United Airlines Returns 787 Dreamliners to Service

Abstract: After being grounded by battery problems since mid-January, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner returned to service in the United States on Monday with a nearly full flight of passengers from Houston to Chicago. With the flight, United Airlines became at least the fourth of eight airlines using the planes to return them to the air. It is the only American carrier flying the high-tech jets so far. LAN Airlines of Chile said last week that it was about to start flying the 787 again. Three other airlines plan to return the planes to service in the first week of June. The flights are a big moment for Boeing as it tries to realize the potential of the revolutionary plane, a substantial portion of which is made with lightweight plastic composites to save fuel. Image Jeff Smisek, left, and Jim McNerney, chief executives of United Airlines and Boeing, who addressed the crowd before riding on the flight. Credit Scott Olson/Getty Images Production problems delayed construction of the first jets by several years before they eventually went into commercial use in late 2011. Then, within nine days in January of this year, smoke or fire erupted from the new lithium-ion batteries on two of the first 50 planes, prompting authorities worldwide to ground the jets until Boeing could come up with a fix. Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., and Jeff Smisek, the chief executive of United Continental Holdings Inc., both rode on Monday’s flight, sitting in coach and chatting with some of the 186 other passengers. Both men spoke at a brief ceremony at the gate before the plane took off. United handed out chocolate chip cookies, bottled water and posters of the Dreamliner to celebrate the occasion. Referring to the months the plane sat idle, Mr. Smisek said, “It was a fairly expensive piece of sculpture to have on the ground.” But, he told reporters, “If you want to be the world’s leading airline, which is what we at United are working for, you’ve got to have the world’s leading airplane.” Mr. McNerney said Boeing was “very sorry” about the delay. He said it remained confident about both the safety and promise of the plane. Video Boeing's 787 Dreamliner battery fix includes ventilation in case of a fire, reports CNBC's Phil LeBeau. Ethiopian Airlines was the first to start flying the planes again with the modified batteries, starting April 27. Since then, Qatar Airways and Air India also have resumed flights. Two Japanese carriers, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, plan to start carrying passengers on their 787s again on June 1. LOT Polish Airlines expects to restore service on June 5. Marc R. Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said the company had finished modifying the batteries on 45 of the 50 jets delivered so far. He said it also had delivered two new jets with the modifications over the last several days. Safety investigators have still not determined what caused a fire in the battery of a 787 parked at Boston’s Logan Airport on Jan. 9 or smoke to leak from the battery of another 787 in Japan on Jan. 16. Boeing’s fixes include better insulation to keep a short circuit in any of the batteries’ eight cells from spreading to the others. Boeing also added a stainless steel box to encase the batteries and minimize the chances for ignition and, as a last resort, titanium tubing to vent any smoke out of the planes. Boeing engineers have also modified the plane’s power panels and generators, including replacing some parts and bringing components up to the latest standards. Those changes were not linked to the battery system, and were not required by the Federal Aviation Administration. But the parts caused problems before the planes were grounded.

Airlines,airplanes
United Airlines
Boeing
Batteries
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes


Syrian Town Is Strained by Flood of Refugees

Abstract: AIN al-BEIDA, Syria — Final exams were canceled in this farming village, but the concrete schoolhouse is full. The students have been replaced by anxious families seeking shelter from a violent crackdown on antigovernment protesters that has spread in recent weeks here to the rural northwestern corner of Syria . Barely 1,000 people live in Ain al-Beida, tucked on a hillside in densely wooded mountains five miles from the border with Turkey . But the population has tripled in the past two weeks as residents of a nearby town, Badama, have fled the advance of the Syrian security forces, fearing an attack that has not yet materialized. On Saturday morning, Syrian troops swept into Badama, according to news reports. The Associated Press, citing the Local Coordination Committees, a group that documents anti-government protests, said troops backed by six tanks and several armored personnel carriers, entered Badama in the morning. The Reuters news service, citing eyewitnesses, reported that troops arrested dozens of people and burned houses as they entered the town. The forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad occupied a neighboring village, Dreibat, on Thursday, residents of Ain al-Beida said, although they did not advance on their village on Friday. The security forces’ brutal drive through Idlib Province has sent more than 8,000 people across the border into Turkey, where they are staying in tent camps set up by the Red Crescent. Thousands more are thought to be hiding in informal tent cities and small forest camps strung throughout the mountainous zone on the Syrian side of the border. Here in Ain al-Beida, people are struggling to cope with an estimated 2,000 refugees who have sought shelter, living in cars and storerooms, at construction sites and in the school. The fortunate ones have been offered space in rough cinder block homes, on narrow streets that ramble down a slope from the border, with wire demarcations. “Every classroom in the school houses at least three families, and every house in town is housing three or four — in my house there are four,” said Ahmed, a resident who, like several others who were interviewed, gave only one name out of concern about retribution. He said most of the refugees had come from Badama and Jisr al-Shoughour, a major town in the province whose residents fled in advance of a military operation there last weekend. Two weeks ago, fighting in Jisr al-Shoughour between security forces and military defectors or armed elements, or a mix of both, set the stage for the government’s aggressive crackdown in the region. Many refugees said they left Badama out of fear that their town could be the next one to feel the government’s anger. Sheik Eyad Hassoun, 32, is from Badama, but leads prayers in the village mosque in Ain al-Beida. On Friday, he sat with a dozen men on thin mattresses in a tent pitched in a pasture above the town, just a few feet from the Turkish border. The men smoked cigarettes and grimly watched Al Jazeera’s coverage of protests in two Syrian cities, Homs and Hama, on a television connected by an extension cord to a distant cottage. Sheik Hassoun left Badama after watching coverage of the military assault on Jisr al-Shoughour last Saturday and Sunday. “I saw all the killing on TV and decided then to come here,” he said. He said he felt safe so close to the border because he could easily escape a government attack, if it came. Down the hill in Ain al-Beida’s schoolhouse, the classrooms have been cleared of desks. Thin mattresses line the floors, and a jumble of pots and pans crowd around the blackboard. Electrical sockets are jammed with cellphone chargers. Children run across the schoolyard, whose wall has become a communal toilet. “Life here is so hard,” said Hassouni, 19, who said he fled Badama a week ago with his family after plainclothes forces loyal to Mr. Assad drove down the main road firing randomly at civilians. He said his family was reluctant to cross into Turkey, fearing they might never be able to return home, so they came to Ain al-Beida instead. After a week in the school, Hassouni said he was beginning to think that his family would inevitably end up in Turkey. “Going to Turkey is the last thing we would do, but now I think it is certain,” he said. “Things here will end. We will run out of food, and then we will have to go.” Entire towns and villages in the region have emptied out, with people fleeing from the security forces, bringing economic activity to a halt. The security forces have set up a formidable line of checkpoints across the province, people in Ain al-Beida said, trying to block the flow of goods and people to the border zone. “There are still people inside Syria who want to come here, but it’s forbidden,” said Abdullah, 32, a refugee from Badama who sat watching Al Jazeera with Sheik Hassoun. Residents and refugees get by on stored goods and fruit plucked from the orchards, but they said their most important lifeline was a vast network of circuitous and secret smugglers’ paths that crisscross the fields and mountains leading to Turkey. “We don’t get enough to eat; it all depends on what comes in from Turkey,” said Samar, 26, who left Badama with her husband and three young children. They were squatting in a bare room in an unfinished building overlooking a steep valley and Turkish military posts atop mountains on the other side. “It is our only source of food.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Testing Benefits and Levels of Testosterone Is Difficult

Abstract: The indication that Floyd Landis might have taken testosterone to win the Tour de France gives rise to questions about how reliable the testing was and what, if anything, a cyclist would gain from using the hormone. Testosterone can have powerful effects on the body, directing it to make muscle instead of fat. And it can increase the red-blood cell count, which may allow more oxygen to reach laboring muscles. But when researchers have studied the hormone’s effects on endurance, they have come up empty-handed. Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a leading testosterone researcher at Boston University Medical Center, said he was puzzled by his and others’ inability to determine if the hormone affected endurance. In several experiments, scientists treated men with testosterone or placebos and then asked them to do such things as run on a treadmill until they were exhausted. The scientists saw no difference between the men who took testosterone and those who did not. “No one has been able to show clearly that testosterone improves endurance,” Bhasin said. Some athletes have said that the hormone helped in events like the Tour de France because it increased aggressiveness or allowed them to train harder. But that, too, has not been demonstrated, Bhasin said. “It’s folklore,” he added. Despite the result of the A sample of Landis’s urine test — which showed high levels of testosterone — it is entirely possible that he did not take the hormone. (Landis said he planned to request an analysis of the B sample today.) The test looks for a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone, a hormone that is produced in parallel to testosterone but does not have testosterone’s effects. Dr. John Amory, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington, said that men ordinarily produced one molecule of epitestosterone for every molecule of testosterone. If a man takes testosterone, he will skew his testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio. The problem, though, is determining a normal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio. The World Anti-Doping Agency used to say that a ratio of more than six to one was evidence of testosterone abuse. Now it is using a ratio of four to one. Dr. Timothy Foster, an endocrinologist and sports-medicine specialist at Boston University Medical Center, said even the six-to-one ratio is within a range that could be found naturally in many men. “If the ratio was five to one or six to one, I would be very concerned that this represents a normal variant,” Foster said. Bhasin agreed. “People can have high ratios without abuse,” he said. He added that one way to know if the ratio found in the test was normal was to continue testing the athlete. If the ratio is normal for that man, it will not change. Endocrinologists also said it was important to know how the test was conducted and how carefully the samples were protected from tampering. The actual testing method “is a real bugaboo,” said Dr. John McKinlay, the senior vice president and chief scientist at the New England Research Institute who directs the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, which follows men and measures testosterone levels, among other things, as they age. Some methods are fraught with errors. Amory, who reviews doping cases for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said tampering was a concern. “When we get cases to review, the chain of custody is really paramount,” he said. “If it gets out of sight for two seconds, someone can squirt testosterone into it. And there are people like that who would like to see an American, the winner of the Tour de France, disgraced. That’s why the chain of custody has to be codified.” And that is why the urine samples are divided in two, the A sample and the B sample. For now, Amory said, it was too soon to convict Landis in the court of public opinion. “You can’t impugn his career,” Amory said. “The testing has to be done right. I am kind of surprised that five days after the fact they are talking about the A sample without the B sample.”

Landis Floyd
World Anti-Doping Agency
Testosterone
Tour de France (Bicycle Race)
Bicycles and Bicycling


Florida: More Accusations Against Priest Named by Ex-Congressman

Abstract: A former altar boy has come forward with accusations that he was sexually abused by the same priest reported of having had intimate contact with Mark Foley, the former congressman, in the 1960’s. The 40-year-old accuser, identified as John Doe No. 26, said he was abused by the priest, the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, in the 1970’s at the age of 12 or 13 when he was an altar boy in Miami, according to a lawsuit filed against the Archdiocese of Miami. The man is seeking more than $10 million in damages.

Mercieca Anthony
Foley Mark A
Priests
Roman Catholic Church


Jury in Councilman’s Trial Says It Is Divided, and at an Impasse on All 12 Counts

Abstract: Halfway through its second full day of deliberations, the jury in the federal corruption trial of City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook indicated on Monday that it was at an impasse on all 12 counts in the case. A note from the jury offered no clue as to how it was split, except to suggest that it was divided into two groups, rather than there being a holdout juror or two. “Neither side” had been able “to persuade each other to a verdict,” the note said. The judge, Robert P. Patterson Jr. of Federal District Court in Manhattan , told the jury to renew its efforts to reach a unanimous verdict. Mr. Seabrook, a Democrat from the Bronx, has been accused of participating in a series of fraudulent schemes to direct more than $1 million in taxpayer money to nonprofit organizations he controlled, so that he, in turn, could funnel over $600,000 to family members and friends. On Friday, the jury reported that it was at an impasse on the first count, which charged Mr. Seabrook, 60, with accepting thousands of dollars in illegal gratuities from a Bronx businessman whom he had helped obtain a boiler contract for the new Yankee Stadium. The note delivered at 1 p.m. Monday said the impasse had broadened. “After much discussion,” the note said, “we are unable to reach a consensus on any individual count verdict.” The jury continued to deliberate through the afternoon before being sent home at day’s end, and it was expected to resume deliberations on Tuesday. Mr. Seabrook spoke briefly with reporters outside the courthouse after the jury was sent home. “I think we are just going to wait and see what the jury has to say,” he said. “The jury will speak and we will follow what the jury says. I’ve always had the faith.” One of Mr. Seabrook’s lawyers, Anthony L. Ricco, said, “The important thing to realize is that the jury hasn’t accepted the government’s theory of the case.” As the jurors worked to resolve the case, he added, he hoped they would “continue to deliberate, but not really abandon their heartfelt views.” “People shouldn’t be asked to compromise their views for efficiency or expediency,” Mr. Ricco said. Prosecutors had no comment. Judge Patterson said outside the jury’s presence that he was somewhat troubled to think the deliberations might have taken the form of the jurors’ “taking sides.” When he addressed the panel, he encouraged the jurors to take another look at the evidence to see if a verdict could be reached.

Decisions and Verdicts
Frauds and Swindling
Democratic Party
Seabrook Larry B
Ricco Anthony L
Bronx (NYC)
New York City
Politics and Government


Deleted but Not Erased: Photos Reborn

Abstract: THANKS to digital cameras, memories are easier than ever to gather. But as Amy Sevigny learned, they can be more fragile as well. Last April, Ms. Sevigny, a nurse living in southern Maine, lost both her father and her brother within the same week. Her father, John Turgeon, died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, and three days later, her brother, Craig Turgeon, died of cancer at 24. While planning the memorial services, Ms. Sevigny gave her camera to a friend and asked her to print the last photos she had taken of Craig with her 9-month-old son, Jack. The friend returned ashen-faced: a photo technician at Rite Aid had mistakenly erased the disk. “I was completely devastated,” Ms. Sevigny said. I heard about Ms. Sevigny’s problem several weeks later from a mutual friend. Mindful of the advances in digital forensics in the last decade, I looked into services for recovering the photos. I found that Ms. Sevigny’s experience is increasingly common, and not nearly as hopeless as she had initially believed. Every year, thousands of people lose, destroy or mistakenly erase digital photos stored on their camera’s removable storage media. These devices typically come in three varieties: Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards and Secure Digital, or SD, cards. Whatever the name, they can be prone to damage from rough handling, static electricity or a computer malfunction. The biggest computer repair services, like Geek Squad, Gurus2Go and Nerds to Go, do not offer photo recovery. Thankfully, photo-recovery technologies have blossomed along with the growing digital camera market. These services can often produce stellar results as long as you are willing to spend some money, or engage in some careful do-it-yourself work. A handful of software programs available online for about $30, including PhotoRescue and ImageRecall, will help users through the photo-recovery process at home. But experts say that depending on your technological skills, the type of damage involved and the sentimental value of the photos, you may wish to seek outside help. “It’s better to ask someone who knows what they’re doing, because you don’t want to make things worse than they already are,” said Brian Karney, director for product management at Guidance Software, a company based in Pasadena, Calif., that makes digital forensics software for investigators. Mr. Karney said consumers should ask important questions of the people to whom they want to entrust their memory cards. Chief among them, he said, is whether they understand “write blocking,” or data-handling techniques that prevent users from writing new data onto a storage device. “If I plug your memory card into my laptop, the operating system will make changes to the device,” he said. “Every time you do that, you’re making it harder, if not impossible, to get the data back.” To try out some of the photo-recovery services, I gave Ms. Sevigny’s SD card, in turn, to two data-recovery specialists and one computer technician with no such recovery experience. Jim Doyle, a senior director at Guidance Software who once supervised computer investigations for the New York Police Department, was the first to take on the job. Mr. Doyle used Guidance’s EnCase application, and retrieved 65 pictures. The recovery was complicated, Mr. Doyle said, by a common problem. Ms. Sevigny had given up hope that the photos could be recovered, so she took 38 new pictures using the same SD card. If there were photos on the part of the card that had been overwritten, they were lost forever. Fortunately, the photos that were overwritten did not include six of Ms. Sevigny’s son and brother together. Guidance does not offer data-recovery services for consumers, but some businesses that serve consumers, like Rolls-Royce and OfficeMax, use its EnCase software. “Most computer repair shops could probably deal with this kind of recovery,” Mr. Doyle said. “But you have to cross your fingers.” In fact, while computer repair shops welcome the job of saving a glitchy hard drive, they often lack the expertise or willingness to work with digital photo storage, said Haim Sternberg, president of Cherry Systems, a data-recovery service in Marietta, Ga. Mr. Sternberg said that although some of his customers mistakenly erase their photos, roughly 70 percent have lost them through physical damage to the storage device. That can include trying to force an SD card into its slot, or crushing the camera beneath a car tire. In those cases, he said, the company recovers the lost data more than 85 percent of the time. “Often, the biggest hurdle is just getting the right part to reconstruct the piece,” Mr. Sternberg said. Once done, however, Cherry Systems can run the damaged card through its software. Customers pay nothing if the process fails, and success or failure is measured by the company’s ability to retrieve the photos that the customer says are lost. If the company retrieves the photos, the customer pays $150. After scanning Ms. Sevigny’s SD card, Cherry Systems recovered the same photos as those found by Mr. Doyle of Guidance Software. Mr. Sternberg said the company’s success rate in recovering erased photos is above 95 percent. “We know data loss is a very dramatic experience for people,” he said. “We equate it to a family loss.” Mr. Sternberg said that lately, more downloadable software for such problems has come on the market. Among the more popular is PhotoRescue, from the software firm DataRescue, based in Belgium. According to Pierre Vandevenne, the company’s chief executive, DataRescue has helped “hundreds of thousands” of customers in the United States recover lost photos since the program was introduced in 2001. As with some other photo-recovery software available online, PhotoRescue quickly downloads a free trial version to users. Some recovery services will recover a sample — say, 10 percent — of the lost photos, and ask for a fee of about $30 for a full version of the software to recover the rest. PhotoRescue instead recovers all of the available photos, but renders them in thumbnail size, so users can see which photos have been saved. For $29, users download a version of the software that will recover the full-size photos. SD cards have a small tab that prevents the writing of new data to the card when set to “locked” mode, Mr. Vandevenne said. But, he said, customers cannot always be trusted to use write-blocking techniques. Still, consumers can save a lot of money and not compromise their results by using home-based software, Mr. Vandevenne said. To test that point, I gave Ms. Sevigny’s card to Bruce Scranton, a computer specialist in Guilford, Conn., who had no experience with data recovery. Mr. Scranton downloaded PC Inspector Smart Recovery software from a German company called Convar. Within minutes, the program retrieved the same photos found by Cherry Systems and Guidance Software. Convar’s software is free, and the site asks for donations to support its offerings. The results of all three had a profound impact on Ms. Sevigny. “I just started crying, because I wasn’t sure if it would really work,” she said. “I’m so excited, just because my son can know he got to meet Craig, and see how much he loved him.”

Cameras
Storage
Guidance Software Incorporated


Raptors Keep Coach

Abstract: Dwane Casey will remain as the Toronto Raptors’ head coach, General Manager Masai Ujiri said. Casey’s future had been in question after the hiring of Ujiri amid a front-office overhaul.


Pakistan: Bomb Blast Kills 11 at Soccer Field

Abstract: A bomb blast that appeared to be targeting a provincial government minister killed 11 people before dawn on Wednesday at a soccer field in Karachi, officials said. The bomb planted next to the field was hidden in a motorcycle, said a senior police official, Razaq Dharejo. The bomb went off near the vehicle of Javed Naghori, a provincial minister who was leaving after a late-night match between local teams in the Lyari neighborhood, Mr. Dharejo said. Mr. Naghori escaped unharmed. The blast wounded 24 others, said the provincial information minister, Sharjeel Memon. Many of the dead and wounded were young boys standing near the soccer field when the bomb exploded. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Karachi
Terrorism
Fatalities,casualties
Pakistan
Bombs
Javed Naghori


U.S. Is Intensifying a Secret Campaign of Yemen Airstrikes

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen , exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials. The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power. On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki , the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived. The recent operations come after a nearly year-long pause in American airstrikes, which were halted amid concerns that poor intelligence had led to bungled missions and civilian deaths that were undercutting the goals of the secret campaign. Officials in Washington said that the American and Saudi spy services had been receiving more information — from electronic eavesdropping and informants — about the possible locations of militants. But, they added, the outbreak of the wider conflict in Yemen created a new risk: that one faction might feed information to the Americans that could trigger air strikes against a rival group. A senior Pentagon official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that using force against militants in Yemen was further complicated by the fact that Qaeda operatives have mingled with other rebels and antigovernment militants, making it harder for the United States to attack without the appearance of picking sides. The American campaign in Yemen is led by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command , and is closely coordinated with the Central Intelligence Agency . Teams of American military and intelligence operatives have a command post in Sana, the Yemeni capital, to track intelligence about militants in Yemen and plot future strikes. Concerned that support for the campaign could wane if the government of Yemen’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh , were to fall, the United States ambassador in Yemen has met recently with leaders of the opposition, partly to make the case for continuing American operations. Officials in Washington said that opposition leaders have told the ambassador, Gerald M. Feierstein, that operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula should continue regardless of who wins the power struggle in Sana. The extent of America’s war in Yemen has been among the Obama administration’s most closely guarded secrets, as officials worried that news of unilateral American operations could undermine Mr. Saleh’s tenuous grip on power. Mr. Saleh authorized American missions in Yemen in 2009, but placed limits on their scope and has said publicly that all military operations had been conducted by his own troops. Mr. Saleh fled the country last week to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after rebel shelling of the presidential compound, and more government troops have been brought back to Sana to bolster the government’s defense. “We’ve seen the regime move its assets away from counterterrorism and toward its own survival,” said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But as things get more and more chaotic in Yemen, the space for the Americans to operate in gets bigger,” he said. But Mr. Boucek and others warned of a backlash from the American airstrikes, which over the past two years have killed civilians and Yemeni government officials. The benefits of killing one or two Qaeda-linked militants, he said, could be entirely eroded if airstrikes kill civilians and lead dozens of others to jihad. Edmund J. Hull, ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to 2004 and the author of “High-Value Target: Countering Al Qaeda in Yemen,” called airstrikes a “necessary tool” but said that the United States had to “avoid collateral casualties or we will turn the tribes against us.” Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is believed by the C.I.A. to pose the greatest immediate threat to the United States, more so than even Qaeda’s senior leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan . The Yemen group has been linked to the attempt to blow up a transatlantic jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 and last year’s plot to blow up cargo planes with bombs hidden inside printer cartridges. Mr. Harithi, the militant killed on Friday, was an important operational figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was believed to be one of those responsible for the group’s ascendance in recent years. According to people in Yemen close to the militant group, Mr. Harithi travelled to Iraq in 2003 and fought alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , the Jordanian operative who led the Qaeda affiliate in Iraq until he was killed in an American strike in 2006. Mr. Harithi returned to Yemen in 2004, those close to the militants said, where he was captured, tried and imprisoned in 2006 but released three years later. Even as senior administration officials worked behind the scenes with Saudi Arabia for a transitional government to take power in Yemen, a State Department spokesman on Wednesday called on the embattled government in Sana to remain focused on dealing with the rebellion and Qaeda militants. “With Saleh’s departure for Saudi Arabia, where he continues to receive medical treatment, this isn’t a time for inaction,” said the spokesman, Mark Toner. “There is a government that remains in place there, and they need to seize the moment and move forward.”

Yemen
Espionage
US Military
Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Ali Abdullah Saleh


Ellen McCormack, Anti-Abortion Presidential Candidate, Dies at 84

Abstract: Ellen McCormack, a self-described housewife and grandmother who ran for president as an anti-abortion candidate in 1976 and 1980, doing well enough to become the first woman to qualify as a candidate for federal financing and Secret Service protection, died on Sunday in Avon, Conn. She was 84. The cause was congestive heart failure, her daughter Kathleen McCormack-Batterson said. Mrs. McCormack initially ran for the presidency to help focus national attention on abortion after the 1973 Supreme Court decision recognizing women’s right to the procedure. Her television commercials, partly paid for with federal campaign money, attacked abortion as the equivalent of murder. In a 2007 column on the Web site Eagle Forum , Phyllis Schlafly , long a national leader in the fight against abortion, said Mrs. McCormack had played “a major role in the pro-life movement.” “Her leadership,” Ms. Schlafly added, “enabled the then-young pro-life movement to flex its muscles and demonstrate political courage, determination and perseverance.” In 1976, Mrs. McCormack, who ran as a Democrat and campaigned almost solely on the abortion issue, raised a total of $525,580 in contributions of $250 or less from 20 states. That made her eligible for $247,220.37 in federal matching money for the primaries. The money went mainly for anti-abortion television commercials. Mrs. McCormack won 238,000 votes in 18 Democratic primaries, and 22 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. Her success prompted criticism that she had misused amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 that mandated matching money for presidential candidates. Critics said the amendments, adopted in 1974, were never meant to finance single-issue campaigns. Congress responded in March 1976 by requiring a candidate for a presidential nomination to receive more than 10 percent of the vote in two consecutive primaries to qualify for matching money. Mrs. McCormack responded in 1980 by running as the presidential candidate of the Right to Life Party, qualifying for the ballot in Kentucky, New Jersey and New York and winning more than 32,000 votes. This time, she did not apply, nor was she eligible, for matching money. Eleanor Rose Cullen (she preferred to be called Ellen) was born in Manhattan on Sept. 15, 1926. In her early 20s she married Francis McCormack, who became a deputy inspector in the New York Police Department. He died in 1993. The couple lived in Merrick, on Long Island, where Mrs. McCormack, a Roman Catholic, focused on the abortion issue when the procedure was legalized in New York State in 1970. In an interview with The New York Times in 1976, she said she saw slides of fetuses at the time and “was convinced it was a human life being taken.” Her political involvement started with her book discussion group and progressed to membership in the Pro-Life Action Committee. She never became a household name. Newsweek reported that not even her next-door neighbor knew she was running for president. She had never held office in a local P.T.A. “We thought our legislators would take care of it,” she said of the abortion issue in an interview with The Times in 1978. “But they didn’t. We found very early that it’s in politics that the big decisions are made. So we decided to run our own candidates.” As Mrs. McCormack traveled the nation, she did take positions on issues other than abortion. She favored Soviet-American détente, opposed busing to integrate schools and said neither Israel nor Egypt should be sold American arms. She also made a strong pitch for her view of traditional values. “The feminists have convinced politicians they represent all women,” she told The Times in 1976. “But I am a woman, too. I differ with some of their beliefs. I believe in child care for the poor, but I don’t favor child care for the middle class. I think we are teaching working mothers it is more prestigious to work than be home with their children.” In addition to her daughter Kathleen, Mrs. McCormack is survived by two other daughters, Anne McCormack and Ellen Stapleton; a son, John; 11 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. In 1976, Mrs. McCormack emphasized that she was fighting for bus drivers and janitors and continued to run her household despite her hectic campaign schedule. Her husband underscored the point in an interview with Newsweek, saying, “We need more ordinary people like my wife running for president.”

McCormack Ellen
Abortion
United States Politics and Government
Deaths (Obituaries)


Haiti Elections in Doubt as Ex-Presidents Stir Pot

Abstract: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When he returned to Haiti from exile three years ago, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest turned president turned deposed president, promised to stay out of politics. Yet the political party he founded and continues to inspire has routinely sent thousands of people into the streets to protest the current government, demanding the resignation of the prime minister. When the former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier returned from exile a few months before Mr. Aristide, he kept largely to night spots and defending himself against an investigation into human rights atrocities during his rule. Yet not long ago he showed up in a seaside village to inaugurate a new political party that, however small, got a lot of people talking. And the current president, Michel Martelly, remains locked in a standoff with political opponents over long-overdue elections, attracting waves of international dignitaries in recent weeks to try to defuse a crisis that could leave the coup-prone country without a parliament and with a president ruling by decree, an ominous echo of its autocratic past. The story of the delayed reconstruction of Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake is largely one of unmet pledges of billions of dollars in aid from the international community. But the simmering, uncertain politics that perennially push the country to the brink of instability — and sometimes over it — have taken a more hidden toll, thwarting the kind of private investment vital to long-term development and improving its image, and laying bare yet again the fragility of democracy here. “It’s a constant frustration to see Haitian leaders more interested in fighting each other than coming together to work together for the future of Haiti,” said Robert Maguire, a George Washington University scholar and longtime observer of Haiti politics. “Opportunities are being squandered in Haiti, right when it needs them more than ever, because the politics are so polarized.” Mark L. Schneider, a Haiti expert at the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that analyzes conflict zones, said many investors who have expressed interest in Haiti have not followed through in part because of the unsettled politics, unfulfilled changes to business law to ease investment, and weak institutions. “People are just holding their breath,” Mr. Schneider said. “Until the political uncertainty is resolved, a lot of people do not want to invest.” Mr. Martelly and Parliament cannot agree on how municipal and legislative elections intended for October would be run. Without the election, Parliament could be dissolved in January, throwing the country into political chaos. Even if the election could be pulled off, things could get unwieldy: Two-thirds of the 30-member Senate, all 99 seats in the lower chamber and hundreds of municipal offices would be at stake. Both sides blame the other for intransigence. Mr. Martelly, his opponents say, has always wanted to rule by decree and so until recently, facing tremendous international pressure — including an Oval Office urging by President Obama — he has dragged his feet on negotiating for elections. Martelly supporters counter that members of Parliament have stalled because they wanted to extend their terms and weaken the president ahead of the presidential election in 2015. Mr. Martelly, who has made little secret of his disdain for Congress, is now attempting to push forward with the elections by naming his own council to run them, including last month appointing a Duvalier friend and lawyer to the panel, drawing new fire from opponents worried about the influence of the old dictator. Although a handful of new hotels have opened or are under construction, a few new garment and other industrial factories have opened, and, officials assert, crime has dropped, there is a sense that Haiti’s redevelopment should be farther along. Electricity still comes and goes, roads remain choked and potholed, refuse clogs drainage canals and 137,000 people remain in encampments — though that’s down from 1.5 million after the earthquake. Image Michel Martelly Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press On the streets people complain that the halting rebuilding has not done enough to narrow the deep chasm of inequality that has long bedeviled the country and often stirred political dissent. “In the media they say they are doing this and that, but not around here — it is all the same,” said Jean Lucknef, 38, an unemployed laborer in the Fort National neighborhood, one of the hardest hit in the quake. “No matter who is elected it is all the same. The government was supposed to create jobs, and we have none while we all have children to worry about.” He swept his hand around a group of idle young men, some smoking marijuana, who admitted they have participated in protests but denied, as some Martelly supporters have said, that they were paid to do so. “We want the change that we were promised,” said one, who declined to give his name out of fear of reprisals from the police. Mr. Martelly met last week with members of the Senate to reach a new compromise for elections, but talks ended without an agreement. Haiti’s newly appointed Cardinal Chibly Langlois had mediated a previous agreement to hold the elections, but it has not been ratified by the Senate because six members refuse to sit, denying a quorum for the vote. As part of that agreement, reached among some 50 political parties but boycotted by some of the largest Martelly opponents, Mr. Martelly’s prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, agreed to shake up the cabinet — the third one in two years — in a bid for more openness with the opposition. Haitian journalists, however, could find few if any dissident voices among the new appointees. Mr. Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party was conspicuously absent from the agreement. The party has splintered over internal disagreements since the return of Mr. Aristide, a touchstone figure of the left here and abroad who ushered in Haiti’s first democratic elections in 1991 in a coup-interrupted first term but left on an American military airplane in his second term in 2004 as dissent threatened to topple him. Maryse Narcisse, the party’s coordinator and a potential candidate for president, said Mr. Aristide, who did not respond to an interview request, remains the “charismatic leader” of the party and offers advice as someone who “has a lot of political experience,” but mainly focuses his time on his educational foundation. She denied the party was sowing chaos but instead, like a smattering of lesser-known parties protesting in the streets, was exercising its right to hold the government accountable. “Lavalas will continue to mobilize with the people of Haiti,” she said. Less certain is what Mr. Duvalier is up to. Several people with ties to his regime have served in the Martelly administration or advised it, and his sudden, if fleeting, reappearance on the political stage was seen among analysts as a tweak to Mr. Aristide, a bitter enemy and political opposite. Amid all the uncertainty, an array of international leaders — including ambassadors, former world leaders and members of the United States Congress — have visited Haiti in recent weeks to push for the elections and avert a worsening of the crisis. The lack of elections this year “would engender yet another political crisis, with unpredictable consequences for the future of Haitian democracy,” said a statement by the United Nations and the Core Group of ambassadors from the United States, France, Canada and other primary supporters of Haiti. The stalemate could go on. The president of the Senate, Simon Desras, has not sounded conciliatory, publicly accusing Mr. Martelly and Mr. Lamothe of violating the Constitution at best, corruption at worst. He has not pushed a vote on the accord because, he said, it is unconstitutional. “It is the dream of the government to rule by decree,” he said in an interview. “They don’t see the danger in the streets, that many senators and members of Congress could become militants. The country would plunge into chaos if there are no elections.”

Haiti
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Michel Martelly
Jean-Claude Duvalier Baby Doc
Election
Legislature
Earthquake


Webdenda

Abstract: Leila Amirsadeghi joined Trailer Park, Hollywood, Calif., in a new post, vice president for client engagement. She had most recently run her own creative consulting practice, Mesh, and before that was senior director for business development at Blitz, Santa Monica, Calif. Charlie Anderson joined Project WorldWide in a new post, senior vice president for shopper marketing, based in Fayetteville, Ark. He had been chief executive for North America at Saatchi & Saatchi X, part of the Saatchi & Saatchi division of the Publicis Groupe, also based in Fayetteville. Robert Boucher joined David & Goliath, El Segundo, Calif., in a new post, director for digital delivery and technology. He had been director for creative technology at BLT Communications, Los Angeles. Ned Brown and Krista Lang joined 22squared, Atlanta. Mr. Brown becomes senior vice president and creative director, succeeding Tom McMahon, who left the agency to start Atomc Woodworks; Mr. Brown had been a creative director at Apple. Ms. Lang becomes senior vice president and executive media director, succeeding Lisa Duncan, who resigned, the agency said; Ms. Lang had been media director at the Seattle office of Razorfish, part of the Publicis Groupe. Brent Choi joined JWT Canada, Toronto, part of the JWT unit of WPP, in a new post, chief creative and integration officer. With his arrival, Martin Shewchuk, executive creative director, becomes creative chairman at JWT Canada. Mr. Choi had been chief creative officer at Cundari, Toronto. David Fisher joined the New York office of Arnold Worldwide, part of the Havas Creative unit of Havas, in a new post, director for integrated production. He had most recently been executive producer and production director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York, part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group. Leo P. Francis joined McCann Complete Medical, New York, in a new post, executive vice president at McCann Complete Medical U.S. He had been president at the Publicis Medical Education Group division of the Publicis Groupe. McCann Complete Medical is part of the McCann Health division of the McCann Worldgroup, which is owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies. Jonathan Gardner joined the New York office of Turn in a new post, director for communications, overseeing those duties on a worldwide basis. He had been global director for communications at Vibrant Media, New York. Ron Gillyard joined Quantasy, Los Angeles, in a new post, chief growth officer. He had been running a consulting business, working with music and technology companies, and before that was an executive at companies like Bad Boy Entertainment and Interscope Records. Amy Gunzenhauser joined Bpg Advertising, Los Angeles, in a new post, senior director for social media and strategy. She had been director for social media and strategy at the Los Angeles office of Way to Blue. Christopher S. Holben, vice president and director for public relations at Runyon Saltzman & Einhorn, Sacramento, was named president and director for public relations. He assumes the president’s post from Estelle G. Saltzman, who becomes chairwoman. David Jones joined the Toronto office of Critical Mass, part of the Omnicom Group, as vice president for its social practice, leading social operations globally. He succeeds Heidi Skinner, who is now e-marketing manager at the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Milwaukee. Mr. Jones had been vice president for strategy at Blast Radius, Toronto. Anna Magzanyan joined The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles, in a new post, vice president for marketing. She had most recently been senior vice president for strategic partnerships at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, part of Clear Channel Communications. The Hollywood Reporter is owned by Guggenheim Digital Media, formerly known as Prometheus Global Media; Guggenheim is owned by Guggenheim Partners. Bill Masterson joined SocialCode, New York, in a new post, chief revenue officer. He had been a sales director at the New York office of Facebook. Maxwell Systems, King of Prussia, Pa., which sells management software to construction companies, named Stein & Partners Brand Activation as agency of record. Billings were not disclosed. There had not been a previous agency of record. The Okaloosa County Tourism Development Department in Florida chose Peter Mayer Advertising, New Orleans, as its agency of record, to promote Okaloosa County — including Destin, Fort Walton and Okaloosa Island — as a travel destination. The account had been handled by the Zimmerman Agency, Tallahassee, Fla. Spending was estimated at $437, 580 each year. Albert Poon joined Doremus Hong Kong and Doremus Beijing, part of the Doremus division of the Omnicom Group, in a new post, group creative director. He had most recently been creative director at Atelier Design, Hong Kong. Ripley’s Believe It or Not Times Square selected RP3 Agency, Bethesda, Md., as its agency of record. Spending was not disclosed. The account had previously been handled by the Pekoe Group, New York. The Ripley’s Believe It or Not in Times Square is owned by Big Apple Entertainment Partners, part of 1848 Capital Partners. Caralene Robinson joined VH1, part of Viacom, as senior vice president for creative group and consumer marketing. She succeeds Nigel Cox-Hagan, who left, the channel said. Ms. Robinson had most recently been vice president for brand strategy and marketing communications at Sprint Nextel. Mike Rosen joined the New York office of Telemundo Media, part of the NBCUniversal division of Comcast, as executive vice president for advertising sales and integrated marketing. He succeeds Dan Lovinger, who was recently promoted to executive vice president for advertising sales at the NBCUniversal Cable unit of NBCUniversal. Mr. Rosen had been president for investment and activation at the New York office of Starcom, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe; he was recently succeeded there by Amanda Richman . St. Lucia Tourist Board, St. Lucia, West Indies, selected ISM Lifestyle Marketing, Boston, as its agency of record. Spending was not disclosed. The account had previously been handled by Figment Design, Coconut Grove, Fla. Salmon Group, London, has become part of WPP, London, as WPP acquires the Salmon parent, Okam. Financial terms were not disclosed. Salmon, which specializes in e-commerce and digital consulting for retailers, will operate as an autonomous unit of WPP. UniversityNow , San Francisco, the parent of Patten University and New Charter University, hired Neighbor, Santa Monica, Calif., as its first agency of record. Spending was not disclosed. Andrew Vasquez joined the Seattle office of Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener as senior designer. He had been a senior designer at Creature, Seattle. Matt Weisbecker joined GumGum, Santa Monica, Calif., in a new post, vice president for Western sales. He had most recently been director for national sales and strategy at the Amazon Media Group division of Amazon.

advertising,marketing
Appointments and Executive Changes
Public relations


Flyers Acquire Defenseman Luke Schenn From Maple Leafs

Abstract: The Philadelphia Flyers acquired defenseman Luke Schenn from the Toronto Maple Leafs for forward James van Riemsdyk. Schenn, 22, who has 14 goals and 61 assists in four seasons, should help replace the void created by the loss of Chris Pronger, who is unlikely to return because of postconcussion symptoms. Van Riemsdyk, also 22, has 47 goals and 52 assists for 99 points in three seasons. ¶ The biggest eyebrow-raiser of the N.H.L. entry draft in Pittsburgh might have been the Devils’ choice of Stefan Matteau with the 29th pick Friday night after the Rangers had passed on him at No. 28. Matteau wryly asserted that “I’m in shock myself” about going to the Devils, the team his father beat with a Game 7 overtime goal in 1994. On Saturday, the elder Matteau, Stephane, said he was happy his son wound up with the Devils. “It’s one of the classiest organizations in the league,” he said. “It’s just kind of weird that he’ll be with the Devils, and the Rangers are their No. 1 rivals.” JEFF Z. KLEIN

Hockey Ice
Toronto Maple Leafs
Philadelphia Flyers
van Riemsdyk James
Schenn Luke


The Built-In Accessibility Features of iOS

Abstract: Q. How can mobile technology help the visually impaired? My mother is legally blind and elderly but I would like for her to enjoy books and take advantage of voice controls — preferably on the Apple platform. Are there any organizations out there that could offer some help on a technological level? A. The three major mobile platforms — Apple’s iOS , Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone — all include tools and features to help users with low or impaired vision, as well as those with hearing or motor-skills issues. Apple and Microsoft also have accessibility features built into the macOS and Windows desktop operating systems, as do some Linux distributions . Apple’s latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 10, includes several new features for those with visual impairments . For example, you can invert or filter screen colors in the Display Accommodation controls, or use the device’s camera and flash as an illuminated digital magnifying glass with the Magnifier feature. Image Apple’s iOS 10 software includes a Magnifier feature that lets you use the device’s camera like a digital magnifying glass. Credit The New York Times You can find all of Apple’s assistive iOS 10 features in the system settings. To get there, tap the Settings icon on the home screen, select General and then Accessibility. Once in the settings, you can turn on the VoiceOver feature, which audibly describes what is on the screen and can be controlled with touch-screen gestures or a Braille display . Some people have even used the VoiceOver feature and Siri to recite the text from iBooks aloud. The voice-activated Siri assistant can handle voice commands and control certain apps. The iOS Accessibility settings include a Zoom function, controls for making the onscreen text bigger and an Accessibility Shortcut to reach the system’s assistive features quickly by triple-clicking the Home button. The system can even provide audible text corrections when you type. As for training with using the Accessibility settings, Apple’s support site has a collection of illustrated technical support articles . The Mac for the Blind website sells training packages for using Apple products and can provide personalized support over Skype, FaceTime, Messages or telephone. The American Foundation for the Blind has a list of resources for iOS users. Helpful sites around the web like iMore and iAccessibility (which offers suggestions for specialized apps, accessories and training videos) are among the resources available for those who want to better learn how to use the assistive features of iOS.

Blindness
Apple
American Foundation for the Blind
Microsoft Windows
Linux
Android


Home Construction Rises, as Do Building Permits

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Builders began construction of single-family homes at a faster pace in August, and building permits for construction hit a five-year high, pointing to resilience in the housing market recovery in the face of higher mortgage rates. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that construction starts on single-family homes surged 7 percent to an annual rate of 628,000 units last month, the highest level in six months. Single-family homes are by far the largest segment of the market. Groundbreaking in the volatile apartment and condominium sector tumbled 11.1 percent. That limited the rise in overall housing starts to an 891,000-unit annual rate, much smaller than the 917,000-unit rate economists had expected. While higher mortgage rates have slowed home sales, demand for homes, as the rate of household formation rises, is expected to bolster residential construction. “Home building seems to be holding up decently in the higher mortgage rate environment, probably due to the support of strong underlying fundamentals — thin inventories and steady household formation,” Guy Berger, an economist, said. Mortgage rates have risen in recent months in anticipation that the Federal Reserve was ready to reduce its $85 billion monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, which it has been buying to keep interest rates low and stimulate the economy. The Fed, however, surprised the financial markets on Wednesday by maintaining its bond-buying program and not cutting back. That move could ease mortgage rates. In a separate report, the Mortgage Bankers Association said applications for home loans rose last week as mortgage rates eased off recent highs. Since early May, rates on 30-year mortgages have risen more than 1 percentage point to about 4.5 percent. Still, mortgage rates remain historically low, and economists do not expect the increase to throw the housing recovery off track. Home building is expected to slow a bit this quarter from the second quarter, but still contribute to growth this year. Though residential construction accounts for only 3.1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, economists estimate that for every single-family home built, three jobs that last for a year are created. Last month, building permits for single-family homes rose 3 percent to their highest since May 2008. A survey on Tuesday showed that confidence among builders of single-family houses remained near an eight-year high in September, with builders upbeat about prospective buyer traffic. “We expect to see a more meaningful rebound in construction activity in the coming months,” said Millan Mulraine, senior economist at TD Securities. Building permits for multifamily homes, however, dropped 15.7 percent last month, pushing down overall permits 3.8 percent to an annual rate of 918,000 units. The drop in multifamily housing starts and building permits suggested that the higher mortgage rates could be making developers cautious about taking on new projects. Builders have also been complaining about expensive materials and a shortage of labor.

Real Estate
Housing
Construction
Mortgage loan
Federal Reserve
US Economy


Borussia Dortmund’s Goetze May Miss Champions League Final

Abstract: Borussia Dortmund midfielder Mario Goetze pulled out of training on his comeback from a hamstring injury, putting his participation in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich in doubt. He will have a magnetic resonance imaging test before it can be determined if he can play Saturday against Bayern, the club he will join next season.

Soccer
Bayern Munich Soccer Team
UEFA Champions League
Sports injury


Tiny Particle Looms Large on Eve of Top Physics Prize

Abstract: It’s that time of year again, when physicists of a certain age, even if they do not want to admit it, are afraid to step into their morning shower for fear of missing the call from Stockholm. This year the pressure is magnified if you are Peter Higgs, 84, a legendarily shy and self-effacing professor at the University of Edinburgh whose name is attached to what is so far the landmark discovery in physics this century: a particle said to be the key to explaining the existence of mass, diversity and — yes — life in the universe, the Higgs boson. Most people know it as the “God particle.” Dr. Higgs — the J. D. Salinger of physics — has already let it be known that he will not be available in any form on Tuesday. But if you believe the oddsmakers, the news media and the self-appointed prognosticators, Dr. Higgs is a lock to join the immortals on Tuesday, when this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced. The announcement had been scheduled for 5:45 a.m. Eastern time but was delayed by at least an hour. But he will not be the only one pausing by the shower. At least four other living theorists can claim credit for coming up with the idea of the boson — quantum-speak for a force-particle — and its mother ship, the Higgs field, in three papers published back in 1964. Not to mention the 10,000 or so scientists who built the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the nuclear research organization, and then sifted through two trillion subatomic collisions to find the long-sought particle. According to tradition, a maximum of three living people can share the award. It is rare that there is an obvious candidate for the physics prize. Many people think it would be crazy for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences not to recognize the rock star event of the decade, but nothing is ever for certain. On July 4, 2012, physicists working at CERN in Switzerland announced that they had discovered a particle matching the description of the Higgs boson. The news sparked headlines and set Champagne fountains around the world flowing. It also started a widespread debate about who would win the Nobel Prize, if the work panned out, which it has. Betting pools like Ladbrokes in London and other prognosticators have named Dr. Higgs the leading candidate. As he once told The Guardian newspaper, speaking of the boson that bears his name: “It has consequences. If it wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be here.” (Indeed, a Scientific American blog put up a joke article saying the prize had been awarded to the subatomic particle itself.) Image Peter Higgs on July 4, 2012, when the heads of two large research groups, working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, independently confirmed the existence of the particle bearing his name. Credit Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Besides Dr. Higgs, the other theorists with good claims to the particle are François Englert and his colleague Robert Brout of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the team of Tom Kibble of Imperial College London, Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester and Gerald Guralnik of Brown University. Dr. Brout died in 2011, so he is not eligible for the prize. Other theorists who get mentioned sometimes in the Higgs conversation are Jeffrey Goldstone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose work in the early 1960s drove much of the theoretical work of Dr. Higgs and the others, and Philip W. Anderson of Princeton, already a Nobel laureate, whose work on superconductivity in 1963 helped point the way for Dr. Higgs. As for the experimentalists, here is where the Nobel tradition of the one genius meets the reality of collaborative modern science, and the oddsmakers throw up their hands. Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, which has been given to groups, the physics prize so far has always gone to people. One solution would be to give the prize to the leaders of the two collaborations, CMS and Atlas, that found the boson. As of the July announcement, they were Joseph Incandela of CMS and Fabiola Gianotti of Atlas — but the leadership revolves, so winning would be a fluke of timing. Another would be to give it to the leaders of CERN: the director general, Rolf Dieter-Heuer, who muscled the two giant collaborations to the finish line; Lyn Evans, who oversaw the building of the Large Hadron Collider from its beginnings; and Steve Myers, who wrote the first paper proposing what would become the Large Hadron Collider back in 1984 and has kept the machine running. But that would leave out the unsung heroes and graduate students who did the work. An informal survey of physics insiders this summer found widespread doubt that the Royal Academy would be able to find a way to “narrow the circle,” as one physicist put it. Most seem to agree that if any prize is given for the theory, Dr. Higgs should be part of it. Often Dr. Englert is also mentioned. He and Dr. Brout beat Dr. Higgs to the punch back in 1964, limning the notion of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass, but they did not explicitly point out that there was a new particle associated with that force field, the one we now call the Higgs, although they have argued that it was implicit in the math. Drs. Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble were the last to weigh in, and although they did mention the new boson, they have fought to be included in the glory. Reached last week, Dr. Hagen said his expectations were low. If there is a third theorist from 1964, it might be Dr. Kibble, who has a long and distinguished career. In 2004, Drs. Higgs, Brout and Englert won the Wolf Prize, considered to be a forerunner of the Nobel. In 2010, Drs. Higgs, Brout, Englert, Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble shared the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, another important forerunner, and the first time that prize had been split six ways. This year, the European Physical Society gave its high energy and particle physics prize to the Atlas and CMS collaborations, naming the founders of those experiments, Michel Della Negra, Peter Jenni and Tejinder Virdee. In an e-mail, Dr. Jenni wrote, “I honestly hope that the Nobel will this year go to those who motivated us to start the LHC adventure.” He named Dr. Higgs and Dr. Englert specifically, adding, “These gentlemen are already old, no point to wait longer!”

Higgs Boson
Peter Ware Higgs
Nobel Prize
Physics
Particle accelerator
CERN
Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble
Carl Richard Hagen
Francois Englert
Robert Brout


Obama Says He Will Seek More Money for AIDS Programs

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama won plaudits from AIDS groups that have criticized him in the past with his announcement on Thursday that he is seeking additional federal money for efforts to prevent and treat the disease in the United States and globally. “So make no mistake, we are going to win this fight,” Mr. Obama told an audience of international activists, celebrities and lawmakers of both parties assembled at George Washington University for the annual World AIDS Day , 30 years after the disease was identified. “But this fight is not over — not by a long shot.” That comment seemed directed at potential donors, whether organizations, individuals or other countries. Advocacy groups say contributions have suffered as perceptions have taken hold that the epidemic has been arrested. Mr. Obama acknowledged that while the rate of infection has declined elsewhere, in the United States it has remained steady, disproportionately hitting the young, African-Americans and Hispanics. “This fight is not over — not for the 1.2 million Americans who are living with H.I.V. right now, not for the Americans who are infected every day” or their families, Mr. Obama said. And, he added, “It certainly isn’t over for your president.” For the domestic fight, Mr. Obama announced that he was committing to seek $15 million more for the Ryan White program supporting H.I.V. medical clinics in the United States and $35 million for state programs providing access to necessary drugs. For global efforts, he set a goal of nearly doubling to six million the number of infected people who will get antiretroviral AIDS drugs through a program that his predecessor, George W. Bush, started. Mr. Bush and former President Bill Clinton appeared by satellite, Mr. Bush from Tanzania, a focal point of the anti-AIDS effort in Africa. Throughout his administration, activists have complained that the Obama administration has done less for the global fight than Mr. Bush. During the 2010 mid-term election campaign season, they repeatedly heckled Mr. Obama at political appearances — a situation the White House surely wants to avoid as he seeks re-election in 2012. On Wednesday,Mr. Obama paid tribute to Mr. Bush, calling his contributions “one of his greatest legacies,” but he also strongly defended his own record. Mr. Obama said that under his administration, the government has increased support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and reauthorized the Ryan White program. And, to applause from attendees including the musicians Bono and Alicia Keys, he recalled that he had ended a ban that prevented people with HIV-A.I.D.S. from entering the country — an action that cleared the way for the United States to host an international AIDS conference next year, for the first time in the gathering’s two decades. “The president just put a powerful down payment toward the end of the AIDS crisis,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of advocacy for Health GAP , an activist group, in a statement. And the international group Doctors Without Borders hailed Mr. Obama’s financing commitment as “the shot in the arm that the global H.I.V./AIDS response needs right now,” and called on Congress “to turn this commitment into reality.” For several minutes after his address Mr. Obama greeted audience members. Then he returned to the White House, where a huge red ribbon hung from the North Portico in honor of World AIDS Day, flanked by two newly decorated Christmas trees.

Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria


Troubled Manhattan Commercial College to Close

Abstract: Interboro Institute, the fast-growing two-year commercial college in New York City that ran into problems with state regulators two years ago, will close on Friday because it cannot raise the money it needs to meet stiffer state requirements, according to a statement from its parent company on Monday. Interboro students will be able to transfer to other colleges, including Interboro’s sister college, Technical Career Institutes — owned by the same parent company, EVCI Career Colleges Holding Corporation. Interboro has about 2,500 students, according to the State Education Department. Joseph D. Alperin, general counsel of EVCI, said it was working to make the transition for Interboro’s continuing students to Technical Career Institutes or other colleges “as seamless as possible.” In September, the Board of Regents said that commercial schools could no longer use the preadmission test that Interboro was using to determine whether students without high school diplomas had the ability to benefit from higher education, and thus be eligible for financial aid. Interboro, which specialized in serving such students, said the pass rate for its spring 2008 applicants using the replacement test was about one-third of the pass rate on the old test. Two years ago, state undercover agents found cheating by Interboro’s admissions officials in determining who qualified for state financial aid and directed it to limit its enrollment.

Colleges and Universities
Interboro Institute
Education and Schools
Manhattan (NYC)
New York City
Shutdowns (Institutional)


Arrests in Iraq Raise Concerns About Maliki

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has moved swiftly to consolidate power in advance of the American military withdrawal, offering a glimpse of how Iraq ’s post-American identity may take shape, by rounding up hundreds of former Baath Party members and evicting Western companies from the heavily fortified Green Zone. As Mr. Maliki met with President Obama in Washington on Monday to discuss Iraq’s future after the end of a painful nearly nine-year war, his aggressive actions back home raised new concerns in the West, where officials have long been uneasy with the prime minister’s authoritarian tendencies. The actions also underscored the many lingering questions about America’s uncertain ally, a prime minister who once found refuge in Syria and Iran and who will now help write the epitaph to the American invasion. “There are two dominant narratives in Washington about Maliki,” said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington who recently published a report on the arrests. “Some say he is a nationalist; others say he is a puppet of Iran.” Both are oversimplifications, he said: “Maliki is a Maliki-ist. His religion is the church of survivability.” Mr. Maliki, whose bland public persona belies his mastery of Iraq’s zero-sum politics, will help decide if his nation preserves its fragile democracy or if it will return to one-man-one-party rule. As an exile from Saddam Hussein ’s Iraq who escaped a death warrant, Mr. Maliki has proven his ability to retain power. But he is also criticized for holding tight to a security-first mentality. And as a Shiite leader who some say owes his current position to Iran’s backing, he has not made clear if Washington, or Tehran, will wield more influence. A Western diplomat who has worked closely with Mr. Maliki said the prime minister’s mind-set still reflected the years after the American invasion when 3,000 Iraqi civilians were dying each month and sectarian war threatened to rip the country apart. “He sees himself as fighting since 2006 to pull the country out of the brink,” the diplomat said. But Mr. Maliki has also taken steps to put his stamp on the Green Zone, the physical center of government whose geography and very name became shorthand for the cloistered American presence. His son, Ahmed, has overseen raids evicting Western companies from the Green Zone in recent weeks. As the prime minister left for the United States , onerous new security procedures were put in place at the few entrances into the area. That, and the scale and secrecy of the arrests in October and November, of 600 former Baathists, have raised new tensions in Iraq’s suspicious political atmosphere. They have fanned fears that Mr. Maliki will use the threat of terrorism and unrest as a pretext to strike political foes. The Iraqi government said the arrests had been prompted by a tip from Libya ’s transitional government that said documents revealed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was working with insurgents to stage a coup. Mr. Maliki has denied any sectarian or political motives behind the sweep, pointing out that both Shiites and Sunnis were arrested. In an interview with Iraq’s official television channel, he said the raids had captured loyalists to Saddam Hussein who were conspiring with Al Qaeda , not peaceful, low-level party apparatchiks. “We do not have space in our government for those plotting against our government,” he said. A person briefed on the raid by Iraqi security forces said some of the detainees were in fact military and intelligence officials from the old government. Other names on the target lists, however, included laborers, political adversaries of the government, the elderly — even dead people. “It’s highly unlikely to be much validity behind” the coup plot, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, to avoid upsetting relations with the Iraqi government. “Baathism here is a symbol that Maliki uses as a bogyman. It gives them the leeway to go around arresting people. It’s about a climate of fear.” Mr. Maliki’s signal achievement since he first won office in 2006 has been consolidating control of the security forces, reducing violence through a willingness to crack down on Shiite militias from strongholds in the southern city of Basra. The defeat of the militias demonstrated to Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, that Mr. Maliki would evenly target all insurgent groups, regardless of sect, and bolstered his credentials as a nationalist. As Iraq’s commander in chief, he sometimes micromanages the forces under his control. He pays informers out of his own pocket for intelligence and sometimes sends orders to commanders in the field by text message, officials say. But in a country where political leaders regularly fly off to second homes in Jordan or London , Mr. Maliki often works through the night in his Baghdad offices and has a steel-trap memory for dates, names and conversations. His family — wife, four daughters and a son — all live in Iraq, while many leading politicians have moved their families abroad. If he eschews a cult of personality like that built by Mr. Hussein, his close control over Iraq’s police and army and his influence over the country’s judicial system have drawn calls that Mr. Maliki is becoming too powerful. His government has come under criticism from rights groups for running secret jails, widespread abuses inside Iraq’s detention system, and for jailing political adversaries, such as journalists and demonstrators calling for government reforms. In interviews, a handful of the people arrested in the recent Baathist sweeps spoke angrily about the justice system. “It’s unbelievable,” said Abu Muamel Bahadli, 60, a retired teacher from Basra who was arrested. “They don’t have an idea about who is the real enemy. They also want to keep the people distracted from their corruption. I spent two weeks and then they released me without one question.” Nearly nine years after the American invasion broke the Baath Party’s stranglehold on power, the specter of Baathism remains a ghost that Iraq cannot seem to exorcise. The Baath Party staged coups in 1963 and 1968 to seize power, and its persistent, if shadowy, presence in Sunni areas of the country offers a reminder that few Iraqi leaders leave office peacefully. In late October, more than 100 professors at Tikrit University — in Mr. Hussein’s hometown — were fired for alleged Baathist connections. “You can’t live in a democratic system in this way,” said former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi , a former Baathist himself who frequently clashes with the prime minister. “It is painful to see what is happening to this country.” Despite strains of Sunni disenfranchisement, Sunni Arab politicians hold powerful posts in government, including speaker of Parliament, deputy prime minister and vice president. (A Kurd serves as president.) And, as Mr. Maliki frequently points out in speeches, deadly vestiges of Mr. Hussein’s government do continue to stalk Iraq. But when the Iraqi forces arrested former Baathists, they also hauled in suspects like Jasim Nusaif, a 71-year-old retired bureaucrat with high blood pressure and a tendency to faint on his morning walks to buy bread. Mr. Nusaif’s wife and son said he was an employee in Iraq’s Water Ministry who was expelled from the Baath Party in the early 1980s for refusing to volunteer for the front lines in the grinding Iran-Iraq war. He retired from the government and worked for a while at a minibus depot. Mostly, his family said, he now just collected his pension and read the newspapers at home in the heavily Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, a jumble of faded colonial mansions where bombs still rip through crowds. “He’s old and he’s sick. He just sits in the garden ,” said his son, Mohammed Jasim. “I can’t believe how a 71-year-old man could carry out a military coup against the government.”

Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
Iraq
Politics
Baath Party
US Foreign Policy
Iran


Joining International Criminal Court Wouldn’t Guarantee Palestinians a War Crimes Case

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The political fallout from the Palestinian move Wednesday to join the International Criminal Court is likely to be swift and profound. Israel is expected to withhold tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority , restrict officials’ travel and possibly advance settlement activity in sensitive spots in the West Bank. The United States Congress may cut off $400 million in aid to the Palestinians . The already dim prospects for renewing peace talks now seem null. But legal repercussions from last summer’s war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, or Israel’s settlements, would take longer and face many hurdles. The cases Palestinians plan to bring against Israel, and potential counterclaims against Palestinian officials, are unlike any the International Criminal Court has tackled in its dozen-year history. The Hague court, facing new scrutiny after the collapse last month of its case against the president of Kenya , may be wary of wading into the fraught politics of the Middle East, though doing so could help it rebuff longstanding criticism of its emphasis on pursuing African despots. “It may jump at the chance because it’s under fire,” Geoffrey Robertson, a British lawyer and author, said of the court, which he follows closely. “This is an opportunity to get out of the endless African wars and to do something which is very much in the public eye, and very much of public importance,” he added. “It would be a new and possibly productive way to deal with the cloudy legalities.” But other legal scholars said the United Nations’ estimate that about 1,500 civilians were killed in Gaza might not meet the court’s threshold for “unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity.” Michael P. Scharf, the dean of the Case Western Reserve University law school in Ohio, said that past cases “involved hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands of deaths,” and that the court “requires that they be committed as part of a policy or plan, and not simply incidental to attacks on enemy targets.” As for the settlements, Robbie Sabel, an international law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said delving into them would put the court in the awkward position of essentially defining the borders of a Palestinian state. “Up to now the crimes they have dealt with are mass murders and rapes, not where a border is, an issue which is clearly political,” said Mr. Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “My assumption is that on the political issue of where the border should be, whether East Jerusalem should be part of the Palestinian state, they would hesitate.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement Thursday that he expected the court to reject the Palestinian Authority’s “hypocrite application at once,” but experts on international law said the court has indicated that it would not reject the application. Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but Dore Gold, an adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said Thursday, “the arena is not just The Hague.” “If they want to open up the legal arena, Israel has many tools,” Mr. Gold said on Israeli radio. Citing cases in which victims’ families have sued Iran in American courts for sponsoring terrorism, he added, “if there is property belonging to the Palestinian Authority in the United States and the Palestinian Authority is involved in terror attacks against Israeli citizens, we can help them with claims all over the world.” The papers the Palestinians signed Wednesday acceding to the Rome Statute , which established the court in 2002, will soon be delivered to the United Nations secretary general and distributed to the court’s 122 member countries. There is then a 60-day waiting period before any member state can ask the court’s prosecutor to look at the Palestinian situation, or she could decide to do so on her own. A self-defined “court of last resort,” it would have to determine that Israel’s justice system had not genuinely addressed accusations of war crimes. There are also technical questions regarding the contours of Palestinian territory, the definition of Palestinian citizenship and the timetable for potential cases. Even preliminary inquiries can last for years. Some experts say any incidents since the court was created are fair game, while others say the court can deal only with matters since the United Nations General Assembly upgraded Palestine’s status to nonmember observer in 2012, or perhaps only after the Palestinian Authority joins the court in March. Shawan Jabarin, director of the human rights group Al Haq , said the Palestinians would submit a request for retroactive jurisdiction to last June 13, to coincide with the period being considered by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry. Mr. Jabarin said the commission, with which Israel has refused to cooperate, would provide an initial report in March that could serve as a road map for the Hague court. Separately, his group and others have been documenting allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, and are working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare complaints about Israeli settlements. “The crime is not just the rape and the widespread killing or something like that, but also to transfer civilians and to confiscate land and to destroy property,” Mr. Jabarin said. “It’s a different way of rape, it’s a different way of killing, it’s a different way of destruction.” The court defines a war crime as “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power, of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Israel captured from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 ; experts said settlers were unlikely to face prosecution, but charges could be aimed at government officials who provided incentives to lure them. “Crimes of aggression” may be added to the court’s mandate in 2017, possibly including the annexation of lands — which Israel undertook in East Jerusalem as well as the Golan Heights — military occupation and the blockade of coasts, as many international critics refer to Israel’s restrictions on Gaza’s waterways. But the court has not yet dealt with such issues. Experts said thousands of complaints had been submitted — one in 2011 urging that the pope and three top Vatican officials be prosecuted for “abetting and covering up” the sexual assault of children by priests — but very few pursued. (The church abuse case was not.) In November, the court’s chief prosecutor declined to investigate the Israel Defense Force’s deadly storming of a flotilla of ships delivering aid to Gaza, saying the “small number of victims” was not sufficiently grave. Joining the court would also open Palestinians to prosecution. Shurat HaDin , an Israeli legal organization, pre-emptively sent complaints to The Hague against President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Khaled Meshal, a leader of the militant Hamas faction, as well as one about Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus in 1974, hoping this would deter prosecution of Israelis. Mr. Scharf, of Case Western, said any action in The Hague was “likely to unfold over a period of several years,” if at all. Gaza “is not a case the I.C.C. prosecutor is eager to take on, given its immense geopolitical implications,” he said in an email, and although settlements “may be inconsistent with international law,” the court was “highly unlikely to consider them a crime against humanity or war crime.” After the criticism she faced over the Kenya case, he added, “I would think the I.C.C. prosecutor would be more cautious.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


After Brain Surgery, H.M. Solved Crossword Puzzles Without a Memory

Abstract: He did two crossword puzzles a day, sometimes more, working through the list of clues in strict order, as if to remember where he was. And, perhaps, what he was doing. Henry Gustav Molaison — known through most of his life only as H.M., to protect his privacy — became the most studied patient in the history of brain science after 1953, when an experimental brain operation left him, at age 27, unable to form new memories. Up until his death in a nursing home in 2008, Mr. Molaison cooperated in hundreds of studies, helping scientists identify and describe the brain structures critical to acquiring new information. He performed memory tests; he filled out questionnaires; he sat for brain scans and performed countless research tasks, each time as if for the first time. In between it all he did puzzles, books upon books of them, a habit he’d picked up as a teenager. Near the end of his life he kept a crossword book and pen with him always, in a basket attached to his walker. His solving opened a window on the brain, and demonstrated puzzles’ power, and their limitations, in stretching a damaged mind. “For someone with this profound amnesia , the question was: Why, of all the pastimes out there, would he find crosswords so reassuring?” said Dr. Brian Skotko, a clinical fellow in genetics at Children’s Hospital Boston. “Well, in a world that was buzzing by and not always so easy to understand, I think finding solutions gave him great satisfaction. He had those puzzle books nearby morning, afternoon and night, and he turned to them if nothing else was going on. It was his go-to activity.” In a series of experiments , Dr. Skotko led a team from Duke University and M.I.T. who used crosswords to test Mr. Molaison’s language aptitude, as well as his capacity to learn new facts. As expected, the puzzles stumped him badly if they drew on events that happened after 1953, the year that a surgeon removed two finger-shaped slivers of tissue from the brain to relieve severe, chronic seizures . Those slivers included a structure called the hippocampus, which scientists now know is critical for acquiring so-called declarative memories, those concerning people, places and facts. The Nixon presidency, the gulf war, the rise of Starbucks, the Internet bubble and its bursting — they all came and went without leaving any accessible trace on his memory. Yet the researchers found that Mr. Molaison was a competent puzzle solver, compared with healthy people his own age, when allowed to draw on what he’d learned in the years before the operation. He knew about the 1929 stock market crash, the Great Depression and Pearl Harbor. His language skills, once acquired and uploaded from his then-intact hippocampi to higher areas in the cortex, were entirely independent, protected from surgical damage. “We found that learned language is a robust dynamic,” Dr. Skotko said. “He often came up with answers to the clues that others did not.” Mr. Molaison stunned researchers over the years by learning some new facts, said Suzanne Corkin, a professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at M.I.T. who worked with him in the last decades of his life. He knew that Archie Bunker called his son-in-law “Meathead,” on the 1970s show “All in the Family,” one of his favorites. He knew that Raymond Burr played a detective on TV. He knew about the moon landing, she said, perhaps because of his lifelong interest in rockets. In particular, Dr. Corkin said, he seemed to be able to update pre-1953 memories.. To see whether his love for crosswords could help this process, Dr. Skotko, Dr. Corkin and others performed another study , this time testing Mr. Molaison’s ability to solve post-1953 clues that had pre-1953 answers. For instance: “Childhood disease successfully treated by Salk vaccine ” (announced in 1955); and “_____Pact, military alliance of 7 European communist nations enacted to counter NATO” (also 1955). After repeated trials on the same puzzles, the man who lost his memory learned to fill in the right answers. “We found that he could learn new semantic, factual information as long as he had something in his memory to anchor it to,” Dr. Skotko said. Mr. Molaison, who grew up in Hartford, would certainly have known about polio : the city suffered through an epidemic during his childhood, said Dr. Corkin, a fellow Hartford native who, though younger, remembers it herself. “This would have been an emotional memory; he certainly would have know people who had polio, and maybe some who died of it,” she said. That emotion, she said, seemed to enhance his brain’s ability to update previous memories. At least two processes may have been at work when H.M. learned new facts, Dr. Corkin argues. One is a weak signal from tissue around his hippocampus that survived the surgery; recent research shows that these surrounding areas are active in acquiring new facts. But research also suggests that anytime the brain retrieves a stored memory, it updates and reshapes it. This process, called reconsolidation, occurs in higher cortical areas that were intact in Mr. Molaison’s brain. It does, however, apparently depend on the hippocampus to retain the updates. H.M., after he stopped practicing the study puzzles, soon forgot the post-1953 answers he had learned. Not that he minded. In a 1992 interview, he admitted to Dr. Corkin that he did have trouble remembering things. “One thing I found out is that I fool around a lot with crossword puzzles,” he said. “And, well, it helps me, in a way.” It helps you remember? Dr. Corkin asked. It did, he said. And, he added, “You have fun while doing it, too.”

Molaison Henry Gustav
Crossword Puzzles
Memory
Amnesia
Research
Medicine and Health
Science and Technology


Protesters Say Archbishop Dolan Mishandled Sex Abuse Scandal

Abstract: A Milwaukee man stood on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday to talk about how that city’s archbishop, Timothy M. Dolan , had dealt with the sexual abuse scandal during his six-year tenure. And his assessment of Archbishop Dolan, who has been chosen to lead New York’s Catholics, was considerably cooler than the reception the gregarious prelate received two weeks ago at the same spot. “We want him to succeed in New York,” said the man, Peter Isely. “But you can’t do that with a slap on the back, an off-you-go, and a joke.” He and five others who said they had been sexually abused by Catholic priests huddled in the cold holding posters with children’s photos and slogans like “Children Must Have a Voice.” Mr. Isely, the Midwestern director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests , said that Archbishop Dolan was loved in Milwaukee, but that after first meeting with victims, he largely dismissed their attempts to bring members of the clergy to justice. Jerry Topczewski, Archbishop Dolan’s chief of staff, said that the archbishop had dealt decisively with the problem, and that there were now no priests working in Milwaukee with substantiated allegations against them. The protesters said Thursday that the New York Archdiocese had not responded strongly enough to allegations of sex abuse under its current leader, Cardinal Edward M. Egan. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability , a group in Waltham, Mass., that has documented abuse in the Roman Catholic Church , spoke skeptically of New York’s “unique success in suppressing the crisis.” In 2004, she said, Cardinal Egan reported that only 1.3 percent of priests in New York had been accused of sexual abuse, compared with 7 percent in Boston, 7.6 percent in Philadelphia, and an average of 4.9 percent nationwide. “There’s no reason to think an archdiocese as big as New York would be comparatively pristine,” said Ms. Doyle, who joined the others at the cathedral. Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese, said he could not explain the low number. “We reviewed every file of every priest for more than 50 years, and only about 1 percent were found to have committed abuse,” he said. “I don’t know if they were better trained or better supervised, but the numbers that we reported were the complete and accurate count.” In Milwaukee, Mr. Isely said, Archbishop Dolan has allowed three abusive priests to continue presenting themselves as clerics in good standing, failed to report admissions of rape by a nun and a priest to the police, and has not publicly released files on 71 clergy accused of abusing minors. “We have released files to civil authorities,” Mr. Topczewski said. “What we have not done is released documents to media, advocacy groups and plaintiffs’ attorneys.” He said the archdiocese had listed the names of abusive priests on its Web site . Mr. Isely said he hoped Archbishop Dolan would be held to higher standards in New York. “New Yorkers have a way of getting to the bottom of things,” he said. “We are absolutely counting on that — for you to succeed where we have failed.”

Cardinals (Roman Catholic Prelates)
Sex Crimes
Demonstrations and Riots
Dolan Timothy M
Christians and Christianity


Minimizing Risks of Renting Your Home

Abstract: Try as one might to vet tenants, the sharing economy involves risks. You should ask tenants why they will be renting, who will live in your home, whether they have pets and what they do for a living. Here are some of the lessons for homeowners based on our experiences as landlords and tenants. Give them space. Declutter, remove personal items and create shelf, drawer and hanging areas for tenants’ belongings. Store your valuables in locked closets or off the premises. Provide a comfortable bed and fresh, high-quality linens – preferably white, which can be bleached. Protect upholstery. Double up on mattress pads. If buying a new sofa, choose something durable – like leather – or consider slipcovers that can be laundered between rentals. These heavily used items are especially susceptible to stains and spills that can be costly, if not impossible, to remove. Have boots on the ground. This might be a cleaning lady who comes weekly (at your tenant’s expense) or a handyman whom you pay to handle maintenance and repairs in your absence. You or that person should do an initial walk-through with your renters and show them how everything works. Send redundant messages. A lengthy house manual will get less attention than a single page with the Wi-Fi code and other key information. Put Post-it notes in spots that require special care – for instance, a reminder like the one Ms. Chambon left us, not to leave wet bathmats on the wooden floor. Cover contingencies. Notify your homeowner’s insurance company that your house will be rented, said Laura Clark, senior underwriting manager at the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Most will continue covering the dwelling and your personal liability — say, if my tenant’s child fell down the basement stairs and was injured, she said. But some exclude your possessions while the house is rented and they typically won’t cover your tenants’ belongings. (Make this clear in a lease.) Ask your tenants for the declarations page of their homeowner’s or renter’s policy and make sure their liability limit is at least $500,000, Ms. Clark said. Homeowners who rent through Airbnb automatically get supplemental property insurance through the company’s Host Guarantee and, in a growing list of countries including the United States, personal liability coverage under its Host Protection Insurance. Require a security deposit. With extended stays, it makes sense to charge about half the weekly rent, said Jon Gray, chief revenue officer at HomeAway; others recommend 10 percent of the total tab. Hold it long enough after your tenant leaves to discover any damaged or missing items — one month is acceptable, Ms. Baum said. Here Airbnb gives you much less control. It doesn’t allow you to collect a security deposit upfront and you must file claims within 48 hours of checkout. If you and your tenant can’t agree on a settlement, Airbnb, which disburses the funds, has the last word. DEBORAH L. JACOBS

Rent
Personal finance
Airbnb
HomeAway
NYC
Retirement