Deal Between North and South Korea Defies Their Mutual Disdain

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — The agreement that ended a tense military standoff on the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday taught a lesson about North-South dynamics: Though they heap verbal abuse on each other’s leaders, the two sides can still do a deal when it suits their interests. Their mutual disdain could hardly be more apparent. State-run news outlets in the North often refer to President Park Geun-hye of South Korea as a prostitute. Ms. Park does not hide her contempt for Kim Jong-un , the North’s young and inexperienced leader, calling his policies “delusional.” Each of them had domestic political reasons to want to show toughness and resolve, analysts said, so the confrontation swiftly escalated to the brink of armed conflict. Then, each leader had reasons to want to appear statesmanlike and in command of events, so an agreement was struck. “Both leaders will interpret the deal in their own different way and claim victory,” said Yang Moo-jin, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “Park Geun-hye says her patient, principled approach on the North has finally worked. Kim Jong-un will say his daring initiative forced the South to a bargain.” Some observers said the agreement opened up at least the possibility that the relationship could now improve to some degree. “This deal is a real watershed for the two Koreas,” said John Delury, a professor of history at Yonsei University in Seoul who specializes in China and North Korea . “This is a promising beginning.” South Korea kept its side of the bargain at noon on Tuesday, shutting off the propaganda blaring from loudspeakers at the border , according to the Defense Ministry. The North had said the loudspeaker broadcasts affronted Mr. Kim’s “supreme dignity.” Image Koreans at a rail station in Seoul watched a report about the agreement to end a military standoff between the South and North. Credit Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press In return, North Korea relaxed its military from a state of high alert and expressed “regret” over the wounding of two South Korean border guards by land mines this month. The wording fell a bit short of the explicit apology the South had demanded, but South Korea decided it was close enough. The countries also agreed to hold further talks, and to revive a sporadic program of reunions for families separated by the Korean War. The drama of those reunions has often led to calls on both sides to ease hostilities. South and North Korea, of course, have never gotten along smoothly — technically, they have been at war since 1950, with combat halted only by a truce, not a peace treaty. But their relations have been especially testy under their current leaders. Under Mr. Kim, a new leader eager to establish his credentials, North Korea launched a long-range rocket in December 2012 and conducted its third nuclear test the next February, a few weeks before Ms. Park was sworn into office. When the United Nations responded with more sanctions, his government threatened to annihilate the South “in a nuclear holocaust,” and South Korea responded with a promise to “wipe the North off the face of the earth.” Ms. Park’s tough talk helped her image as a leader who did not give in to bombast from Pyongyang, a strategy that appealed to the conservative South Koreans who supported her. Her approval ratings, battered by her government’s mishandling of a deadly ferry disaster last year and a deadly viral outbreak this year, rose substantially during the military standoff. But an early casualty of the brinkmanship was the so-called trustpolitik policy she had promised — building trust with North Korea to guide it toward more openness, denuclearization and, eventually, reunification. The agreement on Tuesday “allows her to finally put meat on the bones” of that strategy, Mr. Delury said. The talks were also a test for Mr. Kim, who is believed to be in his early 30s and who inherited Pyongyang’s totalitarian government from his father, Kim Jong-il , in late 2011. Mr. Kim has yet to deliver on his bold promise to improve North Korea’s economy, a task seriously hindered by sanctions and the drying up of aid and trade that once flowed from the South. His government remains rooted in the cult of personality that surrounds his family, as evidenced by its jitters over the South’s propaganda broadcasts. Analysts said the deal showed that despite having purged many of his father’s time-tested advisers, Mr. Kim was able to oversee a complicated negotiation with the South. The talks lasted for days in part because the North’s negotiators — senior figures in the government — had to leave the bargaining table frequently to consult with Pyongyang, South Korean officials said. “If you look at how this talk came about and how it led to a deal, you get a clear sense that Kim Jong-un has been calculating it carefully,” Mr. Yang said. The expression of “regret” over the land mine episode could probably be explained to the North Korean public as a gesture of sympathy rather than an acceptance of responsibility, analysts said. The North’s leaders have framed such concessions that way in the past, the analysts said. “I even doubt that North Korea really cared that much about the South Korean loudspeakers, whose impact is never proven,” said Kim Dong-yup, also of the University of North Korean Studies. “Its outcries about them may very likely have been a ploy to provoke and drag the South into talks.” The “regret” compromise could also work for Ms. Park, by deflecting criticism that her rigid stance had made the North more provocative, analysts said. And the deal could help dispel her “image as a paper-pushing type of leader,” said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. On Tuesday, Ms. Park said the deal had been possible because of her government’s “consistent principle of dealing sternly with the North’s provocations while keeping the door open for dialogue.” Analysts saw wiggle room for the South in its promise to leave the loudspeakers turned off unless an “abnormal case” develops. South Korean officials said that caveat would discourage further provocations from the North, but the two sides are likely to have very different definitions of abnormal. Their willingness to build trust and cooperation will be tested in the talks that are to be arranged in the next few weeks. In past moments of brinkmanship, after reaching what seemed to be a breakthrough, the two sides have generally reverted to haggling and stonewalling. “The agreement is like a box with the sign ‘Fragile’ stamped on it,” Mr. Lee said. “Unless handled carefully, it could break at any time.”

South Korea
North Korea
Park Geun-hye
Kim Jong-un
International relations
Demilitarized Zone
Arms control


To Catch Cairo Overflow, 2 Megacities Rise in Sand

Abstract: 6 OCTOBER CITY, Egypt — The highway west out of Cairo used to promise relief from the city’s chaos. Past the great pyramids of Giza and a final spasm of traffic, the open desert beckoned, 100 barren miles to the northwest to reach the Mediterranean. That, at least, was the case until recently. Now, the microbus drivers and commuters driving from Cairo cross 20 miles of nothingness to encounter a new city suddenly springing from the sand. A distressingly familiar jam of cars and a cluster of soaring high-rises herald the metropolis that is designed to relieve pressure on the historic center of Cairo, which city planners have deemed overtaxed beyond repair. Welcome to the new Cairo, not entirely different from the old one. Cairo has become so crowded, congested and polluted that the Egyptian government has undertaken a construction project that might have given the Pharaohs pause: building two megacities outside Cairo from scratch. By 2020, planners expect the new satellite cities to house at least a quarter of Cairo’s 20 million residents and many of the government agencies that now have headquarters in the city. Only a country with a seemingly endless supply of open desert land — and an authoritarian government free to ignore public opinion — could contemplate such a gargantuan undertaking. The government already has moved a few thousand of the city’s poorest residents against their will from illegal slums in central Cairo to housing projects on the periphery. Few Egyptians seriously expect the government to demolish the makeshift neighborhoods that comprise as much as half the capital, although many critics accuse the government of transferring Cairo’s historical inequalities to the new cities. But on one point almost everyone seems to agree: it is too late to change course. Enormous subdivisions have sprung up in the dunes outside of Cairo, on an almost incomprehensible scale. Already a million people have moved to 6 October City, due west of Cairo, named for the date of the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel still hailed as a seminal Arab victory. A similar number have moved east of the city, to a settlement unimaginatively dubbed “New Cairo.” The government’s original plans — which are widely considered more wishful than literal — conceived of 6 October City’s expanding to 3 million by 2020 and New Cairo to 4 million, primarily as havens for working-class Cairenes. So far, however, the overwhelming majority of new residents come from Egypt’s uppermost economic strata. “These settlements represent the greed of the rich,” said Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim, an architect known for incorporating historic Islamic aesthetics into his contemporary public buildings and parks. Mr. Abdelhalim designed the American University of Cairo’s new eastern campus , but he no longer works on elite housing projects. The Egyptian government has spent untallied millions of dollars building new roads and power and water lines to the desert areas it designated for future development. It has sold huge parcels of land to developers in opaque deals, and built some low-income housing. But it has relied primarily on private developers to put up the cities’ more expensive villas and condos, as well as the malls and offices. Some of the earliest arrivals in the new cities are affluent Egyptians like Nisrine Alkbeissi, 29, who chose suburban quality of life over urban convenience. “I was torn between staying in Cairo, close to everything, or moving out here,” said Ms. Alkbeissi on a recent weekend at Dandy Mall, a rare public space in 6 October City, a patchwork of luxury compounds and lower-income housing complexes that still is a city in name only. Her mother had already moved to a nearby gated compound with palm trees and a swimming pool. “I chose the house with the garden,” Ms. Alkbeissi said, her saucer-size gold filigree earrings flapping as she propped her two-year-old daughter on her lap. She was hosting two friends who had driven 50 miles for coffee. A few years ago, they lived only a few miles apart but hours away when they factored in Cairo’s legendarily snarled traffic. Now they drive along the ring road from New Cairo in the east to 6 October City in the west, never once getting close enough even to spot the old city in the distance. Other pioneers include some of the richest Cairenes, who buy villas on golf courses and in gated compounds. They have been joined by some of the poorest, drawn by factory and construction jobs, or to serve the rich. Other poor people are shuttled in against their will by the government to isolated tracts of row houses. The juxtaposition of rich and poor highlights one of Mr. Abdelhalim’s greatest concerns. The new cities, he says, tend to highlight Egypt’s already striking imbalance between rich and poor, and could sow the seeds of future troubles. Consider Haram City, the first affordable housing development here built by a private company. Phase 1 was just completed this summer, and 25,000 people have moved in. When it is complete in two years, Haram City will house 400,000 people — a single project with the population of Miami. Although it was designed for lower-income workers, some of Haram City’s first residents are indigent Cairenes who were displaced by a rockslide and moved to this distant development by the government. They complain that they are isolated, and that it costs them nearly as much to take the bus into the city as they can earn in a day’s work. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We can’t work or live,” complained Saber Abdel Hady, 31, who relocated three months ago to a 400-square-foot apartment in Haram City with his pregnant wife and two children. They used to inhabit a spacious but illegal dwelling in Cairo’s Manshiet Nasser neighborhood. He slaughters chickens for $6 a day, but commuting consumes half his wages, so he has stopped going. For now, he’s living on borrowed money, and recently broke into a larger, uninhabited apartment where he plans to squat with his family. Haram City was conceived as an affordable neighborhood for lower-middle-class professionals, but the government has bought hundreds of units and is filling them with some of Cairo’s poorest inhabitants — importing the city’s historic class tensions to the replacement 6 October City. Piecemeal development has created short-term hiccups as well. The new development lacks a subway, sufficient jobs, schools and medical services. Businesses, however, are relocating to the new city and the government plans to put many of its ministries and service buildings there. Greater Cairo needs 2 million new housing units within the next 10 years, said Omar Elhitamy, managing director of Orascom Housing Communities, Haram City’s developer. That demand can be met only if private companies like Orascom create a sizable volume of new homes at low cost, he added. “It’s not charity, it’s a longer-term vision,” Mr. Elhitamy said. “The project has to provide quality of life.” He envisions 6 October City’s sprawl eventually meeting Cairo’s western edge, “like Dallas-Ft. Worth or the Twin Cities.” A few miles farther out in the desert is the extreme side of replacement Cairo: an exclusive golf course community called Allegria , already half built, and the planned luxury development of Westown, flanking the main highway from Cairo to Alexandria. Developers are building a replica of downtown Beirut, which will serve as an urban hub for all the gated communities and other developments proliferating in the desert. Well-off Egyptians who have moved to the desert cities rave about their new suburban lifestyles. “Cairo is hot and packed,” said Noha Refaat Elfiky, 33, a market researcher who moved a year ago to Palm Park from Heliopolis, itself built as a leafy getaway from downtown Cairo in the 19th century, but now swallowed by the city. “There will be nothing lost and much gained as everybody moves out of the city.” Nevertheless, Ms. Elfiky still spends a night or two a week in her family apartment in Cairo. “Sometimes,” she said, “I miss the smell of pollution.”

Area Planning and Renewal
Cairo (Egypt)
Egypt
Affordable Housing
Urban Areas


Heat Used Streak to Solidify a Top Seed

Abstract: Most coverage of the Miami Heat’s 27-game winning streak focused on LeBron James and his ability to take over games. What started as a well-publicized six-game streak in which James scored 30 or more points while shooting 60 percent or higher ended up as a nearly two-month run in which he averaged 27 points on 57.5 percent shooting. He also contributed 8.1 rebounds and 8 assists a game, leaving little doubt as to his status as the game’s top player. James’s brilliance was enough that you could almost forget Dwyane Wade was on the court. Take James out of the picture, however, and Wade played phenomenally throughout the streak, averaging 22.8 points, 5.8 assists and 5.6 rebounds while shooting 53.6 percent. In all, the Heat’s Big Three — James, Wade and Chris Bosh — averaged 65.4 points, 19.7 rebounds, 15.3 assists and 5.5 steals, and each shot above 50 percent, leaving little else for their teammates in terms of statistics. But the Heat had plenty of contributions from other players. Shane Battier and Ray Allen took turns as the team’s primary outside shooter, each hitting better than 40 percent from 3-point range, and the team as a whole played strong defense and adjusted well to matchups. “To do something like this, everyone needs to step up,” Battier, who contributed to a 32-game streak while at Duke and a 22-game streak with the Houston Rockets, told reporters after Wednesday’s loss to the Chicago Bulls. Image LeBron James, left, and Dwyane Wade, along with Chris Bosh, not shown, accounted for most of the Heat's statistics during their 27-game winning streak. Credit Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images For their trouble, the Heat went from the marginal leader in the Eastern Conference to a juggernaut virtually guaranteed of having home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. Heading into a Super Bowl Sunday matchup against the Toronto Raptors on Feb. 3, the Heat were only half a game ahead of the Knicks for the No. 1 seed in the conference. When they beat the Orlando Magic on Monday, their lead over the Knicks had grown to 12 ½ games. For all of the accolades James and his teammates have received for the second-longest winning streak in N.B.A. history, the greatest tangible benefit is the insurmountable lead they now have over their competition. “I think they’re looking for bigger fish to fry,” Jerry West, a member of the 1971-72 Lakers team that won 33 consecutive games, told ESPN after Wednesday’s loss. “You know they’re trying to win another championship, so I think this is just a blip in the road for them.” In the time it took the Heat to win 27 games, starting with their victory over Toronto and ending with their defeat of Orlando on Tuesday, 10 teams failed to win even 10 games, with the Magic pulling up the rear with a record of 4-21. But the biggest losers of the streak were probably the Milwaukee Bucks. On Feb. 3, the Bucks were the No. 7 seed in the East, leading the Boston Celtics by a game and a half. After going 10-14 over the course of Miami’s streak, while the Celtics went 13-11, Milwaukee has fallen to the No. 8 seed. It is a seemingly small change, but for the Bucks it means their first-round opponent is no longer projected to be the Knicks, a team they may have a fighting chance against, but instead will be the nearly invincible Heat.

Basketball
Miami Heat
LeBron James
Chris Bosh
Shane Battier
Ray Allen


For Cubans in Miami, the Gulf to Their Homeland Narrows

Abstract: MIAMI — Over a half-century, they have transformed what had been a sleepy, heat-drenched Southern town, infusing it with the rat-a-tat patter of Spanish in boardrooms and restaurants, the Cuban rhythms blasting from car radios, the linen guayaberas men don for parties and work, and the smells of mojo and picadillo wafting in the air. Beyond that, Cubans fleeing their island have helped turn Miami into an economic powerhouse, the capital of Latin America and a center of Hispanic political power in the United States. Isabel De Lara, a 65-year-old former banker, arrived alone here at the age of 12 in 1961, put on a plane by fearful parents determined to get her out of Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution. Jose Antonio Lorenzo, 61, boarded one of an armada of boats in 1980, joining other desperate Cubans in the Mariel boatlift. Alicia Garcia, 43, almost died during her voyage in a rickety raft in the “balsero” wave of 1994. Elsa Riverón, a lawyer in Cuba, arrived three years ago via Spain as part of a new era in which Cubans with connections and money can arrive by plane. They came to a city that over the years went from feeling like a foreign land to an extension of home, and faced both enormous obstacles and one great advantage: The United States government has for decades accepted them with open arms, granting them asylum and allowing them to become permanent residents a year and a day after arriving in the United States. On Wednesday, the gulf between here and there shrank again when President Obama announced the re-establishment of diplomatic ties with Cuba and a move to liberalize travel, exports, communication and banking rules. Miami stands to benefit economically from the softening of sanctions. Businesses here that charter direct flights and ship goods to Cuba will see the most immediate windfall. And the changes will make it easier for Cuban-Americans, who already visit the island frequently, to see their relatives. How the news is being received varies widely in Miami, where first-generation exiles who remember Mr. Castro’s brutality mix with millennials for whom Cuba is more a cultural touchstone than a personal memory. Their opinions, though, seldom stray far from the blueprint of their own experience. Lives Shaped by an Island Every Cuban in Miami has a story. I have mine. I was not born in Cuba. But like the lives of so many Cuban-Americans of my generation who grew up in Miami, mine was framed by the island. Through my parents’ stories, I saw its radiance and felt its sea breezes. The lessons they conveyed were clear: In one moment, everything could be lost — jobs, homes, pets, friends and family. In 1961, my mother, sister and brother boarded a plane with three suitcases and left Havana. My mother had $100 sewn into her belt. Their first home was a boardinghouse, a world away from the country club life they had led. My mother, a writer, got a job as a secretary. My father arrived a few months later. A pilot, he diverted a plane midair to Miami. He found work as a cabdriver and later flew covert missions in Africa for the Central Intelligence Agency. In time, he became a commercial airline pilot. Through sheer will, my family prospered. My brother is a lawyer. My sister became a professional ballerina. And I sit here tapping away at my laptop, happy to have inherited even the smallest slice of Cuba. Isabel De Lara came at the same time as my family. By the time Ms. De Lara arrived in Miami, she was deep into Cold War tumult. Her father, a civil engineer, had been jailed for being an anti-Castro activist. Revolutionaries had rummaged through her Havana house. Her pregnant mother, under too much stress, lost her baby. Chaos ruled the island as Mr. Castro embraced communism, imprisoned and executed opponents and began seizing businesses and homes. The first large exodus took form — a collection of Cuba’s elite, the middle class and the upper middle class who realized that their homes, jobs and, in some cases, their lives were at risk. Hundreds of thousands arrived on the so-called freedom flights to Miami in the early 1960s, only 240 miles away, with the hope that soon they would head back home. They arrived with no money and few possessions, but with college degrees, business acumen and vivid memories of the island they left behind. Image Cuban rafters setting out for Miami in 1994, when Cuba suffered from shortages of gas, food and medicine. About 33,000 people crossed the Straits of Florida during the crisis, and American policy on asylum for Cubans became tighter afterward. 1 / 6 Ms. De Lara, like so many children in that wave and others that followed, arrived alone. Fearing the worst, her parents had put her on a plane to Miami. Her father arranged with the Catholic Church in Miami to care for her until the family could be reunited, through a network known as Peter Pan. Ms. De Lara was one of 65 Cuban girls delivered to an orphanage in Denver. She cried. She mourned. She stole, along with the others, toiletries at a pharmacy on their Sunday trip there because the girls were given so little. Nearly two years later, in 1963, her parents were able to bring her to Miami. “I hated their guts,” Ms. De Lara said. “Now I know the sacrifice they had to make to let go of me.” Many of these newly arrived lawyers, doctors and businessmen took the jobs that were traditionally held by African-Americans — waiters, bartenders and gas station attendants. Cubans were called ethnic slurs. But slowly, they cobbled together a life and began to transform the city. “We wanted to be what we were before,” Ms. De Lara said. Ms. De Lara assimilated and prospered quickly. She got a job at a bank, ultimately becoming a vice president, and in the 1980s worked for nearly three years for the Republican Party of Florida. Even now, she can clearly picture her family’s house in Havana. Her father was fiercely anti-Castro; he would have hated Mr. Obama’s recent decision. Ms. De Lara does not think the president’s move will lead to change. But she has softened her own views of the embargo, believing it to be futile. Leaving Cuba Behind Each wave of Cubans had its own narrative. Not too long after he clambered aboard the crowded boat, Majestic 2, that would take him out of the Port of Mariel to Florida in 1980, Jose Antonio Lorenzo wept. Then he looked back at the island one last time. “I started to watch Cuba disappear in the horizon,” Mr. Lorenzo said. “When it disappeared, I turned to the captain and said, ‘What I left behind, I never want to see again.’ ” Mr. Lorenzo, an employee at a thermoelectric company, was part of a Cuban refugee flotilla that became known as the Mariel boatlift. In a couple of weeks, 125,000 Cubans arrived in Miami, brought here by friends or relatives with access to boats. Mr. Castro, facing broad discontent, opened the borders for a brief spell, and out they poured: people seeking freedom and opportunity, together with thousands of criminals and mentally ill patients, a gesture of spite from Mr. Castro. For nearly a third of his life, Mr. Lorenzo lived apart from his parents and siblings, a story that permeates the Cuban exodus. His parents left in 1970, but Mr. Lorenzo was barred from leaving because he was of military age. A decade later, on May 14, Mr. Lorenzo arrived at Key West and was bused to Miami, which was awash with refugees in staging areas. His was the Orange Bowl stadium, and his daughter was handed an apple, the first she had seen. Soon, he was reunited with his parents, and life took a turn for the better. He spent years at Bacardi as a maintenance worker. His wife taught ballet. And his daughter, Riolama, became a professional ballerina. The boatlift’s impact on Miami was profound. The “Marielitos” — mostly poor and reared under Communist rule — were at first viewed with suspicion. Crime skyrocketed; schools were strained. But success followed. Their numbers — not just the largely comfortable exiles of the first wave but now a much broader cross section of Cuban life — helped bolster the spread of Cuban restaurants, music, Spanish-language movies and media. After 1980, Miami felt Cuban to the core. Fearless and Fed Up Alicia Garcia was 21 the night of Aug. 16, 1994, when she left Cuba’s coast in a homespun raft of inner tubes with three men she had only recently met. She was fearless, fed up and young enough to shrug off everything that could go wrong. Miami-Dade’s Cubans: Where They Live, What They Think Where Cubans live in Miami-Dade and how they view U.S. policies toward Cuba. On that day she became a “balsera,” part of an exodus of 33,000 who crossed the Straits of Florida. Most were intercepted and taken to the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba for months, a crisis that led to a major change in United States immigration policy toward Cubans. Ms. Garcia’s parents left for Miami in 1980, assuring her that she would be right behind them. But because of a passport problem, she could not join them. She grew up with her grandparents, became a pharmacist and savored the few minutes of conversation she had once a week with her parents. She knew she wanted more; 1994 was an especially difficult year in Cuba. The Soviet Union, Cuba’s economic lifeline, had dissolved. Severe shortages of gas, food and medicine followed. Wages plummeted. Riots broke out. This led Mr. Castro to temporarily allow Cubans to leave by sea on rafts and boats. During the six-day journey, Ms. Garcia ran out of food and water, until another group tossed the Cubans supplies. The salt rubbed their feet raw. Sharks circled incessantly. Ms. Garcia, a Christian, prayed and prayed. The group spotted other rafts. One boat was sinking. A mother on board handed over her baby, and Ms. Garcia strapped the girl to her own chest, where she stayed until Brothers to the Rescue, a team of Cuban pilots who helped spot balseros, radioed in their location. Seven hours later, they were on a military ship headed for Guantánamo, where the baby’s mother was also taken. Ms. Garcia stayed nearly five months while the government debated what to do with the thousands of balseros. In the end, most were brought to Miami. But United States policy tightened: To receive asylum, Cubans now would need to set foot on American soil. In Miami, Cubans had organized to help the balseros and pressured the United States to bring them here from Guantánamo. But the balseros had a harder time adapting to Miami than their predecessors. Culturally different, they were a generation that had grown up surreptitiously skirting the law to survive back home. They even spoke differently. But they, too, persevered, adding to the diversity of the Cuban experience in Miami. “It took 20 years for the word ‘balsero’ to not signify something bad here,” said Ms. Garcia, a writer and an advocate for domestic violence victims. “We had the courage to leave the way we did and announce to the world that things were horrible in Cuba.” A Simple Life Elsa Riverón’s memories of Cuba could not be more different from Isabel De Lara’s final years there. Looking back on her life on the island, Ms. Riverón, who arrived in Miami three years ago, said her life in Cuba had felt “simple and normal.” Her family was middle class. She was a lawyer in Havana. In many ways, she was more privileged than most others in Cuba. What she did not like was Cuba’s education system, which had declined. She worried for her teenage son, Manuel. In 2008, Spain instituted a law giving some descendants of Spanish immigrants in Cuba the right to become Spanish citizens. Ms. Riverón, whose grandparents were Spanish, was one of them. She sold her house — something recently permitted in Cuba — and flew to Madrid with her son. Her husband had to stay behind. Six months later, she flew to Kennedy International Airport in New York, where she asked for asylum, and from there flew to Miami. Her three years here have not been as easy as she imagined. She said she has had little guidance from more seasoned Cubans on how to adjust to the capitalist bustle of Miami. Her law degree is collecting dust. She is caring for an elderly woman and trying to improve her modest English skills. Unlike the old guard from Cuba, the tens of thousands of recently arrived Cubans routinely come and go from the island under more liberal travel and visa rules. They do not view the island with hostility. They want change in American laws in the hope of eroding the Fidel and Raúl Castro’s hold on the island. They lean toward voting for Democrats, not Republicans. The good news is that Ms. Riverón’s son, a high school junior, has a 4.7 grade-point average. “That is what makes it worthwhile,” she said. No one knows for sure what comes next, including how far Raúl Castro will push change, such as expanding access to the Internet. One thing seems clear: The gulf between the experiences of the first generation of Cuban exiles and those of each succeeding generation continues to widen. What is less certain is how far Mr. Obama’s changes and the passage of time will go toward coaxing Cubans here and Cubans there toward finding common ground.

Miami
Cuba
Cuban American
Immigration
Embargoes Sanctions
Economy
US Foreign Policy


Romneys at Church: Scripture, Songs and Six Grandchildren

Abstract: BOSTON — Mitt Romney read Scripture from his iPad as he juggled his 2-year-old grandson on his lap. He made sure to accept a small piece of white bread and cup of water, representing the flesh and blood of Jesus, from a member of the clergy who looked like he was about to accidentally pass him by. And with a knowing nod, he encouraged his wife, Ann , to leave the pew and join the women’s choir in a rendition of “Because I Have Been Given Much.” (She did.) On one level, it was a typical Sunday morning for Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and a devoted churchgoer. But on another level, his Sunday observance was an extraordinary moment for a candidate who zealously protects his privacy and rarely talks about his Mormon faith. On Sunday, for the first time since Mr. Romney became a candidate for president, his aides invited members of the news media to accompany him to church services near his lake house in Wolfeboro, N.H., providing the public with a look into one of the most intimate corners of his life and into the rituals of a religion that is frequently misunderstood. After a year of studiously avoiding all but the most oblique references to Mr. Romney’s faith on the campaign trail, his advisers said they believe it is time for him to publicly embrace it. They reason that his religious devotion, as well as his leadership within the church, convey qualities that voters will warm to — and outweigh any squeamishness among those who are unfamiliar with or suspicious of Mormonism. The display of openness inside the church was not entirely spontaneous: Mr. Romney agreed a few weeks ago to allow a small group of reporters, known as a protective pool, to track his every moment by airplane or vehicle, a longstanding tradition in presidential campaigns. But Mr. Romney’s aides have wide discretion over what events members of the pool may attend, and the campaign’s decision to allow reporters into church was something of a surprise. (His advisers are known to scold reporters whose articles focus on Mr. Romney’s faith.) Mr. and Mrs. Romney arrived at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wolfeboro at 10 a.m. with their oldest son, Tagg; his wife, Jennifer; and their six children. On their way in, the family was greeted in the parking lot by an older couple. “Welcome back,” a woman said, giving Mr. Romney a hug. Mr. and Mrs. Romney sang along to hymns and took turns holding their grandchildren during the service, which was attended by about 100 people. At times, Mr. Romney flipped through a picture book with his grandson Johnny. Mr. Romney, wearing a navy blue suit, listened intently as Ali Marriott, a member of the family that owns the giant hotel chain, delivered a talk about her recent missionary work in Utah and California. At one point, volunteers were invited to join the women’s choir in song. Mr. Romney glanced at his wife, and gently and wordlessly suggested she do so. Mrs. Romney and her daughter-in-law both stood, walked to the front pulpit and along with about 40 others — nearly all the women in the congregation — began singing “Because I Have Been Given Much,” a popular Mormon hymn about using one’s blessings to help other people. The lyrics include this line : “I shall divide my gifts from thee with every brother that I see, who has the need of help from me.” After the closing prayer, which asked for God’s guidance through the rest of the day, Mr. Romney wiped his eyes. He then headed to Sunday school, which was not open to reporters. Roughly a half-hour before the final class ended, Mr. and Mrs. Romney emerged from church with another woman from the congregation, who seemed startled by the cameras awaiting the Romneys. “You’re in trouble now,” Mr. Romney said, putting his arm around the woman. “You’re in trouble now.” His wife joked, “She got caught sneaking out early!”

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


London Knife Attack Kills Woman and Wounds 5 Other People

Abstract: One person was killed and five were wounded Wednesday night in a knife attack in London , the Metropolitan Police said. The police said they were called around 10:30 p.m. about a man with a knife who was attacking people in Russell Square, a park in Central London. A woman in her 60s died at the scene, the police said. Five others, two women and three men, were wounded. Details about their conditions and injuries were not immediately available, although the police said on Twitter on Thursday morning that three people had been discharged from the hospital. A 19-year-old man was arrested shortly after officers arrived at the scene, the police said. They later said he was being held on suspicion of murder at a South London police station after being released from the hospital. The police used a stun gun to detain the suspect. The police said in a statement that “terrorism is one possibility being explored at this stage.” A Metropolitan Police official, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, later said, “Early indications suggest that mental health is a significant factor in this case,” while adding that security would be increased as a precautionary measure. Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement on Thursday that the “safety of all Londoners” was his top priority. He also expressed his sympathy for the victims and asked residents to keep an eye out as the investigation continued. “I urge all Londoners to remain calm and vigilant,” Mr. Khan said. “Please report anything suspicious to the police. We all have a vital role to play as eyes and ears for our police and security services and in helping to ensure London is protected.” Russell Square is in the Bloomsbury section of London, best known as the home of the British Museum and many universities, including University College London. Although many students live and study in Bloomsbury, and it is a popular place for tourists to stay, the area around the square is not particularly known for its night life. The knife attack occurred just hours after officials announced the start of Operation Hercules, an initiative that included the addition of 600 armed officers to better protect the city against an attack. “The threat level here in London has not changed, but it does remain at severe, and especially in light of recent deadly attacks in Europe, it is important we are prepared should the unthinkable happen,” Mr. Khan said in a statement on Wednesday. “We will see more armed officers on our streets, but there is no reason to be alarmed,” he added. Most London police officers do not carry firearms in a country where gun control laws are far stricter than those in the United States. Residents in the area said the police responded quickly. “Thank you so much @metpoliceuk for being so fast, caring and efficient tonight in #russellsquare ,” Susanna Cappellaro wrote in a post on Twitter. “I am a resident and I really thank you.” The police have been on heightened alert after a series of terrorist attacks in Europe. “Anyone who’s been following events in Europe over the past few weeks will understand why we want to show our determination to protect the public,” said the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe.

London
Crime
Great Britain
Terrorism
Knife
Police
Murders and Homicides


In Neanderthals’ DNA, Ancient Humans May Have Left Genetic Mark

Abstract: In 1997, scientists found the first scrap of Neanderthal DNA in a fossil. Since then, they have recovered genetic material, even entire genomes, from a number of Neanderthal bones, and their investigations have yielded a remarkable surprise: Today, 1 to 2 percent of the DNA in non-African people comes from Neanderthals. That genetic legacy is the result of interbreeding roughly 50,000 years ago between Neanderthals and the common ancestors of Europeans and Asians. Recent studies suggest that Neanderthal genes even influence human health today, contributing to conditions from allergies to depression . Now scientists have found that the genes flowed both ways. In a study published on Wednesday in Nature, a team of scientists reports that another instance of interbreeding left Neanderthals in Siberia with chunks of human DNA . This exchange, the scientists conclude, took place about 100,000 years ago. That’s a puzzling date, because a great deal of evidence indicates that the ancestors of today’s non-Africans did not expand out of Africa until 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. It’s possible, then, that these Neanderthals acquired DNA from a mysterious early migration of humans. “I think at this point we’ve convinced everybody the observation is real,” said Adam Siepel, a geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a co-author of the new study. “But the story behind the observation is still very much in dispute.” Humans and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor in Africa about 600,000 years ago. At some point afterward, the ancestors of Neanderthals spread to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. Along the way, Neanderthals took on a distinctive anatomy — a stocky, powerful build — and became impressive hunters of big game. The last Neanderthals appear to have died about 40,000 years ago . In 2010, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, recovered about 60 percent of a Neanderthal genome from fossils found in a Croatian cave. Neanderthals shared certain mutations with living Europeans and Asians, the scientists found — but not with modern Africans. They concluded that humans must have interbred with Neanderthals after leaving Africa. Three years later, the Max Planck team reconstructed the complete genome of a male Neanderthal from a toe bone dating back at least 50,000 years, which had been discovered in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Comparing the Altai genome to modern human DNA confirmed the interbreeding . Recently, the researchers harvested more DNA from European Neanderthal fossils, putting together very detailed reconstructions of a single chromosome, Chromosome 21. Sergi Castellano, a geneticist at Max Planck Institute, set out to compare this European Neanderthal DNA to the genes from Siberia. He was curious about how isolated the populations of Neanderthals were from one another, and how they were related to humans alive today. He was joined by Dr. Siepel, who has developed powerful statistical models in recent years to trace how DNA changes over time. He and his colleagues are able to compare genomes and infer their common history: how their ancestors split apart, for example, and how large the populations of their ancestors were. Dr. Siepel, Dr. Castellano and their colleagues used these models to analyze the Neanderthal DNA and that of humans. Their analysis confirmed previous studies: Some Neanderthal DNA did indeed end up in modern Europeans and Asians. But they also found another example of so-called gene flow, and an unexpected one at that: The Altai Neanderthals in particular shared some mutations with living Africans, but not with Europeans and Asians. That pattern suggests that an African lineage of humans interbred with the ancestors of the Altai Neanderthals after they split from other Neanderthals. Dr. Castellano and Dr. Siepel thought at first there was something wrong with their analysis, so they went back to fix it. But when they looked for the problem, they could not find it. “We poked and prodded and poked and prodded, and couldn’t get it to go away,” said Dr. Siepel. Once the scientists accepted that the interbreeding was real, they estimated when it happened. When DNA gets passed down through the generations, it gets shuffled into new arrangements that can be used to build a sort of timeline. Based on this gene shuffling, the scientists estimated that humans and the ancestors of the Altai Neanderthals interbred about 100,000 years ago — long before people were thought to have left Africa. “This observation throws a wrench in the works,” said Dr. Siepel. Bence Viola, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto and a co-author of the new study, said he was skeptical when he first learned of the genetic data. “It’s really weird, that’s my main impression,” he said. Video Svante Paabo is a Swedish biologist who studies evolutionary genetics. Credit Credit David Reich/Nature Eventually, however, Dr. Castellano persuaded him the data were strong, and Dr. Viola looked over the fossil record for possible explanations for the interbreeding. In the 1930s, for example, scientists discovered 120,000-year-old fossils in Israel that looked a lot like living humans. Many scientists viewed them as a failed human migration from Africa, with no genetic connection to humanity today. In October, Chinese researchers discovered another intriguing clue in a cave: 47 teeth that they estimate are between 80,000 and 120,000 years old . The scientists argue that the teeth belonged to modern humans. Dr. Viola is not completely convinced by the Chinese study. Instead, he thinks the scenario that best fits the evidence is that humans expanding into the Middle East encountered and interbred with Neanderthals there. The Neanderthals then migrated east to Siberia, taking human DNA with them. “It seems pretty solid,” said Jonathan K. Pritchard, a geneticist at Stanford University who was not involved in the study. “Overall, the story they’re telling is pretty coherent.” Dr. Pritchard said that more examinations of ancient DNA would help resolve the many questions raised by the new study and help scientists understand the scope of the intimate back-and-forth between Neanderthals and humans. “There’s going to be a lot more data really soon,” he said. “I would expect in the next few years we’ll have much, much more of the jigsaw puzzle, and it will be possible to piece this all together.”

Neanderthal
DNA
Archaeology,Anthropology
Nature Journal
Genetics and Heredity
Fossil
Sergi Castellano
Adam Siepel


Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches to Wall Street Animate Her Opponents

Abstract: Nine months after leaving the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton sat on a stage under the life-size model of a blue whale that hangs in the American Museum of Natural History. For a fee of $275,000, she had agreed to appear before the clients of GoldenTree Asset Management, the capstone of a lucrative speechmaking sprint through Wall Street that earned her more than $2 million in less than seven months. Mrs. Clinton said the Dodd-Frank rules, while unpopular among some on Wall Street, were a necessary response to the financial crisis, according to one person who attended, while making clear she viewed Wall Street as a partner in securing the country’s economic future, not an enemy. We have to win together, she said, not divide ourselves. But her paid speeches are now emerging as the central line of attack in an increasingly bitter primary clash with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In Sunday’s debate in South Carolina and at a series of campaign appearances in Iowa this week, Mr. Sanders has argued that Mrs. Clinton is too personally beholden to Wall Street to effectively rein in the industry’s excesses. In Iowa on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders went even further, seeming to mock her sizable speaking fees as borderline bribes from a powerful industry. “You got to be really, really, really good to get $250,000 for a speech,” he said. The attacks have become one of Mr. Sanders’s biggest applause lines in Iowa, where the median household earns about $52,229 a year. And Republican strategists are testing how to turn Mrs. Clinton’s speaking fees against her in an election defined by rising economic inequality and stagnant middle-class wages. Even some of her supporters are questioning the wisdom of accepting the fees when she knew she might run for the presidency again. 2016 Delegate Count and Primary Results According to the Associated Press, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton have each won enough delegates to claim their party’s nomination for president. Mrs. Clinton has sought to parry Mr. Sanders by highlighting her support for tighter regulation and comparing herself to President Obama, who took millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Wall Street but went on to enact some of the furthest-reaching financial regulations in decades. But the new attacks strike at what even some allies believe may be one of Mrs. Clinton’s biggest vulnerabilities: not her positions on financial regulation, but her personal relationships with Wall Street executives, along with the millions of dollars Mrs. Clinton, her husband, and their family foundation have accepted in speaking fees or charitable contributions from banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama has never earned speaking fees from Wall Street. “The reason that Bernie is focusing on the speaking fees is that Hillary can’t use the Obama defense,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor, who has supported Mrs. Clinton. In retrospect, Mr. Rendell conceded, Mrs. Clinton would have been better off giving fewer such speeches. “Although they needed money, I think that Bill was raking in enough that Hillary didn’t have to do it,” Mr. Rendell said. “To people who earn $200,000 in seven years, it looks ridiculous.” Together, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have earned in excess of $125 million in speech income since leaving the White House in 2001, one-fifth of it in the last two years. Image Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, on Wednesday. He has raised Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees and ties to Wall Street as issues in the Democratic primary race. Credit Max Whittaker for The New York Times Mrs. Clinton’s own speechmaking was a veritable tour through high finance. She gave paid speeches at GTCR, the Chicago private equity firm that the Republican governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, helped found; Deutsche Bank, the German financial services conglomerate; and the investment bank Morgan Stanley, among other companies. Goldman Sachs alone paid Mrs. Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in three different states, a fact Mr. Sanders has highlighted repeatedly. “Goldman Sachs also provides very, very generous speaking fees to some unnamed candidates,” he told voters at a winery in Carroll, Iowa, on Tuesday. In highlighting Mrs. Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, Mr. Sanders is tapping into suspicion that remains potent in both parties years after the last Occupy Wall Street tents disappeared from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Donald J. Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has mocked hedge fund managers as “guys that shift paper around” and “get lucky.” Other Republicans have likewise sought to tap into popular discontent with Wall Street, blaming the Dodd-Frank legislation for letting “the big banks get bigger and bigger and bigger,” as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential candidate, put it last fall. Sensitive to the sour public mood, Mrs. Clinton has layered her own speeches with calls to reduce income inequality and overhaul the country’s “rigged” economic system. In what was billed as a major economic speech before a Wall Street audience in July, Mrs. Clinton called for expanding Dodd-Frank and denounced fraud in the financial sector. Dennis M. Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a financial industry watchdog group, said Mr. Sanders appeared intent on opening a new front on the issue of financial regulation. “He’s got a plan, and she put out a plan. Your eyes glaze over,” said Mr. Kelleher. With his attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s speaking fees, Mr. Kelleher said, Mr. Sanders was trying to “get out of the fight over whose plan is better.” Mr. Sanders’s line of attack is now being bolstered by an unlikely ally: American Crossroads , the conservative “ super PAC ” advised by the prominent Republican strategist Karl Rove. In recent days, the group has run digital advertisements in Iowa questioning Mrs. Clinton’s Wall Street ties — even though several hedge fund billionaires are among the top donors to Crossroads. “Wall Street made her a multimillionaire,” the ad, titled “Hillary’s Bull Market,” asserts. “Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?” On Wednesday, the group escalated its attacks, targeting Mrs. Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who in her 20s worked for a New York-based hedge fund run by a Clinton friend and campaign donor, Marc Lasry. Mrs. Clinton’s time on the speaking circuit connects her to a long and bipartisan tradition of prominent former officials who commanded large fees for modest work, including Mr. Rove (who reportedly charges about $25,000 per appearance), and former President George W. Bush ($100,000 to $250,000 ). Condoleezza Rice, Mrs. Clinton’s predecessor as secretary of state, also preceded her as a speaker for GoldenTree, appearing at a previous investor dinner for the New York-based firm, which manages $25 billion in assets. The contracts for such events typically include strict confidentiality agreements, meaning there are no known video recordings of Mrs. Clinton’s Wall Street appearances. In a now-famous interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2014, Mrs. Clinton said she thought giving paid speeches was “a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company as so many people who leave public life do.” But a Crossroads official said that its polls and focus groups of voters in battleground states suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s speaking fee — typically around $225,000, or almost five times the median American household income — could be a potent line of attack with swing voters in November. One poll, from June, found that when informed that the Clintons had made $25 million in speaking fees since the beginning of 2014, slightly more than half of respondents said she “does not understand” the “struggles of ordinary Americans.” Another poll, from November, found that Wall Street campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton made a similar proportion of voters less likely to vote for her. “Our focus groups with swing and independent voters, especially women, responded very negatively to the contrast between Hillary’s rhetoric on Wall Street and her close financial ties to the industry,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has seized on the group’s intervention to discredit Mr. Sanders. In a statement, Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, said Mr. Sanders was “taking his cues” from Republicans and “using a Karl Rove attack to go after her.” Still, interviews with voters in Iowa suggest that Mr. Sanders’s attacks are finding an audience. “It’s a gentle jab at Hillary,” Joe Driscoll, 71, an architectural restorer from Honey Creek, said after one Sanders speech. He called the gibe “classy” when compared with Chelsea Clinton’s suggestion that Mr. Sanders would strip Americans of their health care. He said the connection of Mrs. Clinton to Goldman resonated with him and others who equated Goldman with Wall Street misdeeds. At an appearance before 1,200 people in Sioux City on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders attacked “the revolving door of politics and Wall Street,” with two Treasury secretaries, one from each side of the political aisle, having Goldman Sachs on their résumés. He called it a travesty that the executives who “ripped off” Americans never did jail time, saying, “That’s wrong, and we are going to change that.” Mr. Sanders seemed ready to move on when another thing suddenly seemed to occur to him: “Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention they also provide a lot of campaign contributions and speaking fees to unnamed candidates.” Russ Gifford, from South Sioux City, said he had always figured that the relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Clintons was beneficial to the Clintons personally and the bank institutionally, but also to Americans who benefited from a strong economy fueled by success on Wall Street. Now, Mr. Gifford said, he is not so sure. “Bernie’s calling it into question. ‘Just how beneficial is it for us?’” Mr. Gifford said. He described himself as a longtime supporter of Mrs. Clinton but called Mr. Sanders “very impressive.”

Banking and Finance
Hillary Clinton
Bernard Sanders,Bernie Sanders
2016 Presidential Election
Speeches
Campaign finance
Goldman Sachs Group
American Crossroads
Iowa


Ukraine: Controversial Law Signed

Abstract: Ukraine ’s sizable Russian-speaking minority won a major victory on Wednesday when a new law was approved that allows the official use of the language in many regions. Critics see the change as a threat to their hopes of moving further away from the Russian fold. The law, signed by President Viktor F. Yanukovich, leaves Ukrainian as the only state language, but it allows public servants and citizens to file official documentation in Russian at government bodies, courts and other state institutions in regions where more than 10 percent of residents are Russian. The legislation had caused violent brawls among lawmakers and during street rallies, and Mr. Yanukovich’s move will probably fuel further protests. In an apparent attempt to assuage his critics, Mr. Yanukovich also set up a body to promote the use of Ukrainian. Some critics have called the law a ploy by Mr. Yanukovich to win votes in the Russian-speaking east, his support base.

Russian Language
Law and Legislation
Ukraine


E-Prescriptions Reduce Errors, but Their Adoption Is Slow

Abstract: AS e-mail and texting have become our favored means of written communication, handwriting has almost disappeared. Penmanship is becoming a modern form of hieroglyphics, intelligible only to literary scholars. But one place where handwriting persists is on medical prescriptions , and that’s unfortunate. Sloppy writing or inappropriate directions can lead to what doctors delicately refer to as preventable A.D.E.’s, or adverse drug events. These can encompass minor but still avoidable problems, like rashes or diarrhea , and much more serious events like, well, death. Studies show that errors are much less likely if a doctor clicks to select medications from an onscreen list and sends the prescription data via computer to the pharmacy. Rainu Kaushal, a professor of medical informatics at Weill Cornell Medical College , led a study published in 2010 in which she and four colleagues followed prescriptions issued by a sample of providers in outpatient settings in New York. (Providers included physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners .) Some were prescribing electronically for the first time, and some continued to use paper. The researchers found an astonishing 37 errors for every 100 paper prescriptions, versus around 7 per 100 for those who used e-prescribing software. These errors didn’t even include legibility issues, when the pharmacist couldn’t read the handwriting with confidence and called the provider to clarify. Earlier, when the participants who would switch to e-prescribing were still using paper, they had almost 88 legibility errors per 100 prescriptions. (Some prescriptions had more than one error.) An illegible prescription requires time to sort out with the provider. “In the case of an urgent medication,” Dr. Kaushal says, “the delay can result in patient harm.” Previous studies of prescriptions in hospital settings have suggested error rates of about 5 per 100 paper prescriptions. Most were not serious, but about 7 percent had potential for harm. The Institute of Medicine has estimated annual costs for preventable A.D.E.’s in hospital settings alone at about $2 billion in the United States. Yet only about 36 percent of all prescriptions were delivered electronically in the United States in 2011, according to a report to be published in May by Surescripts, which maintains an e-prescribing network. E-prescribing comes as part of the switch to electronic health records, which can cost a medical practice tens of thousands of dollars. The stimulus package passed in 2009 included provisions that theoretically ease the financial burden for doctors, but the payments are tied to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that are spread out over five years. So the upfront costs remain substantial. In addition to those costs, the other large obstacle to adopting electronic records is their impact on office work flow, Dr. Kaushal says. More hours may have to be added to the workday to enter data. “These systems are far from plug and play,” she says. The number of hospitals using e-prescribing is growing rapidly, but still only about 30 percent have made the switch, says David W. Bates, chief of the division of general internal medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at the Harvard Medical School . Even when they install the technology, hospitals often leave e-prescribing as an option for providers but don’t require it. “What one sees often is about two-thirds of prescriptions are generated electronically” at these hospitals, Dr. Bates says, “but it’s hard to get that remaining third converted.” In Australia, handwriting has been largely eliminated from prescribing. Johanna I. Westbrook, director of the Center for Health Systems and Safety Research at the University of New South Wales, says that about a decade ago, “the government provided financial incentives for family physicians to introduce computers into the practice.” Today, about 90 percent of those practices are computerized, but most pharmacies don’t receive prescriptions electronically. So the provider uses a computer and printer to prepare a neat prescription in paper form that the patient drops off at the pharmacy. Reducing prescription errors can mean more than eliminating handwriting. Software is needed to integrate prescriptions with a patient’s electronic health record and to check for adverse interactions. This “decision support” software can have its own issues. It must be vigilant in looking for potential problems, but not overzealous. “Decision support is leading to ‘alert fatigue,’ ” Professor Westbrook says. “The consequence is providers ignore the alerts and the system then can’t prevent all of the medication errors that it could.” On balance, though, it’s clear that e-prescriptions help prevent errors. Such prescriptions were not unknown even in the 1990s, so clicks have long seemed to be on the verge of replacing scribbles. Perhaps it won’t take another 20 years before the prescription pad is placed next to the jar of leeches as an exhibit in the Museum of Medical Curiosities.

Computers and the Internet
Doctors
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Drugstores
Handwriting
Hospitals
Electronic Health Records


Television Revenue Helps Profit at Viacom to Rise 4%

Abstract: Viacom, the media powerhouse that includes the movie studio Paramount and cable television channels like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, generated $502 million in profit for its latest fiscal quarter, driven by increased advertising and higher affiliate fees for its television outlets, the company reported on Thursday. Viacom had $3.17 billion in revenue for the three months ending on March 31, the company’s fiscal second quarter . That was slightly below analysts’ expectations of $3.20 billion, but up 1 percent from the company’s revenue of $3.14 billion for the same period a year earlier. Its quarterly earnings of $502 million, or $1.13 a share, were 4 percent greater than last year. Viacom’s results were reported early Thursday morning, before the stock market opened. On Thursday, its share price closed at $83.50, down 1.7 percent for the day. The company also reported on Thursday morning that it had agreed to pay $757 million in cash for Channel 5 Broadcasting, a British television group. That was more than four times what the Northern & Shell Media Group, controlled by the British press magnate Richard Desmond, paid for it four years ago. “This deal will dramatically increase Viacom’s investment in content produced in the U.K.,” Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. The deal will make Viacom the first American company to control a British public service broadcaster, and the move toward international expansion drew intrigued if cautious early responses from analysts. “The question is whether this will be a one-off, or if it signals a major change of strategy for Viacom,” wrote Todd Juenger, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company in New York. Viacom’s results extended a recent trend at the company of steady growth in its television networks alongside declines at Paramount. Operating income at the networks was up 9 percent to $949 million, buoyed by increases in advertising and affiliate fees. But operating income at the film division was down 83 percent, to $11 million, reflecting a soft theatrical release schedule for the quarter, including films like “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.” Mr. Dauman made it clear in a conference call with investors on Thursday that the company expected coming quarters to be stronger for film. “Noah,” a No. 1 draw at the box office, was released on March 28, just three days before the end of its last fiscal quarter. And the “summer tent-pole season” this year, Mr. Dauman said, included potential blockbusters like “Transformers: Age of Extinction” and a new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” film. Since 2007, Paramount’s three previous “Transformers” films have made more than $1 billion at the box office in the United States alone, according to the website Boxofficemojo.com. Viacom has also continued its stock repurchase program, with $850 million in buybacks during the quarter. In its last three fiscal years, the company has bought back about $10 billion in stock, and Mr. Dauman said in the conference call that he expected this year’s total to exceed $3.25 billion. Those buybacks have been one factor in an overall rise in Viacom’s share price, which has roughly doubled in the last three years.

Earnings Reports
Viacom
Channel 5
Paramount Pictures
Philippe P Dauman


For Struggling Yankees, One Swing Changes the Subject

Abstract: BALTIMORE — The Yankees came to Camden Yards on Friday having lost 8 of 10 games, with five of those losses coming by a single run. In that stretch, a funk so severe that it drew General Manager Brian Cashman here, the Yankees seemed unable to get hits when they most needed them. “We’ve been playing without a whole lot of luck,” Jorge Posada said. But that changed Friday. With two outs in the ninth inning and the game continuing only because a borderline call had gone his way on a 1-2 count, Alex Rodriguez belted a three-run homer to left field against Koji Uehara, erasing a two-run lead by the Baltimore Orioles and giving the Yankees the kind of victory that has eluded them the past two weeks. It was Rodriguez’s second home run of the game. Mariano Rivera did what Uehara could not, retiring the side in the bottom of the inning. Rivera’s 31st save preserved a 4-3 win for the Yankees, which put the Yankees back in first place by half a game over the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East. “It’s a big win,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “We needed it. This has been a frustrating road trip for us.” The Yankees came to Baltimore after getting swept in Texas and dropping two of three against the Rays. While the Orioles remain far back in last place in the A.L. East, they have been among the hottest teams in baseball since Buck Showalter took over as manager on Aug. 3. They seemed destined for another win on Friday, as the Yankees’ bats were silent against Kevin Millwood, whose 15 losses entering the game were the most in the A.L. this season. Millwood allowed five hits but only one run — a second-inning homer by Rodriguez that broke a scoreless tie. A. J. Burnett, who allowed three runs and six hits in seven innings, failed to hold that lead. Burnett pitched the game with a black eye , and his right cheek was swollen. Girardi would not comment on how Burnett sustained the injury — “The story is he pitched well tonight, and that’s all we’re concerned about,” he said — and Burnett also refused to provide an explanation. “I think there’s more important things going on right now with this team than my eye,” he said, adding: “It’s something I have to deal with; I dealt with it.” Burnett added, “This is probably the best I’ve felt in a long time tonight,” and he said that his injury did not affect him on the mound. If anything, he joked, it made him look tougher. The interrogation about Burnett’s real injury came a few hours after an extended interrogation about a fake injury — the one Derek Jeter pretended to have sustained against Tampa Bay on Wednesday. Jeter was 1 for 5 with a single and two strikeouts on Friday, his first game since his much-debated actions against the Rays, when he was awarded first base after he pretended that a pitched ball had struck his left arm when it actually hit the knob of his bat. Each time he came to bat, Jeter was booed. Before the game, he expressed befuddlement at why so many people had objected to his actions against the Rays. “Next time somebody steals a base and a guy doesn’t tag you, and the umpire calls you out, do you want the fielder to say, ‘No, sir, I didn’t tag him, so let’s just keep him here?’ ” Jeter said. “Come on.” Some observers noted that if it were Rodriguez who had faked the hit-by-pitch instead of Jeter, Yankees fans would have joined the rest of the baseball world in rolling their eyes. But on Friday, it was Rodriguez who pushed the Yankees to the victory. One of Jeter’s strikeouts came in the ninth, after Posada battled Uehara for 11 pitches, hitting the last one, a splitter that stayed up in the strike zone, for a leadoff single. Curtis Granderson followed Jeter’s strikeout with a single, and after Teixeira was retired on an infield popup, Rodriguez stepped to the plate. He took a 1-2 pitch that appeared to catch the inside corner — Rodriguez said afterward that it was not that close, but the fans at Camden Yards and the Orioles thought otherwise — before unloading on a fastball. “We’ve played a lot of one-run games and been on the wrong side of things, but for us today was a big game,” Rodriguez said. Rodriguez was speaking in measured sound bites, as usual. But the Yankees — including Cashman, who described the Yankees as “struggling” when he spoke to reporters during batting practice — surely hope it was more than that. “This is the one that maybe gets us going,” Girardi said. INSIDE PITCH News of Joe Torre’s decision not to return to the Dodgers was broadcast on the televisions in the clubhouse, and several Yankee veterans — including Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte — praised Torre before batting practice. “It goes without saying how much he’s meant to the game of baseball, not only as a player but as a manager, here and in other places as well,” Jeter said. ... Nick Swisher, who fouled a ball off his left knee on Aug. 24 in Toronto and had the injury flare up again in the past week, remained out of the lineup. He pinch hit in the eighth inning and grounded out. ... Joe Girardi gave Pettitte the all-clear to rejoin the starting rotation on Sunday after he missed two months with a strained left groin. ... Brett Gardner returned to the starting lineup after being bothered the past week with a wrist injury. He was 0 for 3 with a walk.

Baseball
New York Yankees
Rodriguez Alex
Baltimore Orioles
Showalter Buck


Broadband Law Could Force Rural Residents Off Information Superhighway

Abstract: WILSON, N.C. — On the first day of the harvest last week, a line of trucks brimming with sweet potatoes rolled into Vick Family Farms , headed for a new packing plant that runs on ultrafast internet. The potatoes were tagged with online bar codes to detail the plots where they grew, their types of seed, and dates and times picked. On a conveyor belt, 50 flashing cameras captured and sent images of the spuds to an online program that sorted the Carolina Golds by size and quality and kicked them into boxes. The Vick family built the plant only after the nearby city of Wilson agreed early last year to bring its municipal broadband service to the 7,000-acre farm. Since the plant opened in October, the farm’s production and sales to Europe have jumped. But now, after a legal battle between state and federal officials over broadband, the farm and hundreds of other customers in the eastern region of the state may get unplugged. “We’re very worried because there is no way we could run this equipment on the internet service we used to have, and we can’t imagine the loss we’ll have to the business,” said Charlotte Vick, head of sales for the farm. Vick Family Farms got caught between the Federal Communications Commission and North Carolina state legislators over the spread of municipal broadband networks, which are city-run internet providers that have increased competition in the broadband market by serving residents where commercial networks have been unwilling to go . Image The Vick family uses ultrafast internet to run its sweet potato packing plant. Each box is traced from field to market. Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times This month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld restrictive laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that will halt the growth of such networks. While the decision directly affects only those two states, it has cast a shadow over dozens of city-run broadband projects started nationwide in recent years to help solve the digital divide . In siding with the states, the court hobbled the boldest effort by federal officials to support municipal broadband networks. While the court agreed that municipal networks were valuable, it disagreed with the F.C.C.’s legal arguments to pre-empt state laws. Now, cities like Wilson fear they have little protection from laws like those in about 20 states that curb municipal broadband efforts and favor traditional cable and telecom firms. City officials say cable and telecom companies that have lobbied for state restrictions will be encouraged to fight for even more draconian laws, potentially squashing competition that could lead to lower prices and better speeds to access the web. “This is about more than North Carolina and Tennessee,” said Deb Socia, executive director of Next Century Cities , a nonprofit coalition of cities exploring broadband projects. “We had all looked to the F.C.C. and its attempt to pre-empt those state laws as a way to get affordable and higher-quality broadband to places across the nation that are fighting to serve residents and solve the digital divide.” In Wilson, officials said cable and telecom companies rejected requests to team up with them and upgrade aging networks, which led the city to start its own broadband network called Greenlight in 2008. The service provides speeds of one gigabit per second, which lets people download big video files in seconds or minutes instead of several hours with DSL or basic cable broadband. In 2011, companies like Time Warner Cable, represented by the cable lobbying association, asked the North Carolina legislature to adopt a law to limit Wilson’s ability to serve customers outside Wilson County, even though the city serves electricity customers in four additional counties. Grant Goings, Wilson’s city manager, said the court decision made it unclear “how we can bridge the digital divide and create economies of the future when there are corporate interests standing in the way.” Image Empty sweet potato crates at Vick Family Farms. Charlotte Vick, head of sales, said she “can’t imagine the loss we’ll have to the business” without ultrafast internet. Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times But some lawmakers and free-market-oriented think tanks say public broadband projects should be carefully scrutinized by local regulators because they are costly and, if unsuccessful, can be a financial burden on taxpayers. In addition, the F.C.C. cannot intervene in state laws, they said. The court decision “affirms the fact that unelected bureaucrats at the F.C.C. completely overstepped their authority by attempting to deny states like North Carolina from setting their own laws to protect hardworking taxpayers and maintain the fairness of the free market,” Thom Tillis, a Republican United States senator who pushed through the 2011 bill when he was North Carolina’s House speaker, said in a statement. CenturyLink , one of the broadband providers serving Wilson and surrounding areas, says it offers competitive internet speeds and has upgraded its networks. The company says it wants to partner with municipalities but is concerned that city-run networks may have an unfair advantage. “If local governments choose to compete with private internet service providers, there needs to be a level playing field,” said Rondi Furgason, CenturyLink’s vice president for operations in North Carolina. The F.C.C. does not plan to appeal the federal court’s decision “after determining that doing so would not be the best use of commission resources,” Mark Wigfield, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement. That means municipalities that want to keep expanding their municipal broadband networks will have to fight to overturn state laws on their own. The legal fight is being closely watched by other cities in states that have similar broadband restrictions, such as Colorado and Washington. Even big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco are in the early stages of exploring municipal broadband networks, which they view as crucial to serving low-income families who cannot afford service from cable and telecom companies. “It’s bad news for projects looking to expand beyond their borders in hostile, anti-muni broadband states,” said Robert Wack, president of the City Council in Westminster, Md., which began its own gigabit municipal network last year. Image Mark and Tina Gomez at home in Pinetops, N.C. They may move to nearby Wilson to keep their broadband service. Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times For thousands of residents in communities near Wilson, about an hour from Raleigh, the court decision has created whiplash. In Pinetops, a short drive east of Wilson, many residents cheered the arrival of the Greenlight service last year. The former railroad stop, known for its picturesque pine trees, has long struggled to maintain its population of 1,300. Though many cars pass through the town, there is little reason to stop, since many storefronts are shuttered. Last year, Pinetops officials pleaded with Wilson, its much larger neighbor that provides water and power to the area, to also bring its broadband service. They saw how having Greenlight had helped Wilson attract companies like Exodus FX , a visual effects company that has worked on movies like “Captain America” and “Black Swan.” In February, Wilson expanded Greenlight to Pinetops by extending fiber lines to 200 homes, and it has plans to serve 400 homes by later this year. Tina Gomez, a Pinetops resident, quickly saw Greenlight’s benefits. She recently got a telework job with General Electric, which requires reliable high-speed internet service to run a customer service software program. Ms. Gomez, 37, also started online courses in medical billing and coding. Before subscribing to Greenlight, finding telework was a challenge because the existing home internet service was too slow, she said. Now the political squabble over broadband may hurt her livelihood. Mark Gomez, Ms. Gomez’s husband, said they would move from Pinetops to Wilson when their broadband service was disconnected. “We can’t stay if the basic services we need aren’t here,” Ms. Gomez said. At Vick Family Farms, Ms. Vick recalled what life was like before Wilson’s municipal broadband service. Her previous service, supplied by CenturyLink, often stalled or stopped entirely. One week before Thanksgiving a few years ago, the farm was shut down for hours because of an internet failure, so workers had to pack boxes by hand. “We can’t step back in time when everyone else is moving forward,” she said.

Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Wilson
Rural area
Federalism
FCC
North Carolina
Tennessee


House Clears Path for Repeal of Health Law

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The House cleared the way on Friday for speedy action to repeal the Affordable Care Act, putting Congress on track to undo the most significant health care law in a half-century. With a near party-line vote of 227 to 198, the House overcame the opposition of Democrats and the anxieties of some Republicans to approve a budget blueprint that allows Republicans to end major provisions of President Obama’s health care law without the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. President-elect Donald J. Trump, Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other Republican leaders now face a much bigger challenge: devising their own plan to ensure broad access to health care and coverage while controlling costs. While their party is far from a consensus on how to replace the health care law — under which more than 20 million Americans have gained health insurance — they will need votes from Democrats in the Senate to enact a robust replacement plan. Republicans have argued that Americans have been crushed by soaring premiums and other unintended effects of the law, which was adopted without any Republican votes. “This is a critical first step toward delivering relief to Americans who are struggling under this law,” Mr. Ryan said, adding, “This experiment has failed.” Democrats warned that repeal of the health law would cause hardship for millions of Americans and create chaos in insurance markets and in the health care system, which accounts for about 18 percent of the nation’s economy. “If we go down this path, we won’t have repeal and replace,” said Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “What we’ll have is repeal and repent because we’re going to owe a huge apology to the American people for the damage that we cause.” Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, a Democrat, said, “There’s still no plan for what comes next, threatening massive disruption to the entire health care system.” In the days before the House vote, some conservative Republicans, as well as moderates, expressed discomfort about signing off on the budget blueprint without having a clearer picture of how and when Republican leaders planned to replace the health care law. Nine House Republicans ended up voting against the budget measure on Friday. No Democrats voted for it. New Hampshire Residents: Did You Sign up for Insurance Through the Affordable Care Act? The Times would like to hear from Americans who are signing up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The Senate approved the same measure early Thursday by a vote of 51 to 48. The House and Senate votes this week — essentially procedural steps — represented the first of several moves that Republicans plan to make as they work to unwind the health care law. In the coming weeks, they say, they will try to devise a replacement, working closely with Mr. Trump and his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Representative Tom Price of Georgia. Four committees — two in the Senate, two in the House — will write language repealing major provisions of the 2010 health law. The resulting legislation can be passed with simple majorities in both chambers, and will be immune to a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. Then, Republicans say, they will pass one or more free-standing bills to replace selected provisions of the Affordable Care Act. In the Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats, they will need help from Democrats to reach the 60 votes necessary to approve such legislation. Mr. Trump voiced support this week for repealing and replacing the health care law “essentially simultaneously,” though it remained to be seen if Republicans in the Senate can win enough Democratic support to adopt a replacement for the existing health care law, given the need to reach 60 votes. In the House debate on Friday, Republicans and Democrats offered wildly differing views of health care and health insurance. Representative Jason Lewis of Minnesota, a first-term Republican, said he had firsthand experience with the Affordable Care Act. “Minnesotans have seen their health insurance choices shrink while their premiums, co-pays and deductibles skyrocket,” Mr. Lewis said. “I should know. For the last, in fact, over five years, I’ve been in the individual market, and my own insurance premiums have nearly tripled, and I’ve gone through three insurers. Minnesotans have seen a 50 to 67 percent increase in the premium cost this year alone.” The House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who helped engineer passage of the health law, defended it on Friday, saying that every American benefited. “The Republicans are feeding their ideological obsession with repealing the A.C.A. and dismantling the health and economic security of hard-working families,” Ms. Pelosi said. For six years, she said, Republicans have had the chance to put forth an alternative, but “we’ve seen nothing.” Echoing their colleagues in the Senate, Democrats asked how Republicans planned to go about replacing the Affordable Care Act — a complex, arduous task, as Democrats know from their own experience developing and passing the health law in the first place. “When you put pen to paper, all hell is going to break loose on your side,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont. Democrats also tried to draw attention to what they said would be the devastating consequences of repealing the health care law. Over and over, after a Republican member spoke out against the law, Mr. Yarmuth offered several data points specific to the member’s home state, including how many people would lose their health coverage. Republicans, though, were eager to deliver on a central campaign promise. “The public has rendered judgment on this health care law,” said Representative John Shimkus of Illinois. The differing views among House members on Friday foreshadowed the acrimony that is all but certain in the weeks to come, as Republicans press ahead with their repeal efforts over Democrats’ strenuous objections. So far, lawmakers have shown some creativity in trying to explain the wisdom — or lack of wisdom — in moving forward with a repeal. On Friday, Representative Drew Ferguson of Georgia, a freshman Republican, likened the health care law to a goat that had been let loose in a person’s home. “Now for six years, that goat has been messing in and destroying my house,” he said. “I want to renovate my house, but before I can, I have to get the goat out of the house before it does any more damage. It makes no sense to start fixing up my house until we get the goat out.” Voting for the measure on Friday, Mr. Ferguson said, would get rid of the goat.

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Senate
Congress
House of Representatives
Congress
Republicans
US Politics


AT&T Could Find a Lesson in Comcast’s Media Merger

Abstract: Comcast is schooling AT&T on media mergers and acquisitions. The cable giant now gets more than one-third of its revenue from NBCUniversal, a deal it concluded in early 2013 when the regulatory and political climate was more accommodating and the strategy of the company’s chief executive, Brian L. Roberts, was sound. AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner, by contrast, is a mess. The top line at NBCUniversal, home to the Peacock Network, MSNBC and a giant movie studio, jumped 28 percent in the third quarter, to $9.2 billion. Granted, the unit got a huge lift from broadcasting the Olympics in the United States. But even after stripping out the sporting event, revenue increased about 6 percent thanks to strong growth at its theme parks. Comcast’s two-part deal for NBCUniversal, which it bought from industrial conglomerate General Electric, was prudent by today’s standards. Regulators insisted on a variety of conditions before approving the deal, including that Comcast take a passive role in its ownership of video-streaming service Hulu. G.E.’s then-huge finance division was also under duress thanks to the financial crisis, and the parent company was eager to rid itself of media assets that made little sense in its portfolio of jet engines and capacitors. By contrast, AT&T is offering a whopping $20 billion above Time Warner’s market value before word of a deal leaked out. The cost savings cited by AT&T, some $1 billion, barely cover a third of the premium. The telecommunications giant also has little experience in producing TV shows and movies. Mr. Roberts himself has learned some hard deal lessons. Comcast’s earlier attempt to take over the Walt Disney Company was a failure. So too was his proposal to buy Time Warner Cable after trustbusters denied the union. AT&T argues it will have no problem sailing through the review process. Based on Time Warner’s shares, which are now trading $20 below the offer price of $107.50, AT&T may want to take a more humble tack.

Mergers and Acquisitions
Comcast
NBCUniversal
AT&T
Time Warner
Brian L Roberts


City Smells Confound Flower-Seeking Moths

Abstract: Car exhaust and other urban fumes can disrupt moths’ ability to make their way to flowers, a new study reports. “The flowers occur in patches that can be kilometers away, and these moths are almost at the edge of survival trying to find them,” said Jeff Riffell , a biologist at the University of Washington and the first author of the study , which appears in the journal Science. The research focuses on the tobacco hornworm moth, which depends on nectar for energy. Nectar from one flower provides enough fuel for just 15 minutes of flying time, so “flying around is really energetically expensive,” Dr. Riffell said. The scientists sampled flower scents and other odors with a sensitive mass spectrometer, and then used a wind tunnel to determine how different combinations of smells affected a moth’s ability to find flowers. They found that the moths did far better in rural environments than in urban and suburban ones. But it is not just man-made odors that affect the moths. Scents from neighboring vegetation can be very disruptive as well, Dr. Riffell said. Now the researchers are interested in studying the effects of urban scents on other major pollinators, like honeybees.

Odor
Butterflies and Moths
Science Journal
Air pollution


MTV Will Acquire Maker of Music-Oriented Games

Abstract: MTV, the cable TV channel some critics have accused of straying too far from its musical roots, is to acquire Harmonix Music Systems, a maker of music-oriented video games, for $175 million in cash. Harmonix’s main product, Guitar Hero, is a console game developed for Sony’s PlayStation 2 that equips players with a simulator that looks like a guitar while promising them the ability to feel like a rock star without knowing how to play music or even leaving their bedroom. The goals of the deal, which is to be announced today, are broader than putting the MTV logo on a Harmonix game box: for instance, the company wants to offer visitors to its Web sites, its new virtual worlds and its planned mobile services the ability to play along with, or remix, their favorite songs. “It is about people coming to MTV who are passionate about music and wanting to interact on deeper and deeper levels,” said Christina Norman, the president of MTV. “It’s not just about wearing the T-shirt.” Ms. Norman insisted that music video was alive and well at MTV, particularly with its spin-off channels and Web offshoots. “Realistically speaking, there is more music available on all of the platforms of MTV—wherever the audience wants it—than there has ever been before,” she said in an interview. The purchase of Harmonix by MTV Networks, the cable-programming unit of Viacom, is the second music-related digital acquisition by a media conglomerate recently. Last week, the News Corporation acquired control of Jamba, a seller of ring tones and other products for mobile phones, for $188 million. In addition to Guitar Hero, Harmonix has developed a line of karaoke game programs. MTV executives said they hoped to promote those programs, but also make them available on its Web sites and in VMTV, the digital virtual world it is introducing next year. Harmonix is based in Cambridge, Mass., and was founded by Alex Rigopulos, its chief executive, and Eran Egozy, its chief technology officer, who are both staying with the company.

MTV Networks
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Harmonix Music Systems
Computer and Video Games
Virtual Reality (Computers)
Computers and the Internet


In England, West Ham Wins Playoff and Promotion to Premier League

Abstract: West Ham striker Ricardo Vaz Te scored with three minutes remaining to send his team to England’s Premier League with a 2-1 win over Blackpool in the promotion playoff final Saturday at London’s Wembley Stadium. Vaz Te, a Portuguese wing, lifted the ball into the roof of the net from close range after a goal-mouth scramble to end the Hammers’ yearlong absence from the Premier League. The victory guarantees West Ham about $150 million in broadcast and other revenue, and should help it keep hold of its best players, including the England international goalkeeper Rob Green and Vaz Te, who scored 24 goals this season. “It is another step, a big challenge,” Vaz Te said. “We must get there with the mentality that we’re a Premier League side and not there to fight relegation.” West Ham was relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season and hired the former Bolton, Newcastle and Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce to get it back to the top flight. “It’s everything to me,” Allardyce said. “It was difficult at the start to turn the club around with the relegation problem we’ve had, but we turned it round and came good at the end.” RED BULLS WIN AGAIN Dane Richards scored in the 67th minute with the Red Bulls playing a man short in a 2-1 win at Montreal. It was the Red Bulls’ fifth straight win. Richards pounced on a rebound in close and put the ball under the crossbar. Kenny Cooper scored his 10th goal for the Red Bulls (8-3-1). SCOTTISH CUP DROUGHT Hearts won the Scottish Cup for the first time in six seasons, brushing aside its Edinburgh rival Hibernian, 5-1, at Hampden Park in Glasgow. Hibernian’s Cup drought continued; its last Cup title was in 1902.

Soccer
West Ham United (Soccer Team)
UEFA Champions League (Soccer)
Blackpool (Soccer Team)


The Cardinals Find Themselves Looking for Another Quarterback

Abstract: If it is Monday, the Arizona Cardinals must be looking for a quarterback. Last week, they signed Tim Rattay as a backup to Kurt Warner , who took over for the injured Matt Leinart. Now Warner is out indefinitely with a sprained left elbow, Rattay is the starter and the Cardinals are expected to sign Tim Hasselbeck as soon as they clear a roster spot. “It’s obviously unusual,” Coach Ken Whisenhunt said. “It’s hard enough when you lose one quarterback, but when you lose two, it’s doubly difficult.” This is the fourth year since 2001 that the 36-year-old Warner, a two-time N.F.L. most valuable player, has missed games because of an injury. Warner had a magnetic resonance imaging exam yesterday, but after Sunday’s game he said he was having trouble gripping the ball with his left hand. YOUNG IS DAY-TO-DAY Tennessee quarterback Vince Young had an M.R.I. exam yesterday to check out his strained right quadriceps. The results were not immediately available, and Coach Jeff Fisher said Young would be day to day. The Titans (3-2) visit Young’s hometown Sunday and the team, the Houston Texans (3-3), that passed him over in the 2006 draft. “He loves it down there, and they love him down there,” tight end Bo Scaife said. “I think there’s nothing more for him to be able to play. I’m sure he’s going to do everything he can to try to see that it happens.” The Titans will be without receiver Brandon Jones on Sunday. Fisher said Jones had arthroscopic surgery on his knee yesterday and would be out a week or two. Jones hurt his right knee Oct. 7 against Atlanta. BOLLER TO START FOR RAVENS Kyle Boller will start at quarterback for a second straight week Sunday in Buffalo, Baltimore’s final game before a much-needed bye. Steve McNair could play, but the Ravens would prefer he rest his lingering groin injury and sore back. The objective is to get McNair three weeks off before the Ravens play Nov. 5 at Pittsburgh, which leads the American Football Conference North. BULGER SET TO RETURN Quarterback Marc Bulger said yesterday that he planned to return to the lineup for the 0-6 Rams this week, and Coach Scott Linehan said Bulger would be cleared to play at Seattle. Bulger missed the previous two games while he nursed two broken ribs. Bulger said he could not worry about compounding his injuries. “I don’t think we have an option right now,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s smart, I think I have to.” Another impact player on the Rams’ offense, Steven Jackson, could miss his third straight game with a partially torn groin. Linehan said Jackson had a “very outside” chance of playing this week. SUPER BOWL IN LONDON? A future Super Bowl champion may someday be crowned overseas in a game witnessed predominantly by a foreign audience, Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “There’s a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl in London,” Goodell told reporters in Scottsdale, Ariz., yesterday. Goodell said London’s new Wembley Stadium would make a great candidate for pro football’s biggest matchup, given the enthusiasm overseas for the game. On Oct. 28, Wembley will play host to the first regular-season N.F.L. game outside North America. It took just 90 minutes to sell the first 40,000 tickets for the game between the Miami Dolphins and the Giants. Goodell said event organizers have sold 95,000 tickets. GREEN HOPES TO PLAY THIS YEAR Miami Dolphins quarterback Trent Green said he hoped to play again despite concerns about long-term repercussions from his second severe concussion in 13 months. Speaking on his weekly radio show yesterday, Green said all test results so far had been normal. He said he had more tests scheduled today. “Right now my mind-set is to come back and play,” Green said. “Everything has been real positive up to this point. That has given me great reassurance and given my family great reassurance.” The 37-year-old Green has been sidelined since a concussion Oct. 7 at Houston left him face down and motionless on the field. He was carted away and taken to a hospital and has since undergone tests in Kansas City and South Florida. CHARGERS’ INJURY TROUBLES While the resurgent San Diego Chargers waited word on the severity of Pro Bowl center Nick Hardwick’s foot injury, All-Pro defensive tackle Jamal Williams had arthroscopic surgery on both knees yesterday. The Chargers have their bye this weekend, and Coach Norv Turner said that “with a little luck,” Williams would be able to play when the Chargers play host to Houston on Oct. 28. Hardwick was having a magnetic resonance imaging exam on his injured right foot. The team said Sunday that he had a sprain. AROUND THE LEAGUE Seahawks defensive tackle Chuck Darby, a three-year starter and leader of Seattle’s defense, is facing knee surgery and will miss the rest of the season. Darby tore the patella tendon in his right knee Sunday. ... Bills defensive end Anthony Hargrove pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for a fight with the police outside a Rochester nightclub in August. He was fined $300 and must perform 200 hours of community service.

Arizona Cardinals
Football
Rattay Tim
Warner Kurt
Leinart Matt