of the problem, the threatened collapse of odd financial instruments called structured investment vehicles — but there has been no visible effort to deal with the underlying problem. In part, that may reflect the slow realization of what is at stake. For many months, we called it the subprime mortgage crisis, because that was where the problem first became apparent. But that label is far too narrow, and serves to obscure what is at stake. “Rather ominously, borrowing costs for even the most creditworthy of firms have started to rise,” said Paul Ashworth, an economist with Capital Economics in London. Homeowners who can still get mortgages have seen rates rise in recent weeks, and banks say they are tightening their standards for both credit cards and commercial real estate loans. “The principal cause for concern today is the paralysis of the credit markets,” Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist and an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week. “The collapse of confidence in credit markets is now preventing that necessary extension of credit. The decline of credit creation includes not only the banks but also the bond markets, hedge funds, insurance companies and mutual funds. Securitization, leveraged buyouts and credit insurance have also atrophied.” The latest area of crisis is one that Morgan would have recognized in 1907. The major Wall Street houses — from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to Citigroup and Merrill Lynch — have refused to commit capital to the auction-rate market, a market that was supposed to allow investors to sell each week, via an auction that set interest rates. Now many auctions are failing. That has left customers unable to sell securities that were supposed to have virtually guaranteed liquidity, and it has left the issuers — who paid fees to the banks to conduct the auctions — paying ridiculously high interest rates. It’s not easy to get both borrowers and lenders feeling angry and abandoned, but Wall Street has managed the feat. When the crisis storms gathered in late 2007, much of the problem was with complicated securities — collateralized debt obligations, for example — that were extremely difficult to analyze. The failure of buyers to step up may have been rational. But that is not true with some of the auction-rate securities. They represent loans to borrowers that by any standard should be deemed good credits. But the big banks were unable or unwilling to either buy the securities or find customers to buy them. That lack of action has damaged the reputation of each of the houses, in ways that would have been unthinkable a few months ago. But the bosses are scared. They no longer are sure just how adequate their capital is, and they are afraid to commit it while the financial crisis swirls around them. Some got their jobs because their predecessors were too willing to take risks. It is not clear what the Fed or the Treasury could, or should, do now. The players can no longer be gathered into a single room, and they are regulated in different countries around the world, if they are regulated at all. Things are far more difficult because many of these markets are unregulated, making it difficult to gauge who is at risk and for how much. But it is hard to see this ending until something is done to, in Mr. Feldstein’s words, assure “that necessary extension of credit.” Lowering interest rates will not, by itself, do that so long as the banks and investors are too scared to lend money at any rate. In their book on the Panic of 1907, published last year before the crisis began, Mr. Bruner and Mr. Carr hailed Morgan’s actions, as well as the Fed’s 1998 move to salvage the hedge fund. But they warned, presciently as it turned out, that the current environment might hamper similar efforts in a new crisis. “In a globally complex financial system, will such collective action be possible if the crisis is triggered beyond the reach of any of today’s regulators?” they asked. So far, it appears the answer is no.

Finances
Banks and Banking
Morgan J P Chase & Co
Paulson Henry M Jr


Roger Federer Succeeded by Eric Butorac as ATP Player Council President

Abstract: The past president of the ATP Player Council was preparing Friday for a prime-time match at the United States Open, in front of thousands at cavernous Arthur Ashe Stadium. His successor had played on the far less daunting locales of Court 6 and Court 7. Eric Butorac, a 33-year-old doubles specialist from Rochester, Minn., ranked 28th, was elected a week ago to succeed Roger Federer, who held the position for six years. It may be hard to find a tougher act to follow than Federer, whose popularity is without equal in tennis. “There’s not a player in this tour who could possibly fill Federer’s shoes,” said Sergiy Stakhovsky, who was re-elected to a second term on the council. “It’s just a fact, and I think now for Eric it’s going to be a hard, tough job because Federer had a huge name and a huge impact in negotiations with his name and what he delivers for the game.” Although his experience on tour could hardly have been more different from Federer’s, Butorac has been deeply involved in the machinations of the tour since being elected to the council six years ago. He served as vice president (a role that will be filled by Gilles Simon) for the last two years, during which the council achieved major advances, most notably securing major increases in prize money for players who lose in the early rounds of Grand Slams. “To get to work closely with Roger was unreal,” Butorac said. “To have meetings with him and see how he handles everything and to do a lot of the legwork and work especially with the Grand Slam negotiations.” Butorac said his road to the tour, which included playing at Division III Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., complemented Federer’s view from the top because he could give Federer perspective on life for players who earn far less than the elite. “I would present him some ideas of what a lot of guys were concerned about, and it would blow his mind,” Butorac said. Butorac recalled Federer saying, “I can’t believe that guys are concerned about first-round prize money if they withdraw and don’t collect their check.” But, Butorac added, “a $40,000 first-round check to a guy ranked 90th in the world is massive.” Butorac believes one of his biggest assets is the time he can dedicate to the role and his approachability. “I don’t have to sign as many autographs,” he said. “So it allows me to be in the locker room, listening to players and hearing what their issues are. It allows me to go meet with tournament directors. It allows me to keep my finger on the pulse and then relay a lot of the information.” Butorac carries a small black notebook in which he logs issues that the council might address. Among his passions are increasing the number of matches on Grand Slam outer courts that are televised or streamed and increasing the number of players who are able to make a good living off the tour, which he estimates requires earning $150,000. Last year, 165 players earned that amount. Butorac will also lead players through future negotiations with the nine prestigious Masters 1000 tournaments, which will have their prize-money contract expire at the end of the year. “Within the ATP Tour they’ve been incredibly successful, but there is also a bit of variance within there,” Butorac said. “Some have done more than others. I need to make sure that our guys get taken care of and that these tournaments don’t fall too far behind the Grand Slams.” Butorac hopes to have those negotiations completed for the World Tour Finals in November. “We just want to make sure that our guys are getting compensated correctly — that’s a big issue — but we also don’t want to compromise the tournaments, and then they overpay, and things sway too much,” he said. “You don’t want them to go bankrupt. It’s about finding that right point without it getting ugly.” While his fellow council members Simon and Stakhovsky have been outspoken about men deserving more compensation than their female counterparts, Butorac balks at reopening the debate. “There was a time, the last four years, when the ATP was stronger than the WTA,” he said. “But there’s also times when the WTA was maybe equal to the ATP. So I doubt it’s something that we’re ever going to go back on. So I’m focusing on saying: ‘Let’s grow the whole pie. Let’s work together.’ We have a lot of combined events, and if the facility is right and it’s big and those events have been very successful, so let’s let that continue on and move forward. I don’t think it’s worth going back on that.”

Tennis
Eric Butorac
Roger Federer
Assn of Tennis Professionals
US Open Tennis


New York City Says Its Medicaid Approvals Were Proper

Abstract: Medicaid fraud conjures up images of shady doctors, pharmacists and businessmen being led away in handcuffs by federal agents as photographers snap away and television cameras roll. But this week, Medicaid fraud investigators struck out in a new direction as federal prosecutors brought a civil fraud lawsuit accusing the New York City government of using the bureaucracy to run its own Medicaid mill. And in the minds of several advocates for aged and disabled people, the lawsuit raised new questions about health policy, just as the government is expanding health care. The suit, filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, does not accuse officials of pocketing money for their own gain. Instead, it says the city improperly authorized 24-hour in-home care for thousands of patients, at a cost of $75,000 to $150,000 per year, without obtaining required recommendations from doctors, nurses and social workers. Because of that, Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor, paid “at least tens of millions of dollars” in benefits that it should not have, the lawsuit said. Robert Doar, the commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, which manages Medicaid in the city, said on Wednesday that he did not believe the city had been so cavalier in approving the home care, and that if it had not followed procedures, the state’s Medicaid officials would have noticed. With an aging population, the growth of in-home care has been one of the biggest challenges for states trying to control spiraling Medicaid costs. But the part of the lawsuit that troubled health care advocates was the accusation that in some cases, the city approved in-home care when patients should have been placed in nursing homes . The suit cited, by way of example, three elderly patients who, it said, had threatened to kill themselves or were unable to function in their homes. Several disability lawyers said on Wednesday that they feared the lawsuit would push the city to institutionalize more people rather than let them live at home. “The lawsuit is causing very great concern for those of us in the disability rights community,” Roger Bearden, director of the Disability Law Center at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest , said. “Serving people in the community, giving them the supports they need in the community, is a civil right, protected by antidiscrimination laws.” Mr. Doar sounded a similar note on Wednesday, saying the city had operated on the principle that whenever possible, it was better for people to be allowed to stay in their own homes than to be forced to go into nursing homes, even if that meant providing them with round-the-clock aides to care for them. “Not everybody needs to be in nursing homes,” Mr. Doar said. “We want everybody to live with dignity and as much independence as they can appropriately manage.” On its face, the lawsuit does not take a position on whether aging or disabled people should go into institutions. It accuses the city of overruling doctors who are responsible for deciding whether people should get 24-hour personal care, or of not seeking the doctors’ recommendation at all. The personal care program provides an aide, or more than one aide in shifts, who watches over patients and helps with tasks like grooming and cooking. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on Wednesday. But its lawsuit suggested that the city’s underlying motive in putting people in 24-hour personal care was to shift costs. The federal complaint says that before 2006, the city shared the cost of personal care with the state and federal governments through the Medicaid program, but that beginning in 2006, the state and federal governments picked up the whole cost. But city officials said on Wednesday that the complaint was oversimplifying the financing of the program, and that the 2006 change had put limits on how much the city would have to contribute to the cost of personal care but had not eliminated it. City officials said their statistics did not support the federal government’s suggestion that the city was trying to shift costs. In the last few years, the number of New York City residents entering the personal care program had gone down slightly, to 3,900 in 2009 from 4,700 in 2005.

Medicaid
Frauds and Swindling
New York City
Suits and Litigation
Home Health Care
Elder Care
Human Resources Administration


Cuomo’s First State of the State Address Won’t Be at Capitol

Abstract: Next Wednesday, four days after he is sworn in as governor, Andrew M. Cuomo will deliver the annual speech known as the State of the State address, outlining the condition of New York and his plans for the legislative session. But unlike his predecessors, Mr. Cuomo will not deliver the address in the vaulted and ornate State Assembly chamber in the Capitol. Instead, he announced on Wednesday, he will break tradition and speak in a nearby state convention hall located beneath Empire State Plaza. Mr. Cuomo said the move to the larger site — announced jointly with Dean G. Skelos, the Republican poised to become the Senate majority leader, and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver — was an effort to make enough room to invite members of the general public alongside the lawmakers, state officials, lobbyists and others who are typically in attendance. “The change in setting is a metaphor for the change we must undergo as a state,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “We must reconnect with the people and rebuild a relationship of trust.” But in Albany, the switch in tradition carried other political connotations. Mr. Cuomo will now deliver his first major policy speech on neutral ground rather than on the home turf of Mr. Silver, a fellow Democrat with whom the governor-elect is widely expected to clash over how to close a budget gap estimated to be over $9 billion. And instead of delivering it to an audience filled with the very lawmakers and representatives of special interests likely to oppose some of his signal initiatives, like a property tax cap and cuts to Medicaid , Mr. Cuomo may in effect be bringing his own cheering section: roughly half the tickets to the event will be distributed to the public by lottery, according to his transition team, with the rest split between the governor’s guests and those of the Senate and the Assembly. That is a marked change from previous annual addresses, for which Mr. Silver’s office handled the ticketing, including the occasional request from governors and other legislative leaders for extra seats. While Mr. Silver assented to the changes, some lawmakers said privately that they believed Mr. Cuomo’s intent was to undermine them, not build trust. “It’s about diminishing the place of the Legislature,” said one Democratic lawmaker, who asked for anonymity because he did not want to anger Mr. Silver or Mr. Cuomo. The governor-elect’s goal, the lawmaker argued, is to stack the crowd with people who will cheer Mr. Cuomo on “as he calls for things the Assembly doesn’t like, such as a property tax cap, no taxes and redistricting reform.”

State of the State Message (NYS)
Governors (US)
Cuomo Andrew M
New York State


Dispute Over Island of Abu Musa Unites Iran

Abstract: TEHRAN — For Iranians, whose country’s borders have shrunk in the past 200 years after wars and unfavorable deals by corrupt shahs, territorial issues are a delicate matter. So a renewed claim by the United Arab Emirates to the tiny island of Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf has touched a raw nerve. But many here say that may just be the point. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his reactionary agenda tend to be unpopular among the urban middle classes, but he is enjoying a rare surge of support even in those inhospitable quarters in the growing dispute with Iran ’s Persian Gulf neighbors — one that he touched off by making a surprise visit to the island last month, a first by an Iranian president. Other Iranian politicians have rushed to embrace the controversy, aware of how it is playing at home. A parliamentary delegation made a high-profile visit to the island on Sunday to observe Iran’s National Day of the Persian Gulf, a normally low-key event, which seems bound to further inflame the issue. Other legislators have called for the establishment of a Persian Gulf province, and want the Tehran street that the United Arab Emirates Embassy is on renamed Abu Musa. For many Iranians, the dispute over Abu Musa, a four-square-mile spit of sand with about 2,000 inhabitants and surrounded by pristine blue waters, arouses strong nationalistic feelings at a time of general hopelessness over the devastating impact of a grinding economy, foreign sanctions and a feeling of unprecedented isolation. To that extent, it mirrors Iran’s nuclear program , which has also whipped up nationalistic emotions that Mr. Ahmadinejad has used to build support for the government. “We Iranians continuously fight and disagree like a husband and wife during a nasty divorce,” Somaye Allahdad, 35, a Tehran homemaker who does not always agree with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies, said over a family lunch of traditional lamb kebab and sabzi, a sort of herbal stew. “But when someone tries to take away our child, we team up and face the threat.” Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit to Abu Musa, where he spoke to an audience of sun-tanned Iranian fishermen, prompted angry reactions from Arab states on the western shore of the Persian Gulf, which rejected his assertion that the island is occupied by Iran. That, too, may have been part of the plan, some Iranians believe. “Be sure that Ahmadinejad saw those angry Arab reactions coming,” said Mrs. Allahdad’s aunt, who would not give her name. “He needs distraction from his internal problems.” If that was the plan, it seems to be working. On Sunday, the Facebook page of the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, was closed after tens of thousands of Iranians had left the slogan “Persian Gulf forever” in the comments section of his latest post. At Mrs. Allahdad’s lunch, several relatives, none of whom had voted for the president, debated loudly over his intentions, the continuing scourge of inflation and the effects of sanctions imposed by the West because of Iran’s nuclear program. But all concluded that Mr. Ahmadinejad had done the right thing by visiting Abu Musa. Mrs. Allahdad spoke of her father, who died on the front lines during the eight-year war with Iraq when she was a young girl in 1981. “We defended every inch of our nation with our lives, and now we should give the Arabs our island? Over my dead body,” she said. Tensions in the Persian Gulf have always run high, but with Iran jockeying for the position of regional power and recent weapons purchases by Saudi Arabia and the emirates worth more than $100 billion, the dispute over the island takes on added significance. According to a 1971 memorandum of understanding between Iran and the emirate of Sharjah, the island and its energy resources are to be divided between the two. By agreeing to the pact, the tiny emirate prevented an invasion by Iran, which two days earlier had taken two other disputed islands, Greater and Lesser Tunb, which were even smaller and uninhabited. Iran has stoutly defended its actions, saying all three islands were Iranian territory until Britain occupied them in 1908. The United Arab Emirates say most of the inhabitants of Abu Musa have been Arab for centuries. In 1980, the emirates took their claim to the United Nations Security Council, which rejected it. Most of the island’s infrastructure like roads and schools, including a university, have been built by Iran, and Abu Musa’s governor is Iranian. One Iranian analyst sympathetic to the government said the ownership issue had surfaced now as part of the Western campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, which it says is peaceful but the West suspects is a cover for developing weapons. “The emirates are not acting independently in this matter,” said the analyst, Sadollah Zarei, 55, a columnist for the hard-line state Kayhan newspaper. “Bigger powers are behind this.” He said the West was trying to raise the pressure on Tehran ahead of the second round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, scheduled for May 23. “By driving up tensions in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. and their allies are trying to send a message to Iran: back down, or face pressure on other fronts,” Mr. Zarei said. Whatever the reason for the resurfacing of the Abu Musa claims, many here agree the Iranian collective psyche can be wounded by even the smallest verbal threat to the nation’s territorial integrity. History has not smiled on Iran, which has lost territory in the Caucasus, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Bahrain after wars with Russia and highly unfavorable land sales by a succession of shahs, among other things. “In the past 200 years, our territory has been taken from us bit by bit,” said Mohammad Esmael Heydari, 68, a retired journalist. He also pointed out that the Soviet Union and Britain invaded Iran during World War II . “Such incidents are not quickly forgotten here,” he said. “We do not want to lose any more territory. No more.” While the Persian Gulf is a handy motive for stirring up nationalist support, there is also an ethnic element to the appeal, as Mrs. Allahdad explained after lunch. “These Arabs pretend as if they rule the region, but they have no history, and no independence, like Iran,” she said. “They have no right to look down upon us.” For three years, Mrs. Allahdad and her family lived on the Iranian island of Kish, where her husband was working. Mrs. Allahdad confided that in all that time she had never made an effort to visit Abu Musa, even though it was quite near. There was no point, she said, because she had been told it was a barren place where there was nothing to do. “I don’t need to go there,” she said. “All that matters is that it is Iranian.”

Iran
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
United Arab Emirates
Abu Musa
Persian Gulf
Politics and Government
International Relations
Defense and Military Forces


Popularity of Mixed Martial Arts Revives Interest in Once-Secret Soviet Techniques

Abstract: It was born in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution and remained largely a state secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is called sambo, a Russian acronym that stands for self-defense without weapons, and it is a martial art that combines striking, submissions, throws and weapons disarmament. Popular in Russia and the former Soviet republics, sambo was relatively unknown in the rest of the world. But over the last five years that has slowly changed in the United States with the increased popularity of mixed martial arts, a sport that counts a number of sambo experts among its elite fighters. Two such fighters, Fedor Emelianenko and Andrei Arlovski, will participate in a mixed martial arts event Saturday in Anaheim, Calif. Emelianenko, considered by some to be the best fighter in the world, will take on Tim Sylvia, the former heavyweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Arlovski, also a former U.F.C. champ, will square off against Ben Rothwell, an American who has dabbled in sambo. Sambo originated in the early 1920s as the newly formed Soviet Union attempted to improve the hand-to-hand-combat abilities of the Red Army. Two men, Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oschepkov, studied various martial arts throughout the world — disciplines like karate, judo and Mongolian wrestling — to find the most efficient way to thwart an armed opponent. They worked independently through the 1930s. But after the Soviet government reportedly killed Oschepkov in 1937 for political reasons, a student of his, Anatoly Kharlampiev — along with students of Spiridonov — began combining their techniques. In 1938, the Soviet government recognized this fusion of teachings as the country’s official combat sport. “It was a great propaganda piece,” said Dayn DeRose, a longtime sambo practitioner and the owner of South Mountain Martial Arts in Madison, N.J. “It was a very calculated move by the Russian government to unite the different ethnic groups.” To make sambo a sport, Soviet officials prohibited striking a competitor, for safety reasons. They also created a new uniform: a modified judo jacket along with shorts and shoes. After World War II, the sport’s authorities banned choking maneuvers, saying they were impractical on the battlefield. At its core, however, some sambo experts said this rules change reflected a nationalistic impulse: the desire to distance sambo from its resemblance to judo. Even as sambo was transformed into a sport, the country’s military and secret police continued to practice it without competitive restrictions, a form of the martial art known as combat sambo. This variation includes strikes, chokes and weapons disarmament maneuvers. Both forms of sambo remained behind the Iron Curtain until the mid-1960s. After Soviets using sambo began competing and succeeding in international judo competitions, the sport version of sambo gained popularity in Europe and Japan. In the 1970s, sport sambo came to the United States by way of wrestlers and judo experts. And though it initially caught on, by the early 1990s the sport’s growth here had begun to wane because of disagreements among the sport’s organizers and the rising popularity of Brazilian jujitsu. In 1993, Royce Gracie, a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, dominated the first Ultimate Fighting Championship, despite being the tournament’s smallest competitor. Since then, Brazilian jujitsu has become one of the most popular martial arts in the United States. It is almost universally considered an essential skill set for mixed martial artists even though its moves are largely the same as those of judo and sambo. The three martial arts differ primarily in emphasis, philosophy and competitive rules. “Maybe I did a better marketing job,” said Rorion Gracie, Royce’s brother and the co-founder of the U.F.C., of the popularity of jujitsu. Many sambo experts agreed. “The people coming out of the Soviet Union were trying to find appropriate ways to popularize something in a capitalist world, and that was difficult,” DeRose said. Sambo has grown over the last five years in the United States because of the popularization of mixed martial arts and the increased access to Russian coaches, said Stephen Koepfer, the head coach of New York Combat Sambo in Manhattan. Enrollment in national tournaments, which was virtually nonexistent in 2003, has climbed to roughly 100 people, he said. And sambo has gained a reputation for its crushing leg submissions. In an e-mail interview, Igor Kurinnoy, the head of Club Boretz, a sambo academy in Moscow, said that combat sambo began to spread after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian immigrants like Alexander Barakov, Koepfer’s teacher, brought combat sambo with them to the United States. In 2001, combat sambo became an international sport. Competitors wear headgear, shin pads and a sambo uniform. Experts say that it is the dominance of fighters like Arlovski and Emelianenko that has been the main factor in the growth of both combat and sport sambo in the United States. More recently, in June, another sambo expert, Amir Sadollah, received considerable attention after he won the U.F.C.’s mixed martial arts reality show “The Ultimate Fighter.” “Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France and the next day there are twice as many people on bicycles,” said Serge Gerlach, who runs Cali Combat Sambo, a school outside of San Francisco. “I get that same effect” from Emelianenko, he added. “Sambo is mixed martial arts,” said David Rudman, the founder of Sambo-70 in Moscow, the sport’s largest academy in the world. “Show me a move and it’s good, we use it.” Some schools are doing just that. The American Sambo Association, an organization founded by Koepfer and Barakov to promote the sport, has modified the rules to broaden the sport’s appeal. Vladislav Koulikov, a Russian immigrant who owns Ultimate Sambo, a school in upstate New York, implemented a belt system to help attract students. Some of these inventions may rub traditionalists the wrong way, but not Emelianenko. “I’m all for it,” he said through an interpreter. “It’s my desire to advance the sport.”

Martial Arts
Mixed Martial Arts
Ultimate Fighting Championship


China and Vietnam Agree to Talks on South China Sea Dispute

Abstract: BEIJING — China announced Sunday that it and Vietnam had agreed to hold talks on how to resolve conflicts arising from a sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea, an issue that has escalated tensions between them and led to angry protests by the Vietnamese. The announcement came after Dai Bingguo, the senior Chinese official in charge of foreign affairs, met with Ho Xuan Son, a Vietnamese vice foreign minister and special envoy, on Saturday in Beijing, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. Xinhua said both countries had agreed to “adopt effective measures to jointly safeguard peace and stability of the South China Sea” and to take seriously a multination pact reached in 2002 that was supposed to help resolve territorial disputes. The pact has long been ignored. The Chinese and Vietnamese navies held joint exercises this month despite the intensifying maritime tensions. Xinhua’s report gave no details of how the China-Vietnam talks would proceed. The dispute over the South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits, has festered for years, and neither country has made any concessions despite conflicts involving fishing vessels, maritime surveillance boats and oil exploration ships. In January, Nguyen Van Tho, Vietnam’s ambassador to China, said the two sides would hold more talks at some point on the dispute, and that he was optimistic. The talks never took place. Then in two episodes in May and June, Vietnam accused Chinese vessels of severing cables to Vietnamese oil exploration ships. Chinese officials said any such events were accidental or provoked by what they called Vietnam’s unilateral oil exploration. China has insisted that countries should only explore jointly in the region. Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei also have made claims to all or parts of the sea.

Politics and Government
China
Vietnam
South China Sea
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
International Relations


Julian Goodman Dies at 90; Led NBC

Abstract: Julian Goodman, a former journalist who produced the second Kennedy-Nixon debate before becoming the president of NBC during a tumultuous period of conflict with the Nixon administration, died on Monday at his home in Juno Beach, Fla. He was 90. The cause was kidney failure, a family spokesman said. Though he took pride in his frequent defense of the First Amendment and in being targeted by the Nixon White House as a political opponent, Mr. Goodman had a reputation for being self-effacing and never asking for a promotion or a raise. “People gave me one when I did my work well,” he wrote in 1985. When he was named president of NBC in 1965, he told The New York Times, “I am not an ambitious man.” But four years later he was engaged in a war of words with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who accused the news media of biased coverage of the Vietnam War. Mr. Goodman responded, “Evidently he would prefer a different kind of television reporting — one that would be subservient to whatever group was in authority at the time.” He later sparred with the Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan, who said the networks should be decentralized, but Mr. Goodman called that “dangerous thinking.” And he resisted the administration when it threatened to challenge broadcast licenses if network news divisions did not give President Richard M. Nixon what it considered unbiased — that is, more favorable — coverage. During his NBC tenure, Mr. Goodman also negotiated a record-setting $1 million deal to retain Johnny Carson as host of “The Tonight Show.” He joined other network chiefs in pushing to end the Fairness Doctrine, which required networks to present balanced coverage of controversial issues. (It was ultimately done away with.) And he was compelled to apologize to viewers in 1968 after NBC cut away from a nationally broadcast New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game so that a movie version of “Heidi” could go on as scheduled. Television viewers never saw the end of the game, thereafter known as “the Heidi bowl,” when Oakland scored two touchdowns in the last minute to overcome a 32-29 New York lead. Mr. Goodman called the programming switch “a forgivable error.” “I missed the end of the game as much as anyone else,” he said. Julian Byrn Goodman was born on May 1, 1922, in Glasgow, Ky., and began his journalism career as a $3-a-week reporter for The Glasgow Daily Times. After serving in the Army, he moved to Washington, where he met William McAndrew, the head of NBC News, who hired him for the night news desk, to replace David Brinkley. As an executive in the Washington bureau, Mr. Goodman later became a strong advocate for Mr. Brinkley, pressing NBC News to pair him with Chet Huntley to anchor the 1956 Democratic and Republican conventions. The two went on to fame anchoring the network’s nightly news together for more than a decade. Mr. Goodman often joked that freeing Mr. Brinkley from the night desk had been his greatest contribution to journalism. Mr. Goodman produced the second Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 in Washington, in an NBC studio. He rejected Cleveland, the initial choice, saying he could not find a suitable location there. Cleveland reacted with umbrage, and Mr. Goodman rarely set foot in the city again. Through his associations with Mr. McAndrew and then with NBC’s president, Robert Kintner, Mr. Goodman climbed the network ladder, reaching the president’s office when Mr. Kintner was fired in 1965. Mr. Goodman, who celebrated his Kentucky roots, wrote that when he called his family with the news of his appointment, his father told him that he was proud of him but had to hang up to get to a mule sale. “A man can always use another mule,” he told him. Mr. Goodman married Betty Davis, who was also from Kentucky, in 1946. She survives him, along with three sons, John, Jeffrey and Gregory; a daughter, Julie Koerner; and six grandchildren. Mr. Goodman expressed surprise that he was singled out by the Nixon administration. (His name appeared on a White House “opponents” list, a broader one than the original list of 20 Nixon “enemies.”) He recalled being visited in 1970 by the Nixon aide Charles W. Colson, who he said had arrived intending to intimidate him. But Mr. Colson later described Mr. Goodman as accommodating, because the only ornament on Mr. Goodman’s desk was a medal from Mr. Nixon’s 1969 inauguration. What Mr. Colson did not know was that Mr. Goodman had cleaned up his notoriously cluttered desk, leaving only the medal as a gag. “Evidently Colson has no sense of humor,” Mr. Goodman said afterward, “and he must think no one else has one, either.”

Goodman Julian
National Broadcasting Co
Deaths (Obituaries)
NBC News
News and News Media


U.S. Urges More E.U. Aid to Pakistani Refugees

Abstract: BRUSSELS — The United States on Tuesday appealed for more European aid to refugees fleeing the fighting between the Pakistani Army and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley, arguing that their plight was increasing instability in the region. “This is more than a humanitarian crisis — it is a strategic crisis,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “These refugees are in the exact area where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are. We have to have the same degree of stability and control on the Pakistani side of the border.” Speaking in Brussels after meetings with NATO and European Union officials, Mr. Holbrooke also conceded that Western strategy in Afghanistan had not been sufficiently well explained in Europe, where concern is mounting in some nations over military casualties. But his main goal was to call for greater use of Europe’s so-called soft power, suggesting that a commitment of an additional €50 million, or about $71 million, would help stabilize the Swat Valley. “Pakistan needs more attention from the Europeans,” Mr. Holbrooke told reporters. He added that the United States had provided $335 million, a larger percentage of relief aid than Washington would normally expect to provide. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, last month promised to contribute €72 million, but it also said that together with contributions from European governments, the E.U. contribution was significantly higher. “In purely humanitarian aid, the E.U. has provided $263 million in the last six months alone,” said John Clancy, European Commission spokesman for development and humanitarian aid. Mr. Holbrooke declined to criticize Europe’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan, rejecting such complaints as the “fruitless unproductive drama” that he said characterized the position of the Bush administration. He said that because the new U.S. administration had inherited “no strategy” from the Bush years, the purpose of the campaign in Afghanistan had not been sufficiently well explained in Europe. His comments came a day after David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, outlined his government’s Afghan policy in comments widely seen as a way to ease concern among Britons about British casualties in Afghanistan. Mr. Miliband called for greater engagement with moderate elements of the Taliban, a policy advocated by Washington. According to an opinion poll published by The Independent of London, more than half of British voters would like to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Separately, Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency, highlighted the need for more effort to “include in the Afghan political system people who either feel excluded or have chosen to be excluded.” Speaking at a foreign policy conference in Brussels, Mr. Bildt said the period between Afghanistan’s presidential election next month and its parliamentary elections in 2010 “is the crucial time when we can create the opportunity for people to become part of the political system.”

Refugees
Pakistan
European Union
Taliban
Holbrooke Richard C


Turnout Low in French Pension-Age Rallies

Abstract: PARIS — Thousands of French workers took to the streets Thursday to protest a government proposal to raise France’s minimum retirement age from 60, part of a raft of changes aimed at reining in a ballooning deficit in the state pension system. But while large marches took place in several cities, including Marseille and Paris, and opinion polls showed that about two-thirds of French supported the strikes, only about one in five public-sector employees took part, news reports said. Disruptions to air traffic, public transportation, schools and other government services were minimal. Around 10 percent of flights at the main international airport serving Paris, Charles de Gaulle, were canceled Thursday, as were 30 percent of flights at Orly Airport, south of the capital, the civil aviation authority said. Air France said it had maintained its full schedule of intercontinental flights at Charles de Gaulle, while 95 percent of medium- and short-haul flights continued to operate. Roughly 20 percent of its Orly flights were canceled, the airline said. The C.G.T., France’s largest union, had called for a national protest against the pension overhaul, aiming for 850,000 demonstration participants. “Only a show of force on the streets can defend the 60-year retirement age and the social achievements that Nicolas Sarkozy is methodically attacking,” Bernard Thibault, the C.G.T.’s secretary general, said, referring to the French president. Police estimates put the total number of protesters nationwide at no more than 350,000, far less than the 650,000 who protested the overhaul in March. Opinion polls published Thursday had raised expectations that the crowds would be larger. A survey in Le Parisien showed that 62 percent were prepared to demonstrate for their right to retire at 60, while one in L’Humanité showed that 68 percent either supported or sympathized with the strikers. France, which has one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe, faces a rising public deficit that is expected to reach 8 percent of gross domestic product this year. The government has been negotiating with unions to increase the retirement age to 62 or 63 while lengthening the duration of social security contributions required for a full pension. Finance Minister Éric Woerth said Wednesday that without drastic reform, “the only alternative is to condemn the French to even higher social charges and even higher taxes, and therefore even less employment.” According to a report last month by the Pensions Advisory Council, a government-appointed entity, the French state pension system is running a deficit of €11 billion, or about $13.6 billion; by 2050, it will be €103 billion, or about $127 billion, about 2.6 percent of projected G.D.P. As the country’s fiscal woes have deepened amid the economic recession, the debate over the pension system has even begun to divide the French Left. Last week, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, a former darling of the Socialist Party and a potential challenger to Mr. Sarkozy for the presidency in 2012, rejected the notion of retirement at 60 as “dogma.” “The world is changing very quickly, and we live amid globalization, which has its advantages and disadvantages, but that’s the reality,” he said. “That has to be recognized.”

France
Pensions and Retirement Plans
Strikes
Economic Conditions and Trends


Anemia Drugs Under Review by Congress

Abstract: A Congressional committee has begun an inquiry into the marketing and regulation of widely used anemia drugs that have recently raised safety concerns. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has sent letters to Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, the drugs’ marketers, requesting information about when they knew of possible risks and about how they have promoted the products. The letters also asked them to suspend any consumer advertising of the drugs and any incentive programs for doctors who prescribe them until after the Food and Drug Administration has time to determine whether further safety precautions are necessary. The products — Epogen and Aranesp from Amgen and Procrit from Johnson & Johnson — are all forms of erythropoietin, or Epo, a protein made by the human kidney to spur production of red blood cells. The drugs are mainly used to treat the anemia caused by kidney failure or cancer chemotherapy and have combined worldwide sales of roughly $10 billion a year. On March 9, the F.D.A. and the companies agreed to put a “black box” warning, the most serious kind, on the drugs’ labels after new evidence showed the medicines might cause blood clots, worsen cancer or increase the risk of death if overused. In its letters, the lawmakers said they viewed the reports of safety issues “with increasing alarm,” adding that as much as $700 million in annual sales of the three drugs were from uses that did not conform to the label. An F.D.A. advisory panel is scheduled to meet May 10 to further discuss the safety of the drugs. In issuing its warning last week, the F.D.A. said the companies had agreed to suspend direct-to-consumer advertising of the drugs on television and radio until after the advisory committee meeting. David Polk, a spokesman for Amgen, said Wednesday that the company had never directly advertised Epogen or Aranesp to consumers and did not provide financial incentives to doctors. He said the company would cooperate with the inquiry and that it believed the drugs were safe if used in accordance with the label. Kassy McGourty, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson, said the company had not conducted direct-to-consumer advertising for Procrit since 2005. She said the company could not yet comment. The letters, dated Tuesday, were signed by John D. Dingell, the committee’s chairman, and Bart Stupak, the chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, both Michigan Democrats. The Republican leaders of the committee and subcommittee did not sign. Mr. Dingell and Mr. Stupak said in the letters that the questions about the anemia drugs were part of a larger inquiry into whether the F.D.A. was adequately protecting the public from the risks of prescription medicines. Many of the questions to the companies were about their communications with the F.D.A. The lawmakers also asked when the companies had learned about suspensions of clinical trials for safety issues and when they had notified the regulators.

House of Representatives
Anemia
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Accidents and Safety
Advertising and Marketing
Amgen Inc
Johnson & Johnson Inc


Plan for No. 7 Train Would Link Queens and New Jersey

Abstract: At the corner of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue, where the No. 7 train terminates in Flushing, Queens, a barrage of people chat in dozens of languages, jostling for space on the sidewalk. Steps from the subway is an international smorgasbord of restaurants and shops, most splashed with Chinese characters and Korean lettering. At the Secaucus Junction station, next to the New Jersey Turnpike, there are lots of tall, tan and fluffy plants called cattails. There is also a Dunkin’ Donuts, a yet-to-open Italian fast-food restaurant and a parking lot that offers valet service. These two very different places might one day be knitted together by a single rumbling artery: the No. 7 subway line. The Bloomberg administration is considering a plan to extend the line under the Hudson River and into New Jersey to get more cars off the road and improve public transit options for commuters. The idea has become an intriguing Plan B after Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey scuttled a plan to dig a new commuter railroad under the river. “Sounds like a great idea to me if you live in New Jersey,” said Vincent Chin, 26, who lives in Queens. But would he ever envision riding the subway all the way to the other side? “No,” he said with a little chuckle, as he headed for the platform at the Flushing-Main Street station on Thursday. “Not at all.” At the other end of the hypothetical line, Jennifer Laddy passes through the Secaucus Junction Station between her home in Bergen County, N.J., and her sales job in New York City. “It’s a nice, clean station,” she said, standing on the platform on Thursday, wrapped in a camel-colored coat. “I thought I would hate taking the train in, and it’s not bad at all.” Then she was asked something she clearly did not expect: Had she ever ventured outside the station to sample the surrounding amenities, perhaps when there was an inordinate train delay? Ms. Laddy stared for a moment and then burst into a great belly laugh. “That’s a good one!” she said. “I’d rather go to Flushing.” The Flushing station is a grimy, crowded subway stop that has been around for about 70 years and handles an average of 57,753 trips through its turnstiles every weekday in an exercise that closely resembles a subterranean running of the bulls, but performed on stairways. Secaucus Junction, which saw about 19,360 trips each weekday this spring, is a young station, less than 10 years old, that can best be characterized as civilized. It has a soaring central atrium that floods the sand-colored terminal with natural light. Its official name is the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus Junction, named for the longtime Democratic senator who was the station’s patron and whose name is emblazoned in enormous lettering inside and outside. The station is a main transfer point for several New Jersey Transit lines, with trains from throughout the state feeding passengers into Manhattan. Still, during the morning rush, there is plenty of room to spread out, trot for a coming train or even sit on one of the wooden benches that surround a giant, shimmering sculpture of a cattail made of steel and glass. Even the bathrooms are clean. There are, however, some drawbacks. “It’s a little smelly,” said Simone Salmon, 45, who commutes to her job at a New York City law firm each day through Secaucus Junction, and stood on the platform Thursday crinkling her nose in displeasure. “And in the summertime, it gets worse.” As it happens, the station was built on a swamp. “It smells like cat pee,” said Josh Warshofsky, 27, who was sitting in the atrium on Thursday. “And there are times when I miss trains here, and there is nothing — nothing! — to do.” Besides the doughnut shop, the station offers a bar and a newsstand. Despite the Secaucus in its name, reaching the commercial heart of the town would require a suicidal dash across a major interstate highway. “They first brought me out to Secaucus before the building was up,” said Cork Marcheschi, an artist from San Francisco who created the sculpture. He added, “They took me out to the site and showed me all these drawings, but basically what I’m really left with is a swamp.” Back in Flushing, a motorman preparing to leave the station made his feelings clear about possibly crossing state lines. “No way,” said the motorman, who refused to give his name and who quickly started up the train and pulled it out of the station. “Though I do go to Atlantic City all the time.”

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Subways
Bridges and Tunnels
Transit Systems
Flushing (NYC)
New Jersey
Bloomberg Michael R
Christie Christopher J