At 60 M.P.H., Office Work Is High Risk

Abstract: JOPLIN, Mo. — Looking back, Paul Dekok wonders what he was thinking that May morning when the urgent call came in. Mr. Dekok, a manager at the Potash Corporation, learned that a 25-ton truckload of the company’s additive for livestock feed had been rejected by a customer as contaminated. Scrambling to protect his company’s credibility with a big customer, he grabbed his cellphone to arrange a new shipment, cradling it between his left ear and shoulder, and with his right hand e-mailed instructions to his staff from his laptop computer — all while driving his rental car in a construction zone on a two-lane highway in North Carolina . “I thought I was doing a great job because I was being productive,” Mr. Dekok said. “It’s an adrenaline rush. It’s the buzz we all get of trying to do everything you can in business.” But later, reflecting on the risks he took that spring day in 2007, he saw himself in a different light: “I was Bozo the clown.” Mr. Dekok may be rethinking how he works on the road, but tens of thousands of Americans barely give it a second thought. They have turned their cars, vans and trucks into mobile offices, wired with phones and computers to stay in close touch with bosses and customers. On Wednesday, the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood , called the broader phenomenon of distracted driving a “deadly epidemic” at a meeting on the issue in Washington . Real estate brokers, pharmaceutical sales people, entrepreneurs, marketers and others say they have little choice but to transform their cars into cubicles. In this merciless economy, they say, they have to make every minute count, and respond instantly to opportunities and challenges. And they argue that the convenience of constant contact — and the chance to tick off items from an endless to-do list while driving — far outweigh what they think are slim chances that it could lead to a wreck. For white-collar employees, pressures to multitask are largely self-imposed. For blue-collar workers, the demands to stay connected while driving are often imposed by their bosses. Truckers, plumbers, delivery drivers and others are tethered to dispatchers with an array of productivity devices, including on-board computers that send instructions about the next job and keep tabs on drivers’ locations. Such devices can require continual attention — distracting drivers who are steering the biggest vehicles on American roads. The compulsion to work while driving often trumps clear evidence that such activity is dangerous. Studies show that someone who talks on the phone while driving is four times more likely to crash, even using a hands-free headset, than someone who is simply driving. The risks are even greater when sending text messages . For all the perceived benefits of multitasking behind the wheel — like staying a step ahead of competitors — the dangers have begun to take their toll on companies, leading some to ban the practice by employees. Some families of victims killed in collisions with a multitasking worker have successfully sued the driver’s employer for tens of millions of dollars. Researchers say there is another reason to question the benefits of working behind the wheel: a growing body of research shows that splitting attention between activities like working and driving often leads to distracted conversations and bad decisions. “There is an illusion of productivity,” said David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan . “It’s actually counterproductive.” “To the extent that someone is focused on driving, the quality of work product is diminished,” he added. “To the extent someone is focused on work and not driving, there’s a risk of crashing and burning. Something’s got to give.” The Drive to Compete Potash, a large public fertilizer and chemical company, never told managers like Mr. Dekok, or regional salesmen like Rob Hudson, that they needed to multitask while driving. But given that both men drive an average of 150 miles each day visiting feed mills and other customers, their cars inevitably became rolling offices, the place where they call clients, plan meetings and make hotel reservations. “I’d be on my cellphone, writing notes in my planner, driving with my knee, and with a sandwich in my lap,” Mr. Hudson said. He felt he could not ignore his phone, he said, because he never knew which call or e-mail message would be one he could not miss. “For the clients, a lot of times it’s an urgent request for a delivery,” he said. “In the animal feed business, they never stop eating. It’s not like that can wait until tomorrow.” Plenty of other workers feel similar pressures. IDC, a market research firm, estimated last year that there were 111 million mobile workers in the United States , including all manner of people who do work outside an office, whether in a car, café, or airport lounge. And in a 2007 survey, IDC found that 70 percent of owners of BlackBerrys and other smartphones used their device in a car at least once a week. (The survey did not specify whether the phone users were drivers or passengers, but 80 percent of people typically drive alone). “It’s a seconds-count economy,” said Sean Ryan, an analyst at IDC. Mr. Ryan feels the pressure. He schedules work calls to make his own 45-minute commute — from Boston to Framingham, Mass. — more productive. At stop lights, he checks texts and e-mail messages. He does not want to miss something important, but he also sees the practice as a time saver. “I might as well get a quick e-mail taken care of, or at least delete spam,” he said. “When I get to the office, I’ve saved 15 to 20 minutes of work.” David Vered, 53, chief executive of Pacific Yogurt Partners, which operates Golden Spoon frozen yogurt stores in the San Francisco Bay Area and helps manage other stores around the state, sometimes does not wait for stop lights to check his e-mail. He has trained employees to send concise messages so that he can read them while driving on the highway as he visits stores. “With the BlackBerry, you can hold it up over the steering wheel,” he said. “I just hit ‘open’ and see what the issue is.” On his lengthy commutes, he occasionally schedules calls with lawyers to do lease negotiations, or with contractors to discuss construction of a new retail outlet. But his phone can also ring with an urgent problem, like a broken frozen-yogurt machine. Mr. Vered’s workers need to know what to do. If he delays, he said, they might be paralyzed, wasting time and money. “I respond to them as rapidly as possible,” he said. “I don’t like holding people up. And I’m not just holding them up: I’m paying them. I want them to be as effective as possible.” Studies show that drivers who send text or e-mail typically take their eyes off the road for an average of five seconds. But Mr. Vered said he was vigilant about safety. Besides, he said, he never reads e-mail on his bigger laptop computer, which he keeps on a desk he has installed on the passenger seat of his small Toyota S.U.V. “That’s dangerous because you have to shift the field of vision away from the road,” he added. Mr. Vered said he was an adept multitasker. “I’m in a zone,” he said. He uses a Bluetooth cellphone device attached to his ear so he can keep both hands on the wheel unless he is dialing or reading a text. “I’ve done it my whole life, so I know how to multitask,” he added. As his own boss, Mr. Vered can choose whether to multitask while driving. But other employees, particularly blue-collar workers, do not have that luxury. Many employers deploy an array of devices to stay connected with their drivers at all times. The Mobile Office “When someone’s toilet overflows, they call a bunch of plumbers — the first plumber there wins,” said Brian Edds, a marketing director for Xora, a company based in Mountain View, Calif. Xora’s software lets workers using mobile phones receive dispatch and navigation directions, deal with payroll, fill out invoices and otherwise manage their work as if they were sitting at a desk. IDC, the research firm, estimates companies spent $850 million last year for such software from Xora and its competitors, and estimated the market size would double in five years. The software has been installed on the phones of millions of electricians, service technicians, home health care workers, sales people, plumbers and others — at companies like Coca-Cola , Merck , Pitney Bowes and Xerox , and the city of Chicago . Xora’s customers include the Roto-Rooter Services Company, the plumbing chain. In the past, Mr. Edds said, a mobile worker might have had to scribble down directions from a dispatcher. “Now he gets sent the information in an organized manner, so he can click on the address, and get the best route, so he gets to a job very fast,” he said. Stephen R. Poppe, chief information officer for Roto-Rooter, said that when employees turned on their device, it warned them not to use it while driving. But employees can bypass the warning, and Mr. Poppe conceded the company cannot stop them from doing so, “It’s like telling your daughter, ‘Don’t talk while driving,’ ” he said. “She answers, ‘Sure, Dad.’ ” The company also needs quick responses from its plumbers. “We want to know right this minute if they’re going to take that job or not, or we’ll assign the job to someone else,” he said. “We’ll know within 60 seconds.” Mr. Edds said that Xora software included a standard warning screen urging users not to use it while driving. But he acknowledged that it could be ignored — and often was. “Like the warning screens on in-dash navigation systems, most users treat them as a speed bump on their way to do what they want to do,” he said. And sometimes a computer in the driver’s seat can be a deadly distraction. Unintended Costs Jered Noe was driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck on a quiet stretch of two-lane highway in Seminole County, Okla., two Novembers ago. Samantha Dawn Earnest, with her three children, Jason, 7; Dakota, 5; and Hailey, 4; was driving along the same road in the other direction in her green 1999 Chevrolet Malibu . In the back seat, Jason and Dakota talked about decorating the walls of their shared room. Jason favored pictures of dinosaurs. Dakota preferred horses. As Ms. Earnest crested a hill, the delivery truck swerved into her car, spun it around and sent it careening across the highway. Jason died on impact. Ms. Earnest, stunned and bleeding, saw the truck driver walking toward her. “I said, ‘Why, why, why?’ ” she recalled screaming at him. “He told me, ‘I just took my eyes off the road for a second because I was looking at my computer.’ ” She started chasing him. “I went into a mad rage,” she said. “If he’d said he’d fallen asleep, maybe I’d have understood. But using a computer?” Mr. Noe, 24, received a suspended sentence for negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, and the Earnest family sued Mr. Noe’s employer, the ADA Coca-Cola Bottling Company. The company settled, and the terms of the agreement are confidential. ADA did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers and expert witnesses in cases involving multitasking drivers say such lawsuits are common. Last year, International Paper reached a settlement to pay $5.2 million because of a 2006 accident in which an employee on a phone hit another driver, whose arm had to be amputated. Katherine McArthur, a lawyer in Macon , Ga., who sued International Paper in that case, said the company permitted employees to use a cellphone while driving if it had a hands-free headset. (This remains the company policy, according to International Paper). But Ms. McArthur said that several studies show that drivers using headsets face the same likelihood of crashing as someone holding the phone to their ear. That risk has been compared to driving at the legal limit for intoxication. “What I’m arguing in these cases is that these companies are authorizing something as bad as drunk driving and that they knew about the research or should have known,” she said. Ms. McArthur said that companies should expect more such lawsuits. “They’re the deep pockets,” she said. Some may pay before an accident even happens. Insurance executives say that when setting premiums the industry has started to consider whether companies have policies on cellphone use. The Calculus There might be another reason for drivers to reconsider working behind the wheel: a growing body of studies suggest that such work may be less valuable than many people assume. The reason, researchers say, is that the brain can effectively perform only one difficult task at a time. Mr. Meyer, the Michigan professor, found that when someone tried to multitask, important neural regions must switch back and forth, taking time and creating inefficiencies. That can be particularly dangerous, of course, when a driver suddenly feels the tires slipping on an icy road in the middle of a phone call. But that 2001 study, and numerous others, also show that multitasking motorists can pay another price — in the quality of their work. In 2006, for instance, researchers at University of California , Los Angeles , used brain imaging to show that multitaskers were less effective learners. According to that research, a person focused on a single task remembers what he has learned using the hippocampus, a part of the brain critical to storing and recalling information. But when that person multitasks — like trying to learn something new while driving — the brain relies more on the striatum, a part of the brain used more for learning motor skills. The researchers concluded, “Don’t multitask while you are trying to learn something new you hope to remember.” “The brain is fundamentally built to unitask,” said Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford, where he is also a co-director of a new automotive research laboratory. That limitation can put drivers at a disadvantage if they are negotiating with someone who, say, is in an office and less distracted. Driving, Mr. Nass said, taxes the parts of the brain that make it more difficult to appreciate nuances of a conversation. “A person is much more manipulatable when they’re behind the wheel,” he said. Mr. Nass said that the counterproductive effects can linger after the ride. Research shows that the brains of heavy multitaskers can become so accustomed to hopping from task to task that they have trouble focusing on longer, more in-depth ones. Some companies have weighed several factors — including the safety risks and the cost of potential lawsuits — and banned employees from doing work on their phones behind the wheel. (In a survey taken in August of its 13,000 member companies, the National Safety Council found 469 with such bans.) Some corporations that have imposed the bans have found that productivity has not suffered. AMEC, an international engineering and project management company, banned its 9,000 North American workers, starting in 2005, from talking on the phone while driving — a decision the company made after executives heard about a fatal accident caused by a driver talking on a cellphone. AMEC surveyed its workers a year later, asking them to respond anonymously to encourage candor, and 95 percent said their productivity had not been affected. In 2004, Exxon Mobil started asking the same question after it became concerned about the safety of its 90,000 workers and 100,000 contract workers, who drove up to 1.5 million miles each day, said Michael Henderek, the company’s safety executive at the time. The company wanted to know what a ban would do to the bottom line. “Exxon Mobil is a corporation in which 50 percent of employees are engineers,” said Mr. Henderek. “It’s driven by data.” The company determined that research equating the dangers of behind-the-wheel multitasking with drunken driving was reliable. So in early 2004, Exxon Mobil ran a pilot project, restricting some employees from using the phone while driving. It found no loss in productivity, and quickly imposed a ban for all workers and contractors. “To not act was irresponsible,” Mr. Henderek said. “The risk to employees was much greater than any marginal benefit of the productivity you get.” Exxon Mobil was particularly concerned about its big fuel trucks. “The last thing you want to have,” Mr. Henderek said, “is an incident between the fuel fleet and the community.” Tragedy Begets a Change Last March, Potash’s chief executive, William J. Doyle, attended a conference in Bahrain that focused on safety in the fertilizer industry. He was particularly moved by a harrowing speech — not about chemical safety, but distracted driving. Before day’s end, Mr. Doyle had sent an e-mail message to several Potash executives telling them the company needed to change its policy. “It said, ‘We have to get a cellphone policy in place. We can’t subject people to this anymore,’ ” John Hunt, Potash’s executive in charge of safety, health and environment, recalled. On April 1, Potash banned its 5,000 workers from using their phones while driving, telling them they could be fired if they broke the rule. “There’s always an extra 15 or 30 minutes where someone can pull the car over to place a call. Nothing is that critical,” Mr. Hunt said, explaining the policy. Mr. Dekok, the manager, was skeptical. But his grudging acceptance vanished when he heard a speech by David Teater, an executive with the National Safety Council, which has made a cause of eliminating driver distraction. This year, as part of that, the group began an effort to get corporations representing one million workers to ban their employees from using cellphones while driving. At the invitation of Potash, Mr. Teater, 53, a former college football player with an easygoing manner, recently gave company workers and their families a version of the stump speech he has given dozens of times. Over 40 minutes, Mr. Teater detailed the increased risks drivers face when multitasking. He talked about cognitive distraction and the need for stronger laws. He thanked Potash for being a leader and urged the audience to tell others to rethink their priorities. “We don’t need our phones as much as we think we do,” he said. Then Mr. Teater, his audience already rapt, showed pictures on a projector of people who had been killed by multitasking drivers. The last photo he showed was of a 12-year-old blond boy, smiling — it was Joe Teater, Mr. Teater’s son. On Martin Luther King Day in 2004, a driver talking on a cellphone on her way to church hit the Teaters’ car, killing Joe and injuring his mother, who was driving. (After his son’s death, Mr. Teater worked 18 months for a company that is developing technology that can prevent a driver from using a cellphone while the car is in motion, and he still owns shares in the company.) Many of the Potash employees teared up as Mr. Teater concluded. They thanked him, and said they would change their behavior and urge friends and family to do the same. Mr. Hudson, the Potash salesman, still wishes there could be some compromise on the policy. He acknowledged that he has had more than a few scary moments in the past when he’s “swerved off the beaten path” while multitasking. But he still feels drive time should be productive. “You’d think we could have some leeway on the highway — when you’re on open road and you’re wide awake,” he said. “It’s a little over the top to have a 100 percent ban. But then, where do you draw the line?” For Mr. Dekok, the line is now clear. If he is driving and the phone rings, he lets it go to voicemail. He knows every rest stop on his routes, and which ones have good cellular and Wi-Fi service. He does not drive more than 30 miles without stopping to respond to messages. And he delegates more authority to subordinates so they can deal with problems when he is on the road. Business is just as urgent as it always has been, but he has a new view of the calculus. “After you go cold turkey, and get rid of the cellphone when you drive, you see other people’s behavior,” he said. “It’s like getting sober and realizing everyone else is still drunk.”

Cars
Wireless
Accidents and Safety
Productivity
Driving Under the Influence DUI
Mobile phone


Clijsters Plays on With New Priorities

Abstract: Kim Clijsters did not play a single match on tour in February after her disastrous — and somewhat inexplicable — loss to Nadia Petrova in the third round of the Australian Open. Had it occurred five years earlier, Clijsters would probably have been on the next flight to a smaller event in Memphis, Dubai or Paris to regain her form. These days, however, the 26-year-old Clijsters has a much different list of priorities. “My main concern is to prevent injuries and be mentally fresh for each tournament,” Clijsters said Monday. “I’m focused on being a wife, a mother and an athlete.” This past week, Clijsters and her husband, Brian Lynch, brought their daughter, Jada, to New York to celebrate her second birthday. On Monday night, Clijsters played in the Billie Jean King Cup at Madison Square Garden, her first trip to the Garden in nearly 10 years. She lost to Venus Williams, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5. “Now I’m going back as a mother,” Clijsters said. “This kind of event is really special and I’m inspired to be there.” When Clijsters won the United States Open last September in only her third tournament after a two-year layoff, a period when she gave birth to Jada, she was praised for her steely nerve and her improved pressure-point play. “I thought she was brilliant in New York,” the Hall of Famer Virginia Wade said. “Her ability to dig deep and her fortitude were tremendous.” Such fortitude was partly credited to motherhood, but there is an uncertainty if Clijsters can maintain a high level of play while competing in fewer tournaments. “I think it’s going to be a little bit harder for her to drop in and play out of her mind like she played at the U.S. Open,” Wade said. Monday’s Garden exhibition served as a sort of prelude to the start of the North American women’s tour this month, with tournaments in Indian Wells, Calif., and Key Biscayne, Fla. “It will help me with Indian Wells,” Clijsters said. “In my first career there were plenty of easy scores, but now early rounds are just as tough. Lots of the top players have to be aware that the young up-and-comers are eager to beat us.” In a drive put on by the United States Tennis Association to coincide with the Garden exhibition, novice players got the chance to sign up to play tennis at hundreds of public facilities, park and recreation agencies and commercial clubs as a part of Tennis Night in America. “Historically, we’ve used May to promote what we call tennis month,” said Kurt Kamperman, the chief executive of community tennis for the U.S.T.A. “Tying in to this event allowed us to extend the season.” There are 735 facilities across the country that have registered thousands of children for spring and summer tennis programs. The U.S.T.A. has also introduced a new teaching initiative, QuikStart, that Kamperman hoped would attract more young players to the game. “We realized that kids today want to play earlier, younger,” Kamperman said. “QuikStart allows parents to be engaged with their kids, set up a makeshift net in the driveway and get hooked.” As for Clijsters’s daughter, her involvement with tennis comes in the form of rounding out her mother’s second career. Clijsters tries to have breakfast with Jada or spend a few hours with her on off days. On this trip, they went on a carriage ride in Central Park. “Jada is a good kid,” Clijsters said. “She sleeps well and doesn’t take too long to adjust.” Something Clijsters, too, is trying to do a second time around.

Tennis
Clijsters Kim
United States Tennis Assn


Most Health Insurance Co-ops Are Losing Money, Federal Audit Finds

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Most federal insurance cooperatives created under the Affordable Care Act are losing money and could have difficulty repaying millions of dollars in federal loans, an internal government audit has found, prompting the Obama administration to step up supervision of the carriers. Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that most of the insurance co-ops enrolled fewer people than they had predicted, and that 22 of the 23 co-ops lost money last year. Even as overall enrollments for insurance have increased, many of the co-ops are still losing money, a review of 2015 data by federal health officials shows. In February, the Iowa insurance commissioner moved to shut down a nonprofit co-op insurer, CoOportunity Health , created with $145 million in federal loans, and a state court found it insolvent because of “adverse claims experience.” Another carrier, the Louisiana Health Cooperative, started with $65 million in federal loans, said it would voluntarily halt operations at the end of this year. The Louisiana co-op was “not growing fast enough to maintain a healthy future,” said Greg Cromer, the chief executive of the Louisiana plan who is also a Republican state legislator and chairman of the House Insurance Committee. Over all, co-ops have received $2.4 billion in federal loans to help pay start-up costs and to meet state solvency requirements. “The low enrollments and net losses might limit the ability of some co-ops to repay start-up and solvency loans and to remain viable and sustainable,” Mr. Levinson said in a report analyzing the insurers’ financial condition. Andrew M. Slavitt, the acting administrator at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said his agency “has recently increased the data and financial reporting requirements for co-ops.” As part of their stepped-up supervision, administration officials said that six co-ops were on an informal watch list. The government is closely monitoring their operations and financial status and has warned them about performance problems or required them to take corrective action. The officials refused to identify the co-ops subject to what they call “enhanced oversight.” Congress authorized the co-ops to increase competition in state insurance markets and to create additional choices for consumers, with the hope of holding down premiums. Dr. Martin E. Hickey, the chief executive of the New Mexico co-op, who is also chairman of the National Alliance of State Health Co-ops, said it was unrealistic to expect them to achieve a surplus right away. “This is inherently a risky venture, a tough, tough business,” Dr. Hickey said. “There will likely be a handful of co-ops that fail. I don’t deny that. But you will probably see the red ink disappear for some plans starting next year.” Susan Dunlap, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Health Cooperative, said that 52,000 people were now enrolled in its plans, down from 56,680 at the end of last year. But, she said, the co-op still has more than half of all the people who obtained coverage through the state’s insurance exchange. The Kentucky plan lost $50 million last year, more than any other insurance co-op, as it paid out $1.25 in claims for every dollar it collected in premiums. “We attracted many consumers with serious illnesses,” Ms. Dunlap said. “One of our most popular plans had low premiums, low out-of-pocket costs and a large network of providers. It’s difficult, it’s uphill, but we are energetic and hopeful. Trends are going in the right direction.” The Kentucky insurance commissioner recently approved rate increases averaging 25 percent for the Kentucky Health Cooperative in 2016. The co-op said the additional revenue would help reduce its losses. At the same time, the inspector general found that a few co-ops had done exceptionally well. The one in Maine, Community Health Options, has captured more than half of the market and achieved a surplus, with revenues exceeding expenses by $5.9 million last year. The New York co-op, Health Republic Insurance, lost money, but it signed up 155,400 people, five times its projected enrollment and far more than any other co-op. Michael J. Fagan, a spokesman for Health Republic, said that the carrier lost $77.5 million on premium revenue of $521 million last year, for a “negative margin” of 14.8 percent. But, he said, “the co-ops were never intended to be profitable in their first three years.” Even as some of the co-ops were losing money, tax returns show that their executives were paid sizable salaries. For example, the South Carolina co-op, the Consumers’ Choice Health Plan, paid its top two executives $458,196 and $351,710 in 2013, according to the return it filed as a tax-exempt organization in November 2014. The Nevada co-op reported paying its top executive $340,000. Jerry W. Burgess, the president of the South Carolina co-op, said: “I am not overpaid. My compensation is similar to that at nonprofit health care enterprises of similar size.” Mr. Burgess is also president of the Tennessee co-op, which he said pays half his salary. Enrollment in the South Carolina co-op stands at 70,000, up from 46,000 at the end of last year, Mr. Burgess said. “We are still losing money,” he said, “but will break even in 2016.” Likewise, Tom Zumtobel, the chief executive of the Arizona co-op, Meritus Health Partners, said it lost $7.2 million in 2014 and was projecting a loss of $6.7 million this year, but would operate in the black next year. Health insurance co-ops are generally governed by their members. The Affordable Care Act says they cannot use federal loan funds for marketing. Co-op executives said this put them at a disadvantage in competing against well-known brands like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna and Humana.

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Health and Human Services
US states
Cooperative


Washington: Codeine Warning for Nursing Mothers

Abstract: Nursing mothers who take codeine should watch their infants for increased sleepiness or other signs of overdose, federal health officials warned. The Food and Drug Administration warning of the rare but serious side effect was prompted by a 2006 report of the death of a nursing infant whose mother was given codeine for episiotomy pain. Genetic testing later showed that the woman’s body converted the codeine to morphine more rapidly and completely than in other people. That led to higher-than-expected morphine levels in her breast milk. Given the risk, the F.D.A. said, doctors should prescribe nursing mothers the smallest dose of codeine for the shortest period of time, and should closely monitor both mother and child.

Nursing of Infants
Food and Drug Administration
codeine


San Francisco Approves Cup Plan

Abstract: After several days of modifications, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan to host the 34th America’s Cup along its northern waterfront. Mayor Gavin Newsom was to sign the bid late Tuesday and present it to the organizers of the race, who want a deal in place by Friday. The organizers, though, are pushing for additional assurances the plan will give them the ability to recoup the nearly $500 million they expect to spend on the event. Some of those details were expected to be worked out by the end of the week. If not, the organizers have said they will seek another site.

America's Cup
Sailboats and Sailing
San Francisco (Calif)
Newsom Gavin


Dynamics Are Shifting in an 8-Member Supreme Court

Abstract: WASHINGTON — It was February, and Justice Antonin Scalia had just died. Responding to a question about how the Supreme Court would cope with just eight members, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was sanguine. “We will deal with it,” he said. Now it is April, and it is possible to start to assess how a short-handed court is dealing with its work. It has started to deadlock in closely divided cases. That happened twice last month, in a minor case on bank guarantees and a major one on public unions. “With almost 50 cases still on the docket for the term, the Supreme Court could set a record for most tie votes,” said Justin Pidot , a law professor at the University of Denver and the author of a study of Supreme Court deadlocks to be published in the Minnesota Law Review . “No term since 1990 has included more than two tie votes, a benchmark the court has now hit in a single week.” Such ties give rise to a judicial anticlimax. The court issues an unsigned opinion containing a single sentence: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court.” That means the appeals court decision under review remains in place. The Supreme Court itself sets no national precedent, and a legal issue important enough to have warranted a scarce spot on the court’s docket remains unresolved. But these deadlocks are just one aspect of a new judicial dynamic, one that threatens to limit the court’s reach. The court’s docket, already small by the standards of recent history, seems poised to shrink even further. In 1986, when Justice Scalia joined the court, it decided about 175 cases. In his last full term, which ended in June, the number had dropped to 75. It takes four votes to add a case to the court’s docket, and simple math suggests that with one vote fewer available, fewer petitions will be granted. The justices, moreover, will be unlikely to vote to hear cases fated to end in the waste of time that is a 4-to-4 split. In March, the court agreed to hear just two cases. One concerned patents, the other double jeopardy. Neither qualified as a blockbuster. The previous March, the justices agreed to hear nine cases, among them important ones on the death penalty and on sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders . Another was the banking case that ended in a deadlock last month. Oral arguments have changed, too. Justice Scalia was the court’s most active questioner, and arguments without him have been somewhat wan and tepid. His jokes were not to everyone’s taste, but they enlivened what can be dry affairs. How a Vacancy on the Supreme Court Affected Cases in the 2015-16 Term The empty seat left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death leaves the court with two basic options for cases left on the docket this term if the justices are deadlocked at 4 to 4. “Scalia was in a whole other league when it came to getting laughs at oral argument,” said Jay D. Wexler , a law professor at Boston University and a leading authority on Supreme Court humor. “If the court were a high school baseball program, Scalia was the ace of the varsity pitching staff, and everyone else played third-string utility infield for the J.V. squad.” Transcripts of Supreme Court arguments include the notation [laughter] when there is audible levity, and they allow Professor Wexler to keep detailed statistics. In recent weeks, he found, Justice Stephen G. Breyer has generated far more laughs than any other member of the court. “Since Scalia’s death, Breyer has pretty much cemented his position as the new funny guy of the bench,” Professor Wexler said. But the laughs are different now. “Scalia’s humor was basically quip-based, fast one-liners,” Professor Wexler said, “whereas Breyer’s are often connected in some way to his long, circuitous hypotheticals.” Justice Scalia’s absence has allowed other justices more room to express themselves, said Adam Feldman , a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Southern California who used linguistic software to analyze transcripts of recent arguments. “Without Justice Scalia consistently inserting himself into the conversation, there was a void for the other justices to fill,” Mr. Feldman said, adding that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had seized the opening. “Justice Sotomayor usurped Justice Scalia’s spot taking the most turns talking.” Justice Sotomayor and the rest of the court’s four-member liberal wing have gained new power. They tend to vote together, so they can block conservative rulings but can achieve liberal ones if they pick up an additional vote. Such a vote might come from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was at the court’s ideological center until Justice Scalia’s death, or from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who assigns the writing of the opinion for the court if he is in the majority. The other conservatives — Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas — have started to cement an extraordinary bond, staking out positions to the right of the rest in a remarkable series of two-man opinions. They dissented from the court’s decision not to hear a challenge to a Colorado law allowing the recreational use of marijuana. They said the court had acted rashly in reversing the conviction of a Louisiana death row inmate because of prosecutorial misconduct. They dissented from a ruling in favor of workers at a slaughterhouse who had sought overtime pay. They criticized the majority for not going further in handing gun rights groups a Second Amendment victory in a Massachusetts case concerning stun guns. And they added boilerplate concurrences when the court returned more than 40 cases involving juvenile offenders to lower courts. The concurrences recited various grounds on which the courts could still rule against juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole notwithstanding a January decision that had seemed to give them a fresh shot at eventual release. All of those joint opinions from Justices Alito and Thomas were issued over 15 days in March. Monday’s voting rights decision was unanimous, but even there two members refused to endorse the majority’s reasoning: Justices Thomas and Alito. In February, Justice Alito said the court would have to adapt to the “great shock” of Justice Scalia’s death. “We’ll see what develops,” he said. What has developed is a court transformed, partly paralyzed and, for now, diminished in the role it can play in the life of the nation.

Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Samuel A Alito Jr
Justice Breyer
Anthony M Kennedy
Justice Roberts
Antonin Scalia
Sonia Sotomayor
Clarence Thomas
Legislation


When Bell Sounds, Surgeon Answers Ringside Calling

Abstract: One recent Friday, the orthopedic surgeon Victor Khabie performed seven operations, grabbed a sandwich and fought traffic to a ballroom in Queens to care for athletes who walked willingly into fists. They call themselves boxers. Khabie calls them patients. This presents a contradiction for Khabie and other doctors who moonlight as ringside physicians. They come from the world of medicine, which is predicated on healing, into the world of boxing, which is predicated on pain. Khabie must reconcile these worlds, for a few hundred dollars a fight, while his patients cut, bruise and disfigure each other for sport. “It’s tough, but we do the best we can for them,” Khabie said. “If society says we don’t want boxing, then I wouldn’t be taking care of boxers. But I’m not a politician. I do know these boxers need help, these boxers are hurt, and often they have no one to take care of them.” On Saturday, the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko defeated David Haye in Germany in a fight shown on HBO. Khabie watched both boxers and the physicians who watched over them. In 2006, he examined Klitschko before a bout at Madison Square Garden. That fight, with the boxer Laila Ali on the undercard and her father, Muhammad Ali, in attendance, served as a career highlight. Just like the time Evander Holyfield raised his left glove between rounds when Khabie instructed him to lift his right, inadvertently smacking Khabie in the face. Khabie long ago learned the violence inherent in his favorite sport. He tried boxing with a friend and ended up with broken ribs. His wife, Brenda, told Khabie: “You’re a surgeon. You need those hands.” But she also understood that the violence, so different from his daily routines, drew him ringside in the first place. “If he wasn’t a surgeon,” she said, “he’d be a boxer.” By day, Khabie can be found in Mount Kisco, N.Y., where he is the chief of sports medicine at Northern Westchester Hospital and also helps operate the Somers Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine Group. On fight nights, he makes a mental switch, from repairer of torn ligaments and busted knees to caretaker of battered faces, from central figure in the operating room to anonymous face at ringside. Khabie described his job like this: between rounds, he fights through camera crews and trainers into a designated corner, where he attempts to pepper a boxer who is often injured and trying to catch his breath with questions for 10 to 15 seconds. He then makes a decision on whether the bout should continue, one he must live with through the next round. If all goes well, Khabie operates unseen. This being boxing, “all goes well” means none of the combatants end up in the hospital. Those are the fights that stick with Khabie, that keep him awake at night, like a bout a few years ago at a beer garden on Long Island where a boxer was knocked unconscious. For five minutes that felt like five hours, the boxer did not move. Khabie never expected to work in boxing, but knew early he would become a doctor, even back in Boy Scouts when his favorite tasks included constructing a bandage in the woods. A longtime sports fan, he entered orthopedics because they combined both passions, because the first time he removed a screw from a leg, his instructors asked not about removal technique, but about a football game the night before. After college at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School, Khabie worked at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in California. There, he served as assistant physician for the professional sports teams in Los Angeles. Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal occasionally pulled pranks on him. Khabie enjoyed caring for athletes (as an assistant doctor, he examined and called in a prescription for the tennis champion Steffi Graf at the United States Open ). But boxing, with no place to hide, all the energy and raw aggression, drew him in. His first bout as a ringside physician took place at a cafe in the Bronx, which later became a Red Lobster and had a makeshift ring inside. On the recent Friday in Queens, Khabie called his work typical: eight fights, three boxers knocked down, two repeatedly, one serious gash opened by a head butt. In one bout, Bryan Abraham sent Scott Burrell to the canvas four times. Each time, Khabie scurried into the ring. Because Burrell rose quickly from each knockdown, because he remained relatively calm, Khabie let the fight continue. (Khabie finds that fighters who become overly emotional, begging to continue, usually need to be stopped.) Khabie paid particular attention two fights later. He knew that one boxer, Carlos Cisneros, was 35, with 17 losses in 27 previous fights. (Cisneros lost by knockout.) As Khabie attended to Cisneros, the surgeon from Westchester appeared at home. “He likes to have that peacefulness and that action,” his brother, Dan Khabie, said. “That’s very much our personality. At home, we’re relaxed and civilized. Put us in a ring, and we’ll go nuts.” Yet part of Khabie’s role as ringside physician includes making an unsafe sport more safe, or trying to. He echoed Melvina Lathan, the chairwoman of the New York State Athletic Commission, who noted the rules governing fights in New York were more stringent than most states, if not all. Khabie spoke of the wide range of specialists available to boxers (orthopedists, oral surgeons, eye doctors, plastic surgeons) and the seminars they conduct each year. Khabie said doctors began using more sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging testing in recent years. Research has been conducted on whether larger gloves would reduce the force of blows. Fighters are also required to have brain testing every three years, yearly eye and heart exams, and blood work and mental exams before each fight. But they will never be truly safe. “Boxing is a violent sport,” Khabie said. “But like football, it can be made safer. We’ve had 60-day suspensions for concussions. Imagine that in football. We’ve taken every precaution we possibly can. But, unfortunately, people will get hurt.” Recently, an 80-year-old amateur traveled to Khabie’s office, certain that if any doctor would clear him to fight, it would be a boxing one. Khabie did not clear the man, but he returned a few months later and dropped the belt he won on Khabie’s desk. So goes the life of a ringside physician, where safety is both relative and paramount.

Boxing
Doctors
Medicine and Health
Khabie Victor


Colombian Senator, Accused of Aiding Rebels, Is Dismissed

Abstract: BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombia ’s inspector general on Monday ousted an outspoken opposition senator, barring her from public service for 18 years and accusing her of “promoting and collaborating” with Latin America’s last remaining rebel army. The senator, Piedad Córdoba, gained international attention by brokering the release of more than a dozen hostages who had been held by the rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia , or FARC. Known for her trademark turban, Ms. Córdoba has been a polarizing force in domestic politics and is a close ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Ms. Córdoba, 55, has not been charged with any crime. The inspector general, Alejandro Ordóñez, has the constitutional power to dismiss any member of Congress. In fact, the inspector general has jurisdiction over nearly all public servants in Colombia except for the president and senior judges. Ms. Córdoba has been in the Senate since 1994 and was mentioned last year as a possible candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. She did not return telephone messages seeking comment. But in a Twitter message, Ms. Córdoba thanked supporters for “the innumerable expressions of affection” and said she had been meeting with her lawyers. “We continue forward,” she added. Her lawyer, Ciro Quiroz, said he would challenge Mr. Ordóñez’s ruling, but he acknowledged that he lacked the option of appealing to a higher authority. One possibility is that Ms. Córdoba could sue Mr. Ordóñez before the Constitutional Court. Representative Iván Cepeda, a close friend and political ally of Ms. Córdoba, called the decision unjust and said that the inspector general had long “demonstrated public hostility to Córdoba’s work.” Her dismissal comes less than a week after the FARC’s military mastermind and No. 2 leader, Jorge Briceño, was killed in a bombing raid in the country’s south. President Juan Manuel Santos on Sunday called the death “the beginning of the end” for the badly battered insurgency. In an interview published Monday in the newspaper El Tiempo, Colombia’s national police chief, General Óscar Naranjo, said four former FARC rebels would share more than $2.5 million in reward money for helping the government locate Mr. Briceño. Mr. Ordóñez said in a statement posted on his office’s Web site that he had dismissed Ms. Córdoba based on digital documents found in computers belonging to Raul Reyes, who had been called the FARC’s “foreign minister” and who was killed in a March 2008 raid by the military on a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador. The documents showed that Ms. Córdoba, who was identified by several aliases, had overstepped her government-authorized role to facilitate hostage releases, Mr. Ordóñez’s statement said. She advised the FARC on releasing messages from hostages in which they said they were alive, the statement said, “with the goal of favoring other governments” — believed to be a reference to Venezuela and Ecuador. Ms. Córdoba also made public declarations “that favored the interests of the subversive group,” the statement said. She has often endorsed the FARC’s stated goals of a Colombia where wealth was distributed more equally.

Cordoba Piedad
Colombia
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Politics and Government


After Joe Maddon, Kevin Cash Takes Charge

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — Kevin Cash said he was honored to meet Cal Ripken Jr. last week, but he is too young to recall Ripken’s sensational rookie season of 1982 or the next year, when the Orioles won the World Series. Cash’s first Major League Baseball memory is of Pete Rose breaking the career hit record in 1985, when Cash was 7. Thirty years later, with the Tampa Bay Rays, he is the youngest manager in baseball, facing two monumental challenges. First, he is following the successful tenure of the charismatic Joe Maddon, now the Chicago Cubs’ manager. And Cash, in his first managerial job at any level — including Little League — will have to match wits with a group of respected managers in the American League East, including the Baltimore Orioles’ Buck Showalter and the Yankees’ Joe Girardi, who have thousands of games of experience between them. “It’s a unique situation in the A.L. East,” said Cash, who was a catcher for three of the managers in the division and played against Showalter’s teams. “To me it’s as good a division as there is in baseball.” Cash, though, is not only the youngest manager in baseball; he is the youngest manager or head coach in any of the four major pro sports leagues. The next youngest, at 38, is Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics’ coach. Cash is so young that in a spring training game on Monday, he was managing against two players who are older than he is: Alex Rodriguez, Cash’s Yankees teammate in 2009, who is 39, and Carlos Beltran, who will turn 38 on April 24. Cash will not be 38 until Dec. 6. He may not remember those Orioles teams of his youth, but Rodriguez does. “Are you saying I’m old?” Rodriguez said Monday when notified of their age difference. “That is a really strange feeling for me. But I think he’s going to do a great job over there. He’s really smart, and he’s definitely a people person.” None of Cash’s players are older than he is, but some are not too far behind: Reliever Grant Balfour was born 24 days later. Another pitcher, Ernesto Frieri, who broke in with the San Diego Padres in 2009, is only seven years Cash’s junior. “He is good,” Frieri said. “He knows what it is to be a player, but he talks like a real manager.” Several managers Cash could end up tangling with are old enough to have been playing at the time of his early baseball consciousness. That includes Bruce Bochy, now San Francisco’s manager, who was the Padres’ catcher in the game in which Rose broke the hit record. Bochy will turn 60 on April 16. But he is not the oldest manager in the majors. That distinction goes to the Mets’ Terry Collins, 65, who started his managing career in the minor leagues the year Cash turned 4. Showalter, 58, played his final season in the minor leagues two years later. Showalter has managed 2,421 regular-season games in the majors. Cash has five exhibition games on his résumé, including Monday’s 4-3 loss to the Yankees. Image Cash, with the Yankees in 2009, was a catcher for three of the managers he will face in the American League East. Credit Jim McIsaac/Getty Images “Hey, I’ve been at it a month already,” he joked. “Yes, I’m young, but Tom Foley will be standing right next to me, talking over every pitch of every inning,” Cash added, referring to his bench coach, who is serving under a fourth manager since he joined the major league club in 2001. “That’s going to help a ton.” Cash’s predecessor, Maddon, won 754 games over nine seasons with Tampa Bay and led the Rays to the A.L. pennant in 2008. He was known for innovations like expanding the use of infield shifts, as well as for team-building novelties, like bringing penguins into the clubhouse. Cash is as personable as Maddon but knows he must be himself: There will not be any penguins around, for instance. Still, he is not looking to change the entire culture of what has been a successful organization. “What Joe did was incredible here,” Cash said. “I think you embrace it. How lucky am I to be walking into a situation that was already so good to begin with? “I don’t like changes. I think there will be adjustments here and there, but I feel lucky to have come to a place with such a solid foundation.” Cash, who had an eight-year major league career that ended in 2010, played under Maddon in 2005, appearing in 13 games for the Rays. He also played a handful of games with the Blue Jays in 2004 under John Gibbons, who is again Toronto’s manager. John Farrell, now the Red Sox’ manager, was Boston’s pitching coach when Cash was a backup with the team in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Cash’s biggest influence in Boston, though, was Terry Francona, then the Red Sox’ manager, who later picked Cash to be Cleveland’s bullpen coach after the Indians hired Francona for the 2013 season. The idea was always for Cash to learn the art of managing. “I watched Tito closely,” Cash said, referring to Francona. “His handling the media, communicating with players, making moves, all those things. I could not have asked for a better mentor.” At every stop he made as a player, including Tampa Bay, Cash made an impression. Girardi, who managed Cash in 2009, when Cash appeared in 10 games for the Yankees, said he could tell that Cash had the makings of a manager. He is smart and confident enough to lead a team, which is why the Rays made sure to hire him before the Texas Rangers, who interviewed him in October, had the chance. Across the league, teams no longer hesitate to hire former players with no managing experience. Minnesota hired Paul Molitor in November, and Girardi was new to managing when the Marlins turned to him for the 2006 season. A. J. Hinch, now with Houston, was only 34 when he was hired by Arizona in 2009. “Ownership groups aren’t afraid to go to young managers today,” Girardi said. “The game has changed a little bit in that sense. It happened to me.” Cash will have many opportunities this year to face off with Girardi and some of his elders who are still playing. “Hey, for him that’s good,” Beltran said. “If he does well, he can manage for a long time.”

Baseball
Joe Maddon
Tampa Bay Rays
Kevin Cash


Giffords’s Husband Delivers a Message: ‘She’s a Fighter’

Abstract: This article is by Michael Luo , Sam Dolnick and Jennifer Medina . TUCSON — On a day when Representative Gabrielle Giffords ’s condition was upgraded to serious from critical, her husband, Mark Kelly, spoke publicly for the first time on Sunday. He left his wife’s hospital bedside to take the stage at a memorial service for Gabriel Zimmerman , an aide who was killed in the shooting rampage that left Ms. Giffords grievously wounded. Mr. Kelly told the several hundred mourners gathered in the courtyard at the Tucson Museum of Art that he had just come from the hospital and that his wife was “improving a little bit each day. She’s a fighter.” “I know someday she’ll get to tell you how she felt about Gabe herself,” Mr. Kelly said. His wife loved Mr. Zimmerman “like a younger brother,” he said, and was inspired by “his idealism, his strength and his warmth.” At almost the exact same time, about a half-hour’s drive east, another shooting victim — Dorwan Stoddard , 76, known as Dory to friends — was eulogized at a church filled with hundreds of mourners. “There are no monuments to Dory, there are no streets named after him,” said the Rev. Mike Nowak, his pastor. “He was just an ordinary man. He did not become a hero that day — he was a hero every day of his life.” At University Medical Center, officials said on Sunday that Ms. Giffords’s condition was upgraded because she was no longer on a ventilator. Doctors announced on Saturday that they placed a tracheotomy tube in Ms. Giffords’s throat as a precautionary measure. “The congresswoman continues to do well,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “She is breathing on her own. Yesterday’s procedures were successful and uneventful.” Jared L. Loughner , the man charged in the shooting that left six dead and 13 wounded, is in the custody of federal marshals at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, which houses almost 1,100 prisoners about 25 miles north of downtown. According to an official familiar with the prison, Mr. Loughner, who federal records say is registered as inmate No. 15213-196, is being held in “segregation” for his own protection. Prisoners in segregation are closely monitored, the official said, and generally spend 23 hours of the day alone in their cells and have an hour or so a day for exercise and showering. Mr. Loughner, 22, has no contact with other prisoners, said the official, who added that the prison’s past inmates included Salvatore Gravano, the Mafia informer and hit man known as Sammy the Bull. The funerals on Sunday marked the fourth and fifth for victims of the shooting, leaving just one remaining, that of Dorothy Morris , 76, whose husband, George, remains hospitalized after the shooting. A date has not yet been set, said Bill Royle, a family friend, because it depends in part on Mr. Morris’s recovery. On this cool, sunny day, it seemed as though this reeling community, despite the tears, had finally begun to slip back into a semblance of its former rhythms, as the horde of news media that descended upon the city finally began to pack up and leave. Grocery carts trundled through the aisles at the Safeway where the shooting occurred, though shoppers continued to pause and reflect in front of a makeshift memorial outside. The neighborhood where Mr. Loughner lived with his parents, Randy and Amy, was quiet on Sunday afternoon, with nary a satellite truck in sight. About 300 people gathered at a midtown park on Sunday morning and marched about two miles to Ms. Giffords’s district office in what organizers called a “walk for peace” to honor the victims of the shooting. The event was the brainchild of Amanda Lopez, 23, and Amanda Hutchison, 20, who had been grappling with how respond to the rampage, ultimately coming up with the idea of the peace walk. Some marchers carried babies in slings or pushed strollers, others walked their dogs. To avoid politicizing the event, the organizers decided not to allow anyone to hold signs, but distributed yellow ribbons to commemorate the victims. “It’s time for people to reflect, for the city of Tucson and the rest of the country to come together and reflect,” said Yvette Patterson, 42, who was among the marchers. “It’s important that we really see the humanity in each other. If we don’t start to lower our barriers, maybe we could get torn apart.” When the crowd reached a collection of tributes outside Ms. Giffords’s office, a woman began singing “Amazing Grace.” Others in the crowd softly sang along. The effects of the shooting, like pebbles in a pond, continued to ripple on Sunday, as one of the 13 people wounded spent the day in a mental health center by police order. The wounded person, J. Eric Fuller, 63, a military veteran, was arrested on Saturday after disrupting a forum being taped for broadcast by ABC News. He was said to have blurted out “You’re dead” to Trent Humphries, the founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who was speaking. Mr. Fuller had showed flashes of anger, railing against the “Tea Party crime syndicate” in an interview with The New York Times in the early days after the shooting. He was being held for a 72-hour mental health evaluation, said Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima County sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office forwarded charges of threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct against Mr. Fuller to the county attorney’s office, Mr. Ogan said. At Mr. Zimmerman’s service, Mr. Kelly, an astronaut who is supposed to lead the crew of the shuttle Endeavour this spring on its final mission, spoke for several minutes. He was one of a long train of speakers that included childhood friends, relatives and staff members in Ms. Giffords’s office. As Ms. Giffords’s director of community outreach, Mr. Zimmerman helped prepare for the “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway on Jan. 8. He arrived early, as he often did. When Ms. Giffords was shot, Mr. Zimmerman, 30, was standing nearby and lunged to help her. He was remembered on Sunday as a passionate idealist, able to put anyone at ease, dedicating his life to helping others. He proposed to his girlfriend last summer while on a 5 a.m. run through the mountains. He was addicted to diet sodas. He was so good with angry callers that his nickname in the office was “The Constituent Whisperer.” Ron Barber, another of Ms. Giffords’s aides who was shot in the attack, took the stage with the help of a walker. He said Mr. Zimmerman was a genius at connecting with people from across the political and social spectrums. “He had the integrity, he had the heart, he had the personality,” Mr. Barber said. The story of Mr. Stoddard, mourned at the day’s other funeral, has become part of the tragedy’s lore. When the gunfire erupted, Mr. Stoddard knocked down his wife, Mavy, and threw his body on top of hers to protect her. Mrs. Stoddard was shot three times in the leg but was released from the hospital last week. As the service was about to end, Mrs. Stoddard went to the microphone, wearing a red jacket and sitting in a wheelchair. Her hands shaking but her voice strong and firm, she said: “I am the woman who was married to this man. He loved God, and he loved me, and spoiled me rotten.” A wave of laughter went through the audience. “The journey will be very, very difficult, but he died for me, and I must live for him,” she said. “I will survive,” she added. “We will not let that gunman take that away.”

Tucson Shooting (2011)
Funerals
Zimmerman Gabriel
Stoddard Dorwan
Murders and Attempted Murders
Giffords Gabrielle
Monuments and Memorials
Kelly Mark E
Loughner Jared Lee
Morris Dorothy


Brazil Gains in Reaching Out to Africa

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — In Mozambique, Brazil ’s government is opening a plant making antiretroviral drugs to fight the AIDS epidemic. Brazil is lending $150 million to Kenya to build roads and ease congestion in the capital, Nairobi. And in Angola, a rising oil power, a new security agreement seeks to expand the training of Angolan military personnel in Brazil. Brazil, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside of Africa itself, is assertively raising its profile again on the continent, building on historical ties from the time of the Portuguese empire. The array of aid projects and loans recently extended to African countries points both to Brazil’s ambitions of projecting greater influence in the developing world and to the expanding business allure of Africa, where some economies are rapidly growing even as parts of the continent still grapple with wars and famine . The charm offensive is paying off in surging trade flows between Brazil and Africa, growing to $27.6 billion in 2011 from $4.3 billion in 2002. “There’s the growing sense that Africa is Brazil’s frontier,” said Jerry Dávila, a historian at the University of Illinois who has written extensively about Brazil’s inroads across the South Atlantic Ocean. “Brazil is in the privileged position of finally reaching the institutional capacity to do this.” Brazil’s forays into Africa are similar to the ambitions of other rising powers, like Turkey, which has established its sway in the Arab world, and India’s promotion of its culture across Asia . The prominence given to Africa also reflects Brazil’s shift from aid recipient to provider. Big development challenges persist in Brazil, including woeful public schools and a sharp economic slowdown this year. But Brazil is a major agricultural exporter that recently surpassed Britain as the world’s sixth-largest economy, and it now boasts more embassies in Africa than Britain does — a notable change from when Brazil relied on foreign aid in the 1960s, largely from the United States, to alleviate hunger in the country’s impoverished northeast. Africa now accounts for about 55 percent of the disbursements by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency, which oversees aid projects abroad, according to Marco Farani, the agency’s director. Altogether, including educational exchanges and an expanding loan portfolio, Brazil’s foreign aid exceeds $1 billion, he said. Big portions of Brazilian aid also go to countries in Latin America, and there is a smaller focus on East Timor, the former Portuguese colony in Southeast Asia. “We still have a smaller foreign aid profile than other some countries, but we’re learning how to do cooperation,” Mr. Farani said. Brazil still trails other nations, notably China and the United States, which have far more expansive aid programs and trade in Africa. Elsewhere in Latin America, Venezuela and Cuba have offered different ways of enhancing African ties. Venezuela organized a 2009 summit meeting of African and South American leaders, in which President Hugo Chávez tightened an alliance with Libya’s leader at the time, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. During the cold war, Cuban troops supported Communist governments in Africa. In Angola, this mission included the seemingly paradoxical task of protecting a Chevron oil complex at the same time the United States was supporting an insurgency against Angola’s leaders. More recently, Cuba has sent thousands of doctors to Africa. But while the Cuban and Venezuelan efforts have largely prioritized developing-world solidarity with some African nations, Brazil’s growing foothold in Africa is more complex, involving ambitions to forge Brazil into a diplomatic and economic powerhouse. After a surge of openings of diplomatic missions over the past decade, Brazil now has 36 embassies across Africa, and hopes to open its 37th in Malawi this year. Brazil is already using this presence to bolster its actions on the world stage, sending jets to fly delegations from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cape Verde to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which was held here in June. Other projects are intended to lure Africans to study in Brazil. A new university began offering classes last year for students from Portuguese-speaking countries, including Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Principe. Since Brazil does not need to import large amounts of oil or food, its plans in Africa differ somewhat from other countries seeking greater influence there. Outreach projects tie largely into efforts to increase opportunities for Brazilian companies, which sometimes work with Brazil’s government in offering aid. Some of Brazil’s biggest inroads, predictably, are in Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola, where the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht ranks among the largest employers, and Mozambique, where the mining giant Vale has begun a $6 billion coal expansion project. But Brazilian companies are also scouring other parts of Africa for opportunities, putting down stakes in Guinea and Nigeria. A leading Brazilian investment bank, BTG Pactual, started a $1 billion fund in May focused on investing in Africa. New links are also emerging, including Brazilian farming ventures in Sudan; a flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to São Paulo; and a fiber optic cable connecting northeast Brazil to West Africa. Some of Brazil’s forays in Africa have come with complications, including criticism of warming ties with leaders connected to human rights abuses, like Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. A freedom-of-information measure has enabled journalists to delve into African arms deals by Brazilian companies, including the sale of cluster bombs to Zimbabwe. African students studying in Brazil have filed numerous complaints describing slurs and aggression, complicating the myth of “racial democracy” that once prevailed here, in which scholars contended that Brazil had largely escaped the discrimination common in other societies. In one episode here in Rio, Eleutério Nhantumbo, a Mozambican police officer with a scholarship to study public security at a Brazilian university, said he was stopped by police officers on one occasion. They ordered him to raise his shirt upon exiting a store on the suspicion that he had stolen something. When he questioned why they had singled him out, he said the officers responded with a racial slur and warned him of addressing them without respect; hearing his accent in Portuguese, they queried him about his origins. “The police asked, ‘Where’s Mozambique?’ ” said Mr. Nhantumbo, 33. “They didn’t know that there existed a country with this name.” Brazil, closely linked for centuries to Africa through shipping routes and the slave trade, is thought to have imported 10 times as many slaves as the United States did before slavery was abolished here in 1888. For a stretch in the 19th century, Brazil was the seat of the Portuguese empire, making the capital then, Rio de Janeiro, a nerve center for trade with Africa. Those ties withered until civilian leaders sought to establish relations with newly independent governments in Africa in the early 1960s. That process cooled after Brazil’s military rulers seized power in a 1964 coup supported by the United States. Then economic necessity and a quest to build autonomy from the United States laid the foundations in the 1970s for today’s diplomatic buildup in Africa. Seeking to offset spending on oil imports, including cargoes from Nigeria, military rulers set about opening new markets in Africa for Brazilian companies. They found some success, notably in newly independent Angola. Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, built on those inroads in trips to Africa from 2003 to 2010, referring to the “ historic debt ” Brazil had to Africa in its formation as nation.

Brazil
Economic Conditions and Trends
Africa
Foreign Aid
Angola
International Trade and World Market


Recession Drives Women Back to the Work Force

Abstract: The Great Recession is pushing many highly educated women who had left work to stay at home with their children to dive back into the labor pool, according to several nationally recognized experts on women in the workplace. Many of these women are sending out job applications for the first time in years because their husbands were laid off, fear being laid off or had their salaries cut or because their family’s investments plunged in value. Last February Trudi Foutts Loh felt compelled to find full-time work, some 20 years after she quit her job to care for her two children. Her job back then as a lawyer and three hours of daily commuting made balancing everything impossible. She occasionally worked as a political consultant and writer, but numerous economic worries made her conclude that that was not enough. She pointed to investment losses “in the healthy six figures,” along with “some very high medical expenses for a family member and having two daughters in college. And then the value of our home and pension plan has taken a tumble.” She feels lucky because a law school friend hired her at a prestigious firm in Pasadena , Calif. For Lisa Hughes, a mother of two, it was an unexpected layoff that shoved her back into the labor pool. A former corporate lawyer, she moved from Montclair, N.J., to California last year, after the World Poker Tour recruited her husband to be its chief operating officer. Then, squeezed by the recession, the tour laid him off, pushing Ms. Hughes to pursue full-time work for the first time in 16 years. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he would be unemployed a year later,” she said. She plans to start a solo practice because “it’s hard to find jobs after 16 years.” According to some economists, these women, once part of a privileged minority that could afford not to work, are now collateral damage of the recession — not forced out of work, but back into it. “What’s happened is 78 percent of the people who lost their jobs in the recession are men,” said Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco . “That has brought home to many families that having one income places you in a very vulnerable position. Some women who expected to take a long time out of the work force suddenly felt they needed to re-enter, in some cases much more quickly than they expected.” The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics found preliminary evidence of affluent women returning to the labor force. When it comes to women with a college education who are 25 to 44 years old and living with a spouse, the proportion of those working or looking for work increased to 78.4 percent in the first half of 2009, from 76 percent in the first half of 2007. Economists say this is surprising because the percentage of people in the work force usually drops as unemployed workers grow discouraged and stop looking for work in a recession. Over the same period, the proportion of men of the same age and circumstance inched down, falling from 97.4 percent to 97.1 percent. It is too early to tell whether those numbers reflect an increase above and beyond the long-term growth of women’s participation in the work force. Examining women’s work force participation — and especially women with children — has been one of the battlefields of economics. In the last several years, some researchers have suggested that many affluent working mothers chose to leave the work force during the boom times of the 90’s and early this decade, saying there was a trend of women opting out of careers once they had children. The suggestion — highlighted in an Oct. 26, 2003 New York Times Magazine cover article — prompted a huge controversy. Critics responded that most women had no choice but to work and that only a small affluent minority could chose not to. They said many working mothers left the labor force not because they were opting to, but because they were forced to by workplaces that made it too difficult to balance family and work. Separately, some economists argued that the decrease in women working was not caused by opting out, but by the 2001 recession that was followed by years of weak job growth. Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the liberal Center for American Progress and a fierce critic of the notion of opting out, said her studies showed little difference in how often mothers and women without children left the labor force. Ms. Boushey nonetheless agreed that the current recession was pushing women who had stopped working for whatever reason to re-enter the labor force. She said this helped explain why the percentage of women aged 20 and above in the work force has remained relatively flat during the recession, while the percentage of men has fallen slightly. “This does indicate that some women are opting back in,” she said. One of them is Patricia Smart. She quit her banking job 14 years ago when her son was born. But last April, her husband received a layoff notice. “It was a cosmic kick in the butt,” said Ms. Smart, who had toyed with returning to work for years. “It forced me to do something.” After a quick job search, she landed a job in July as a full-time manager at Wachovia Bank in Charlotte , N.C. Carolyn Bednarz was not as fortunate. The former lawyer at Milbank & Tweed spent nine years at home raising three children, but she became frightened for her family’s future after her banker-husband endured four rounds of layoffs and reduced bonuses. Ms. Bednarz started looking for work. After a 10-month search she couldn’t find a paying job. “I probably applied for 30 jobs on Craigslist , and hardly anyone writes back,” she said, complaining that many employers aren’t interested in hiring someone who has not worked in years. “This is just the most humbling experience.” In the end, she took a position as an unpaid intern at a law firm in Marin County, Calif., north of San Francisco. Several studies have found that two different groups of women are likely not to return to work after giving birth: affluent ones and poor ones unable to afford child care. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, an independent research group, and several other economists and experts argue that there is an unmistakable trend toward women returning to the labor force — and not just professional women. “Women are at a watershed moment,” Ms. Hewlett said, pointing to the recession’s squeeze on incomes. Anna Bresnahan of Spokane , Wash., says she would not have returned to work if she and her husband had not started worrying that the bank where he worked might fail. “I decided I could start looking. He said, ‘That would be nice.’ ” Ms. Bresnahan, who quit a marketing job in 2001 after her first child was born, found a position with an accounting firm in December, although at a lower salary. (Studies have found that for every two years a woman is out of the labor force, her earnings fall by 10 percent, a penalty that lasts throughout her career.) Karen Boon felt pressured to return to working full time after staying home for five years to raise her two children. Her husband’s job for Boston Scientific , a manufacturer of medical devices, was shaky and the family’s investments had plunged. Ms. Boon regularly visits the Opting Back In chat room, sponsored by the Hastings College of Law, where lawyers with new jobs trade stories, tips, hopes and complaints. “If my husband had been laid off, it would have been a world of hurt,” she said. In April, she found a temporary job as counsel for a Bay Area company that oversees surgery centers, replacing someone on maternity leave. She said it was a pleasure to be working with adults again. Still, she added, “It is really hard to do two jobs at once — the kids still need to be fed and the laundry still needs to get done.” Ms. Bednarz, the former Milbank lawyer turned intern, also participates in the chat room. “The women who lead the chat room say, ‘Don’t jump into something until you find something that’s just right,’ ” she said. “That’s all well and fine, but some of us have to find something right now. It’s not like we have that luxury in today’s job market.”

Women and Girls
Jobs
Economy
Recession and Depression


Obama Won’t Veto Military Authorization Bill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama will not veto a military authorization bill that contains several disputed provisions about the treatment of terrorism prisoners, the White House announced Wednesday, signaling a likely end to a political battle over detainees and executive power. The administration had threatened to veto versions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 passed by the House and the Senate, arguing that provisions would open the door for the military to perform policing functions inside the United States, and that they would infringe on executive branch powers. But the White House said in a statement that adjustments made by a House-Senate conference committee had sufficiently addressed its concerns. “As a result of these changes, we have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the president’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the president’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” it said. Civil liberties groups still object to the revised bill. But other critics of earlier versions — notably, Representative Adam Smith of Washington State, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee — praised the changes and urged that the bill be passed. On Wednesday, the House approved the bill, 283 to 136; it goes to the Senate. The administration and Congress have been wrestling for months over proposed rules and limits for handling terrorism cases. The bill that emerged from the conference committee on Tuesday dropped a section from the House version that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute Qaeda suspects. It also dropped a House-written provision enacting a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies. But the bill includes a narrower provision, drafted by the Senate, authorizing the government to detain, without trial, suspected members of Al Qaeda or its allies — or those who “ substantially supported ” them — bolstering the authorization it enacted a decade ago against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. Another section would require officials to hold noncitizens suspected of being Qaeda operatives in military custody. The administration had focused its objections on that section, but the panel expanded the executive branch’s ability to make exceptions. It also added language declaring that the new law would not restrict the existing authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in terrorism matters. Still, the bureau’s director, Robert S. Mueller III, testified on Wednesday that he remained concerned that it would introduce “uncertainty” about what should happen at the time of an arrest. Another provision would require the attorney general to consult with military and intelligence agencies before charging a terrorism suspect in civilian court. The bill also would require the defense secretary to certify, before transferring any Qaeda-related detainee to another country, that it has met certain security conditions — expanding a rule that currently applies only to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But the bill would also relax the certification requirements, which the Pentagon has said are too onerous to meet.

United States Defense and Military Forces


On the Web With Big Concepts for a Fragmented Long Island

Abstract: OYSTER BAY, N.Y. Those whose first thoughts about Long Island usually don’t begin with high-concept, big-think, high-tech regional planning analysis might be surprised by some of the vapors emanating from there these days. There’s the Long Island Plasma Converter Project, the Long Island Innovation Council and the Long Island 3.0 Open Code Library, which is not to be confused with the Long Island Internet Public Library or the Long Island Info Grid. There’s the Long Island Idea Bank, the Long Island School of Meta Interdisciplinary Studies, the One Long Island Virtual Constitution and {hellip}well, you get the idea. There’s a lot more. Of course, to be technical, none of it actually exists outside the brain and Web site of Louis G. Savinetti, an unpretentious Long Island native with gray hair and glasses, and family roots in Sea Cliff, Locust Valley, Glen Head and Glen Cove, who is a former member of the Oyster Bay Town Council and now serves as the town’s human resources commissioner. But sitting at Taby’s Burger House, with its antique map of the Long Island that was — “Large Estates Here,” “Good Swordfishing Here” — you quickly realize that there’s much to be learned about Mr. Savinetti, about Long Island, and about the political potential of the wired world in his somewhat quixotic Long Island Idea Factory Web site, longislandideafactory.blogspot.com . Mr. Savinetti, 52, came out of C. W. Post College thinking he wanted to teach and compose music, but soon ditched that and later got degrees in public administration and law. Along the way, he picked up the habit of scribbling down ideas in notebooks, which piled up in the basement of his house. About a year ago, he decided to do something with them online as an abstract intellectual exercise — “sort of the way other people do crossword puzzles” — and as something with public policy potential. And so, in March the Long Island Idea Factory was introduced as a way to throw ideas out into the public sphere and to offer online avenues for people and institutions to share information, data and ideas about Long Island, a place sorely lacking in unifying structures. Its catchphrase is “One Long Island,” and it reads like half eccentric fantasy baseball for tech-savvy policy wonks and half serious virtual forum for tech-savvy policy wonks. Asked to sum up on his blog what it’s about, he wrote: “Simply stated, ‘One Long Island’ is a series of interrelated projects designed to foster productive collaboration on Long Island through the utilization of common technology, interdisciplinary education, public participation and a shared Long Island philosophy. In short it is a way to change the way we solve problems on Long Island in a sustainable manner.” He figured he needed a reality check before he went too far. “I’m out there writing this stuff, and maybe I’m insane. You don’t know,” he said. So he sent it off to some serious people, who took it seriously. John Murcott, a successful Long Island software entrepreneur, whose current project, 411Karma.com , is a social networking site for the nonprofit world, and Yacov Shamash, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University, both said the site filled a void and reflected a logical intersection of technology and public policy. Dr. Shamash, in fact, is meeting with Mr. Savinetti to forge a partnership with Stony Brook that would build a Long Island virtual think tank with more technological sophistication than Mr. Savinetti’s homemade one. “There are great ideas here, but the question is, what kind of controls are you going to put on, and what kind of structure and organization do you put up around it?” Dr. Shamash said. With its label clouds and meta-charts and other buzzy features, Mr. Savinetti’s site might not be for everyone. He’s quick to say the site doesn’t reinvent the wheel and instead uses many ideas from other sources. But he likes to think that in its own way it still gets at something intrinsic to Long Island, with its hundreds of towns, villages, special districts, school districts and very little that ties them all together. “When I was growing up, Long Island was open space, a clean environment, small communities,” he said. “Now it has an identity issue. What do you think of when you see Long Island in the news? I don’t know. Joey Buttafuoco. The Hamptons. Now maybe illegal immigrants, the license issue. “It doesn’t seem like Long Island is something or a series of somethings that add up to one thing. I guess that’s why no one ever used One Long Island before.” And, whether or not the site creates a useful virtual Long Island, he figures maybe it will help him at home in the real one. “I thought it would be nice for my son to see I wasn’t a complete idiot and that I had an idea every once in a while,” he said. “You know how kids are.”

Long Island (NY)
Idea Factory
Computers and the Internet


Now, Even Those Temporary Wheels Can Be Greener

Abstract: ROO ROGERS, who lives in Lower Manhattan, is helping to reduce auto emissions by not owning a car. But he still likes to take the wheel for occasional multistop spins around town, for hundred-mile drives to a vacation home on Long Island and for business trips when he’s in California. When he rents a car or uses a car-sharing service, Mr. Rogers tries to help the environment a little more by driving only a hybrid vehicle, the Toyota Prius . And he has ridden to the airport by using OZOcar, a car service of which he was a founder; it has an all-hybrid fleet of Priuses and a few Lexuses. “The Prius is the most practical and sustainable car with the best gas mileage,” he said. “And I don’t have the problems of parking, the insurance and even the gas whenever I go anywhere.” In city driving, the Prius gets 60 miles for each gallon of gas — a dozen more than its main competitor, the Honda Civic Hybrid, and double the urban range of the highest-mileage gasoline-only cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. As more consumers express concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, and as gasoline prices rise, rental car companies are reshaping their fleets. In June, Enterprise, Hertz and Avis, the largest renters, added several thousand Priuses to their fleets, as well as other hybrids, and more are on the way. Car service companies are another source of Priuses. Evo Limo, based in Los Angeles, began adding the cars to its fleet two years ago — the same year when Mr. Rogers started OZOcar. To be sure, rental hybrids are not necessarily bargains, nor are they always available. The biggest range of services and the greatest number of hybrids can generally be found in West Coast cities including Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Northeastern cities like Boston, New York and Washington. Some cities offer more choices than others — at least for now. In the Los Angeles area, for example, Hertz branches and EV Rental Cars, a smaller company with an all-hybrid fleet, have had Priuses readily available for years. When Chloe Ellers of Los Angeles had to take her Audi in for repairs, she got a Prius as a replacement vehicle from Midway Car Rental, without even asking for one. Avis has joined the competition in Los Angeles and several other West Coast cities. “It’s all about demand,” said John Barrows, a spokesman for Avis. In the East, change is coming more slowly. Hertz has only recently moved into New York with its hybrids, and Avis plans to follow by year-end. To make online reservations for a Prius from Hertz, renters need to click onto the “green collection” category under vehicle type. For a recent midweek reservation, the Prius cost $127 a day in Manhattan (not including any insurance). That was $7 more than for a regular gas-powered Toyota Corolla . Enterprise Rent-A-Car has hybrids across the nation, and among the lowest rates. Priuses account for half of the company’s more than 3,000 hybrids, said Pat Farrell, a company spokesman. Other hybrids in its fleet include Saturn Vues from General Motors, Ford Escapes and Toyota Camrys. Its midweek daily rate was $56 in Manhattan for the category that includes the Prius. But customers may not necessarily get the hybrid because Enterprise doesn’t rent specific models, only vehicle types, and the Prius is just one of a number standard sedans. Torshana Towles tried to rent a Prius from Enterprise in Silver Spring, Md. — asking for one twice in the last few months. She came up empty both times. Instead, she got a Ford Escape , a sport-utility hybrid. “It was cool, though,” she said. “It doesn’t get any better mileage than a sedan does, but it does much better than other S.U.V.’s and it’s so quiet when it’s on the electric motor.” Priuses are easier to get from car services — for customers in the two cities they serve. OZOcar in New York charges rates of $65 from Manhattan to Kennedy Airport and $50 to LaGuardia or by the hour. The cars are equipped with laptops, Sirius radio and Internet service. But it may be the car-sharing services that offer drivers the best way for drivers to reduce their impact on the environment. The two most successful companies, Zipcar and Flexcar, rent cars by the hour and the day to members only. Members pick up cars from various locations in a city and return them to the same spot. Gasoline and insurance are included in the rental costs. Both Zipcar and Flexcar have had Priuses in their fleets for more than two years and have been adding them as their businesses grow. Flexcar, based in Seattle, has a 2,000-car fleet, including about 30 percent that are Priuses (250 cars) or Honda Civic Hybrids (350). Flexcars can be found in 12 cities on the East and West Coasts (but not in New York), and in Chicago. Rates start at $8 an hour and $63 a day. There is a $35 annual membership fee. Zipcar, based in Boston, has 3,000 cars, including 150 Priuses and 20 Honda Civic hybrids. The hybrids are in New York and 13 other cities, mostly on the East and West Coasts. Priuses at Zipcar rent for $8 an hour and $85 for a weekday in New York, with drivers paying a $50 annual membership fee and a $25 application fee. Renting a hybrid is just one way for drivers to reduce their impact on the environment when using a car-sharing service, Scott Griffith, chief executive of Zipcar, said. “We see that drivers change their behavior when they become members,” he says. “They’re being charged by the hour, so they tend to group their trips together and so they don’t drive as much as they did before. Many members who owned cars sell them. Of our 100,000 members, some 40,000 have sold their cars or decided not to buy one since joining.” Mark Norman, chief executive of Flexcar, reports a similar experience at his company. RUSSELL CAPRIO is one of the converts. He lives in downtown San Francisco, one of the few cities where the two car-sharing companies compete, and owned a Subaru until he sold it after becoming a Zipcar member earlier this year. He hadn’t used his car much, and when he took into account all the costs of owning it — insurance, gasoline, depreciation and parking — he found that sharing cars would cost hundreds of dollars less. He can also drive a Zipcar in Boston, where his family lives, rather than rent a car. While he drives other cars, he prefers Priuses because he sees them as better for the environment. “It depends on availability,” he says. “I’ll walk for one, though. The most I ever had to walk was eight blocks, which was O.K. That’s the same distance I had to walk to the garage where I had my Subaru parked.”

Hybrid Vehicles
Renting and Leasing
Automobiles


Afghan Lovers’ Plight Shaking Up the Lives of Those Left in Their Wake

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — However matters eventually turn out for the Afghan Romeo and Juliet who eloped into hiding, a happily-ever-after ending is eluding many of those whose lives crossed theirs. The couple, Zakia, 18, and Mohammad Ali, 21, fled their homes in mountainous Bamian Province after her family threatened her with an “honor killing” because she wanted to marry outside her ethnic group, and against her father’s wishes. They have stayed in hiding since their escape in March, but an Afghan official who helped Zakia evade almost certain death has now fled Afghanistan and is seeking asylum in Rwanda, where she is expected to arrive Monday. Zakia’s family, which included nine other children, many of them young, says it has been driven from its farm, resettling in Kabul to eke out an uncertain existence as day laborers. Mohammad Ali’s family is still on its farm in Bamian, but his father and brother say they have been forced to mortgage most of their land to raise money to help the couple by bribing officials. In part, his family says, the couple’s escape was the only way out because the money to keep paying such bribes had run out, and they feared the courts would return Zakia to her family. The couple’s story began last year when Zakia fled her family’s home and asked to be taken in by Mohammad Ali, declaring her love for him. That was such a contradiction of traditional practices that, although Zakia was legally an adult, Mohammad Ali’s father, Anwar, took her to a women’s shelter in Bamian Province. Image The American philanthropist Miriam Adelson, wife of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, expressed an interest in helping the couple and anyone involved in their case. Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images Zakia said her family, members of the Tajik ethnic group and Sunni Muslims, opposed the match because Mohammad Ali is a Hazara and Shiite. The matter went to court, where judges ordered Zakia returned to her family, despite her age and her wishes. Instead, the head of the Women’s Affairs Ministry office in Bamian, Fatima Kazimi, intervened to keep her protected in a shelter, suspecting Zakia’s family would kill her when they got her home. Her brothers and father have vowed in front of witnesses to kill Zakia and Mohammad Ali, and her own mother has denounced her as a whore. But then on March 20, Zakia climbed the wall of the women’s shelter in the middle of the night and eloped with Mohammad Ali, and they have remained in hiding since. Ms. Kazimi said that she was blamed for engineering their escape, and that Zakia’s family threatened her life as a result. She made it known that she wanted to flee the country, as did Zakia and Mohammad Ali. The American philanthropist Miriam Adelson, wife of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, expressed an interest in helping the couple and anyone involved in their case, and she persuaded the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, to offer them asylum. Because Ms. Kazimi had a passport, that was fairly easy to arrange once she got to India, where there were Rwandan consular services. Ms. Kazimi confirmed, in an interview a week ago, that she planned to go to Rwanda with her husband and children. The minister of women’s affairs, however, was critical of Ms. Kazimi’s motives. “Her life is not in danger,” said the minister, Husn Banu Ghazanfar. “Our life is in danger because of her. Bamian is one of the safest places in the country; she’s just trying to make a deal for herself.” Video Zakia and Mohammad Ali fled threats of arrest and death in Afghanistan as a result of their marriage, which crosses cultural boundaries. Credit Credit Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times It was more difficult, however, for Ms. Adelson’s contacts to make arrangements for the couple, since they had no passports. Western embassies have been reluctant to get involved because of criminal charges of bigamy brought against them by Zakia’s family, who claimed she had been married previously. Many others have been affected by their escape, as well. Najeeba Ahmadi, who is the head of the shelter that Zakia escaped from, said she had been blamed. “This is a shelter, not a prison, but they blame me from both sides, the government and the family. The family says, ‘We want our daughter back, dead or alive.’ ” Meanwhile, Zakia’s family fled Bamian because of the anger among Hazara neighbors who sympathized with the couple. “We left everything, whatever we had in our home, our fields, everything,” said Gula Khan, 21, her brother. “If we were men, we would do something,” and “take our revenge.” Mohammad Ali’s relatives say they have been financially ruined by the elopement. His father, Anwar, has mortgaged most of his 28 acres to pay what he said amounted to $22,000 in bribes during the nearly six months that Zakia was in the shelter while the courts tried to compel officials to turn her over to her family. Anwar said he paid bribes to government officials on many levels to prevent that from happening. (Like most of his and Zakia’s family, he goes by one name.) “There was no way but to give our lands, all of our best fields,” said Anwar’s son Bismullah. “My father has high blood pressure, but we don’t even have money to take him to the clinic.” Mohammad Ali was reached by cellphone in hiding at an undisclosed location. Instead of a ring, his phone plays one of the love songs of Ahmad Zahir, considered the Elvis Presley of Afghanistan, a crooner who sang rock songs based on Persian ballads, and was killed by the communists in 1979. “I know it’s extremely hard for my family,” he said. “I feel bad for this; I didn’t know how much my father had to give. You spend your life in hope, and I’m just hoping now that God will help us.” He passed the phone to Zakia, who seemed unmoved by word of her family’s new situation. “God be with them, but why should I miss them? I know it’s my family, but they only want to do me harm.”

Hazara people
Honor killing
Bamian Afghanistan
Rwanda
Islam
Miriam Adelson
Sheldon G Adelson
Marriage
Afghanistan


Bolt Surges to Win 100

Abstract: Usain Bolt had to work hard for his 100-meter victory in 9.90 seconds at the Weltklasse Diamond League meet in Zurich. Bolt, the world and Olympic champion, had the slowest reaction time out of the starting blocks. His fellow Jamaican Nickel Ashmeade led deep into the race. But Bolt muscled through a slight headwind to reach the front after 85 meters. He edged ahead of Ashmeade, who finished in 9.94 for second. Justin Gatlin was third in 9.96.