The Mind Slips, but Love Is Undiminished

Abstract: She was not about to let her husband go. Not after more than 70 years together, raising five daughters. “Not when you love someone,” Delia Cruz said of her husband, Miguel. Though it has broken Mrs. Cruz’s heart and sapped her energy and resolve to see her lifelong mate succumb to dementia over the last five years, she insists on taking care of him rather than installing him in a nursing home. “It is very depressing sometimes: He doesn’t know who I am, he starts asking for his mother, and one night I woke up at 1 in the morning and he was taking a shower with his clothes on,” Mrs. Cruz said. “It takes everything that I have. But I want him at home, here. Otherwise, I would spend all my time wherever he is anyway.” Mrs. Cruz met her husband as a schoolgirl in their native Puerto Rico. They have lived in New York since 1947. He was a swimmer who could have competed in the Olympics, his wife said, but his mother forbade him. Mr. Cruz joined the United States merchant marine and served as a pantryman on a number of ships, meeting John Wayne, President Harry S. Truman and Grace Kelly along the way. “Everybody in my mother’s family fell in love with him,” said their youngest daughter, Ruth Murphy, recalling that he was so strong he could flex his muscles and let all five daughters hang from his arms as if he were a tree. “We called him Rey Miguel — the King. He called us his harem.” The past two decades have taken their toll on Mr. Cruz, who is 90. He underwent triple-bypass surgery in 1992, followed by a double bypass in 2001, and then 36 radiation treatments for throat cancer. “He also had an aneurysm,” said Mrs. Cruz, 84. “The doctors tell me they’ve never seen anyone so strong.” But the illness that began to ravage Mr. Cruz’s mind five years ago was what brought his wife to eventually search for additional care in their Bronx home. After he got home from the hospital from treatment for throat cancer, Mrs. Cruz recalled, she realized she could not manage alone. He had difficulty swallowing food and became incontinent. The Cruzes’ monthly income — from Social Security and Mr. Cruz’s merchant marine pension — amounts to $1,831, barely enough to cover the rent on their apartment and basic living expenses. Mrs. Cruz could not afford to pay for a home health aide herself. But a hospital worker put Mrs. Cruz in touch with the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York , one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund . In 2007, a social worker from the beneficiary agency used a grant of $768 from the fund to pay for 64 hours of home health care services for the Cruzes. This was enough for several weeks; in the meantime, with the agency’s help, Mrs. Cruz was granted Medicaid . This provides them with home health assistance 30 hours per week (six hours a day, Monday through Friday). During an interview in their apartment, Mr. Cruz sat propped up with pillows in a needlepoint wing chair while his wife, in an armless chair beside him, tried to engage him. “Who am I?” she asked him in Spanish. “My sister,” he replied. “No,” she said dolefully. She was grateful, she said, that it had been more than a year since her husband had had to go to the hospital. “He fell over because he had his shoes on the wrong feet,” she said, and crossed her ankles, to demonstrate what his feet had looked like. Mr. Cruz looked down at his own shoes, which have Velcro closures so that he can fasten them himself. “He hit his head on the ground right here, and it split open like a coconut,” Mrs. Cruz said, holding his hand in hers and shaking it with affectionate reproach. Ms. Murphy said that her mother has had difficulty coming to terms with Mr. Cruz’s illness. “It’s been hard for her to realize that he has a disease, that she’s not going crazy,” she said. “She had to accept that he’s not doing this on purpose.” How to Help Checks payable to The NewYork Times Neediest CasesFund may be sent to: 4 ChaseMetrotech Center, 7th FloorEast, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn,N.Y. 11245. All gifts are acknowledged;special lettersare not possible. Checks intendedfor a particular Neediestagency should be writtento and mailed to the agency,noting that it is a Neediest gift. BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE 285 Schermerhorn Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 (718) 310-5600 THE CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK 1011 First Avenue New York, NY 10022 (212) 371-1000 CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS 191 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 (718) 722-6000 THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY 105 East 22d Street New York, NY 10010 (212) 949-4800 THE COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 105 East 22d Street New York, NY 10010 (212) 254-8900 THE FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES, INC 281 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 (212) 777-4800 UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK Church Street Station P.O. Box 4100 New York, NY 10261-4100 (212) 980-1000 For instructions on how to donatestock to the fund, call(212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 730-0927. No agents or solicitors are authorizedto seek contributionsfor The New York Times NeediestCases Fund. The Times pays the fund'sexpenses, so all contributions godirectly to the charities, whichuse them to provide services andcash assistance to the poor. Contributions aredeductible from federal, state andcity income taxes to the extentpermitted by law. To delay may mean to forget.

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
UJA-Federation of New York
Dementia
Medicine and Health
Families and Family Life


UConn Player Faces Pornography Charge

Abstract: A University of Connecticut player was arrested on child pornography charges and was being held on $75,000 bond on Wednesday. Greg McKee, 18, surrendered to the state police a day after the university announced that he had been indefinitely suspended from the team. McKee, a 6-foot-6, 290-pound offensive lineman from Chicago, has not played for the Huskies and was sitting out his freshman year in order to have four years of eligibility left. ¶Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon has been named the recipient of the 2010 Paul Warfield Award, which is given annually to college football’s best receiver. Blackmon, a sophomore, caught 102 passes for 1,665 yards and had 18 touchdowns in the 2010 regular season. He also added two scores with a 69-yard run and a blocked punt return. Blackmon had 151.36 receiving yards per game and 9.27 receptions during the regular season. He is the first Oklahoma State player to win the award. Past recipients include Desmond Howard and Keyshawn Johnson. warfield

Football
University of Connecticut
Pornography


Two Del Monte Entities Argue Over Selling Fresh Fruit

Abstract: Pineapples and papayas are the weapons of choice in a global fruit fight under way in federal court in Manhattan . The point of the struggle? Deciding whether the fruit in plastic containers on refrigerated shelves in grocery store produce sections is fresh — or processed. The dispute sets Fresh Del Monte against Del Monte Foods. The two companies were created out of what had been a single Del Monte after the takeover of its corporate owner, RJR Nabisco, in 1989. Under the terms of two licensing agreements between the two companies, Fresh Del Monte has the right to sell “fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and fresh produce” under the Del Monte name, while Del Monte Foods has the right to sell canned and preserved fruits, vegetables and produce. That might seem like a fairly straightforward division of the spoils, but the two companies have fought over those terms ever since, each accusing the other of encroaching on its turf. The bitter arguing, the turnover of lawyers and the stacks of legal briefs have come to resemble the case at the heart of Charles Dickens ’s “Bleak House.” In the current lawsuit, being heard before Judge Sidney H. Stein in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Fresh Del Monte charges that Del Monte Foods breached the contracts between them by selling various cut and prepared fruit products under the names Orchard Select, Fruit Naturals and SunFresh. The fruit is sold in plastic tubs on refrigerated shelves in produce sections of grocery and convenience stores. Fresh Del Monte argues that by selling those products in the produce section — sometimes with the words “must be refrigerated” on the labels — Del Monte Foods is misleading and confusing consumers, who may mistake the contents of the packages for fresh fruits. If the products need to be refrigerated to prevent spoiling, Fresh Del Monte argued in its court filings, they would be fresh fruit under the terms of the licensing agreement. And in any case, Raoul Kennedy, the company’s litigator, argued in court, the contract and a previous court opinion gives Fresh Del Monte, not Del Monte Foods, the exclusive right to sell refrigerated pineapple and other fruits, including melons, berries, papayas and bananas “peeled, cut and cored.” Mr. Kennedy said that if Del Monte Foods wanted to sell peanut butter in the produce section, Fresh Del Monte would not have a problem with it because consumers would not mistake peanut butter for “fresh melon.” “We’re talking about things that have this carefully contrived perception of freshness to deliberately confuse people,” he said. In keeping with the spirit of the fight, Del Monte Foods portrayed the lawsuit in court filings as “a classic case of sour grapes.” Arturo J. Gonzalez, a lawyer for Del Monte Foods, told the jurors that although the company had been selling cut, processed and refrigerated fruit products since 1998, it had heard no complaint from Fresh Del Monte until 2008, when the fresh produce company’s sales began slipping. “We beat them in the market,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Their product just doesn’t sell.” As evidence he cited a January 2009 e-mail from a Fresh Del Monte employee, describing to a national account executive how the Shaw’s grocery stores in his neighborhood had moved the company’s products to the lowest refrigerated shelves and replaced them with Del Monte Foods’ Superfruit cups “by the hundreds.” “When I talk to the produce guys at the stores, they say our stuff just doesn’t sell,” he wrote. Mr. Gonzalez said Fresh Del Monte had offered no empirical evidence that consumers mistook Fruit Naturals or any other of his client’s refrigerated and preserved fruit products for fresh fruit. Most people, he said, know that fruit visibly packed in liquid and labeled as containing sodium bicarbonate and other preservatives is not fresh. The one thing both companies agree on is that Del Monte is one of the country’s best known brands. The name can be traced back as far as an expensive blend of coffee prepared in the 1880s by an Oakland , Calif., food distributor for the showy Hotel Del Monte on the Monterey Peninsula. In 1892, that company decided to apply the name to a new line of canned peaches. (The Del Monte Corporation, comprising that original food distributor and others, did not exist until 1967). The Del Monte Corporation set a high standard in the food industry in 1971, when it became the first American food company to put nutrition labeling on its packaging. Eight years later, it was bought by R. J. Reynolds Industries, the tobacco company, which was on a diversification binge. A decade later, what was then known as RJR Nabisco was taken over by the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company , in a deal immortalized in the book, “Barbarians at the Gate.” To raise money, KKR immediately set about selling assets, including Del Monte. “For reasons seemingly dictated by financial considerations, RJR Nabisco agreed to split the Del Monte business,” recounted Judge Jed S. Rakoff , who in 1998 and 1999 presided over a separate lawsuit between Fresh Del Monte and Del Monte Foods, the two companies that resulted from that process. The split was known to insiders as the “Great Divide.” The canned and preserved produce business, Del Monte Foods, was sold to an investor group led by Merrill Lynch , which retained ownership of the trademark. The fresh produce business went to Polly Peck International, a British conglomerate led by a prominent Turkish Cypriot investor, Asil Nadir. Polly Peck paid $875 million to use the Del Monte brand to sell fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, as well as other cut, refrigerated and frozen fruit products, in perpetuity and with no obligation to pay royalties, under the terms of the much disputed licensing agreements. A year later, Polly Peck fell apart in a financial scandal that led to corporate legal reforms in Britain . Fresh Del Monte was sold first to a set of Mexican investors who relied on a spiritual adviser to formulate their bid, and then to a Palestinian investment group that incorporated it in the Cayman Islands and eventually listed it on the New York Stock Exchange . Mr. Nadir’s trial on charges that he diverted £150 million (about $240 million) from Polly Peck began this year in London . Del Monte Foods was sold in 1997 to the Texas Pacific Group, a private equity firm, and went public two years later. Then, in 2002, Del Monte bought several prominent brands from the H. J. Heinz company — including College Inn and 9Lives cat food, which it added to its growing pet foods business — and more than doubled the company’s size. Then, in a strange twist of fate, KKR, together with two other private equity firms, rebought Del Monte for $5.3 billion in 2010. As Judge Rakoff and countless others have noted, the licensing agreements divvying up fresh and processed produce were not a model of clarity. In an oral ruling from the bench in the earlier case, Judge Rakoff said the licensing “certainly has more than its share of ambiguities, and that is the function, the court finds, not only of the time pressures under which it was drafted but also of the fact that it was largely negotiated between business persons who were not, frankly, wholly candid with one another as to their ultimate goals and understandings.” In that case, Del Monte Foods sued Fresh Del Monte for test-marketing the sale of cut, refrigerated fresh fruit in plastic cups, contending that constituted processing. Judge Rakoff ruled in Fresh Del Monte’s favor. “Indeed,” he said, “it is refrigeration that keeps fresh fruit fresh.” The jury in the current case, which began its deliberations on Thursday, is unaware of that ruling. Even though Fresh Del Monte and Del Monte Foods filed Judge Rakoff’s opinion with their complaints, Del Monte Foods refused to allow it to be admitted into evidence.

Fruit
Lawsuit
Del Monte Foods
Fresh Del Monte Produce
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts,KKR
R J Reynolds Tobacco
Jed S Rakoff


Heels to Hall: Williams Joins Smith

Abstract: There has always been a strong bond between Roy Williams and Dean Smith. Williams, North Carolina’s current men’s basketball coach, works in the massive arena that bears the name of Smith, his longtime mentor and former boss. The two have combined for three of the program’s four N.C.A.A. titles and forged the Kansas-to-North Carolina pipeline. Along the way, two of the biggest names in the Tar Heels’ rich history have created plenty of memories along Tobacco Road, with nearly every shelf of Williams’s office bearing a photograph or souvenir from Smith’s coaching tenure. The two will add another link next weekend when Williams joins Smith in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Fittingly, his presenter will be his idol. “It’s hard for me to even think about joining Coach Smith in any group,” Williams said. “That’s such a weird feeling — I’m having a weird time even thinking about that kind of thing, because I don’t think you should put Roy Williams and Dean Smith in the same sentence.” Williams and Phil Jackson, who has won nine N.B.A. championships as a coach, headline a class of incoming Hall of Famers that also includes the 1966 N.C.A.A. champion Texas Western team; Van Chancellor, the four-time W.N.B.A. championship coach and the longtime women’s coach at Mississippi recently hired by Louisiana State; Mendy Rudolph, the former N.B.A. referee; and the international coaches Pedro Ferrandiz of Spain and Mirko Novosel of Yugoslavia. But one of the most compelling story lines concerns the homespun Williams, who is still coming to grips with what he will face at the Hall in Springfield, Mass. Five months have passed since Williams’s election, but the significance of the honor did not begin sinking in until last week, when he wrote the first page of his two-page speech. “It’s the kind of thing that I’ll be in awe of the whole moment,” Williams said. “And I’ll feel very lucky because I’ll have this doubt as to whether I deserve to be there. That may sound weird, but it’s the truth.” Writing the speech forced him to contemplate the decade he spent assisting Smith, the 19 seasons he has spent as the coach at Kansas and at North Carolina, and the numerous connections between the two powerhouse programs that are linked to both coaches. Smith, a Kansas native who played for and was an assistant for the Jayhawks, came to North Carolina in 1958, a year after the Tar Heels won their first N.C.A.A. tournament title. He became the coach in 1961. In 1978, he hired Williams — a native of western North Carolina, a former player on the freshman team and the basketball and golf coach at Owen High School in Swannanoa, N.C. Four years later, Smith and Williams coached the Tar Heels to the 1982 national title behind a clutch shot from a skinny freshman named Michael Jordan. When the North Carolina alumnus Larry Brown left Kansas for the N.B.A. in 1988, Williams replaced him in his first stint as a college head coach. He went 418-101 in 15 seasons and led the Jayhawks to four Final Fours and two championship games before, reportedly at Smith’s urging, he returned to his alma mater in 2003. In his second season there, he claimed the national title that had long eluded him. “I would have loved to have won the national championship at Kansas just as much as I wanted to win one here,” Williams said. “The only difference is the look in Coach Smith’s eyes when he came into the locker room, the sense of pride for him. That made it a little special.”

University of North Carolina
Basketball
Athletics and Sports
Williams Roy
Smith Dean


Egypt Expels French Journalist in a Rare Move Against Foreign Media

Abstract: CAIRO — The Egyptian authorities expelled a French journalist this week, an unusually harsh step that highlighted the crackdown on press freedoms by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egyptian and French officials said on Wednesday. The journalist, Rémy Pigaglio, had worked in Egypt for almost two years and had residency permits and media accreditation that allowed him to do so legally, according to an article in the French newspaper La Croix , one of several outlets that Mr. Pigaglio contributed to. Egyptian security agents detained him at the Cairo airport on Monday as he was returning to Egypt from a 10-day vacation. He was held for 30 hours before security agents deported him without giving a reason, La Croix reported. Egypt’s authorities have arrested and prosecuted scores of Egyptian journalists over the last two years, but they have generally been reluctant to take action against foreign journalists, fearing unwanted international scrutiny. It is even more unusual for the government, with its emphasis on procedural rules, to take action against international correspondents who have been accredited to work in Egypt. Mr. Pigaglio’s expulsion threatened to strain relations between France and Egypt at a time when the two countries are cooperating to locate the debris of EgyptAir Flight 804 , which plunged into the Mediterranean last week during a flight from Paris to Cairo. Investigators are searching for the airplane’s cockpit data and voice recorders — the black boxes — to explain the flight’s descent soon after it crossed into Egyptian airspace. During a visit with French lawmakers on Tuesday, Mr. Sisi reiterated the alliance between the two countries and “stressed the importance of increasing Egyptian-French efforts to reveal the circumstances” of the plane crash, according to a statement from his office. France has been one of Egypt’s most prominent allies in recent months, even as the Egyptian government has been accused by other European countries of human rights violations. During a visit to Cairo by President François Hollande in April, Egypt signed a deal to buy $1 billion of French weapons, as well as agreeing to commercial agreements. Amnesty International, a human rights organization, said in a statement that France and 12 other European countries should suspend weapons sales to Egypt . Otherwise, the group said, the European countries risk “complicity in a wave of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances and torture” that the group says have been carried out by the police and government forces. On Wednesday, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “deeply regrets” Egypt’s decision to deport Mr. Pigaglio, and urged Mr. Sisi’s government to reconsider. Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek, the chairman of Egypt’s official State Information Service, confirmed Mr. Pigaglio’s deportation but said he had not been fully briefed on the reason for the journalist’s expulsion. Mr. Pigaglio had been reporting for French news organizations for two years, including La Croix and RTL, a French radio station, according to a group of French correspondents in Egypt who wrote a letter protesting Mr. Pigaglio’s deportation. “All French correspondents in Egypt find unacceptable the growing repression (surveillance, intimidation, deportation and detention) exerted by the authorities on Egyptian and foreign media alike,” the correspondents wrote.

Egypt
Remy Pigaglio
Freedom of the press
Deportation
France
News media,journalism
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
International relations


Syria: Mass Grave May Hold Bodies of 230 Members of Anti-ISIS Tribe

Abstract: More than 230 bodies of people believed to have been killed by Islamic State militants have been found in a mass grave in eastern Syria, activists said Wednesday. Those killed were thought to be members of the Shuayat tribe in Deir al-Zour Province, which has battled the group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other activists monitoring the conflict said. With their deaths, more than 900 Shuayat members are believed to have been killed by the group. The Islamic State controls all but pockets of the province.

Syria
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Middle East
Islam
Fatalities,casualties


Small Banks Keep It Simple, and Avoid Wall Street Meltdown

Abstract: Oradell THE president’s office at Freedom Bank occupies a small corner of the lobby, and through its glass walls Paul Fitzgerald could see the wide-screen television mounted near the main entrance. The news from the other side of the Hudson was screamingly bad. The end of the world was nigh, again, as Wall Street staggered toward the close of its worst week ever. Mr. Fitzgerald barely looked up. “What’s it down now, 305?” he asked, sitting at a desk from which he could see all his customers, and they could see him. The big numbers on the TV screen mattered far less to the health of his bank than the smaller numbers on his desk: the new deposits being recorded, the loans being made. “You’ve got to stick to the basics,” he said. “If we’ve learned anything from current events it’s that if you ignore the basics, eventually you’re going to get in trouble.” Plenty of New Jerseyans have been upended by that trouble, from the investment captains of Summit to the junior analysts of Hoboken to the retirees of Toms River who wince as they peek at their 401(k)’s. But from inside the small banks and credit unions that anchor the state’s downtowns — like Freedom Bank, which just opened in April in a tidy brick building overlooking the Oradell Reservoir — the view is more placid, and shaded by a hint of I-told-you-so. “I think Main Street banking is going to be back in vogue, and I think a lot of people would use the Jimmy Stewart analogy,” said Mr. Fitzgerald, 59, who has worked for New Jersey banks both large and small throughout his career, and who shares an alma mater (Princeton) with America’s favorite small-town movie banker. “Maybe that’s an omen.” While national banks gorged on one another in recent years, growing ever larger and devising ever more exotic theories about how and to whom to lend money, smaller, state-chartered institutions watched skeptically from the sidelines, unconvinced that the basic laws of economics had suddenly changed, and husbanding assets that amounted to no more than loose change at their swaggering competitors. A wise strategy, as it turned out. Staying small and staying home has meant staying solvent. “You stuck to your knitting when you had to and maybe it cost you some bottom-line points, but in the end you’re going to be there to take advantage of the present circumstances,” said Steven M. Goldman, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Banking and Insurance. State-chartered institutions like Freedom Bank, he said, “are almost without exception in pretty good shape. None of them participated in any of this subprime lending that has caused so much difficulty.” And so — while Wall Street was sinking on the TV screen, while big companies were wondering whether big banks would lend them any money, while Washington was lurching toward a bailout — Paul Fitzgerald, like other small bankers in New Jersey, had other matters to attend to: the daily business of keeping a local economy lubricated. Credit might have frozen in the national economy, but it was still flowing here on Kinderkamack Road. The owner of an apartment building was refinancing to make renovations. A small-business owner brought in his financial statements, looking for a line of credit. Depositors stashed cash in money market accounts whose rate of return (3.4 percent) was looking more generous by the hour compared with the investment options on Wall Street. Michael Giancarlo came to Freedom Bank because his business — Atrium Pharmacy of Emerson, which fills and packages prescriptions for nursing homes, group homes and assisted-living facilities — needed a substantial credit line to bridge the gap between when it has to pay for medications and when it is reimbursed by insurance companies. “If we needed an extra $100,000 we had to go through their home office and it would take weeks and weeks to come back, so we went searching for another bank,” said Mr. Giancarlo, 46, co-owner with his brother of Atrium, which is 10 years old, with 18 employees and $6 million in annual sales. They switched from Washington Mutual to Freedom three months ago. “We explained it all, and they could tell we knew what we were doing.” The same shift is under way at other community banks. “They’re playing an even bigger role as some of the larger banks have become paralyzed,” said Michael Horn, a former state banking commissioner and state treasurer, and the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, a government-chartered cooperative that has lent 40 percent more over the last year to the community banks it serves. “People still want the feeling that they know the bank president, and the president knows them.” For six months last year, before Freedom Bank opened, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had helped start two other community banks in recent years, was the lone employee, working by himself in the 5,000-square-foot building that had for many years been home to a branch of Provident Bank. Freedom started with 16 investors — local professionals and business owners — who each put up $100,000. About 250 other shareholders invested also, and the bank opened with $13 million in capital. At the end of September, its deposits had grown to $50 million. Since April, four other new community banks have also opened in the state. “I’ve seen what happens when the local touch goes away,” Mr. Fitzgerald said, as the TV screen beyond his glass wall showed the dire consequences on a national scale. “These people who took risks and either brought down or caused severe damage to their institutions and their shareholders and their employees get a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn’t quite pass the smell test.” The bank is open each business day until 6, and after the stock market had closed, and the day’s damage was tallied up elsewhere, the lobby TV was tuned to a more festive contest: the playoff game between the Phillies and the Dodgers. “I think people are a little tired of seeing all the red ink,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “It’s a nice change of pace.”

Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Banks and Banking
New Jersey
Wall Street (NYC)


Producer Prices Fall in Euro Zone

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Euro zone factory prices fell for the second month in a row in December, mirroring the trend in consumer inflation and leaving room for a possible European Central Bank interest rate cut to revive the weak economy. Prices at factory gates in the 17 countries using the euro fell 0.2 percent in December from November, the E.U.’s statistics office, Eurostat, said on Monday. Prices fell by the same margin in November. Compared to the same month a year ago, the producer price index was up 2.1 percent in December. Annual consumer inflation was 2.0 percent in January, close to the E.C.B.’s target of below 2 percent. The E.C.B.’s governing council kept rates at 0.75 percent at its January meeting and will discuss rate policy again on Thursday. The decision to keep policy on hold last month was unanimous, but economists are divided over the E.C.B.’s future moves. “The E.C.B. is unlikely to change policy stance” in February, analysts at Citigroup wrote in a note. “But we expect the tone of the press statement to turn more cautious on the economic outlook and more relaxed on the outlook for inflation,” the bank said, referring to the E.C.B.’s explanation for its decision on rates delivered to the media. Both consumer and factory inflation were driven up last year by high world oil prices and tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, which further pushed up the cost of energy. Lower world oil prices have since helped cut the cost of energy for industry and households in the euro zone. Brent crude came down from $120 a barrel in August to trade around $110 a barrel towards the end of 2012. Brent crude was around $116 a barrel on Monday, on signs of improving economic growth in the United States and China. Last year’s cooler prices were reflected in the euro zone’s producer prices in December. Energy prices dropped 0.8 percent, the third straight month of decline, and by the same margin as in November.

Inflation
Banking and Finance
European Central Bank
EU


Sifting Through Genes in Search of Answers on Ebola

Abstract: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — An old two-story brick building in a shabby part of town, formerly a distribution center for Budweiser beer, is now the world’s most powerful factory for analyzing genes from people and viruses. And it is a factory. At any given time, 10,000 tiny test tubes each holding a few drops of gene-containing fluid are being processed by six technicians, working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — two on the night shift — using 50 dishwasher-sized machines in two large rooms. The machines spit out sequence data onto a computer screen in the form of a long list, in order, of the letters that make up genetic material. That is three billion letters if the genes are from a person. Another 64 technicians do the more labor-intensive work of preparing the samples for analysis. It is all in service of researchers who work for the Broad Institute, a gleaming, lavishly endowed genetics center a few blocks away. The sequencing center has worked on human DNA from an international effort, the 1,000 Genomes Project , that looks at the genes of thousands of people from around the world. It has gotten sequences of microbes, like dengue fever, malaria and West Nile virus. It has gotten genetic sequences from animals like chimpanzees. And it is here that Broad scientists studying Ebola and a similar deadly disease, Lassa, send their samples, taking advantage of what the center’s manager, Andrew J. Hollinger, referred to as superfast track sequencing in their urgent work on these diseases ravaging West Africa. Those scientists receive their sequence data in about 40 hours, compared with days for the usual work. Image Jessica Barbagallo working with a machine that prepares samples for the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times The Ebola and Lassa group, led by Pardis Sabeti, wants to know what the viruses look like. Do they mutate while they are infecting people, possibly evading the immune system? Are some strains more deadly than others? And what about the genetics of the people who are infected? Are some people more resistant, perhaps even immune, to these viruses because of tweaks in their own genes? The research is emblematic of a new direction in public health, which uses powerful genetic methods and applies them to entire populations. The aim is to get a detailed picture of disease epidemiology, as the disease is happening. Armed with such data, doctors should be better able to stop epidemics and researchers can get clues to treating and preventing infections. In one of their first investigations , the group traced the start of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone from a single funeral in May that ended up infecting 14 women. One person who had been at that funeral showed up at Kenema Government Hospital a few hours’ drive from the village where the funeral was held. “That first case was manageable,” Dr. Sabeti said. But several weeks after the funeral, there was a fear that an epidemic could have been sparked. The fear turned out to be true. “The virus was like a tidal wave coming into the country,” Dr. Sabeti said. Sierra Leone’s department of health and safety sent epidemiologists to the remote village to trace the disease, asking who had been at the funeral and who had the funeral participants contacted. They found 14 ill with Ebola and an additional 35 people who tested negative for Ebola but had been exposed and had some symptoms. Image Decoding Viruses At the Broad Institute in Cambridge, researchers are sequencing the genomes of viruses like Lassa and Ebola to watch them mutate in real time. Did they really have no virus in their bodies? That’s where genetic sequencing provided an answer. “The government wanted to know if they were negative for real or was the diagnostic test just not picking Ebola up?” Dr. Sabeti said. The blood from those people was sent to the Broad Institute, where any viral genetic material in it was sequenced. Those 35 were not infected — they had no Ebola virus in their blood. But the test found the virus in the blood of the 14 who had the disease. As the group examined the genetics of the Ebola viruses in different patients — 78 in the first few weeks of the outbreak in Sierra Leone — they noticed the virus was continually mutating, which raises questions about whether it could become airborne or more deadly. Dr. Sabeti said the mutations were not a surprise because that was what viruses did. But, she added, “it is also always something we should be concerned about.” It probably would take many major mutations for the virus to be able to spread through the air or become more virulent, she said. “But, again, any change is one change too many, and we should stop this thing as quickly as we can.” For their continuing work on why some who are exposed to Ebola become sick and die while others escape infection or become sick and recover, the investigators need to study the genes of the patients themselves. That can be difficult. In Sierra Leone, Dr. Sabeti said, people do not want researchers studying cells of people who died. “We all want to work through these issues carefully, ” Dr. Sabeti said. “We do not want to desecrate the memories of people who died, so for now, we will be studying survivors.” While Dr. Sabeti and others work on Ebola, they also are working on Lassa and asking the same questions. Lassa virus is much more common than the Ebola virus, but Lassa and Ebola infections have many of the same symptoms: fever, vomiting, bleeding in some cases. Image A decidedly low-tech method for reserving a machine for the preparation of Ebola samples. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Lassa also can have dreadful consequences — only 16 percent of those admitted to hospitals in Sierra Leone with Lassa survive. Lassa, unlike Ebola, infects the brain, so survivors often end up with permanent neurological damage like deafness, dizziness or psychiatric symptoms. Dr. Sabeti’s interest in Lassa was piqued seven years ago, before there was an Ebola epidemic, and before sequencing reached today’s low price and fast speed. She had decided to look at already-determined DNA sequences from people around the world with a simple question: Are there new gene mutations, ones that only recently emerged in a population, that might protect against disease? The idea was that if a disease entered a population and was deadly, those who carried a protective mutation would survive and reproduce and soon that good mutation would become common. She saw one such mutation in Nigeria — it was a slight tweak in a gene and so common that 34 percent of the population there has it. The gene, called LARGE, is 10 to 50 times bigger than other genes. The gene still functioned, but why did so many people have this variation? It turned out that the role of the LARGE gene was well known, studied by Dr. Michael B.A. Oldstone at Scripps and his colleagues. LARGE modifies a protein on the surface of cells that the virus uses as an entryway. Without LARGE, that group found, Lassa cannot get into cells. Now that was interesting, Dr. Sabeti thought. Could the little tweak she had found in LARGE among so many Nigerians make it harder for the virus to infect them? Lassa had been in Nigeria for about 1,000 years. If this gene mutation was protecting people, how would she know? Dr. Sabeti looked at DNA sequences from Sierra Leone, where Lassa entered about 150 years ago. Ten percent had the mutation in the LARGE gene. Elsewhere in the world, the mutation was unheard-of. This told her that it was likely that the mutation was protective. To confirm her suspicion, she had to get data — cells from people who were exposed to Lassa and fell ill and those with similar exposure who resisted the virus. That way, she could test whether the LARGE mutation was linked to a better outcome. It is a difficult project and still underway, but so far, based on a small set of data, the mutation in LARGE does appear to be protective. Dr. Sabeti was far from the first to investigate Lassa — a small contingent of researchers had been focusing on the illness for years but without the benefit of rapid genetic sequencing. The disease came to worldwide attention in the 1960s, said Dr. Joseph B. McCormick of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Brownsville, when some American missionaries became sick and died. Lassa, Dr. Sabeti said, “likely kills tens to hundreds of thousands of people every year.” She is concerned — the virus is spread by mouse urine and outbreaks occur from winter until spring, when the mice enter homes. “Everyone is so myopically focused on Ebola,” she said, that they are not testing for Lassa and other infectious diseases in many places. The challenge with Lassa and Ebola, though, was to follow the spread of the viruses in real time. And that meant finding a quick and accurate way to get the genetic sequences of Lassa and Ebola viruses from samples of blood. It took the Broad group five years to develop such a viral blood test — there is very little virus in blood samples; the blood often has been stored under less-than-ideal conditions in tropical heat; and before a sample can be examined, the researchers have to kill any viruses in it so it does not infect laboratory workers. But the chemicals that kill the viruses make it even harder to fish out the virus. “The method really came together in the past year,” Dr. Sabeti said. Now the group is starting to study how variations in the genetic sequences of the viruses affect the course of infection. And they are asking how quickly and easily the viruses spread by tracing the genetic footprints of the viral strains. “There are hundreds of mutations evolving in individuals,” she added. “We can see the new mutations emerging, and it helps us understand transmission.” She said the work could also help with the development of methods of diagnosing the diseases as well as work on vaccines and treatments. There should be practical payoffs, too. People who come to clinics ill with fevers, diarrhea or vomiting could receive an accurate diagnosis. Many clinics send blood samples to labs to test for Ebola, but those with Lassa have just been sent away, told that what they had was “not Ebola,” which does not help much. “I proposed several years ago to do a genetic study with Ebola,” Dr. Pardis said. But it was infeasible: There were too few patients. The situation, unfortunately, has changed.

Ebola
Broad Institute
Genetics and Heredity
Virus
Andrew J. Hollinger
Pardis Sabeti
Cambridge Mass


Renewed Rays Become Tough Out for Yankees

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For most of the last decade, there were few things in baseball as certain as Andy Pettitte beating Tampa Bay. Across the first 10 years of this anguished franchise, Pettitte won 13 of 15 decisions. Of course, lots of those wins came against a different set of Rays — Devil Rays , actually. Those teams had never been six games above .500. No Tampa Bay team had risen so high until Monday. The Yankees and Pettitte became the latest team to fall to the sprightly Rays, who ran off with a 7-1 victory at Tropicana Field. The Rays (22-16) have swept their last two series here — against the Red Sox and the Angels — and they trail Boston by a half-game in the American League East. “When you’re hot, you want to do your best to stay hot and keep going,” the Rays’ Jonny Gomes said. “When your pitching’s not there, you want your bats there. And when your bats aren’t there, you want your pitching there. Right now, we’ve got both clicking, so we just want to keep that going as long as possible.” The Rays have their biggest lead ever over the Yankees, at three and a half games, and they never trailed on Monday. It is dangerous to let the Rays get a lead, Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said, because that is when they are most aggressive. Then again, the Rays planned all along to challenge the Yankees. Gomes, a burly designated hitter, stole two bases against Pettitte and scored three runs. Starter Matt Garza tossed seven shutout innings and was so overpowering that Johnny Damon said the scoreboard readings — 92 or 93 miles an hour — must have been low. “He came right after us,” Damon said. “Before we knew it, he was jamming us and making us pop out. That’s what happens when you’re late on the fastball, and it seemed like we were late all day. It just seemed like we couldn’t catch up to it.” Damon referred to Tuesday’s opponent and said the Yankees could be in for another tough game: “I’m sure Edwin Jackson’s taking notes, saying, ‘These guys couldn’t get through tonight.’ And he has a harder fastball.” Garza, who came to the Rays from Minnesota in the Delmon Young trade last November, induced six popouts and three double-play grounders. The Yankees managed five singles off him, including two that never left the infield. “I think he threw one breaking ball for a called strike,” Girardi said. “He just went right after us with the fastball, and he beat us.” Pettitte has lost two of three starts to the Rays this season. He lasted a season-low four innings this time, allowing five runs and eight hits, and his earned run average is 6.75 in his last four starts. His recent problem — a sinker that would break the wrong way — was gone on Monday, but Pettitte’s location was off. He also said he erred by ignoring Gomes. Pettitte has a superb pickoff move, but he did not expect Gomes to steal, as he did in the second and fourth innings. “Guys that I don’t think are stealing are taking off first move,” Pettitte said. “Obviously, it’s going around the league. I’ve got to pay more attention to the guys that I don’t think are going to run and make an adjustment.” Pettitte looked sturdy enough through three innings, but the fourth was a mess. The rookie Evan Longoria drove an 89-m.p.h. fastball to the opposite field for a double off the right-field wall. Gomes scored him with a single, pumping his fists at first base. A sacrifice bunt and a walk brought up Jason Bartlett, another prize from the Garza trade. Pettitte threw two curveballs as Bartlett tried to bunt. On a 1-1 pitch, he tried another curveball, and Bartlett roped it to left-center for a two-run triple that pushed the Rays’ lead to 4-0. Pettitte, who met twice on the mound that inning with catcher José Molina, blamed himself for throwing the wrong pitch to Bartlett, the No. 9 hitter. “I probably just shouldn’t have thrown three curveballs in a row,” Pettitte said. “It wasn’t up, but he’d seen two before that and he stayed on it and drove it to the gap. That was a big blow. I couldn’t make the pitch to get out of it.” Pettitte did not come back for the fifth, and he used the word pathetic to describe his outing. The Rays are better now, to be sure, but Pettitte said there were a lot of good teams and he expected to beat them all. “I won’t sleep,” Pettitte said. “It doesn’t matter if I got whacked around or I had a bad inning. We lost. I lost the game, I didn’t do my job and I’m not going to rest real good for the next few days.”

Baseball
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
New York Yankees
Pettitte Andy


Planetary Science and Cosmology - Science in 2011

Abstract: Both planetary science and cosmology are ripe for big news in 2011, the former in its effort to find planets beyond the Earth and the solar system that could harbor water and thus life as we know it, and the latter in the unending effort to figure out what the universe is made of. Finding out how common habitable planets are around Sun -like stars is the mission of NASA ’s Kepler satellite, which has been trailing the Earth’s orbit of the Sun ever since its launching in March 2009, staring at 156,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra looking for telltale blips in starlight caused by planets passing in front of them. Last June, the Kepler team released a list of 350 stars thought to be harboring planets, but at the same time, and over the protests of some astronomers, they held back the data on 400 more stars that they wanted to check out over the summer. In February, the Kepler 400 are expected to be released. The smallest planet on the previous list was about one and a half times the diameter of the Earth. The Kepler scientists will not say anything about the stars on the withheld list or their candidate planets, but in an e-mail message Natalie Batalha, a co-investigator on Kepler, said it would not be unreasonable to suspect that there is a smattering of planet candidates smaller than that on the new list. More small planets could also show up as more data is analyzed, she said. The discovery of an Earth-size planet would be another step on a path that planet hunters have been following for the past 15 years, since the first exoplanet was discovered. About 500 exoplanets are now known, but most of these have been giant ones circling too close to their stars, because they are easiest to find. As techniques have been refined, smaller planets have come into view, and a recent survey by University of California astronomers, Andrew Howard and Geoffrey Marcy, concluded that about a quarter of all Sun-like stars should have Earth-size planets. If indeed there are Earth-size planets in the Kepler 400, however, Dr. Batalha and others hasten to point out, these would not quite be the planets of our dreams. An Earth-like planet — that is to say, one that is the right temperature for water and thus life as we know it — would take about a year to complete a circuit around a star like the Sun. Kepler would be lucky to have seen even one blip from a planet in such an orbit in the data analyzed so far and would need an additional year or two to record enough blips to determine that it was indeed in a habitable, water-friendly orbit around a star like our Sun. The so-called habitable zone around a smaller dimmer star would be smaller, however, and a planet in that zone would complete its orbits more quickly, fast enough to have produced several blips noticeable by Kepler. In September, there was a flurry of excitement when a team of planet hunters led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, announced it had detected a small planet, Gliese 581g , in the habitable zone of a dim red star in the constellation Libra. But enthusiasm cooled when a rival team of veteran planet hunters from the University of Geneva said it couldn’t find the planet. Dr. Batalha said that if the Gliese planet were in Kepler’s patch of sky and did transit its star, the Kepler spacecraft would have seen it. On Earth, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider will enjoy the accelerator’s first full year of banging protons together in search of new secrets of nature. On top of Haleakala in Hawaii, the biggest digital camera ever built, with 1,400 megapixels, on a telescope known as Pan-Starrs 1, will continue scanning the sky for killer asteroids — in that case no news is good news — and anything else that goes bump in the cosmic night. Another large camera, known as the Dark Energy Survey, will swing into action at a mountaintop observatory in Chile, looking to discern the effects of dark energy on the history and evolution of the universe. Any day now, the mystery particle that is presumed to make up the dark matter that amounts to a quarter of creation, and which provides the gravitational scaffolding for galaxies, could pop out of the collider and leave its tracks in one of a number of underground detectors. Or it could signal its presence in space by high-energy emanations recorded by experiments like NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope or the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer , a sophisticated cosmic ray detector that will be installed on the International Space Station next year. A European satellite called Planck will continue its mission, begun in 2009, of surveying a cosmic radio haze left over from the Big Bang for clues to the origin and structure of the universe. Meanwhile, the Hubble Space Telescope , rejuvenated by on-orbit surgery a year and a half ago, will keep scrutinizing the heavens with its matchless clarity, sifting eternity pixel by pixel. The quest goes on, although the role and surely the leadership of American science in it is uncertain. Incoming Republicans have already signaled their desire to whack discretionary spending, which includes nonmilitary research, back to 2008 levels. That would pretty much undo the America Competes Act, which aimed at doubling research funds for a number of government agencies over five years; it was first passed in 2007 and reauthorized by the House of Representatives last summer but is still awaiting a vote in the Senate. It might be a long wait.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration


Democrats Outline Plans to Improve Environment

Abstract: LOS ANGELES, Nov. 17 — Three Democratic presidential hopefuls described their plans to combat global warming and promote energy independence at a forum here Saturday, with each emphasizing the need for government mandates to reduce greenhouse gases and voicing commitment to treaties on the environment. The event, organized by environmental groups, brought together Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio. Each candidate took the stage at a different time, however, and there was little disagreement among them as they laid out their proposals to a friendly audience. The candidates had previously released their proposals on global warming and energy, the focus of the forum. But the opportunity to reiterate them and take questions from a panel of experts in a state that is not holding an early primary highlighted the impact that environmental issues have taken in the campaign. After immigration , reducing oil dependence and global warming is the second most important issue among independent voters, said Daniel J. Weiss, the director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a cosponsor of the forum. Mr. Weiss cited a Democracy Corps poll released last month, which also found that among Democrats, it is the fourth most important issue. Mrs. Clinton’s plan, released this month, includes raising fuel standards to 55 miles per gallon by 2030, creating five million jobs through renewable energy advancements and reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. On Saturday she also called for reducing foreign oil imports by two-thirds by 2030. If she is elected, she said, she will create a $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund by cutting tax benefits for oil companies, and will also create a national energy council and a new treaty to replace the one signed in Kyoto. “We cannot afford to fiddle while the world warms,” she said. Mrs. Clinton has called for a “cap and trade” auction system, in which businesses would buy allowances to pollute. Mr. Edwards has also said greenhouse gas pollution needs to be capped starting in 2010 with a cap-and-auction system. But he said a difference between him and Mrs. Clinton was that he was opposed to building more nuclear power plants. Mr. Edwards’s plan includes placing a cap on emissions of greenhouse gases and reducing them by 20 percent by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050. He also wants to auction the right to emit any greenhouse gases after a short transition period. His plan also calls for a $13 billion a year New Energy Economy Fund, financed primarily through the sale of emission permits. “We can have a prosperous middle class while preserving our natural resources and the beauty of our planet,” Mr. Edwards said. “We can wean America off of foreign oil.” Mr. Kucinich said the United States must abolish nuclear weapons; that environmental principles need to be worked into trade agreements, and that he supports the United States rejoining the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement that limits the emissions of greenhouse gases from most industrialized countries. Mrs. Clinton was briefly interrupted when a man in the audience stood up and shouted, asking her about her vote on Iraq before the war. “Were you invited to speak here this afternoon?” Mrs. Clinton said. The man was removed by security. Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, which helped organize the forum, said all of the Democratic and Republican candidates had been invited. The others either had scheduling conflicts or did not respond to the invitation, Mr. Karpinski said. The league is considering candidates questionnaires to decide whom to endorse.

Global Warming
Elections
Democratic Party
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Edwards John
Kucinich Dennis J


Link to African Ebola Found in Bats Suggests Virus Is More Widespread

Abstract: For the first time, scientists have found evidence of the African Ebola virus in Asian fruit bats, suggesting that the virus is far more widespread around the world than had been previously known. That does not mean that outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever are inevitable, said Kevin J. Olival, leader of the bat-hunting team at EcoHealth Alliance. But the possibility exists: bats are believed to drink out of jars attached to trees to collect tasty date palm sap, and fatal outbreaks in Bangladesh of Nipah virus , which is not related to Ebola, have been blamed on fresh sap contaminated with bat saliva, urine or feces. Palm sap gatherers should be encouraged to put bamboo covers on their collecting jars to keep bats out, Dr. Olival said. Image A Rousettus leschenaultii fruit bat. Credit Kevin J. Olival/EcoHealth Alliance For the study , published this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases, his team caught 276 bats in four Bangladesh districts. “These bats roost in caves, but there are very few caves in Bangladesh, so we put up mist nets outside old ruins that looked like something out of ‘Indiana Jones,’ ” he said. “In the evenings, they would come out to forage.” The team would untangle the bats, draw blood and take saliva, urine and fecal samples, and release them. Five of them — all from the Rousettus leschenaultia species — reacted to tests for antibodies to Zaire Ebola virus. The researchers did not find any virus itself, so it was not possible to do genetic sequencing and see exactly how close the match to the African strain was. Although closely related species of fruit bats are found in Africa, India and China, their territories do not overlap and these bats don’t migrate long distances, Dr. Olival said, so it was likely the virus had been in a bat ancestor species for millenniums. A related virus, Ebola Reston, which is not known to sicken humans, has been found in Philippines fruit bats, and an “Ebola-like” virus has been found in insect-eating bats in Spain. But the match in Bangladesh was closest to Zaire Ebola. Ebola was at first thought to be a gorilla virus, because human outbreaks began after people ate the bodies of dead gorillas. But scientists believe that bats are the natural reservoir and that primates may get infected by eating fruit that bats have drooled or defecated on.

Bat
Ebola
Medicine and Health
Bangladesh


Old Issues of Playboy and Rolling Stone Will Be Available on DVDs

Abstract: Starting next month, people who enjoy fine writing — oh, and nude photography — will be able to order a boxed collection of some of Hugh M. Hefner’s very favorite issues of Playboy, all to appreciate from the comfort of their own mansion. Bondi Digital Publishing of New York, a three-year-old company that publishes magazine archives in digital editions, will be putting out a DVD-ROM set with page-by-page reproductions of all 72 issues of Playboy published in the 1950s. In addition to the magazine’s first issue (of December 1953, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover and semi-naked in the centerfold) the set features fiction by writers like Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck and Ray Bradbury, cartoons by LeRoy Neiman, and photographs of Brigitte Bardot and Bettie Page. Separately, Bondi will offer a DVD archive of Rolling Stone, which will include photographs by Annie Leibovitz as well as articles by writers like Lester Bangs and Cameron Crowe. The boxed set will have 1,024 issues of Rolling Stone from over the decades; the magazine turns 40 this year. Although DVD technology has been around for more than 10 years, few magazines have used it to reproduce their archives. Those that have include The New Yorker, which published its archives in 2005 using software produced by Bondi; Mad Magazine, which published its archives on DVD last year, and Mother Jones, which will publish its first 30 years of issues on DVD next month. Mr. Hefner predicted in a telephone interview that the Playboy DVD set would sell better than the others. “Playboy is so ideally suited for this purpose,” he said. “It is not only the kind of text and cartoons that you get in The New Yorker, you also get the photos, images. Nobody published more delicious advertising.” Joe Levy, executive editor of Rolling Stone, said he expected his magazine’s DVDs would appeal to both “longtime and new readers.” He added, “To music fans, 40 years of the magazine’s music coverage is truly monumental, and to fans of Hunter S. Thompson and ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,’ the idea that you’ll be able to read everything he wrote for Rolling Stone is exciting.” The Playboy DVD will come with a paperback book that Mr. Hefner edited, as well as a facsimile of Playboy’s first issue, which has never before been fully reproduced. The book will have a copy of a receipt for $1,000 that Mr. Hefner received in September 1953 from his mother, Grace, for “one-thousand (1000) Class A Shares in HMH Publishing Co, Inc.” and a letter — signed “Love, Hugh” — that he sent to his parents. In it, he calls their support "just about the nicest thing you have ever done for me," especially, since “much of the magazine will not be material that you fully, personally approve of.” Also reproduced for the first time is a ledger page, in Mr. Hefner’s handwriting, listing his initial expenses, which included a payment to a Chicago calendar company for the photographs of Ms. Monroe. The DVD sets will go on presale online on Sept. 1, and be sold elsewhere online and in stores in November. The Rolling Stone set — which includes a one-year subscription to the magazine — is $125, while the Playboy set is $100. Don Nicholas, managing director of the Mequoda Group, a digital publishing consulting company in Bristol, R.I., said digital publishing of archives had not caught on because magazines “don’t think about repurposing their content as a primary way to generate revenue.” He said the ability to reformat content and store it on DVDs “has become much easier and cheaper in the last couple of years. Given there are probably several hundred consumer magazines that have a collectible aspect to them, I expect you’ll see more and more magazines come out with archives on DVD.” Playboy was a pioneer in the magazine industry when it started its Web site in 1994 and Cyber Club, which sells online memberships to view nude photos, in 1995. Mr. Hefner said that the company agreed to publish its archives on DVD because the magazine “probably more than any other really reflects the changes in the last half century, in images and pop culture and writing.” He added, “To make that available not only is a business opportunity, but an opportunity of expanding the brand in general. The nature of publishing and entertainment has changed, and taking advantage of the new technology is from the very beginning what we’ve been all about.” Mr. Hefner predicted the archives would appeal “both to people of nostalgia of a certain age, who will remember their own particular decades,” and to “people who missed it, the fascination with retro for younger generations.” He said editing the companion book was “a real nostalgia rush for me, it takes me back to those wonderful beginnings.” Playboy, Mr. Hefner said, “went through some very, very difficult times in the conservative ’80s and early ’90s,” but then “half a dozen years or so ago, the brand became hugely popular again.” Bondi plans to publish new DVD sets of Playboy issues , from the 1960s through the present, from 2008 through 2010. Asked which decade of Playboy was his favorite, Mr. Hefner cited the first three. “To some extent, it’s like children,” he said. “What are you going to say? Does one have a favorite child? I confess to a more personal interconnection to the oldest children, because it was so much of an intimate experience for me then.”

DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)
Magazines
Archives and Records
Computers and the Internet
Playboy Enterprises Inc
Rolling Stone
Bondi Digital Publishing


At G.M.'s Helm or Going Under?

Abstract: DETROIT, March 28 - In 1992, with General Motors in the worst financial crisis in its storied history, its board ousted top management and brought in a fresh slate of executives with orders to burst through the automaker's turgid culture. The youngest was its 39-year-old chief financial officer, Rick Wagoner, a virtual unknown outside the company who was as shocked as everyone else when he was summoned back from G.M.'s operations in Brazil for a post that usually went to men a decade or two his senior. He helped fashion a turnaround plan that stemmed the bleeding and put G.M. back on the road to profitability. Now, G.M. is reeling again, and this time it is Mr. Wagoner, 53, its chairman and chief executive, who is under pressure to save the company as well as his job. Whether he can do either is far from certain. The slide that Mr. Wagoner helped to reverse 14 years ago has returned and accelerated. For 2005, G.M. reported its biggest loss -- $10.6 billion -- since 1992, and its lowest market share since the Depression. And the decline is not stopping, prompting analysts to wonder whether G.M. is headed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bad news has put Mr. Wagoner in a harsh spotlight and woken up G.M.'s board, with its newest member, Jerome B. York, who is allied with its biggest investor, demanding that Mr. Wagoner take action. "This is truly a desperate situation," said James P. Womack, an efficiency expert who has followed G.M. for years. Mr. Wagoner's fall from corporate hero to besieged executive reflects the unforgiving nature of the ever-changing auto industry and his own management mistakes. A G.M. lifer, he long resisted bold moves that might have transformed G.M., instead moving methodically -- more like a bureaucrat trying to protect the status quo than a visionary intent on remaking the company. In doing so, critics say, G.M. forgot some lessons that it learned a decade ago. Mr. Wagoner has failed to reduce G.M.'s labor costs by repeatedly agreeing to expensive contracts with the United Automobile Workers that made it difficult to shed excess workers. The company also routinely churned out uninspired vehicles under Mr. Wagoner, who came up through the finance ranks, the classic route for a G.M. chief, rather than manufacturing or sales. The failure to recognize Americans' growing environmental awareness slowed G.M.'s embrace of hybrid-electric vehicles, allowing foreign rivals like Toyota to win sales and publicity. Calling Mr. Wagoner a "paint-by-numbers kind of guy," Mr. Womack said, "What you've got here is a quarterback with an out-of-date playbook, and the opposition isn't going to be beaten by any of the plays." Mr. Wagoner declined to comment for this article. But his loyalists, alarmed at the criticism, are hustling to defend him, portraying an executive firmly in charge and working 12 hours a day or more both in the United States and around the world, to turn the company around. A spokesman, Stephen Harris, said: "I can understand why people might be speculating. But the reality is that Rick has the support of the board and the management team and employees at G.M. and its dealers -- the vast support of all the constituencies you can think of. He's definitely very focused." Moreover, G.M. is trumpeting glimmers of good news, like the promising early sales of a restyled lineup of sport utility vehicles, and corralling allies of the embattled chief executive to defend him. But even allies acknowledge that Mr. Wagoner, a lanky native of Virginia, is under pressure. "Time is finite," said Richard E. Dauch, the chief executive of American Axle, a parts supplier that does 78 percent of its business with G.M. Despite pledging his support for Mr. Wagoner's efforts, Mr. Dauch went on, "You try the patience of your board and you try the patience of your investors." Indeed, some critics ask, how much time should the board allow Mr. Wagoner to fix the problems? Wouldn't G.M., which faces a ruthlessly competitive present with no resemblance to its fabled past, be better off with a boss who has the passion to embrace change? It has been a sobering time for Mr. Wagoner, who joined G.M. in 1977 after getting an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Winning high marks for his quick, analytical mind and easy manner, Mr. Wagoner held a series of jobs in G.M.'s treasurer's office in New York. In the 1980's, he shifted to international operations, then overseen by John F. Smith Jr., who had impressed G.M.'s outside board members as having the potential to run the company. Though Mr. Wagoner had earned a reputation as "a comer," his promotion in the 1992 management shake-up was unexpected. But working with Mr. Smith, who was named chief, Mr. Wagoner proved his mettle. G.M. sliced $4 billion in its purchasing costs, first under the mantle of a colorful Spanish executive, José Ignacio López de Arriortúa, and then, after he departed, under Mr. Wagoner's wing. The company accelerated the closing of 25 plants and eliminated 75,000 jobs, reorganizing its far-flung operations. Meanwhile, Mr. Wagoner, who was put in charge of North American operations in 1994, brought in an outsider, Ronald A. Zarrella, to sharpen the image of G.M.'s brands and weed out underperforming dealers. The company retooled Cadillac, winning praise for the bold new look and livelier marketing featuring Led Zeppelin tunes. The company's earnings soared, and its stock peaked at more than $90 a share in early 2000. But with success, G.M. lost its urgency. Mr. Wagoner did not heed calls to eliminate some brands, instead buying Hummer when the popularity of its large S.U.V.'s was at its peak. As competition increased, G.M. frequently relied on gimmicks like no-interest financing and discounts to sell its cars, diminishing their effectiveness and conditioning buyers to expect big rebates and financing plans. Inventories piled so high last spring that G.M. rolled out employee discounts to every buyer, sending sales soaring -- and then crashing once the plans ended. G.M.'s shares also plummeted, closing Tuesday at $22.75. Critics say the emphasis on rebates proved Mr. Wagoner's bent was more for financial solutions and less for the nuts and bolts of auto building. Two years ago, when Toyota and G.M. celebrated the 20th anniversary of their joint venture in Fremont, Calif., which makes the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix, senior Toyota executives spent two hours on a walking tour of the factory. Notably absent were high-ranking G.M. officials, including Mr. Wagoner, say those who were present, although he attended a ceremony in the factory the next day. Likewise, after insisting last fall that G.M.'s highest priority was to make its plants capable of building more than one type of vehicle -- a major advantage of Japanese auto plants -- Mr. Wagoner admitted he did not know how many already could do so. (G.M. says 8 of its 23 plants in North America are flexible.) His supporters say no chief executive of a big company can know everything. "You have to surround yourself with people who know the other parts of the company," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, and the son of a former G.M president. "Rick has done that. That's one of his strengths." Still, the numbers in recent years tell a dismal story. Since Mr. Wagoner became the chief executive in 2000, G.M. has lost 6 points of market share, falling to just under 25 percent -- 10 points lower than in 1992, when it sold 35 percent of all cars in the United States. In contrast to Toyota, which last year earned about $2,000 a vehicle worldwide, G.M. lost about $1,200. Only once in 14 years has G.M. achieved its target of earning 5 cents on the dollar in its North American operations. In that time, more than 100,000 G.M. factory workers have lost their jobs, and another 30,000 more are set to go by 2008, leaving 83,000, even as foreign rivals have been increasing sales and adding workers. While some fault Mr. Wagoner for not acting faster to reduce costs, his associates credit him with refusing to "blow up" G.M. in a confrontation with the U.A.W., which paralyzed the company with a seven-week strike in 1998, the year he became president. Recently, supporters say, this strategy paid off when G.M. negotiated a buyout deal with the union to reduce staff without a showdown. G.M. will offer its 113,000 hourly workers and 13,000 workers at Delphi, its parts supplier, up to $140,000 to leave their jobs. G.M. is also willing to take back 5,000 workers from Delphi, spun off from G.M. in 1999, to help it lower costs. But critics say the cost of moving so slowly has been high. The debt now carries junk ratings. Critics add that Mr. Wagoner only became serious about making tough decisions after Kirk Kerkorian, G.M.'s largest individual shareholder, bought a stake of just under 10 percent last year and began agitating for change. The pace picked up when Mr. York, a representative of Mr. Kerkorian, joined G.M.'s board in early February. Already, he has led the board's outraged reaction earlier this month to accounting fumbles that caused G.M. to delay its annual report and restate its earnings for the second time in four months, causing its 2005 loss to swell by $2 billion. (On Tuesday, the company filed its annual report, which included another restatement.) Mr. York, meanwhile, is on a fact-finding mission inside the company, preparing a report he plans to give directors at May's board meeting. But even before he joined the board he had an impact. After his January speech in Detroit calling on G.M. to move faster, the board in February halved the dividend -- which Mr. Wagoner had defended -- and eliminated its $60,000 in cash payments to directors, who now receive all their compensation in stock. Mr. Wagoner still enjoys the public support of G.M.'s board, but the question is for how long. Industry insiders are already buzzing about possible successors, though it might not be easy to find someone to succeed him. Perhaps because of Mr. Wagoner's relatively young age, G.M. has not groomed a successor inside its ranks -- indeed, four executives who once worked for him have become top executives elsewhere, including Lewis B. Campbell of Textron, whose name has been mentioned as a possible successor, and Mark Hogan, the president of the auto supplier Magna, one of the young Turks who helped fashion the last G.M. turnaround. The other candidate most often mentioned is Carlos Ghosn, the head of the French automaker Renault, who is admired by Mr. York for his deft restructuring at Nissan, including a complete overhaul of its product lineup. Saving G.M. would cap Mr. Ghosn's career as an industry icon. But so far he has deflected questions about G.M., saying that his job is to fix Renault. Mr. Womack wonders whether anyone with the right stuff will want Mr. Wagoner's job. "There are a lot of people out there who would take it," he said, "but does anyone have the spark, the creativity and the ability to create a new concept?"

GENERAL MOTORS CORP
EXECUTIVES AND MANAGEMENT


Humbled, but Still Short of Humility

Abstract: PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. Back when the golf ball routinely did his bidding, Tiger Woods could bend people to his will with a glare. He kept a tight rein on photographers, reporters, fans and members of his inner circle, perhaps to compensate for that which is beyond any golfer’s control: bad weather, unlucky bounces, a wailing baby, an opponent’s score. The putts that once dropped with regularity no longer are falling. In Thursday’s first round of the Honda Classic, Woods missed a 5-footer for par on his way to a one-over 71, which left him tied for 68th. But it’s not just around the greens that Woods looks heavy-handed. His reaction this week to a soon-to-be-published book by his former swing coach, Hank Haney, has been needlessly contentious. Woods, 36, looked as clumsy trying to steer the message as he did the putt toward the hole at No. 12. Instead of deflecting interest in a book whose mere existence he clearly views as a betrayal of trust, Woods only piqued interest in it by refusing to comment on questions about excerpts posted this week on Golf Digest’s Web site. The most startling revelation — that Woods considered giving up golf to try to become a member of the Navy SEALs — isn’t even breaking news. Haney had made a similar observation to the writer Tom Callahan, who included it in “His Father’s Son.” Shortly after the book’s 2010 publication, Woods said he had never entertained the notion. When pressed, he added: “Well, I’ve always wanted to become a SEAL. That’s something that I told my dad from the very get-go, either I’m going to become a professional golfer or I’m going to become a Navy SEAL.” So it’s not the story that Woods would seem to have a problem with, it’s the storyteller. Woods’s testy exchange on Wednesday with a reporter who persisted in trying to ascertain what, if anything, was incorrect in the book was a case of displaced anger. So was the statement issued by Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, via e-mail to The Associated Press in which he dismissed Haney’s “armchair psychology” as ridiculous and called into question his loyalty. The touring pro Jesper Parnevik knows what it’s like for someone in Woods’s tight-lipped world to talk out of turn. Parnevik was a friend of Woods; he and his wife, Mia, introduced him to his future bride, Elin Nordegren. In a 2009 interview with a Swedish newspaper after Woods’s serial adultery was publicly exposed, Parnevik said he had lost respect for Woods “primarily as a man and a father” and expressed regret that he had vouched for Woods’s character to Nordegren. Parnevik was the only touring pro to publicly criticize the transgressions of Woods, who has been the engine that has driven the PGA Tour since he turned pro in 1996. They have spoken a few times since, Parnevik said. After posting a 73 on Thursday on the Champion Course at PGA National, Parnevik added: “It was pretty chaotic for there for a year. I was more just trying to give Elin some support because of the position she was in. “She didn’t really have anyone to speak for her. Of course, I didn’t know it was going to explode as much as it did in the media and so on. I would do it again. But of course, it’s easier not to say anything. I think in any sport when you say something about the stars, it’s not always a good thing for the person who says it.”  Woods has won 71 official tour events, including 14 major championships, but none since the revelation of his personal indiscretions and his subsequent divorce from Nordegren. At his best, Woods stalked a course and carried a lethal putter. It’s an approach that Rory McIlroy, who was among those tied for second here, two strokes behind Davis Love III, said was not for everyone. “He gives out this aura where everything is just so focused and so — you know, it’s like I’m going to rip your head off on that first tee,” said McIlroy, who signed for his round of 66 at No. 9 as Woods was preparing to tee off a few hundred yards away at No. 1. “I felt like that’s the way I needed to be to win a major. But I quickly found out that isn’t me and that isn’t how I play my best golf.” With Woods not playing his best golf, his air of entitlement comes across as less regal than when he was golf’s sovereign ruler. Michael Fineman, the president of Fineman Public Relations, a San Francisco-based firm that has never represented Woods, wrote in an e-mail: “Tiger’s team missed a prime opportunity to take the high road with a more dignified public response; Team Tiger has done little in three years’ time to effectively reassure the oft-forgiving public that their hero has learned the lessons of being justifiably humbled.” How can Woods help himself? “Bottom line,” Fineman said, “Team Tiger needs a life coach.”

Golf
Woods Tiger
Haney Hank
Parnevik Jesper
Honda Classic (Golf Tournament)
Honda Classic


John Legend Rejects Calls to Cancel Bahrain Show Over Rights Abuses

Abstract: Bahraini rights activists expressed dismay on Friday that John Legend, the American singer known for his outspoken advocacy of civil rights and racial equality in the United States, plans to perform in Bahrain next week, despite the country’s brutal crackdown on dissent. Faced with calls to cancel his appearance on Monday at Bahrain’s state-sponsored Spring of Culture festival, Mr. Legend said in a statement sent to The Independent in London that he was aware of “documented human rights abuses by the government of Bahrain,” but preferred to “engage with the people of the country” by visiting there. Please note that tickets for John Legend have now sold out. #socbh pic.twitter.com/Sdf4zqZfq4 — Spring of Culture (@SpringofCulture) February 23, 2015 Bahrain’s ruling monarchy has jailed dissidents and restricted free speech since protesters took to the streets in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. In his statement, Mr. Legend said that he had “spent quite a bit of time thinking about human rights, civil rights and other issues of justice, both in the United States and abroad. The solution to every human rights concern is not always to boycott.” The singer added that part of his “mission in life is to spread love and joy to people all over the world,” and he hoped that touring widely would allow him to “meet the many people who are peacefully struggling for freedom, justice and accountability, regardless of what country they live in, and tell them directly that I stand with them.” His response failed to convince critics of Bahrain’s government. Maryam Alkhawaja, a rights activist whose father and sister have been sentenced to long jail terms for engaging in peaceful protest, said in an email that she was disappointed that Mr. Legend intended to play at the festival, because his performance “will be used by the regime to whitewash ongoing violations.” Reacting to his statement about his hope to meet and encourage dissidents in Bahrain, Ms. Alkhawaja said, “‘Freedom fighters’ couldn’t attend even if they wanted to.” Mr. Legend, she said, “should not drown out the cries of people being attacked only 10 minutes away from where he is performing with his music.” Earlier this week, Mr. Legend had offered words of encouragement to protesters as he accepted an Oscar for “ Glory ,” the theme song for the film “Selma,” about the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. After his co-writer, Common, mentioned recent protests in France and Hong Kong, Mr. Legend told viewers of the Academy Awards telecast , “We say that ‘Selma is now’ because the struggle for justice is right now.” Americans, the singer added, “live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850. When people are marching with our song, we want to tell you that we are with you.” Ala’a Shehabi, a British-Bahraini activist, criticized Mr. Legend for not extending his concern with incarceration in the United States to political prisoners in Bahrain, an American ally that is home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Ms. Shehabi said in an interview that she had tried to contact Mr. Legend through his agent, “to see how he wants to ‘engage,’ ” but that the singer had not yet taken up her offer “to start a ‘conversation’ ” about the repression in Bahrain, which drove her and other dissidents into exile in Britain. While activists tried to reach Mr. Legend, it seems possible that he could be getting a very different impression of Bahrain from people closer to him. A similar campaign in 2012 failed to dissuade one of Mr. Legend’s friends, Kim Kardashian, from visiting Bahrain for the grand opening of a milkshake shop at a mall in the kingdom. Mr. Legend and Ms. Kardashian recently shared a photograph of themselves with their spouses on a double date. Marc Lynch, the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, addressed an open letter to Mr. Legend on the subject, urging him to “apply your strong political convictions at home to a very similar set of problems abroad, and reconsider this performance, or speak out about what you see.” Mr. Lynch, who identified himself as a fan, noted that Mr. Legend had also equated the story of “Selma” with the protests in Ferguson last year, writing in an op-ed article that he had screened the final version of the film “with the backdrop of the streets of many of our major cities filled with protesters, crying out for justice after yet another unarmed black person’s life was taken by the police with impunity.” Mr. Lynch argued in his letter: “Bahraini lives have been taken by the police with impunity as well, and Bahraini lives do matter. I hope that you will think deeply about the implications of performing in a country like today’s Bahrain, where the violence of an unaccountable police against peaceful protesters mirrors everything against which you have spoken out at home. If you do decide to perform, perhaps you could speak out about the situation there as you have so gracefully done here in America.” As Ms. Alkhawaja noted last summer , three years before the American protesters mentioned in the song “Glory” confronted police officers in Ferguson, Mo., with the chant, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” demonstrators in Bahrain were gunned down by the security forces as they marched with raised hands , repeating the Arabic word for “peaceful” — “ selmiya ” — again and again.

John Legend
Bahrain
Arab Spring
Human Rights
Civil Unrest
Political prisoner
Boycott


Brazil Leader Suffers Setback on Overhaul

Abstract: SÃO PAULO, Brazil — One of President Dilma Rousseff’s signature efforts to temper the huge protests shaking Brazil suffered a setback on Thursday, as leaders of her governing coalition agreed to pursue a plebiscite on political overhauls but fell far shy of meeting her call to hold one right away. The president, whose approval ratings have fallen sharply since the protests began last month, has pushed for Brazilian voters to weigh in on changes to the tangled Brazilian political system this year, in time for them to go into effect by elections next year. But it falls to Congress to call such a vote. Vice President Michel Temer emerged Thursday from a meeting with leaders of the governing coalition in Congress’s lower house and told reporters that “the majority” had agreed to a plebiscite to be held next year and to go into effect by 2016 at the earliest. “It is always good to listen to the people,” he said. The decision was widely seen as a loss for Ms. Rousseff. “It is certainly a defeat for the president,” said Frederico de Almeida, a political scientist at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation. “It is not what she had hoped for. It also shows the difficulty the political class in general is having in responding to the protests.” Video A protest song similar to a car manufacturer’s television commercial is calling people to the streets. While the president and other politicians have publicly sympathized with the protesters, passing major changes remains daunting and demonstrations continue to simmer across the country. Still, some changes have come at a surprising pace, including harsher penalties for government corruption and rollbacks of transit fares. Legislation to put 75 percent of oil royalties toward education and 25 percent toward health care — two areas that have been a focus of the protests — is moving quickly through Congress. But political change has proved sticky for Ms. Rousseff. She first called for a constituent assembly, but withdrew the proposal under criticism from politicians and legal experts. Then she proposed a plebiscite to be held in time for changes to take effect by next year’s election, meaning the vote would have to be held, and subsequent congressional legislation enacted, by early October. That became more complicated when the country’s highest election authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, determined that it would need 70 days to hold the vote, leaving little time for Congress to act. The opposition has been against the plebiscite from the beginning, but for her own ruling coalition not to embrace her timetable underscored the president’s struggles to control her ranks. In an interview, Brazil’s justice minister, José Eduardo Cardozo, who attended the meeting, said there was still a possibility of holding the vote in time and objected to characterizing the outcome as a setback. “The fact that political reform has been placed on the agenda for debate is a great victory,” he said. Efforts at political change go back to the 1990s, but the process had moved slowly — when it moved at all — until the protests. Ms. Rousseff has proposed that the plebiscite include votes on public financing for elections, a possible restructuring of Brazil’s opaque representative system, and the end of “secret” votes by legislators on some congressional decisions. David Fleischer, a political science professor at the University of Brasília, said the debate over the plebiscite showed that “the politicians don’t want to do a political reform, they want to keep the same system that helped them get elected. Unless there is much stronger and acute pressure from the street, they’re not going to do anything.”


Fresh Graves Point to Undercount of Ebola Toll

Abstract: FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery’s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day’s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies. The backs of the battered secondhand vans carrying the dead were closed with twisted, rusting wire. Bodies were dumped in new graves, and a worker in a short-sleeve shirt carried away the stretcher, wearing only plastic bags over his hands as protection. The outlook for the day at King Tom Cemetery was busy. “We will need much more space,” said James C. O. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger, as a colleague cleared the bush with his machete. The Ebola epidemic is spreading rapidly in Sierra Leone’s densely packed capital — and it may already be far worse than the authorities acknowledge. Since the beginning of the outbreak more than six months ago, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported only 10 confirmed Ebola deaths here in Freetown, the capital of more than one million people, and its suburbs as of Sunday — a hopeful sign that this city, unlike the capital of neighboring Liberia, had been relatively spared the ravages of the outbreak. Video In Sierra Leone, a group of young men take on the dirtiest work of the Ebola outbreak: finding and burying the dead. But the bodies pouring in to the graveyard tell a different story. In the last eight days alone, 110 Ebola victims have been buried at King Tom Cemetery, according to the supervisor, Abdul Rahman Parker, suggesting an outbreak that is much more deadly than either the government or international health officials have announced. “I’m working with the burial team, and the first question I ask them is, ‘Are they Ebola-positive?’ ” said Mr. Parker, adding that the figures were based on medical certificates that he had seen himself. The deaths are carefully recorded by name and date in a notebook headed “Ebola Burials.” A burial team supervisor who drove up with fresh bodies echoed Mr. Parker’s assertion. “Any body we collect is a positive case,” said Sorie Kessebeh. “All the bodies that we are bringing in are positive.” Beyond the many worrisome trends in the Ebola epidemic seizing parts of West Africa — the overflowing hospitals, the presence of the disease in crowded cities, the deaths of scores of health workers trying to help — another basic problem has stymied attempts to contain the disease: No one seems to know how bad the outbreak really is. The World Health Organization acknowledged weeks ago that despite its efforts to tally the thousands of cases in the region, the official statistics probably “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.” Image The grave of Marion Seisay at King Tom Cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Area residents say animals dig near the graves, creating dangers for the living. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Here in Sierra Leone, the government just finished an aggressive national lockdown to get a handle on the epidemic, ordering the entire country to stay indoors for three days as an army of volunteers went door to door, explaining the dangers of the virus and trying to root out hidden pockets of illness. Still, the Health Ministry spokesman insisted that the epidemic was not as bad as the flow of bodies at the cemetery suggested. “It is not possible that all of them are Ebola-related deaths,” said Sidie Yahya Tunis, the Health Ministry spokesman, saying the corpses included people who died of other causes. But as the cemetery records show, the challenge facing the government might be of a different magnitude than previously thought. The majority of the recent deaths recorded at the cemetery were young people — young adults, people in early middle age, or children — with very few elderly people on the list. Several of the deaths also occurred in a concentrated area, sometimes in the same house, suggesting that a virulent infection had struck. At the house of Marion Seisay — the third name on the list — her son acknowledged she was a secretary at Wilberforce Hospital, had died of Ebola and was buried on Sept. 14. The house was now under quarantine, with some of its eight residents lingering on the cinder-block porch. “The way my Mummy died was pathetic,” said the son, Michael Foday, clearly frustrated by the quarantine. “How do you expect us to get food?” Other houses in Wilberforce Barracks, the village-like compound surrounding the hospital, were on the list of the dead and placed under quarantine, marked off from the surrounding jumble of shacks and cinder-block houses by a thin line of red or blue string. In one of them, the house of Momoh Lomeh, the residents said that a total of five people who lived there had died of Ebola — yet four of them did not even appear on the cemetery list. At another, the house of Andrew Mansoray, a family member said that the disease had been ruthless and unrelenting. “It wouldn’t stop,” Abdul R. Kallon said of the diarrhea that Mr. Mansoray, his brother-in-law, had endured before dying. “They took him to the hospital, and they wouldn’t let him out.” Image A burial team removed the body of a man in Freetown believed to have died from Ebola. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times At another six households on the cemetery supervisor’s list of the dead, residents gave similar accounts. One family said the victim had definitely died of Ebola, while five others described Ebola-like symptoms — vomiting, diarrhea, fever — though none had been given an official cause of death. International health experts here had no explanation for the striking discrepancy between the government’s tally of the dead in the capital and the cemetery crew’s statistics. Several of them noted the general confusion surrounding official statistics here from the beginning, with one leading international health official saying: “We don’t know exactly what is going on.” But nobody disputed that things appear to be getting worse. The W.H.O. has shown a sharp increase in new cases in Freetown in recent weeks, rising from almost none early in the summer to more than 50 during the week of Sept. 14. Various models of the growth of the epidemic here “all show an exponential increase,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team in Sierra Leone. “The conditions are amenable to Ebola spread.” The goal of the government’s national lockdown was to reach every household in the country, and officials claimed success in doing so on Monday, saying that progress had been made in the fight against the disease. How Many Ebola Patients Have Been Treated Outside of Africa? Questions and answers on the scale of the outbreak and the science of the Ebola virus. But the exhaustion of the Ebola gravediggers at King Tom Cemetery, who dig as many as 16 graves a day, indicated that the disease was far from being contained. “It’s a herculean task,” said Mr. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger. “It’s only out of patriotism that we are doing it.” The Ebola victims were buried in an expanding stretch of fresh muddy graves under a giant cotton tree, and the makeshift arrangements are seen as a looming threat by the residents of the slum next to it. No barrier stops the pigs rooting in the adjoining trash field from digging in the fresh Ebola graves, which residents say they often do. “We have creatures in the community, and they dig in the graves,” said Henry S. Momoh, who lives in the adjoining slum, which residents call Kolleh Town. “They are burying the Ebola patients in there, but not in the proper manner.” Five yards from where the new graves begin, a well-used path connects the slum to the main road. Residents all use it, passing close to the freshly dug graves, and are frightened by the intensifying activity in the cemetery. “Since last month, it’s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming” to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer. A cloudy stream drains from the area of the new graves into the slum, further frightening the residents. “We are at risk, big risk,” said Ousman Kamara, a resident. “We have made many complaints.” But the bodies, he said, keep coming. “Even at night,” he said. “You stand here, and you see them coming.”