It's Chicago! - USOC tabs Midwest metropolis to bid for '16 Games

It's Chicago! - USOC tabs Midwest metropolis to bid for '16 Games
Posted: Saturday April 14, 2007 4:22PM; Updated: Saturday April 14, 2007 4:28PM
Copyright by The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chicago beat Los Angeles on Saturday in a U.S. Olympic Committee vote to pick a candidate for the 2016 Summer Games.

Chicago, which has never held an Olympics, now will try to persuade the International Olympic Committee that it deserves to be the host, joining a group of bidders expected to include Madrid, Prague, Rome, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

"It was a very tough decision," USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said before opening a sealed envelope and revealing the winning city. "If I had all the power -- and sometimes people accuse me of that -- I would take the map and merge the two cities, because I'll tell you what: If you could take the mayors of these two communities and have them run our country, we would all be better off."

The USOC had said beforehand it would not release Saturday's vote count.

By choosing Chicago instead of Los Angeles, the 11-member USOC board of directors went with a city that does not have major venues already in place. Los Angeles held the Summer Games in 1984 -- when the Olympics were run by Ueberroth -- and in 1932.

Chicago, meanwhile, offered a bid that hinges on building new facilities, mostly situated around the downtown lakefront and nearby parks. The centerpiece would be an 80,000-seat, $366 million temporary Olympic stadium that would be built in historic Washington Park. Chicago's plans also call for a $1.1 billion lakefront village that would be built near the convention center just south of downtown.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Boston Globe Editorial - Read the signals in Iraq

Boston Globe Editorial - Read the signals in Iraq
Copyright By The Boston Globe
Published: April 13, 2007

Even by Baghdad standards, Thursday's bombings were shocking. Mayhem in the Parliament building and the disabling of a key bridge over the Tigris River illustrated the dim prospect of a purely military solution to Iraq's civil war.

Earlier in the week, a peaceful event delivered an equally potent message. Tens of thousands of Iraqis turned out Monday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf to protest the U.S. occupation. As the Bush administration's continual floundering in Iraq ought to make clear, policymakers must seek to understand the motives of key players in Iraqi politics.

The Najaf demonstration was above all a show of influence by the demagogic young cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Just before the Najaf event U.S. forces clashed with some of Sadr's militia, who call themselves the Mahdi Army, in Diwaniya, a town near Baghdad. One signal sent by the crowds in Najaf was that the Americans should not push too hard against the Mahdi Army.

Sadr's lieutenants pointedly boasted that his militia has grown at least threefold since being routed by the Americans in Najaf in 2004. By including a smattering of Sunni Arab clerics and even some Kurds in Monday's demonstration, and by stressing a nationalist rather than a sectarian theme, Sadr was warning the Americans that a serious attack on his forces would be tantamount to attacking all patriotic Iraqis who were happy to be free of Saddam Hussei's dictatorship.

Sadr, whom senior ayatollahs have scorned as an unlearned hothead, was also sending a message to the Shiite clerical establishment that he is too powerful to be ignored. By making a show of his mass base and his Iranian backing, Sadr is seeking to be recognized as first among his peers.

Sadr's street theater in Najaf offers a lesson for U.S. policymakers: a tolerable exit from Iraq will require that they learn to play the complex, many-sided game of Iraqi politics.

Democrats push for tax overhaul - Their target: A levy aimed at rich that hits middle class

Democrats push for tax overhaul - Their target: A levy aimed at rich that hits middle class
By William Neikirk
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats said Friday the alternative minimum tax has turned into a "parent penalty" weighing heavily on middle-class families and that overhauling it has become their top tax reform priority.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said in the Democrats' weekly radio address, taped for airing on Saturday, that "now is the time for a middle-class tax cut" built around reform of the controversial levy.

Emanuel's address, parts of which were released Friday by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, signaled a major effort by Democrats to lay claim to the tax-cut issue that has been a key part of Republican economic orthodoxy since Ronald Reagan's presidency.

In addition to ensuring that only the wealthiest Americans pay the tax, known as the AMT, Democrats are considering additional tax relief for the middle class that could involve tax simplification, a senior House Democratic aide said. About 80 million people could see lower taxes if the bill passes this year, the aide said.

It is not yet clear how Democrats would offset the cost of this middle-class tax relief, although a clear target is higher taxes on wealthier people. One idea reportedly being considered is to deny the current preferential tax rates on capital gains and dividends to taxpayers subject to the AMT. But there are other proposals as well.


Tax not adjusted for inflation

Wall Street is anxiously waiting to see if well-to-do investors would be forced to pay higher taxes, said William Beach, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. If they have to, he said, the stock market could take a steep slide.

The alternative minimum tax, enacted in 1969 to prevent wealthy people from escaping any tax liability, is increasingly ensnaring the middle class because it was never indexed for inflation.

Over the next three years, without congressional action to stop it, the AMT would hit nearly 30 million people, Emanuel noted.

The AMT is a parallel tax. Americans must first figure out their income taxes by calculating their taxable income after claiming deductions, such as those for mortgage interest and personal exemptions. Then those who may be subject to the AMT must do taxes a second time without taking most of these deductions. There are exemptions for singles and couples, but they are not indexed for inflation.

In his radio remarks, Emanuel called it a "parent penalty" because denial of personal exemptions for dependents could force many middle-class families to owe the tax.

Emanuel said Democrats "will work with our Republican colleagues to identify bipartisan solutions that help middle-class families avoid this tax that was never intended for them. This is one thing on which Democrats and Republicans should agree."

Both parties have indicated that the AMT is a major problem. Rather than try to reform it, however, they have adopted "patches" over the years so that more Americans don't have to pay the tax, generally by raising the AMT's exemptions.

Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, predicted that Congress would not be able to pass AMT reform this year, saying the Bush administration would likely object to raising taxes on upper-income taxpayers.

Tax reform is a hot topic in Congress now as complaints about the complexity of America's tax system increase. But Beach said that while overhauling the AMT is desirable, "I don't think anyone has the political courage to do it" with lobbyists having such influence on Congress.


Reform bill to be resurrected

Emanuel plans to reintroduce a tax reform plan next week that he and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sponsored in 2005. Among other things, that proposal would have repealed the alternative minimum tax and reduced the number of tax brackets from six to three. It would have repealed Bush's 2003 dividend tax cut and a number of business-tax breaks.

Len Burman, a former Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration and a scholar at the Urban Institute, said many middle-class tax breaks would be popular with Democrats, such as a permanent child-care tax credit.

One of the political and economic problems with overhauling the AMT is that the taxes raise so much money -- roughly $1 trillion over 10 years. In an effort to keep the deficit under control, Democrats have pledged to offset any proposals that would increase the deficit with either spending cuts or tax increases. These offsets could be extremely unpopular.

wneikirk@tribune.com

Top aide proposed replacements a year before firings

Top aide proposed replacements a year before firings
By David Johnston and Eric Lipton
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A Justice Department e-mail message released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for U.S. attorneys nearly a year before they were fired in December 2006, contradicting repeated statements by department officials that no successors had been selected before the dismissals.

The Jan. 9, 2006, message, written by Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as the top aide to Gonzales, identified five Bush administration officials, most of them Justice Department employees, whose names were sent to the White House for consideration as replacements.

The e-mail and several related documents provide the first evidence that Sampson, the Justice Department official in charge of the dismissals, had focused on who would succeed the ousted prosecutors. Justice Department officials have said repeatedly that seven of the eight prosecutors were removed without regard to their successors.

The e-mails were among more than 2,000 pages of documents released by the Justice Department as part of a continuing outpouring of more than 6,000 pages of e-mails and other internal records produced in the past month in response to requests by House and Senate committees as the furor over the dismissals has grown.

Gonzales is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Some of the new documents show the department's acute awareness of individual U.S. attorneys' political and ideological views. A spreadsheet attached to an e-mail message on Feb. 12 listed the federal prosecutors who had served under President Bush along with their past work experience.


List said to be 'initial thoughts'

The chart included a category for Republican Party and campaign work, showing who had been a delegate to a Republican convention or had managed a GOP campaign. The chart had a separate category indicating who among the prosecutors was a member of the Federalist Society, a Washington-based association that serves as a talent pool for young conservatives seeking work in GOP administrations.

Taken together, Democrats asserted, the e-mails supported their contention that the fired attorneys were dismissed to make room for favored candidates who were chosen on the basis of political qualifications.

The Justice Department said that Sampson's e-mail message did not contradict either his sworn testimony or the department's past statements. Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the department, said: "We have consistently stated that, with the exception of [Timothy] Griffin, individuals were not preselected for any of the eight U.S. attorney positions prior to asking the U.S. attorneys to resign. The list made public today had previously been shared privately with Congress, and it in no way contradicts the department's prior statement. The list ... reflects Kyle Sampson's initial thoughts, not preselected candidates by the administration."

Sampson's lawyer, Bradford Berenson, also denied that the e-mail contradicted Sampson's testimony last month.

The electronic messages, some written as recently as March, offer a rare and almost contemporaneous account of the tactics used by a sitting administration attempting to manage a political firestorm.

Rove's e-mail trail

The possible replacements selected by Sampson -- with the exception of Griffin, an aide to Bush adviser Karl Rove -- never materialized, at least in part because the controversy pushed aside consideration of who will fill the vacancies. But it is clear from actions taken over the past two years that agency officials had placed lawyers from department headquarters, who were known to be loyal to Gonzales and the president, into open posts.

Meanwhile, a lawyer said that Rove did not intentionally delete e-mail to avoid creating a paper trail detailing his work. Rather, Rove mistakenly thought that the messages were being preserved by the Republican National Committee.

"Karl has always understood that his RNC e-mails were being archived," Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said in an interview.

In addition to their government e-mail addresses, Rove and 21 other White House officials maintain e-mail accounts with the national committee that are supposed to be used for political business only.

The White House has said some e-mail messages from the political accounts are missing and it is working to recover them.

Study pans abstinence programs

Study pans abstinence programs
By Kevin Freking
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press
Published April 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, says a study ordered by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of four abstinence classes studied reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not. They first had sex at about the same age as other students, too -- 14.9 years, says Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

The federal government spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education.

The Mathematica study involved 2,057 youths from Miami and Milwaukee and rural Virginia and Mississippi.

Students averaged 11 to 12 years old at the start of the study in 1999 and took part for one to three years. Mathematica then did a follow-up survey in late 2005 and early 2006 and found that about half of the abstinence students and about half from the control group reported that they remained abstinent.

"First, there is no evidence that the programs increased the rate of sexual abstinence," said Chris Trenholm, a senior researcher at Mathematica who oversaw the study. "However, the second part of the story that I think is equally important is that we find no evidence that the programs increased the rate of unprotected sex."

A trade association for abstinence educators emphasized that the findings represent less than 1 percent of the abstinence-education projects funded by federal Title V block grants.

"This study began when [the programs] were still in their infancy," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Associa

Bush seeks expansion of wiretaps

Bush seeks expansion of wiretaps
Plan allows U.S. to spy on more non-citizens, intercept messages
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration on Friday asked Congress to make more non-citizens subject to intelligence surveillance and authorize the interception of foreign communications routed through the United States.

Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, individuals must be associated with a foreign terrorism suspect or a foreign power to fall under the auspices of the FISA court, which can grant the authority to institute federal surveillance.

The White House proposes expanding potential targets to include non-citizens believed to possess, transmit or receive important foreign intelligence information, as well as those engaged in the United States in activities related to purchase or development of weapons of mass destruction.

The proposed revisions to the FISA law would also allow the government to keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Now, such information is destroyed unless it indicated threat of death or serious bodily harm.

And the suggested revisions provide for requiring telecommunications companies and e-mail providers to cooperate with investigations, while protecting them from being sued by their subscribers. The legal protection would be applied retroactively to companies that cooperated with the government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The White House draft offered the first specifics of what Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said Tuesday is needed to respond to "dramatic" changes in communications technology used by intelligence targets in this country.

The proposed changes do not address the controversial intelligence program, initiated in October 2001 and first disclosed in December 2005, of monitoring communications between the United States and another country in which one party is suspected of having terrorist connections, according to senior administration officials.

While the administration contends the proposed changes are intended to help the government better address national security threats, civil liberties groups see the government's effort as a needless power grab.

The administration wants to allow government lawyers to decide whether a FISA court order is needed for electronic eavesdropping based on the target of the monitoring, not the mode of communication or the location where the surveillance is being conducted.

One effect of such a change: The National Security Agency would have the authority to monitor foreigners without seeking court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.

Most often used by the FBI and the NSA, the 1978 FISA law has been updated several times since it was first passed, including in 2001 to allow government access to certain business records.

Among other tools available now, the government can break into homes, hotel rooms and cars to install hidden cameras and listening devices, as well as search drawers, luggage or hard drives.

President Bush has been under fire for the program that allows the NSA to monitor international calls and e-mails coming into this country, when one party in the communication had suspected links to international terrorism. Earlier this year, Bush asked a federal court to oversee the operations, known as the terrorist surveillance program.

"This legislation is important to ensure that FISA continues to serve the nation as a means to protect our country from foreign security threats, while also continuing to protect the valued privacy interests and civil liberties of persons located in the United States," the Justice Department said in a fact sheet released Friday.

But civil liberties advocates at the American Civil Liberties Union and elsewhere see the changes as a sweeping overhaul that would undermine long-standing protections. Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies said the changes are "poorly conceived" and "not justified," given a lack of oversight on the government's current powers.

A crucial Republican senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said in an interview that he believed Congress might be reluctant to take significant action on the issue soon, because of legal challenges to the constitutionality of the domestic surveillance that are in the courts. Last year, a federal judge in Detroit ruled the program unconstitutional.

The administration has appealed to an appeals court in Cincinnati.

Among other things, the proposed legislation would:

*Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails -- such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.

*Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge. The Justice Department says this would allow the government to focus its resources on cases involving U.S. citizens because it wouldn't have to get as many time-consuming renewals on warrants for cases involving foreigners.

*Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Why Bush should let a damaged Wolfowitz go

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Why Bush should let a damaged Wolfowitz go
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 14 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 14 2007 03:00


Should Paul Wolfowitz leave the World Bank? The answer to that question is "yes". Will Mr Wolfowitz leave the World Bank? The answer to that question is murkier. The US put Mr Wolfowitz in his job and the US will decide whether he is to stay. George W. Bush will hate to abandon a loyal henchman. He should do so, none the less.

It would be absurd to leave the decision to the bank's executive directors. True, they promised yesterday to "move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take". If the board did indeed exercise effective oversight, it would be welcome. But it would also be most surprising. These mid-level bureaucrats are not going to reach such a decision on their own.

In practice, national capitals will make the choice, unless Mr Wolfowitz himself takes it out of their hands. The US will be decisive: it is the bank's largest shareholder; it has always appointed the bank's president; and the president himself chose Mr Wolfowitz.

Who would want to take the US on if it decided to defend Mr Wolfowitz to the bitter end? However unhappy they may be with him, the other high-income countries are unlikely to want a big fight with the US over what most governments would consider a relatively unimportant matter. Many developing country members may even find the presidency of a now de-fanged anti-corruption campaigner quite appealing.

Mr Bush tends to be loyal to those he regards as loyal to himself. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, declare that Mr Wolfowitz continues to have "our full confidence". That then would seem to be the end of the matter: Mr Wolfowitz will survive because the US president has decided he should.

Yet this ought not to be the end of the matter. To place loyalty above all other virtues is the ethics of a mafia boss not of the leader of a great country. The US president also needs to consider what is both right and in the interests of his own country.

That the US has in recent years lost a great deal of moral credit around the world is undeniable. But one area where the present administration has been relatively forward-looking has been aid and development. It has raised the share of gross domestic product spent on official aid to a still low 0.17 per cent, but that is well above the mere 0.1 per cent in 1999. It has supported ambitious debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries. It has also, rightly, put much weight on the need to tackle corruption and improve governance in aid recipients.

The best justification for placing Mr Wolfowitz at the bank was his determination to give this last objective overriding priority. It is possible to debate the wisdom of this, since the quality of governance, albeit hugely important, is not the sole determinant of development. But one point nobody can debate: if the US has decided that this is what it wants the World Bank to achieve, it cannot sustain a president who is no longer a credible spokesman for that cause. To do so can only destroy yet more of its own battered moral capital. It would be worse than a crime; it would be a blunder.

Loyalty is indeed a virtue. But loyalty is not the overriding virtue. The US needs to perceive its true interests in having an effective and credible bank. It needs also to preserve its own credibility as a campaigner for good governance. Mr Wolfowitz now needs to go if the aim of his presidency is to survive. The choice for Mr Bush has become as simple and as stark as that.

Subprime woes take toll on GE results

Subprime woes take toll on GE results
By Francesco Guerrera in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 13 2007 13:26 | Last updated: April 13 2007 18:21


The US subprime mortgage crisis hit General Electric on Friday, wiping $373m from the industrial conglomerate’s first quarter profits and prompting its executives to warn of an incipient “bubble” in global credit markets.

GE said it had replaced the senior management team at its mortgage unit, and would reduce its workforce by around 1,000 people, or 40 per cent.

GE will also cut by half the loans it makes to less than $15bn this year - a sign of its belief that the subprime market has yet to hit the bottom.

Asked whether GE would invest more in the subprime market, Keith Sherin, GE’s chief financial officer, told the Financial Times the company had to first restructure its mortgage unit and evaluate market conditons.

“We have got to get our house in order,” he said.

Mr Sherin said the problems in the subprime sector, which targets borrowers with weak credit histories, were being replicated in the market for “Alt-A” loans for borrowers with slightly better credit scores.

Mr Sherin sounded a broader warning on the health of the global credit markets.

He said he was concerned at the rise in the level of high-yield debt, which has fuelled the boom in leveraged buyouts by private equity groups, and the growing use of “no covenant” deals, which strip lenders of the right to force borrowers to repay the debt.

“The levels of debt assumed in LBO activities and the lack of covenants . . . to me those are sign of a bubble,” he said.

GE is in talks with a number of buyout groups over the $8bn-$10bn sale of its troubled plastics business, which it expects to clinch by June.

GE, whose WMC mortgage division is the fifth-largest US subprime lender, is the latest blue-chip company to be wrong-footed by the abrupt downturn in the industry, which has been hit by a sharp rise in defaults and delinquencies.

GE saw a reduction of $373m in the profits of its GE Money division in the first quarter of 2007 and took a $500m markdown to reflect the lower value of its assets.

Mark Begor, chief executive of GE Money, Americas, told Wall Street analysts the subprime woes would have smaller impact, about $50m, on second quarter results.

Despite problems in the subprime unit and the plastics business, GE reported net earnings from continuing operations of $4.5bn in the three months to March.

The 8 per cent increase over a year ago was in line with analysts’ forecasts.

Profits were driven by a strong performance in the infrastructure unit, which has been powered by strong orders in the Middle East and Asia. Revenues were up 6 per cent to $40.2bn.

Net earnings, including discontinued operations, were up 2 per cent at $4.5bn.

Barclays bid for ABN Amro in jeopardy

Barclays bid for ABN Amro in jeopardy
By Peter Thal Larsen in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 13 2007 18:34 | Last updated: April 13 2007 20:37


Barclays’ efforts to vault itself into the top echelon of world banking through a friendly merger with ABN Amro were on Friday night in serious jeopardy after three of Europe’s largest banks approached the Dutch lender with a rival break-up proposal.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander of Spain and Fortis, the Belgo-Dutch banking and insurance group, on Friday wrote to ABN Amro seeking exploratory talks about a deal that would effectively carve up the bank’s operations. They said they had “requested access to the same due diligence information given to Barclays”.

The approach could pit those determined to maximise shareholder value against those seeking to keep the 183-year-old bank largely intact.

The proposal is an audacious attempt by Sir Fred Goodwin, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, and Emilio Botín of Santander to maintain their position as Europe’s leading bankers and see off a challenge by Barclays, which has for the past four weeks been negotiating a deal with ABN Amro that would create the world’s fifth-largest bank.

The proposed approach - likely to be worth around €65bn (£44bn, $88bn) - by the three banks would see each seize roughly a third of ABN Amro’s operations. Royal Bank of Scotland would buy ABN Amro’s US subsidiary and its investment banking business, which is largely based in London. The bank’s operations in Brazil and Italy would be sold to Santander, while Fortis would take control of its Dutch retail bank, as well as its private banking and asset management operations.

According to people familiar with the matter, the consortium suggested in its letter that its proposal would be likely to deliver more value to ABN Amro shareholders than an offer from Barclays, though it did not set out a specific price.

ABN Amro activist shareholder The Children’s Investment Fund welcomed the announcement of an invitation to the Dutch banking group to exploratory talks by the RBS consortium. “As ABN Amro shareholders, we believe that the fiduciary duties of the supervisory and management boards require that the Royal Bank of Scotland consortium is allowed to proceed immediately with due diligence on a basis equivalent to Barclays for there to be a fair and transparent process which maximises shareholder value,” TCI managing partner Christopher Hohn said in a statement.

Analysts have calculated that RBS and Santander could afford to offer more than €40 per share for ABN Amro, and the involvement of Fortis – which already has extensive operations in the Benelux – is likely to increase that target even further. By comparison Barclays, which has limited overlap with ABN Amro, is expected to offer no more than €35 per share.

However, no bank of ABN Amro’s size has ever been broken up before and the consortium’s bid is expected to be extremely complex. It will also face intense scrutiny from politicians and regulators.

The three banks, which are being advised by Merrill Lynch, are expected to argue that they have more experience of executing large takeovers. Sir Fred has built his career on large deals such as the hostile takeover of Natwest, while Mr Botín has also carried out a string of successful deals, including the takeover of the UK’s Abbey National in 2004.

RBS, Santander and Fortis all declined to comment.

Additional reporting by Ian Bickerton in Amsterdam and Leslie Crawford in Madrid

Google pays $3.1bn for DoubleClick

Google pays $3.1bn for DoubleClick
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 14 2007 00:06 | Last updated: April 14 2007 00:48


Google on Friday pulled off the biggest in a lengthening line of acquisitions as it won a bidding war with rivals Microsoft and Yahoo over DoubleClick, one of the early pioneers of online advertising.

The $3.1bn cash purchase, almost double the amount it paid in its all-stock acquisition of YouTube, will turn the search engine company overnight into one of the biggest sellers of online display advertising, a field in which it has until now been only a small player.

However, the deal represents a high price given DoubleClick’s revenues, which one person familiar with the deal put at $300m-$400m, and reflects a sharp intensification of the competition between some of the internet’s biggest companies as they jostle for leadership in the fast-growing online advertising markets.

One of the first companies to develop an automated network for delivering adverts to targeted groups of users online, New York-based DoubleClick was a star of the dotcom boom, but crashed when internet advertising went into reverse in 2001. It was eventually taken private in a $1.1bn leveraged buy-out two years ago by a private equity consortium led by Hellman & Friedman.

Recent reports suggested that the private equity firms were carrying out an informal auction of the company starting at about $2bn, and one person close to the deal described the heated bidding of recent days as “extraordinary”.

Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, defended the high price based on the potential to cross-sell DoubleClick’s services to Google’s existing search advertising customers. Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times, he said: “There’s no question in our mind that we’ll get this money back, and more.”

For Google, the purchase opens up a big new advertising market at a time when its core search advertising business is starting to slow, though at the cost of eating into a cash hoard that stood at $11bn at the end of last year. The company has indicated that it has also earmarked a large amount of that cash for content deals that it hopes to reach with traditional media companies to bring more video to YouTube and its other sites.

Many of the advertisers who use DoubleClick’s network to place display, or “branded”, advertising on a variety of websites also use Google’s network to distribute text-based search adverts, Mr Schmidt said.

“The integration [of search and display advertising] is what people have been asking us for for a very long time,” he added, making it possible to sell the two side-by-side.

By combining the analytical and other tools used by the two networks, Google would also make it easier for advertisers to manage and track their online campaigns, and assess the financial returns from both classes of advertising alongside each other, company executives said.

For DoubleClick’s private equity owners, meanwhile, the sale will bring a sizeable profit from a company that was still widely thought of two years ago as a victim of the dotcom bust. According to one person familiar with the deal, the sale price amounted to an eight-fold return on the equity portion of the original investment in DoubleClick, after also taking account of an earlier sale of part of the business.

Leading By Example

Leading By Example
By: MANNY ROMERO
04/12/2007 Copyright by Gay City

Dr. Charles R. "Chuck" Middleton, and Ralph Hexter of Hampshire College in Massachusetts are the only university presidents in the U.S. who are openly gay.

Dr. Charles R. "Chuck" Middleton is one of two openly gay university presidents in the United States. Since July 2002, he has served as the fifth president of Roosevelt University, with campuses on South Michigan Avenue, just west of Grant Park and Lake Michigan, in downtown Chicago and in northwest suburban Schaumburg.

"I'm actually six months older than the university," said Middleton, who earned a B.A. degree with honors in history from Florida State University and holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Duke University. "I think I'm the only university president who can say that. Maybe I should keep that to myself."

Middleton's academic expertise is 18th and 19th century British history. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of "The Administration of British Foreign Policy, 1782-1846."

Beginning his career as a university professor 36 years ago, Middleton has served as an administrator in recent years at an array of institutions. Prior to joining Roosevelt, he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Bowling Green State University in Kentucky, and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Maryland.

"I really enjoy working in higher education," he said. "Today's colleges challenge individuals to look at the world and learn about its complexity and they help students evolve along with it."

Roosevelt University (http://www.roosevelt.edu) was founded in 1945 as an independent, non-sectarian, co-education institution of higher learning. Its founders were determined to make higher education available to all students who could qualify academically. Considerations of social or economic class, racial or ethnic origin, sex, or age were from the start irrelevant in determining who was admitted - a policy still not widespread at that time. Originally named Thomas Jefferson College, the new school was renamed Roosevelt College in recognition of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's democratic ideals and values.

As president of Roosevelt University, Middleton takes great pride in serving one of the most diverse private universities in the U.S.
"We welcome everyone who's here and who wants to be here," he says of Roosevelt, which currently has 7,400 students and more than 500 faculty members. "It's important to provide an atmosphere that will help maintain that passion in students who want to learn. We provide the best education for everyone who's there."

Building on Roosevelt's historic commitment to social justice and student success, Middleton is proudest of his successes in working closely with faculty, staff, and the board of trustees to develop and implement a comprehensive university plan that focuses on providing quality education to its students and a healthy work environment for its faculty and staff.

Middleton and Ralph Hexter of Hampshire College, a small liberal arts institution in Massachusetts, are the only university presidents who are openly gay.

"For whatever reason, fear of getting fired or fear of total acceptance, it's a shame more academic leaders can't take that step," Middleton said.
Middleton and his partner John Geary have been together for more than 25 years. Geary is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese and chair of the department of foreign languages at Northeastern Illinois University, also in Chicago.

"We met at the University of Colorado, Boulder, when we were both on the faculty there," he said. "Times were different then. Gay issues were not discussed as openly as they are now. That's not to say things are great in today's world. I think we as a community are just beginning to be heard."

Gay discrimination in professional fields vary; however, said Middleton, "It's not easy to compare levels of difficulty and struggle between groups with any certainty, especially when everyone wonders at some level whether they personally have the ability to succeed or even get a job in their field of expertise."

In higher education, Middleton said, there are still challenges presented to openly gay professionals who want to move up in the administrative ranks.

"Despite their liberalism on so many issues, and despite a more accepting atmosphere on campus than exists in many other places, the fact is that there still are many people who are uncomfortable with or even hate LGBT individuals," he said. "This too often leads to subtle unacceptance of a sort that is analogous to that faced by other groups, even in these generally progressive places called campuses. Some of it is based upon discomfort with us...but some is just outright hostility that makes its way into both subtle and covert comments and resistance to giving opportunity to members of our community."

To illustrate, Middleton presents the following example: "A candidate for a job, a gay man, is politely interviewed, and many like his work, on a non-gay topic, though they are a bit uncomfortable with his personal manner of presentation, which is expressive in ways not normally found in such interviews. In the hiring discussion, held in confidence, there is a discussion of his sexual orientation as a factor in his being a colleague in the unit and how students might respond to his lecturing style. There are many disclaimers on why that is not important. Then in a secret ballot the other candidate is hired instead."

"I have heard these conversations with regard to both gay men and lesbians, but I have never heard them with regard to people of color or straight women," Middleton said. "Or perhaps, I should state that when I was closeted I heard them a lot; now, at least in my presence, they don't happen. What always surprised me when fear kept me silent was how many people who are progressive in every way, or so I thought, could be so harsh to another human being for these reasons."

Middleton's contributions since coming out as a gay man and engaging in community work were acknowledged in November 2006, when he was inducted into Chicago's Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame.

As an out gay man, Middleton is active both in professional academic circles and in community organizations throughout Chicago. He serves as a Fellow of the Institute for International Education, a group founded in 1919 to increase ties between American universities and high education institutions worldwide, and a member of the American Council on Education. He is involved with the American Historical Association and the North American Conference on British Studies and is active in the National Association - as well as Illinois Federation - of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Middleton serves on three leading city planning organizations - the Chicago Loop Alliance, the Chicago Central Area Committee, and the Near South Planning Board - and is also a member of leading civic groups, including the city's Rotary One, the Economic Club, and the Executives' Club. He is on the board of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York.

Middleton is also active with the Chicago LGBT community's Center on Halstead, the Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to promising LGBT college students who lack family support, and at the Chicago Historical Society is on the Community Advisory Council for "Out at CHS."

"I think it's important to serve as a mentor to members of our community," he said, "especially when you are shaping the lives of future leaders. College campuses serve as training ground for the real world. Unfortunately, the real world can be even more challenging and less accepting of us. That's why it's important to get involved."

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Four years since Saddam came tumbling down

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Four years since Saddam came tumbling down
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 12, 2007

Four years ago this week, as American troops made their first, triumphant entrance into Baghdad, joyous Iraqis pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein.

It was powerful symbolism - a murderous dictator toppled, residents of Baghdad taking to the streets without fear, American soldiers hailed as liberators.

After four years of occupation, untold numbers killed by death squads and suicide bombers, and searing experiences like Abu Ghraib, few Iraqis still look on American soldiers as liberators.

Instead, thousands marked this week's anniversary by burning American flags and marching through the streets of Najaf chanting, "Death to America."

Once again, tens of thousands of American troops are pouring into Baghdad. On Wednesday the Pentagon announced that battle-weary United States Army units in Iraq would have to stay on for an additional three months past their scheduled return dates.

President George W. Bush is desperately gambling that by stretching the Army to the absolute limits of its deployable strength, he may be able to impose some relative calm in the capital.

He seems to imagine that should that gamble succeed, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki will, without any serious pressure from Washington, take the steps toward sharing political power and economic resources it has tenaciously resisted since the day it took office a year ago.

Unless Maliki takes those steps - eliminating militia and death squad members from the Iraqi army and police, fairly sharing oil revenues, and rolling back laws that deny political and economic opportunities to the Sunni middle class - no lasting security gains are possible.

More Iraqi and American lives will be sacrificed.

Even among Shiites, who suffered so much at the hands of Saddam Hussein and who are the supposed beneficiaries of Maliki's shortsighted policies, there is a deep disillusionment and anger.

This week, a Washington Post reporter interviewed Khadim al-Jubouri, who four years ago swung his sledgehammer to help knock down the dictator's statue.

Jubouri said that ever since he watched that statue being built he had nourished a dream of bringing it down and ushering in much better times. Now, with friends and relatives killed, kidnapped or driven from their homes, the prices of basic necessities soaring and electricity rationed to four hours a day, Jubouri says the change of regimes "achieved nothing" and he has come to hate the American military presence he once welcomed.

Maliki's supporters can be even more frightening to listen to.

This week's demonstration in Najaf was organized by the fiercely anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose political party and militia helped put Maliki in power and are still among his most important allies.

Two months into the Baghdad security drive, the gains Bush is banking on have not materialized. More American soldiers continue to arrive, and their commanders are talking about extending the troop buildup through the fall or into early next year. After four years, the political trend is even more discouraging.

There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left.

Import price rise surprises experts

Import price rise surprises experts
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg News
Published April 13, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Prices of U.S. imports rose last month by the most in almost a year, led by gains in crude oil and natural gas that are likely to prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates anytime soon.

The 1.7 percent increase was more than twice economists' forecasts and followed a 0.1 percent gain in February, the Labor Department said Thursday. Imports account for about 17 percent of all goods and services purchased in the U.S.

Separately, the department said first-time jobless claims rose last week to the highest level in nearly two months.

The import figures were released a day after Fed policymakers released minutes of their March meeting in which they said higher fuel prices cause some firms to pass costs on to their customers. The Fed added that higher rates might even "prove necessary."

"It's a pretty inflation-unfriendly piece of data," said Ethan Harris, chief U.S. economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York. The recent gain in energy costs "is one of a number of factors that has made the Fed more nervous."

The import-price index is the first of three monthly price gauges from the Labor Department. The government is scheduled to release its measure of producer prices Friday and the consumer price index Tuesday.

"The recent increases in prices for energy and some non-energy imports likely would boost overall inflation in the near term and might put upward pressure on prices of some core goods and services," Fed policymakers said at their March 20-21 meeting, according to minutes of the meeting.

The Fed, which kept interest rates unchanged at the last six meetings, has been counting on a slowing economy and declines in energy prices to limit inflation.

The price of imported petroleum and its products jumped 9 percent in March. The average price of a barrel of crude oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose to $62 on March 1 from $57.30 on Feb. 1. The Labor Department bases its import-price calculations on the first day of the month. Imported natural gas prices increased 4.7 percent in March.

Weakness in the dollar has made imported goods more expensive. The dollar weakened 4 percent through March from a year earlier on a trade-weighted basis and has fallen about 18 percent since early 2002.

The government said the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week was swollen by the Easter holiday and school spring recess. Initial jobless claims rose by 19,000, to 342,000, the Labor Department said.

Holidays such as Easter occur in different weeks each year, making it difficult to adjust the data for seasonal variations, said a Labor Department spokesman. It might take a week or two for the underlying trend in firings to re-emerge, economists said.

"The claims numbers tend to get volatile around this time of year," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital in Greenwich, Conn.

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Wolfowitz must be told to resign now

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Wolfowitz must be told to resign now
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 13 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 13 2007 03:00

The president of the World Bank has one asset: his credibility. The Bank's capacity to make a difference lies not in its money and ideas but in its ability to be the world's voice for development. This includes, as Paul Wolfowitz, the current president, has insisted, being the voice for good governance. Recent revelations have, however, demonstrated such serious failures that the Bank's moral authority is endangered. If the president stays, it risks becoming an object not of respect, but of scorn, and its campaign in favour of good governance not a believable struggle, but blatant hypocrisy.

It is important to understand what is not at issue here. It is not Mr Wolfowitz's unpopularity, even though his role as an architect of the Iraq war made him disliked from the start. It is not failures of management, even though his reliance on a group of outside appointees made him mistrusted by many inside and outside the Bank. It is not disagreements over development doctrine, where some convergence of views has occurred. It is not a romantic relationship with a subordinate, itself hardly a rarity in today's world.

The issue is whether the failures of corporate governance are serious enough to damage the Bank's moral authority. In a world where curtailing corruption and improving governance have become central to the practice of development, the world's premier development institution must, like Caesar's wife, stand above suspicion.

What then is the story? When Mr Wolfowitz became president of the World Bank he also became the boss of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. To resolve this situation - inconsistent, rightly, with Bank rules - Ms Riza was seconded to the US State Department.

So far, then, so unproblematic. Yet, it is alleged, the terms of the appointment, which appear astonishingly generous, violate a number of Bank protocols. Worse, it now appears Mr Wolf-owitz personally directed the Bank's head of human resources to offer his girlfriend these exceptional terms. Worse still, this has come out after misleading claims by a senior official that the ethics committee of the board, in consultation with the general counsel, approved the agreement.

What then do we see here? The answer is: an apparent violation of Bank rules; favouritism that borders on nepotism; and a possible cover-up. It is true Mr Wolfowitz and Ms Riza were put in a difficult position. Even so, what has come out would be bad in any institution. In an institution that spear-heads the cause of good governance in the developing world, it is lethal.

The World Bank has moved from being a self-proclaimed exemplar of best practice in corporate governance to an example of shoddiness. As long as Mr Wolfowitz stays, this can be neither repaired nor forgotten, be it outside the Bank or inside it. In the interests of the Bank itself, he should resign. If he does not, the board must ask him to go.

Common gene causes obesity, says study

Common gene causes obesity, says study
By Clive Cookson in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 13 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 13 2007 03:00


The first clear-cut evidence of a common gene that explains why some people get fat and others stay lean is published today. A British study of 38,000 people shows one-sixth of the population carries a 70 per cent higher risk of being obese as a result of variants in the so-called FTO gene.

"Even though we have yet to understand the role played by the FTO gene in obesity, our findings are a source of great excitement," said Mark McCarthy of Oxford University, one of the study leaders. "By identifying this genetic link, it should be possible to improve our understanding of why some people are more obese, with all the associated implications such as increased risk of diabetes and heart disease."

Although other genetic links to obesity had been identified, these caused severe obesity in extremely rare cases - typically one person in 10,000 - said Andrew Hattersley of Peninsular Medical School, Exeter. FTO mutations, in contrast, were very common.

About half the population carries one copy of the FTO variant, which leads on average to a weight gain of 1.2kg compared with those without the variant. People who carry two copies - one inherited from each parent - will gain 3kg.

FTO is one of many human genes whose biological role is still a mystery. It produced a protein unlike any other known to science, said Prof McCarthy, though there might be a clue in the fact FTO was very active in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain involved in appetite and satiety.

Today's online publication of the study by the journal Science is likely to trigger a large international research effort to understand what FTO does. Scientists hope it will lead to a biological understanding of the reasons why some people put on weight and others do not under the same conditions - and the pharmaceutical industry will be looking for leads to potential drugs.

Prof McCarthy said the researchers and their main funding body, the Wellcome Trust, "thought long and hard" about patentingthe discovery and decided not to. The immediate reason was scientific competition: they knew other researchers were on the track of FTO and did not want to risk delaying publication while they were tied up in the intellectual property debate.

Independent scientists hailed the study as a landmark in understanding obesity although some were concerned about the psychological impact on the public health campaign against the "obesity epidemic" that is sweeping the industrialised world and spreading to developing countries.

There was a risk of people reacting to news of a "gene for obesity" in a fatalistic way, Prof McCarthy conceded, and imagining wrongly that fatness was determined by their DNA.

But Susan Jebb, head of the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition unit in Cambridge, hopes it will have the opposite effect.

"People who know they are carriers may be more motivated to adopt a prudent diet and healthy lifestyle to decrease their risk," she said.

Suicide bomb hits Iraq parliament

Suicide bomb hits Iraq parliament
By Steve Negus, Iraq Correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 12 2007 12:10 | Last updated: April 12 2007 18:49


A suicide bomber on Thursday blew himself up inside the heavily guarded Iraqi parliament building, killing at least eight people including three legislators, and dealing a blow to the new US security plan for Baghdad.

The brazen lunchtime attack in the parliament cafeteria, inside the fortified Green Zone, cast doubt on the ability of even the most stringent security measures to provide a safe, neutral space in the Iraqi capital for politicians to meet.

The building which houses parliament is more accessible to the public, and not as secure as prime ministerial offices or the homes of various political leaders. But the attack is probably the most serious breach of security to date in the Green Zone, the swathe of the city guarded by the US and allied militaries, private security contractors and Iraqi troops.

Parliamentary sources have so far identified three legislators killed in the blast – two from the two main Sunni blocs and one from the Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance.

Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, condemned an attack she said was perpetrated by those wishing to stop Iraqis from “having a future that would be based on democracy and stability”.

She insisted the Baghdad security plan – launched earlier this year and seen as a last-ditch American effort to control the city’s sectarian violence – was still in its early stages. “We have said there will be good days and bad days,” she said.

The Green Zone is regularly hit by mortars fired from the outside, usually ineffectively. Security measures make bomb attacks inside comparatively rare, although six people were killed in October 2004 in an attack on a cafe.

Most Iraqis who wish to enter it must pass through multiple checkpoints run by troops of the US-led coalition, private security firms and Iraqi security forces, and include body-scanners, pat-downs and sniffer dogs.

Legislators themselves, however, can circumvent some of the checkpoints and some Shia have accused Sunni parliamentarians of co-operating with insurgents.

Thursday’s violence could deter deputies from coming to Iraq’s already sparsely- attended parliamentary sessions and delay the implementation of a government legislative platform aimed at national reconciliation.

In other violence, at least 10 people were killed when insurgents managed to partially destroy a major bridge across the Tigris with a car bomb. The death toll may rise from cars which plummeted into the river from the broken structure.

The al-Sarafiya bridge, one of nine major spans across the Tigris, links a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood in north-east Baghdad and a Shia district across the river.

The blast marks one of the first times that insurgents have been able to seriously damage part of the country’s transport infrastructure.

Chicago, LA race for 2016 Olympics

Chicago, LA race for 2016 Olympics
By Doug Cameron and Matthew Garrahan
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 12 2007 19:53 | Last updated: April 12 2007 19:53


Pat Ryan, chairman of insurance group Aon, took a long hard look at the T-shirt handed to him amid a crush of reporters in a cramped corner of the Macy’s department store in downtown Chicago.

Wisely, Mr Ryan did not attempt to pull the limited edition “Chicago 2016” shirt over his neat suit, but there are few things the city’s business community will not do to help bring the summer Olympics to the Midwest for the first time.

Chicago will square off against Los Angeles on Friday at a meeting of the US Olympic Committee in Washington DC to decide which – if any – US city will front a bid for the 2016 games.

The two cities have taken markedly different approaches in the run-up to this weekend’s decision, with Chicago boasting experience of hard work and LA – a two-time Olympic host – focusing on glitz and its past experience.

Chicago has been unashamed in promoting the potential economic benefits of hosting the games, using it as a springboard to revitalise parts of its lakefront and south side.

The focus of a Los Angeles bid will be to reignite interest in sport, rather than the economic regeneration which has fired Chicago’s mayor, Richard M Daley, to galvanise the local business community. “We want to bring audiences back to the Olympics,” says Barry Sanders, executive counsel at law firm Latham & Watkins and chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games.

“I think that Chicago, being a city of celebration and celebrating sport, there will never be an Olympics with so many people involved,” countered Mr Ryan this week, as both teams put the finishing touches to their presentations.

The Californian committee was formed in 1939 – seven years after LA hosted its first games – and its 60-member board cuts across business, politics, sports and the arts.

The bid has secured support from prominent companies based in the city, such as Walt Disney and Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns London’s Millennium Dome and the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Chicago responded last June by naming its own bid panel, headed by Mr Ryan and including the sort of heavyweight business and civic leaders who have been instrumental in previous public-private partnerships, such as the modernisation of O’Hare airport and the building of Millennium Park.

Mr Ryan leads a panel that includes Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney and John Madigan, the former Tribune Company chief now running the Madison Dearborn private equity group. It has established a $30m war chest to fight the international round of the battle if it wins approval from the US Olympic Committee.

“In my experience living in several cities in the US and overseas, I have never seen a business community as united as that in Chicago,” says Mark Angelson, chief executive of RR Donnelly, the world’s largest printing group, and a member of the organising committee.

The USOC is headed by Peter Ueberroth, who is credited with reinventing Olympics economics by successfully turning a profit from the Los Angeles games in 1984.

The US is likely to face opposition from Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and at least five other cities for the 2016 games, with a final decision not due until 2009.

World Bank pledges action on Wolfowitz

World Bank pledges action on Wolfowitz
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 13 2007 13:53 | Last updated: April 13 2007 13:53


Paul Wolfowitz’s future as president of the World Bank was in jeopardy on Friday after the bank’s board issued a damaging finding of facts on his role in the Shaha Riza affair and pledged to ”move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take.”

The board said that its ”consideration of the matter” would ”focus on all the relevant governance implications for the Bank”.

The promise of further action will intensify pressure on Mr Wolfowitz to step down of his own accord, ahead of possible censure by the board.

As of Friday morning, though, there was no indication that Mr Wolfowitz – who issued a public apology Thursday morning – was ready to give up the fight.

Much will now depend on the position of the US, which is more nuanced than yesterday’s reaffirmation by the White House of confidence in Mr Wolfowitz suggests.

The decision came after a marathon emergency session of the 24-member board, made up of representatives of the Bank’s shareholder governments, which began around midday on Thursday and ran late into the night.

Overnight reports suggest European nations took the lead in driving for a tough board statement, overcoming reluctance from some other states. However, there was no consensus to call for Mr Wolfowitz’s resignation.

The controversy relates to Mr Wolfowitz’s personal involvement in securing a promotion and a pay rise far in excess of the normal maximum associated with such a promotion for Ms Riza, a bank official with whom he was romantically involved, as part of a secondment package.

The board statement – hammered out after tough negotiation between board members – states that Mr Wolfowitz ”sent the vice-president, human resources, a written memorandum directing him to reach agreement with the staff member and specifying in detail the terms and conditions.”

The existence of this memorandum, dated August 11 2005, was first revealed by the Financial Times.

The statement further notes that the then ethics committee ”had not been involved in the discussions with the concerned staff member. Neither did it find that the terms and conditions of the agreement had been commented on, reviewed or approved by the ethics committee, its chairman or the board.”

However, the statement does acknowledge that the ethics committee originally advised Mr Wolfowitz to consider a secondment for Ms Riza as one of a number of possible ways to comply with Bank rules that prohibit employees from working under the authority of a colleague with whom they are romantically involved.

It also states that the board suggested that Ms Riza could be offered a promotion as compensation for the disruption to her career.

The board released the full report of the subcommittee that investigated the Riza secondment and promised to release all relevant documents.

Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
American Empire | Books
Excerpt: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

04/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.
I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
The Test of a Leader.

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points, not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush,"Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't. Leadership is all about managing change, whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths. For what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake. It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know, Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush. Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here." I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

The Biggest C is Crisis Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day, and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq, a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you,I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess.

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened. Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it? Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change? Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough

A conversation with Larry Kramer by Rex Wockner

Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A conversation with Larry Kramer
Copyright by Rex Wockner
From his Blog wockner.blogspot.com/2007/03/conversation-with-larry-kramer.html


He wrote the novel "Faggots," the play "The Normal Heart" and the screenplay for "Women in Love," among other works. He's been a longtime gay thorn in the side of New York Times reporters, bourgeois gay activists and his alma mater, Yale. In 1987, he launched ACT UP. And now he's trying to do it again. Rex Wockner talks with gay legend Larry Kramer.
Rex: Speaking at New York City's gay center March 13th, commemorating ACT UP's 20th anniversary, you called for a resurgence of gay street activism -- and the audience promptly organized a Times Square recruiting station demo against the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's recent anti-gay slurs. Do you think gay America is ready to act up again?

Larry: We'll see. The initial response to my speech was kind of overwhelming. The room was packed, and mostly young folks, which surprised me because I thought a lot of the old ACT UP crew would show up, which they didn't. They loved the speech, and the energy quickly turned into deciding to march two days later on the Army recruiting station. It was just like the first ACT UP speech I made in 1987. Great turnout, great energy, our first demo two days later on Wall Street. Very spontaneous both times. We'll have to see if the energy will sustain. These are the delicate first weeks to see if the troops coalesce or drop by the wayside. Like the Sondheim song, we are "putting it together, bit by bit, piece by piece." Again, that is how it was in the beginning. We didn't know where we were going, we just figured it out. The needs are different now. Then it was AIDS and now it is utter sheer hate hurled at us right and left, the latest example of this being Gen. Peter Pace.
Rex: Let's talk about your reference to hate from the left. You took a strong jab at Hillary Clinton during that speech at the gay center. Our enemies come from all parts of the political spectrum?

Larry: I say that hate is an equal-opportunity employer. I say over and over again that we must realize that gay people are hated. Period. And we don't realize this. We think they just don't like us. Or that bullshit about "love the sinner, hate the sin." When the Supreme Court rules against us, as always happens, it is because of hate. The recent New York state ruling handed down on gay marriage contained some of the most bigoted reasoning I have ever heard.

I want this new ACT UP to be an army confronting this hate in every way we can, whether it is Hillary and her constant waffling -- which, of course, isn't hate, yet -- or the judges ruling against us. Gen. Pace's disgusting talk is hate. As I say in the speech, there is not one elected official or candidate for president who, given half the chance, would not sell us down the river. Bill Clinton was the prime example of that, with his "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and his support of the hateful Defense of Marriage Act. Gays at HRC and elsewhere lining up to give [Hillary] big bucks is a big mistake. We demand now, and pay off later -- after they show us the beef, not before.
Rex: I do feel hate sometimes from courts and politicians, but I only very rarely feel it living my daily life in San Diego. Some days I think they wish we'd just all disappear from the face of the Earth, but most days I feel like we're all accepted and integrated, at least in the cities. Aren't we, culturally, kind of in a supremely schizo phase? Also, what straight people do one-on-one with the gay people in their lives seems very different from what slimy politicians do in public. My ex and I were good friends with the fundamentalist Christians who lived next door. Perhaps they didn't like gays, I don't know, but they liked me and Bob, as a gay couple, just fine. In other words, schizo. Discuss.

Larry: It is seeing your life through such rose-colored glasses as you describe that is so dismaying to me. Yes, life is better for the blinded. Leave San Diego and go to northern Idaho, or to parts of Queens in New York City, and you would not live as you describe. Indeed, I am sure there are portions of San Diego where you could get seriously mugged. I am actually kind of sick and tired of palaver -- hot air -- as you just passed. I am also sick and tired of those who say that everything is better now than the old days. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't; this is an irrelevant argument. It is the today that we have to contend with. Every action that I describe in my ACT UP speech is an action of hate -- by judges, by our government, by our elected officials, by government bureaucrats. And until gays start facing up to this fact, that this is hate, not just, say, difference of opinion, then we continue to live in the doggy do-do that we do.
Rex: Yes, I've been scolded for this hot air, or optimism, by others, too; and you're right that we still lack equality in many, many areas and that homophobia is the reason for it. You mentioned the Human Rights Campaign. They've taken a lot of flak lately. I've seen them under attack from blogger Michael Petrelis; writers Andrew Sullivan, Paul Varnell and Chris Crain; and from others who still dare to have a controversial opinion. Has HRC become useless?

Larry: HRC is almost worthless and has been since the day it was born. I totally agree with Andrew that it is a cash cow milking gullible gay men and women and providing scant evidence that it is money well-spent. Every once in a while they manage a minor victory in Washington but hardly one to merit their existence. I say this sadly. I'll tell you one thing: that they are able to corral so much money every year is scary. It's scary that so many of us believe they are doing good stuff. What are they seeing that I can't see? We are in worse shape in Washington than we have ever ever ever ever ever been. Washington is HRC's turf. I shudder.
Rex: If what has been dubbed ACT UP ARMY takes off, it likely will do such things as shout down waffling presidential candidates and homo-hating senators, throw pies at homo-nasty cultural figures and such. That will drive media coverage, and media coverage sometimes fixes things. So that's all good. Apart from that, what alternative form of activism would you suggest for people whose current style of activism is sending money to HRC and GLAAD? Besides interrupting Hillary's speeches and throwing pies at Ann Coulter, what should gay Americans be doing to diminish the hate?

Larry: Would that someone would only throw pies at Ann Coulter! If ACT UP ARMY takes off is a major "if." All of this getting-us-off-the-ground-again stuff is delicate and tenuous, as I said. There is no consensus yet about anything, including the name of ACT UP ARMY. Some don't like the army word and some no longer even want the ACT UP words, preferring something more like RAGE, which is not available for Web registration, or who knows what else. One of the suggestions that got out is the Queer Justice League, which I hate; it sounds too fascistic. So far, few of the old-time ACT UPers have showed up, which was surprising and disappointing to me. Who has appeared have been young people, which is fine but which requires new getting-to-know-you's for us all.
Once again, forgive me if I carp but I am tired of people asking me for what suggestions I have for activism. We are a fantastically gifted population of people with strong imaginations and creative powers. What the fuck do you -- meaning each individual -- want to do? If you don't want to storm barricades or boo Hillary or McCain at every whistlestop and you don't have spare money for our gay organizations, which are not worth it anyway, please realize that it only takes one person to do an action, if you are of the mind to do it.
Donna Shalala once made a speech before a huge hall when she was Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services and I stood right beside her holding up a sign saying "Donna Do Nothing." Sure, I felt funny, but if you hold the sign up in front of your face, no one sees it, and I sure felt good after it was over. My point is that we all have to find ways that are commensurate with our courage and belief in our validity of ourselves as equal Americans who are being dumped on royally and constantly. If you don't feel that in your bones, then I guess you are never going to be an activist and we are all going to continue to be dumped on royally and constantly.
Please don't wait for others to do anything! There once were ACT UP chapters in dozens of American cities. People just got together and did stuff. All across America. Do it again, for all our sakes! Just call a Tupperware party and say to your friends, "OK, what can we do this week?" It's like Mickey and Judy putting on a show, if that reference isn't too obscure now.

Rex: I'll guess Rooney and Garland. If I weren't a reporter -- we have to watch and take notes and can't join in -- you'd have me sold. There's so much going down in the public sphere every week that more than justifies acting up and fighting back. Thanks, Larry.

Why do straights hate gays? - An 72-year-old gay activist isn't hopeful about the future.

Why do straights hate gays? - An 72-year-old gay activist isn't hopeful about the future.
By Larry Kramer, LARRY KRAMER is the founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of Today's Gays.
Copyright by The L. A Times
March 20, 2007

DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood? Why, even as we die you don't leave us alone. What we can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a faggot dies? Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with "constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you.

At least 23 die in 2 terrorist bombings in Algeria

At least 23 die in 2 terrorist bombings in Algeria
By Craig S. Smith
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 11, 2007

PARIS: Two bombings in Algeria, one targeting the main government building in the country's capital, killed at least 23 people Wednesday, marking a sharp escalation in the Qaeda-linked violence that has been spreading across North Africa in recent months.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North Africa's most active terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks. The bombing in Algiers was the worst terrorist attack in the capital in more than a decade.

"This is a crime, a cowardly act," said Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, speaking on national radio shortly after the explosion tore open the front of the building housing his office. "It can only be described as cowardice and betrayal at a time when the Algerian people are asking for national reconciliation."

The bombing of the government building killed at least 12 people and wounded 118, according to APS, the country's official new agency. The agency reported that 11 others were killed and 44 wounded in a second attack at a police station on the road to the country's international airport, east of the capital.

The terrorist group, originally called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, was created in 1998 as an offshoot of an earlier Islamist group that had been fighting the government in a decade-long civil war.

Its numbers had been seriously eroded by two government offers of amnesty and a subsequent manhunt by Algerian security forces. But the core of the group, hundreds strong, has steadfastly rejected reconciliation and last year aligned itself with Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, publicly anointed the group as Al Qaeda's representative in North Africa on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and in January the group changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The group has undergone an apparent revival since then, drawing new members from across North Africa, terrorism experts in Europe and North Africa say.

Governments on both sides of the Mediterranean fear that the rebranded group is coalescing into a regional terror movement.

"The concern is that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb want their reach to be larger than it is now," said Rear Admiral William McRaven, Commander of Special Operations Command Europe, speaking at his headquarters in Stuttgart last month.

U.S. Special Operations Forces are helping train militaries in the so-called Trans-Sahara region to help combat the terrorist threat. "They are already somewhat regional and growing," he said of the Algerian organization.

In December and January, Tunisian security forces killed 12 Islamic extremists and captured another 15 after uncovering a terrorist cell whose leaders had crossed into the country from Algeria.

The Moroccan authorities, meanwhile, were hunting for as many as 10 would-be suicide bombers after three men blew themselves up Tuesday and a third wearing explosives was killed before he could do so. One policeman was killed in the blasts. The men were being sought in connection with an explosion in a Casablanca Internet cafe on March 11 in which another Islamist extremist blew himself up.

Many terrorism experts suspect that those men are also linked to the Algerian group.

Attacks in Algeria have also steadily increased since a convoy of foreign construction workers was bombed outside the capital in December. In February, the group detonated five powerful car bombs outside police stations in six towns east of the capital, Algiers, killing six people.

Last month, a convoy of oil workers was attacked in Ain Defla Province, west of Algiers, killing one Russian and three Ukranians. Subsequent clashes with the Algerian Army killed nine soldiers and four fighters from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The bombings Wednesday confirmed fears that the violence would again enter the capital, which became a war zone during the country's horrific civil war in the 1990s.

The attacks began around 10:45 a.m. when a suicide bomber drove an explosive-packed vehicle through the gate at the prime minister's office building in central Algiers. The explosion tore apart the front of the six-story, French colonial-era building, shattered windows in nearby ministries and set several cars in the vicinity on fire. Witnesses reported seeing rescue teams remove at least seven badly burned bodies from the rubble.

"It was shocking, incredible," said Leila Benhamoud, who was at the scene shortly after the blasts. "Even in the park nearby, they found a burned body in the grass." A second blast destroyed a police station in the eastern suburb of Bab Ezzouar.

Al Jazeera's bureau in Rabat, Morocco, reported that it had received a telephone call from a spokesman for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claiming responsibility for both attacks.

The caller claimed that the blasts had been carried out by three Al Qaeda members driving "trucks filled" with explosives and that the bombers had targeted three sites, including the government headquarters in Algiers, Interpol's Algiers offices and a special police forces building in Bab Ezzouar, Al Jazeera said. There was no report of an attack at Interpol's Algiers offices.

Said Chitour contributed reporting from Algiers.

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Bush's border politics

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Bush's border politics
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 12, 2007

President Bush's prescription for immigration reform has always included four points: border security, workplace enforcement, a guest worker system to address this nation's labor shortages and a plan to bring the 12 million immigrants living here illegally into the open.

U.S. Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) nailed all four points in the 700-page bill they tossed onto the table two weeks ago. The bill drew predictable scowls from recalcitrants who think the solution is to wall off the border, period. But it has much in common with the comprehensive bill passed last year by the Senate and favored by Bush. With a little muscle from the president, it seemed, the Flake-Gutierrez bill could pass. And work.

But Monday, the president poured cold water on that plan. He doesn't think it's restrictive enough to get through Congress. Determined to sign an immigration law before he leaves the White House, Bush has been meeting with Senate leaders to draft a measure that he hopes will appease enough hard-liners to ensure passage. The plan he sketched out Monday is less welcoming than the Flake-Gutierrez bill, or last year's Senate legislation.

Like the Flake-Gutierrez bill, Bush's plan calls for more guards at the border, better systems for verifying the legal status of job applicants and stiffer penalties against employers who hire illegal workers. But the president is backing away from the idea of "earned citizenship" for immigrants who have settled here illegally. His plan would allow them to stay indefinitely under a renewable "Z" visa that would cost $3,500 every three years. But to get green cards and eventual citizenship, they would have to leave the country and return through regular channels after paying a $10,000 fine.

Those are steep costs for workers at the bottom of the labor ladder, but the greater obstacle is the shortage of visas that would let them re-enter legally. Bush's plan does little to reconcile the huge gap between the number of jobs that need to be filled and the much smaller number of visas that are granted. Bush would increase the number of worker visas slightly by diverting visas now allotted for applicants who want to join family members already living here. That would reverse a long-standing policy of promoting family unification and would net only a fraction of the workers needed. It's not worth it.

Bush's plan also provides for an unspecified number of low-skilled guest workers who would have to leave this country after two years and wait six months before returning. Those workers could not bring their families and would not be working toward citizenship.

Immigrants and their advocates consider the Bush plan a betrayal given his assertions that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." They also say the plan would create a permanent underclass of revolving-door guest workers and Z-visa sub-citizens.

Those are valid concerns. The country would be better served by a plan that encourages immigrants and their families to put down roots -- to assimilate, invest and build communities.

White House staffers insist the president has merely outlined his "talking points" and is open to other approaches. Let's count on it. In the meantime we can be grateful for the relative quiet of the hostile hard-liners who dominated last year's debate. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) can still be counted on to demand the deportation of illegals, but he's not calling the shots. The people who have the floor right now -- on Capitol Hill and in the White House -- don't yet agree on immigration legislation. But they are focused on getting the job done.

States rebel against sex-ed rules

States rebel against sex-ed rules
By P.J. Huffstutter, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times; Tribune staff reporter Diane Rado in Chicago contributed to this report
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press
Published April 12, 2007

In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity.

In Ohio, Gov. Ted Strickland said that regardless of the state's sluggish economic picture, he simply did not see the point in taking part in the controversial State Abstinence Education Grant program anymore.

Five other states -- Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Montana and New Jersey -- already have dropped the program or plan to do so by year's end. The program is managed by a unit of the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services.

Illinois accepts federal dollars for abstinence programs and has no plans to forgo the money, said Tom Green, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

The agency funds 29 programs around Illinois that get about $1.6 million in federal funds, he said. That figure excludes money from other sources that goes toward abstinence education in the state.

For example, the Glenview-based program Project Reality is receiving $1.2 million in state money to provide curriculum and training for abstinence programs statewide, said executive director Libby Macke. Other organizations apply directly to the federal government for program funding.

The programs have been criticized on a variety of fronts, but their defenders insist the programs can influence teens' behavior.

"We don't preach at them; we engage them in a dialogue and try to find out where they're at," said Barbara Singer, executive director of CareNet Pregnancy Services of DuPage, which does abstinence programs in 28 DuPage County schools. "Kids are out there and they are experimenting, and I think a lot parents don't know it. ... We're really trying to get them to consider having abstinence as an option as a lifestyle."

Most high schools in Illinois are teaching abstinence because they can get the money for those programs, said Steve Trombley, president of Planned Parenthood of Chicago.

"Cash-starved school districts are going with abstinence-only programs even though they don't necessarily believe in them," he said. "We get no government support for comprehensive [sex-education] programs whatsoever."

Ohio's Strickland, like most of the other governors who are pulling the plug on the funding, said last month that the program has too many restrictions and rules to be practical. Among other things, the money cannot be used to promote condom or contraceptive use, and requires teachers to emphasize ideas such as that bearing children outside wedlock is harmful to society and "likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects."

That states are walking away from such funding alarms abstinence-only groups, who insist that cutting off this source of revenue will close dozens of non-profit sex education groups -- and undermine the progress they have made to fight teen pregnancy and curtail the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

States have used the money to help public and private schools start and run educational programs, develop classroom instruction for non-profit groups, and pay for advertising and other media campaigns.

"There are kids who don't want to know how to put on a condom, because they don't want to have sex," said Leslee Unruh, president and chief executive of the South Dakota-based National Abstinence Clearinghouse, the nation's largest network of abstinence educators. "So why can't kids who want to abstain have equal time, funding and education in the classroom as kids who are having sex?"

White House support for the so-called Title V grant remains strong. President Bush has asked Congress to carve out $191 million for the program in fiscal 2008, an increase of $28 million over current funding.

- - -

What lawmakers want

Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation promoting comprehensive sex education instead of abstinence-only curricula. They want to send money to schools that emphasize abstinence while also instructing students about the health benefits and side effects of contraceptives.

Wade Horn, the Bush administration official who oversaw the two largest abstinence-education programs until he resigned last week, predicted lawmakers will give states more flexibility in determining how federal dollars are spent. He doesn't expect major funding cuts.

"I've seen some bills introduced by Democrats that suggest they want a separate fund dedicated to comprehensive sex education, but my sense is that it won't be at the expense of abstinence education," he said.

Army tours extended - Troops' reaction: Stoicism, anxiety

Army tours extended - Troops' reaction: Stoicism, anxiety
By Aamer Madhani, Washington Bureau; Tribune national correspondents Kirsten Scharnberg in Hawaii and Dahleen Glanton in Georgia contributed to this story
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 12, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced Wednesday that all active-duty Army soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan will now serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard deployment. The move, intended to bolster a "stretched" U.S. military, was greeted by troops and their families with a mix of anxiety, soldierly stoicism and disappointment.

The new policy goes into effect immediately and would allow the White House to maintain the troop buildup in Iraq for the next year, while delaying the return trip home for thousands of soldiers already in Iraq. Critics said the extension puts a greater burden on troops from whom too much has already been asked.

The extended terms of deployment will not affect the Marines, who generally serve seven-month tours, or the Army National Guard or Army Reserve, which serve 12-month tours. Two Army brigades that already had their terms extended by 120 days will remain on their schedules.

At Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, Staff Sgt. Edgardo Delgardo arrived home for two weeks of leave from his tour in Iraq on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, he and his family found out that his tour, which had been set to end in September, will be extended until the end of the year.

Delgado, 29, of the 25th Infantry Division, stood shaking his head in disbelief. "You're kidding, you're kidding," he said again and again upon learning the news.

His wife, Stephany Delgado, who has been raising the couple's four children alone while also getting her master's degree, was more vocal about her frustration.

"It's unfair to the family, to the kids," she said, looking at her 3-year-old daughter, who was born during Delgado's last deployment to Iraq. His current deployment marks his third time in the war zone.

At Ft. Stewart, Ga., soldiers from 4th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division expressed mixed emotions upon hearing that their upcoming tour in Iraq would be extended.

"Some of the newer soldiers expressed sadness or surprise. They were concerned about spending more time there dealing with possible hostile situations," said Lt. Kevin Brown. "But everyone is human. We just told them that everything will be all right and that we will look after them."


Flexibility for commanders

In making the announcement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that it is too early to say whether the so-called troop surge in Iraq -- adding about 28,000 U.S. troops -- will continue beyond the end of this summer, but the extended tours will certainly give commanders on the ground more flexibility. He said that the decision was made at the recommendation of Peter Geren, the acting Army secretary, and Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff.

Soldiers at Ft. Stewart learned of the longer deployments on CNN, as Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the policy at a hastily arranged Pentagon news conference after word began leaking out before the Army could inform the affected soldiers. The 4th Brigade is being sent to Baghdad as part of the troop buildup.

While some veteran soldiers said they are prepared physically and mentally to stay as long as they are needed, platoon leaders said some soldiers preparing for their first deployment expressed concerns about the three-month extension.

But Lt. Tony Dovie, 23, of New Orleans said he was concentrating on the mission, not the length of time he will spend in Iraq.

"Our vision is to focus on the task," said Dovie, a 4th Brigade platoon leader who is preparing for his first deployment to Iraq. "I am going to do my job no matter what the timeline is."

While acknowledging U.S. forces are feeling the strain, Gates said the military is not broken. He added that without changing the standard tour length, the Army would have been forced to send five brigades into Iraq before they had completed 12 months of service at their home bases.


'Our forces are stretched'

"Our forces are stretched, there is no question about that," Gates said. "What we're trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families about how long their deployments will be and how long they will be at home."

The announcement came as the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress are at an impasse over spending bills to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that include language calling for a pullout from Iraq next year.

President Bush has invited Democratic leaders to the White House to discuss the bills, but says he will not budge from his position that he will not consider any legislation that includes an end date to the war in Iraq. Democratic leaders, who extended an invitation to Bush to come to Capitol Hill to talk about the bills, say they are willing to talk to Bush, but they will not be dictated to.

Democrats immediately pounced on the announcement to extend deployments for active-duty soldiers as ill-conceived.

"This new policy will be an additional burden to an already overstretched Army," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "I think this will have a chilling effect on recruiting, retention and readiness. We also must not underestimate the enormous negative impact this will have on Army families."

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who has been one of a few vocal Republican critics of the Bush administration's handling of the war, said he feared the change in policy could have long-lasting effects on an already overburdened Army.

"Maintaining this tempo of operations will have drastic and lasting consequences for our nation's military readiness and unnecessarily endangers our ability to react to any other crisis in the world," Hagel said. "We are on a very dangerous course."

But Pace argued that changing the length of deployments would give soldiers and their families greater predictability about their lives. The Army has repeatedly extended tours for various units throughout the 4-year-old war.

"This goes a long way toward making sure that we will have proper amount of time to train them," Pace said, " ... that they will have a predictable life; that they can sit there around the dinner table and know that on calendar month so-and-so, daddy's going to leave, and on calendar month so-and-so, mommy's going to come home and those kinds of things."


Troops in place by June

Only two of the five Army brigades being sent as part of the Iraq troop buildup are fully active in Baghdad, but the third is moving in now. All five aren't expected to be in place until June, and commanders in Iraq have said that it won't be until fall before they can properly access whether the troop buildup is curbing the sectarian violence.

In January, Bush announced that 21,500 additional troops would be sent to Iraq, most of them to Baghdad. That number has swelled to about 28,000 to include additional military police and support units. When the surge is complete, there are expected to be more than 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the largest American presence since the force was bolstered in late 2005 to protect Iraqi elections.

While the change in deployment lengths will allow commanders to maintain the Iraq troop buildup well into next year if they choose to, Gates would not commit to saying it would last that long.

"We are creating the capability to keep it in place," he said. "Whether it will be kept in place depends entirely on the conditions on the ground."

----------

amadhani@tribune.com

Officials' e-mail may be missing, White House says - The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of eight U.S. attorneys

Officials' e-mail may be missing, White House says - The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
By Tom Hamburger
Copyright © 2007, The Los Angeles Times
Published April 12, 2007

WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.

The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business.

"The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.

As a result, Stanzel said, "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."

He refused to estimate how many e-mails may have been lost, but the system was used by dozens of officials for more than six years.

"This is a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the role of electoral politics in administration policymaking. "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

The missing e-mails not only add to the growing legal and public relations woes for the White House and Rove's political operation, but also to the problems of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Gonzales, who is under fire for the handling of the U.S. attorney dismissals, was serving as White House counsel at the time the Republican National Committee's parallel communications system was set up.

His office had at least partial responsibility for establishing ground rules for using the private system.

The White House briefing Wednesday occurred a few hours after the staff of Waxman's committee and staff of the House Judiciary Committee met with White House officials to discuss the e-mails.

The White House has informed congressional investigators that it will not be able to meet the committee's deadline of Friday to turn over the communications.

The House aides are expected to meet with the Republican National Committee's legal staff today. A committee spokesman said the GOP hopes to cooperate as much as possible but provided no further details.

The e-mails were sent through a communications system created in conjunction with the RNC early in the Bush administration. Rove and others were given special laptop computers and other communications devices to use instead of the government communications system when dealing with political matters.

The parallel system was designed to avoid running afoul of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes, White House officials have said.

But evidence has emerged that system users sometimes failed to maintain such separation and used the private system when communicating about government business.

For example, before the U.S. attorneys were fired, a Rove deputy used an account maintained by the Republican National Committee in discussions with Justice Department officials about replacing some of the regional prosecutors. One e-mail requested a meeting between top officials at the Justice Department and a member of President Bush's campaign team to discuss one U.S. attorney who was among those to be fired.

The Justice Department turned over those e-mails at the request of several congressional committees.

Waxman said some of the documents suggest White House personnel may have used the political email accounts "to avoid creating a record of the communications."

Loss of the e-mail files would create a potential legal problem for the Bush White House: compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in 1978 in response to the Watergate scandal that enveloped Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The law was designed to ensure that presidential papers were preserved for historical and investigative purposes.

Rove's operation appears to have gone much further. Today, 22 staffers have e-mail accounts issued by the Republican National Committee, Stanzel said, noting that it is a tiny percentage of the 1,000 political appointees in the executive office.

Since 2001, about 50 staffers e-mailed using the system, he said. One former White House staffer told National Journal recently that Rove uses his RNC e-mail account for 95% of his e-mail communications.

One former White House official, Assistant Press Secretary Adam Levine, told The Times that he was issued a private laptop computer but he found the dual system so cumbersome that he decided to use only his official White House computer.

However, Levine recalled seeing White House staff members moving fluidly between their official computers and the laptops provided by the RNC.

Stanzel said that the law has gray areas defining what sort of activity is permitted using government resources, and that some employees may have opted for the RNC system to avoid any suggestion of a Hatch Act breach or because the private equipment was easier to use.

But, he added, "I can say that historically the White House didn't give enough guidance to staff on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act while following the Records Act. We didn't do a good enough job."

Some former employees recall receiving briefings on the Hatch Act. At the time of the 2004 Republican convention, newspaper accounts described emphatic warnings to White House staffers not to use government-issued cellphones for politically related calls.

Now, Stanzel said, the White House has begun a formal review that will include new training material for staff members on maintaining records with special attention to those with RNC accounts.

In addition, the White House will begin the forensic process of trying to reconstruct any lost records. That will probably be hampered by an RNC policy of automatically erasing most e-mail after 30 days. Since 2004, White House records have been exempt, Stanzel said, though individuals might have been able to kill out e-mail messages.

The White House will also explore whether the hard drives of laptop computers might have preserved a record of e-mailed communications.

*

tom.hamburger@latimes.com

Financial Times Editorial Comment: The IMF reports on a wonderful world

Financial Times Editorial Comment: The IMF reports on a wonderful world
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 12 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 12 2007 03:00



There is always a risk of rain. When the sun is shining, though, and there are few clouds in the sky, it is neurotic to be carrying an umbrella all the time. The latest economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund suggests that the world economy is doing rather well and, with sensible policy decisions, it should continue to do so.

Global economic growth, though a little slower than last year, is strong just about everywhere. The IMF has raised its 2007 growth forecasts all over the place: in Europe - from east to west - Japan, India, Brazil, Africa and the Middle East. Chinese growth is still forecast to be 10 per cent. The only major cuts to the IMF's forecasts are for the US and Canada, and even there growth is expected to be close to its long-run trend in 2007, before accelerating in 2008.

There are short-term risks and, as an institution designed to worry, the IMF has a list of them. The most pressing is of a deeper downturn in the US, where consumer spending has slowed with the housing market, but the economy is otherwise strong. If US house prices not only stagnate but fall, and keep falling, then their economic impact could get worse. But the chances of that outcome still look relatively low.

Oil prices are still high but not dramatically higher than a year ago and the risk of inflation seems to have been weathered. Despite occasional bouts of nervousness in the financial markets, risk premiums, and therefore the cost of investing in new projects, are low.

The real danger of bad economic weather comes in the longer term. It is no accident that the world is growing fast now; there is no voodoo magic, and only a little luck. Strong growth is the result of 20 years of better economic policy around the world, the result of central bank independence, greater fiscal discipline, globalisation, technological progress, and the Uruguay round of free trade talks.

If these reforms are reversed, or merely slowed down, then global growth will suffer. Protectionism is one of the greatest risks. In the struggle to reach a deal at the Doha round of trade talks, in opposition to foreign takeovers in many countries, and in the resurgence of bilateral trade deals there are signs that further liberalisation, at least, is becoming harder. That will slow economic growth, maybe not next year, but certainly in the 2010s.

The world economy will also do better if the large US trade deficit and corresponding surpluses around the world deflate gently rather than blow up. The IMF points to some positive signs - a fall in the dollar and in the deficit - but China could help by letting its exchange rate appreciate faster.

These problems are real and need solutions but it would be wrong to overdo the gloom. The world economy has now been growing rapidly for five years in a row. It may not, indeed it almost certainly will not last forever, but while it does we should enjoy it.

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Citigroup’s bloat carries lessons for Barclays and others

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Citigroup’s bloat carries lessons for Barclays and others
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 18:16 | Last updated: April 11 2007 18:16


Here is a cautionary tale for Barclays and ABN Amro, the European banks that are negotiating a merger. Citigroup has discovered just how difficult it is to manage a megabank.

Citigroup’s announcement of 17,000 job cuts in an effort to save $1.7bn this year was accompanied by some humble pie. Through mergers, the bank has accumulated excess layers of middle management and inefficient back and middle offices, which it is belatedly trying to eliminate.

Citigroup bills this as the biggest shake-up since it was created by a merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group in 1999. Chuck Prince, its chief executive, needs to regain credibility with investors who complain that he has let expenses run out of control.

In some ways, banks are no different from other companies that merge. It is always tough to join two corporate cultures together and to eliminate overlapping layers of management. Companies that are highly practised in implementing acquisitions effectively, such as General Electric, are rare.

But banks have special difficulties, some of which are only emerging after a decade of constant merger activity. Banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America are so large that transforming mergers are hard to find and, as concerns about bad loans rise, they are having to trim themselves.

In the early days of bank mergers, there are some easy wins. It is relatively simple to put together Treasury operations and, at least in the US, close overlapping branches. Investment banking arms can also be reshaped although investment bankers are easily upset and disinclined to save money for the greater corporate good.

But slapping some new signs on branches only goes so far. In the longer term, retail banks are tough institutions to remould. National Westminster Bank’s troubles in the 1990s, which led to its takeover by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2000, were partly due to bloat from its founding merger in 1968.

Old technology cannot simply be ripped out and replaced because computer systems – and often paper files – carry customer and loan information that have to be retained. Tight central controls on credit must co-exist with local oversight of lending. Many different products from credit cards to insurance, must be managed well.

Add to this the complexity of cross-border mergers. Citigroup wants to expand internationally, as its takeover bid for the Japanese broker Nikko Cordial shows. European banks are venturing into such mergers and Barclays is discussing with ABN Amro sensitive issues such as head office location.

The lesson is twofold. First, do not underestimate how difficult it will be to gain enduring value from a merger after the initial gains. Second, keep working to implement mergers, even years after the event. Having failed to obey both principles, Citigroup is struggling to salvage its reputation.

Where the truth lies – and lies again

Where the truth lies – and lies again
By Jacob Weisberg
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 19:29 | Last updated: April 11 2007 19:29


What do the Australian-born Taliban fighter David Hicks, the embattled American radio talk show host Don Imus and the British sailors and marines released last week by the Iranian government all have in common?

It is an easy question if you have been following these stories. These people have been in the news lately apologising for their actions. The twist is that they all issued their confessions under forms of pressure – physical, emotional or financial – that serve to undermine the credibility of those confessions. In each instance, the implication that pivotal statements were coerced leaves us wondering whether to believe the speakers now, then or ever.

Let us begin the comparison with David Hicks, the former kangaroo skinner captured with al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. Mr Hicks offered his confession in the form of an agreement with American military prosecutors at the Guantánamo Bay prison. With his guilty plea, he retracted his previous allegations of abuse at the hands of the American military, agreed not to speak to the media for a year, not to sue the US government for mistreatment and not to profit from selling his life story. In a statement read by his lawyer in court, Mr Hicks thanked American service members for their professionalism and apologised to the US for his actions.

A number of analysts in the US and Australia have declined to take this confession at face value. Mr Hicks, who has been at Guantánamo for more than five years, was facing a life sentence for lending material support to terrorism. As a result of the deal, he will serve only nine more months in an Australian prison before being released. If you tend to doubt the word of the Bush administration, you may tend to credit Mr Hicks’s earlier claims of torture and mistreatment and regard the threat of a long sentence as a reason to doubt the sincerity of his confession. The military prosecutor’s insistence on a gag order only raises suspicions that when Mr Hicks says that he was lying, he’s lying.

If apologising to the Pentagon provokes scepticism, apologising to Shiacrats holding you at gunpoint prompts outright disbelief. Before the 15 British detainees were set free last week, the Iranian government released three letters written by Faye Turney, the only woman in the group, in which she said that the sailors were at fault, denounced the Bush and Blair governments for occupying Iraq and asserted that she and her colleagues were being well treated by their captors. Even those who have been critical of the sailors’ excessive co-operation in captivity assume that their confessions of guilt resulted from intimidation or threats by their Iranian captors. This is the sailors’ defence as well. “I never meant a word of it,” Ms Turney said of her letters after returning home.

Don Imus grovelling on the radio show of the racial demagogue Al Sharpton this week looked a bit like a 16th captive, only he was not smiling quite so much. Mr Imus wants Americans to accept his apology for comments last week in which he referred to members of a triumphant black women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” and “jigaboos”. Mr Imus hopes that apologising profusely will liberate him from boycott threats and prevent the cancellation of his profitable and successful programme.

Here the coercion factor works against, rather than in favour of, the captive’s current wishes. Mr Imus’s motive is too transparent for us to believe he simply means what he is saying. But as with the other cases, the facile assumption that coercion equals deceit, may tell us more about our political views than where the truth actually lies. If you think racism is a pervasive and ineradicable fact of American life, you will almost certainly think Mr Imus embodies it. If not, you might dismiss his slurs as transgressions of taste rather than evidence of inveterate bigotry.

Likewise with Mr Hicks, those focused on American misdeeds assume that his earlier, uncoerced statements are more reflective of his beliefs. But his allegations from a few years ago about mistreatment at American hands, including claims of sexual abuse, seem far-fetched. And Mr Hicks had a motive to lie back then, too – to help fellow al-Qaeda members slander the Americans. According to one account, Mr Hicks ceased to be a Muslim at Guantánamo, which would explain why he now sympathises with his captors. The world would be a simpler place if we could believe that torture and coercion never work. But sometimes they may, which means we have to draw lines on moral grounds, not just practical ones.

As for the British seamen, they may indeed have confessed without meaning what they said in Iran, but they appear to be saying what their nearest audience wants to hear again now. The sailors need to defend themselves against the charge that they failed to maintain military discipline and embarrassed their country by co-operating with their captors and accepting gifts. Some had a financial motive as well, Ms Turney reportedly being paid £100,000 ($198,000) to co-operate in her exoneration by Britain’s largest newspaper. That may not count as coercion, but it is a harder gift to refuse than a bag of pistachio nuts.

The writer is editor of Slate.com

Fed views inflation as biggest risk

Fed views inflation as biggest risk
By Eoin Callan in Washington and Michael MacKenzie in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 20:38 | Last updated: April 11 2007 20:38



The Federal Reserve views inflation as the biggest risk to the US economy in spite of the increasingly uncertain outlook for growth, according to the latest minutes of the Open Market Committee.

The minutes of the March 20-21 meeting, released on Wednesday, said all members of the committee agreed the “predominant policy concern remains the risk that inflation will fail to moderate as expected”. The hawkish comments underlined the reluctance of the central bank to cut interest rates and prompted a sell-off in stocks and government bonds.

The S&P 500 was down 0.6 per cent at 1,439.60, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.7 per cent at 12,487.30.

Treasury yields rose, led by the two-year note that is largely influenced by expectations of Fed rate policy. The yield on the note rose to 4.73 per cent from a level of 4.68 per cent prior to the release of the minutes. The yield on the two-year was at 4.72 per cent, while the yield on the 10-year was at 4.735 per cent, up from an earlier level of 4.71 per cent.

Expectations for a rate cut in June were close to zero, while one quarter-percentage point rate cut was largely priced in for this year according to December eurodollar interest rate futures.

The Fed held rates steady in March at 5.25 per cent, but acknowledged in a statement at the time that the next move in rates could be down due to the uncertain outlook for growth.

“The committee agreed that further policy firming might prove necessary to foster lower inflation, but in the light of increased uncertainty about the outlook for both growth and inflation, the committee also agreed that the statement should no longer cite only the possibility of further firming,” the Fed minutes added.

John Shin, an economist at Lehman Brothers, said: “The minutes are a little bit more hawkish than anticipated. The thing that really stands out is that there seemed to be a general consensus on the committee that the upside risk to inflation was the predominant risk,” he said.

The minutes show the central bank reduced its forecast for growth in the first quarter “in response to weaker-than-expected incoming data on business equipment spending and federal defence purchases”.

US plans curbs on subprime lenders

US plans curbs on subprime lenders
By Gillian Tett in London and Eoin Callan in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 22:01 | Last updated: April 11 2007 22:01



US politicians are drawing up a bill that could make it less attractive for Wall Street investment banks and other financiers to repackage risky mortgages into securities and then sell them to investors around the world.

Senior figures in Congress hope to force the financiers who buy mortgages and create mortgage-backed securities to share some of the liability – and thus financial cost – that might arise if mortgages were mis-sold to borrowers who proved unable to meet payments.

The proposal, which will be debated by the House financial services committee next week, could reduce the flow of finance from the capital markets into the mortgage sector. Politicians and consumer groups blame such flows for the lax lending practices that developed in the subprime market in recent years.

The idea under consideration is intended to assist distressed homeowners and prevent a recurrence of the subprime lending problems – initiatives that will also include tougher rules about how mortgages are sold to home buyers.

“We will regulate mortgage brokers,” Barney Frank, Democratic chairman of the financial services committee, told the Financial Times yesterday.

Warnings about a wave of foreclosures across America have prompted Democrats to turn their fire on Wall Street and federal regulators over their role in the high-risk lending boom.

Lawmakers said they would summon stakeholders to a crisis summit, while itigroup and Bank of America responded to the political pressure with an announcement yesterday by a non-profit advocacy group that the two largest US banks would make $1bn of loans available at favourable terms to borrowers on the verge of losing their homes.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York called for “hundreds of millions of dollars” to bail out distressed homeowners, though other leading Democrats reacted cooly to calls for an injection of federal money.

Any move to extend legal and financial liability for mortgage mis-selling is likely to face opposition from investment banks, who have recently enjoyed rich revenues from the fast-growing business of repackaging loans into new securities.

More than $2,000bn (£1,000bn) of mortgage-backed bonds were sold last year, of which about a quarter were securities linked to subprime mortgages, according to data from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, an industry body.

SIFMA yesterday criticised the proposal, saying: Any legislative response should curtail abusive practices while not restricting the availability of credit or harming legitimate secondary market activity.”

But Mr Frank said he hoped the measures would be passed by the end of this year. “It is no part of my concern whether investment banks make money . . . the purpose of housing finance is to get people in houses, not to finance the US financial markets,” he said.

Mr Frank, a Democrat, said yesterday that he had still not agreed with Republican politicians on Committee the financial services committee on the precise details about how mis-selling liability might be assigned to those involved in securitisation.

Spencer Bachus, Mr Frank’s Republican counterpart, has backed an “assignee liability” system which would mean investment banks that repackage mortgages into bonds would be liable to pay compensation to borrowers if loans turned out to have been mis-sold. unless they can show they conducted extensive due diligence.

Such a move would make it less attractive to repackage these loans and to buy mortgage-backed securities.

Separately, Mr Frank said that his committee was also considering whether government-related entities should help restructure some private sector subprime mortgages and related securities.

“We are in the process of talking to [government-chartered mortgage groups] Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae about what type of instrument they may come up with,” he said. “They may be willing to take something of a haircut to stop the market from collapsing.”

ABBOTT CUTS HIV DRUG PRICE IN THAILAND - Responds to threat from country, pressure from UN

ABBOTT CUTS HIV DRUG PRICE IN THAILAND - Responds to threat from country, pressure from UN
Copyright byh The CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Bloomberg News, and The AP
April 11, 2007

Abbott Laboratories cut the price of its HIV drug to poor countries by more than half, responding to pressure from the United Nations and Thailand's threat that it might make a generic version.
Abbott will sell Kaletra for $1,000 a patient for a year's supply, 55 percent less than the average cost paid now by those countries, Abbott said.

The agreement might help alleviate a dispute that began in January when Thailand said it might copy several patent-protected HIV and cancer medicines to reduce prices, and increase the number of people with access to the drugs. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers' Association, a company trade group, responded then that its members wouldn't introduce new medicines in Thailand as a result.

The new agreement "takes HIV pricing out of the debate, and now we hope we can have a thoughtful debate about a system society needs in order to bring forth new medicine while increasing affordability," said Abbott spokeswoman Melissa Brotz. "Obviously because Thailand is a low-middle-tier country, they're eligible for this price.

"The withdrawal of registration for new medicines (in Thailand) has not changed," she said.

The poorest countries already receive HIV treatment at lower prices, Brotz said. The new pricing takes effect for companies that are low to low-middle income, as defined by World Bank criteria.

The new price of Kaletra "is lower than any generic price available in the world today for this medicine,"
Abbott said. Kaletra will be available in Thailand and at least 39 other countries at the new price, the company said.

In a related development, Abbott officially opened a new $450 million factory in Puerto Rico Tuesday, as part of an effort to increase production for its top-selling anti-inflammatory drug Humira. The lab is Abbott's largest capital investment, officials said.

New Hampshire House OKs civil-union bill

New Hampshire House OKs civil-union bill
Copyright 2007 Associated Press
Thursday, April 5, 2007


New Hampshire moved closer Wednesday to joining neighboring Vermont and a handful of other states in approving civil unions for same-sex couples.

The state House of Representatives in Concord voted 243-129 to give same-sex couples the same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as married couples. Same-sex unions from other states would be recognized if they were legal in the state where they were performed.

Supporters pushed a message of equality. "Help our daughters, friends, sons, and neighbors live their lives the way I believe we all want to live with the people we love -- in peace and dignity," Democratic Rep. Bette Lasky said.
Opponents, including Republican Rep. Maureen Mooney, said restricting civil unions to same-sex couples amounted to discrimination against heterosexual couples, roommates, and others who might want to share legal benefits as a couple. Democrats called it an attempt to confuse the issue.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Republican Bob Clegg has proposed legalizing "contractual cohabitation" as an alternative. His bill would give gays and other adults who don't choose to marry the same legal rights as married couples.
Gov. John Lynch opposes same-sex marriage but has avoided taking a position on civil unions. "I will weigh in on it once I make up my mind on it," he said Wednesday.

Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut allow civil unions. California authorizes domestic partnerships with benefits similar to civil unions. Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex couples to marry. (Beverley Wang, AP)

Marriage, Civil Unions & The Fight for Equality

Marriage, Civil Unions & The Fight for Equality
Copyright by Gay Chicago Magazine
April 10, 2007

Can it be possible that gay men and women in Illinois are on the verge of realizing the right to enter into civil unions in the state of Illinois?

The hotly contested debate over marriage rights for gays and lesbians has become the cornerstone of Rep. Greg Harris’ (13th District) House Bill #1826, known as “The Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act,” now before the Illinois General Assembly in Springfield. This proposed legislation, if voted into law, would provide civil unions for gay and lesbian couples throughout the state - an unprecedented accomplishment for the LGBT community in Illinois, one that until the last decade seemed like a pie-in-the-sky dream that had little, if any, possibility of ever becoming anything remotely resembling reality.

Based on the tenent that the current marriage law in Illinois is discriminatory and harms same-sex couples, the Act asserts that “there is no compelling interest or rational basis to deny same-sex couples full marriage benefits.”

Harris’ bold stance and enthusiastic initiative on the hotbed issue of same-sex marriage would appear to be anything but out of character. The 51-year old full-time lawmaker has been tackling the tough issues throughout a distinguished career in politics.

Harris served for 14 years as Chief of Staff for 48th Ward Chicago Alderman Mary Ann Smith. As the only openly gay member of the Illinois Legislature, Harris is also openly a person with AIDS. Harris’ legislative priorities include: Public safety, education, affordable housing and a passionate dedication to several causes he is very familiar with, accessible health and mental healthcare, and, in particular, HIV issues and economic development.

Elected without opposition to the Illinois General Assembly on Nov 7, 2006, Harris cochaired the City of Chicago’s task force on LGBT Substance Use/Abuse and is a member of the Crystal Meth Task Force. He is a founder and first Board President of both Open Hand Chicago and AIDS Walk Chicago.

A 1997 inductee into Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, Harris has worked closely with the city budget director and mayor on the extension of full domestic partnership benefits to City workers and has worked with a growing coalition of community groups to support the creation of a domestic partner registry in Cook County, the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Transit Authority.

I recently sat down with Harris in his offices for a lively discussion about the exciting progress of HB 1826 and Harris’ distinguished career as he continues to meet the daily challenges of being the highest-ranking openly gay elected official in the state of Illinois.

Gay Chicago: Greg, can you please briefly outline the main points of HB 1826 and what it proposes, since there may be many readers out there who are not yet fully aware of it?

Greg Harris: Sure. The bill originally originated as “The Religious Freedom and Marriage Protection Act,” and it would have extended full marriage to same-sex couples in Illinois. In talking to my colleagues on the floor of the House to see what support there would be - if I would have enough votes - it became really clear that people across the state, in big cities, small towns, rural areas, understood all the equal rights and justice issues. That is, about benefits, protections and responsibilities. But for a lot of them, the word “marriage” would still be very troublesome for them to support in their districts. So we came forward with the new bill, “The Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act” that would create civil unions in Illinois that would extend all the protections and all of the obligations of marriage to same-sex couples but would not amend the marriage statutes. It would give people all of the rights and protections of marriage but with a different name, and I think that will have substantial support and could pass in the Legislature. To begin this process and possibly pass something in the first year would be phenomenal. Then I think as years go on, we could readdress the marriage issue.

GC: There are those who believe that civil unions are another way of saying that LGBT people are “separate but definitely not equal.” Is this really an acceptable compromise to the reality of gays and lesbians having full marriage rights? What do you say to those people?

GH: I think that anytime you’re dealing with legislation where you have to get senators and representatives from every corner of the state, every walk of life on board, every piece of legislation is a compromise. And I think that every issue is a work in progress. But I think if we can get the legal protections and benefits right away; people need these things tomorrow. The folks I talk to, they need them tomorrow. Their partner is sick in the hospital, they need some rights today. They’re going to need some rights tomorrow. They want to be sure their children are protected. As we work through the political discussion of the words civil union vs. marriage, people understand that’s where we want to get. But they need these rights and protections today.

GC: There are many gay men and women who believe that marriage is an outmoded construct of heterosexual society; it isn’t working for them, and they cite the burgeoning divorce rate to prove their point. How do you respond to those people, Greg, and how do you justify the push for same-sex marriage in a political climate that appears unstable and often wavering on this issue?

GH: Well, David, it’s interesting. The Capital Facts, which is sort of the preeminent political journal in Illinois, had their discussion blog on the issue of civil unions (recently). And the comments started off with people stating how important it was to extend these protections, but then it trailed off toward the end of the day in this endless discussion of the pros and cons of marriage as an institution. Everyone’s got their opinion. Some of my straight friends have said, “We think you should have it (marriage) too so you can be as miserable as we are.” I’ve heard all of these kinds of comments. The fact is, under the law, in Illinois and in every other state, people who are in a legally recognized union have rights automatically that gay and lesbian couples don’t have. So from my point of view, yeah, you can have your own thoughts about religious marriage vs. civil marriage, but what’s important is that we have every right, every protection and every obligation for our families that’s legally available.

GC: Talking about the front-running Democratic candidates in the 2008 Presidential race for a minute, how upset should the LGBT community be with the contenders, since neither Clinton, Obama nor Edwards see gay marriage as a viable option and make no secret of their feelings on the subject. Should the 2008 LGBT vote be influenced by this fact, or is it simply unrealistic to expect a serious presidential candidate in 2008 to be openly in favor of gay marriage?

GH: Well, I think there are a couple of parts to that question, David. Let me try to take one at a time. I think that everyone really needs to educate themselves on all of the positions the candidates take; everyone is going to have his or her “hot-button” issue, whether it’s gay marriage or healthcare, immigration reform, the tax policy of the country; I think it’s our obligation to really know what all of these candidates stand for and not just pay attention to glossy TV ads, which tend to be motherhood and apple pie. And people have to make their own decisions based on what their most important issue is. On the other hand, I was terribly disturbed last week when I saw that Clinton and Obama did not come out immediately to denounce the hateful remarks of the General who spoke here in Chicago and said that he thought homosexuality was immoral. I thought it was deplorable that they didn’t come out immediately and talk about that. I think that they (the candidates) need to watch the trends of society across the country, because I think fair-minded people now realize that gay and lesbian citizens are entitled to the same rights and protections as other Americans. And I think they should be on that bandwagon.

GC: Greg, I believe you are the highest ranking openly gay official in the state, and you are also a man who is openly HIV positive. What, in your opinion, is most lacking relating to the legal provisions now in effect for the LGBT community?

GH: I think what we really need is a fire in the belly in our community. Chicago, in particular, thanks to Mayor Daley, has become a much safer and more progressive place to live. The LGBT community takes a lot for granted sometime but should realize that that’s not true as a matter of law throughout the rest of the state. There are still challenges for stopping the spread of HIV, of being sure that people have adequate access to quality healthcare, whether it’s for HIV or for breast or cervical cancer, and any number of other issues. To me, the problem is the complacency of people. They need to get engaged in the critical process, know what their elected officials are doing and hold them accountable.

GC: How difficult was it to get support for the Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act in Illinois, and where in the state do you anticipate the most opposition?

GH: The thing that surprised me most as I went from desk to desk on the floor of the legislature and started to talk to my colleagues about the Bill, most of them would say, “Stop right there.” I don’t care if you’re talking about big city urban people or small town folks or rural districts, almost every single legislator said to me, “I understand this issue, and I know why it’s important.” They would go on to say they have a cousin or a sister or a brother or a father or a neighbor who has faced one of these issues. And that is so telling because I think a number of years ago that wouldn’t have happened. One of the most important things people can do in their lives is to be out in their own way within their own community, because the elected officials are certainly being made aware of the issues facing LGBT people. People see a human face, and that is what’s important. Of course there are some people, both Democrat and Republican, who come from very conservative districts who, I think, are going to be looking at some of their colleagues to see how they’re going to vote on this - and giving them a comfort level (that indicates) this is not the hot-button issue that it would have been 10 years ago. And some people, frankly, who just told me that they’re philosophically opposed to the idea of gay marriage or civil unions, and there’s no way they could vote for it.

GC: How adequate is the current Illinois law regarding hate crimes, and are you currently a part of those making it easier to both identify hate crimes and prosecute them as such?

GH: This is a huge issue. I think that the implementation of hate crimes - and I don’t know if this is way the law is written - and how they’re investigated is always difficult. You know, what constitutes the element of a hate crime? And this is something that continually needs work. And I don’t know if we need to more carefully refine the definitions within the law or the implementation by the police. What is it in the act itself, assuming someone doesn’t yell “dyke” or “fag” at you 20 times as they beat on you, that makes it clearly become a hate crime? And that’s true not only for our community but if it’s a hate crime against a woman, a religious stance, a crime against a transgender, crime against a particular race, etc. What we are trying to achieve in the legislature is making it easier to charge one of these crimes as a hate crime when that’s clearly what it is.

GC: How can people interested become involved in the fight for passage of HB 1826?

GH: Hopefully by the time this is printed the bill will have passed out of committee, and then I think it’s important for all folks in Illinois - especially downstate and in areas of the city not containing many LGBT citizens - to let your legislator know that you live in the area and that this is an important issue to you. So get your coworkers, relatives, friends and colleagues to call and write your legislator asking them to please vote for Bill HB 1826 when it comes to the floor.

Special thanks to Kathy Henning for her invaluable help in making this interview happen. Also thanks to Chief of Staff Brian Curtin.

Contact State Representative Greg Harris at Greg@GregHarris.org.

David R. Guarino is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of De Paul University. A media/entertainment reporter based in Chicago, Guarino’s media/celebrity profiles have frequently been published in at least 20 LGBT publications nationwide. Guarino’s fiction has been featured in the Chicago magazine What’s Uptown, and his poetry/prose can be found in five editions of Off The Rocks, a LGBT anthology published by New Town Writers of Chicago. He can be reached at david.ronald@earthlink.net.

BILL HB 1826 AT A GLANCE WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU


Bill HB 1826 creates the “Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act.”

The Act provides, among other things, that its purpose is to provide “eligible same-sex and opposite sex couples with the same treatment as those in a civil marriage.” The Act further provides that parties to a civil union of the same sex are included in the terms “spouse,” “immediate family,” dependent” and related matters, and that domestic relations, probate and family law shall apply equally to parties to a civil union of the same sex.

The Act further provides that benefits apply equally to same-sex civil unions in these areas: Causes of actions related to spousal status, for wrongful death, emotional distress and loss of consortium, adoption, family leave, group insurance for state and municipal employees, accident and health insurance protections tied to former spouses and dependents and taxes and tax deductions based on marital status.

It provides that nothing in the Act should be construed to interfere with or regulate any religious practice concerning marriage and that no religion is required to solemnize a civil union to which it objects.

It also provides that a civil union is between “two persons” (rather than between “a man and a woman”) licensed, solemnized and registered under the Act. The provisions included herein effective immediately.

Sponsored by State Rep. Greg Harris (13th District)

Cosponsors: Reps. Sara Feigenholtz, Constance A. Howard, Harry Osterman, and others

The Human Services Committee okayed HB 1826, 5-4. It now moves to the House floor, where Harris said he hopes to call it for a vote this spring.

Immigration Reform and LGBT Discrimination

Immigration Reform and LGBT Discrimination
by Charlsie Dewey
Copyright by The Windy City Times
2007-04-11


Introduced by United States Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., on March 22, the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act of 2007 ( STRIVE Act ) could be the answer to immigration reform. But, for LGBT individuals, passage of the STRIVE Act won’t change the immigration situation much.

Presently, there are three primary ways to immigrate to the U.S., family based, employment based and asylum seekers.

The Human Rights Campaign Web site reports, “Approximately 75 percent of the 1 million green cards or immigrant visas issued each year go to family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.”

Without the ability to marry in the U.S., same-sex partners are at a glaring disadvantage, unable to meet the requirements that would allow a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to sponsor a spouse, as is the case for opposite sex married couples.

Immigration law is controlled at the federal level, so even couples who are recognized under a state’s civil union or marriage laws are not eligible to sponsor a spouse.

“The primary mechanism, the spousal category, is completely denied to LGBT people…excluding that major class of immigrants from the United States,” said Adam Francoeur, Policy Coordinator for Immigration Equality.

Francoeur explained, that post-operative transgender individuals face a unique situation, depending on whether or not their state recognizes their marriage as an opposite sex couple, there is a chance for a transgender individual to be sponsored by a spouse.

Gutierrez said through e-mail, “I believe that families, both gay and straight, should not be ripped apart by our badly broken immigration system.”

Yet, if passed, the STRIVE Act will continue to discriminate against same-sex couples because the bill does not include language that would permit a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to sponsor his or her partner.

The bill could, however, help some LGBT individuals who have been living undocumented within the U.S. on an individual level, though not due to their sexuality. Undocumented individuals meeting specific guidelines and living in the U.S. prior to June 2006 can apply for citizenship under the STRIVE Act and become U.S. citizens or permanent residents if requirements are met.

What about all those same-sex binational partners of the future? The STRIVE Act falls short. Same-sex binational spouses of the future will still have the primary immigration opportunity shut off to them.

There is a small hope in another measure known as the Uniting American Families Act ( UAFA ) . The UAFA provides the necessary language for same-sex partners to be able to sponsor a spouse in the same way opposite sex couples can.

Gutierrez said, “I am a longtime original co-sponsor of the Uniting American Families Act. This legislation would ensure that immigration law applies the same standards to loving, committed same-sex couples that the U.S. applies to opposite-sex couples. I have vigorously supported this legislation in the past and will do so again this Congress.”

The UAFA was previously known as the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, which, when introduced in 2003, failed to garner enough support in a Republican led Congress. There is more hope for the UAFA, but many are still skeptical if the climate has changed enough for the measure to pass.

Without passage of the UAFA, same-sex couples will have to continue to seek U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status through work based or asylum cases. Neither of which are easy to obtain.

Employers can sponsor an employee for a green card, but according to Francoeur, they are less frequent and most are non-immigrant visas.

In the case of asylum, LGBT individuals from another country must be able to prove that persecution has occurred based on sexual orientation and that the country’s government cannot or will not protect the individual from further persecution.

There are many problems with the current asylum requirements, such as the fact that an individual is unlikely to win asylum through fear of persecution alone, and an individual must out himself or herself in filing, creating a greater risk for persecution.

Aurora Pineda, board co-chair of Amigas Latinas and founder of PFLAG en Espanol, talked about an incident that reflects what many asylum-seekers face. “There was a case [ concerning a man from Mexico ] where the judge made a comment—’You don’t look gay to me’—so he rejected the asylum. ... You have to prove it’s not safe for you to stay in the country you’re from, and sometimes you might not have access to the documentation or you’re afraid to file a report because, for example, within the police station in Mexico they tend to be very corrupt. I can imagine this happens across the board in any country ... It’s not as easy as people think it is.”

Presently, an important asylum case has been introduced involving Olivia Nabulwala, a lesbian from Uganda whose family, according to CNN.com, was so angry at her admission to being a lesbian that they beat her, stripped her and held her down while a stranger raped her.

In an attempt to remain in the U.S., Nabulwala petitioned for asylum and was denied by a Minnesota judge. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with the judge’s decision, and Nabulwala’s case is being reconsidered.

If Nabulwala wins asylum, an important aspect of her case will be having a published opinion. Rachel B. Tiven of Immigration Equality told CNN.com, “A published opinion gives it greater weight, makes it citable.” If Nabulwala does not win, she will be deported.

For many binational couples the inability for one spouse to remain in the U.S. tears the family apart and oftentimes leads to the U.S. citizen joining the spouse outside of the U.S. This can mean the loss of a vital resource here due to highly skilled individuals taking those job skills abroad. This can also create a situation where an individual is forced to choose between his or her family members or spouse by being separated from loved ones through either decision.

Under the STRIVE Act alone, LGBT families are not given equal consideration or protections. Without the UAFA or a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes LGBT families, LGBT individuals will continue to be uprooted from their families and forced to live illegally in the U.S. if they are unwilling to separate—or they will have to find another country to call home in order to remain together.

Women & Children First Fight for Survival

Women & Children First Fight for Survival
by Ross Forman
Copyright by The Windy City Times
2007-04-11



The bookstore isn’t just for books, of course. There are magazines, CDs, magnets, jewelry and more. Women & Children First, a popular Andersonville anchor, has been in business for almost 28 years, and since 1990 it has been at 5233 N. Clark.

“You’ll see books here that you won’t see anywhere else,” said co-owner Linda Bubon. “I think people often are surprised with what they find when they come inside the store; [ there’s such a ] variety, including books, magazines, cards, videos, etc.”

The books’ subjects range from spirituality to psychology to pregnancy to politics to cooking. People can also order any item they don’t see in the bookstore—including textbooks.

“People don’t know perhaps the breadth of our stock. They may well find things that they don’t expect to,” said co-owner Ann Christophersen. “Our identity has shifted a bit since moving to Andersonville. We still are a specialty—a feminist store. We carry a lot of books by and about women in a depth and breadth that you just won’t find at other general bookstores. But, since moving to this location, we’re functioning more as a neighborhood bookstore and Women & Children First doesn’t quite capture that fact. It just shows our focus, but not our entire store.”

Underscoring that statement is the fact that the store’s customer base is about 40 percent men. W&CF has a diverse stock of books, including some sports titles that, no doubt, would appeal to male consumers.

W&CF also has a deep selection of contemporary politics and loads of fiction titles.

“We certainly have a lot of male customers these days. Heck, there are times when there are only male [ customers ] in the store, and that wasn’t the case in the early days,” Christophersen said. “Our male customer-base has risen significantly over the years because we carry a very diverse selection of books.”

The staff at W&CF includes two full-timers, including Bubon, as well as six part-timers. The staff is knowledgeable, helpful and friendly.

One thing that has affected independent bookstores over the past few years is a decline in sales—and W&CF is no exception. “At the end of the 1990s, we were at a good place [ financially ] ,” Bubon said. “We maintained [ that level ] for the first few years [ of the 2000s ] , but the last three years have been a downward trend in sales.”

One factor hurting sales at W&CF is competition, of course. Borders Books & Music, for instance, has four locations—all within four miles of W&CF. The Internet is also a significant factor because it’s made book-shopping simple and cheaper, especially for those who know exactly what they want. “It’s extremely hard to compete with [ the Internet ] ,” Bubon said.

W&CF was one of the first Chicago-area bookstores to sell online, and it still does.

“We’re working as smartly and operating as smartly as, frankly, we know how to,” Christophersen said. “We have done everything we can think of to cut our operating costs, including my salary.”

Things have gotten so bad at W&CF that both confirm the store must now plan month-to-month, not long-term. And the possibility that W&CF might close before the end of the summer is very real, they confirmed.

“What it ultimately comes down to is: whether people in the community, and the city as a whole, decide it matters enough that we exist and then make their shopping decisions based on that,” Christophersen said. “We want people’s support, and we need it now. By that we mean, that they buy their books here.

“What we offer that none of the Internet sites offer is: an actual place where people can look at books they may be interested in, see other people, and hear book suggestions.”

W&CF hosts regular author speaking and signing events, mostly for lesbian writers. The store also features a handy bulletin board, loaded with local information.

“Good bookstores just seem like an important part, an important space in community life,” Christophersen said. Unfortunately, about 70 percent of independent bookstores have closed in the last 15 years, Bubon said.

W&CF still hosts about 30 or 40 children every Wednesday morning for a free storytelling that has been going on for the past 20 years.

“This reminds me of the early days, when we were really struggling. It’s really hard like that again. Hopefully things will turn around, because they have to if we are to stay in business,” Christophersen said.


PROFILES:


LINDA BUBON

Age: 55

Originally from: Western suburbs of Chicago; now resides in: Chicago, for the past 22 years

Also: Is a storyteller

Book suggestions: The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart; Waiting For Daisy, by Peggy Orenstein; The New Yorkers, by Cathleen Schine


ANN CHRISTOPHERSEN

Age: 58

Originally from: Northwest Indiana

Chicago: Since 1970

Book suggestions: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Grace, by Anne Lamott; Writing in an Age of Silence, by Sara Paretsky


Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, ( 773 ) 769-9299, wcfbooks@aol.com , www.womenandchildrenfirst.com , Parking Available, Wheelchair Accessible.

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Bush on the border

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Bush on the border
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 11, 2007



President George W. Bush went to the Mexico border in Arizona on Monday and showed once again that immigration is an issue he understands. He said America suffers from a system that exploits people who come to do jobs that citizens won't do. He said the country needed "a practical answer" that promotes an orderly flow of legal immigrants, eases pressure at the border and opens a path to citizenship for the hidden 12 million who keep our economy humming. And he urged Congress to find that answer through a "serious, civil and conclusive debate."

It was good that Bush made these points, as he periodically does.

But there was a dissonance in his speech, because it came only two weeks after he and a group of Senate Republicans circulated a list of "first principles" about immigration that amounted to a huge step backward for efforts to fix a broken system in a reasonable, humane way.

It proposed new conditions on immigrant labor so punitive and extreme that they amounted to a radical rethinking of immigration - not as an expression of America's ideals, but as a strictly contractual phenomenon designed to extract cheap labor from an unwelcome underclass.

New immigrant workers and those already here would all be treated as itinerant laborers. They could renew their visas, but only by paying extortionate fees and fines. There would be a path to legal status, but one so costly and long that it is essentially a mirage: By some estimates, a family of five could pay more than $64,000 and wait up to 25 years before any member could even apply for a green card.

Other families would be torn apart; new workers and those who legalize themselves would have no right to sponsor relatives to join them.

In a country that views immigrants as its lifeblood and cherishes the unity of families, the Republican talking points were remarkable for their chill of nativism and exploitation. They were also unrealistic. The hurdles would create huge impediments to hiring and keeping a stable work force, while pushing the illegal economy deeper underground.

The thrust of Bush's speech leaves little room for a vision as crabbed and inhumane as the one he and his party have circulated. It's hard to tell whether his plainspoken eloquence in Yuma was meant to distance himself from those earlier and benighted talking points, or whether he has been talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Bush should clear up the confusion. He should reaffirm the importance of family-based immigration and of an achievable path to citizenship for those willing, as he put it, "to pay their debt to society and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen."

Clarity and forcefulness from Bush are important because the prospects for a good immigration bill this year are so uncertain.

The Senate plans to take up the issue next month, but there is no bill yet, and the talking-points memo shows the debate drifting to the hard right. Edward Kennedy, the Senate's most stalwart advocate of comprehensive reform, has been left in the lurch as the Republican presidential hopefuls John McCain and Sam Brownback have run away from sensible positions to court hard-line voters.

A decent bipartisan House bill, sponsored by Representatives Jeff Flake and Luis Gutierrez, may not get the hearing it deserves.

Bush made a strong case for comprehensive reform on Monday. He should keep it up - publicly and forthrightly, as he did this week, and forget about backroom negotiations that produce harsh political manifestoes to appease hard-liners.

Copper rises on strong demand forecasts

Copper rises on strong demand forecasts
By Neil Dennis
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 12:06 | Last updated: April 11 2007 12:06


Copper hit a fresh seven-month high on Wednesday, as industrial metals prices remained underpinned by falling inventories and strong demand forecasts.

Three month copper futures on the London Metal Exchange rose to $7,945 a tonne, up 2.5 per cent from the previous session’s kerb close.

China’s copper imports reached a record 307,740 tonnes in March, while supplies of the metal monitored by the LME fell for the third-consecutive day.

”With risk appetite increasing the metals appear well underpinned,” said Robin Bhar at UBS. However, a correction was now overdue, Mr Bhar added.

Three month aluminium rose 0.5 per cent to $2,893 a tonne, its highest in 11 months, after Alcoa, the world’s biggest producer of the metal, said global consumption of the metal was expected to remain robust this year, with demand still strong from the aerospace sector.

Oil prices edged higher, following a recent sharp downturn. Nymex West Texas Intermediate was up 16 cents at $62.05 a barrel, while Brent crude added 71 cents to $68.12.

Stem cells offer diabetes breakthrough

Stem cells offer diabetes breakthrough
By Christopher Bowe in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 21:38 | Last updated: April 10 2007 21:38


Diabetics could be freed for long periods from the need for insulin injections by using stem cells transplanted from bone marrow, according to a groundbreaking study published on Wednesday.

The small preliminary study found 14 out of 15 patients with type I diabetes were able to go without insulin for a long period with few serious side effects.

The researchers treated newly diagnosed diabetic patients with drugs to aggressively suppress their immune systems. This prompted their bone marrow to release stem cells into the blood.

Those cells were drawn and collected from the patients to make a therapy for them.

The patients were then again treated with a different aggressive immune-suppression therapy and injected with their own stem cells, to help rejuvenate their bodies’ capability to make the cells that produce insulin.

The study by Dr Julio Voltarelli, of Brazil’s University of Sao Paulo, and Dr Richard Burt, at Northwestern University in the US, is to be published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The research is seen as a landmark in a potential explosion of new science that finds ways to alter the body’s cellular make-up to treat diabetes.

In addition, the study uses bone marrow stem cells, rather than embryonic stem cells, which remain controversial in the US because of ethical and religious concerns.

Nonetheless, the study’s positive result may add momentum to stem cell research, whose prospects have also improved since Democrats took control of the US Congress.

Diabetes is increasingly seen as a growing worldwide problem, particularly in the developed world. The world is expected to spend at least $232bn in 2007 to treat and prevent diabetes and its complications, according to the International Diabetes Federation.

Type II diabetes accounts for 90-95 per cent of the disease, and is growing quickly because of rising obesity rates and sedentary lifestyles. But type I diabetes is the better known form, in which the body’s immune system attacks itself to destroy the cells that create insulin and help it process glucose.

The lifestyles of type I diabetics are significantly affected by the need for insulin injections and blood sugar monitoring. Type I diabetics have a high probability of contracting life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease.

The study found that one patient went nearly three years without insulin, four went without for at least 21 months, seven for at least six months, and two for between one and five months.

Although noting caution in reading too much into early research, Dr Jay Skyler, a diabetes expert from the University of Miami, said research in the field was likely to “explode” in the next few years.

“It’s an area that begs more research,” Dr Skyler said in an interview. “But nobody was brave enough to do it. It is a heroic approach. They were willing to put their toe in the water first.”

US mulls bill of rights for air passengers

US mulls bill of rights for air passengers
By Doug Cameron in Chicago
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 22:51 | Last updated: April 10 2007 22:51


Grassroots support for an airline passengers’ bill of rights in the US will receive its first political test on Wednesday, despite opposition from both the industry and established consumer groups.

The issue will come before a Senate committee on Wednesday and will be discussed by a House committee this month.

An internet campaign led by Kate Hanni, a Californian real-estate agent stranded on an American Airlines flight last December, has bolstered demands for a legislated passenger charter, almost 30 years after the US industry was deregulated.

Ms Hanni, who arrived in Washington on Tuesday to address the hearing, has tapped a populist streak among passengers facing more crowded flights and delays. Her internet campaign boasts 15,000 signatures.

The hearings come amid growing disquiet about service levels in the industry. The issue was elevated to the political stage by the high-profile “trapping” of JetBlue passengers for several hours on aircraft at New York’s JFK airport during an ice storm in February.

The incident spawned two bills that would give passengers the right to leave an aircraft stranded on the ground for more than three hours, subject to safety considerations. The bills – backed by two senators and a congressman – are viewed as impractical by airlines and most consumer groups.

Most delays are linked to weather and an antiquated air traffic control system. However, delays in February rose to their second-highest level in recent years, and service levels have fallen for three years in a row.

Ms Hanni’s Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights has prospered despite the opposition of groups such as the Air Travellers’ Association, which has rejec-ted a bill of rights. The consumer group’s concerns echoed those of the Air Transport Association, representing the largest carriers, which views the proposed bill as naïve.

Critics point to a situation in which a single passenger could demand to be let off an aircraft, even if the majority wanted to wait for take-off.

“It’s not like a parking lot. You can’t just get out of line,” says Dave Castelveter at the Air Transport Association. Returning to drop off a passenger could cause further delays, especially in bad weather when further de- icing might be required.

The proposed bill of rights would also require airliners to carry extra food and drink in case of severe delays. But the Air Travellers’ Association says this would add to the weight and fuel costs – pushing up air fares.

Dave Neeleman, the chief executive of JetBlue, says legislation would be counterproductive, despite introducing a bill of rights for his own airline in the wake of the problems in February. “Eighty-five per cent of what we had in the bill of rights is what we’ve been doing since day one,” said Mr Neeleman.

House panel subpoenas Gonzales

House panel subpoenas Gonzales
By Brooke Masters in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 23:15 | Last updated: April 10 2007 23:15


The House judiciary committee ratcheted up the pressure on Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, on Tuesday by issuing its first subpoena connected to the controversial firing of eight top prosecutors.

The committee wants unedited copies of some heavily blacked-out e-mails that have already been turned over, including a ranking of all 93 US attorneys, and information about several of them who were also considered for dismissal.

This marks the first time that Congress has demanded rather than asked for information about the issue and it could set up a legal confrontation if the department of justice resists.

“We cannot accept the department’s unilateral judgment as to how much of this information it needs to disclose,” John Conyers, the committee chairman, said in a letter accompanying the subpoena.

Brian Roehrkasse, the department’s spokesman, called the subpoena “unfortunate” because the documents include personal information about sitting US attorneys. But he added: “We still hope and expect that we will be able to reach an accommodation with the Congress.”

The committee had previously authorised subpoenas for several department officials and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s chief political aide, but has not issued them. Congressional aides have been negotiating with the White House and the DoJ to get voluntary testimony.

The mass sacking of seven prosecutors in December and the ousting of an eighth to make way for a protégé of Mr Rove has become a flashpoint in Washington. Dozens of Democrats and even a few Republicans are saying that Mr Gonzales should step down.

The controversy has also stirred up allegations that law enforcement has been politicised. Several of the ousted prosecutors say they faced improper questions about political corruption or voter fraud cases.

Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, also asked the DoJ on Tuesrday for information about the prosecution of a Democratic Wisconsin state official.

The official’s conviction became an issue in the 2006 governor’s race in that state but was overturned last week by a federal appeals court because of insufficient evidence.

Citigroup reveals plan to cut 17,000 jobs

Citigroup reveals plan to cut 17,000 jobs
By David Wighton in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 11 2007 12:41 | Last updated: April 11 2007 13:47


Citigroup on Wednesday announced plans to axe 17,000 jobs, of which 8,500 will be lost outside the US, as part of a restructuring plan that it said would cut costs by $3.7bn next year.

A further 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower cost locations, both within the US and overseas, with two-thirds of that through attrition.

The cost cuts figure includes a previously announced programme to rationalise information technology across the group which is expected to save about $2bn a year by 2009.

The job cuts figure, from a total workforce of about 327,000, was in line with expectations while the cost reduction estimate is lower than some Wall Street analysts hoped.

Chuck Prince, chief executive, said the moves, which are the result of a three-month review, would not just cut costs but also improve Citigroup’s ability to grow.

“The recommendations that emerged from the structural expense review will improve business integration as well as our ability to move quickly and seize new growth opportunities,” he said in a statement.

The cost savings are estimated at $2.1bn this year, $3.7bn in 2008 and $4.6bn in 2009. Citigroup’s total operating expenses last year were $52bn but Citigroup said it used as a base a figure of $40.6bn, which excludes bonuses and Smith Barney commissions.

Of the $2.58bn of new cost cuts in 2009, $1.23bn will come from Citigroup’s consumer businesses, $500m from markets and banking, $150m from wealth management and $550m from corporate operations and technology.

The company will take a pre-tax charge of $1.38bn to cover the costs of the plan in the first quarter of 2007 and a further $200m later in the year.

Citigroup said the plan involved the elimination of layers of management and the consolidation of certain back-office, middle-office and corporate functions at the business, regional and headquarters levels to eliminate duplication of effort.

It aims to increase the use of share services across the group including the creation of “utilities” in areas such as legal, human resources, risk management, and financial operations, as well as the sharing of regional and country middle office functions in international markets.

Citigroup aims to expand centralised procurement. At the end of 2006, this covered 65 per cent of overall purchase which is expected to rise to 80 per cent by the end of 2007 and 100 per cent by the end of 2009.

Mr Prince has been under intense pressure to curb mounting expenses in an effort to revive Citigroup’s stagnant share price.

Last year, he faced public criticism from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi investor who owns a 4.3 per cent stake, who called for “draconian” action to rein in expenses.

Sandy Weill, Mr Prince’s predecessor who built Citigroup through a series of acquisitions in the 1990s, has also privately criticised Mr Prince, telling friends that “cost discipline has been lost”.

Operating expenses jumped 15 per cent to $52bn last year, while revenue grew only 7 per cent.

In December, Mr Prince ordered Bob Druskin, newly appointed chief operating officer, to carry out a comprehensive review of the company’s cost base. With the help of consultants Mercer Oliver Wyman, Mr Druskin identified areas where Citigroup less efficient than its best competitors and focused cost cuts accordingly.

Critics have pointed out that estimated additional costs cost of about $2bn – not including the information technology rationalisation – would be relatively modest compared with last year’s $7bn increase in expenses and have claimed that the process was in large part a public relations exercise. They also say that the process has been very disruptive internally.

Insiders strongly dispute this and say that the fact that there has been a big initiative with a large central restructuring charge meant that managers came forward with cost-cutting plans they would not otherwise have been pushed through on their budgets.

“Businesses are doing things they should have done long ago,” said one insider.

The Case for a Global Carbon Tax - OPTIONS: The only way to slow climate change is to make coal more expensive and alternatives cheaper.

The Case for a Global Carbon Tax - OPTIONS: The only way to slow climate change is to make coal more expensive and alternatives cheaper.
By Fareed Zakaria
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.


April 16, 2007 issue - The Bush administration made two notable statements on energy policy early in its tenure. They were both highly controversial. The first was that the Kyoto accords, as negotiated, were "dead." The second was Dick Cheney's declaration in a 2001 speech that "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." As it happens, both are accurate and should be at the heart of any new, ambitious policy to tackle global warming and energy use. If you haven't fainted yet, let me explain what I mean.

The administration had several narrow-minded and callous reasons for rejecting Kyoto, but among its main arguments was that the accords did not include developing countries and thus were ineffective. To understand why that is correct, consider one simple statistic. During the Kyoto time frame (that is, by 2012), China and India will build almost 800 new coal-fired power plants. The combined CO2 emissions from those plants will be five times the total reductions in CO2 mandated by the accords.

Here's the math. These 800 new plants will burn about 900 million extra tons of coal every year. By 2012 they will have emitted about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. During that period, if the countries that have signed the Kyoto accords implement them fully—a big "if"—they will cut their CO2 emissions by 483 million tons.

Understanding the causes and cures of global warming is actually very simple. One word: coal. Coal is the cheapest and dirtiest source of energy around and is being used in the world's fastest-growing countries. If we cannot get a handle on the coal problem, nothing else matters.

Kyoto represents old thinking: if the West comes together and settles on a solution, the Third World will have to adhere to that template. It's the way things have been done in international affairs for decades, perhaps centuries. But today power is shifting to the emerging markets. China, India and Brazil will have a greater impact on the globe in coming years than Europe will—for better or worse. A new Kyoto would start the other way around. The United States should work out an agreement with these three countries. That would become the new template, defining what further actions are necessary and possible.

Getting China and India to stop burning coal will not be easy. It's the cheapest way to fuel their growth. While officials in China are more attentive to environmental issues these days—in part because China now has the dirtiest air and water in the world—they are highly unlikely to do anything that will significantly undercut economic progress.

Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the Indian technology giant Infosys and one of the few Asian executives genuinely concerned about environmental issues, says that ultimately the industrialized world will have to provide subsidies to developing countries to build "clean coal" plants. "Right now in India, and I assume in China, plants are built through competitive bidding. The lowest bid usually wins. You will have to create a subsidy for clean coal to make it the lowest bid. Otherwise, the dirtiest will win."

There's an obvious problem with this model—where will the money for subsidies come from?—but there's another glitch as well. The technology for clean coal doesn't really exist yet in a form that can be widely used. There are various pilot projects and experiments but nothing that is, as yet, economically viable. Both problems can be solved by the same simple idea—a tax on spewing carbon into the atmosphere. Once you tax carbon, you make it cheaper to produce clean energy. If burning coal and petrol in current ways becomes more expensive because of the damage they do to the environment, people will find ways to get energy out of alternative fuels or methods. Along the way, industrial societies will earn tax revenues that they can use, in part, to subsidize clean energy for the developing world. It is the only way to solve the problem at a global level, which is the only level at which the solution is meaningful.

Congress is currently considering a variety of proposals that address this issue. Most are a smorgasbord of caps, credits and regulations. Instead of imposing a simple carbon tax that would send a clear signal to the markets, Congress wants to create a set of hidden taxes through a "cap and trade" system. The Europeans have adopted a similar system, which is unwieldy and prone to gaming and cheating. (It is also unsustainable if Brazil, China and India don't come onboard soon.)

A carbon tax would also send the market a clear and powerful signal to develop alternative energies. Daniel Esty, a Yale environmental expert whose new book, "Green to Gold," is a blueprint for new thinking about the environment, argues that the only way forward is a "transformational approach that creates incentives for innovation and alternative energy. The way we think about these issues is old-fashioned. We're still trying to limit, regulate, control and inspect. We need to become much more market-friendly. Put in place a few simple rules, and let the market come up with hundreds of solutions. We're not even 10 percent of the way down such a path."

In the end, everyone realizes that innovation is the only real solution to the global-warming problem. And that's where Cheney is right. Conservation and energy efficiency are smart policies, but not enough. In America over the last three decades, almost all machines and appliances we use to power our lives have become significantly more efficient (with the exception of cars). And yet we consume three times as much energy as we did 30 years ago. Why? Because rising living standards mean rising energy use. We can slow down the growth, but some increase is inevitable. We have more efficient air conditioners. But now we air-condition our whole houses. Our bed lamps conserve power. But we also plug in two phones, a BlackBerry and three iPods.

And yet the Bush administration's record on energy and the environment is shameful. While they may have the right critique of Kyoto, they have used it as an excuse to do nothing, surrendered energy policy to special interests, subsidized polluters and killed or watered down every measure that would spur innovation or create a new energy framework for the future. They have been weak leaders, bad policymakers and poor stewards of the world we live in. That's not a sign of "personal virtue," it is personal and public vice.

Sadrists turnout in force for anti-US demonstration

Sadrists turnout in force for anti-US demonstration
By Steve Negus,Iraq correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 10 2007 03:00


Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia protesters gathered in the holy city of Najaf yesterday to demand the withdrawal of US forces on the fourth anniversary of the US capture of Baghdad.

The demonstration, the largest in recent months, represented a show of force by the radical Sadrist movement, which has kept a comparatively low profile since the US troop surge in Iraq began in February. The protesters had been bussed in from across the Shia south of the country and waving red, white and black Iraqi flags they filled the 7km highway between the town, which houses much of the Shia clerical establishment, and its sister city of Kufa.

Yesterday's demonstration came at a particularly critical time for a force caught between militant roots and aspirations to join the Shia political mainstream.

Two months ago, much of the Sadrist leadership, including its leader Moqtada al-Sadr, went into hiding to avoid coming into confrontation with Iraqi and US troops carrying out a massive government crackdown. The movement's Mahdi Army militia - blamed for much of the sectarian violence that had left tens of thousands dead in and around Baghdad in the previous 12 months - were told to keep off the streets.

However, much of the movement's rank and file have been chafing under instructions from the leadership not to stage attacks against the US and Iraqi troops pushing into their strongholds, a crisis that was probably compounded by Mr Sadr's own absence from the political scene.

This weekend, fighting broke out in the southern city of Diwaniya between Sadrist militiamen and Iraqi troops backed by American airpower.

Although the death toll appears to have been fairly light, it placed Mr Sadr in an awkward political position. He draws much of his appeal from having been the standard-bearer of anti-occupation militancy among the Shia in the first 18 months after the 2003 US-led invasion.

Since then, however, he appears to have decided that armed confrontation is too risky a strategy, and is deepening his ties with other Shia parties and allowing his followers to run in parliamentary elections.

Mr Sadr issued a statement in the wake of the Diwaniya fighting calling on his fighters not to attack Iraqi government troops but instead to "unify" efforts against the American "arch-enemy", which may be difficult in practice when US and Iraqi forces stage joint operations.

The Sadrists rose to power in the aftermath of April 9 2003, leading Shia opposition to both the Saddam Hussein regime and the US forces that overthrew it. However, the Sadrists' appeal has traditionally been not so much their ideological consistency but their tremendous energy as activists and their huge support base among the Shia poor - strengths that demonstrations like yesterday's are designed to reinforce.

Bush renews drive to reform immigration law

Bush renews drive to reform immigration law
By Andrew Ward in Atlanta
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 10 2007 03:00


President George W. Bush yesterday thrust immigration reform back towards the top of the US political agenda when he announced a fresh push for legislation aimed at resolving the status of the country's estimated 12m illegal immigrants.

Mr Bush vowed to work with Republicans and Democrats to agree bipartisan legislation that would toughen border security while also offering visas to temporary workers and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the US.

Immigration reform is viewed as one of the few policy areas where Mr Bush has a realistic chance of support from the Democratic-controlled Congress but the issue remains deeply divisive for both parties.

Speaking at a border patrol post in Yuma, Arizona, Mr Bush spoke of his "deep conviction" about the need for action on immigration and called for Congress to pass legislation that could be signed into law before the end of this year.

He urged Republicans and Democrats to work together "to find a practical answer that falls between granting automatic citizenship to every illegal immigrant and deporting every illegal immigrant".

Efforts to find consensus have been intensifying, with senior Bush administration officials holding numerous private meetings on Capitol Hill with main figures from both parties.

Mr Bush's visit to the border yesterday was designed to increase momentum behind the process and seek public support for his attempt to tackle one of the thorniest issues in American politics.

He cited evidence that the number of illegal immigrants entering the US had fallen by nearly a third this year because of tougher border security measures, including expanded fencing and increased patrols and surveillance.

By highlighting steps to secure the border, Mr Bush hopes to persuade Republicans to support measures making it easier for immigrants to enter the country legally.

"If you've got people coming here to do jobs that Americans aren't doing we need to find a way for them to do so on a legal basis for a temporary period of time," he said.

Mr Bush said illegal immigrants who had been in the US for a number of years should be allowed to apply for citizenship but insisted there would be no automatic amnesty.

"People who meet a reasonable number of conditions and pay a penalty should be able to apply for citizenship but approval would not be automatic and they would need to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law," he said.

Many Democrats in Congress view immigration reform as an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to produce workable legislation and forge compromise with Republicans.

The Democratic leadership is also under pressure from Hispanic supporters to deliver a bill that gives undocumented immigrants a chance to become legal.

But support for reform is by no means universal within the party, with many Democratic House representatives wary of the strong anti-immigration sentiment among many blue-collar voters.

A large portion of the Republican party is also fiercely opposed to any policy that could be construed as a loosening of immigration laws.

Supporters of reform fear that the concessions needed to secure Republican support will make the legislation too restrictive - deterring immigrants from seeking legal status.

Draft plans under discussion between the White House and Congress would reportedly require illegal immigrants to pay a $3,500 penalty to gain a temporary visa and $10,000 for permanent residence.

US braces for sharp profits slowdown

US braces for sharp profits slowdown
By Francesco Guerrera in New York and Eoin Callan in Washington
Published: April 9 2007 20:13 | Last updated: April 9 2007 20:13
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007


US companies are bracing themselves for a sharp fall in profit growth this year, amid rising fears that corporate America’s woes will exacerbate the expected economic slowdown.

Wall Street analysts and economists are warning that the end to a record run of profit increases along with already anaemic business investment by US companies could have serious repercussions on the domestic economy.

Any slackening in the pace of earnings growth could also unsettle equity markets as corporate profits have been one of the key drivers behind the prolonged resilience of US stocks.

“The situation is fairly precarious,” said David Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch. “The typical chief executive sees a slowing economy and acts accordingly.”

Mr Rosenberg, one of the most bearish analysts on Wall Street, last week reduced his forecasts for US economic growth in the first quarter of this year to 1.8 per cent from 2.2 per cent. The US economy grew at 2.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2006, according to the latest official figures.

Companies in the benchmark S&P 500 index have been increasing year-on-year profits at a double digit rate every quarter for more than four years. However, the record streak is about to come to an abrupt end, with Wall Street analysts forecasting an increase of just 5.1 per cent for the first quarter of this year, according to Reuters Estimates.

Companies in basic materials, energy and cyclical consumer goods are expected to bear the brunt of the slowdown, due to falling prices and lower demand for their goods.

Experts say lower profit growth is to be expected given the slowdown in the economy. Some argue that soft earnings growth need not translate into soft stock markets because valuations will be supported by the recent record levels of share buybacks and merger activity. Solid economic growth in the rest of the world should also help the earnings of US companies with overseas operations. “Will weaker growth erode equity markets returns? The short answer is ‘no’,” wrote UBS economist Larry Hatheway in a recent note to clients.

Nevertheless, economists and policymakers remain puzzled by the persistent weakness in business spending, with companies seemingly reluctant to plough their historically high profits back into capital expenditure.

Iran to press ahead with nuclear enrichment

Iran to press ahead with nuclear enrichment
By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 10:40 | Last updated: April 10 2007 15:33


Two inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Tehran on Tuesday amid confusion over Iran’s nuclear programme a day after president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad announced the country had reached “industrial scale” enrichment.

A sceptical Russian foreign ministry released a statement saying it was “not aware of any technological breakthroughs in the Iranian nuclear programme”.

Although Iran has reduced its level of co-operation with the IAEA since the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions, the inspectors, who are on a routine visit, should be able to verify the number of centrifuges in operation.

The lack of specifics in Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s announcement had encouraged international speculation that Iran was making a political move designed to establish “facts on the ground”, possibly ahead of a nuclear deal with the West under which Iran kept a pilot enrichment scheme.

In an interview on Tuesday with IRNA, the official news agency, Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, criticised the western media for reporting that Iran had effectively announced it had installed 3,000, a figure compatible with a research programme.

Instead, Mr Aghazadeh insisted that Iran would press ahead with installing 50,000 centrifuges, enough to generate fuel for its scheduled nuclear power programme.

“When we say we have entered industrial scale enrichment, (it means) there is no way back” he said. “Installation of centrifuges will continue steadily to reach a stage where all the 50,000 centrifuges are launched.

“I was concerned the foreign media would misuse the issue and pretend that Iran’s nuclear program would end up in installation of just 3,000 centrifuges.”

The apparently slow progress of Iran’s programme, monitored in reports from the IAEA , has for some time encouraged speculation that the centrifuges had been overheating and not performing well.

Jacqueline Shire, of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which monitors Iran’s nuclear programme, said ISIS estimated Iran had installed around1000 centrifuges and would probably finish installing almost 3,000 by late May or early June.

But achievement of “industrial level” enrichment might be enough for Iran’s leadership to claim victory, even if it should compromise later.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Monday, shortly before Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s announcement, that Iran was,with the nuclear fuel cycle complete, ready to begin real negotiations.

Iran has long argued it would accept international limitation on its nuclear programme if its basic access to the technology were acknowledged.

But western countries, lead by the US, have argued that Iran cannot be trusted to enrich any uranium, as it might divert material into developing a nuclear bomb.

Iran’s nuclear programme has meanwhile been built up domestically by its political leadership as a nationalist cause, probably increasing the price Iran would seek in any negotiations.

In its report of Mr Aghazadeh’s interview, IRNA pointed out that Iran had become the eighth country in the world, along with Brazil, to operate the nuclear fuel cycle.

“Earlier, only the five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, Britain, France and the United States - plus Germany and Japan had a monopoly on nuclear fuel cycle” IRNA reported.

US housing worries deepen as DR Horton sales slide

US housing worries deepen as DR Horton sales slide
By Doug Cameron in Chicago
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 10 2007 14:29 | Last updated: April 10 2007 14:29



DR Horton, the largest US homebuilder by sales, on Tuesday provided further evidence that the market has yet to hit bottom as the industry nears the end of the crucial spring selling season.

The Texas-based builder has been one of the most aggressive users of discounts to shift the large stock of unsold homes, which have depressed sales prices and dented national consumer confidence.

Sales dropped by 37 per cent to 9,983 homes in its fiscal second quarter to March 31, and were 41 per cent lower by dollar value, with California and the south-west region returning the largest declines. The company said its cancellation rate remained unchanged from the previous three months, despite boosting incentives.

DR Horton is also viewed by analysts as one of the most exposed builders to the fallout from the crisis in subprime lending because of its focus on affordable housing which could appeal more to buyers with poorer credit histories.

Management will be quizzed on the financial impact of the slide in subprime lending at its quarterly earnings’ call on April 19, but its orders for the period add weight to industry expectations that there will be no national marker recovery before the end of the year.

DR Horton, which closed 53,000 homes in the year to September 30 2006, has halved new construction and ended almost all speculative building, as well as cutting overheads and boosting discounts and other incentives.

The efforts helped trim its cancellation rate at the end of last year, but the rate remained stubbornly flat at 32 per cent in the three months to March 31.

The company, like its smaller rival Lennar, was bearish about the spring selling season from early February to mid-April, which traditionally accounts for two-thirds of new and existing home sales in the US. Don Horton, chairman, said the season “had not gotten off to its usual strong start”.

Don Tomnitz, chief executive, has maintained that there is pent-up demand among potential buyers waiting for more clarity in the market. However, some analysts remain concerned that builders may have started a new phase of construction too early, adding to the stock of unsold homes.

Moreover, median prices have remained stable, and housing experts believe prices may have to fall by 10-20 per cent in some markets to start clearing a backlog of 546,000 unsold new homes at the end of February, the latest figures available.

Mr Tomnitz, who has characterised the company as ”the Wal-Mart of homebuilding”, said earlier this year that a second round of cost cuts had been identified to preserve DR Horton’s industry lead in terms of operating costs.

All six of its operating regions were profitable in the December quarter, despite lower average selling costs as the company boosted incentives, cutting its gross margin to 18.6 per cent, a 2.6 percentage point fall from the previous three months.

Mr Tomnitz also signalled that Horton had no immediate plans to seek acquisitions, despite speculation among analysts that smaller private builders would seek buyers as their cash flows eroded.

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Breast cancer screening

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Breast cancer screening
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 9, 2007


The often confusing issue of screening for breast cancer just got more confusing. First, a major medical group disputed the need for regular mammograms for all women ages 40 to 49, as is currently recommended. Then a widely used computer system that was supposed to make mammograms more accurate was judged to make them less accurate.

And guidelines just issued by the American Cancer Society recommend annual MRI scans - in addition to mammograms - for all women at high risk of developing breast cancer, starting at age 30.

Nothing in the new material shakes the long-standing recommendation that all women age 50 or older should get regular mammograms. Women in their 40s, however, will need to weigh the pros and cons carefully.

Most expert groups believe they should get mammograms every year or two. But guidelines issued by the American College of Physicians take a more discriminating approach.

The guidelines acknowledge that regular mammograms for women in their 40s can reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer by a modest amount. But a very high percentage of the women screened, the college warns, will get false positive results that lead to unnecessary biopsies.

The latest verdicts on two advanced technologies were mixed. One new study found that MRI scans could find tumors that mammograms had missed in a small percentage of women. The downside is that the costly scans are so sensitive they pick up lots of suspicious but harmless growths.

Another study found that a costly computerized system to help read mammograms was no better at finding cancer than traditional mammography and led to many more false alarms. The computerized systems are used in some 30 percent of all mammography centers, where they are driving up costs for no clear benefit. Government and private insurers may need to reconsider whether the systems are worth covering.

International Herald Tribune Editorial - The consequences of corn

International Herald Tribune Editorial - The consequences of corn
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 9, 2007

By now, most American farmers know what they'll be planting this spring. And all across the country the answer is the same: corn, corn, corn.

The numbers are surprising. Farmers will plant some 90.5 million acres of corn this year - 12 million more than last year and the most since 1944. Soybean acres are down by more than 10 percent, and there are similar decreases in wheat and cotton.

The reason for this enormous shift is, of course, the ethanol boom and the corn rush it has created.

If it were just a matter of shifting the balance in already planted acreage - more corn, less wheat - a point of economic equilibrium might be found soon enough. The real trouble comes at the edges. This corn boom puts pressure on land that has been set aside as part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program. Since the mid-1980s, farmers have enrolled some 37 million acres of farmland in the program. This is land that has been returned to nature, and it is part of what Americans pay for through the farm bill. Much of it is unsuitable for crops - too hilly, too wet, too valuable as wildlife habitat - but when corn prices are this high, the idea of suitable changes swiftly.

Agricultural interest groups have begun to call on the Department of Agriculture to release some of this land from the reserve so that farmers can put it into corn production. The department has temporarily halted new enrollments in the program, and though it will probably not release land this year, the pressure to do so will only increase.

Much as we like the idea of ethanol production - and especially the potential of cellulosic ethanol, from sources other than corn - it would be a tragic mistake to jettison two decades of farm-based conservation for short-term profit. Corn ethanol will replace only a small fraction of the petroleum we use, and if it does so at the cost of a new agricultural land rush, then we will have lost much more in conservation than we gained in energy independence.

U. OF C. HEALTH STUDY | Physicians believe God can help patients get healthy

Doctors and faith
U. OF C. HEALTH STUDY | Physicians believe God can help patients get healthy
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 10, 2007
BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter jritter@suntimes.com

A majority of American doctors believe God or another supernatural being intervenes in patients' health, a study has found.

And nearly two in five doctors believe religion and spirituality can help prevent bad outcomes such as heart attacks, infections and even death, according to the University of Chicago nationwide survey of 2,000 physicians.

"Most physicians apply medical science while maintaining a belief that God intervenes in patients' health," Dr. Farr Curlin and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Cures 'that don't make sense'

Religious doctors were more likely than nonreligious doctors to believe this -- and to report that patients bring up religious issues.

Dr. Wayne Detmer, an internist at Lawndale Christian Health Center, said all doctors have seen cures of patients "that don't make sense based on our current understanding of physiology or medicine."

Detmer recalls one patient, disabled by a neurological condition, who was able to walk again after praying. A pastor, diagnosed with terminal lymphoma, is still alive after 13 years. And a suicidal patient has regained the willingness to live after prayer.

Detmer said he can't prove God made these patients better. But he notes the Bible says Jesus healed people. "It's not so much of a stretch to believe He can still do it."

About three out of four doctors believe religion and spirituality give patients a positive, hopeful state of mind and help them cope with illness and suffering.

But there are possible drawbacks. About one-third of doctors believe religion and spirituality can cause patients to refuse, delay or stop medical therapy or avoid taking responsibility for their health, the U. of C. study found.

And 45 percent of doctors said religion and spirituality can cause guilt, anxiety or other negative emotions that lead to increased patient suffering.

Nevertheless, 85 percent of doctors believe the influence of religion and spirituality is generally positive.
Giving patients false hope?

The role of religion is one of the most contentious issues in medicine. Many studies have found there are health benefits to prayer, church attendance, etc., but critics say those studies are flawed. Some experts believe religion can do more harm than good, by for example, giving patients false hopes.

Among the most vocal critics is Richard Sloan of Columbia University Medical Center, author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.

Sloan is troubled by the study's finding that 54 percent of doctors believe God intervenes in patients' health. "That's a religious assertion, not a scientific assertion," he said.

Sloan noted the survey had a 63 percent response rate -- "acceptable, but lower than you'd like."

Consequently, researchers should be cautious about interpreting the results, Sloan said.

Study numbers

54%
of doctors surveyed believe God or another supernatural being intervenes in patients' health.

76%
of doctors surveyed believe God or another supernatural being helps patients cope with and endure illness and suffering.

74%
of doctors surveyed believe God or another supernatural being gives patients a hopeful state of mind.

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Time to act on auto emissions

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Time to act on auto emissions
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 9, 2007

The Bush administration normally is not timid when it comes to assertions of executive authority. It usually subscribes to the notion that almost anything the president wants to do, he is entitled to do. So it was more than a little strange to hear it singing a different tune on the subject of the greenhouse gases produced by automobiles. Not only did the Environmental Protection Agency lack the desire to regulate these emissions, it argued, it lacked the statutory power to act even if it wanted to.

But last week, it got a withering retort from the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the agency ample authority to combat global warming by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that cars generate. And the court went further, concluding that the agency has an affirmative obligation to take such action or provide persuasive reasons not to.

It was a sound decision, both as a matter of law and a matter of policy. And while the verdict does not actually compel the administration to finally address a growing problem it has long avoided, it does give the president political cover to start doing what needs to be done. If he declines to act to improve auto fuel economy, on the other hand, he may find Congress newly emboldened to take the lead.

The decision stemmed from a lawsuit by the state of Massachusetts, along with other states and several environmental groups, which argued that greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures, and that they all stood to suffer tangible harms as a result -- in the Bay State's case, through the loss of coastal land and property due to rising sea levels.

Dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. insisted that the harm the state would suffer was "pure conjecture," and that therefore, the case should have been dismissed. But the majority recognized that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere creates dangers to Massachusetts that, far from being a distant fantasy, are "both actual and imminent."

The Clean Air Act, said the court, requires the EPA to regulate any air pollutant that may harm "public health and welfare" -- and defines those terms to include effects on "weather" and "climate." The agency, it says, may not shirk this duty by simply ignoring the law.

In a separate dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia scoffed at the notion that carbon dioxide can be described as an air pollutant. Given the vast potential consequences of global warming, that's a position that borders on the absurd.

The administration may still avoid taking steps to boost the fuel economy of American cars. But as the court explained, the EPA "can avoid taking action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."

But it can no longer do that without inviting public ridicule and congressional intervention. In light of all the evidence, the debate on whether these emissions pose a serious risk is over. The administration should recognize as much and start addressing the danger.

Campaigns' shocking gold rush may boost calls for reform

Campaigns' shocking gold rush may boost calls for reform
Bt LAURA WASHINGTON
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
April 9, 2007

They're off to the races again. The politicians are trotting out the spiels and padding the silver linings of their campaign coffers. By the March 31 fund-raising deadline, Hillary Clinton had raised $26 million, Barack Obama, just a hair short of that. Mitt Romney grabbed $20 million, Rudy Giuliani, $15 million. Fading war hawk John McCain brought in a paltry $12.5 million.

Big Bill "Why can't we have him back" Clinton may have dubbed this March Madness as the "first primary." It feels like a stickup to me. Our political leaders kneel before the golden calf and besot themselves with filthy lucre. This stampede for the green should reinforce voter cynicism and disgust. Money, however, always preempts message.

At least they are good at spinning it. Just listen to Clinton's minions cooing about their big score. Her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, told reporters she was "completely overwhelmed and gratified by the historic support we've gotten." History is a wonderful thing.

The New Man From Hope can spin with the best of them. Obama's people boast of pulling in 100,000 donors, with $6.9 million coming from the Internet. It's a sign, they say, that the electorate is deeply yearning for a new type of politics. Penny Pritzker, Obama's finance chair and Hyatt Hotel magnate, intoned: "This overwhelming response, in only a few short weeks, shows the hunger for a different kind of politics in this country and a belief at the grass-roots level that Barack Obama can bring out the best in America to solve our problems."

The best, no doubt, is yet to come. That's certainly McCain's new mantra. The co-author of the revolutionary McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform has found himself in the dubious position of having to apologize for his lousy showing in the money marathon. In the loony world of money and politics, a candidate who raises "only" $12.5 million in three months is flirting with irrelevancy. So the campaign is jamming McCain's spring schedule with the mother lode of cash calls.

Don't despair. A veteran finance reform advocate says there is indeed a silver lining. Last week's numbers are "shocking," says Larry Hansen, a vice president for the Joyce Foundation, a staunch supporter of campaign finance reform. He adds, however, candidates trolling for smaller donations on the Internet is good for democracy. "When you get more people involved, it diminishes the influence" of wealthy donors, Hansen says. "The debate about public financing will gain steam because of what's happening now."

Here's another good thing. Thanks to the Big Box debate, the tide may be turning in the moribund Chicago City Council. The April 17 aldermanic runoffs have served up a cornucopia of financial peccadilloes. The labor unions are showering key candidates with big cash. That means some do-nothing aldermen who have been perennially snoozing their way to re-election may finally get booted off the public dole.

The unions are leveling the playing field long dominated by Mayor Daley's cash machine and the largess of his developer chums. Labor already has doled out a whopping $388,000 to 16th Ward challenger Joann Thompson. Pat Dowell in the 4th Ward has raised at least $150,000 from the unions, about 70 percent of her total contributions.

Lest we forget -- unions represent workers -- actual constituents who deserve representation. That's a silver lining I can live with.
LauraSWashington@aol.com

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Warriors in Washington

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Warriors in Washington
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 8, 2007


The House has acted swiftly to deal with some of the shameful conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were discovered foundering in slum-like billets and bureaucratic neglect as outpatients. A measure creating a stronger system of case managers, counselors and advocates for the wounded received unanimous approval from lawmakers.

But so far there has been no comparable action in the Senate. There can be no higher home-front priority.

The House bill is a good start, particularly in its mandate to end the bureaucratic divisions between the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs in managing the wars' 25,000-plus wounded troops. The chaotic way that medical records are transferred from one to the other, for instance, is unconscionable.

A presidential study commission is to report by midsummer on what is wrong with the armed forces' medical care system. But the Senate should not wait to act on some of the obvious shortcomings already begging for repair, particularly with the flow of wounded troops continuing unabated from the battlefields.

Purging the chain of command of two generals and the army secretary was a bromide solution compared with the visceral needs of those suffering the traumas of war.

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Hot and cold

International Herald Tribune Editorial - Hot and cold
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: April 8, 2007


Last week began with a Supreme Court decision declaring that the U.S. government had the authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and all but ordering the Bush administration to do so. It ended with a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the world's authoritative voice on global warming - warning that failure to contain these emissions will have disastrous environmental effects, especially in poorer countries, which are least able to defend themselves and their people against the consequences of climate change.

One would hope that these events would shake President George W. Bush out of his state of denial and add his authority to the chorus of governors, legislators and business leaders calling for an aggressive regulatory and technological response to the dangers of global warming. They haven't. When asked about the Supreme Court decision, the president said he thought he was already doing enough.

He argued further that there was little point in America doing any more unless other polluters like China acted as well. That ignores the reality that no developing country is going to move unless the United States - which produces one-fourth of the world's emissions with only 5 percent of its population - takes the lead.

The report from the intergovernmental panel was the second of three due this year. The first concluded with "90 percent certainty" that humans had caused the rise in atmospheric temperatures over the last half-century. The most recent focused on the consequences, few of them positive.

The northern latitudes will have longer growing seasons. But elsewhere climate change will lead to more severe storms, the flooding of tropical islands and coastlines inhabited by hundreds of millions of people, the likely extinction of at least one-fourth of the world's species and, in poorer countries in Asia and Africa, drought and hunger.

Some of these changes have begun. But the report also makes clear that while emissions already accumulated in the atmosphere make some damage inevitable, the worst can be avoided if the world's nations take swift action to stabilize and then reverse emissions.

What must be avoided, the report said, is a rise of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which truly devastating effects will begin to kick in. But such a rise is almost inevitable over the next century if the world continues to do business as usual.

The panel's next paper will discuss alternatives to business as usual. These policies will almost certainly require a major shift in the way energy is produced and used, as well as massive investments in new technologies. They will also be expensive. But what the world's scientists are telling us, with increasing confidence, is that the costs of doing nothing will be far greater than the costs of acting now.

This column gets 'so ghetto'

This column gets 'so ghetto'
By Clarence Page
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
Published April 8, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Somebody should have warned Newt Gingrich to stay away from the "ghetto."

The word, I mean. If so, the former speaker of the House, who is weighing a presidential bid, could have avoided the embarrassment for which he is apologizing.

In a video statement on YouTube that's read in Spanish and subtitled in English, the Georgia Republican says his "word choice was poor" when he equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto" in a recent speech.

What he meant to say, he says, is that, "In the United States it is important to speak the English language well in order to advance and have success."

Alas, poor Newt. As a journalist who has had the G-word stricken from my copy by cautious editors, I could have warned him. "Ghetto" means so many things to so many different people that it is best avoided as a metaphor in mixed company unless you're trying to be, say, Grand Master Newt, the rap artist.

Gingrich fell into an unexpected culture gap similar to the one that Sen. Joe Biden opened up by referring to Sen. Barack Obama as "clean" and "articulate." On the bright side, such political gaffes offer rare opportunities for the rest of us to see how different cultures can draw vastly different meanings from the same words.

Gingrich didn't know it, but his G-bomb stepped into the middle of a bubbling controversy in the black community that has boiled over into mainstream American culture.

"Ghetto" originally referred to the areas of Rome, Warsaw and some other European cities into which Jews once were confined. Black activists in 1960s America embraced the word to label impoverished urban areas into which blacks had long been segregated.

But in recent years, the word increasingly has come to mean simply "low class," sometimes with irony, sometimes not.

Gingrich's gaffe coincides with the publication of a book he would have found helpful: "Ghettonation: A Journey into the Land of Bling and the Home of the Shameless" by Cora Daniels, a contributing writer for Essence, Fortune, The New York Times and O: The Oprah Magazine, among others.

She was moved to write, Daniels says, by the sight of Paris Hilton remarking on the reality TV show "The Simple Life," that "this truck is so ghetto," as she tried in vain to start up an old, rusted pickup truck. At that moment, Daniels says, she realized that "ghetto" is no longer a "black thing," but "an American thing."

Martha Stewart helped confirm that when Daniels saw her boast on TV that she can "get ghetto" when she needs to. Not a good thing, Martha.

Daniels is not radical chic. She comes courageously to vilify "ghetto," not to praise it.

With wit and wisdom, she explores and exposes the ghetto "mind-set" that demeans women ("hos," "bee-yatches"), devalues education ("acting white"), ridicules proper English ("talking white"), celebrates criminality ("gangsta love"), discards traditional parenthood ("babydaddies," etc.) and celebrates tacky fashion and behavior ("ghettofabulous").

She knew things had gone off the rails when, shopping for Halloween, she found "pimp" and "ho" costumes in preschool sizes.

Or when she discovered that more than 1,200 babies were named Lexus in 2006.

Yet, Daniels writes with an undertone of love. She softens the inevitable "elitist" label that some critics have pinned on Bill Cosby by spreading the blame. Cosby famously chastised poor people three years ago for "not holding up their end in this deal." Daniels quite properly includes black middle-class Americans, like her and me, in her critique, too.

Daniels fails to pin down the precise moment when the most self-destructive values took hold, if there is one. I would put it at the point when, as black novelist-journalist Jill Nelson tells Daniels, "We lost hope." Our generation saw Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy and other great leaders rise, only to be violently snatched away from us. Then, Nelson recalls, we "smothered our kids in material stuff to insulate them from the pain."

We also saw the poorest of the black poor becoming increasingly isolated in the economic ghettos from which their more fortunate neighbors escaped. Like impoverished societies everywhere, our black poor created new music and fashions from the resources they had. These, in turn, were ironically exploited by entertainment executives when they found big profits to be made, often in white suburbia.

At a time of great national argument over who is to blame for poverty, racism or bad habits, Daniels reveals that society can be blamed.

Gingrich is hardly the first or only American to be caught in the "ghetto." The first step toward improving our predicament, as Daniels tells us, is to improve the way we think about it.
----------
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: cptime@aol.com

Zell's deals don't work for everyone

Zell's deals don't work for everyone
BY CAROL MARIN
April 8, 2007
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
Dear Sam Zell, I haven't written in a while but thought this might be a good time to reach out to you again.

Last time around, because it was so darn hard to get a hold of you, I tried hand-delivering a letter requesting an interview, giving it to the doorman of your elegant apartment building downtown. You let my editors know pretty quickly that you weren't too happy about that. So I'm trying this new approach.

I feel that you and I have a kinship, Mr. Zell. We're in the same business now given your planned $8.2 billion acquisition of the Chicago Tribune. Though I work for the competing paper and though you and I operate on vastly different economic scales, we're both engaged in news.

The reason for this letter, and the last one too, is about a news story that affects 300,000 people here in Illinois and a few million across the country. The majority of them are around your age, 65, though some are older.

These seniors live in manufactured home communities, what we used to call mobile home parks. And you, Mr. Zell, through your Equity LifeStyle Properties, have in recent years become the country's biggest landlord for this type of housing.

A couple of years ago, I visited two of your properties, Willow Lake Estates in Elgin and Golf Vista in Monee. They are lovely places that challenge any negative stereotype of a "trailer park." The lawns are well kept, the homes are beautifully maintained, and the mostly elderly residents have a clear sense of community.

But boy, do they have a problem, Mr. Zell.

You've got retired people like Phil Asplund, 80, a retired accountant, trapped. He and his wife Marian own their home, but you own the land underneath it, which your company rents to them. And since you took over, once-affordable rents tied to the consumer price index are now set at "market rate," which is whatever you say it is. Leases have gotten even more restrictive. And retirees, on fixed incomes, are depleting their savings trying to pay the increases. Many have been forced just to abandon their homes, turn the keys over to your managers, and go live with their kids.

When the Asplunds and others go to their legislators, like state Rep. Ruth Munson (R-Elgin), you have fleets of lobbyists and lawyers to outspend and outgun them. And when Munson and her colleagues, in spite of all that, manage to vote out even a small measure offering some consumer protection for those homeowners, you've got Gov. Blagojevich to veto it for you. After all, you and your wife have given him $82,000 since 2002. Not that there is necessarily a connection.

All across the country, the story is the same.

Your people claim any consumer bill to help protect these retirees is "rent control." It's not. That's a red herring, a scare tactic. Meanwhile, these residents are systematically being stripped of their rights as property owners with no means to appeal.

The Los Angeles Times, one of the papers in your new Tribune stable, last Monday reported that in one of your California communities, $600 rents are skyrocketing to between $2,000 and $5,000.

That's beyond sticker shock.

Last Wednesday you told the Tribune, "Everything I do is motivated by doing it best, doing it different, answering the questions no one else could."

Senior citizens in 25 states where you are their landlord have urgent questions for you. As small investors -- that investment being their homes -- they're hardly billionaires, but they've spent their lives working just as hard as you in order to have a dignified retirement.

On April 19, Illinois seniors will take buses to Springfield once again to plead with legislators to give them some small relief. Munson will try to persuade House Speaker Mike Madigan to let her modest consumer protection bill out of committee.

It would be great if you would take another look at the long-term implications of your company's strategy and reassess.

I've read that your favorite columnist is Charles Krauthammer. I'm no Charles Krauthammer, but on the off chance you ever read this, and want to hop on your Harley and take a ride, there are some people in Elgin and Monee I'd love for you to meet.

Best wishes,

Carol Marin

English only, please - with a response by Carlos T Mock, MD

English only, please
IMMIGRATION | Despite himself, Newt Gingrich has a good point about how to teach native Spanish-speaking students. This writer ought to know; she speaks Spanish and has taught bilingual education.
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
April 8, 2007
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA ecepeda@suntimes.com
Newt Gingrich stuck his foot in his English-only-speaking mouth last week in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women when he said Spanish was "the language of living in the ghetto."

Not good.

But what drove me nuts is that his dumb comment invalidated his original point. He started off with "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity."

That I can get behind.

For a few years, I was a bilingual teacher, the kind old Newtie would have liked. The kind who insisted on getting my students out of their Spanish comfort zone and into that language of prosperity he so values. The kind other bilingual teachers hated.

My parents -- like many parents who come here to give their kids a better education -- wanted me to speak perfect English; they'd take care of the Spanish part themselves. So off I went to kindergarten knowing only what Big Bird had drilled into me. Guess what? I, like all my other classmates, soaked that English up like a sponge and spoke only Spanish at home.

I vowed that as a bilingual teacher I would push my students hard to become fluent in English, hard enough to get them out of the bilingual education ghetto and into mainstream classes where they could start their lives with U.S.-born peers.

Yes, I used the word "ghetto." It's true: Kids who stay in bilingual education year after year end up getting short shrift. Illinois law says that if a school has 20 or more students who speak the same language, they get "support" in their native language. That support is defined by each school and could range from a fully certified teacher teaching in a certain language to a paraprofessional with special language skills.

The Illinois Resource Center, an organization that supports school districts that provide second-language services, estimates that 150,000 to 175,000 kids all over the state get some form of bilingual or English-as-a-second-language services, with Chicago Public School kids comprising a little less than 50 percent of the total. Spanish, at 80 percent of services provided, is by far the most common native language.

I taught both first grade and high school, and it shocked me how willing some bilingual teachers were to adamantly and passionately keep kids in self-contained Spanish-speaking classes. I'd ask them, "Well, if you keep teaching them in Spanish, when are they going to learn English?" I'd usually get a blank stare. Yet, there I was, teaching algebra to 17-year-olds, including a few who, although born here, had been in bilingual education their entire academic careers and still couldn't speak English!

I was always the weirdo bilingual teacher who was looked at sideways by the other bilingual teachers because I insisted on speaking and teaching primarily in English with some Spanish explanations. And -- can you believe it -- my students picked up English!

First-graders were no problem, but my high schoolers hated it. They'd whine constantly for me to speak in Spanish like all their other teachers. "You're supposed to be talking to us in Spanish," they'd demand. But I wasn't buying it. I'd tell them, "If you want to make it here and not end up mowing lawns or waitressing at Tacos El Norte for the rest of your lives, you'd better start learning." More than a few of them thanked me at the end of the year.

Keeping Spanish-speaking kids in separate but equal programs kept them from interacting with English-speaking peers, further isolating them from the culture they eventually have to be able to navigate for that "better future" their parents sought.

In high school, it was too late. All the bilingual ed kids were so self-segregated they didn't even hang with the U.S.-born Spanish speakers. Homecoming? Prom? Those events were not for them, they believed, they stuck to their own and spoke Spanish to each other.

So, I have to hand it to Newt, even with his foot in his mouth. He's right.

The prevailing wisdom is transitioning students to English through Spanish while giving them core curriculum such as language arts and math in their native language -- often remediating poor Spanish language skills first -- is best. Maybe in a perfect world, with well-run bilingual education programs with high-quality teachers, that would be true. But that's not what I saw. More often than not, when students had to sink or swim, with a little help, they swam.


Ms. Cepeda:

I was insulted by your article in the Chicago Sun-Times about teaching English to all foreigners. I agree with your premise: English is necessary to get ahead in The United States. However, I disagree your conclusions: most of the Latino men and women I know in this country ONLY speak English. Zealot teachers like you have completely obliterated Spanish from our heritage. Besides, how many Americans speak more than one language fluently?

I grew up in Puerto Rico. I started English the minute I stepped in school, and French in second grade. My English teachers taught me to speak English. The other classes I took were taught in our professor’s preferred language. If the teacher was American, History would be taught in English, if the teacher was Puerto Rican, Math would be taught in Spanish.

The problem with bilingual education in the USA is: you have to expose the children to English starting in preschool—don’t wait for high school to try to “catch up”. And, please, teach them another language, any language—not just Spanish—just as vigorously alongside.

My Puerto Rican sister in Connecticut has five children all of which were educated in the US. They all speak beautiful English and have college degrees. None of them speak Spanish. My sister in Puerto Rico has two daughters. They are being educated in Puerto Rico and they are both bilingual. I speak three languages fluently.

Spanish as a second language is dying in the USA. Your letter bothers me because you make it sound like Hispanics should be ashamed to speak Spanish in the USA.

“English is the language of business, and Spanish, don’t forget, is the language of love and romance. The only poem worth reading is the one written in Spanish, because it is the only one that sings! A truly educated person speaks more than one language fluently.” Mosaic Virus by Carlos T Mock, MD



-- Carlos T. Mock, MD
Www.carlostmock.com
Www.orgulloenaccion.org
Author: Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual Odyssey - Floricanto Press 2003. Nominated for a Stonewall Award by the American Library Association Round Table
Author: The Mosaic Virus – Floricanto Press 2007. Nominated for a Stonewall Award by the American Library Association Round Table
Author: Papi Chulo – Coming to a bookstore near you soon