Photography Student Captures Scene of Killing on a D Train

Abstract: It began with a startling, inexplicable explosion of anger over a seat on a D train. And then the passenger who had resisted giving up his seat was bleeding from stab wounds, staggering through the car, collapsing, dying. The other passengers on the train at 2 a.m. Saturday — among them four photography students on their way home from burgers and beer in a Midtown restaurant — had just become witnesses to a murder . One of the students, Paola Nuñez Solorio, 30, chronicled the aftermath of the stabbing, ending her day as she had begun it, watching the world through her camera. In the morning she had zoomed in on apartment-building courtyards for a school project. Now she was photographing frightened passengers, a wounded man tottering through the train, a killer standing at the end of the car. She took 120 photographs in the mayhem that followed the stabbing, some out of focus, some a blur of passengers scrambling to get out of harm’s way, some showing the victim’s blood on the floor, some showing the victim’s body sprawled across the two seats he collapsed on. New York City and its subways are far safer than they once were, but violence can still erupt, seemingly out of nowhere, and Ms. Nuñez’s photographs captured the harrowing moments in all their unfiltered, unvarnished reality. Ms. Nuñez and her friends had been standing in the first car of the uptown D train after they boarded at 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas. There were scattered empty seats, not enough for them to sit together, so they stood, talking about nothing in particular. The train stopped at Rockefeller Center, and moments after it pulled out of the station, they realized something was wrong at the other end of their car. “Everyone started running toward us,” Ms. Nuñez said. “We thought there was a fight. Then we saw this guy with blood coming out of his mouth, and the killer right behind him, putting this thing away. I didn’t know what it was.” It was a knife, other passengers said. Instinctively, Ms. Nuñez reached for her camera, a digital single-lens reflex model that did not need a flash to function in the fluorescent light of the car. She and her friends had not noticed the suspect, identified by the police as Geraldo Sanchez, 37, an exterminator from the Bronx, when he boarded at Rockefeller Center. Nor had they realized that he had gone on a rampage at the other end of the car, spilling food and demanding that a passenger, Dwight Johnson, 36, vacate a seat beside one of the doors. Mr. Johnson said there were other seats. Mr. Sanchez said he wanted that seat. Soon he pulled out a knife and slashed Mr. Johnson’s hands and neck, witnesses said. Ms. Nuñez said Mr. Johnson staggered through the car, bleeding, with Mr. Sanchez right behind him. “We didn’t know what to do,” Ms. Nuñez said, and she and her friends realized they might be in danger: “We were stuck with the killer.” The fear behind that thought deepened when someone pulled the emergency brake cord, freezing the train between Rockefeller Center and the Seventh Avenue station. The passengers were trapped in the car with the suspect and the dying victim longer than if the train had gone on to the station and had been met by the police. As the train sat in the tunnel, the terrified passengers huddled together. Mr. Sanchez walked by and began trying to open the locked door leading to the next car. “We didn’t know what to do,” Ms. Nuñez said. “A guy standing with us said, ‘Don’t move.’ ” Another passenger, a woman, fainted. The man with her tried to revive her, Ms. Nuñez said. After several long minutes, the train started moving again. It pulled into the next station, at Seventh Avenue, but the doors remained closed. One of Ms. Nuñez’s friends said it appeared that the two officers on the platform were waiting for backups to arrive. That left the passengers in the car feeling vulnerable anew. “People were looking at us like we were in the zoo,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified because she had not told her father that she had been at the scene. Once the doors opened and the police stepped in, “We told them, ‘That’s the guy who killed him,’ ” the woman recalled. “They said, ‘Step aside.’ ” She said Mr. Sanchez tried to blend in with the other passengers as police officers swarmed into the car. “The killer tried to be a part of us,” she said. She remembered hearing him say, “I didn’t do anything.” Mr. Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. Mr. Sanchez was charged with second-degree murder and weapons possession.

Subways
Murders and Attempted Murders
Photography
New York City


Comedy Central Hosts Return to TV

Abstract: The late-night stars of the Comedy Central cable network, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert , returned to their programs for the first time in nine weeks Monday night, ready to sling their satirical stones at a new target: the continuing strike by the Writers Guild of America , which is forcing the stars to find creative ways to perform without their writers. Mr. Stewart of “The Daily Show” was the first host to take on the writers as well as the management, first mocking the studios’ argument that the writers’ work was only promotional by comparing it to the free cheese in a shopping mall and then taking some shots at the series of Internet ads by actors supporting the writers under the title of “Speechless.” One of these ads featured the actor Sean Penn, and Mr. Stewart said, “If you have Sean Penn advocating your cause, you MUST have a cause.” Mr. Stewart closed Monday night’s show as he does every episode — with a “throw” to Mr. Colbert, who joined him electronically from his studio, several blocks away in Manhattan. As he appeared by remote at Monday’s taping of the “The Colbert Report,” Mr. Stewart found Mr. Colbert hovered over a shredder on his anchor desk, appearing to destroy any evidence of the evening’s script. Mr. Colbert opened his program with a preview of the headlines to come, though it sounded as if he was on a bad cellphone connection: “Tonight ...then ...plus ... hey! ... ” Later, he made a point of showing the audience that he had no paper on his desk and that the teleprompters affixed to the front of each of his cameras were dark. “Where are my words?” he railed to his producers, in character as a dim-witted blow-hard. Later, he did separate interviews with two authors who had crossed the picket lines (about 20 strikers gathered outside the theater on West 54th Street): Andrew Sullivan, who discussed an article about Barack Obama that he wrote for The Atlantic, and Richard B. Freeman, a scholar on labor movements who teaches at Harvard. Before the taping, Mr. Colbert told the studio audience: “I just want to say before we begin, ‘I love my writers. I think they’re great. I can’t wait for them to come back.’ ” He closed his show by saying, on camera: “Writers, I’ll see you in my dreams.” Until late Sunday, both programs had hoped to avoid the high-wire act of working without scripts. Executives from Hello, Doggie, the production services company for the “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” as well as executives from Comedy Central, petitioned the union on several occasions over the last 10 days, seeking to reach an interim agreement like the one that allowed David Letterman to return last week with his full writing team. The proposal asked that the shows be allowed to use their writers and committed them to the same terms Mr. Letterman’s company had agreed to. The request was never formally turned down, though an executive associated with the shows said, “We were told it wasn’t looking good.” On Monday, guild members picketed both shows, with about 15 people outside Mr. Stewart’s studio . Courtney Simon, a striker who formerly worked as a script editor on “As the World Turns,” acknowledged some awkward feelings about protesting against Mr. Stewart, whose show she said she loved. “He is a member of the guild,” she said. “But we are on strike against the studios. There are certain things that have to be done, and this is one of them.” Most of the picket signs at both locations had messages aimed at Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central. The denial of the request for an interim agreement left representatives of the two programs and Comedy Central disappointed and, the executive associated with the shows said, “confounded by the fact that the decision was so arbitrary.” What most upset those involved in the effort was that the union gave no special consideration to the Comedy Central shows, even though the guild regarded it as a coup when it won a contract for “The Daily Show” in 2006. The series had just won an Emmy for best writing. Like the other hosts whose shows have been picketed by the guild, including Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on NBC and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert had been paying the salaries of nonwriting staff members out of their own pockets. In the negotiations, the guild would offer only an interim agreement to all Comedy Central shows. Mona Mangan, the executive director of the Writers Guild of America East, said in a telephone interview, “If Comedy Central wanted to come to us and sign the deal for the whole network, we were willing to do that.” But executives at Comedy Central said the network could not agree to that. Last weekend, representatives of the shows tried again in two long negotiations to win an interim agreement. “Given how important it was to the guild in 2006 to sign on ‘The Daily Show’ it is incomprehensible that they would turn down this opportunity,” said the executive associated with the shows, who asked not to be identified out of concern that it would alienate the union leadership. But Ms. Mangan said the guild had “strategic goals and determinations to make, all of which figured into the mix” in denying the Comedy Central shows the same deal as Mr. Letterman. She said the production entities were different in the two cases. Mr. Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, actually owns its shows, she said, while Hello, Doggie, despite being the entity the guild dealt with in 2006, is a production services company, overseeing issues like payroll, and does not own the content of the two Comedy Central shows.

Stewart Jon
Colbert Stephen
Writers Guild of America
Comedy Central
Writing and Writers
Television
Labor
Cable Television


After 3 Fires, Safety Agency Opens Inquiry Into Tesla Model S

Abstract: DETROIT — A federal safety investigation of the Tesla Motors electric Model S sedan announced on Tuesday comes at a critical juncture for the car and the company. For the first time, regulators are examining whether the design of the high-end vehicle and its advanced lithium-ion battery pack are defective and the cause of two battery fires. After garnering high praise for its styling, performance and eco-friendly electric power, the Model S will be the subject of scrutiny by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said the company welcomed the inquiry. At issue is whether the size, shape and chemical makeup of the car’s battery makes it prone to fires when its lithium-ion cells are punctured in a collision. Mr. Musk has repeatedly defended the design of the Model S, which won early accolades for its safety from regulators and independent publications like Consumer Reports. But the car has caught fire on three occasions in less than two months — twice in the United States and once in Mexico. By comparison, the Nissan Leaf — the best-selling all-electric car on the market — has not had any reported fires. A federal defect investigation can take months to complete, and could include crash tests of the vehicle well beyond the ordinary government testing done on cars before introduction. Tesla said it would increase the ground clearance of the Model S, and it also pledged to extend its current vehicle warranty to cover fire damage. But those changes are not expected to divert the focus of the investigation, or minimize the potential for the safety agency to order structural changes and a vehicle recall. Image The first fire occurred when a Tesla Motors Model S sedan hit a metal object on a highway in Kent, Wash., on Oct. 1. “Adjustments or modifications of the vehicle will not affect the inquiry,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst with the auto research firm Kelley Blue Book. “That is out of Tesla’s hands now, and the range of potential outcomes is very wide.” As a start-up company in the keenly competitive global auto industry, Tesla has, until now, enjoyed remarkable early success with its Model S luxury sedan. Mr. Musk’s track record as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur gave the company credibility that helped it secure a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy in 2010. Glowing reviews of the Model S, which is priced at $70,000 and higher, fueled investor interest in a public stock offering that allowed Tesla to pay back its government loans early. The company has since become a darling of Wall Street because of steadily growing sales of the Model S and Tesla’s promise to bring less expensive models to market in the future. Tesla stock, which has slid about 35 percent from its high, closed at $126.09 on Tuesday. But the safety agency inquiry has raised questions about what was perceived to be one of Tesla’s greatest strengths — its technological superiority. Mr. Musk has not retreated from his position that the Model S is safer from fires than vehicles with gasoline engines. And in a blog posting on the company website on Monday, Mr. Musk went so far as to assert that Tesla asked federal regulators to conduct the safety investigation to allay any fears about electric cars. “There is a larger issue at stake,” Mr. Musk wrote. “If a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences worldwide.” The agency flatly denied on Tuesday that the inquiry was opened because of a Tesla request. The swift rebuttal of Mr. Musk underscores how Tesla’s relentless promotional campaign is wearing thin on regulators charged with making the nation’s vehicles and roadways safe. The agency, in fact, had originally cleared the Model S of possible defects after the first vehicle fire, which occurred Oct. 1 , when the car struck a metal object on a highway in Kent, Wash., outside of Seattle. Image Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, has repeatedly defended the design of the Model S and said he welcomed the investigation. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times A high-speed crash in Mexico on Oct. 18 also resulted in a fire, but that incident was beyond the scope of American regulators. A third fire occurred on Nov. 6 on a highway in Smyrna, Tenn., near Nashville, after a Model S ran over a tow hitch in the roadway. That accident prompted regulators to revisit their earlier pronouncement of the car’s safety. “The agency has opened a formal investigation to determine if a safety defect exists in certain Model S vehicles,” the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. Automakers generally cooperate with federal investigations of their vehicles, and participate in developing safety solutions. Even when a company disputes the agency’s findings — as Chrysler did recently with an investigation of gas tanks on its Jeep sport utility vehicles — it usually agrees to make changes to the vehicle rather than risk a long, public battle that can damage its reputation. Industry analysts said the Model S inquiry would center on the exposure of its battery pack, a long, flat slab that runs almost the entire length of the underside of the vehicle. Other all-electric cars have smaller battery packs that are not as vulnerable to damage by metal objects in the road. The battery in BMW’s new i3 model, for example, is protected by a thick metal floor, according to the carmaker. BMW also said the electrolytes that store energy in its batteries are suspended in a gel that is less likely to leak than liquid electrolytes could in a collision. BMW said it performed “extensive development” tests on the i3 battery system before introducing the car this year. Tesla is a much smaller company than BMW or Nissan, and may not have had the same financial resources for engineering tests. Mr. Brauer, the Kelley Blue Book analyst, said the N.H.T.S.A. investigation would most likely include puncture-testing the battery, and then monitoring chemical reactions that may occur after the battery is damaged. If the design is deemed structurally unsound, the agency could recommend that Tesla add a protective covering to the cars, which would be expensive and could compromise its performance. Whatever the outcome, the inquiry promises to be a lengthy process that could hurt sales of the Model S in the interim. “For a while this company appeared infallible,” Mr. Brauer said. “Now the most important thing is that they cooperate with the regulators and do what it takes to regain their safety reputation.’


Chicago Play ‘Late Nite Catechism’ Pokes Fun at Nuns, With Big Returns

Abstract: CHICAGO — When did nuns become funny? Was it in 1967, when Sally Field first donned her absurd cornette and took flight in the ABC comedy “The Flying Nun”? Maybe it was 1985, when the musical “Nunsense” made its Off Broadway debut — soon to procreate, paradoxically, many sequels. Certainly nuns were safe sport by 1992, when Whoopi Goldberg appeared in “Sister Act,” a movie that later became a play in the West End in London and on Broadway. Americans began laughing at nuns just as the nuns lost the power to defend themselves. In the early 1960s, Catholic nuns were plentiful, working in schools, hospitals and orphanages, and visible, wearing the habits prescribed by their orders. Today their numbers are diminishing, and many of them wear civilian clothes. Americans, many Roman Catholics especially, now think of nuns with the safe nostalgia and curiosity that we reserve for endangered species, like manatees, or Shakers. Vicki Quade, the Chicago playwright, shares the view that nuns can be funny, and indeed she has written five comedies featuring funny nuns: the original, “ Late Nite Catechism ,” and spinoffs including “Put the Nuns in Charge” and “Mother Superior’s Ho-Ho-Holy Night.” But Ms. Quade (rhymes with “body”) also loves nuns, even reveres them, and she now uses her shows, at least one of which has been running in Chicago since 1993, to raise money— more than $2 million so far — for Catholic sisters. On a Friday last month, I went to the Royal George Theater in Chicago to see “Late Nite Catechism,” which Ms. Quade wrote with Maripat Donovan, who has since written her own line of sequels. I found that night’s performance, starring Lisa Buscani, ragged but definitely enjoyable (I’m not quite with The New York Times critic who called the 1996 New York production “ an uproarious piece of interactive theater ”). It’s a one-woman show in which Sister, a tough but acerbic nun, leads the audience, which is supposed to be a body of reluctant students in St. Bruno’s Adult Catechism Class, through a two-hour lesson in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church . Based on a show of hands, most of the audience members in the tiny space were raised Catholic, but that did not mean they knew much about their faith, or showed proper respect to Sister. One man came to regret his attire: “This isn’t a Cubs game; take that hat off!” Sister barked. “I don’t care if your hairline’s receding.” A woman in the audience was humiliated when she gave an incorrect explanation of the Immaculate Conception, which refers to Mary’s being born without sin, not the virgin birth. Another woman grinned with pride when she correctly answered that “extreme unction” is what Catholics used to call the Anointing of the Sick, part of the Last Rites. But nobody could name the scapular, the tunic that is part of a nun’s habit. Sister instructed us in these and other matters, like the continuing effort to make Dorothy Day a saint. At the end of the show, Sister announced that there would be a collection for donations to local religious orders; on the way out, nearly everyone deposited some folded bills in the stage manager’s hat. “It’s over $2 million since we started doing that collecting,” Ms. Quade said, as she drove me around Chicago afterward. “Our first anniversary, we approached the Benedictine order. They wouldn’t take the money. They said they didn’t need it. That was in 1994. In 1995, we went to the Carmelites in Naperville and got them to take the money.” At first, collections were only around Christmas and Easter, but that soon changed. “At some point around 1996, we said we were going to start collecting all the time” — after every show. And they would periodically bundle the money and give it to an order: the Carmelites, the Sisters of St. Joseph , the Benedictines, the Mercy nuns , the Sisters of St. Francis. “That first check was not much, maybe $1,500. The next check was maybe $5,000,” she said. Ms. Quade asked an early beneficiary what her order had done with their gift. “She said she used it to bury one of the nuns that died.” Although not a regular churchgoer, Ms. Quade considers herself “a spiritual Catholic,” and she sent her three children to Catholic school. She grew up in the suburb of Burbank, Ill., back when priests and nuns were plentiful. As a child, her family would let the nuns use a car whenever they needed. “Father John Hill would come over for dinner,” Ms. Quade remembered. “We loved him. He’d smoke cigars with my dad. But the nuns would knock on the window. My mother would say, ‘The sisters are here, give them the keys.’ They wouldn’t come up on the steps. My mother would say, ‘You have to go give it to them.’ ” For the nuns, unlike for the priest, apparently, being inside a family’s home was dangerous. “They didn’t want to be tempted by family niceties,” Ms. Quade said. “They’d given that all up. So they would put their feet not even on the first step, but in front of it. And nothing stuck with me more than that. Father Hill was back there smoking cigars with my dad, and the nuns wouldn’t even come in.” That memory, Ms. Quade said, fairly sums up why she turned her comedic plays into fund-raisers. “I wanted to honor those women. So we have said, ‘You can do anything with this money. It can be your Häagen-Dazs fund.’ They’ve bought handicapped vans. They’ve redone bathrooms. “We’ve gotten pictures of big-screen TVs, with notes saying, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Nuns
Theater
Roman Catholic Church
Chicago (Ill)
Quade Vicki


Jeffrey Watler Has a New Home; Rajlakshmi Wahid Still Struggles

Abstract: In daily articles from November to January, the Neediest Cases charitable campaign provides a window into the lives of the people it serves. Sometimes the money provided by the fund can offer minor but vital assistance; sometimes it can do little more than lessen the pain of a daily struggle. Today, The New York Times catches up with two people featured in past campaigns. Moving out of his mother’s home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn: This has been Jeffrey Watler’s ambition since he started earning his own money in 2004. Five days a week, he crisscrosses the city by bus and subway to deliver packages to businesses throughout the five boroughs as a foot messenger for Avant Business Services, based in Grand Central Terminal. “I love to work. There is no place I won’t go. I go at my own pace, but I’ll get there,” he said during an interview for an article published in December 2007. His progress through life has been step by step, much like his workday. Mr. Watler, 28, was born with cerebral palsy, which limits the use of his right arm, hand and leg. He has persevered through operations and rehabilitation. And he has remained dedicated to a training program for people with mental or physical impairments at the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service . The bureau is one of seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. It was through this training he was referred to his employer. The miles he covers on the job and his impaired gait put pressure on the outside of his soles, so he wears shoes out faster than most other people do. To buy Mr. Watler a new, sturdier pair of winterized walking shoes, the bureau drew $90 from the Neediest Cases Fund in 2007. And at his own pace and with the support of the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service , he achieved his next goal. He moved into a spacious, furnished studio apartment on July 20, 2009. Other adults who participated in the bureau’s program occupy the other 11 studios in the building, which is in Bedford-Stuyvesant. All the rooms are handicapped accessible, with railings in the bathrooms and space for wheelchairs. Mr. Watler affords the $675 monthly rent with his earnings, which range from $150 to $200 a week. He also gets $200 a month in Supplemental Security Income. His utilities are subsidized by the state’s Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. In addition to paying their rent, the residents are responsible for maintaining their apartments. When Mr. Watler needs help, an aide is provided. “Jeffrey has made a big adjustment; he is doing really great now,” said Lynette Loadholt, director of M.R. Services, who oversees the residents. Mr. Watler has made good friends in the building, she said, but he is the most independent of the group. “He is one of those people who you don’t have to provide a lot of supervision to.” The situation is ideal for his mother, Lorena Watler, too. The home they shared is close by, and she visits to bring him a home-cooked meal and to do his laundry on occasion. “You have to get down there early,” Mr. Watler said of the laundry room. “I can’t do that, no way. I have to go to work. I got to get up and go.”  While Jeffrey Watler was realizing his dreams of living independently, Rajlakshmi Wahid, now 48, was in the courts fighting to keep her home. In November 2008, The Times published an article about Ms. Wahid , who was on the brink of foreclosure. She managed to avoid losing her home after her lawyer negotiated a deal with her bank, then Countrywide, now Bank of America. The monthly payments on her $540,000 mortgage were adjusted from $4,000 to $1,663, which includes the property tax, but not insurance. She and her husband bought the home, in Queens Village, in 2001, putting $80,000 down on the $225,000 price. They refinanced several times to build ramps, widen doorways and add railings in the bathroom to make it easier to care for their daughter, Shabena, 16, who has cerebral palsy, severe scoliosis and mental retardation. She is immobile and can say only a few words. “She is completely dependent on me,” Ms. Wahid said recently. “I am very happy that I got to keep my house. I put a lot of work in it for my daughter.” But her struggles are far from over. She and her husband separated early in 2007, and her monthly household income fell to $2,500 from $4,600. Ms. Wahid ignores her own physical ailments — back problems, high blood pressure and a thyroid disorder — to care for Shabena and work as many hours as she can cleaning hotel rooms. Her situation become even more difficult when the financial assistance she received from the government stopped this past year. She no longer receives $350 a month in food stamps. “I was told I make too much money,” she said. Her daughter’s Supplemental Security Income, which had been $600 a month, then reduced to $400, was ended because of an accounting error. “I was told that we had been previously overpaid and now we have to pay it back,” she said. Another blow came when Medicaid refused to cover some of her daughter’s medical bills. “I have union insurance, I can take her to her union clinic, but Shabena needs to see her specialists,” Ms. Wahid said. “If I don’t see her doctor, she can’t get prescriptions.” At the moment, she is running out of Ensure, a vitamin supplement drink Shabena needs for nourishment. The cold winter weather has forced Ms. Wahid to increase her energy use. The electricity bill has doubled to $140 a month. Her last heating oil bill was $600. The one place she has found help time and again is Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens , another of the seven charities supported by the Neediest Cases Fund. “There are not a lot of resources out there for a single mother with a special-needs child,” said Sha-nae Anderson, a casework supervisor at the Queens North Community Center, a program run by Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens. “I know she is doing all she can, but she needs more help. Gratefully, we are in a position to do so because of the funds from The New York Times. It is a precarious situation, but there is a lot of hope.” Ms. Wahid expressed her gratitude. “I don’t have nobody to lean on. It is just me taking care of my kid,” she said. “ I am trying to hold my house up. But I feel everything at my throat. I am really having a hard time.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service


Giants Lose Ross and Add Two to Secondary

Abstract: Weakened in the secondary by injuries as they headed into Sunday’s game with the Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants on Saturday added two defensive backs. In a surprise, Aaron Ross, the team’s first-round draft pick in 2007, was placed on injured reserve to make room for one of the two players. Ross’s season is over. A starter at cornerback in the Giants’ last two games, he had been filling in for the first-string cornerback Corey Webster. Ross left last week’s game against Kansas City with a back injury and had not practiced since. Ross was a member of two of the Giants’ Super Bowl-winning teams. He had four tackles and one interception this season. Webster is still sidelined with a groin injury. Safety Will Hill and cornerback Charles James were activated for Sunday’s game. Hill had been suspended for violating the N.F.L.’s substance-abuse policy but became eligible to play this weekend. James was signed from the team’s practice squad. The other deletion from the active roster was center Dallas Reynolds, who had been signed by the team Tuesday. BILL PENNINGTON

Football
Giants
Aaron Ross
Will Hill
Corey Webster
Philadelphia Eagles


Charles Paces the Liberty With Career-High Scoring

Abstract: Tina Charles scored a career-high 32 points to lead the Liberty to an 87-80 win at home over Maya Moore and the Minnesota Lynx. Trailing by 59-53 midway through the third quarter, the Liberty went on a 20-6 run over the next seven minutes. Moore rallied Minnesota, but the Liberty scored 11 of the final 15 points.

Basketball
New York Liberty
Minnesota Lynx
Tina Charles


Sweden's Lundqvist Still Playing to the Crowd

Abstract: TURIN, Italy, Feb. 25 - Hockey's one-man cover band hits the big stage Sunday, finally with his own material. No longer does Henrik Lundqvist have to perform anyone else's lyrics. Sweden always wanted him to be the reincarnation of a legend who died young. New York wanted him to be the replacement for an icon who left quietly. Even fans of Lundqvist's music appreciated most that he could imitate others, usually Lars Winnerback, a Swedish rocker whom the masses found comfortable. Lundqvist honored all requests. He reminded his fellow Swedes of Pelle Lindbergh, the celebrated Flyers goalie who died in a car crash at 26 in 1985. He reminded New Yorkers of Mike Richter, the Rangers goalie who retired three years ago. Lundqvist even formed a band in his spare time that blasted Winnerback's greatest hits. Lundqvist, the guy on bass guitar, is now playing lead for the Swedish Olympic hockey team. In six frenetic months, he has become the Rangers' starting goalie, steered them to first place in the Atlantic Division, and made himself a candidate for the N.H.L.'s rookie of the year award. With a victory over Finland on Sunday, he will also be an Olympic gold medalist, the kind of player who needs to impersonate no one, because everybody is trying to impersonate him. "It's been amazing," he said. "All my dreams are coming true at once. But looking back, I think the key to this was going to New York and getting a really good start." Lundqvist's first purchases in Manhattan were a guitar and a harmonica. When he reported to the Rangers' training camp in September, a former seventh-round draft choice scraping for a roster spot, he was just trying to win a backup job. The Rangers already had their starting goalie, Kevin Weekes. They also had a goalie prospect, Al Montoya, who was drafted in the first round and paid almost $1 million. But Lundqvist found that public sentiment shifts as quickly in New York as it does in Stockholm. Montoya was sent to the minor leagues. Weekes was booed at Madison Square Garden. And out skated this 23-year-old with a shaggy haircut and an unkempt beard. He looked as if he had been club-hopping all night. "In some ways," said Kenny Jonsson, a Swedish defenseman and former Islanders captain, "Henrik can look more like he is 33 than 23." The notion of a rock-star goalie must have appealed to Manhattan. The crowds started chanting Lundqvist's name before they could have possibly learned how to spell it. If Jaromir Jagr was the Rangers' veteran superstar, leading the offensive surge, Lundqvist was the rookie stopper, anchoring the other end. His unlikely ascent in New York was mimicked back home. Lundqvist became the Rangers' starting goalie because Weekes was inconsistent. He became Sweden's Olympic goalie because Tommy Salo was disgraced. The last time many fans paid attention to Swedish hockey was at the Salt Lake Games in 2002, when Salo allowed the softest goal conceivable, a shot from center ice by Vladimir Kopat of Belarus. The next morning, the headlines in Sweden screamed, "Darkest Day in Swedish Sports History." Lundqvist, a sunburst wherever he goes, quickly emerged as Salo's obvious heir, starring for Frolunda of the Swedish Elite League. When Lundqvist was not deflecting shots, he was strumming chords for his band, Box Play, along with three Frolunda teammates. Lundqvist's twin brother, Joel, was on the drums. "I know it's a surprise to a lot of people what he's done," Olli Jokinen of Finland said. "But everyone knew the past couple years that he was the best goalie in Europe." Lundqvist allows his teammates to take chances because they believe he will wipe away most of their mistakes. Just as the Rangers like to push the puck and rush the net, the Swedes encourage their defensemen to take an aggressive approach. If they commit a turnover and the opposing team has a breakaway as a result, Lundqvist can square his body, drop into his stance and make everything O.K. "When you know you have a good goalie, you have more confidence in the way you play defensively," said Christian Backman, a Swedish defenseman. "You can give up certain shots that you know he can save." Stardom has come quickly to Lundqvist, which may be why he appears so untouched by it. He still looks as though he lost his razor and cannot afford a decent haircut. He laments that Box Play is on hiatus during hockey season, but he anticipates a raucous reunion in the summer. "It's a lot of fun," he said, "even though we're not really that good." Lundqvist does like to make clear, though, that his group is fundamentally different from Abba, the Swedish pop band whose bubble-gum sound follows the hockey team wherever it goes. During Sweden's semifinal victory over the Czech Republic on Thursday, the stereo system at Palasport Olimpico blared a song by Abba, just as the Swedes were getting ready to celebrate. Apparently, Olympic organizers did not have any Winnerback, and no cover bands were available.

SWEDEN
FINLAND
NEW YORK RANGERS
LUNDQVIST HENRIK
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)
HOCKEY ICE
WINTER GAMES (OLYMPICS)
OLYMPIC GAMES


Charter School Chief Keeps an Eye on Politics

Abstract: A recent 14-hour day in the life of Eva S. Moskowitz — former city councilwoman, someday mayoral aspirant, current chief of a fast-growing chain of Harlem charter schools — began with a metal bowl of nectarines. “Is it possible,” Ms. Moskowitz asked a cafeteria worker in the urgent tone familiar from her City Hall hearings, “to get the fruit on something lower?” After ensuring that the smallest children could see one of their healthier breakfast options, Ms. Moskowitz, 44, moved on to weightier issues: advising a novice principal on how to approach a testy parent, figuring out who should replace a first-grade teacher who quit, arguing about the city’s methods for doling out space to charter schools. She zipped from school to school to cocktail party, all in four-inch patent-leather heels and juggling a latte, cellphone and the BlackBerry on which she routinely shoots pointed notes to city officials. “It is the accumulation of the hundreds of minute decisions that is the difference between mediocrity and true excellence,” read a recent 14-paragraph Moskowitz message to a senior Education Department employee that began about scheduling difficulties but became broadly philosophical. “We at Harlem Success literally go for perfection.” This is the woman who, during four years of running the City Council Education Committee, agitated the bureaucracy and the teachers’ union alike with exhaustive hearings on the dearth of science classes, the restrictions of the union contract and, famously, the matter of why so many school bathrooms seemed perpetually to lack toilet paper. Now, with the zeal of a bureaucracy-busting superhero, Ms. Moskowitz has channeled her interests in matters mind-bending and minute into the Success Charter Network, which started in 2006 with Harlem Success Academy 1 , added three more schools this summer and plans to expand to 40 over a decade. “She could be looked at as a lightning rod or a zealous advocate,” said Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright , a Democrat who represents Harlem. “You can initiate, you can start, you can maintain a charter school and not be so controversial,” he added. “I think the jury is still out. If our kids are educated, the proof will be in the pudding, and educated kids speak for themselves.” It is, indeed, too early to assess her success; the first school will face standardized tests for the first time this year (and therefore has not yet received a letter grade under the Bloomberg administration’s new accountability system). But the network has drawn unusual attention from parents, politicians and philanthropists. This spring, the schools received 3,600 applications for 600 slots, and 5,000 people, including Gov. David A. Paterson and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, attended the highly orchestrated admissions lottery, where parents wept tears of joy as their children’s names were drawn. Ms. Moskowitz and her board of directors have raised $9 million in private donations to support the growing network, though they plan to have each school survive on public dollars by its third year. Crucial to the intrigue is Ms. Moskowitz herself, since those who make and critique education policy rarely trade in their gavels for daily work with real children in real schools where even the perfect plan can go awry — as it did the other day, when a kindergartner wet himself on the office floor just as a mayor from Rhode Island arrived for a tour. Charters, which are publicly financed but independently operated, are rarely run by politicians, which is perhaps why Ms. Moskowitz sees her job as not just to create a model network of schools, but also to change city and state policy. And Ms. Moskowitz — whose $250,000 salary, paid for with private money, matches the chancellor’s — is not just the chief executive, she is also a parent. Her son, a sweet-faced redhead, is a kindergartner at Harlem Success 3, one of the very few white students in a set of schools where virtually all children are black or Hispanic, and roughly three-quarters are poor. Critics say Ms. Moskowitz, who openly discusses the possibility of running for mayor someday, is more politician than educator (although she taught history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the College of Staten Island before running for City Council in 1997), and accuse her of expanding the charter schools too quickly. Each school started with kindergarten and first grades, and each plans to add a grade every year through middle school; Ms. Moskowitz hopes to open three or four new schools in 2010. With such rapid expansion, staffing is a critical challenge: As at most other city charters, Harlem Success teachers are not unionized, and work a longer school day and year than those at traditional public schools. Within the flagship school’s first few months, the assistant principal and two teachers were let go. Five of last year’s 20 primary classroom teachers did not return this year, and turnover has been high among the largely 20-something back-office staff. “Between law school, not liking New York and the boyfriends, we could be out of business tomorrow,” Ms. Moskowitz said in frustration. Congratulating her staff on a smooth start of school, she also cautioned them: “Opening schools and running them at a high level are two very different things. And that’s really going to be the hard part.” Attention to Details A tour through Ms. Moskowitz’s schools is like a nostalgia trip through her Council Education Committee agendas. Hearings on the lack of science classes have translated into all Harlem Success students having science every day. Hearings on the lack of technology inspired EduTube, on which teachers post videos of model lessons. Each school’s operations manager — one of several positions Ms. Moskowitz created to keep principals focused on teaching instead of paperwork — makes the rounds each morning to, among other things, make sure each bathroom has toilet paper, documenting those that do not with digital cameras. These are also schools clearly run by a mother. Mindful of the time it takes to tie tiny shoelaces, Ms. Moskowitz mandates Velcro footwear. The fact that her son Culver barely spoke at age 3 but played chess by 4 is behind the school’s policy of teaching chess to every child. She describes the Harlem Success educational philosophy as a mix of the liberal Bank Street College of Education approach and the traditional Catholic school model. In an age when kindergarten is increasingly academic, and many urban charter schools have taken a militaristic approach to learning, the Harlem Success kindergartens have dress-up corners, water-activity tables and Legos but also use the highly scripted Success for All reading curriculum and embrace standardized tests. Even kindergartners take TerraNova exams in literacy and math, in January and May. Sheree Thomas, 36, plays the “Rocky” theme song before her third graders’ test-prep sessions: “They know he tried, they know he got beat down, and they know he triumphed,” she said. Since the first school opened in 2006, the curriculum has been a work in progress. Officials are rethinking how their students are taught writing, and Ms. Moskowitz was clearly exasperated while recently reviewing responses to a practice test, in which third graders were asked to read a passage about a family’s berry-picking expedition, then predict what might happen next. “Some one stold there berries,” read one of the more inadequate answers — a testament to the learning that must still take place. Concerned that part of the problem was teachers’ and administrators’ low expectations, Ms. Moskowitz ordered a staff member to collect third-grade writing samples from the prestigious Brearley School. Hardball, on a New Field Even as she parades through school hallways instead of City Hall, Ms. Moskowitz still operates like a politician, and still plays hardball. She has had particularly rocky relationships with some of the traditional public schools that house her charters. Last spring, she referred to the fight to house a Harlem Success school inside Public School 123 as a “Middle East war” (she later apologized). When P.S. 123 officials repeatedly refused to open three locked closets in a Harlem Success section of the building, Ms. Moskowitz hired a locksmith, an incident that has entered Harlem Success lore as “closetgate.” In lobbying for her own needs and the broader charter school agenda downtown and in Albany, one of Ms. Moskowitz’s most powerful tools is Harlem Success parents, whom she helped organize into a group called Harlem Parents United. They showed up en masse last spring at public hearings regarding Harlem Success’s bids for space in public school buildings; the outpouring, and the result, was very different from what happened in the spring of 2006, when public outcry led the department to backtrack on its initial plans for placing Harlem Success 1. Ms. Moskowitz’s relationship with Chancellor Klein, who spoke at a recent Harlem Success fund-raiser, has improved since the days when she derided the Education Department’s lack of transparency to the point of threatening subpoenas. But while the Bloomberg administration prides itself on running one of the nation’s most charter-friendly districts, Ms. Moskowitz continues to push. The day that began with the ill-placed fruit bowl, for instance, ended at a cocktail party, where Ms. Moskowitz grilled Michael Thomas Duffy, Mr. Klein’s top aide for charter schools, over the city’s formula for allocating space to charters. Mr. Duffy, in an interview, conceded that conversations with Ms. Moskowitz can run “hot”; he recounted his early days in the job, when what he thought would be a 45-minute get-to-know-you turned into a two-hour meeting dominated by her frustration at not being able to obtain potential students’ contact information. “She dispensed with the niceties pretty quickly,” he said. Nevertheless, Mr. Duffy described the Harlem Success lottery this spring as a “watershed event,” saying “it seemed to crystallize an understanding of the permanency of charter schools in the city, that there’s no going back.” Winning Parents Over There are now 78 charter schools in New York City, with 24,000 students, up from 17 schools with 3,200 students in 2002. A disproportionate number of the schools, 21, are in Harlem, a fact that has irked some and thrilled others. The Success Network was created by Joel Greenblatt and John Petry, business partners at Gotham Capital, a Manhattan hedge fund, who chose the location because, as Mr. Petry put it in an e-mail message, “many/most of the Harlem schools have underperformed for years, if not decades.” Ms. Moskowitz grew up at 118th Street and Morningside Drive, then moved to the Upper East Side. After a failed bid for Manhattan borough president in 2005, she was hired to run Success and moved back to Harlem, buying a condominium within a 10-minute walk of three of the schools. She demands a lot from Harlem Success parents: They must read their children six books a week, year round, and attend multiple school events, from soccer tournaments to Family Reading Nights. If children are repeatedly late, the parents must join them to do penance at Saturday Academy. Nefertiti Washington, 28, whose son is a kindergartner, said some parents walked out of a springtime information session when Ms. Moskowitz made her expectations clear by saying, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.” Ms. Washington and Katrina Young, 43, who swapped tales at a recent Family Reading Night on their sons’ rapid transformation into bookworms, said they welcomed the opportunity to be involved, and described the schools as a godsend. Ms. Washington recalled opening a book one evening, only to have her son demand, “Mommy, who is the illustrator?” Ms. Moskowitz said she and her husband, a lawyer, thought hard about where to send their middle child to school; their older son is in fifth grade at a public gifted program, and their younger daughter is in a Jewish Community Center preschool. The couple ruled out private school for financial and ideological reasons, she said, and were wary of traditional public schools because of their belief that the union contracts she railed against during her City Hall days allow mediocre teachers to remain in classrooms. In the end, they picked Harlem Success because she believes in what she is building. “When I honestly assessed where the instruction was phenomenal,” she said, “it was at my own schools.”

Moskowitz Eva S
Education and Schools
Charter Schools
Harlem Success Academy


Power Wins in Toronto and Extends His IndyCar Points Lead

Abstract: TORONTO (AP) — The IndyCar Series points leader Will Power knew when to be aggressive and when to play it safe Sunday in the wreck-filled Honda Indy Toronto. After patiently avoiding early trouble, Power boldly passed Justin Wilson on the outside off a restart with 14 laps left, then held off Dario Franchitti for his second straight victory and fourth of the season. “The key for me when I came to this race was avoiding carnage and accidents, which I know happens every year,” Power said. All four of Power’s IndyCar victories have come on street or road courses. He won two weeks ago in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and swept the season-opening races in São Paulo, Brazil, and St. Petersburg, Fla. Power, who increased his lead over Franchitti to 42 points from 32, is in his first full season with Team Penske after driving six races last season, highlighted by a victory in Edmonton, Alberta. Power finished 1.2757 seconds ahead of Franchitti, the winner last year in Toronto. Ryan Hunter-Reay was third, followed by Tony Kanaan, Graham Rahal, Danica Patrick, Wilson, Marco Andretti, Simona de Silvestro and Dan Wheldon.

Indy Racing League
Automobile Racing
Wilson Justin (1978-2015)
Power Will (1981- )


Computational Photography May Help Us See Around Corners

Abstract: ANYONE who has witnessed the megapixel one-upmanship in camera ads might think that computer chips run the show in digital photography. That’s not true. In most cameras, lenses still form the basic image. Computers have only a toehold, controlling megapixel detectors and features like the shutter. But in research labs, the new discipline of computational photography is gaining ground, taking over jobs that were once the province of lenses. In the future, the technology of computational photography may guide rescue robots, or endoscopes that need to peer around artery blockages. In camera phones, the technology can already merge two exposures of the same image. One day, it could even change the focus of a picture you’ve already taken. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , one experimental camera has no lens at all: it uses reflected light, computer processing and other tools to let it see around corners. Ramesh Raskar , leader of the Camera Culture research group at M.I.T., aims his camera and an ultrafast laser attachment at a door half-open into a model room containing simple objects. The laser — the equivalent of a flash — fires pulses shorter than a trillionth of a second. Light bounces off the door, scatters into the room, hits the objects within and then bounces back to the detector. Dr. Raskar traces those bouncing echoes of light photon by photon, based on when and where they land. From the reflected light, as well as the room’s geometry and mathematical modeling, he deduces the structure of the hidden objects . “If you modify your camera and add sophisticated processing,” he said, “the camera can look around objects and see what’s beyond.” Steven Seitz , a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, says Dr. Raskar’s technology will have to surmount tough obstacles to go beyond the laboratory. “He’s demonstrated that it can work, but the big questions are when and how it can be deployed,” Dr. Seitz said. “You will need powerful lasers and there will be safety issues. But the work is exciting as a prototype.” Shree K. Nayar , chairman of the computer science department at Columbia University, does research that includes computational photography. “The data megapixel sensors gather is just an intermediate step on the way to a picture,” he said. “We are interested in how you design a camera that goes hand in hand with computation to create a new kind of picture.” Many images produced by computational photography are seen mainly in research — for example, in shots where the focus has been changed after the fact. But inexpensive applications for ordinary camera phones are also starting to appear, said Marc Levoy , a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford. “A year ago this wasn’t happening,” he said. “But the industry is beginning to think that if the megapixel war is over, computational photography may be the next battleground.” For example, consumers can buy apps for high dynamic range, or HDR, a common technique in computational photography, said Frédo Durand , an associate professor at M.I.T. who collaborates with Dr. Levoy. True HDR (99 cents) and Pro HDR ($1.99), both sold at iTunes, can combine photos shot at different exposures — one in deep shadow, the other overexposed, merging them for a dynamic range that normally can’t be attained in a single shot. Professor Durand said he would like to write his own computational photography apps for conventional cameras. But he can’t, because the camera’s workings are typically closed to amateur photographers. What feats could computation perform if consumer cameras were opened to programmers? To demonstrate, Dr. Levoy and his colleagues have created a gallery of programmable cameras. Using spare parts, the team assembled a prototype for a portable camera, dubbed Frankencamera, now in its third version, that runs on Linux, the open operating system. Programmers can play with the chips inside the camera that record and process images. There’s a cellphone Frankencamera, too. With the support of Nokia, the group has opened up the Nokia N900 smartphone, writing software to give programmers more control of its components. Details of the Frankencamera work, including the software for the Nokia, are available free at the Stanford group’s Web site . Dr. Levoy and his group have also written applications showing the Frankencameras’ abilities. The Rephotography app, for instance, lets users take a photo in the exact spot where an earlier one was shot. “The camera guides you step by step, so that you mathematically find the exact same viewpoint,” said Professor Durand, who with colleagues created the original app. SOON, many students may be learning about computational photography. Dr. Levoy has received a grant from the National Science Foundation for a course to introduce it to graduate students at American universities. He and his team are preparing materials; each packet will include lectures, one or two of the Frankencameras and a dozen or so of the adapted N900s. Dr. Seitz in Seattle says he hopes the Frankencamera project will succeed. “Once camera technology is opened up so that anyone can program,” he Seitz said, “the promise of computational photography will start to pay off.”

Cameras
Photography
Computers and the Internet
Software
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stanford University
Smartphones


Has Opioid Abuse Affected You? Readers Respond

Abstract: The devastating effects of opioid abuse are rippling through families and neighborhoods across the United States. We asked to hear readers’ stories about painkillers, heroin and addiction, and how the opioid epidemic is playing out where they live. Hundreds of people responded. Here are some of the responses, in readers’ own words, lightly edited for clarity. ‘I’ve struggled with anxiety since I can remember’ When I was introduced to OxyContin, I felt that I had found my relief. I had finally found something to calm my brain down. I had no idea that if I stopped using these pills, I would be left with more anxiety than I had ever felt. I am 26 years old with 2.5 years clean. — Sadie Campbell , 26, Portland, Ore. ‘I couldn’t manage the pain’ Graduated magna cum laude from law school. After motor vehicle accident, I was prescribed hydrocodone and eventually ended up on OxyContin, Percocet, Xanax, Soma. Eventually I couldn’t manage the pain because it was worse, and went on disability. Lost my wife, friends and job. — Sean , 43, California ‘I am a heroin addict’ I remember the moments of shame and guilt after being resuscitated from an overdose. It didn’t start like that, but no one told me it would end like that. I did it to get high until I had to do it to be “normal,” to function, to not be in excruciating pain. Now I’ve been sober for two and a half years. — Zach Neuser , Midland, Tex. ‘This compound is very sneaky’ I am a 45-year-old married mother of two. After multiple medical procedures, I found myself with a full-blown opiate addiction. I sought treatment at an inpatient recovery center, was counseled to not move back home but rather transitional housing. It was then I was introduced to heroin. I was told just use a little, that’s all it takes. It will help you get by. You only need to do it once a day. LIES LIES LIES!!! — Laura Dingee , White Lake, Mich. ‘Take addictive drugs too long and guess what?’ I have used pain medication for 35 years without a problem. The issue on the prescription-drug side of the issue is stupidity. Take addictive drugs too long and guess what? On the other side, what is important to understand is that people who feel very poorly about themselves and their prospects are very inclined to indulge in something that makes it all go away. — Ben Jencks , Springfield, Ore. ‘I believed the doctors would know better’ I paid $50 every month to see a pain specialist who said “How are you, here’s your prescription” without any consideration for the amplified pain. I believed the doctors would know better than I would, so I never addressed it. — Stephanie Scheffner , 36, Boise, Idaho ‘One time I thought he was dead’ My 30-year-old son is a recovering addict/alcoholic. From middle school on, he moved through pot, alcohol and opiates. One time I thought he was dead. There were so many lies and denials. His addiction forced me to seek my own recovery and has made me a better parent and person. It took a lot for him to get sober at age 24. He is my hero. — Jan , 60, South Pasadena, Calif. ‘The first time’ My son accepted that he could no longer endure his life of addiction, but only after a night camping out under a highway overpass with homeless heroin users. He used a needle for the first time. — Lucy , San Francisco ‘I was in love with it’ I broke my back in 2012. I used anything and everything to cope with the pain. Once the doctors figured out I was abusing the pain pills, they cut me off. I thought I was going to die. I was introduced to mainstream heroin. I was in love with it the first time I tried it. I craved and sought it through every step of my days. Sober since 4/28/15. — Braden Ewell , Odessa, Tex. ‘Stigmatization’ This is a stigmatization of a useful and necessary prescription drug that is used responsibly by almost everyone for whom it is prescribed. If the so-called War on Drugs has taught us a single thing (the same that Prohibition taught us), it’s that some people will do anything to get high, including dying. — Dan Lundmark, Fort Collins, Colo. ‘My son is dead but not dead’ My son has been addicted to opiates for 11 years now, first OxyContin, then heroin. Every time he lied to me about getting clean, I would believe him and try to help him out. Now I just hope his bottom is not his death. This is something no parent can be at peace with. My son is dead but not dead. — Ross , Tucson ‘Struggling again’ I became addicted to prescription painkillers due to an automobile accident. It took me eight years to get my life back on track. I lost guardianship of my older two children and in the midst of all of it ended up in jail, then pregnant; my daughter was born and went through withdrawal because it had such a hold on me. I went to detox and rehab, got my life together for a few months, all to be in another devastating car accident and right back on painkillers due to all the injuries. Now struggling again. — Meagan , Cadillac, Mich. ‘More painkillers than we need’ My husband and I have had an assortment of dental and day-surgery procedures (typical for our age) that usually include a prescription for far more painkillers than we need. We don’t understand why patient post-procedure instructions do not include info about safe ways to dispose of these drugs. — Nancy A. Johnson , Edina, Minn. ‘I started stealing from my family’ I started taking painkillers when I was 19. I went to the dentist one day for a toothache and was prescribed Vicodin. After that first one, I was hooked. Then one day a friend introduced me to heroin. I started stealing from my family, and they pressed charges on me. I thank God every day because I’m alive today. — Carla Goff , Shelby, Ohio ‘Left with the uncertainty’ My father’s life spiraled out of control, and he became addicted to prescription painkillers. After hitting rock bottom and finding himself deeply in debt, my father went through an in-treatment program. About two months after successfully completing the program, he died unexpectedly. Now I am left with the uncertainty surrounding my father’s death. — Megan Lennon , 34, Minneapolis ‘Never a second of rest’ Seven rehabs, suboxone, doctors, methadone clinics, money, money, money that you do not have but you would sell your soul to get. Begging God to get through to him as I age early. Why? — Karen , 54, Yardley, Pa. ‘Poison’ My home was broken into and I have been scammed and had my wallet stolen by addicts. I understand how difficult addiction is, but what I don’t understand is why someone chooses to put poison in their body for the first time. If it really wanted to, the federal government could stem the flood of drugs into this country. — Ann , 58, Pennsylvania ‘I thought I had found heaven’ I have been battling addiction for 16 years. When I found heroin, I thought I had found heaven. I have now learned to not only lay the dope down but to give reality a chance. It’s not my parents, friends, husband’s or even God’s fault I used, and it not anyone’s fault today when things go bad. It’s solely mine. — Cacey Ethington , 30, Shelbyville, Ky. ‘We need them’ The reporting is one-sided and leaves out how all of these new laws affect chronic-pain patients. We do not abuse these drugs. We need them to function in daily life. Politicians should not make health care decisions. — Christiane Warren , Kearny, N.J. ‘The guilt I felt’ It wasn’t until I got involved in Harm Reduction that my brother’s heroin addiction made sense to me. I remember the first time I brought home clean needles and naloxone, and the guilt I felt. I talked to a friend about it. She smiled and said, “You know, I look at it like this: Wearing a seatbelt won’t stop a car accident from happening, but it will drastically increase your odds of surviving one.” — Emily , Buffalo ‘I always wonder’ My life was altered due to heroin ever since I was a baby. My mother was a chronic heroin user while my father was in jail for small crimes and different drug offenses. My grandparents went to court to gain custody of my twin sister and me. I always wonder what life would have been like if opioids didn’t take over my mother’s life. — David , Millersville, Pa. ‘I had no idea that this was here’ My 19-year-old son, Creighton Shipman, overdosed from heroin less than 48 hours after leaving rehab. His eight-month ride with heroin began after he was prescribed an opioid from an emergency surgery. My three children and I have been doing our best to educate and make our community aware of the crisis. I had no idea that this was here, in Charleston. — Nanci Steadman Shipman , Charleston, S.C.

Heroin
Naloxone
Oxycodone
Addiction
Opioids
Therapy
Drug Abuse
Pharmaceuticals


Sex Scandal Shakes Race for Congress in Florida

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Florida congressman who succeeded Mark Foley after he resigned because of a sex scandal is now embroiled in a sex scandal of his own, and has requested a Congressional ethics investigation to clear his name. The congressman, Tim Mahoney, a Democrat, agreed to a $121,000 settlement with a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, two Democratic staff members who have been briefed on the settlement said. The revelation, first reported by ABC News, could cost Mr. Mahoney his House seat. His South Florida district is conservative, and he was already in one of the most competitive races involving an incumbent Democrat. Mr. Mahoney was elected two years ago after the resignation of Representative Foley, a Republican, whose lewd Internet messages to Congressional pages created a national outrage. Without denying the accusations or explaining how he might benefit from an ethics investigation, Mr. Mahoney said the truth would vindicate him. “While these allegations are based on hearsay, I believe that my constituents need a full accounting,” Mr. Mahoney said in a written statement. “As such, I have requested the House Ethics Committee to review these allegations.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi also called Monday for a House ethics inquiry. The money, which did not come from campaign funds, was paid as part of a severance package to the aide, Patricia Allen, after she was fired, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mahoney said. Mr. Mahoney’s wife was aware of the affair and the legal agreement involving Ms. Allen’s dismissal, two Democratic staff members said. That agreement included a $61,000 severance payment, a $60,000 payment for legal fees and an agreement by Ms. Allen not to join any other campaign for at least a year, the staff members said. They said the agreement also involved a promise to Ms. Allen of a job at Fletcher Rowley Chao Riddle, a Nashville firm that handled Mr. Mahoney’s advertising. On Monday, the company said that it was severing all ties with Mr. Mahoney’s campaign and that it had no knowledge of the promises to Ms. Allen for employment. The affair began in 2006, when Mr. Mahoney was running for Congress, Democratic staff members said. Mr. Mahoney first met Ms. Allen at a campaign stop and later arranged for her to volunteer for the campaign, the Congressional aides said. Friends of Ms. Allen told ABC that she had sought to break off the affair when she learned that Mr. Mahoney was involved in other extramarital relationships. Mr. Mahoney fired Ms. Allen in January 2008, and she began legal proceedings in February that concluded with a settlement in March, Democratic staff members briefed on the matter said. “You work at my pleasure,” Mr. Mahoney told Ms. Allen in a Jan. 20 telephone call that was recorded and played for Mr. Mahoney’s employees. “If you do the job that I think you should do, you get to keep your job. Whenever I don’t feel like you’re doing your job, then you lose your job. And guess what: The only person that matters is guess who? Me.” In 2007, rumors began spreading on Capitol Hill that Mr. Mahoney was having an affair. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, one of several senior Democrats who heard the rumors, approached Mr. Mahoney to discuss the matter. “Congressman Emanuel confronted Congressman Mahoney, told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly and appropriately, and urged him to do so,” said Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. “They had no further conversations on this topic.” Mr. Mahoney is facing Tom Rooney, a lawyer, who was trailing Mr. Mahoney by about seven percentage points in a September poll.

Mahoney Tim
House of Representatives
Adultery
Ethics
United States Politics and Government
Elections
Florida
Allen Patricia


Surge in Consumer Prices Stirs China’s Concern About Overheated Economy

Abstract: HONG KONG, Aug. 13 — Steeply rising food prices pushed inflation in China to 5.6 percent last month, the fastest pace in a decade, government figures showed Monday, prompting renewed concern about whether inflation would spread more widely in China and abroad. The surge in consumer prices last month pushed inflation past its previous peak of 5.3 percent, reached in July and August 2004. At that time, Beijing officials responded by imposing sometimes drastic administrative measures to slow what appeared to be an overheating economy. Local officials were jailed then for allowing large projects to proceed without central government approval, price controls were introduced for a variety of government services and thousands of workers were mobilized for emergency projects to expand overburdened ports. But Beijing’s response to higher prices this year has been more subdued because the increases have been largely confined so far to food. The government has gradually pushed up interest rates and raised the percentage of assets that banks must keep as reserves with the central bank, but it has refrained from trying to shock the economy into a slower pace of growth through sharp interest rate increases or severe administrative controls. Led by pork and other meats, consumer prices for food were up 15.4 percent from a year ago, pinching unskilled workers and other low-income city dwellers to the alarm of top Chinese officials. Floods in southern China have hurt crops. Grain prices have been rising globally because more grain is being used for ethanol production and because increasingly affluent people in developing countries are buying more grain-fed livestock and poultry. Pigs in China have been dying in significant numbers from diseases, driving up pork prices. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited Beijing’s wholesale food market on Aug. 4 and called for local governments across the country to check on food supply lines from farms and to subsidize poor families to keep food on their tables. “The supply line for daily necessities should not be disrupted,” Mr. Wen said, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The Chinese government is now paying much greater attention to food safety, following scandals like the contaminated pet food that killed cats and dogs in the United States. But experts doubt the increased emphasis on safety is causing inflation. “New food safety rules may have an indirect, long-term effect on food prices, but have little impact on the price increases we are seeing now,” Jing Ulrich, the chairman of China equities at JPMorgan Chase, said in an e-mail statement. Higher food prices may have a silver lining for China’s leaders: when prices reflect greater demand for food, as opposed to flood damage or dying pigs, the price increases mean more income for China’s 800 million peasants. President Hu Jintao has made it a top priority to increase farm incomes and reduce income inequality between rural and urban areas; when Mr. Wen visited the Beijing market in a trip covered by official media, he was careful to avoid criticizing farmers and did not accuse them of price gouging, although he did caution against hoarding and speculation in general. The real mystery is why inflation is largely confined to food. Excluding food, consumer prices were up 0.9 percent last month from a year earlier, about the same increase as in June. Economists are divided, and to some extent perplexed, by how well inflation has been contained in the rest of the economy. Some predict that prices will start rising soon for a broader range of goods and services, warning that the economy may have reached an unsustainable rate of growth when it expanded 11.9 percent in the second quarter. By comparison, growth of 9.6 percent in the second quarter of 2004 ignited a broad acceleration of inflation then. Ships had to wait as long as a month to unload supplies of critical industrial commodities like iron ore for steel production, driving up costs that producers passed on to consumers. Railroads were unable to clear docks of arriving cargoes, which piled up in enormous mounds at docks. National, provincial and local government agencies have engaged in a frenzy of spending since then on new ports, railroads, highways, pipelines and other infrastructure while businesses have been investing heavily in new factories, office buildings, apartment towers and more. Economists contend that the sheer scale of the spending has sometimes been wasteful and that unnecessary projects have been completed. But China has avoided so far the inflationary bottlenecks that briefly threatened to overwhelm it in 2004, even as growth has accelerated to a considerably faster pace. Some economists worry that broader inflation will still come to China. They point to a brisk expansion in the money supply last month, and suggest that soon too much money may be chasing too few goods, inevitably leading to broader rises in China’s consumer price index. “In our view, inflationary pressures will remain high in the coming months, and we see significant upside risks to our current C.P.I. forecasts,” Liang Hong, an economist in the Hong Kong offices of Goldman Sachs, wrote in a research note. So far, stock investors are largely untroubled by the inflation figures released today. The Shanghai market in A shares climbed 1.52 percent while the Shenzhen A share market fell 0.89 percent.

China
Economic Conditions and Trends
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Food Contamination and Poisoning
Consumer Price Index
Accidents and Safety


Mexico’s Leader Likens Donald Trump’s Tone to Hitler and Mussolini’s

Abstract: Mexico’s president has said that his country will not pay for Donald J. Trump’s proposed wall along the United States-Mexico border, and has likened the presidential candidate’s “strident” tone to that of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during their ascents. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s comments, published in the Excélsior newspaper on Monday, were among the most critical public statements yet by a foreign leader about the New York billionaire. Mr. Trump has set off outrage in Mexico with his campaign vow to build a wall along the United States’ southern border to keep out undocumented immigrants and drugs, and to make Mexico pay for it. Asked by Excélsior whether there was a scenario under which Mexico would pay for a wall, Mr. Peña Nieto was clear. “There is no scenario,” he said. “I have to say that I regret” the plan. He added, “Of course I can’t agree with this American politician’s position.” Mr. Peña Nieto also attacked the tone of the Trump campaign. “And there have been episodes in human history, unfortunately, where these expressions of this strident rhetoric have only led to very ominous situations in the history of humanity,” he said. “That’s how Mussolini got in, that’s how Hitler got in. They took advantage of a situation, a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis.” In spite of his comments, Mr. Peña Nieto stressed that his administration would seek to reach agreement and maintain a respectful relationship with the winner of the United States presidential election.

Enrique Pena Nieto
Mexico
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Immigration
US


Hugh Massingberd, 60, Laureate for the Departed, Dies

Abstract: Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Daily Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day. He was 60 and lived in London. The cause was cancer, according to The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper announced Mr. Massingberd’s death in an expansive obituary that described, not unkindly, his being “invariably strapped for cash” and the “gourmandism” and “bingeing” that had turned him “into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence.” Sometimes called the father of the modern British obituary, Mr. Massingberd was The Daily Telegraph’s obituaries editor from 1986 to 1994. He was also a shy autodidact who had never been to college; a past editor of Burke’s Peerage, the venerable record book of the titled families of Britain and Ireland; the author of dozens of books on the English aristocracy; a recognized authority on the country homes of England, stately and moldy alike; and a rabid theatergoer whose enthusiasm for “Phantom of the Opera” was undimmed by the fact that he had seen it more than 50 times and knew every word and every note by heart. In 2002 The Spectator, a British weekly magazine, described Mr. Massingberd as “an English eccentric of the sort Hollywood imagines shoot snipe in their underpants.” Mr. Massingberd did not actually shoot snipe in his underpants, but he did once pose for a photograph dressed as a Roman emperor garlanded with sausages, as his obituary in The Daily Telegraph helpfully reminded readers on Thursday. Traditionally, the obituary departments of most newspapers were little Siberias, and The Daily Telegraph’s was no exception when Mr. Massingberd arrived. The long, leaden recitals of awards, club memberships and honorary degrees massed on the page were distasteful pills that writers, and readers, choked down dutifully each day. Mr. Massingberd transformed the paper’s obituaries from ponderous, sycophantic eulogies into mordant, warts-and-all profiles of the delectable departed. His model, he often said, was the 17th-century English writer John Aubrey, whose collection of biographical sketches, “Brief Lives,” offered gossipy backstairs portraits of eminences of the time. In Mr. Massingberd’s hands the newspaper obituary became unabashed entertainment, and the page attracted a passionate following that endures to this day. It also helped to set a benchmark for newspapers throughout Britain, where obituaries are now far more irreverent, more editorial and more prurient than their American counterparts. (Witness The Daily Telegraph’s send-off of one Lt. Col. Geoffrey Knowles, “who as a subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear — he survived but the bear expired.”) Typically unsigned, Daily Telegraph obituaries are written by a stable of contributors. But during Mr. Massingberd’s tenure, observers widely agreed, every obit in the paper bore his droll, distinctive stamp. Naturally, he covered the presidents, kings and captains of industry who are the grist of obit pages everywhere. But Mr. Massingberd also sought out eccentrics; having the good fortune to live in Britain, he found them. One Daily Telegraph obituary, from 1991, opened this way: “The Third Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided through his character and career ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle. His chief occupations were bongo drummer, confidence trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer.” Another, from 1988, memorialized Peter Langan, a London restaurateur: “Often he would pass out amid the cutlery before doing any damage, but occasionally he would cruise menacingly beneath the tables, biting unwary customers’ ankles.” And there was this much-quoted line, also from 1988, which appeared in The Daily Telegraph’s obituary of John Allegro. A once-renowned scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mr. Allegro later advanced a theory that Judaism and Christianity were the products of an ancient cult that worshiped sex and mushrooms. His obit in The Daily Telegraph pronounced him “the Liberace of biblical scholarship.” To dispatch his subjects, Mr. Massingberd used the thinnest of rapiers, but also the sharpest. Cataclysmic understatement and carefully coded euphemism were the stylistic hallmarks of his page. Here, for the benefit of American readers, is an abridged Massingberd-English dictionary: ¶“Convivial”: Habitually drunk. ¶“Did not suffer fools gladly”: Monstrously foul-tempered. ¶“Gave colorful accounts of his exploits”: A liar. ¶“A man of simple tastes”: A complete vulgarian. ¶“A powerful negotiator”: A bully. ¶“Relished the cadences of the English language”: An incorrigible windbag. ¶“Relished physical contact”: A sadist. ¶“An uncompromisingly direct ladies’ man”: A flasher. Hugh John Montgomery was born on Dec. 30, 1946, in Cookham Dean, in the Berkshire district of England. His family, The Daily Mail wrote in 1994, were members of the “stranded gentry.” Hugh’s mother was a schoolteacher; his father worked for the BBC. But as young Hugh was dreamily aware, the Montgomerys had nobler roots: Through their blue-blooded Massingberd relatives, he stood to inherit two country houses. In the 1960s, in the hope of securing one, Hugh’s father changed the family name to Montgomery-Massingberd. But both inheritances fell through. In the 1990s Hugh shortened his name to Massingberd. As a young man, Mr. Massingberd planned to go to Cambridge University, thought better of it and took a job as a law clerk. Hating the work, he found his way to Burke’s Peerage, where from 1971 to 1983 he was the chief editor. When Mr. Massingberd joined The Daily Telegraph as obituaries editor, he later said in interviews, friends regarded him with a mixture of pity and contempt. But he realized two things immediately: First, that a subject’s passage from cradle to grave furnishes writers with a built-in narrative thread from which to spin a ripping good yarn. Second, that personal stories, the odder the better, can be the stuff of deep, life-affirming levity. One story belonged to this man, the John Allegro of the piano: “The first sign that Liberace had embarked upon a road along which reticence would never ride came when he placed a candelabra on his piano. At this, the dam of discretion appeared to burst: first came a white tail suit, followed by stage patter about his mother and his philosophy of life, then a gold lamé jacket and a diamond-studded tailcoat.” Mr. Massingberd’s first marriage, to Christine Martinoni, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Caroline Ripley, known as Ripples; and two children from his first marriage, Harriet and Luke. His books include “Royal Palaces of Europe” (Vendome, 1983); “Blenheim Revisited: The Spencer-Churchills and Their Palace” (Beaufort Books, 1985); “Her Majesty the Queen” (Collins, 1985); a memoir, “Daydream Believer: Confessions of a Hero Worshipper” (Macmillan, 2001); and six anthologies of Daily Telegraph obituaries, which, he often said, made splendid bedtime reading. Mr. Massingberd also belonged to a spate of respectable clubs, but they will not be itemized here.

Writing and Writers
Newspapers
London (England)
Deaths (Obituaries)
The Telegraph of London
Massingberd Hugh
England
Great Britain
Books and Literature


Radiohead Concert at Wall Street Protest Was Just Hoax

Abstract: The frenzy began at 12:18 p.m. on Friday with an e-mail blast from the organizers of the anti-Wall Street demonstrations in Lower Manhattan: “ Radiohead will play a surprise show for #occupywallstreet today at four in the afternoon.” It seemed almost conceivable. Radiohead, the British band that has built a career on its distrust of authority, had just played two nights in Manhattan. The band’s presence would provide star power for a two-week-old protest movement that has complained of tepid media attention. Still, the logistics of putting on a concert on short notice in Zuccotti Park, the protesters’ three-quarter-acre headquarters in the financial district, were daunting. Public address system? Crowd control? Permits? Those doubts were readily confirmed by a call to the band itself. The band’s spokeswoman issued a statement: “We can officially say this is not happening.” All the same, the Web was going crazy. Perhaps “officially” was a wink? Fans and the curious filtered toward the park. The spokeswoman, Laura Eldeiry, issued a firmer statement. “It’s definitely not going to happen,” she said. “It’s a false rumor.” At Zuccotti Park, the rumors refused to die. Maybe Thom Yorke, Radiohead’s leader, would show up with an acoustic guitar. He would not. At 3:39 p.m., Occupy Wall Street ’s publicist, Patrick Bruner, sent out a second e-mail. “I got hoaxed. Radiohead was never confirmed. Completely our fault. Apologies. The band were victims in this hoax as well.” Four o’clock came and went. Mr. Yorke did not show, though the band sent a note of support on Twitter. But the crowd in the park had tripled over the course of the afternoon.

Occupy Wall Street
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Radiohead
Music


Couple Lose Property Suit

Abstract: An aggrieved couple who sued their real estate agent lost their case in a Vista, Calif., court on Thursday. The couple, Marty and Vernon Ummel, drew national attention when they accused a ReMax agent, Mike Little, of fraud and negligence, saying he was so eager to close the deal and earn a commission that he withheld the information that other properties on their Carlsbad street were selling for less money. If the Ummels won, real estate lawyers had predicted, it might cause an avalanche of suits from other home buyers who had seen the value of their homes shrink and felt their agents were to blame. But the jury swiftly returned a not guilty verdict. “We felt that Mr. Little did what he was supposed to do,” said one juror, Wendi Brick. Ms. Ummel called the jury’s decision “a sad day for the real estate industry” because it meant home buyers could no longer trust their agents.

Real Estate
Frauds and Swindling
Housing
California


On Anniversary, Hamas Repeats Vows on Israel and Violence

Abstract: GAZA — The Hamas movement celebrated the 24th anniversary of its founding on Wednesday by reasserting that it would never recognize Israel nor abandon violence. Tens of thousands of supporters watched the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, speak from a large outdoor stage in the shape of a ship with a model of Jerusalem’s Al Aksa Mosque. Denying speculation that Hamas would turn its attention to nonviolent resistance, Mr. Haniya said: “Today we say it clearly. Armed resistance and armed struggle are the strategic way to liberate the Palestinian land from the sea to the river.” He was referring to all of Israel as well as to what his rivals in the Palestinian Authority want to become the state of Palestine — Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He said Hamas had never said that “Palestine is only Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.” He hinted that should those areas be handed over by Israel, Hamas could take a “temporary” respite “without Israel being recognized and without any concession being made.” Next week, Israel and Hamas are to carry out the second part of a prisoner exchange in which an Israeli soldier was freed for more than 1,000 Palestinians. Political changes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya augur well for Hamas’s brand of Islamist politics, and the flags of those countries were present on the stage. The flag of Syria, where there is a popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad and where the Hamas exiled leadership remains based, was absent.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Primping for the Cameras in the Name of Research

Abstract: PARIS, Feb. 6 - The quest for the holy grail of beauty begins in a stark white bathroom, where a middle-aged strawberry blonde primps her freshly washed and blown hair under the relentless gaze of two overhead cameras. Steps away, a researcher checks a flickering computer screen, toggling controls to zoom in on the woman, who has just sampled unmarked bottles of shampoo and conditioner. This bathroom laboratory near the Place de la Concorde in Paris is a shiny ceramic war room for one of the leading international beauty giants, L'Oréal, and one the company is reproducing around the world. In France alone, researchers are examining the mixed population of the Paris region to create what is called an "atlas for the human hair," with test subjects reflecting European and Western and Central African roots to compare with volunteers in Beijing and Shanghai. Like its major rivals, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, L'Oréal, based in Paris, is battling for advantage in a fiercely competitive $231 billion market for cosmetics and grooming products. In the business of beauty, growth is powered by alluring hawkers like the actress Scarlett Johansson and glamour novelties like "phototonic" eye shadow intended to refract light like butterfly wings, or new cosmetic lines suited for aging skin and the color palette of baby boomers. L'Oréal, with sales last year of 14 billion euros ($16.9 billion), is spending heavily on research, devoting 507 million euros, or more than 3 percent of revenue, to it. Crucial to that effort is the search for differences that could help build a brand in critical emerging markets like India and China. L'Oréal has an expanding network of 13 evaluation centers around the world created to observe grooming and ponder a variety of burning questions: Do national differences exist in primping styles? Would women in Japan and Europe, for instance, stroke on mascara with the same lavish hand? (The answer is that in Japan, women apply mascara with an average of 100 brush strokes compared with Europeans, who are satisfied with 50, a difference noted by ethnologists for L'Oréal.) It was observations like these that ultimately affected how the company made and marketed its mascaras or developed the foaming quality of its shampoos. "We are far from understanding everybody everywhere. It takes time," said Fabrice Aghassian, director of international product evaluation for L'Oréal, which is seeking to map the world's beauty routines in a landscape the company calls geocosmetics. "When we know the behaviors of people, we know what unexpressed expectations we do have to consider." The beauty of China's 451 million women ages 15 to 64 is of particular interest these days to industrial ethnologists; the nation's cosmetics market has almost doubled in the last five years, to $7.9 billion, according to Euromonitor, and with rising affluence, the market could come close to $13 billion by 2009. In November, Estée Lauder opened a sleek new research center in Shanghai with the aim of developing local raw materials inspired by traditional Chinese medicine. Other multinational beauty companies are making similar moves. Elizabeth Arden purchased Leroy, a distribution company based there, and last year L'Oréal created the Pudong L'Oréal Research Center on the outskirts of the city to study the properties of Chinese hair and skin and botanical materials used in Chinese medicine. China is a critical engine of growth for these companies, which have struggled with weak sales in Europe and rising prices for petroleum, an important ingredient in many cosmetics. "As a global company with headquarters in New York, the Estée Lauder companies bring a different flavor versus our mainly French and Japanese competition in the market," said Michel Grunberg, who supervises the Lauder regional offices out of Shanghai. The company has introduced brands like Bobbi Brown, Aramis, Clinique and Tommy Hilfiger in the region. China is driving the growth of Estée Lauder; the company's most recent report in September indicated that sales in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Africa were flat compared with a year earlier, but Asia-Pacific sales gained 5 percent, to $198.6 million. L'Oréal, which renders its name in Mandarin as "Oulayia" and translates that as "elegance from Europe," had revenue of 290 million euros in China in 2004, a 58 percent rise from a year earlier, after much stronger growth in the previous two years. To fathom the tastes of the Chinese, the company interviews about 35,000 women a year, among them, a woman in Shanghai with hair about 13 feet long who is under contract to study the aging of hair fiber. Consumer habits vary significantly in China according to the seasons, with women washing their hair more frequently in the summer and switching products and textures according to the climate, Mr. Aghassian said. Besides studies in laboratory bathrooms, house calls offer an even more realistic view. From home visits, Mr. Aghassian and his researchers learned that many Chinese wash themselves and shampoo over a bowl to conserve water in cities where the water supply is frequently interrupted. That information "is essential since the qualities in use constitute major competitive advantages," he noted. One result was to formulate a local variety of shampoo that rinses easily. In 2003, L'Oréal opened a multimillion-dollar research and development laboratory in Chicago, which the company says was the first lab to focus specifically on the beauty needs of people of color. The company is lavishing even more resources on marketing and promotion, spending about 30 percent of its revenue to promote its products. It recently hired Ms. Johansson and another actress, Eva Longoria of the television series "Desperate Housewives," to pitch its cosmetics, and it has signed a two-year deal with the moviemaking Weinstein Company for product placements in films and to be a co-host corporation at high-wattage events like parties for the Golden Globes and Academy Awards. But amid all this spending, Michael Steib, an analyst for Morgan Stanley in London, has reservations on L'Oréal's shares, given the multinational crowd jostling for the same business. "Innovation is one of the key strengths of L'Oréal," he said. "There are a lot of competitive changes in the industry, and there are a lot more aggressive players." With the merger of Procter & Gamble with Gillette last fall, some $20 billion of P.& G.'s sales are now competing with L'Oréal, he said, noting that other beauty companies like Beiersdorf and Henkel have growing ambitions tied to innovation in products. Mr. Steib also said he expected that growth in emerging markets would become more costly for all the companies pursuing expansion. Beiersdorf, the maker of the Nivea, Juvena and Eucerin brands, is planning more investment in China. Amid all the competition, vital bathroom laboratory research presses forward. How else would the world learn that South Korean women use no fewer than 9 to 12 products for their morning beauty routine? And that does not include nail polish, mascara and lipstick.

LABORATORIES AND SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT
COSMETICS AND TOILETRIES
HAIR


F.D.A. Rejects Jet Lag Drug by Cephalon

Abstract: Air travelers for now may have to rely on coffee instead of a wonder drug to help them function in new time zones. Cephalon said on Monday that the Food and Drug Administration had declined to approve use of its alertness drug, Nuvigil, to treat jet lag. Had the drug been approved, it would have been the first prescription drug specifically designated for jet lag. Nuvigil is a slightly longer-lasting form of Cephalon’s biggest seller, Provigil. Both drugs are approved to treat the excessive sleepiness associated with narcolepsy , sleep apnea and shift work. In a statement, Cephalon did not elaborate about why the F.D.A. had rejected its application, other than to say that the agency had questioned the “robustness” of the results of questionnaires that asked participants in the company’s clinical trial how sleepy they felt after taking the drug. The F.D.A., as a policy, does not comment on applications it does not approve. Millions of Americans who take long trips suffer from jet lag, in which the body’s internal clock is out of sync with the time in one’s location, leading people to feel sleepy when they need to be awake, or alert when they should be sleeping. Nuvigil was not intended to shift the body’s clock to its new time zone, only to allow people to stay awake. Provigil, also called modafinil, had sales of $1 billion last year, accounting for nearly half of Cephalon’s revenue. Nuvigil, or armodafinil, had sales of $73.4 million in 2009 after reaching the market in June. Provigil is expected to face generic competition in 2012, so Cephalon is trying to shift as many patients as possible to the newer drug, which the company hopes will have a far longer patent life. Getting Nuvigil, but not Provigil, approved to treat jet lag was one element of that strategy. Cephalon’s clinical trial involved 427 volunteers who were flown from the East Coast of the United States to France, then kept in a sleep lab for three days. As measured by electrodes placed on the scalp, those who took Nuvigil were less sleepy during the French daytime than those who were given a placebo. In a more subjective test, in which participants were asked how sleepy they felt, the drug also did better than placebo, but not as convincingly. Cephalon’s shares fell 4 percent in early after-hours trading after rising 3 percent in regular trading on Monday. In another development on Monday, a federal judge turned down Cephalon’s request to dismiss antitrust lawsuits against the company filed by the Federal Trade Commission and various private parties. The Federal Trade Commission and the other plaintiffs said that Cephalon had paid generic drug companies to delay generic competition for Provigil until 2012. The company said its agreements with the generic companies were legal and sought to have the lawsuits dismissed.

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Jet Lag
Food and Drug Administration
Cephalon Incorporated
Nuvigil