NewsSummary

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 06-12-10 AIMED AT YOUR FUNNY BONE

2010-06-12T10:18:00.001-07:00

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 06-12-10
AIMED AT YOUR FUNNY BONE

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

With most of the world going gaga over the upcoming world football championships
in Africa, I think it would be wise to remember, If God intended us to play soccer,
She wouldn't have given us hands. (PBen)

"Let's see, the Cubs plan on having an illuminated 'Toyota' sign over the left
field bleachers at Wrigley Field, while this weekend they play the White Sox
for ownership of the BP Cup(yes, that BP). What's next, 'Take Me Out To The
Ballgame' being sung by Jesse James?" (Bill Littlejohn)

British Petroleum made some progress Friday in halting the oil spill. They used
giant clippers to cut off the tip of the pipe. The idea is if you can't top it,
cap it or plug it, circumcise it and maybe the God of Israel will deliver us
from oil. (Argus Hamilton)

Several media sources called right-hander Stephen Strasburg's major league
debut the most super-hyped ever in baseball. Clearly a pitcher worth more
than a thousand words. (RJ Currie)

Defense contractor Blackwater is up for sale. Its assets are impressive.
The company currently owns over 50 percent of all Congressmen. (Alan Ray)

In Los Angeles, a porn actor attacked and killed one of his acting colleagues
with a porn movie prop. It is the first time the county coroner ever listed
cause of death as "vibrated to death". Up to now, his porn movie prop had
been known simply as a "weapon of mass distraction". It sure gives the movie
title "Die Hard" a whole new meaning. (Jerry Perisho)

Cameron Diaz told British Vogue that lots of sex keeps a person looking young.
Dennis Rodman recently tweeted that fifty per cent of life in the NBA is sex.
So how do you explain Greg Odom? (RJ Currie)

BGR The Burger Joints, four of them in the Washington, D.C., area, are selling
hamburgers named in honor of the Nationals' fastballing pitching phenom. The
$10.99 Strasburger is a hot dog on top of a hamburger patty smothered in aged
Vermont cheddar and 14 pickles, one for each strikeout Strasburg recorded in
his big-league debut on Tuesday. Economists predict they'll sell much better
than, say, Roethlisbergers. (Dwight Perry)

USC will join Michigan as one of the most renowned programs in college football
that will be on probation for 2010. Too bad, the teams could be a perfect matchup
for the newest bowl at Yankee Stadium. Except they'd have to change the name from
"Pinstripe Bowl" to "Jailstripe Bowl." (Janice Hough)

Actor Woody Harrelson kicked the game-winner in a shootout before 65,000 fans
helping his Rest of the World team down England in a Unicef celebrity soccer
match. Many of those in attendance swear that from now on whenever they hope
to score, they'll pray for a Woody. (RJ Currie)

Pat Thomas, General Curator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo,
says that Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men cologne is very attractive to big
cats like tigers and jaguars. Well, we already knew that it attracted cougars.
(Bill Littlejohn)

THE LIMBOUGH WEDDING

Good to see that Rush Limbaugh is protecting the sanctity of marriage....
for the fourth time! (Paul Benoit)

Rush Limbaugh recently took his fourth wife at a simple ceremony attended by
a few friends and supporters. After the vows were read, the bride threw the
traditional bouquet in the air and out of habit, Sarah Palin shot it.
(Bob Mills)

Rush Limbaugh got married on Saturday. It was weird for the new wife, especially
when on the first night she found Rush in bed with the Republican Party, the oil
and the gun industry. (Pedro Bartes)

Rush Limbaugh got married over the weekend. This is actually his fourth marriage;
he blames the first three breakups on Obama. (Craig Ferguson)

I was really disappointed in Rush Limbaugh's wedding. I was so hoping
Ann Coulter would get Rush (Joe Hickman).

You know who performed at the Rush Limbaugh wedding? Elton John. Isn't that
amazing. It proves that there's absolutely no ideological gap that a million-
dollar check can't bridge. (David Letterman)

Rush Limbaugh married for the fourth time. The bride is a direct descendant
of our nation's second president, John Adams, who Limbaugh argues was 'soft
on the British.' (Ira Lawson)

Rush Limbaugh got married for the fourth time on Saturday. He's 59,
she's 33. So, I'm doing the math. That means when she's 40, he'll be
on wife number seven. ( Jay Leno)

You know who sang at Rush's wedding? Elton John! According to Rush,
gay people can sing at weddings. Just not their own. (Craig Ferguson)

Elton John was paid $1-million to sing at Rush Limbaugh's wedding, although
guests admit it was a little hard to hear him from the closet. (Tim Hunter)

What's more bizarre? That Rush Limbaugh, who openly opposes gay marriage,
asked Elton John to perform at his fourth wedding? Or that Sir Elton
accepted? (Janice Hough)

"Congratulations to Rush Limbaugh, who got married for the fourth time
on Saturday. It was so romantic — so romantic. First, the couple wrote
their own vows and then they wrote their own prescriptions.
(Jimmy Fallon)

"Here now the official Rush Limbaugh wedding announcement. Rush Limbaugh
wed Kathryn Rogers in a quiet Florida ceremony on Saturday. The bridegroom
is a controversial radio host and an influential opinion leader in the
conservative movement in the United States. The bride is clearly insane.
(David Letterman)

THE GORE DIVORCE

Al Gore and his wife getting divorced? After 40 years of marriage, it's kind
of sad. Apparently what happened was, I guess, she walked in, caught him
boring another woman. (Jay Leno)

"They could tell Al Gore was lonely as of late because when he'd hug a tree,
he'd linger. (Bill Maher)

Al and Tipper Gore announced their separation Monday without giving any reason
for their break-up. Friends said Al and Tipper never recovered from losing the
presidential election ten years ago. You just knew it would end up being Bush's
fault. (Argus Hamilton)

Al Gore and his wife, longtime married couple, are separating. Tipper Gore.
And they may get a divorce. Apparently what happened, they experienced global
cooling. (David Letterman)

Bad news for Al Gore. Tipper's divorce attorney called Google to find out
how much half of the Internet is worth. (Paul Seaburn)

Were you sad to learn that Al Gore and his wife, Tipper? I was. I was a little
sad about that. Yeah, according to the report, the two are separating amicably
after a long process of careful consideration. You know, even his divorce is
boring. (Jay Leno)

You guys heard about Al Gore and Tipper splitting up? Everybody is talking about it.
Everyone's blogging about this, and now there are reports online that his daughter
and her husband are splitting up. I bet this is the one week where Al Gore wishes
he didn't invent the Internet. (Jimmy Fallon)

Looks like this Gore divorce could end up being pretty costly. In fact, Al Gore
now talking about only trying to save half the planet. (Jay Leno)

What happened to Al and Tipper Gore is very sad. The wedding vows they took more
than 40 years ago have become an inconvenient troth. (Terry Etter)

The Gores will have an amicable divorce, Al doesn't want arguments to get
overheated! In the divorce agreement, she'll get half of the world that
Al Gore is hoping to save! (Gil Stern)

After 40 years, Al and Tipper Gore have split up. Nobody knows why, but there
is a rumor today that Al came home early last week and found another man's
carbon footprints. (Bill Maher)

There are signs the divorce is starting to get ugly. In fact, today, Tipper
stopped recycling and bought a Humvee. (Jay Leno)

If Mrs. Gore were now to marry the ABC newsman Jake Tapper, she'd be
Tipper Tapper. (Paul Feehan)

THE BP OIL SPILL

According to BP, this containment cap is now capturing, they're capturing
10,000 barrels of oil a day. Which is amazing, considering they said it
was only leaking 1,000 barrels a day. (Jay Leno)

The Gulf oil spill has now lasted longer, cost more, and destroyed more
wildlife than Sarah Palin. (Jimmy Kimmel)

BP officials are now saying the campaign to clean it up could last until fall.
That's why they call it a campaign. You know why it's called a campaign? Because
it's like an election. It's dirty, it's slimy, it never seems to end. (Jay Leno)

BP spokesman Tony Hayward said that the environmental impact from the Gulf oil
spill would end up being "very modest." Right. If Hayward had been Tiger Woods'
frontman, Woods wouldn't have had mistresses, he'd have had bosom buddies.
(RJ Currie)

The oil spill is getting bad. There is so much oil and tar now in the Gulf of
Mexico, Cubans can now walk to Miami. (David Letterman)

Tony Hayward is set to testify before Congress next week. Unfortunately neither
Congress or BP has ever shown any ability to stop a leak. (Jim Barach)

According to a new report, BP has the worst safety record of all the oil companies.
They've paid over $372 million in fines. Oh, they don't call them fines. They call
them "campaign contributions." ((Jay Leno))

BP, which of course stands for "Born Polluted," is spending $50 million on a
p. r. campaign to make themselves look good. In fact, they said they would burn
the midnight oil if they hadn't spilled it. (Jay Leno)

BP says their robots are still trying to cap that oil pipe, and they made a lot
of progress, working all day Sunday. Which is hard on BP, because on Sunday,
robot plumbers get double time. (Frank King)

This BP oil spill looks like it may last longer than any of Limbaugh's marriages.
(Janice Hough)

The White House sent oil stocks falling Friday by vowing to prosecute British
Petroleum for environmental damage. There's a lot of room for interpretation
in the law. Dick Cheney would be prosecuting the pelicans for trying to fly
off with BP's oil. (Argus Hamilton)

Yesterday, British Petroleum stock dropped $17 billion in value. And the executives
at British Petroleum say they have no idea what happened. I kind of have an idea.
I kind of think maybe I got a hunch. (David Letterman)

But British Petroleum, they're getting desperate, so here is what they are going
to do to improve their public image: With every 100,000 gallons of oil that leaks,
you get a free N. F.L. team glass.

BP is now saying they've captured anywhere from 35 percent to 75 percent of
the oil that is gushing out of the well. Of course, you've got to keep in mind
they usually lie anywhere from 85 percent to 95 percent of the time. (Jay Leno)

BP C.E.O. Tony Hayward said he would just like to get his life back. He wants
to get his life back. You know, I say give him life plus 20. (Jay Leno)

Actor Kevin Costner testified in Washington before a House subcommittee about
the BP oil spill. Kevin Costner is to oil spill disaster recovery what Lady Gaga
is to perfecting the 360-degree tomahawk slam dunk. (Jerry Perisho)

Here's a little bit of good news. The Coast Guard says that BP is now catching
up to 630,000 gallons of oil a day. The bad news is that they're capturing it
with ducks. (Jimmy Fallon)

PRESIDENT OBAMA

Tonight, the Obamas invited members of Congress to a picnic at the White House.
The Obamas' picnic featured foods from all over the four corners of the U. S.,
the Pacific Northwest provided the wild salmon and strawberries and the southern
gulf coast provided 400 million gallons of salad dressing. (Jimmy Fallon)

In his commencement speech at Kalamazoo Central High School, President Obama
told the graduating seniors, "Don't make excuses." He said it's better to
just blame someone else. (Bill Mihalic)

President Obama pitched his healthcare bill to a group of seniors. According to
a poll, half of the seniors thought the president was convincing, 30 percent
thought he was unconvincing, and the rest thought he was Will Smith.
(Craig Ferguson)

Paul McCartney visited the White House and performed for the Obamas. I noticed
he stayed away from singing "Fixing a Hole" (Bill Littlejohn)

President Obama is angry. He wants to know what happened in the Gulf and he also
wants to know why a 33-year-old woman would marry Rush Limbaugh. (David Letterman)

THE STATES & LOCAL NEWS

Meg Whitman will face the veteran politician Jerry Brown in the California
governor’s race. He’s way past his “sell-by date,” and she’s clearly determined
to “buy it now.” (Bill Williams)

Women won big in California, Arkansas, Nevada and South Carolina. These are
exciting times. I can remember when only rich white men could buy elections.
Now women can buy them, too. (Jay Leno)

This morning in California we found that Meg Whitman has bought.... er, sorry,
make that won the Republican race to compete for the office of Governor of
California, an office she hasn't bothered to vote for in about three decades.
The good news is that many jobs will be created, the bad news is that if her
past is prologue they will be created off shore. (Jerry W.)

Odd side note to the gubernatorial primary: Meg Whitman spent $80 per vote in
the election, and at her victory party in Unversal City, it was a cash bar.
(Janice Hough)

South Carolina Democrats are crying foul after an unknown, unemployed man facing
a criminal charge won the Senate primary. After all, technically he is not yet
a felon. (Clint Thatcher)

South Carolina voters sent Nikki Haley into a runoff for the GOP nomination
for governor. She was linked sexually to two men not her husband but it wasn't
enough to defeat her. Southerners always rally to anyone who reminds them of
Scarlett O'Hara. (Argus Hamilton)

An Ohio woman was surprised when she discovered a groundhog that had been making
noise under the hood of her car. When mechanics pulled it out, the groundhog saw
its shadow; that means 6 more weeks of accelerator pedal problems. (Jerry Perisho)

U.S. POLITICIS & POLITICIANS

Sarah Palin is now saying that President Obama needs to make sure that these oil
companies act ethically and responsibly. This from a woman who shoots wolves from
a helicopter. (David Letterman)

Sarah Palin ordered a wall built around her backyard to shield her family from
the prying eyes of biographer Joe McGinniss. The woman must be living right.
Ever since she started building that wall she's gone up ten points in the polls
in Arizona. (Argus Hamilton)

There's a rumor that Sarah Palin got breast implants. Apparently it was started
by a Russian man who said he could see them from his front porch. Actually, when
I hear Sarah Palin's name, I've always thought of two big boobs: George Bush and
Dick Cheney. (Tim Hunter)

Al Gore arrived in California Friday to raise money for Harry Reid at a dinner
with rich Silicon Valley tech executives. Fundraising isn't the only reason he's
in California. He's won the Nobel, the Oscar and the Grammy, and now he wants a
trophy wife. (Argus Hamilton)

Senator John McCain actually tweeted to Snooki from "Jersey Shore," an MTV program,
after she complained about the tanning bed tax in the new health care law. But,
unfortunately, Snooki never got the message because McCain tweeted it off his
electric razor. (Jimmy Fallon)

Democratic California gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown asked for 10 televised
debates with Meg Whitman. She accepted the invitation to debate him, ONCE, in
October. Time and exact date to be worked out, but word has it Whitman is open
to any weekday between 3 and 4am. (Janice Hough)

George W. Bush told a crowd in Grand Rapids Friday he waterboarded Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and he'd do at again to save lives. He doesn't care that
the confession is inadmissible in court. He just enjoyed reliving Hell Week
at his college fraternity. (Argus Hamilton)

TAXES & THE ECONOMY

A new report found that 20 percent of people over 45 had to dip into their retirement
savings last year. And the other 80 percent said, "Retirement savings?" (Jimmy Fallon)

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says if we don't cut back our spending, America will
go the way of Europe. After hearing that, President Obama authorized another
$17 trillion in spending. (Jake Novak)

BUSINESS & LABOR

Apple unveiled its new iPhone Monday which features a front-facing camera for
video chats. It could make a porno filmmaker out of everybody who buys one of
these phones. So much for the last sector of California's economy that was
still profitable. (Argus Hamilton)

Delta Airlines apologized for a mix-up where they sent an unaccompanied boy
to Cleveland, instead of Boston, and an unaccompanied girl to Boston, instead
of Cleveland. Everyone had a good laugh, though, when luggage for both kids
ended up in Albuquerque. (Jerry Perisho)

McDonalds is recalling their Shrek drinking glasses because they're tainted
with Cadmium, which could cause "long term adverse health effects." You know,
like the food! (Tim Hunter)

Cereal maker Kellogg has agreed to drop its marketing claims that Rice Krispies
will strengthen a child's immune system. Any parent that bases their child's
health program on what they read on a cereal box can only be called a flake,
a sugar-frosted flake. (Jerry Perisho)

More than 12,000 nurses walked off the job in Minnesota is a well-orchestrated
one day strike. Nursing hasn't been this big an issue in Minnesota since it
looked like Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura was lactating. (Jerry Perisho)

To improve the brand's image, General Motors has told employees they should
no longer refer to a Chevrolet as a "Chevy." In a similar move, Toyota told
employees to stop referring to a Toyota as an "Oy." (Paul Seaburn)

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

A 63 year-old New Jersey man has been arrested for reaching under the blanket
of a sleeping woman aboard a Continental flight and sexually abusing her. Today
Continental changed its slogan. The new one, "Want to get off?" (Pedro Bartes)

IMMIGRATION & CIVIL RIGHTS

Today, the White House announced they have come up with a cheap, effective
solution for illegal immigration. They're going to have Helen Thomas on the
border, yelling, "Go back to Mexico! Go back to where you came from! Get out!"
(Jay Leno)

GREAT BRITAIN

Prince William's upcoming wedding is reported to cost as much as $400,000.
Of course it was going to be a fraction of that until Sarah Ferguson was
brought in to be the wedding consultant. (Jim Barach)

EUROPE

Denmark wants to tax donors to sperm banks. Talk about oppressive moves.
It’s yet another example of the little guy getting squeezed. (Alan Ray)

Furious over government budget cuts, workers in Spain are protesting.
Thousands marched, lit fires, blew car horns and chanted slogans, until
it was time to go home for their afternoon nap. (Sean M. Lee)

THE MIDDLE EAST

The only commercial airline in Iraq, Iraqi Airways, folded this week.
The CEO says the company could not survive in a market where everybody
in the country is on the No-Fly list. (Jay Leno)

AUSTRALIA & OCEANIA

The chain-smoking toddler from Indonesia has cut down to 15 cigarettes
per day. You know what would get him to stop smoking for good? It's a
lesser-known treatment called, "Don't give him any." (Craig Ferguson)

SCIENCE

Scientists in Thailand have found a species of monkey that has learned
to fish. Evolution has caused changes in their physical appearance as
well. They now have big beer guts. (Alan Ray)

HEALTH

A medical study says sports are OK for most kids with high blood pressure.
The fierce competition. The physical play. The emotional stress. And those
are just the parent meetings. (Dwight Perry)

Scientists at Canada's Concordia University have created cloth, woven with
wireless sensors, that can track the wearer's vital signs including temperature,
heart rate, and breathing. If all goes according to plan, Armani will soon
market the "Dr. Georgio 500" -- a business suit that can give you a complete
physical. (Bob Mills)

SPORTS

It's been quite a summer at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, where one
trespassing fan got tased, another got arrested for intentionally vomiting
on a fellow fan, and TV cameras recorded a preschooler swigging a beer. Now,
if they could only get that 4-year-old kid from Indonesia who smokes two packs
a day to go to a Phillies game, they will have hit for the cycle. (Len Berman)

The first World Cup game is between South Africa and Mexico. Mexico really
has a solid team this year, especially after they got all those great players
from Arizona. (Jimmy Fallon)

The NBA finals continue. Some guys nod off for three quarters and only pay
attention for the last 2 or 3 minutes of the Fourth. But enough about the
refs. (Alan Ray)

The Atlanta Braves are on pace to pass 300 walks for the season this weekend.
They trail only Derek Jeter in getting to first base. (RJ Currie)

The San Diego Padres turned a triple play against the New York Mets on Thursday.
It's always big news when a Padres triple play doesn't include the Father, Son
or Holy Ghost. (Jerry Perisho).

Apparently after an NCAA investigation, USC's football team will not only
lose scholarships, but also be punished by the NCAA by being banned from
bowl games for the next two years. Which will at least give their players
more time not to go to class. (Janice Hough)

Some schools would worry that with bowl probation, a number of their stars
might jump to the NFL early. Not at USC. Most players don't want to take
the pay cut. (Janice Hough)

The NCAA's investigation of the USC athletic program, which started in
March 2006, lasted longer than the Civil War. (Jerry Crowe)

The Edmonton Eskimos announced all tickets to the 2010 Grey Cup were sold
in just one week - a CFL record. Might be the fastest sellout in Edmonton
since Chris Pronger. (RJ Currie)

Is it just me, or did anybody else watching the final game of the Stanley Cup
on TV think the best-timed shot was that Cialis logo popping up in extra time?
(RJ Currie)

The Brazilian referees working the England-United States match at the World Cup
have been studying English-language swear words so they can make sure players
aren't being abusive. Who says sports isn't educational? (Janice Hough)

ATHLETES

Less than 24 hours after winning the first of his record 10 NCAA basketball
championships, UCLA's pious John Wooden got a message from above, from a
pooping pigeon that dropped a souvenir on his head as he was leaving the
team hotel in Kansas City for an Easter church service. Wooden, who died
Friday, recalled the event when he returned to K. C. for a Hall of Fame
ceremony four years ago: "I think the Good Lord was letting me know,
'Don't get carried away.' " (Dwight Perry)

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game
Wednesday by umpire Jim Joyce. The ump showed up the next day in tears.
His guide dog took a big chunk out of his ankle when he got home the
night before and it was killing him. (Argus Hamilton)

Hockey great Gordie Howe was given an honorary law degree from the University
of Saskatchewan. You would think with all the teeth Gordie knocked out, he
should have received a doctorate of dentistry. (Derek Wilken)

Where have you gone, ironman pitchers? The Phillies' Jamie Moyer, 47,
collected the 33rd complete game of his 24-year career in Saturday's
6-2 win over the Padres. Bob Feller had 36 for the Indians ... in 1946.
(Dwight Perry)

The Washington Nationals named seventeen-year-old slugger Bryce Harper
the top draft pick Monday, he's being called the best prospect since
Mickey Mantle. The Nationals fans are so excited. They can't wait to
see what the Yankees give up for him. (Argus Hamilton)

Ken Griffey Jr. once pulled a pair of drugstore sunglasses off my head,
threw them on the clubhouse floor in disgust and replaced them with a pair
of $150 wraparound Oakleys. I tried to give them back. He just smirked.
He was determined to give me an upgrade in cool. I next asked him whether
he liked my clothes or my car. (Sportswriter Dan Raley)

Tiger Woods agreed to participate in a skins game Wednesday in a charity
pro-am before the Memorial Tournament. He was surprised to see Jack Nicklaus
and the huge crowd waiting for him at the first tee. He thought he was
signing up for a skin flick. (Argus Hamilton)

The NCAA levied severe penalties against USC for their violation of rules
in football and basketball; USC will appeal those penalties. That noise
you hear is Tim Floyd, Pete Carroll, Reggie Bush and O. J. Mayo laughing
all the way to the bank. (Jerry Perisho)

Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, still owed $24.9 million from his days with
Texas, has been named to a three-member committee representing Rangers
creditors during the team's bankruptcy case. Might be the first time he's
ever looked forward to getting a take sign. (Dwight Perry)

A Chicago Sun-Times report said Kevin McHale had been interested in coaching
the Chicago Bulls. I'd like to see Kevin coaching the U.S. Naval Academy
Midshipmen; McHale's Navy has a ring to it. (RJ Currie)

Andre Agassi, Cassius Clay, Karch Kiraly, Lisa Leslie and Mickey Mantle
were among the honorees when Sports Illustrated announced its All-Alliteration
team. (Dwight Perry)

Ferrari Driver Academy signed 11-year-old Montrealer Lance Stroll, winner
of several Canadian karting titles, making him the youngest driver ever to
wear the Ferrari logo. In other words, it was the kart before the horse.
(RJ Currie)

Mavericks forward Caron Butler joined a couple U. S. congressmen and the
crown prince of Denmark on a bike ride around Washington, D.C., to promote
alternative transportation. Hey, who better than an NBA player to give a
traveling endorsement? (Dwight Perry)

A salute to Canadian Daniel Nestor for winning the French Open doubles
championship, his 69th doubles title - tops among active players. Nestor
has won more court battles than Clarence Darrow. (RJ Currie)

Star quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, already on double-secret probation,
was kicked off the Oregon football team when his latest brush with the
law included marijuana possession. In other words, one too many roll-outs.
(Dwight Perry)

ENTERTAINMENT

The finale of "Glee" was just on. The Fox network is the home of "Glee,"
while Fox News is the home of people who don't like people who watch "Glee."
(Craig Ferguson)

New York City officials are complaining that the decision to transfer
"Law and Order" from New York to Los Angeles will result in an $80 million
loss to local merchants. Not exactly cheap for the producers, either. So far,
they've had to spend $75,000 just to have all the graffiti removed from the
squad cars. (Bob Mills)

A revival of "Annie" is in the works for 2012. It's just like the original,
until the end when she's adopted by Brad and Angelina. (Jimmy Fallon)

ENTERTAINERS

Charlie Sheen got a month in jail for assaulting his wife days after he signed
a two-million-a-week deal with CBS. He's also addicted to pills and he's hooked
on the Internet. If Charlie Sheen were a board game he'd be a lot more fun than
Monopoly. (Argus Hamilton

Gary Coleman's death should cause us to reflect on a life too short. (Terry Etter)

Willy Nelson has cut off his signature pony tails. Well, he didn't so much
cut them off, he smoked them by accident.. (Alex Kaseberg)

Seems Hall and Oates have canceled an upcoming concert in Arizona to protest
the state's new immigration law. Well, that will teach Arizona a lesson, huh?
Let's see how long they can go without Hall and Oates! Now, apparently, Hall
and Oates were worried Arizona authorities would make them go back to where
they came from — the '70s. (Jay Leno)

Actress Rue McClanahan has died at the age of 76. She was one of the
"Golden Girls." To give you an idea of how long ago that series was
on TV, it was back when a woman named "Blanche" could be considered
sexy. (Tim Hunter)

OTHER CELEBRITIES

Shaquille O’Neal challenged last year’s National Spelling Bee winner Kavya
Shivashankar to a spell off. The 14 year old said she would rather compete
at something where she had a better chance at beating Shaq. Like a free
throw contest. (Jake Novak)

A sex tape featuring reality TV star and former Playboy model Kendra Wilkinson
- wife of Philadelpha Eagle Hank Basset - surfaced this week and reports say
ex-XFC fighter Justin Frye, who stars in the tape with Kendra, is behind it.
Other times he is in front of it. (RJ Currie)

Hollywood mogul David Geffen said Friday he can bring LeBron James to L.A.
if he buys the Clippers because he and the free agent NBA superstar are close
friends. LeBron says he wants to win a championship. In twenty years the only
thing the Clippers have ever won is a free taco for guessing the final score
of the Lakers game. (Argus Hamilton)

“The Dog Whisperer” Caesar Millan and his wife of 16-years, are getting divorced.
Apparently she caught him fooling around with some bitch. (Alex Kaseberg)

THE MEDIA

White House reporter Helen Thomas had to resign Tuesday after she told a rabbi
on camera that Jews should leave Israel and go back home to Poland and Germany.
We won't hear from her for awhile. She's rumored to have eloped to Bavaria with
Mel Gibson. (Argus Hamilton)

Longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas has been caught on tape telling
the Jews in israel to "go back to Germany." It's the worst thing Thomas has done
since she tried to eat Hansel and Gretel 375 years ago. (Jake Novak)

White House reporter Helen Thomas is retiring after making some quite controversial
comments about Israel. She said Jews should leave the Middle East and go back to
where they came from. The problem is that's where they came from. (Jay Leno)

EDUCATION

A new study shows that language programs in U. S. schools are lagging behind.
Not enough kids are learning foreign languages in America. In fact, here in
L. A., the schools have cut foreign language classes completely. Did you know
that? Everyone just speaks Spanish now. (Jay Leno)

The on time graduation rate for high school students is 75 percent. A senior
at the top of the class is called a valedictorian. A senior at the bottom of
the class is called an SEC running back. (Alan Ray)

HISTORY

A study rules out lead poisoning as a cause of death for Beethoven in 1827.
The results would have come back sooner, but the tests were sent to the lab
at Kaiser. (Alan Ray)

CULTURE & SEXUAL MORES

A two-year-old Sumatran baby smokes 40 cigarettes a day. The father says
he is addicted. I’m no Dr. Phil, but I think a good way to stop a baby
from smoking is to take away his cigarettes. (Alex Kaseberg)

Baseball fans in Philadelphia are disgusted after a toddler was caught on
video at a Phillies game chugging a beer. The parents of the toddler say
they don't know what all the fuss is about. The kid always chugs a beer
after a couple of cigarettes. (Frank King)

According to a recent survey by iVillage.com, 55% of married women are happy
with their sex lives. The other 45% are not having affairs. (Pedro Bartes)

According to a recent survey by iVillage.com, 41% of women would rather
catch up on sleep than have sex with their husband. Why does it have to
be either/or? My wife does both things at the same time. (Pedro Bartes)

A study says that four in five poker players use drugs to stay sharp at
the table. The one who isn't staying quite as sharp is the one who keeps
yelling out "Go fish!" (Jim Barach)

A Pennsylvania couple who were born in the same room on the same day
are set to be married 24 years later. Or as they call that in Alabama,
“fraternal twins”. (Jim Barach)

HOLIDAYS

Happy National Doughnut day to everyone. This is why America is such a great
country: 64 percent of our population is overweight and yet we still have
National Doughnut Day. (Jimmy Kimmel)

World Ocean Day marked the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the
famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau Monday. He wouldn't recognize it today.
When Jacques Cousteau explored the ocean it was an eco-system, today it's
an energy drink for cars. (Argus Hamilton)

Compiled by Stan Kegel
skegel@socal.rr.com

Why doesn't Obama save us? He's showing sensible restraint on the spill

2010-06-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Why doesn't Obama save us? He's showing sensible restraint on the spill
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 13, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0613-chapman-20100613,0,349441.column

Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too activist, too meddlesome and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General Motors, wrecking the financial system and promising to make the oceans recede.

But that was a different guy, from a parallel universe. The President Obama we all know is a passive, detached do-nothing. Or so we have been hearing since the BP oil spill gained our attention.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who once denounced Democrats for scheming to "increase dependence on government," now demands that Washington do more for his state.

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently urged Congress to zero out the Environmental Protection Agency, challenges the administration to "save the Louisiana coast, save the fisheries, save the wetlands."

Funny how nobody said that at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where the chant was "drill, baby, drill." Back then, real men didn't protect sea turtles.

"For 35 days, he hasn't used the full force of our government," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., complained of the president last month. That's right: A conservative lamenting that Obama is being too cautious and prudent in his deployment of federal power.

What's next? Griping that he's not enough of a socialist?

It may not be a surprise to find Republicans damning Obama when he does and when he doesn't. But it is novel for them to act as though the president is an omnipotent national father, without whose tender care we are all lost.

"America wants a leader, not a politician," proclaims former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, writing in USA Today. He says Obama should emulate former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who after the 9/11 attacks, "camped out at Ground Zero" to lead the response. "There is no substitute for being there," Romney lectures the president.

This is part of Romney's ongoing campaign to make sure no one ever again takes him seriously. Obama is not a mayor. He is commander in chief at a time we are fighting two major wars, confronting a North Korea that recently sunk a South Korean naval vessel, trying to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons and grappling with an international crisis involving Israel.

He is also responsible for directing policy and making budget decisions involving numerous federal departments and agencies that exist because the GOP, after all, didn't abolish them during its time in power.

To suggest that Obama should devote his full attention to fixing a single problem (a leaking oil well) that the federal government has no competence or responsibility to fix is not leadership but childish fantasy.

Making rules for deepwater drilling is a legitimate function of government, and so is holding polluters accountable for the damage they cause. Plugging oil wells is the function of oil companies.

The federal government does have a responsibility to help mitigate the harm done by the leaking petroleum. But Obama does not need to be on hand for it to carry out that mission, any more than the chairman of Toyota needs to be carrying a wrench on the factory floor. If the president cannot formulate a policy and direct those under him to carry it out, he has no business being president — because there is no other way to be president.

When his critics accuse Obama of being detached and passionless, they are really faulting him for being calm, rational and realistic. Those qualities, a contrast to the cocky style of his immediate predecessor, are what got him elected. If Americans had wanted a leader to channel rage or grief, they would have chosen someone more demonstrative.

Obama has gone wrong — as conservatives have often been correct in pointing out — when he has pressed against the limits of his rightful powers, taking on responsibilities far greater than the federal government should assume. A president who does too much is far more dangerous to life, liberty and property than one who does too little.

So if Obama is erring on the side of circumspection, more power to him. When he was running for the White House in 1968, Democrat Eugene McCarthy was asked if he felt he would be a good president. "I think I would be adequate," he replied. Here is a goal for Obama that conservatives as well as liberals should be willing to endorse: Just be adequate.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman

schapman@tribune.com

Kirk again challenged over military record - Congressman's use of 'deployment' comes under scrutiny

2010-06-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

Kirk again challenged over military record - Congressman's use of 'deployment' comes under scrutiny
By John Chase and Todd Lighty
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 13, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-senate-kirk-giannoulias-20100612,0,2203077.story

When Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk says he repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan with the Navy, he's referring to two-week training missions as part of his annual reservist requirements.

After acknowledging a series of misstatements that embellished his Navy service, Kirk is being challenged over his use of the military term "deployment," and this could be yet another opportunity for critics to parse his words in what has recently become a resume-bashing battle with Democratic Senate opponent Alexi Giannoulias.

Deployment can mean more than one thing in the military, but it is often used to describe service members going off to war for an extended time.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>

Navy Cmdr. Danny Hernandez said there is a difference between annual training and being deployed, which can sometimes last more than a year.

"I would think that would be (considered) two weeks of annual training," Hernandez, a Navy spokesman, said of Kirk's stints. "A deployment is a deployment and annual training is annual training."

Officials with Kirk's campaign said the five-term North Shore congressman and commander with the Navy Reserve was accurate because deployment encompasses any relocation of forces.

"Congressman Kirk was proud to deploy to Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 on military orders issued by the United States Navy," said Kirk spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski.

Kirk's recent stumbles over his military record — and his attempts to put the focus back on Giannoulias' own resume issues — have dominated the high-profile race to fill the seat once held by President Barack Obama.

Kirk's campaign tried to even the score by pointing out Giannoulias had stated on a campaign Web site resume that he was a director of a little-known banking association when, in fact, he sat on a committee for the group. The shot also was an attempt by Kirk to remind voters of the biggest political baggage for state Treasurer Giannoulias, whose family-owned Broadway Bank was taken over by federal regulators and once made $20 million in loans to a pair of convicted felons.

The Giannoulias campaign admitted the error and changed the Web site. "It doesn't rise to the same level of what Kirk did," Giannoulias spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said.

Kirk has been hammered by Democrats after acknowledging he misstated his Navy record, including that he served in the Gulf War, that he once commanded the Pentagon war room and that he came under fire while flying intelligence missions over Iraq.

Last week, he was hit again after publication of a Defense Department document that suggested he had engaged in "partisan political activities" during his last two tours of duty.

The wording was part of a waiver written last year that Kirk needed in order to serve in Afghanistan. Politicians — particularly members of Congress — are not allowed to serve in imminent danger areas unless the Department of Defense specifically allows it.

Kirk insisted he never conducted any political activities while he was in Afghanistan. "Congressman Kirk never violated Defense Department policies," his campaign said in a statement. "The memorandum in question is simply off the mark."

Asked to explain the wording, a Defense Department spokeswoman said Friday the Pentagon was still examining the topic and couldn't comment.

Kirk's campaign also pointed to the congressman's fitness reports, in which supervisors praised his work in Afghanistan.

jchase@tribune.com

tlighty@tribune.com

Illinois suffers new credit rating blow

2010-06-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Illinois suffers new credit rating blow
By Nicole Bullock in New York and Hal Weitzman in Chicago
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
Published: June 12 2010 00:10 | Last updated: June 12 2010 00:10
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6f27f66-75ab-11df-86c4-00144feabdc0.html

Illinois’ unwillingness to tackle its budget woes prompted Fitch on Friday to become the second agency in a week to downgrade the cash-strapped state, which is likely to push up the state’s borrowing costs as it prepares to issue new debt.

Fitch lowered the rating on Illinois’ general obligation bonds from “A+” to “A” and assigned them a negative outlook, signalling it could downgrade the state further. The move came a week after Moody’s moved the state’s general obligation rating to A1 from Aa3. Standard & Poor’s rates Illinois “A+”.

“Something significant needs to happen on either side of the budget – either cutting spending or raising revenues,” said Karen Krop of Fitch. “Now they are relying on deficit borrowing.”

Ms Krop said Illinois has budgeted to raise more than $8bn with bonds in the current and next fiscal years. “There doesn’t seem to be an endgame,” she said.

Illinois’ budget situation is among the worst in the US. The state faces a $13bn budget deficit for the financial year that begins on July 1. More than $6bn of that is unpaid bills from the current year, which have prompted state prisons to let out inmates early, and the state to cut 20,000 teachers and staff.

Illinois’s legislature last month passed a budget bill, but the proposal is billions of dollars short and calls for outstanding payments to be delayed further.

The legislature has now gone into recess, leaving Pat Quinn, the state governor, to balance the budget.

Mr Quinn has proposed borrowing the $4bn needed to cover the pension contributions in order to avoid severe cuts, a plan that has passed the Illinois House but has stalled in the Senate, with Republicans refusing to approve it.

Yields on some Illinois bonds on Friday rose above those of California, the poster child for local financial problems. The state’s 10-year bonds were quoted at 4.20 per cent while California’s 10-year bonds were quoted at 3.95 per cent, according to one trading desk.

“The market is growing more careful about Illinois,” said Matt Fabian, managing director at Municipal Market Advisors. “Higher yields are one of the costs of a poorly balanced budget.”

This week, Cook County, which comprises the city of Chicago, had to boost the proposed yields on nearly $700m of bonds to entice investors, Mr Fabian said.

In the credit derivatives market, dealers bid up the cost of default protection on Illinois debt by 17bps to 283bp on Friday, according to Markit. That means it costs $283,000 a year to insure $10m of Illinois bonds for five years, compared with $290,000 for Californian bonds.

The Markit MCDX North America Index for municipal bonds this week rose about 200bp for the first time in nearly a year.

CDS for municipal bonds is a very small part of the overall market, which is dominated by trading in corporations and sovereigns.

Sales dip raises doubts on US recovery

2010-06-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sales dip raises doubts on US recovery
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 11 2010 14:08 | Last updated: June 11 2010 16:50
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63d63220-7554-11df-a7e2-00144feabdc0.html

US retail sales recorded a surprise drop in May, breaking a seven-month stretch of solid increases and signalling that the US consumer remains stubbornly fragile.

Sales fell by 1.2 per cent last month, commerce department figures showed on Friday. That failed to meet economists’ expectations that they would continue climbing, as purchases were pulled back by a drop in demand for building materials and customers held off on buying new summer clothes.

Retail sales have been climbing steadily in the last year, increasing by 6.9 per cent from May 2009, as consumers reaped the benefits of surging equity markets and recovering home prices. Friday’s figures tarnished some of that, and the sharpest monthly decline since last September provoked some analysts to downgrade their economic outlooks.

“This data then certainly fits with a sub-par recovery with tentative evidence of some lost momentum into the spring,” said Alan Ruskin, strategist at RBS Securities, noting that weaker consumption could dent gross domestic product projections for the coming quarter.

The disappointing data rattled US markets, with investors already feeling anxious after last week’s tepid non-farm payrolls report showed that the US economy added just 41,000 private sector jobs last month.

Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, said that some of the recent strength in sales was due to consumers spending their tax rebates and from demand spurred by rebates for energy-efficient appliances.

“With these effects all now gone, the weaker underlying picture is revealed,” Mr Shepherdson said.

Building materials sales crumbled in May, falling by 9.3 per cent after strong rises during the prior two months that were fuelled by homeowners fixing up their houses in the wake of a harsh winter. Car sales, petrol purchases and buying at general merchandise and department stores were also thin last month.

But in spite of the monthly decline, there were some shades of optimism in Friday’s figures.

Electronics shops reported greater demand, and sales were up at sporting goods retailers and grocery stores. April’s results were also stronger than previously thought, with sales revised to show a rise of 0.6 per cent.

Some economists downplayed the May decline as the result of bad weather and a effect of a late Memorial Day holiday on shoppers.

Analysts pointed to optimism in a separate Reuters/University of Michigan survey, showing that consumer sentiment in June rose to its highest level in more than two years.

Businesses also continued to demonstrate confidence, according to the commerce department, boosting their April inventories to a 10-month high in anticipation that sales will stay strong.

“Looking forward, the growth in household labour income and the ongoing improvement in consumer sentiment should lend support to continued growth in real consumer spending,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.

New York Times Editorial: BP’s Responsibility

2010-06-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

New York Times Editorial: BP’s Responsibility
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12sat2.html?ref=global

The Times reported on Friday that investors and politicians in Britain are increasingly upset at America’s criticisms of BP. This isn’t an issue of American pique or British patriotism. Americans are rightly angry at BP’s inability to stop a disastrous leak for which it was wholly unprepared and its failure to tell the truth about the extent of the damage.

United States government scientists did nothing to improve Americans’ mood this week when they doubled their estimate of the amount of oil flowing from BP’s out-of-control well in the Gulf of Mexico. The new range announced by a special panel is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. At that rate, the amount of oil fouling the gulf is approaching one Exxon Valdez spill a week.

One can sympathize with people who depend on BP and its large profits for part of their income. BP is also a major taxpayer in Britain, which is eager to reduce its huge government deficit. But what is at issue here is BP’s responsibility for a huge mistake and for the damage to, and possible destruction of, one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet — and the many thousands of livelihoods that go with it.

These are points President Obama can and should make when he meets with BP officials next week. The main point to stress, of course, is that BP must be in this for the long haul, that Americans expect it to meet its obligations under law and that it must honor its oft-repeated commitment to pay claims from individuals even if those claims exceed statutory limits.

The president might also point out that BP is not on Americans’ most-trusted-corporations list right now — partly because of its carelessness, partly because of its chief executive’s tin ear.

Many people are genuinely worried that BP will not have enough money on hand to pay for the cleanup and claims. To make sure that it does, some have suggested the Justice Department enjoin the company from paying its dividends. The company may soon find it prudent to do that on its own.

Although BP has about $11 billion in cash and investments on hand, its obligations in the gulf could exceed this cushion as well as anticipated profits. Credit Suisse has suggested that a total bill of $40 billion is not out of the question — even without a finding of gross negligence. That number is breathtaking. The destruction BP has wrought is even more so.

BP Directors to Discuss Suspension of Dividends

2010-06-12T09:51:00.001-07:00

BP Directors to Discuss Suspension of Dividends
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/12spill.html?hpw

HOUSTON — BP said Friday that its board of directors would meet Monday to discuss whether to suspend the company’s dividend to pay spill-related claims.

BP executives continued to say they were financially capable of paying the dividend, which amounts to $10.5 billion a year. But they also acknowledged the political pressures building in Washington to set aside at least the next dividend payment while the amount of oil being released into the gulf is assessed and the growing federal fines linked to that amount can be estimated.

“There are ongoing discussions, there are lots of options on the table,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman. Among options being considered by board members, BP officials say, is suspending or cutting the dividend for a quarter, paying the dividend in shares of stock, or issuing an i.o.u. for delayed payment.

The BP board will discuss a strategy for a meeting between top company executives and President Obama on Wednesday. No decision is expected until then. By that time, the company hopes its containment efforts will be gathering most of the oil spilling into the gulf. Such progress could relieve some political pressure as well. Political controversy boiled on many fronts Friday as Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida sent a letter to BP demanding that it put at least $2.5 billion into a dedicated escrow account to cover spill-related losses to the state and its residents. Mexico’s environment minister told Reuters that Mexico was considering how to sue BP for environmental damage if oil reaches the country’s shores.

BP’s efforts to contain the spill were the subject of debate at hearings in Washington on Friday. Robert J. Barham, the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, told a House of Representatives subcommittee that chemical dispersants used underwater may be more environmentally damaging than the oil.

“As bad as it is, we have a whole lot more experience dealing with oil on the surface than we do in subsea, where we have literally no experience,” Mr. Barham said.

He said that despite repeated requests to BP and to the manufacturer of the dispersant, they have not received information on the percentages of the components of the chemical, Corexit.

John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, told the committee that the shrimping industry was angry over the continued use of the dispersants without proper knowledge of how the chemicals could affect seafood.

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington.

A Tourist Mecca Fears a Long-Term Oil Smear

2010-06-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

A Tourist Mecca Fears a Long-Term Oil Smear
By MICHAEL COOPER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/12community.html?hpw

GRAND ISLE, La. — They are not selling many fried Snickers bars à la mode these days at the Kickin Chicken restaurant here, located by a wide, sandy beach that is now off limits to swimmers because of the oil spill. So its owners are going after different customers, with the help of a roadside sign: “Disaster Catering Available! Let’s Talk.”

Grand Isle, a normally picturesque seven-mile stretch of barrier beach off the Louisiana coast, is slowly waking up to a grim reality: the impact of the April 20 spill will not be measured in months, even if BP manages by fall to plug the well that is gushing oil 50 miles off the coast.

It is likely to be measured in years of oil-streaked beaches and marshes, of plummeting property values in a maritime community suddenly cut off from the water, of teams of hazmat-suited workers on beaches lined with orange booms, and cleanup crews in tourist motels.

“It’s shifted from a beautiful tropical paradise with people running around in bathing suits with rods and reels, having fun, to feeling more like a coastal town near a military base,” lamented Linda Magri, a real estate broker who rents summer homes and camps on the island. “We’ve got National Guard trucks running up and down.”

Like many islanders, Patrick Shay can hardly bear to look at the beach in its current condition. He has transformed his family’s front yard into a memorial for all the rites of summer that have been lost to the oil spill.

Mr. Shay planted 101 white crosses on his lawn, making it look like a national cemetery, and each cross is labeled for a loss: Brown Pelican. The Beach. Fishing. Riding My Golf Cart. Playing Board Games.

“This is our new way of life,” said Mr. Shay, 43, who has a seafood business near New Orleans and comes to his beach cottage here often with his wife and son.

Grand Isle has undergone huge transformations before. Over the last 300 years it has been home to pirates and smugglers, sugar plantations and several grand hotels that were wiped out by the hurricane of 1893. It was the setting of Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, “The Awakening.” Now most islanders make their living from fishing, tourism, or the oil industry, which have all been imperiled by the oil spill.

More recently it had to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina. Some people here are wondering aloud if the spill is worse.

“A hurricane comes in one night, wipes you out, and you know you’re dealing with mud and water, and material things,” said Mayor David J. Camardelle. “When you’re dealing with material things, on land, in just a little time everything gets better. You see progress. But this oil, it’s like a monster in the Gulf of Mexico. It comes up on the beach, you get rid of it, and you pray the next morning it won’t come back.”

Oil first hit the shore just before Memorial Day, shutting beaches just when an influx of tourists was expected to triple the population of this small island, which has about 1,200 year-round residents. Since then, President Obama has visited twice. Now the mayor is hoping to block the oil from entering the delicate bay behind the island with barges and rocks. Many here pray it works.

Expensive flood insurance bills are due for many residents this month. At least one home was put up for sale because of the spill, a broker said, but it was unclear if anyone would buy it now.

The oil has cost the island another cherished tradition. The Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo, a fishing tournament that packs an estimated 20,000 visitors onto the small island at the end of each July, was canceled.

Frank Besson, 61, a native of Grand Isle who runs a daiquiri stand and souvenir shop, said he had missed the rodeo only once, when he was stationed in Vietnam.

“It was the saddest day,” Mr. Besson said.

Fishermen book their rooms for the rodeo a year in advance at the Sand Dollar Motel and Marina. When the rodeo was scrapped, the cancellations poured in, so Butch Gaspard, its owner, rented the whole place to BP and some of the contractors the company hired for the clean-up for the foreseeable future. But his marina is empty.

The contractors staying at Ricky’s Motel and RV Sites have been telling Joe Lamothe, the manager, that they would be likely to need their rooms for at least a year.

But Mr. Lamothe took out a calculator to show that the motel will still be earning less than it would in a normal season. He is renting rooms to the contractors for $800 a month, which nets him less than half of what he would collect if they were going at their usual rate of $65 a day.

But even that kind of shortfall looks good to other local businessmen. Wesley Bland, 33, a builder who advertises all over the island with slogans like “Got Roof?” said that business fell off so abruptly that he had to let several workers go.

Kickin Chicken sold only two of the 12 cases of chicken it bought for Memorial Day. The restaurants here are being hit especially hard: BP has been using off-island caterers to feed the workers, so they do not have much reason to venture to local restaurants.

And there have been tensions between islanders and the cleanup workers, who are bused in from elsewhere. Most of the islanders are white; many of the workers are black. Mayor Camardelle said that he ran one contractor off the island for denigrating its residents.

Many houses on Grand Isle rest on tall pilings, to protect them from floods. The shade beneath them is a popular spot for escaping the blistering sun.

Sitting under the house he built, Curtis Vizier, 78, who came to the island from an isolated bayou as an infant, showed off some of the huge oyster shells he collected in the bay as a young man, and the ladder he built into a towering oak tree so he could climb up with binoculars to make sure his oyster beds were safe from poachers.

The spill will be adding some unpleasant memories to Mr. Vizier’s later years.

“The oil ruined everything,” he said. “It will be for years to come.”

Tom Zeller Jr. contributed reporting.

Spirit Strike Could Delay Thousands

2010-06-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Spirit Strike Could Delay Thousands
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/12/business/AP-US-Spirit-Airlines-Pilots.html?hpw

A strike by Spirit Airlines pilots Saturday threatened to disrupt thousands of vacationers headed to the Caribbean and Latin America from the eastern U.S.

The Florida-based carrier canceled all its flights for the day after its pilots walked out in a dispute over pay. Spirit is the largest single carrier at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport, and its tickets aren't good on other carriers.

Spirit runs roughly 150 flights a day from several airports in the eastern U.S. through Fort Lauderdale. More than 5,000 passengers arrive and depart on Spirit at the airport each day, an airport spokesman said.

The airline said it was refunding fares for Saturday flights plus a $100 credit toward future flights. As recently as Tuesday it had said it was ''partnering with other air carrier providers to continue to serve our customers.'' It didn't immediately announce plans for its Sunday flights.

''As you can imagine, it's probably going to be a very busy day,'' said Greg Meyer, a spokesman for Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Spirit pilots have said their pay lags competitors such as AirTran Airways and JetBlue. The two sides have been in negotiations for more than three years.

Pilots could have walked out as early as midnight Friday, but kept talking under the guidance of the National Mediation Board in Washington until about 5 a.m. EDT.

''In the end, both sides could not reach an agreement,'' said Sean Creed, a Spirit captain and the head of the airline's branch of the Air Line Pilots Association, in a statement on the union's website.

He said pilots ''will not return to the cockpit until a fair and equitable contract is negotiated.''

The company said it offered to raise pilot pay by 30 percent over five years. It would have included work rule changes but would have retained a four-day break between every pilot trip, something the company said no other ALPA contract has. The offer also included a $3,000 signing bonus and a larger retirement plan match.

''We are frustrated and disappointed that our pilots have turned down an over 30 percent increase at a cost of over $70 million over five years while disrupting thousands of our customers and jeopardizing the livelihoods of our over 2,000 employees,'' Spirit President and CEO Ben Baldanza said in a written statement.

Privately held Spirit is much smaller than major carriers like Delta Air Lines Inc. But from Fort Lauderdale it's the only airline to 14 international cities and five U.S. destinations, Meyer said. That means travelers trying to reach those cities could be stuck.

The Miramar, Fla.-based airline has about 440 active pilots. It dubs itself an ultra low-cost carrier, and says some of its tickets go for $9. It attracted notice recently when it announced that beginning Aug. 1 it would charge passengers up to $45 for carry-on bags.

Air carrier strikes are rare. The last one at a major carrier was in 2005, when Northwest Airlines mechanics walked off the job rather than accept deep pay cuts. The strike failed after Northwest replaced them.

Hawaii Gov Consults With Rabbis on Civil Unions

2010-06-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hawaii Gov Consults With Rabbis on Civil Unions
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/12/us/AP-US-Civil-Unions-Lingle.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

HONOLULU (AP) -- Rabbis Itchel Krasnjansky and Peter Schaktman hail from different branches of Judaism and hold starkly contrasting views on whether same-sex couples should be permitted to form civil unions in Hawaii.

What they have in common is the ear of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who has until June 21 to announce whether she may veto the only pending civil unions legislation in the nation.

Lingle, in the final months of her second and last term, faces a momentous decision that carries political and legal implications. For the rabbis, with whom the governor has consulted on the issue, her choice is about much more.

Krasnjansky, who heads the Orthodox community group Chabad of Hawaii, said the Torah teaches that homosexuality, and by extension same-sex marriage, ''is not something that should be condoned or should be legalized,'' he said.

But Schaktman, who leads the Reform Temple Emanu-El, insists Judaism teaches that all people regardless of sexual orientation are and should be treated as ''children of God,'' and thus should not face discrimination.

''Civil unions are a legal arrangement,'' he said. ''Therefore, anyone who uses religion to oppose civil unions is purely using religion to further homophobia.''

Lingle is Jewish, but has rarely -- if ever -- publicly discussed her faith in considering an issue. Lingle's office did not respond to phone or e-mail questions about her religious affiliation.

The debate between Krasnjansky and Schaktman mirrors that of Hawaii's Christians. Catholic, evangelical and conservative pastors have waged a months-long effort to prod the Legislature and now Lingle to block the measure, HB 444. Mainline Protestant and more liberal preachers have worked to get the bill signed.

The bill would allow gay and straight couples to establish government-recognized relationships with the same legal rights and responsibilities as married couples.

Civil unions and same-sex marriage have roiled Hawaii since the 1990s, generating some of the largest rallies at the state Capitol.

The state Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that the state could not discriminate against gay couples who wanted to marry. Five years later, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment authorizing the Legislature to ban same-sex marriages, which it did soon after.

Proposals to permit civil unions never gained much traction. But in January, the state Senate passed a bill that had stalled last year. It stalled again in the House, but on April 30, the final day of the legislative session, the House revived, passed and sent the measure to Lingle.

The governor met with both sides before leaving June 4 for a two-week trip to Asia. She is due back June 19, and by June 21, she is requred by law to identify the bills still on her desk that she might veto. By July 6, she must sign or veto those measures, or allow them to become law without her signature.

Earlier this month, she described how divided Hawaii and its small Jewish community are on the issue, citing as an example the two rabbis she knows personally.

In interviews, Schaktman and Krasnjansky said they got little sense which way the governor was leaning during several conversations with her in recent months.

Krasnjansky said he addressed religion with Lingle, whom he describes as a personal friend. He contends that the Torah, in the Book of Leviticus, clearly deems homosexuality a sin. ''The question is, whether the Torah's teachings are eternal and binding, or not,'' he said.

He also worries that civil unions will legitimize homosexuality in the eyes of young people, and steer them away from heterosexual relationships that have formed the bedrock of Jewish survival for centuries.

If people are drawn to civil unions, he said, ''then they wouldn't recognize the blessings of marriage, of family.''

''The governor is very interested in her Jewish heritage and...the traditions and the teaching of Judaism,'' Krasnjansky added. ''I tried to share with her my understanding of the Jewish view on this matter.''

That kind of talk rankles Schaktman, who said no one branch of Judaism can claim ownership of Jewish teachings.

Lingle's suggestion that the Jewish community is torn over HB 444 also troubled Schaktman.

''I think it was misleading for her to imply that there's split in the Jewish community,'' he said. ''It's fair to say the majority are in favor of it.''

Schaktman, who noted that Lingle attends Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at his temple, said he shied from using his view of Judaism's teachings to advocate for civil unions.

Rather, he stressed that civil unions would not impact any religion, nor would it validate homosexuality.

It is up to Krasnjansky and like-minded religious leaders to oppose homosexuality, Schaktman contended. ''That's not Gov. Lingle's job, and they have no right to expect her or the state to promulgate their morality,'' he added.

In his last conversation with the governor, Schaktman said he encouraged her ''to not do necessarily the expedient thing (but) to really search her conscience to do what is right.''

Search Continues After Fatal Flooding in Arkansas

2010-06-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

Search Continues After Fatal Flooding in Arkansas
By LIZ ROBBINS, EVIN DEMIREL and ERIK ECKHOLM
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13flood.html?ref=global-home

LODI, Ark. — Rescue workers on Saturday resumed their search for survivors of a flash flood that raged through campgrounds in western Arkansas late Thursday night and killed at least 17 people while leaving dozens more missing. The toll rose Saturday morning when a body was discovered close to the campsite.More than 36 hours after the flood, the families of the missing gathered at a church in Lodi miles from the campgrounds — frantic, grieving and waiting for news from the rescue workers.

“There are searchers on foot, by boat and air, and they’re combing the same area as yesterday, as many as 15 miles of river have been covered,” Bill Sadler, public information officer for the Arkansas State Police, said in a telephone interview on Saturday morning. He confirmed that the body of the 17th victim was located at 8:45 a.m. local time at a store not far from the campground.

“The Arkansas State Police will continue to put all the necessary resources that we have into this area and search every inch of that waterway along the banks of the Little Missouri River until everyone is satisfied that those who are missing are accounted for,” Mr. Sadler said.

Rescue workers do not have an accurate count of how many people might be missing, but about 300 people might have been camping along the Caddo and Little Missouri Rivers when the waters surged by 20 feet late Thursday into Friday morning, during a rainstorm, according to Red Cross and state emergency officials.

In pitch darkness, terrified families tried to outrace the churning, swiftly rising water, some fleeing up hillsides as tents vanished, recreational vehicles flipped over into the current and rental cabins were demolished.

The Arkansas Office of Emergency Management set up a call center, and by Saturday morning it had received about 122 calls from worried relatives, said Chad Stover, a public affairs officer of emergency agency.

“We’ve gotten calls from as far away as Texas and Canada who think their families might have been camping there,” Mr. Stover said on Saturday morning. Bob Lewis, the fire chief of Langley, Ark., said that his crews rescued 144 people on Friday. He added that if half of the campground had not been under construction, the toll might have been even worse.

Those who managed to survive gave harrowing accounts of their ordeals. Kayla Chriss, 22, of Vivian, La., and her family had been camping in the area since Monday. “Without warning everything started washing away,” she said.

Around 2:30 a.m., Ms. Chriss, her 3-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son and a family of four tried to make it for high ground in a camper, but were blocked by surging water. They briefly made it onto a nearby branch, and the other family’s father — “I only know his name is Jerry,” she said — grabbed her little girl and lifted her onto a tree.

The waters then pummeled Ms. Chriss and her son into the river. She said she started to black out when her hair got caught on a jutting limb, rousing her so she could pull herself and her son onto branches where they waited, wet and scared, until daylight.

“I was just singing to my son, telling him everything is going to be O.K.,” she said Friday evening, shortly after being discharged from a hospital with only minor sprains; her son had a black eye.“I was just trying to find a way to keep him out of the water. If it wasn’t for him being there, I wouldn’t have made it. He kept me going.”

The National Weather Service issued a flood warning around 2 a.m., after the heaviest rains had started, according to The Associated Press. By then, the disaster was already unfolding, and in any case, state officials said, the terrain and lack of cellphone service in the valleys made communications difficult.

As the rivers began to recede on Friday, National Guard helicopters and hundreds of state and local officials worked frantically to search for survivors in the rugged valleys, some of them scouring the swollen rivers by canoe or kayak. Complicating rescue operations, roads in the valleys were washed out or blocked by landslides.

At first, many campers, including vacationers from Texas and Louisiana, had tried to sleep through the torrential rains. But as the rivers suddenly swelled — at one point by four feet in 30 minutes — many tried to run for higher ground.

One survivor, Chad Banks of Texarkana, said his family had tried to escape in their truck but had to abandon it to the torrent. The truck was lifted “like a leaf floating across the top of the water,” he said, and the powerful current tore off the front tires.

They survived, he told Arkansas Online, by lashing themselves to trees on a hillside until dawn.

State officials said they could not recall so destructive a flash flood in recent Arkansas history.

Rains that began at sunset on Thursday saturated the ground before the heaviest downpours arrived between 12:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Friday, said Chris Buonanno, a science and operations officer with the weather service’s Little Rock office.

The rain ran off into the Little Missouri River in Montgomery and Pike Counties so quickly that the river west of Caddo Gap rose more than 20 feet overnight, from 3 feet to 23.5 feet.

In the rocky terrain of the region, “it doesn’t take much to get up high like that,” said Tabitha Clarke, a weather service hydrologist at the office.

Gov. Mike Beebe of Arkansas toured the area and visited with survivors and the families of victims on Friday. “I’ve seen flooding before, but I’ve never seen water do this kind of damage,” Governor Beebe said.

Bodies recovered from the flood zone were being taken to Mena, a town in western Arkansas that was damaged by a tornado in April 2009, said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the state police.

Anxious relatives of missing vacationers gathered in nearby towns as officials set up a center for them in Lodi. Rescuers said they expected to find more bodies as the waters receded.

As the flood tore through the area, it barreled into Cattlemens Trail Stop, a convenience store and gas station on the Caddo River. Tim Bean, the owner, who lives in Glenwood, said his employees saw the water coming and fled the shop as quickly as they could. Everyone escaped uninjured, but the store was deluged, and on Friday evening it remained soaked by several feet of muddy water. Mr. Bean said it would be a week before he opened again. He said he had never seen anything like it.

“There’s a lot of mountainous terrain around here,” he said, “and there’s no place for all that water to go.”

Liz Robbins and Erik Eckholm reported from New York. Evin Demirel reported from Lodi, Ark. and John Eligon contributed reporting from Lodi.

Kyrgyzstan Seeks Russian Help to Quell Unrest

2010-06-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Kyrgyzstan Seeks Russian Help to Quell Unrest
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Copyright by Reuters
Published: June 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/world/asia/13kyrgyz.html?ref=global-home

MOSCOW — As violence spiraled out of control in a third day of clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan on Saturday, the Kyrgyz provisional government asked Russia to send in troops.

With the death toll in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city, reaching 69 and a state of emergency extending to a second city, the government acknowledged its efforts to end the violence had been fruitless.

“The situation in the Osh region has spun out of control,” said Kyrgyzstan’s acting president, Roza Otunbayeva. “Attempts to establish a dialogue have failed, and fighting and rampages are continuing. We need outside forces to quell confrontation.”

But Russia, which has a small military base in the north and has been a political patron of this former Soviet republic, said only that it would consider the request.

A spokeswoman for President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia said that no decision would be made until at least Monday, when Russia is to hold consultations with other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional security alliance of former Soviet republics.

“A decision about deploying peacekeeping forces to Kyrgyzstan can only be made collectively with all members of the C.S.T.O.,” the spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, said Saturday evening. She also said that Russia was continuing to ship humanitarian assistance, including medicine, to Kyrgyzstan.

On Saturday, heavily armed gangs continued to battle on the streets of Osh, burning and looting as they rampaged through the city.

“It was raining ash the whole afternoon, big pieces of black and while ash,” said Andrea Berg, a Human Rights Watch employee holed up her apartment in the city. “The city is just burning. It’s totally out of control.”

The rioters at one point commandeered two armored personnel carriers from troops stationed in the city, said Timur Sharshenaliyev, a spokesman for the government there. Soldiers were able to take only one back.

Yelena K. Bayalinova, a spokeswoman for the Kyrgyz Health Ministry, said that in addition to the killings, nearly 1,000 people had been wounded. Most victims suffered gunshot wounds, she said.

Meanwhile the violence spread to a second city, Jalalabad, where the government declared a state of emergency on Saturday. At least six people have died in clashes there and dozens more have been wounded, Ms. Bayalinova said.

It remained unclear what started the violence, which threatens to undermine the already fragile provisional government, which took power in April after rioting deposed the country’s president. The interim government has never fully established control in part of the south, where supporters of the ousted president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, have frequently clashed with those loyal to the new government.

Those clashes have reopened a historic ethnic fault line in the region, with gangs of heavily armed Kyrgyz youths clashing with members of the region’s sizeable Uzbek minority. Much of Mr. Bakiyev’s base in the region, his ancestral home, is Kyrgyz, while many Uzbeks support the new government.

Mr. Sharshenaliyev, the government spokesman in Osh, said the military had opened a corridor to allow Uzbek women, children and the elderly to escape across the border, though he said he did not know whether Uzbekistan was prepared to receive them. The Associated Press reported that several children were killed in a stampede at one border crossing.

The government has deployed troops, armored personnel carriers and helicopters, but it has been unable to quell the fighting.

“The day before yesterday we needed special forces to simply disperse the rioters, and as of yesterday the situation had gone over the edge,” Ms. Otunbayeva, the acting president, said Saturday.

Russia and the United States have in recent years been jockeying for influence in Kyrgyzstan, and deploying soldiers there could help solidify Russia’s foothold. The United States has an important military base on the outskirts of the capital, Bishkek, which is used to support the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Russia, which has a smaller base in Kant, has frequently chafed at the American military presence in what it considers its sphere of influence.

Russia appeared to support the protest movement that led to Mr. Bakiyev’s ouster, and it has sought closer relations with Kyrgyzstan’s new authorities. It was one of the first countries to reach out to the provisional government, and it has offered millions of dollars in aid. Provisional officials frequently travel to Moscow for talks with high-ranking Russians, including Mr. Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

Under Mr. Bakiyev, the Kyrgyz government appeared to favor the United States. Mr. Bakiyev incensed the Kremlin when he apparently reneged on an agreement to close the American base in exchange for more Russian aid.

The provisional government took control after riots on April 7 forced Mr. Bakiyev from power. In those riots more than 80 people were killed when the police and presidential guards opened fire on demonstrators, who had gathered in Bishkek to protest government corruption and rising utility prices, among other things.

The new government, though unelected and made up of an uneasy alliance of political forces, quickly established control over the capital and the north of the country, but not in the south, Mr. Bakiyev’s stronghold.

The south of Kyrgyzstan is part of the Ferghana Valley, a fertile strip of land that has a long history of interethnic strife and that also includes parts of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Similar violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh in 1990 left hundreds dead and only abated when the Soviet government sent in troops

Open letter to Senate candidate Mark Kirk.

2010-06-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Congressman:

I find it offensive that Republican Andy Martin claimed you are a homosexual in a radio ad or that Mike Rogers—who has a reputation for outing politicians—is claiming that you are a closeted gay man. I am a gay man and I get offended because there is nothing wrong with being gay. As a a matter of fact I’m very proud of it!

However, a “single, good looking 50 year old man” is no longer called a “bachelor” in our society. When you voted against repealing don’t ask don’t tell policy in congress, you hurt the gay and lesbian community. And as such, the gay and lesbian community has the “right and duty” to ask if you are gay.

If openly gay Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jacob Meister criticizes me for the question, that’s fine by me; but based on your recent lies about your military career, I an starting to think that you’ll say and do anything to get elected.

Where’s your strong support for a woman’s right to choose? Gone in this election. As a fifth-term congressman who is running for U.S. Senate, you received an 85% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, the largest Gay and Lesbian organization in the US, in part for your support of hate-crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. However, now that you are running for the Senate, you lost the group's endorsement for the race to fill the seat to be vacated by Roland Burris, after the DADT vote last week.

Mr. Kirk, before this election in November, voters have a right to know the truth about you!

Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He's had several OP-Ed published at the Chicago Tribune. Inducted in the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame October 18th, 2007

Carlos T Mock, MD
Uptown Chicago
June 10, 2010

Who’s Alvin Greene? State Asks After Vote

2010-06-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Who’s Alvin Greene? State Asks After Vote
By MARK LEIBOVICH
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12greene.html?th&emc=th

WASHINGTON — For a few hours this week, it looked as if South Carolina might ditch its never-fail reputation for political scandal in favor of a genuine history-making event.

There was Nikki Haley, a lawmaker of Indian descent, beaming on election night with her husband and children after taking a major step toward becoming the first female governor of the state. It was a feel-good image to obscure the stain of a campaign marked by ethnic slurs, accusations of marital infidelity and yet more national marveling over how a single state can produce a string of political embarrassments as long as the Appalachian Trail.

But then, the television cameras started rolling on Alvin Greene’s overgrown lawn.

“Yeah, it’s been pretty nonstop for a few days,” said Mr. Greene, 32, in a phone interview Friday.

Because everyone wants to know how Mr. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who had been completely unknown until Tuesday, inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state’s Democratic nominee for the Senate — and the state’s latest political circus act.

Mr. Greene had just a few peaceful hours to savor his victory in the tiny, ramshackle home he shares with his elderly father along a quiet highway in Manning, where he has been bunkered since election night. Then, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Greene was arrested in November and is facing a felony obscenity charge; he is accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. He had been discharged “involuntarily” from the Army and showed no signs of having waged an actual campaign in recent months — no advertising, no staff, no money.

Mr. Greene, who declined to comment on the obscenity charge, would not say how he came up with the $10,440 to register his candidacy. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the House majority whip, suggested that Mr. Greene was a “Republican plant” and that the circumstance reeked of the “shenanigans” that have become the state’s trademark.

“We have embarrassment fatigue here,” said Dick Harpootlian, the former Democratic chairman of the state. “If there is an embarrassment equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder, South Carolina has it.”

Even casual observers across the country can recite the recent litany of Palmetto State political antics. The Republican donnybrook between John McCain and George W. Bush in 2000 left more scars than any presidential primary campaign in recent memory. Gov. Mark Sanford’s public swoon over an Argentinean mistress — an affair he carried on while claiming to have been hiking the Appalachian Trail — remains a spigot of late-night punch lines (while Mr. Sanford remains the state’s governor).

The Republican primary campaign to succeed Mr. Sanford featured two operatives claiming to have had extramarital affairs with Ms. Haley (who strenuously denied the accusations) as well as a Republican state senator dismissing her with an ethnic slur.

Now comes Mr. Greene, adding Democratic balance to the state’s Republican-dominated scandal sheets of recent vintage. Mr. Clyburn immediately called for someone to investigate Mr. Greene’s candidacy — who paid for the campaign, who was behind it, how did he ever win?

Mr. Harpootlian, a former district attorney, wants to know why Mr. Greene had not filed any papers with the Federal Election Commission, and Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, said he suspected that someone tampered with the voting machines.

“There is something genuinely mysterious about this whole thing,” said Mr. Fowler, whose wife, Carol, the current chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party, has called for Mr. Greene to step aside.

Mr. Greene said he had no intention of doing so. He said the whole gambit has been his idea, that he paid the entry fee and that his was — and remains — “a self-managed campaign.” He said he would challenge his Republican opponent, Senator Jim DeMint, to a debate in September. “It will be one hour. Live. On a major network,” he proposed.

Mr. Greene said he was determined to go through with this, which would seem to belie the somewhat shell-shocked demeanor he has projected in several interviews over the last 72 hours. “Can I end this?” Mr. Greene asked in the middle of a brief interview with a local television station in front of his house Wednesday. It might as well be his campaign’s official motto, or wish, at least as far as leading Democrats are concerned.

“Sad,” Mr. Clyburn said, referring to the spectacle that Mr. Greene has become on the cable and YouTube circuits.

Even in Manning, a town of 4,000 where everybody knows everybody, nobody seems to know Alvin Greene. “He just all of a sudden shows up and — boom!” said L. G. Mathis, 61, the owner of L. G.’s Cut and Style, a barber shop downtown.

It is another embarrassment for South Carolina, said Carl F. Jackson Jr, a graphic designer at a local newspaper, The Clarendon Citizen. “Anybody who got beyond eighth grade is a little astounded by this,” Mr. Jackson said, adding his own theory of how Mr. Greene had won. “Maybe voters thought it was the singer, Al Green.”

When asked in a phone interview Friday whether he was having “fun,” Mr. Greene quickly answered yes, before asking for clarification.

“What do you mean by fun?”

Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Greene said he was not interested in “fun,” or signing autographs (which he has yet to do) or indulging any of the trappings of his unlikely celebrity. He is interested in sticking to the issues that are important — jobs, education, justice — and to conveying why he is “the best candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina.”

Before elaborating on why he was, Mr. Greene excused himself, saying that he had to finish another interview.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Manning, S.C.

Across Iran, Anger Lies Behind Face of Calm

2010-06-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Across Iran, Anger Lies Behind Face of Calm
By WILL YONG and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html?th&emc=th

TEHRAN — One year after Iran’s disputed presidential election, the familiar rhythms of life have returned here. Through a widespread, sustained and at times brutal crackdown, the government has succeeded in suppressing a protest movement that shook the nation for months after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which the opposition said was fraudulent.

But the veneer of calm masks what many here call the “fire under the ashes,” a low-grade burn of cynicism and distrust. The major demonstrations and protests are gone, but the hard feelings remain, coursing through the routine of daily life: A young woman who worked for years as a volunteer in a children’s hospital said that she now saw her volunteerism as a “tool of resistance” because it highlighted a failure of the government to provide adequate care.

The son of a prominent official told a friend he would no longer accept money from his father because the father worked for the government, which the son considered corrupt.

A medical school professor recently picked up a green marker to write notes on a white board for his students, and then with a smile chose another color, saying he might otherwise be arrested for using green, the color of the political opposition.

“Maybe on the surface it seems like everything is over, but everyone is keeping the fire under the ashes alive so that when they get the chance they can bring it out into the open again,” said a 30-year-old language instructor who, like most people interviewed in Iran for this article, requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by the state.

Iran has changed since the political crisis of June 12, 2009.

In scores of interviews conducted over the past several months with Iranians from all strata of society, inside and outside the country, a clear picture emerged of a more politically aware public, with widened divisions between the middle class and the poor and — for the first time in the Islamic republic’s three-decade history — a determined core of dissenters who were opposed to the republic itself.

The political grievances have merged with more pragmatic concerns, like high unemployment and double-digit inflation, adding to the discontent.

“I was on the bus the other day and there was a man, you would not believe the kind of information he had,” said a 59-year-old who works for the government. “He started to talk about the foreign currency reserves of different countries and began to criticize the government.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his patron, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are stronger today than they were a year ago, political experts say, although their base of support has narrowed.

They are relying heavily on force and intimidation, arrests, prison terms, censorship, even execution, to maintain authority. They have closed newspapers, banned political parties and effectively silenced all but the most like-minded people. Thousands of their opponents have fled the country, fearing imprisonment.

As a formal political organization, the reform movement is dead.

The leaders of the so-called Green Movement — the former presidential candidates Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former prime minister, and Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of Parliament — have not dropped their demands for more political freedom. But they have dropped their policy of direct confrontation with the government, saying it is not worth the price in blood and heavy prison terms, and canceled demonstrations planned for Saturday after failing to receive a permit.

The security services made clear in the days leading to the anniversary that anyone taking to the streets would be dealt with harshly. On Friday, people in Tehran reported receiving a threatening text message on their cellphones.

“Dear citizen, you have been tricked by the foreign media and you are working on their behalf,” the message read. “If you do this again, you will be dealt with according to Islamic law."

A day earlier, the police staged a major show of force, with black-clad police officers riding around on motorcycles and uniformed officers lining the streets and setting up roadblocks.

The crisis accelerated and institutionalized a transfer of power that began with the first election of Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005. The shift was from the old revolutionaries to a generation that came of age during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, hard-liners who deeply resented the relatively liberal reforms promoted by former President Mohammad Khatami.

The vanguard of the new political elite is now the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and has extended its control over the economy and the machinery of state. It has improved its ability to control the street, to monitor electronic communications and keep tabs on university campuses, and its alumni head the government’s security organs.

Its leaders have promised to deal harshly with the opposition, and since February — when they suppressed protests scheduled for the 31st anniversary of the Islamic republic — their warnings have been heeded.

“The people are more aware than before, but they stay quiet on fear of death,” said an 80-year-old woman as she sat in her kitchen frying onions for a rice dish. “They have killed so many of the young and the well intentioned. Even the shah did not kill like this. They rule the people at the tip of a spear, but the people don’t want them anymore.”

The fear is spread from the top down — and the bottom up.

In recent weeks, the leadership has waged a widespread public morals crackdown which in the scope and tactics exceed what has occurred in the past. It was seen here as an effort to sow fear in advance of the June 12 anniversary of the presidential election.

The authorities have begun filming women they deem insufficiently covered to use as evidence in court. The police have begun issuing fines that some people say exceed $1,000 for beauty treatments deemed inappropriate, like heavily tanned skin. Provocatively dressed women are stationed on street corners, and men who stop to flirt are arrested.

“The opinion of the people with respect to their government was bad, and now they are making it worse,” said a 25-year-old hairdresser.

While many people are disappointed, others say the year of pain and sacrifice is paying off. “People have absolutely gained something, a certain degree of individual independence,” said a 20-year-old medical student. “They began to decide for themselves that they would go out to protest, to follow the news. This is something that has happened for everybody. In different areas of their lives they are losing patience and are not likely to say anymore that they will put up with things.”

Will Yong reported from Tehran, and Michael Slackman from Cairo.

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

2010-06-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press
By SCOTT SHANE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html?th&emc=th

WASHINGTON — Hired in 2001 by the National Security Agency to help it catch up with the e-mail and cellphone revolution, Thomas A. Drake became convinced that the government’s eavesdroppers were squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on failed programs while ignoring a promising alternative.

He took his concerns everywhere inside the secret world: to his bosses, to the agency’s inspector general, to the Defense Department’s inspector general and to the Congressional intelligence committees. But he felt his message was not getting through.

So he contacted a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

Today, because of that decision, Mr. Drake, 53, a veteran intelligence bureaucrat who collected early computers, faces years in prison on 10 felony charges involving the mishandling of classified information and obstruction of justice.

The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks.

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

Mr. Drake was charged in April; in May, an F.B.I. translator was sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing classified documents to a blogger; this week, the Pentagon confirmed the arrest of a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing a classified video of an American military helicopter shooting Baghdad civilians to the Web site Wikileaks.org.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has renewed a subpoena in a case involving an alleged leak of classified information on a bungled attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program that was described in “State of War,” a 2006 book by James Risen. The author is a reporter for The New York Times. And several press disclosures since Mr. Obama took office have been referred to the Justice Department for investigation, officials said, though it is uncertain whether they will result in criminal cases.

As secret programs proliferated after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, were outspoken in denouncing press disclosures about the C.I.A.’s secret prisons and brutal interrogation techniques, and the security agency’s eavesdropping inside the United States without warrants.

In fact, Mr. Drake initially drew the attention of investigators because the government believed he might have been a source for the December 2005 article in The Times that revealed the wiretapping program.

Describing for the first time the scale of the Bush administration’s hunt for the sources of The Times article, former officials say 5 prosecutors and 25 F.B.I. agents were assigned to the case. The homes of three other security agency employees and a Congressional aide were searched before investigators raided Mr. Drake’s suburban house in November 2007. By then, a series of articles by Siobhan Gorman in The Baltimore Sun had quoted N.S.A. insiders about the agency’s billion-dollar struggles to remake its lagging technology, and panicky intelligence bosses spoke of a “culture of leaking.”

Though the inquiries began under President Bush, it has fallen to Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to prosecute. They have shown no hesitation, even though Mr. Drake is not accused of disclosing the N.S.A.’s most contentious program, that of eavesdropping without warrants.

The Drake case epitomizes the politically charged debate over secrecy and democracy in a capital where the watchdog press is an institution even older than the spy bureaucracy, and where every White House makes its own calculated disclosures of classified information to reporters.

Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, who has long tracked the uneasy commerce in secrets between government officials and the press, said Mr. Drake might have fallen afoul of a bipartisan sense in recent years that leaks have gotten out of hand and need to be deterred. By several accounts, Mr. Obama has been outraged by some leaks, too.

“I think this administration, like every other administration, is driven to distraction by leaking,” Mr. Aftergood said. “And Congress wants a few scalps, too. On a bipartisan basis, they want these prosecutions to proceed.”

Though he is charged under the Espionage Act, Mr. Drake appears to be a classic whistle-blower whose goal was to strengthen the N.S.A.’s ability to catch terrorists, not undermine it. His alleged revelations to Ms. Gorman focused not on the highly secret intelligence the security agency gathers but on what he viewed as its mistaken decisions on costly technology programs called Trailblazer, Turbulence and ThinThread.

“The Baltimore Sun stories simply confirmed that the agency was ineptly managed in some respects,” said Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian and author of “The Secret Sentry,” a history of the N.S.A. Such revelations hardly damaged national security, Mr. Aid said.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that defends whistle-blowers, said the Espionage Act, written in 1917 for the pursuit of spies, should not be used to punish those who expose government missteps. “What gets lost in the calculus is that there’s a huge public interest in the disclosure of waste, fraud and abuse,” Ms. Radack said. “Hiding it behind alleged classification is not acceptable.”

Thomas A. Drake, a bureaucrat at the agency, talked to a newspaper; now he’s facing prison.

Yet the government asserts that Mr. Drake was brazen in mishandling and sharing the classified information he had sworn to protect. He is accused of taking secret N.S.A. reports home, setting up an encrypted e-mail account to send tips to Ms. Gorman, collecting more data for her from unwitting agency colleagues, and then obstructing justice by deleting and shredding documents.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of “Necessary Secrets,” a book proposing criminal penalties not just for leakers but for journalists who print classified material, said that whatever his intentions, Mr. Drake must be punished.

“The system is plagued by leaks,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative research organization. “When you catch someone, you should make an example of them.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Matthew A. Miller, said the Drake case was not intended to deter government employees from reporting problems. “Whistle-blowers are the key to many, many department investigations — we don’t retaliate against them, we encourage them,” Mr. Miller said. “This indictment was brought on the merits, and nothing else.”

Though Mr. Obama began his presidency with a pledge of transparency, his aides have warned of a crackdown on leakers. In a November speech, the top lawyer for the intelligence agencies, Robert S. Litt, decried “leaks of classified information that have caused specific and identifiable losses of intelligence capabilities.” He promised action “in the coming months.”

Prosecutions like those of Mr. Drake; the F.B.I. translator, Shamai Leibowitz; and potentially Specialist Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst, who has not yet been charged, have only a handful of precedents in American history. Among them are the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department consultant who gave the Pentagon Papers to The Times in 1971, and Samuel L. Morison, a Navy analyst who passed satellite photographs to Jane’s Defense Weekly in 1984.

Under President Bush, no one was convicted for disclosing secrets directly to the press. But Lawrence A. Franklin, a Defense Department official, served 10 months of home detention for sharing classified information with officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., a top aide to Mr. Cheney, was convicted of perjury for lying about his statements to journalists about an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame Wilson.

The F.B.I. has opened about a dozen investigations a year in recent years of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, according to a bureau accounting to Congress in 2007.

But most such inquiries are swiftly dropped, usually because hundreds of government employees had access to the leaked information and identifying the source seems impossible. Often even a determined hunt fails to find the source, and agencies sometimes oppose prosecution for fear that even more secrets will be disclosed at a trial.

By Justice Department rules, investigators may seek to question a journalist about his sources only after exhausting other options and with the approval of the attorney general. Subpoenas have been issued for reporters roughly once a year over the last two decades, according to Justice Department statistics, but such actions are invariably fought by news organizations and spark political debate over the First Amendment.

The reporter in the Drake case, Ms. Gorman, who now works at The Wall Street Journal, was never contacted by the Justice Department, according to two people briefed on the investigation. With Mr. Drake’s own statements to the F.B.I. in five initial months of cooperation, along with his confiscated computers and documents, investigators believed they could prove their case without her. Prosecutors further simplified their task by choosing to charge Mr. Drake not with transferring classified material to Ms. Gorman but with a different part of the espionage statute: illegal “retention” of classified information.

An Air Force veteran who drove an electric car, Mr. Drake has long worked on the boundary between technology and management. After years as an N.S.A. contractor, he was hired as an employee and turned up for his first day of work on Sept. 11, 2001. His title at the time hints at the baffling layers of N.S.A. bureaucracy, with more than 30,000 employees at the Fort Meade, Md., headquarters alone: “Senior Change Leader/Chief, Change Leadership & Communications Office, Signals Intelligence Directorate.”

Chris Frappier, a close friend since high school in Vermont, described Mr. Drake then as fascinated by technology and international affairs, socially awkward, with “an incredible sense of duty and honor.”

When he read the indictment, said Mr. Frappier, now a legal investigator in Vermont, he recognized his old friend.

“It’s just so Tom,” Mr. Frappier said. “He saw something he thought was wrong, and he thought it had to be stopped.”

According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Drake became a champion of ThinThread, a pilot technology program designed to filter the flood of telephone, e-mail and Web traffic that the N.S.A. collects. He believed it offered effective privacy protections for Americans, too.

But agency leaders rejected ThinThread and chose instead a rival program called Trailblazer, which was later judged an expensive failure and abandoned. Mr. Drake and some allies kept pressing the case for ThinThread but were rebuffed, according to former agency officials.

“It was a pretty sharp battle within the agency,” said a former senior intelligence official. “The ThinThread guys were a very vocal minority.”

One former N.S.A. consultant recalled “alarmist memos and e-mails” from Mr. Drake, including one that declared of the agency: “The place is almost completely corrupted.”

Mr. Drake, whom friends describe as a dogged, sometimes obsessive man, took his complaints about ThinThread and other matters to a series of internal watchdogs. He developed a close relationship with intelligence committee staff members, including Diane S. Roark, who tracked the security agency for the House Intelligence Committee. She discussed with Mr. Drake the possibility of contacting Ms. Gorman, according to people who know Ms. Roark.

The subsequent investigation, which included a search of Ms. Roark’s house, devastated Mr. Drake, his wife — herself an N.S.A. contractor — and their teenage son.

“For Tom Drake, a man who loves his country and has devoted most of his life to serving it, this is particularly painful,” said his lawyer, James Wyda, the federal public defender for Maryland. “We feel that the government is wrong on both the facts alleged and the principles at stake in such a prosecution.”

Forced in 2008 out of his job at the National Defense University, where the security agency had assigned him, Mr. Drake took a teaching job at Strayer University. He lost that job after the indictment and now works at an Apple computer store. He spends his evenings, friends say, preparing his defense and pondering the problems of N.S.A., which still preoccupy him.

Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban

2010-06-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban
By DEXTER FILKINS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/world/asia/12karzai.html?th&emc=th

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two senior Afghan officials were showing President Hamid Karzai the evidence of the spectacular rocket attack on a nationwide peace conference earlier this month when Mr. Karzai told them that he believed the Taliban were not responsible.

“The president did not show any interest in the evidence — none — he treated it like a piece of dirt,” said Amrullah Saleh, then the director of the Afghan intelligence service.

Mr. Saleh declined to discuss Mr. Karzai’s reasoning in more detail. But a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out.

Minutes after the exchange, Mr. Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned — the most dramatic defection from Mr. Karzai’s government since he came to power nine years ago. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar said they quit because Mr. Karzai made clear that he no longer considered them loyal.

But underlying the tensions, according to Mr. Saleh and Afghan and Western officials, was something more profound: That Mr. Karzai had lost faith in the Americans and NATO to prevail in Afghanistan.

For that reason, Mr. Saleh and other officials said, Mr. Karzai has been pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and the country’s archrival, Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime supporter. According to a former senior Afghan official, Mr. Karzai’s maneuverings involve secret negotiations with the Taliban outside the purview of American and NATO officials.

“The president has lost his confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country,” Mr. Saleh said in an interview at his home. “President Karzai has never announced that NATO will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn’t trust it is working.”

People close to the president say he began to lose confidence in the Americans last summer, after national elections in which independent monitors determined that nearly one million ballots had been stolen on Mr. Karzai’s behalf. The rift worsened in December, when President Obama announced that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by the summer of 2011.

“Karzai told me that he can’t trust the Americans to fix the situation here,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year. And then they said publicly that they were going to leave.”

Mr. Karzai could not be reached for comment Friday.

If Mr. Karzai’s resolve to work closely with the United States and use his own army to fight the Taliban is weakening, that could present a problem for Mr. Obama. The American war strategy rests largely on clearing ground held by the Taliban so that Mr. Karzai’s army and government can move in, allowing the Americans to scale back their involvement in an increasingly unpopular and costly war.

Relations with Mr. Karzai have been rocky for some time, and international officials have expressed concern in the past that his decision making can be erratic. Last winter, Mr. Karzai accused NATO in a speech of ferrying Taliban fighters around northern Afghanistan in helicopters. Earlier this year, following criticism by the Obama administration, Mr. Karzai told a group of supporters that he might join the Taliban.

American officials tried to patch up their relationship with Mr. Karzai during his visit to the White House last month. Indeed, on many issues, like initiating contact with some Taliban leaders and persuading its fighters to change sides, Mr. Karzai and the Americans are on the same page.

But their motivations appear to differ starkly. The Americans and their NATO partners are pouring tens of thousands of additional troops into the country to weaken hard-core Taliban and force the group to the bargaining table. Mr. Karzai appears to believe that the American-led offensive cannot work.

At a news conference at the Presidential Palace this week, Mr. Karzai was asked about the Taliban’s role in the June 4 attack on the loya jirga and his faith in NATO. He declined to address either one.

“Who did it?” Mr. Karzai said of the attack. “It’s a question that our security organization can bring and prepare the answer.”

Asked if he had confidence in NATO, Mr. Karzai said he was grateful for the help and said the partnership was “working very, very well.” But he did not answer the question.

“We are continuing to work on improvements all around,” Mr. Karzai said, speaking in English and appearing next to David Cameron, the British prime minister.

A senior NATO official said the resignations of Mr. Atmar and Mr. Saleh, who had strong support from the NATO allies, were “extremely disruptive.”

The official said of Mr. Karzai, “My concern is, is he capable of being a wartime leader?”

The NATO official said that American commanders had given Mr. Karzai a dossier showing overwhelming evidence that the attack on the peace conference had been carried out by fighters loyal to Jalalhuddin Haqqani, one of the main leaders fighting under the Taliban’s umbrella.

“There was no doubt,” the official said.

The resignations of Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar revealed a deep fissure among Afghan leaders as to the best way to deal with the Taliban and with their patrons in Pakistan.

Mr. Saleh is a former aide to the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary commander who fought the Soviet Union and the Taliban. Many of Mr. Massoud’s former lieutenants, mostly ethnic Tajiks and now important leaders in northern Afghanistan, sat out the peace conference. Like Mr. Saleh, they favor a tough approach to negotiating with the Taliban and Pakistan.

Mr. Karzai, like the overwhelming majority of the Taliban, is an ethnic Pashtun. He appears now to favor a more conciliatory approach.

At the end of the loya jirga, Mr. Karzai announced the formation of a commission that would review the case of every Taliban fighter held in custody and release those who were not considered extremely dangerous. The commission, which would be led by several senior members of Mr. Karzai’s government, excluded the National Directorate of Security, the intelligence agency run by Mr. Saleh.

In the interview, Mr. Saleh said he took offense at the exclusion. His primary job is to understand the Taliban, he said; leaving his agency off the commission made him worry that Mr. Karzai might intend to release hardened Taliban fighters.

“His conclusion is — a lot of Taliban have been wrongly detained, they should be released,” Mr. Saleh said. “We are 10 years into the collapse of the Taliban — it means we don’t know who the enemy is. We wrongly detain people.”

Mr. Saleh also criticized the loya jirga. “Here is the meaning of the jirga,” Mr. Saleh said. “I don’t want to fight you. I even open the door to you. It was my mistake to push you into the mountains. The jirga was not a victory for the Afghan state, it was a victory for the Taliban.”

Mr. Karzai has been seeking to build bridges to the Taliban for months. Earlier this year, the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, held secret meetings with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy commander, according to a former senior Afghan official.

According to Gen. Hilaluddin Hilal, the deputy interior minister in an earlier Karzai government, Ahmed Wali Karzai and Mr. Baradar met twice in January near Spin Boldak, a town on the border with Pakistan. The meeting was brokered by Mullah Essa Khakrezwal, the Taliban’s shadow governor of Kandahar Province, and Hafez Majid, a senior Taliban intelligence official, General Hilal said.

A Western analyst in Kabul confirmed General Hilal’s account. The senior NATO official said he was unaware of the meeting, as did Mr. Saleh. Ahmed Wali Karzai did not respond to e-mail queries on the meeting.

The resolution of that meeting was not clear, General Hilal said. Mr. Baradar was arrested in late January in a joint Pakistani-American raid in Karachi, Pakistan. But Mr. Karzai’s attempts to negotiate with the Taliban have continued, he said.

“He doesn’t think the Americans can afford to stay,” General Hilal said.

Mr. Saleh said that Mr. Karzai’s strategy also involved a more conciliatory line toward Pakistan. If true, this would amount to a sea change for Mr. Karzai, who has spent his nine years in office regularly accusing the Pakistanis of supporting the Taliban insurgency.

Mr. Saleh says he fears that Afghanistan will be forced into accepting what he called an “undignified deal” with Pakistan that will leave his country in a weakened state.

He said he considered Mr. Karzai a patriot. But he said the president was making a mistake if he planned to rely on Pakistani support. (Pakistani leaders have for years pressed Mr. Karzai to remove Mr. Saleh, whom they see as a hard-liner).

“They are weakening him under the disguise of respecting him. They will embrace a weak Afghan leader, but they will never respect him,” Mr. Saleh said.

Chicago Sun Times Editorial: More Medicaid funding critical

2010-06-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

Chicago Sun Times Editorial: More Medicaid funding critical
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
June 11, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2380662,CST-EDT-edit11b.article

It's hard to imagine the State of Illinois' nearly $13 billion budget crisis getting any worse than it is.

But that's exactly what could happen if Congress does not pass a six-month extension of the increased Medicaid funding provided by the federal stimulus package.

Last year, the federal government increased the rate at which it reimbursed states for providing Medicaid. In Illinois, the fed's share of Medicaid funding rose to 62 percent, from 50 percent.

That extra funding will cease at the end of this year, unless Congress votes to extend it.

House leaders considered a six-month extension as part of a larger jobs and tax bill. But the extra $24 billion for Medicaid was stripped from the bill at the insistence of conservative Democrats worried about runaway federal spending.

The measure is now before the Senate.

While lawmakers rightly want to control deficit spending, those concerns are outweighed by the likely harm to states if Medicaid reimbursements aren't kept at current levels.

Not only is enrollment in Medicaid on the rise, but also many states have based their 2011 budgets on the assumption that they will get the extra funding. Illinois stands to lose about $750 million.

Health care for the poor could be reduced, and some states, such as Pennsylvania, could be forced to cut jobs in education and public safety to make up for the shortfall.

The purpose of the stimulus package was to keep people working until the economy rebounds.

Cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates while states are reeling from the recession would have precisely the opposite effect.

Analyst sees Apple's iPhone on the T-Mobile network as soon as this fall

2010-06-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Analyst sees Apple's iPhone on the T-Mobile network as soon as this fall
Copyright By The Associated Press
10:50 a.m. CDT, June 10, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-apple-ahead-of-the-bell,0,7935995.story

NEW YORK (AP) — The iPhone will be available on other cell phone networks as early as this fall and will likely come first to T-Mobile USA, one analyst who follows Apple Inc. closely said Thursday.

In a note to investors, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said his checks with Apple suppliers and others suggest AT&T Inc. will lose its exclusive place as the iPhone carrier no later than the first half of next year.

One reason T-Mobile is a likely candidate is because the company's wireless technology is similar to AT&T's. Sprint and Verizon Wireless use a different wireless standard, so converting the iPhone to run on their networks would presumably involve more technical hurdles.

Wu said T-Mobile also sees the iPhone as key to winning back lost customers, meaning the company will be more likely to settle for Apple's terms.

"T-Mobile does not comment on rumor or speculation," T-Mobile USA spokesman Peter Dobrow said Thursday.

"Would we like to offer the iPhone to T-Mobile customers in the U.S.? You bet. Ultimately though it is Apple's decision on who carries its product," Dobrow added.

In any case, Wu said, Apple needs to sign up another U.S. carrier to keep up the pace of iPhone sales and counter the rising competition of phones that run on Google Inc.'s Android software.

Neither Apple nor AT&T have said when their exclusive deal is slated to end.

In midday trading, U.S.-listed shares of T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom rose 40 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $11.33 amid a broader market rally. AT&T shares were up 44 cents at $25.34, while Apple climbed $3.26 to $246.46.

Google's changed home page sparks confusion

2010-06-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

Google's changed home page sparks confusion
Copyright by Dow Jones Newswires
Published on June 10, 2010 4:53 PM
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/06/google-homepage-offers-background-images.html

Google Inc.'s website sparked some confusion and a brief backlash Thursday as Internet users discovered a temporary switch on its home page to bold, colorful background photos from its traditional white, uncluttered design.

The Internet giant, which launched a new feature last week that allows Google account holders to choose their own background for its search engine, sought to demonstrate the feature by pre-loading selected photos when people went to the website.
But many users were surprised and a little disappointed at what appeared to be the loss of one of Google's overlooked advantages in the search-engine battle with rival Microsoft Corp.'s Bing: the sparse and uncluttered display of a single text box against an empty background.

There was a fast response on social-networking site Twitter, with scores of users quickly commenting on the changes. "Why are there giant ugly background images on Google now?" one user wrote. Another user said it appeared Google was "trying to copy Bing," which, since its introduction last year, has featured photos of city skylines, seascapes and other such shots.

Some Twitter users, however, said they liked the switch.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, the site had reverted to its traditional display, with "Google" in primary colors against a minimalist white background.

Google had planned to add a hyperlink on the page that would contain an explanation that the change was only temporary. But the company said in a blog post that, "due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users."

"As a result many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today's series early," said Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, on the blog.

Earlier, a Google spokesman said the company has been asked to create more ways to customize the site, and the images Thursday were an example of what users can change. The switch was planned for one-day only, and was expected to revert back to normal on Friday.

While Google's move could suggest that the company is feeling pressure from Bing, Google remains far ahead of its search rival, conducting 64% of U.S. Internet searches, with Bing at 12 percent. Microsoft has increased its share of Internet searches by 3.4 percentage points since Bing's launch, but most gains came at the expense of Yahoo.

Washington Post Editorial: More judicial activism on campaign finance rules

2010-06-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

Washington Post Editorial: More judicial activism on campaign finance rules
Copyright by The Washington Post
Friday, June 11, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061004708.html

ON THE SUBJECT of campaign finance regulation, the Supreme Court is out of control. The latest manifestation is the court's unwarranted intervention in Arizona's upcoming election. For more than a decade, elections for state office in Arizona have been conducted under a voluntary system of public financing. Among other provisions, participating candidates receive additional public funds if their wealthy or otherwise well-funded opponents choose not to take part in the system and choose to spend more than a specified amount. Some would-be big spenders challenged the law, claiming that the extra public funds violated their free-speech rights. In advance of deciding whether to hear that case, the justices took the extraordinary -- and extraordinarily unwise -- step of issuing an emergency order to block the state from dispensing the extra funds.

This move came despite the fact that, with a primary just a few months away, candidates had made strategic decisions based on the existing system and were expecting the money later this month. Gov. Jan Brewer, for example, was eligible for up to $1.4 million in extra funding because her opponent in the Republican primary, businessman Buz Mills, had already spent more than $2 million. Calling the court's action "terribly troubling," the governor noted that "it is extremely unusual for the judicial branch to change the rules of an election while it is being held."

The notion that the First Amendment speech rights of wealthy or well-funded candidates are violated when extra money flows to their opponents turns the notion of free speech on its head. Under Arizona's system, no one's speech is being silenced or squelched. There is more speech, not less, because competing candidates get extra money to have their voices heard in the clamor of an expensive campaign. This is a different situation than that confronted by the high court two years ago in a case involving the so-called Millionaire's Amendment, part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. In that case, the court, splitting 5 to 4, overruled a provision that permitted candidates competing against self-funded opponents who spent more than a specified amount to raise money in larger increments than normally permitted. With the Millionaire's Amendment, wealthy candidates were disadvantaged by what the court called a "scheme of discriminatory contribution limits." No such discrimination was present in this case. Rather, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit explained in rejecting the challenge, the ability to provide an extra boost to participating candidates facing big-spending opponents is essential to the public financing system.

It takes five votes to grant a stay, and only four to agree to hear a case, so it is likely the justices will agree to review the law. Given the court's recent record of invalidating well-considered legislative efforts to deal with the perception and risk that campaign cash is corrupting state and federal politics, the signs for the Arizona law are not promising. Those who complain about judicial activism might start with the current court's campaign finance jurisprudence.

Spreading thoughts of freedom among North Koreans

2010-06-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

Spreading thoughts of freedom among North Koreans
By Michael Gerson
Copyright by The Washington Post
Friday, June 11, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061004109.html

SEOUL How does a mind -- born into comprehensive tyranny, conditioned for loyalty, fed on lies -- eventually change? What shifts or clicks or breaks?

"I cannot pinpoint one event," says Kim Seung-Min, a former North Korean army officer who defected in the 1990s. "I was very loyal to Kim Jong Il and to the party." His father was a well-known professor and writer; his mother a journalist. But he recalls the leaflet drops from across the border that showed pictures of South Korea. "One image stuck with me. People were wearing all sorts of different clothes. That was remarkable to me."

In such profound isolation, even the possibility of picking your clothes can spark a revolution of the mind.

Another image has stayed with Kim. "On his birthday, Kim Jong Il would give Mercedes-Benzes to people in the privileged classes," he told me. "He would shower them with tangerines and bananas, which most North Koreans citizens never see." (Consider an economy in which tangerines are symbols of privilege.) "But once while I was traveling on business, I saw a pile of 20 corpses lying on the ground" -- victims of starvation. "This was not uncommon, but people were surrounding a corpse to watch. Two belts of lice were moving across the body, which came from the corpse when the host died. Even today, when I think of this scene, I feel like throwing up."

Most North Koreans, says Kim, "have no point of comparison" that would reveal their oppression and suffering as abnormal. Kim now runs Free North Korea Radio, which makes shortwave broadcasts across the border. Other defectors drift large helium balloons north carrying leaflets, small radios and dollar bills. All are trying to replicate their own internal revolution -- to seed the doubts that might someday become dissent.

It is a risky, lonely task. Defectors are living reminders of heroic, dangerous struggles that prosperous, comfortable South Koreans would sometimes prefer to ignore. "Korean socialist groups," says Kim, "held demonstrations, forcing us to move from location to location. In the mail, we got axes covered in blood. North Korea sent spies. Hackers attacked our Web site. At some point, all of us started carrying Tasers for self-protection. Even now there are two policemen waiting downstairs who protect me."

But this is also the best of times to be an information warrior. Ten or 15 years ago, getting news out of North Korea often involved sewing letters into jackets and crossing the border. Now, secretly recorded video of public executions in North Korean prison camps goes viral on the Internet. Libraries of information can move on a flash drive.

And China is playing an unexpected role in the gradual opening of North Korea. Not the Chinese government, which still captures defectors and returns them. But China's thriving smuggling culture reaches into North Korea. Legal and illegal trade spreads radios and cellphones. Chinese cell networks cover North Korean border regions. Brokers run a profitable underground railroad of defectors from North Korea to China and then to Mongolia, Thailand or Vietnam. The relative openness of China is becoming a serious threat to the North Korean regime, in unpredictable ways. During three years spent hiding in China after his defection, Kim became a Christian. "When I first came to China," Kim says, "I found the true meaning of the cross."

With strategic options relating to North Korea limited, an information assault on the regime assumes greater urgency. The irreplaceable National Endowment for Democracy supports Free North Korea Radio. But neither South Korea nor the United States shows much creativity or commitment in applying new information technologies to help the spread of freedom.

Technology is important to this task. But defectors remind us that democratic progress ultimately depends on a moral determination. How does a mind change? The key, says another North Korean defector, Kang Chol-Hwan, is "the internal courage to see the essence of evil."

In his autobiography, "Witness," Whittaker Chambers tells the story of a German diplomat in Moscow during the Cold War who abandoned his communist beliefs. The diplomat's daughter explained the shift: " 'He was immensely pro-Soviet,' she said, 'and then -- you will laugh at me -- but you must not laugh at my father -- and then -- one night -- in Moscow -- he heard screams. That's all. Simply one night he heard screams.' "

For those with ears to hear, those screams can be heard in North Korea.

michaelgerson@washpost.com

Moody’s calms Europe bank debt fears

2010-06-11T06:21:00.001-07:00

Moody’s calms Europe bank debt fears
By Megan Murphy
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 11 2010 13:22 | Last updated: June 11 2010 13:22
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab7d8932-7547-11df-a7e2-00144feabdc0.html

European banks can absorb “severe” losses on their exposure to Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish assets without having to raise additional capital, Moody’s, the credit ratings agency, said in a report issued on Friday.

The analysis, based on Moody’s own “stress test” of more than 30 European banks from 10 countries, may ease fears about the financial sector’s exposure to embattled eurozone economies amid the spectre of a Greek debt default.

“Based on our stress test, we believe that these banks would be able to absorb the losses that could arise from such exposures without requiring capital increases – even under worse-than-expected conditions,” said Jean-Francois Tremblay, one of the authors of the report.

European bank stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks on investor concern over the possible contagion effects of a worsening debt crisis in Greece as well as the credibility of the austerity programmes being put in place across the region.

A $1,000bn bail-out package agreed by European finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund last month has failed to steady markets amid doubts as to whether the Greek government would be able to enforce swingeing cuts in public sector spending.

The Moody’s report does not disclose which European banks participated in the survey. But it concludes that while those institutions are not “immune” against a wider systemic crisis, they already have adequate capital cushions to absorb losses even under “harsh” economic conditions.

“The information gathered by Moody’s reveals that banks’ cross-border exposures in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland to a range of private claims, such as residential mortgages and business loans, are greater than those related to government debt,” the report says.

“Based on the severe loss assumptions made by Moody’s, a forced sale of sovereign debt at depressed market prices would have a greater, although still manageable impact when measured against banks’ capital levels.”

The average regulatory capital ratio of the banks stress tested by the ratings agency was “well above” 9 per cent, Moody’s said.

Funding costs fall for US companies

2010-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

Funding costs fall for US companies
By Aline van Duyn and Nicole Bullock in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 10 2010 22:53 | Last updated: June 10 2010 23:10
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b9c7eac8-74c0-11df-aed7-00144feabdc0.html

Borrowing costs for industrial companies in the US have plunged, allowing some groups to pay the lowest interest rates ever on long-term debt.

The decline in funding costs reflects the sharp fall in US Treasury yields amid the surge in demand for low-risk investments as jitters about the eurozone debt crisis have escalated.

For investment-grade companies including Altria, the tobacco maker, Duke Energy, the utility, Abbott Laboratories, the pharmaceuticals group and General Mills, the food manufacturer, it has provided an opportunity to sell bonds with record low interest payments, according to Dealogic.

The interest paid by companies is usually calculated relative to government bond yields.

“All the problems in Europe again caused Treasury yields to fall,” said Allen Carrick, general manager of corporate finance at Duke Energy.

“This created an opportunity for us. We are part of the flight to quality.”

Duke Energy last week sold $450m of 10-year bonds that paid investors a coupon, or interest payment, of 4.3 per cent, the lowest the company has paid for debt of that maturity.

This week, Altria sold bonds due in 2015 paying 4.125 per cent.

The average yields on the bonds of investment-grade industrial companies recently approached 4 per cent, according to the Barclays Capital US Industrial Bond Index, the lowest level since the index was started in the early 1990s.

The 10-year US Treasury bond has fallen to 3.27 per cent from more than 4 per cent in April.

Even though the yield differential, or risk premium, between government bonds and corporate bonds has risen amid the flight to quality, the decline in bond yields has offset that spread increase for some groups.

The all-in funding cost for companies with high credit ratings and stable prospects has therefore remained low or even fallen.

“There is no question that borrowing costs are extremely low,” said Justin D’Ercole, head of Americas investment grade syndicate at Barclays Capital.

For riskier investments, such as junk-rated US companies or European banks, this has not been the case.

Despite the low funding costs, corporate issuance remains light. Many companies have boosted their cash levels since the crisis, and rushed to sell bonds early in the year when economists were predicting that interest rates would rise.

Also, turmoil has resulted in lower levels of mergers and acquisitions.

“There is relatively little new supply of investment-grade corporate debt, so demand for non-financial companies that do come to market is very strong,” said Jim Probert at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Some investors are, however, cautious about buying bonds at current levels. Any rise in yields would push down the price of bonds.

“With very low yields, you don’t have a lot of room for error,” Jason Brady, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, said.

36 Hours in Brussels

2010-06-11T06:13:00.000-07:00

36 Hours in Brussels
By ELAINE GLUSAC
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 3, 2010
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/travel/13hours.html?hpw

AS the seat of the European Union, Brussels gets its share of gray suits pouring off the Eurostar. Luckily, the ties come off after work. Beneath the buttoned-down facade is a lively capital that follows its own sartorial trends, indulges in decadent flavors (especially when it involves beer) and exhibits a witty, even wacky sense of humor. What other city would erect an entire museum to a single comic book series? Or to an artist famous for painting faceless men in gray suits?

Brussels, Belgium
Friday

4 p.m.
1) HAUT CHOCOLATE

The city is known for chocolate, and you can’t go a block in the historic center without encountering a confectioner. Follow your nose to La Maison des Maîtres Chocolatiers (Grand Place 4; 32-2-888-66-20; mmcb.be), a new boutique that gives 10 master chocolatiers the celebrity chef treatment. Their styles vary wildly. Laurent Gerbaud creates rustic-looking bonbons that are studded with whole pistachios and Persian red berries, while Jean-Philippe Darcis makes elegant, almond-hazelnut pralines with his name signed in pink. Stop in for free samples, or take home a souvenir sampler box (22 euros, or $26 at $1.20 to the euro).

7:30 p.m.
2) CAVIAR AND ART

Paris is an hour away by train, but the new Kwint restaurant (Mont des Arts 1; 32-2-505-95-95; kwintbrussels.com) is even closer. A joint venture by two Parisian purveyors — Caviar Kaspia and La Maison de la Truffe — the restaurant spotlights rich ingredients like a truffle-poached egg (9 euros), a wild Baltic smoked salmon (18 euros) and mussel casserole with truffle cream (24 euros). The cathedral-like dining room is framed by handsome archways and a billowing metallic sculpture by the Belgian designer Arne Quinze, offering a dramatic backdrop for Eurocrat power diners and well-heeled foodies alike.

9:30 p.m.
3) BEERS BY THE THOUSANDS

Belgium has been a brewing stronghold since the Middle Ages. Among the newest well-stocked fortresses is the Délirium Café (Impasse de la Fidélité, 4A; 32-2-514-44-34; deliriumcafe.be), situated in a dead-end alley behind the Grand Place. The smoky, subterranean bar, which opened in 2004, has expanded two stories up for a total of about 2,000 beer selections. If you can’t choose, try the citrusy Rulles Blonde on tap for 3.50 euros. Expect a college-age crowd mobbed around beer barrel tables and jostling for the bartender’s attention.

Saturday

10 a.m.
4) BOWLER HATS GALORE

Appearances can be deceiving in this town. Case in point: a 19th-century neo-Classical building housing an homage to absurdity. The Musée Magritte Museum (Rue de la Regence 3; 32-2-508-32-11; musee-magritte-museum.be), which opened in 2009, is a riot of bowler hats, strange birds and other icons associated with René Magritte, the Belgian Surrealist who lived in Brussels for much of his life. Though many famous paintings are missing, it is one of the world’s largest collections of the artist’s work, spanning some 250 artworks. There are also wacky artifacts, like a homemade film showing the artist and friends acting out “Alice in Wonderland.” Unless you’re an art historian, ignore the prescribed route, which starts on the second floor and winds its way down five levels, and go straight to the basement level, where a clever 45-minute film expands on Magritte’s life and artistic milestones.

12:30 p.m.
5) TWO-STEIN LUNCH

Since 1928 residents have gathered at À La Mort Subite (Rue Montagne aux Herbes Potagères 7; 32-2-513-13-18; alamortsubite.com), an Old World cafe that means “sudden death” in French, and named for a card game that cut off midday revels, sending bankers back to their tills. It is now better known as the name of the house lambic beer, but office workers and arty post-grads file in each afternoon for open-face sandwiches known as tartines (beef tartare, 5.20 euros), and a quiet glass of kreik, or cherry-flavored beer (4.10 euros).

2:30 p.m.
6) FASHION STROLL

Though Brussels is well behind Antwerp when it comes to fashion, the Belgian capital has its own clutch of homegrown designers, conveniently aligned along Rue Antoine Dansaert just a few blocks from the Grand Place. Olivier Strelli (Rue Antoine Dansaert 44; 32-2- 512-78-53; www.strelli.be) sells filmy, romantic dresses for women and crisp khaki jackets for men. Nicolas Woit (Rue Antoine Dansaert 80; 32-2-503-48-32; nicolaswoit.com) carries romantic 1940s-inspired skirts and frocks (from 160 euros). Christophe Coppens (Rue Leon Lepage 2; 32-2-512-77-97; christophecoppens.com) makes statement hats and accessories like oversize lapel pins (165 euros). And the loftlike Stijl (Rue Antoine Dansaert 74; 32-2-512-03-13) showcases better-known designers like Dries van Noten from rival Antwerp.

5:30 p.m.
7) SANCTUARY CYCLE

Atone for your indulgences — and prepare for future rounds — by exploring the shady Parc de Cinquantenaire on two wheels. The 74-acre greensward, laid out in classical style to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence, has hedge-bordered pathways for cycling free of cars. Hop on a yellow Villo bike (www.villo.be), part of a bike-sharing program started in May 2009 with 180 locations around town. A one-day pass costs 1.50 euros, plus 1.50 euros for the first 90 minutes of calorie burning (additional charge per each half-hour after that).

8 p.m.
8) ROYAL FEAST

Over-the-top Belgian design and food meet in the aptly named Belga Queen (Rue Fossé aux Loups 32; 32-2-217-21-87; belgaqueen.be). The owner, Antoine Pinto, runs a stylish string of successful restaurants. And Belga Queen, his flagship, opened in 2002 under the vaulted ceiling of a 19th-century bank favored by the see-and-be-seen set. The menu celebrates indulgence: a medley of duck prepared three ways, including an earthy terrine and foie-gras style seared liver (23 euros), and Namur snails in a cream sauce, served over puff pastry (22 euros). Between courses, you can pop into the basement, where the former bank vault now holds a cigar club.

10 p.m.
9) SWING TIME

Ring the doorbell to get into L’Archiduc (Rue Antoine Dansaert 6; 32-2-512-06-52; archiduc.net), a cozy lounge that feels like an Art Deco jewel box, with a polished wood bar, patterned banquettes and filigreed metal balcony. Live music mixes jazz with country and Creole. For a clubbier scene, squeeze past the doorman into the trendy Mappa Mundo (Rue du Pont de la Carpe 2-6; 32-2-13-51-16), social epicenter of the cafe-filled Place St. Géry. This is where the bohemia of Brussels, lounging on cushioned banquettes, blows smoke rings, and the worldly play list zips from house to Latin.

Sunday

9 a.m.
10) COMIC STRIPS

The city can’t seem to get enough of cartoons. The Smurfs were born here, colorful murals are splashed all over the city and now there’s another museum devoted to the cuddly art form. Tintin, the fictional young reporter with a zany tuft of orange hair, is the subject of the Musée Hergé (Rue du Labrador 26; 32-10-488-421; www.museeherge.com), a three-story museum named for Tintin’s creator, Georges Prosper Remi, who used the pen name Hergé. The modern museum, which opened last year in the nearby town of Louvain-la-Neuve, winds chronologically through his career, from advertising to the head of a small empire devoted to all things Tintin, from live action films to souvenir key chains.

Noon
11) VINTAGE THREADS

There are lots of antiques markets around town, but the most diverse may be the flea market at the Place du Jeu de Balle in the Marolles District. The daily market, held in a concrete plaza, swells on Sundays and is stocked with everything from refrigerators and wheelchairs to vintage clothing and cut glass. If you tire of rifling through boxes of oil paintings, walk up adjacent Rue Blaes, a scruffy, shop-lined street where a number of antiques dealers, including Stef Antiek (Rue Blaes 63 and Place de la Chapelle 6; 32-2-540-81-42; stefantiek.com), have efficiently done the sorting for you, as a city known for bureaucrats might do.

IF YOU GO

Many airlines — including American, Continental, Delta, Jet Airways, KLM and United — fly direct from New York City to Brussels. A recent Web search found round-trip fares in July from $988.

The 173-room Hotel Amigo (Rue de l’Amigo 1-3; 32-2-547-47-47; hotelamigo.com), just behind the Grand Place, has the feel of a luxury pied-à-terre, with splashes of humor, like Tintin prints on bathroom walls. Rooms from 199 euros, about $240.

Opened in October, the eight-room Odette en Ville (25 rue du Châtelain; 32-2-640-26-26; chez-odette.com) is a chic boutique hotel near the high-end shopping street Avenue Louise. Rooms from 250 euros.

For style at a price, the funky Welcome Hotel (23 Quai au Bois à Brûler; 32-2-219-95-46; hotelwelcome.com) models each of its 17 rooms after a country, from Congo to Vietnam. Rooms from 95 euros.

New York Times Editorial: A Basic Civil Right

2010-06-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

New York Times Editorial: A Basic Civil Right
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11fri1.html?th&emc=th

After a nearly three-week trial in January, and a lengthy hiatus while lawyers fought over documents, closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

No one expects the ruling from Judge Vaughn Walker in Federal District Court to be the last word. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, will have its say, and so, eventually, may the Supreme Court.

The testimony made abundantly clear that excluding same-sex couples from marriage exacts a grievous toll on gay people and their families. Domestic partnerships are a woefully inadequate substitute.

On the witness stand, the plaintiffs described the pain and stigma of having their relationships relegated by the state to a lesser category that fails to convey the love and commitment inherent in marriage. “My state is supposed to protect me. It’s not supposed to discriminate against me,” said Paul Katami, one of the plaintiffs.

Defenders of Proposition 8 produced no evidence to back up their claim that marriage between same-sex couples would hurt heterosexual marriage. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” the defense attorney, Charles Cooper, said when asked for an explanation by the judge at a pretrial hearing.

The defense called only two witnesses. The first, Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, argued that gay people are a powerful political force, which was meant to support the claim that there is no need for enhanced judicial protection. He ended up admitting that gay men and lesbians suffer discrimination.

The other witness, David Blankenhorn, the president of the Institute for American Values, argued that marriage is being weakened by rising divorce rates and more unmarried people having children, but he could not convincingly explain what the genders of married couples had to do with that.

Upon questioning, he acknowledged that marriage is a “public good” that would benefit same-sex couples and their children, and that to allow same-sex marriage “would be a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion.” The net result was to reinforce the sense that Proposition 8 was driven by animus rather than any evidence of concrete harm to heterosexual marriages or society at large.

It’s not possible to know whether the final ruling in this case will broadly confront the overarching denial of equal protection and due process created by prohibiting one segment of society from entering into marriage. The Supreme Court has, in different cases, called marriage “essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men” and a “basic civil right.”

The result, even if a win for gay couples, could be a limited ruling confined to the situation in California, where the state’s highest court granted the freedom to marry and voters later repealed it following an ugly campaign spearheaded by antigay religious interests.

But there are actions that can be taken now. States like New York should not put off acting on legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. Last week, President Obama extended a modest package of benefits — including day care and relocation allowances — to all partners of federal employees. Congress has a duty to extend to same-sex partners the rest of the benefits that are enjoyed by federal workers whose spouses are of a different sex. It also needs to repeal the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Bringing Comparison Shopping to the Doctor’s Office

2010-06-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Bringing Comparison Shopping to the Doctor’s Office
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/technology/11cost.html?th&emc=th

SAN FRANCISCO — Americans comparison-shop for items as small as groceries and as big as cars. But they rarely compare prices on their health care. When a doctor recommends a test or a procedure, most patients simply go where the doctor tells them to go.

Even if a patient does want to comparison-shop, there is no easy way to obtain complete and useful information. It is a hole in the market that some companies see as an opportunity, especially because many Americans will soon have to pay more attention to what they are paying for, rather than count on insurance to cover everything.

But there has been no easy way for consumers to shop for the best deal on a colonoscopy or blood test. A start-up financed by prominent venture capitalists and the Cleveland Clinic, Castlight Health, aims to change that by building a search engine for health care prices. Patients using Castlight could search for doctors that offer a service nearby and find out how much they will charge, depending on their insurance coverage.

A few others are starting to publish health care prices, including Thomson Reuters, a Tennessee start-up called Change:healthcare, the New Hampshire government, which created a comparison shopping tool for residents, and health insurers. Aetna, for instance, has built tools to help patients estimate prices and may build more advanced tools, said Lonny Reisman, Aetna’s chief medical officer.

Price transparency could significantly change the way health care is bought in the United States. The notion “seems ridiculously simple and obvious, and in any other industry, you would say, ‘Duh, we already have that.’ But in health care, it’s revolutionary,” said Alan M. Garber, a professor of medicine and the director of the center for health policy at Stanford, as well as an investor in Castlight.

The lack of price information in health care has been a big driver of ballooning health care costs, analysts say, because costs are opaque to patients and heavily subsidized by employers. The patient has no incentive or responsibility to keep costs down. But many employers are switching to health plans that require patients to pay more out of their own pockets.

“Since Americans started having employer-sponsored health care, people are paying with someone else’s credit card, so we created a very inefficient market,” said Giovanni Colella, chief executive and a founder of Castlight. “Creating the right incentives changes the way people behave, and that’s where our company comes in.”

Dr. Colella started RelayHealth, which connects patients and doctors over the Web and was bought by McKesson in 2006. He founded Castlight with Todd Park, a founder of Athenahealth and chief technology officer of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

On Thursday, Castlight announced that it raised $60 million from investors, in addition to the $21 million it previously raised. Safeway, the grocery chain, with 200,000 employees, has signed on as its first customer.

Castlight has received money from investment firms including Venrock, Maverick Capital, Oak Investment Partners and from an unlikely source, the Cleveland Clinic. Hospitals’ business models could be turned upside-down by price transparency.

Several studies and pilot projects suggest that the more patients know about prices, the more money they save. A study published last month by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, found that people on high-deductible health plans, with more exposure to the prices of doctor visits, spent less. Indiana adopted high-deductible health plans, and the average expense in 2009 for patients on one of these plans was $6,393, compared with $8,570 for patients on a more traditional health maintenance organization plan.

“A lot of it is to understand the driver of costs and how they can start to control that, and encouraging that debate to happen while in the physician’s office,” Dr. Colella said. Castlight is working on a mobile version of the service to introduce next year so people can access the information from the exam table.

Health care pricing became part of the national conversation during the debate over health care reform. Prices will be important for the 30 million to 40 million people expected to join exchanges, which will encourage comparison shopping.

But so far, prices have been very difficult to find because health insurance providers and doctors negotiate rates and often agree not to reveal those numbers for competitive reasons. The Cleveland Clinic, for example, has about a hundred different contracts with insurance carriers, each with a different rate for a given procedure.

Ideally, transparency in health care pricing could lead to higher-quality, lower-cost health care, and more patient involvement in buying health care, said Delos Cosgrove, chief executive of the Cleveland Clinic. “Because they begin to realize that a trip to the doctor is not free, they might stay home and take the aspirin instead of getting the neurologic work-up.”

Castlight sells its service to employers and charges by employee per month. (It plans to eventually introduce a Web site for anyone to use.) Employees log on to a search portal, where they enter something like “colonoscopy” to find a list of doctors nearby and how much they charge.

Some insurers have shared pricing with Castlight, but the company gleans most of the information from the explanation-of-benefits forms that patients receive after a doctor visit. Castlight developed a way to pull the information from the millions of forms provided to it by employers.

Anyone who has read an explanation of benefits knows that it often raises more questions than answers, and Castlight says it wants to provide health education in addition to price information. The site explains why a patient has to pay a certain amount and the standard number of tests that a doctor would order for a particular problem.

Safeway has been experimenting with ways to cut health costs, including by using Castlight. “I’m a big believer in trying to create market forces wherever you can and then let personal accountability really drive the result,” said Steven A. Burd, the chief executive of Safeway.

For instance, Safeway pays up to $1,200 for its employees’ colonoscopies, a preventative procedure to detect cancer. If employees wish to go to a doctor who charges more, they must pay the difference. According to Castlight, colonoscopies in the Bay Area, where Safeway is based, range from $500 to $3,000, and sometimes a doctor charges different rates at different hospitals.

Castlight plans to add quality measurements to its price information. There are already several providers of that information, though there is no standard set of quality measurements in medicine. But even with quality ratings, there are many procedures for which Castlight’s service is not applicable. Someone suffering a heart attack is not going to check the Web before calling the ambulance, and a patient who discovers he needs emergency brain surgery is likely to prioritize quality above all else.

Even for more basic services, pricing is not always cut-and-dried. The delivery of a baby, for example, includes the hospital stay and the obstetrician’s fees, but could also include fees for a pediatrician, an anesthesiologist and specialists if there are complications.

At this stage, Castlight works best for big companies that are self-insured and for outpatient doctor visits for which quality does not vary greatly.

An Early Campaign Gaffe Makes a Non-Issue Big

2010-06-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

An Early Campaign Gaffe Makes a Non-Issue Big
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Copyright by the New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/politics/11fiorina.html?th&emc=th

You can parse a voting record. Flip-flops — political ones — are fair game. But don’t talk about a woman’s hair.

In one of those classic campaign gaffes, Carly Fiorina, the Republican nominee for the Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, was caught mocking Ms. Boxer’s hair into an open microphone on Wednesday. She also had a few tough words about the newly minted Republican candidate for governor and her B.F.F.-on-the-stump, Meg Whitman.

Ms. Fiorina’s comments were, all told, really no more incendiary than a bit of warm pasta salad — who hasn’t indulged in some off-the-record chitchat about the grooming habits of others now and then? But they presented her with a political problem that could haunt her throughout the campaign.

They both inform and confirm the image from her days as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard that she is tart and unpleasant. And they open the entire campaign to perceptions, however tired or unfair, that women can be dragged down the road of pettiness, perceptions that detract from the serious and pressing issues of the day.

“The fact is that some voters, including many women, find this interesting and no doubt form their character judgments on such matters,” said Bruce E. Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Of course, bad or old-fashioned hair can become a metaphor for being out of step and in need of change,” he added. “I would like to believe that people use the trivial to express their thoughts about what matters, rather than believe that the trivial matters. That said, it is not a good way to start a woman-on-woman race by playing into negative stereotypes about female culture.”

While the comments may be viewed through the prism of sex, they more likely mark Ms. Fiorina as a novice more than anything else. “I think this is a mistake of a rookie candidate who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut,” said Garry South, a Democratic strategist in Santa Monica. “If a man had made the comment, it would have been viewed as sexist. When a woman says it, it would be viewed as catty.”

Senator Boxer saw an opening, and took it. “Let her talk about hair; we’re talking about jobs,” said Rose Kapolczynski, her campaign manager.

Video of the episode shows Ms. Fiorina waiting to be interviewed by a Sacramento television station, scrolling through her BlackBerry and asking a staff member why Ms. Whitman would want to appear on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, which she deemed too tough an interview.

Then, after commentary on the passion for hamburgers shared by her husband and male staff members, Ms. Fiorina somehow pivoted to the locks of her Democratic opponent.

“Laura saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning and said what everyone says, ‘God, what is that hair?’ Soooooooo yesterday,” Ms. Fiorina said, scrolling, scrolling.

Even in the age of uncivil talk-show discourse and vicious campaign advertisements — Ms. Fiorina’s campaign constructed one that depicted her primary opponent as a possessed sheep — physical appearance, especially hair, is a place most candidates and their staff are careful not to go.

“If you are dissing their hair, you are dissing their personality and their lifestyle,” said Billy Lowe, a celebrity stylist who owns a hair salon in Los Angeles. “It is probably the one thing a woman spends most of her time on every day. It’s always on their minds. Your hair is your personality.”

News 10 in Sacramento, an ABC affiliate, used a CNN satellite to conduct the live interview with Ms. Fiorina, who was in Los Angeles. Producers at News 10 decided not to broadcast or post Ms. Fiorina’s comments.

“We had a vigorous editorial debate,” said Tim Geraghty, vice president and news director of News 10. “To put on a clip of an interview with someone talking about someone else’s hair did not fit with that brand we are trying to establish for News 10 in Northern California.”

Ms. Fiorina is particularly sensitive to the hair issue; hers is shorter than usual because she lost it during recent chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. She talks about her hair — missing it, people’s reaction to it, even its political implications — frequently on the campaign trail. She did so when questioned by the Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who teased her for mocking Ms. Boxer, saying, “All of us have suffered from the old bad hair.”

Ms. Fiorina replied: “Oh, you know, I was, I was quoting a friend of mine. My goodness, my hair’s been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory.”

Ms. Van Susteren, who is not always warm and fuzzy toward Democrats, suggested that Ms. Fiorina call Ms. Boxer to apologize.

Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina — the state’s first Republican female candidates for the respective offices they seek — will be tied together throughout this campaign, joined by party, goal and sex. But several people connected with both campaigns — who would not speak for attribution because they do not wish to be fired, or alienate either candidate — described the candidates’ relationship as frosty and somewhat rivalrous.

During a news conference earlier Thursday, Ms. Whitman told reporters: “Things happen early morning on TV. Having been now in the race for 15 to 16 months, you can actually see how it happens. Carly and I are good friends, and I’m looking forward to running with her.”

Inquiry Finds Graves Mismarked at Arlington

2010-06-11T05:59:00.001-07:00

Inquiry Finds Graves Mismarked at Arlington
By YEGANEH JUNE TORBATI
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11arlington.html?th&emc=th

WASHINGTON — The remains in more than 200 graves at Arlington National Cemetery may be incorrectly identified, the secretary of the Army said Thursday, as he announced a shake-up in the cemetery’s management. In some cases, remains were found in graves listed as empty, and occupied grave sites were unmarked.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

John McHugh, secretary of the Army, apologized for the errors at Arlington.

An Army report listed dozens of deficiencies in the day-to-day management of the cemetery, including an outdated recordkeeping system that may have contributed to many of the errors at Arlington, which was first designated for military burials in 1864. An inspection, which began in August 2009, found problems at 211 sites.

“I deeply apologize to the families of the honored fallen resting in that hallowed ground who may now question the care afforded to their loved ones,” Secretary McHugh said.

Lt. Gen. Steven Whitcomb, the Army’s inspector general, said most of the mismarked graves were in Sections 59, 65 and 66. Section 59 includes the graves of Marines killed in a 1983 bombing in Beirut.

“There could in fact be more,” he said. “We need to bring the recordkeeping at Arlington into the 21st century.”

Arlington National Cemetery still uses paper to track the approximately 320,000 people buried there, despite millions of dollars it has paid to contractors to computerize its records. The report found that the cemetery lacked the expert staff necessary to properly manage contractors, and that Army agencies did not properly oversee the cemetery’s contracts.

Secretary McHugh announced a series of corrective measures, including the creation of a new position, executive director of the Army national cemeteries program, to oversee the cemetery and its staff. Kathryn Condon, previously the senior civilian for Army Materiel Command, will fill the position and carry out a more complete investigation of the mistakes.

Correcting errors at grave sites may require disinterring remains or using X-ray machines to detect whether remains are present in unmarked sites, General Whitcomb said.

John C. Metzler Jr., who has been the cemetery’s superintendent since 1991, announced his retirement last month, effective July 2, and Secretary McHugh’s official reprimand of him was posted on the Army Web site.

Investigators from the inspector general’s office were alerted to about a dozen of the mistakes by family members of soldiers, former cemetery employees and journalists, General Whitcomb said. When pressed to explain how the mistakes could have happened, General Whitcomb said, for example, that a lawn mower might have damaged a headstone that was then removed but never replaced, leading cemetery staff to believe the grave was unoccupied.

“Clearly we found nothing that was intentional, criminal intent or intended sloppiness that caused this,” he said.

Still, the investigation found evidence of systemic problems, including low employee morale and conflicts between Mr. Metzler and the deputy superintendent, Thurman Higginbotham. Mr. Higginbotham has been placed on administrative leave pending further investigation.

U.S. Fury at BP Stirs Backlash Among British

2010-06-11T05:54:00.000-07:00

U.S. Fury at BP Stirs Backlash Among British
By SARAH LYALL and JULIA WERDIGIER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11bp.html?th&emc=th

LONDON — Spewing oil and alienating Americans with its chief executive’s impolitic remarks, BP may be Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States. But in Britain, where the company is a mainstay of the stock market and a favorite of pension funds, investors and politicians are becoming increasingly angry at the blistering attacks from across the Atlantic.

BP’s share price, even after recovering some ground in New York trading on Thursday, has fallen more than 40 percent since the environmental catastrophe in April, and some analysts say the crisis could lead to the takeover or even the bankruptcy of one of Britain’s most valuable and iconic companies.

In that atmosphere, the stream of condemnations from Washington has stirred a protective backlash, even in this closest of American allies. Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, said Thursday that he was worried about “anti-British rhetoric” and “name-calling” from American politicians.

“When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP, it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves,” Mr. Johnson told BBC radio’s Today program.

Prime Minister David Cameron refused to criticize the United States, however, saying he sympathized with its “frustration” in dealing with its worst environmental disaster in memory. But the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, signaled careful support for BP, saying that he had spoken to its chief executive, Tony Hayward, and that it was important to remember “the economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America.”

BP is the third largest oil company in the world, after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, with 80,000 employees worldwide as of last December, sales of $239 billion in 2009 and a market value — even after the recent losses — of more than $100 billion. At a time when Britain is desperate to reduce its deficit, BP is a huge contributor to British tax revenue, paying nearly $1.4 billion in taxes on its profits last year.

Its reputation for reliability and its generous dividends have long made it a favorite of British pension funds. The company’s dividend payments accounted for about 13 percent of the dividends handed out by British companies last year, according to FairPensions, a London-based charity.

Some Britons are irked at President Obama’s seeming determination to refer to the company as “British Petroleum” — even though it jettisoned that name in favor of initials years ago. In any case, they point out, it is truly a multinational company, traded on both the New York and London stock exchanges, with British and American nationals on its board of directors.

BP also has extensive holdings in the United States. It merged with Amoco, the former Standard Oil of Indiana, in 1998, and about 40 percent of its shares are held by American investors. It owns a refinery in Texas City, Tex., that is one of the world’s largest, and a 50 percent interest in the Trans Alaska Pipeline, in addition to a huge gasoline marketing operation.

But alarms went off in Britain when President Obama said earlier this week that he would have fired Mr. Hayward, BP’s chief executive, if Mr. Hayward worked for him and that he was looking for “whose ass to kick” in connection with the disaster. The Justice Department did not help matters when it said Wednesday that it was planning to take action to force BP to withhold its next dividend payment.

Iain Armstrong, an analyst at Brewin Dolphin, an investment manager here, said that the situation had become “overpoliticized” and had confused the markets about BP’s actual strength.

“It’s gotten completely out of hand,” he said. “Ironically, by being extremely strong financially, BP has become a target.”

In an attempt to soothe panicking investors and dispel fears that it could face bankruptcy or be forced to put itself up for sale, BP said Thursday that it had “significant capacity and flexibility in dealing with the cost of responding to the incident, the environmental remediation and the payment of legitimate claims.” Speaking of its performance on the stock market since Wednesday, it said it was “not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”

Many Britons are upset at what they see not just as the economic costs of American anger, but also at language they say demonizes Britain, America’s partner in the so-called special relationship — loose talk that taps into the British suspicion that Americans are insular and overly nationalistic.

Writing on his Web site, a Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, called the American response “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company.”

Comments on British message boards this week have been full of anger at the United States and disillusionment at Mr. Obama, a wildly popular president here until now.

“The rest of the world is fed up with the parasitic attitude of the U.S.,” went one representative comment on the Daily Telegraph Web site. “As a Dutch citizen, I used to be a supporter of the U.S., but not anymore. You want the oil? You clean up the mess.”

Even as Mr. Obama has been attacked at home for his mild manner, so has Mr. Cameron, the new prime minister, been criticized here for not standing up more forcefully to the United States as BP’s fortunes have continued to plummet.

“The government must put down a marker with the U.S. administration that the survival and long-term prosperity of BP is a vital British interest,” Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the United States, told the BBC.

But Mr. Cameron himself, apparently eager not to offend his American ally, took a mollifying tone. He said he would discuss the situation with Mr. Obama when the two next spoke, in a scheduled telephone call this weekend.

“I completely understand the U.S. government’s frustration, because it’s catastrophic for the environment,” he told reporters during a trip to Afghanistan. “BP needs to do everything it can to clear up the situation. The most important thing is to mitigate the effects and get to the root of the problem.”

On Thursday in Washington, the Obama administration tried to play down the diplomatic tensions, saying the issue was purely between a private company and the United States government. “This is not about the relationship between the United States and its closest ally,” a State Department spokesman, P. J. Crowley, told reporters.

New Estimates Double Rate of Oil That Flowed Into Gulf/First the Spill, Then the Lawsuits

2010-06-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

New Estimates Double Rate of Oil That Flowed Into Gulf
By JUSTIN GILLIS and HENRY FOUNTAIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11spill.html?th&emc=th

A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.

The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

These new calculations came as the public wrangling between BP and the White House was reaching new heights, with President Obama asking for a meeting with BP executives next week and his Congressional allies intensifying their pressure on the oil giant to withhold dividend payments to shareholders until it makes clear it can and will pay all its obligations from the spill.

The higher estimates will affect not only assessments of how much environmental damage the spill has done but also how much BP might eventually pay to clean up the mess — and it will most likely increase suspicion among skeptics about how honest and forthcoming the oil company has been throughout the catastrophe.

The new estimate is based on information that was gathered before BP cut a pipe called a riser on the ocean floor last week to install a new capture device, an operation that some scientists have said may have sharply increased the rate of flow. The government panel, called the Flow Rate Technical Group, is preparing yet another estimate that will cover the period after the riser was cut.

The new estimate appears to be a far better match than earlier ones for the reality that Americans can see every day on their televisions. Even though the new capture device is funneling 15,000 barrels of oil a day to a ship at the surface, a robust flow of oil is still gushing from the well a mile beneath the waves.

The question of how much oil is pouring into the gulf has been a nagging one for weeks, especially since early estimates from BP and the government proved woefully low. And the new estimates come as the company, after weeks of failed efforts, is enjoying its first substantial success at preventing a significant volume of oil from entering the gulf.

The new numbers are certain to ratchet up the already intense political pressure on BP.

For days Mr. Obama and his advisers have fended off questions about why he has not spoken with the chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward. The president’s commander for the spill response, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, wrote on Thursday to the chairman of the BP board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, requesting that he and “any appropriate officials from BP” meet with administration officials next Wednesday. Mr. Obama will participate in part of the meeting, he wrote.

Administration officials suggested that they had no immediate plans to directly block BP from paying the dividend, even as the White House and its allies made clear that they would pressure the company to ensure that it made paying spill-related claims its top financial priority. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, told reporters that BP should withhold dividends to shareholders until it paid small-business owners along the gulf for their loss claims. Representative Edward J. Markey, who is chairman of one committee investigating the spill, suggested that the government would take action to block the payments if necessary.

“This company, I think, will stay solvent,” said Mr. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “And we’re going to make sure that the shareholders wait until the victims are paid first.”

Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said “there is no change in the position” of retaining the dividend. “We intend to meet all our obligations to all our stakeholders,” he said. “We are a very financially strong company.”

In coming weeks, BP hopes to start capturing the vast bulk of the oil emerging from the well. The new high estimate of 30,000 barrels, however, would exceed BP’s current processing capacity, which is expected to reach 25,000 barrels a day by next week. The company plans to move an additional ship into position by early July to improve its ability to manage the flow.

Mr. Gowers said that the flow-rate group was doing “appropriate” work and that the new estimate would not affect the company’s planned containment efforts.

Mr. Gowers noted that BP had supplied the information that allowed the technical group to make its calculation. “It’s their job to produce the estimate, and we have nothing to add,” he said.

As investors have fled BP stock over uncertainties about the company’s future and its ability to pay what it will end up owing, BP has lost nearly half its market capitalization since April, and its bonds are now trading at junk levels.

Credit Suisse estimates the cleanup costs could end up at $15 billion to $23 billion, plus an additional $14 billion of claims. But analysts make much of BP’s financial flexibility: it had net profit of $17 billion last year alone.

Mr. Gowers said the company did not have an estimate of what its potential liability costs would be. But he said that as of Thursday morning, the company had already spent $1.43 billion, including claims payments, the costs of trying to plug and cap the leak, and payments of block grants to gulf states.

On the new estimates of the flow rate, Marcia McNutt, director of the United States Geological Survey and chairwoman of the technical panel, said the new figures were based on a more detailed analysis of information like video of the gushing well. The new range was also based on the first direct measurement of the flow rate, using sonar equipment lowered to the ocean floor.

Two scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, made that measurement on May 31, Mr. Bowen said.

As with the government’s previous estimate, Dr. McNutt said subgroups of the panel applied various analytical techniques to come up with estimates. The best overlap among the techniques was the range of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day, she said, and that became the new official estimate.

Dr. McNutt added, however, that the range of estimates the technical panel considered plausible was actually wider, more like 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day.

A barrel is 42 gallons, so 30,000 barrels would equate to nearly 1.3 million gallons a day. The Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 is estimated to have spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska.

Ira Leifer, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the flow-rate group, said the new figures confirmed a suspicion he had developed, based on looking at satellite data, that the rate of flow for the well was increasing even before BP cut the riser pipe.

“The situation is growing worse,” Dr. Leifer said.

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington, and Graham Bowley and Liz Robbins from New York.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 11, 2010

First the Spill, Then the Lawsuits
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11liability.html?th&emc=th

“Oil spill damages? You May Be Entitled to Compensation,” reads a billboard in LaFourche Parish, Louisiana.

It is just one of the tactics lawyers are using to sign up clients to sue BP, along with running advertisements on Gulf Coast television stations, buying Internet addresses like GulfOilSpillLawFirm.com, and holding informational seminars — with free food and drinks — for those who feel the oil company owes them something.

Lawyers across the nation have filed nearly 200 lawsuits so far related to the April 20 oil disaster, including death and injury claims for those aboard the rig, claims of damage and economic loss for people whose livelihoods are threatened by the slick, and shareholder suits over BP’s plunging stock. Cases have even been filed on behalf of the oil-coated fish and birds. Lawyers also plan to file a civil racketeering action alleging a corporate conspiracy with the Bush administration.

At a seminar on Tuesday evening at the Emerald Grande hotel in Destin, Fla., 150 residents and business owners heard a presentation by two lawyers, Robert J. McKee of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Stuart H. Smith of New Orleans, about dealing with the BP claims process.

Mr. Smith, who had flown his private plane from his home in New Orleans for the event, called the continuing gusher under the gulf “a disaster on the installment plan.”

They introduced a team of experts they have assembled to fight BP in court, including accountants, an oceanographer, chemist and toxicologist, and explained to the audience how to gather records to improve their chances.

Mr. McKee’s advice to the group — and it was just advice, because he had to stay on the proper side of the ethical line that bars solicitation of clients — was blunt. Should they decide to sue, he said, “You find someone competent who can kick their butt and take what is owed to you for full, fair and honest compensation.”

Because thousands of plaintiffs’ lawyers from across the country are trying to join in the kicking, consolidation of the federal suits is almost certain. The decision will be made, oddly enough, some 2,000 miles away from the Gulf Coast, by a panel of judges meeting on July 29 in Boise, Idaho, to manage what is known as multidistrict litigation.

The panels will almost certainly give the oil cases to a single judge or a small number of judges, who will then sort them into groups and combine tasks, like the discovery process to ferret out underlying facts for all the cases.

Finding a judge without a potential conflict of interest in the sprawling case could be a challenge: half of the active judges in the federal judicial district in which New Orleans sits have already recused themselves.

The judges in Idaho may send the cases to New Orleans (where more of the plaintiffs and the damage can be found), to Houston (as the defendants wish, perhaps because of the city’s ties to the oil industry) or to more neutral ground. Wherever it ends up, Louisiana’s feisty lawyers are likely to play a big role in the litigation.

Seasoned Texas litigators like Brent W. Coon, who fought BP over the 2005 plant explosion in Texas City, are likely to be deeply involved, as will experts in mass tort litigation from around the country who have taken part in enormously complex suits involving tobacco, pharmaceuticals, accelerating Toyotas and defective Chinese drywall.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers are eager to fight the oil giant, just as soon as they get past fighting one another.

They are still involved in the scrum at the beginning of most multidistrict litigation, trying to get the largest number of clients and earliest filings in hopes of winning influence in steering the consolidated litigation.

Mass tort litigators and the specialists do not think highly of each other. Mr. Smith, an environmental litigator in New Orleans who has sued oil companies for much of his career, scoffs at the generalist approach to mass tort lawyering. “If you need brain surgery, you don’t go to an orthopedic surgeon,” he said.

The mass tort litigators do not pretend to be experts in every field of law required in every case. Asked whether he had experience in the arcane maritime law involved in the spill, Stephen A. Sheller, a mass tort specialist from Philadelphia, said, “I go on a cruise boat occasionally.”

But the mass tort lawyers argue that their experience in prior multidistrict cases is essential to building the ad hoc law firm that will take on the large defense firms that the corporations retain.

“That’s the David-and-Goliath dynamic,” said Richard J. Arsenault, a lawyer in Alexandria, La., who represents plaintiffs in many BP cases.

The question that is likely to dominate much of the litigation, wherever it lands, is the extent of liability for BP and the companies it worked with.

The most straightforward cases are those involving direct impact — compensation to the families of the dead and wounded on the rig, and the effect of the spill on people like commercial boat operators, fishermen and others whose livelihood could be destroyed, and landowners whose property is fouled.

Beyond those cases, there are shades of gray, including for businesses that have not been touched by oil, but still feel its impact.

The Oil Pollution Act, which governs many of the damage issues, does not spell out how far such liability extends, said Val P. Exnicios, a New Orleans lawyer.

The commercial fishing boat is an easy call, Mr. Exnicios said, but what about the stand next to the dock that sells snowballs, the shaved-ice treat that the fishermen might buy after a hot day on the water? What about the company that sells the ice to the snowball stand?

“This case will ultimately determine where the courts are going to draw the line,” he said.

Stephen J. Herman, who is serving as a liaison between plaintiffs’ lawyers and a New Orleans judge who has many of the cases, said he expected BP to fight continuing claims of indirect damage though they might pay initially.

“In the short term they might, for PR purposes,” he said. “But in the long run they won’t, because it would bankrupt them.”

The lawyers are plotting a range of strategies.

Mr. Smith hopes to circumvent some of the restrictions on the claims process under the Oil Pollution Act for some clients by arguing that the act does not come into play at all. His point: the pollution is not coming from a vessel or rig, as the law requires. The rig, he notes, is long gone, and what is left is a hole in the ground spewing oil.

The pollution should fall under the nuisance claims in Louisiana civil law and other states’ common law, just as a neighbor’s toxic dump or feedlot might. That might provide recovery, he said, for people whose land will never get oil on it, but who will claim the smell interferes with the quiet enjoyment of their property.

Mike Papantonio, a Florida lawyer, has many cases involving fishermen and shrimpers, but he is also filing civil racketeering claims intending to tie the BP blowout to what he sees as close collaboration between the industry and Bush administration officials.

“It’s a case that helps us reflect on where we are after eight years,” Mr. Papantonio said. The relaxation of regulatory oversight “disconnected the hydraulic line from your brakes,” he said.

The lawyers, meanwhile, know that they are often viewed as predators who sue for their own profit. A person commented on the Web site of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about an article on the lawyers’ conference saying, “The vultures are circling, hopefully some of them will get soaked in the oil.”

Lisa A. Rickard, the president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, said compensation efforts should reward victims, but litigation drags on for decades and “the end result has too often left at least some victims at the back of the line.”

Such talk riles the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

“Why do I need more money?” asked Daniel E. Becnel Jr., who has worked on mass tort cases leading to billions of dollars in settlements from tobacco companies, breast implant makers and others.

Mr. Becnel raised his shirt to show a long scar on his left side, the mark of difficult surgery to give a kidney to his brother, which left him with lasting health problems. He has also survived grueling treatment for leukemia.

“I’m living on borrowed time,” he said. “I should have been dead 10 years ago.”

With these cases, he insisted, “I want to do right.”

Calvin Fayard Jr., a New Orleans lawyer, said the damage to the gulf and the way of life there was “heartbreaking and gut-wrenching for me, being born and raised in Louisiana.”

Mark Kirk and the Illinois curse

2010-06-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

Mark Kirk and the Illinois curse
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 10, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0610-chapman-20100610,0,4613876.column

Running for Congress in 2000, Mark Kirk told a Chicago Tribune reporter he had almost drowned in Lake Michigan as a teenager. "I should be at the bottom of that lake, but I was given a rare gift of a second life," he confided. "And to be given a second chance means it has to mean something. For me, that means making a difference through public service, and it all comes from the lake."

This brought to mind what Oscar Wilde said of one of Charles Dickens' scenes: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing." After Kirk's earnest tale, no one should have been surprised that he has a genius for creative self-promotion.

Now we learn that the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, a member of the Navy Reserve, made unfounded claims to have been the Navy's intelligence officer of the year, commanded the Pentagon war room, came under fire in Iraq and served in both the 1990-91 and the 2003 Iraq wars. But even now, he can't give straight, believable answers about his embellishments.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>

The congressman has never been one to minimize his talents. Once, in a candidate debate, he responded to a question about immigration reform by announcing grandly, "I could answer that question in Spanish, since I attended Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico." Kirk finds himself amazing and expects you to agree.

But his resume inflation has given voters a powerful reason to abandon him in a race that should have been idiot-proof. This year is shaping up to be a Republican bonanza, Kirk is moderate enough to appeal beyond his own party, and his Democratic opponent, state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, has all the heft of a helium balloon.

Maybe this seat, like the Cubs, carries some curse. It was once occupied by Democrat Carol Moseley Braun, whose ethical controversies led to her defeat in 1998 by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. He was so honest and capable — I'm not joking here — that the Illinois Republican Party found him impossible to bear, inducing his retirement after one term.

In the next election, one serious contender was accused of physically abusing his wife, another allegedly asked his wife to have sex with him in front of strangers at sex clubs, and a third moved abruptly from Maryland to enter the race. Prevailing over them all was Barack Obama, who showed little interest in being a senator and decided he would rather be president.

After Obama departed with two years left in his term, an egotistical mediocrity named Roland Burris took over. He was appointed by Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose alleged efforts to auction off the seat led to the federal corruption trial that's now under way.

But with the incumbent unwilling to take his chances with the voters, the office will fall to either Giannoulias or Kirk, who seem to be determined to raise our opinion of Burris.

Giannoulias ran for treasurer in 2006 on the strength of his experience as an officer at Broadway Bank, which it turned out made loans to convicted felons while he was there and was closed down by the government in April. Now he indicates he was fetching coffee when all the bad decisions were made.

By this point, the average Illinoisan, ordered at gunpoint to choose between the two, would reply, "Shoot." It's a familiar dilemma in a place where state government has four branches: executive, legislative, judicial and correctional.

What is it about Illinois? The state has a history of corruption and self-dealing so extensive that it perpetuates itself. Many honest, well-meaning people avoid our political arena for the same reason they avoid swimming in the sewer: It's nasty, and their presence doesn't make it smell any better.

Kirk was notable for avoiding any hint of ethical scandal, but his very distance from the usual muck may have led him astray. He was not satisfied being smarter and better than your run-of-the-mill Illinois politician. He had to make himself out to be a combination of Superman and Beaver Cleaver.

But voters are not expecting greatness or nobility from their senator. They only ask the political gods to send someone who isn't an embarrassment.

The political gods have given their answer to that prayer: Ha. Ha. Ha.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman

schapman@tribune.com

Surgery no longer required for transgender people to change sex on US passports

2010-06-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

Surgery no longer required for transgender people to change sex on US passports
By CHRISTINE SIMMONS
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
11:13 p.m. CDT, June 9, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sns-ap-us-transgender-travelers-passports,0,6090875.story

WASHINGTON (AP) — Transgender travelers no longer will need surgery in order to change their stated genders on U.S. passports, the State Department said Wednesday.

Beginning Thursday, a transgender person applying for a U.S. passport will just need to show a physician's certification that the applicant has "undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition" to declare a new gender on a passport, the department said.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said appropriate treatment could mean surgery for some patients and non-surgical care for others.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>

The State Department said there are guidelines detailing what the certification must include, but no other medical records are required. The government also said it's possible to obtain a temporary passport if a physician's statement shows that an applicant is in the process of gender transition.

Under previous rules, the State Department would only change the sex on passports if travelers had completed sexual reassignment surgeries, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.

But Keisling said that policy put some transgender people in jeopardy when they traveled through countries where changing genders is dangerous.

The State Department says the new policy is based on standards and recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

App helps travelers find no-fee ATMs

2010-06-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

App helps travelers find no-fee ATMs
By Fritz Faerber
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
June 10, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/ct-travel-app-atm-finder-story-20100610,0,1937413.story

Want to save money when you travel? Sure, you can look for cheap airfares, budget hotels and discount car rentals. But here's a simple change that can save you big bucks over the long haul: Stop paying ATM service fees.

After all, why should you pay a few dollars to withdraw money from a machine just because your bank doesn't have a branch nearby?

Fortunately a handful of apps can help you locate ATMs that won't charge you fees.

I tried two on my iPhone, and both were free. So it costs you nothing to save some dough on the road or even in your hometown.

The first app I tried is from Allpoint. It's a network of about 37,000 ATM locations around the world. A few thousand are in the United Kingdom and the rest are in the U.S.

The ATMs are usually in drug stores, retail outlets and the like. The network charges you zero to withdraw money — though your own bank might charge you something for using an out-of-network ATM.

The app is easy to use. You can search from your current location or by address. It shows nearby Allpoint locations on a map or in list form with distance noted. I used it awhile back to find an ATM close to work. It turned out that machine was even closer than the bank I'd used occasionally at $3 a pop.

Allpoint's app works seamlessly with the iPhone's map function to give directions to whichever location you choose. The network also offers apps for BlackBerry and Android smart phones.

I also tried CO-OP Network's app. It bills itself as the largest credit union-only ATM network in the country. For those with credit union accounts, the app serves much the same function as Allpoint.

It has fewer locations than the first app. And it was a bit slower on my iPhone. There were fewer locations as well. The credit union app offers a link to the location's website and shows it on a map or in list form. But it didn't offer step-by-step directions like the Allpoint app.

But either one can save some serious money over time. Consider that a $3 surcharge to withdraw $20 is like paying a 15 percent fee to withdraw your money.

Some Facebook users quit with little fanfare - Many of them said using the site became an alienating experience

2010-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Some Facebook users quit with little fanfare - Many of them said using the site became an alienating experience
By Wailin Wong
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
7:14 p.m. CDT, June 9, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sc-biz-0610-facebook-quitters-20100609,0,3921822.story

Facebook still has plenty of friends.

Even amid last month's firestorm, which forced executives to hastily revamp the site's privacy settings, the social-networking juggernaut has held steady in membership and traffic. "Quit Facebook Day," an online campaign on May 31, resulted in about 30,000 departures — a negligible percentage of the platform's nearly 500 million active registered users.

Yet people do quit Facebook, often without fanfare. Their personal stories are varied, but there is a shared sense that what started as a personal, close-knit community turned into an alienating experience as the site began adding millions of members and more ways to share content.

This cycle is a common one in the technology world, where early adopters discover a cutting-edge platform only to grow disillusioned with it once the masses arrive. But admitting to being a Facebook malcontent represents more than smugly declaring a trend to be passe. For some defectors, the decision to leave is part of a broader debate about the role of social media in shaping the values of a Web-tethered generation.

"Once (Facebook) started getting mainstream … there was a culture that came on that's like the fast-food culture of quick and easy and cheap," said Joseph Dee, a 33-year-old Web strategist who co-founded Quit Facebook Day and deleted his account after about three years on the site. "There was definitely not a lot of real depth to the social interaction I had on there."

Kory Farthing, a 25-year-old Californian who recently quit the site after a nearly seven-year stint, said he initially signed on two or three times a day to check updates and send messages. It was only after graduating from college that he became uncomfortable with how the site blurred his work and family lives.

"In my opinion, Facebook is a childish, insecure way to publicize one's personal life," said Farthing, who still uses social media to publicize his fitness training products business. "My personal life should not be broadcasted to the entire world. … Nothing bad has ever happened to me because of Facebook, but over time I found it to be less and less appealing."

Leaving Facebook was easy for Farthing. It wasn't that way for Mary Jane Skelly, who tried unplugging when she realized that her friend list was dominated by people she barely knew. Skelly's hiatus lasted three weeks. She rejoined Facebook, although she pared her friend list from 250 to 50 people.

"I really think a lot about getting rid of it altogether, but I can't get off it because there's constantly pictures of my nieces up on Facebook," said Skelly, 28, who lives in North Carolina and is pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience. She said her younger sisters use Facebook in lieu of e-mail.

Because the site's utility spans everything from birthday reminders to organizing events, leaving the site can require some adjustment.

"People would have parties and they'd invite you via Facebook," said Ani Alexanian, a 21-year-old graphic designer from Michigan who quit during her junior year of college. "I remember when I first deleted my Facebook, people were actually calling to tell me, 'Ani, I can't find you on Facebook.' I'm kind of old-fashioned, where my friends know they have to call me to make me feel invited."

Alexanian found Facebook to be a distraction, rather than a useful social tool. This experience also resonated with Alex Hoffman, 23.

"Toward the end, the reason I quit was because I was wasting so much time on it," said Hoffman, a graphic designer in Illinois. "I think it was the fact that it was constantly updating. Not everything was necessarily entertaining or profound, but just knowing when you logged in, you would find something new and that would take a few minutes. … I realized it was just visual noise, mental noise."

It wasn't always just noise for Dee, whose exploration of new Web technologies is both a job and a personal pursuit. He enjoyed meeting people through Twitter in the early days of the microblogging service and once used it to organize a fundraiser. But Dee is now pulling out of Twitter because he sees it as another online platform where vanity runs amok.

Dee said he's not sure how to grow an online community while keeping the conversation meaningful. He's still looking for an answer, though not on Facebook.

Quit Facebook Day "wasn't two guys in their basement, saying 'Wanna quit Facebook?'" Dee said. "We're two guys extremely invested in this world of the Web, who build it and passionately believe in its potential and how it's transforming us. The amount of stake Facebook has in that future, with the amount of users and data they have and the nature of the interactions on there, is huge."

wawong@tribune.com

Did Harry Reid get a softball opponent?

2010-06-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

Did Harry Reid get a softball opponent?
By Dana Milbank
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, June 10, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/09/AR2010060905298.html

Harry Reid is looking at life from a whole new Angle.

Only weeks ago, the Senate majority leader was a dead man walking, facing a seemingly inevitable defeat in his reelection battle in Nevada. But then came Tuesday's primary, and Republicans selected as their candidate Sharron Angle, a woman who, among other things, favors bringing more nuclear waste to Nevada, floated the idea of outlawing alcohol, and wants to abolish the Education Department, the Energy Department, the EPA, the United Nations and most of the IRS. She's not so keen on Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance, either.

That would explain the uncharacteristic smile on Reid's face as he opened Wednesday morning's Senate session. Instead of his usual stemwinder denouncing the obstructionist minority, he engaged his Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a celebration of the national pastime.

"I watched on television last night much of the performance of this 21-year-old phenom, Stephen Strasburg," the majority leader declared. "Seven innings, he struck out 14. . . . He's right-handed but reminded me so much of Sandy Koufax because he throws more than 100 miles an hour. He throws a curveball at 85 miles per hour." Reid went on to discuss, in no apparent order, the Nationals' latest draft pick (from Nevada), Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, the old Griffith Stadium, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra.

McConnell offered the Republican response. "I was there," he said of the Nats game. "Remarkable."

"I wish I could have been there," Reid said. "But it was really, even watching it on TV -- gee whiz."

Gee whiz?

It's a measure of this strange political year that Harry Reid, thanks to the tea party, now has a solid chance to win a fifth term in the Senate. More than half of Nevadans have an unfavorable opinion of Reid -- which means he should have been an easy target for Republicans as they forced him to defend the economy and the national debt. Instead, the campaign now seems more likely to revolve around Angle's oddities. Gee whiz.

Within minutes of the primary win by the tea-party-backed Angle, a gleeful Nevada Democratic Party sent out a news release calling Reid's opponent "Sharron 'Wacky' Angle." Following that was a list of some of the stranger things Angle has said and done over the years: supporting the view that abortion causes breast cancer, proposing a program created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard to give massages and saunas to prisoners, and making the odd statement that drug sales "supported the attack" on 9/11 "and the attack of terror continues against our children in the form of club drugs, particularly Ecstasy."

With the party doing his dirty work, Reid could afford to be generous to his opponent. "I congratulated my Republican opponent in the election, Sharron Angle, about the campaign she ran," Reid announced on the Senate floor before his baseball analysis. "She actually came from nowhere in a 13-person field in the primary to win this election. So I extended my appreciation to her in that regard."

No doubt Reid's appreciation is genuine. In one interview after the primary, KRNV in Reno asked whether he was worried that Angle would benefit from the anti-incumbent atmosphere. "Tonight didn't indicate that at all," said Reid, who easily vanquished his little-known challengers on the Democratic side. "In Arkansas, my agriculture chair, Blanche Lincoln . . . everybody said she was a goner, an incumbent -- she won by a nice margin."

Reid is half right about that. On the Republican side, tea party activists are indeed causing havoc for incumbents and other candidates endorsed by party leaders; that's how Angle beat the party's favorite. But on the Democratic side, the left hasn't shown the same level of energy, as demonstrated by Lincoln's victory in Arkansas' Democratic Senate primary over more liberal insurgent Bill Halter.

Lincoln was embraced by her colleagues on the Senate floor as a conquering general returning from war. Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), in charge of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, gave her a hug and a kiss and said, "Now we just have to raise money." Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) held up two fists and said of her primary campaign: "Fighting Wall Street with one hand, unions with the other."

Lincoln received bipartisan hugs, kisses, handshakes and even a fist bump. Sen. Claire McCaskill applauded and let out a "woo-hoo." Reid walked over and put one hand on Lincoln's shoulder and the other on the shoulder of Sen. Barbara Boxer, another primary survivor.

Congratulations for Reid were less overt. But there was a perceptible change in the way senators greeted him. Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Schumer had been lining up support to succeed Reid as majority leader under the assumption that he would lose his seat. But now both men were part of a long procession of senators approaching Reid, some with notecards in hand, to hear his wisdom, gain his favor or plead for help.

Majority Leader Lazarus was back -- and ready to play ball.

Calif. GOP primary winners look headed for defeat

2010-06-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Calif. GOP primary winners look headed for defeat
By Harold Meyerson
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, June 10, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/09/AR2010060904870.html

LOS ANGELES

The good news for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina here in California was that they won their Republican primaries. The bad news was that they had to run in Republican primaries.

Whitman, now the GOP nominee for governor, and Fiorina, the GOP nominee for senator, dispatched their nearest primary rivals by margins of better than 2 to 1. Each spent a queen's ransom to do so -- in Whitman's case, close to $80 million of her own money -- but both former CEOs have plenty left over to take on their Democratic opponents this fall: in Whitman's case, Jerry Brown, the once and, he hopes, future governor; in Fiorina's case, incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer.

But California Republican primaries have a nasty habit of rendering their winners unelectable in November, and this year's contest looks like it will be no exception. To win, Whitman and Fiorina -- conventional conservative business Republicans both -- had to take positions so far to the right that their chances of winning a state in which Barack Obama commands a 59 percent approval rating are slim. During one debate with her Republican opponents, Fiorina affirmed the right of suspected terrorists on no-fly lists to buy guns, presumably lest the gods of the National Rifle Association strike her dead on the spot. At a campaign event at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, Boxer, never one to let a hanging curveball go unswatted, contrasted Fiorina's guns-to-terrorists stance with her own co-authorship of a law allowing pilots to carry guns in cockpits.

But the issue most damaging for Whitman and Fiorina is immigration. Pressed by their GOP primary opponents and the Republican electorate to endorse Arizona's draconian new law, Fiorina proclaimed her support for it while Whitman countered the charges from her right that she was soft on immigration by affirming that she was "100 percent against amnesty" and demanding a huge increase in border enforcement. To bolster her credibility, her ads featured former Republican governor Pete Wilson -- champion of 1994's Proposition 187, which would have denied all public services, including the right to attend primary and secondary schools, to illegal immigrants.

Wilson won reelection in 1994 by backing 187, which the courts subsequently struck down. But his victory was probably the most pyrrhic in modern American politics. Threatened and enraged by 187, California's Latino immigrants began naturalizing, registering and voting in record numbers. Southern California's Latino-led labor movement -- the most energized and strategically savvy labor movement in the nation -- became particularly adept at turning out Latino voters for Democratic candidates and causes.

In the process, the California electorate has been transformed -- moving the state decisively into the Democratic column. In the 1994 election, according to the nonprofit William C. Velásquez Institute, which seeks to raise minorities' political and economic participation, Latinos counted for 11.4 percent of California voters. By 2008, they comprised 21.4 percent. And particularly when immigration is an issue, theirs is a heavily Democratic vote. "There's a whole generation of Latino voters who don't believe the Republicans look out for them," Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, told me on Election Day. "We ran against Pete Wilson for years after he was out of office. And, voilà! He's back -- he's vouching for Whitman!" Labor will make sure the Latino community knows it. Already, the California Nurses Association is running an ad on Spanish-language radio that splices in a clip from a Whitman primary commercial in which she and Wilson discuss cracking down on immigration.

When your own primary ad is directed against you by your opponents in the general election, you have a fundamental problem. It's not just that Republican nativism pushes perhaps a fifth of the electorate into the Democratic column. It's that the state's Republicans are simply far to the right of the majority of Californians -- so much so that they do not have a majority of registered voters in any one of the state's 53 congressional districts.

There's a reason Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only Republican elected to a major statewide office in California since 1994 -- and it's not his celebrity status. It's because, when he was first elected governor, he did not have to run in and win a Republican primary: He was elected in a special recall election open to candidates and voters from all parties.

Whitman and Fiorina had no such luck. In winning their nominations, they said things deeply offensive to a fatally large swath of California voters. Their campaigns may be gold-plated, but they have ears of purest tin.

meyersonh@washpost.com

General: Kandahar operation will take longer

2010-06-10T10:25:00.001-07:00

General: Kandahar operation will take longer
By Craig Whitlock
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, June 10, 2010; 11:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061000781.html?hpid=topnews

BRUSSELS -- The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that major parts of the military operation to secure Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, would be pushed back because it was taking longer than expected to win local support.

"I don't intend to hurry it," said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, visiting Brussels for a meeting of NATO leaders. "It will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's more important we get it right than we get it fast."

U.S. and NATO commanders began laying the groundwork this spring for their campaign to gain control of Kandahar, an operation considered crucial to the success of President Obama's strategy for the Afghan war. The military side of the campaign was originally scheduled to surge in June and largely end by August.

But McChrystal said it was taking longer than anticipated to gain the blessing of local tribal leaders -- and Kandaharis in general -- for the operation. He also said commanders needed more time to ensure that Afghan government could step in after the fighting stops and provide effective public services, something that has been lacking in Kandahar for years.

"When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them," McChrystal told reporters. "It's a deliberate process. It takes time to convince people."

The Afghan government is already officially in charge of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, but its control is extremely tenuous. Taliban leaders and supporters have steadily made a comeback since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

U.S. and Afghan officials have been trying to negotiate deals with Kandahari leaders before foreign troops enter the city and surrounding province in greater force. The Taliban has responded with an intimidation campaign, assassinating several key leaders and making clear that anyone who cooperates with the foreigners or central government does so at high risk.

McChrystal said the decision to move more slowly in Kandahar was influenced by the experience of U.S. and NATO forces in next-door Helmand province. Led by U.S. Marines, foreign and Afghan troops in February took control of Marja and other districts long held by the Taliban. But the effort to install a functioning Afghan government in the wake of the fighting has stumbled and now the Taliban is trying to reassert itself.

"Some of the lessons we learned in Marja is we did very good coordination with the Afghan people, shuras and whatnot, but then as we did it, we found it even more complex than we thought," McChrystal said. "And so we need to educate ourselves from that and do it even better in Kandahar."

Asked whether he considered the Kandahar delay a setback in the Afgan war, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, said the difficulties were actually an indication of progress in the overall war effort.

"I foresee a very tough time in the coming weeks and months, because we are now targeting what I call the Taliban heartland in Helmand and Kandahar," he said at a news conference. "But that's exactly our goal."

SEC puts in new 'circuit breaker' rules

2010-06-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

SEC puts in new 'circuit breaker' rules
By MARCY GORDON
Copyright By The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2010; 12:55 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061002636.html?hpid=topnews

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators on Thursday put in place new rules aimed at preventing a repeat of last month's harrowing "flash crash" in the stock market.

Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the rules, which call for U.S. stock exchanges to briefly halt trading of some stocks that make big swings. The exchanges will start putting the trading breaks into effect as early as Friday for six months.

The plan for the "circuit breakers" was worked out by the SEC and the major exchanges following the May 6 market plunge that saw the Dow Jones industrials lose nearly 1,000 points in less than a half-hour.

Under the new rules, trading of any Standard & Poor's 500 stock that rises or falls 10 percent or more in a five-minute period will be halted for five minutes. The "circuit breakers" would be applied if the price swing occurs between 9:45 a.m. and 3:35 p.m. Eastern time - almost the entire trading day.

The idea is for the trading pause to draw attention to an affected stock, establish a reasonable market price and resume trading "in a fair and orderly fashion," the SEC said.

On May 6, about 30 stocks listed in the S&P 500 index fell at least 10 percent within five minutes. The drop briefly wiped out $1 trillion in market value as some stocks traded as low as a penny.

The disruption "illustrated a sudden, but temporary, breakdown in the market's price-setting function when a number of stocks and (exchange-traded funds) were executed at clearly irrational prices," SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in a statement. "By establishing a set of circuit breakers that uniformly pauses trading in a given security across all venues, these new rules will ensure that all markets pause simultaneously and provide time for buyers and sellers to trade at rational prices."

Exchange-traded funds are increasingly popular investments that often track a market index such as the S&P 500 and can be traded throughout the day, unlike mutual funds. ETFs as a group were affected by the May 6 plunge more than any other category of securities.

The new rules are taking effect following the agreement by the SEC and the big exchanges, and a 10-day public comment period. They will apply to all U.S. exchanges. Currently most of the 50 or so U.S. exchanges regulate themselves and design their own tools for slowing or halting trading.

During the epic May plunge, the New York Stock Exchange slowed trading according to its rules but the orders that couldn't be executed migrated in a torrent to electronic exchanges, industry officials have said.

Regulators still don't know exactly what caused the "flash crash," but they wanted to move ahead with remedies. A preliminary picture emerged in a recent report by staffs of the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Investigators have focused on, among other things, a possible link between the steep decline in prices of stock indexes and simultaneous and subsequent waves of selling in individual stocks.

Antitrust probe looms for Apple on mobile ads

2010-06-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Antitrust probe looms for Apple on mobile ads
By Joseph Menn and Richard Waters in San Francisco
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 9 2010 23:07 | Last updated: June 10 2010 01:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e7ae5066-7408-11df-87f5-00144feabdc0.html

US antitrust regulators plan to investigate whether Apple is unfairly restricting rivals such as Google and Microsoft in the market for advertisements carried on the iPhone, iPad and iPod, people familiar with the move said on Wednesday.

Apple has introduced its own network to sell display, video and interactive adverts in the small programs known as apps, which have fuelled the rapid adoption of Apple’s devices. On Monday, it said it had sold $60m worth of adverts that will begin on July 1 and run for the rest of the year.

The case provoked a rare public dispute between Google and Apple on Wednesday as the internet group claimed its market-leading mobile advertising network was about to be unfairly excluded from the Apple’s devices.

The dispute comes less than a month after US antitrust authorities ended an exhaustive investigation into whether Google itself might end up with too much power in the mobile ads business, and highlights a rapid shift in the balance of power as Apple has set out to dominate advertising on its own devices.

According to two people close to the situation, US regulators have already taken an interest in Apple’s actions, though it is not yet clear whether it will be left to the Federal Trade Commission, which carried out the recent Google investigation, or the Department of Justice to take an investigation forward.

Apple’s latest rules for developers who create apps for its devices limit the situations in which they can send approved information about their apps’ audiences to advertising services. The information cannot be sent to advertising networks that are affiliated with companies developing or distributing mobile devices or operating systems – a definition that effectively excludes Apple rivals like Google and Microsoft.

Such information, including user locations, is critical for making mobile advertising more effective. Google complained on Wednesday that this would have the effect of barring its AdMob advertising service from apps inside Apple’s system.

Omar Hamoui, AdMob chief, wrote on a company blog: “This change threatens to decrease, or even eliminate, revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. “The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low-cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

While the group takes pains to point out that it lags in the US smartphone market behind Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, Apple has already triggered antitrust attention.

Regulators have been looking into its marketing of digital music, where it is top retailer by revenue, and its blocking of Flash, the Adobe software.

Proving the policy harmed consumers was vital to a formal antitrust argument, experts said.

William Comaner, a University of California professor and former US Federal Trade Commission chief economist, said: “It has to affect consumers, not just rival suppliers”.

He said it was not clear whether Apple could be considered to be breaking the law, especially because the most recent terms take aim at two Google and Microsoft.

Google’s complaint about the iPhone advertising restrictions marks an intensification of its public rivaly with Apple.

Until now, Google executives like Eric Schmidt, chief executive and until last year an Apple board member, have generally sought to play down their company’s growing competition with Apple. But in one sign that the gloves have come off, Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, took direct aim at Google’s standing in the mobile operating system market when unveiling the latest model of the iPhone earlier this week.

ECB leaves interest rates at 1%/Bank of England holds interest rates at 0.5%

2010-06-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

ECB leaves interest rates at 1%
By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 10 2010 12:45 | Last updated: June 10 2010 12:45
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a6a7912a-746e-11df-b3f1-00144feabdc0.html

The European Central Bank left its main interest rate unchanged at 1 per cent on Thursday as it sought to restore investor confidence in the eurozone while rebuilding its credibility with financial markets – and a sceptical German public.

The announcement, which was widely expected, leaves eurozone official interest rates at a record low for the 13th consecutive month, reflecting the eurozone’s weak growth and inflation prospects.

Atttention has focused instead in recent weeks on the ECB’s intervention in eurozone government bond markets and extensive programmes that are pumping unlimited liquidity into the 16-country region’s banking system.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president, faced criticism from international investors after last month’s ECB governing council meeting when he announced the purchase of government bonds just four days after saying such a move had not been discussed, after markets showed signs of panic.

The purchases, which last week reached €40.5bn and are thought to have involved mainly Greek bonds, are aimed at ensuring the functioning of bond markets. But Mr Trichet has also faced protests in Germany where Axel Weber, Bundesbank president, warned that the purchases would generate inflation risks and insisted that the scale of the programme should be strictly limited.

The sensitivities of the bond purchases will create a communications challenge for Mr Trichet when he gives a press conference in Frankfurt later on Thursday.

The ECB may also provide more details about the future of its “enhanced liquidity support” programme. Its gradual “exit strategy,” started late last year, was blown off course by the eurozone debt crisis, which led last month to the reintroduction of unlimited three- and six-month liquidity offers. The almost €850bn outstanding on ECB open market operations is near a record level. But at the beginning of July, €442bn in one-year loans granted a year ago will return to the ECB. Jürgen Stark, executive board member, has suggested that could be the point at which the ECB reverts to some kind of exit strategy.

Revised ECB forecasts could show eurozone inflation rising next year to within its target of an annual rate “below but close” to 2 per cent, on the back of higher oil prices and the effects of a weaker euro. The weaker euro is also helping to boost growth, offsetting the impact of harsher fiscal austerity measures being planned by eurozone governments. The ECB is wary about the pace of the economic recovery – but there are no signs yet of a second dip and it is expected to revise up its forecasts for gross domestic product this year.

Mr Trichet may be pressed to comment on the euro’s weakness. So far, however, there has been little sign that the ECB is worried about its fall.

Bank of England holds interest rates at 0.5%
By Norma Cohen
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 10 2010 12:02 | Last updated: June 10 2010 12:02
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ce15548e-7470-11df-b3f1-00144feabdc0.html

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee on Thursday voted to hold rates steady at their current record lows of 0.5 per cent and hold off on any measures to stimulate demand through its quantitative easing programme.

The move, widely expected by economists, comes after several months of inflation readings that were well above the MPC’s medium-term target of 2 per cent. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose in April at an annualised rate of 3.4 per cent.

Moreover, a long-standing index of inflationary expectations, the BASIX Index from Barclays, the bank, showed the biggest jump since 1995. The Bank of England is set to release its own quarterly survey of inflation expectations on Friday.

However, in the latest edition of its quarterly inflation report, the Bank said that it believes the current rate reflects several one-off factors that are likely to gradually disappear from inflation readings. Among these are the persistent weakness of sterling and the reversion of VAT to its pre-recession level of 17.5 per cent.

But economists noted that the MPC may also be taking the prospect of a significant fiscal tightening into account when considering whether to move on rates. A sharp reduction in government spending could reverse some of the pick-up in economic activity seen in recent months, particularly if it leads to a significant rise in unemployment.

Indeed, Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, welcomed the new government’s plans to step up the pace of cuts in spending, saying the planned £6bn of spending cuts this year “would diminish some of the downside risks because of action to deal with the deficit. I think they are desirable to remove the risk of an adverse market reaction.”

The euro has fallen sharply in recent weeks as markets take account of the effect that individual member states will have on economic recovery in the region via their new-found urgency to deal with bloated government spending.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010

US trade gap widens as exports fall

2010-06-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

US trade gap widens as exports fall
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 10 2010 14:40 | Last updated: June 10 2010 14:40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b19e7036-748b-11df-b3f1-00144feabdc0.html

The US trade gap grew to its highest level in more than a year in April as the relative strength of the dollar and European debt woes slowed exports.

The trade deficit widened by 0.6 per cent to $40.3bn, according to the commerce department. That was the highest level since December 2008, but slightly narrower than economists had projected.

The US trade shortfall has grown by 48.4 per cent since hitting a low last June of $27bn.

In April, exports slid by 0.7 per cent to $148.8bn. That outpaced the decline in imports, which slipped by 0.41 per cent to $189.1bn.

Other countries reduced purchases of US consumer goods, food and beverages and industrial supplies. In the US, demand for consumer goods declined along with appetite for cars, parts and engines.

The US trade deficit with China, its biggest and most politically sensitive trade partner, grew in April by 14.2 per cent to $19.3bn. That came as China reported that its May exports had soared by 48.5 per cent.

Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Securities, said that China’s “bulging” exports and the swollen bilateral trade deficit would probably provoke the US to put more pressure on China to pursue a more flexible exchange rate policy.

US deficits with Europe, Mexico and Japan eased in April.

Meanwhile, the US labour market offered a small glimmer of hope as fresh claims for jobless benefits declined by 3,000 to 456,000 last week, according to the labour department.

The number of Americans continuing to claim jobless benefits also declined, falling by 255,000 to 4.46m.

Although the declines are welcome, economists contend that new claims for unemployment insurance need to fall to the low 400,000s before the economy can sustain job creation.

“With claims stranded at this level, big private sector payroll gains are just not on the agenda,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics.

Thursday’s figures come almost a week after a disappointing labour department report revealed that the US had added just 41,000 private sector jobs, bringing the unemployment rate down to 9.7 per cent.

Why Patients Aren’t Getting the Shingles Vaccine

2010-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Why Patients Aren’t Getting the Shingles Vaccine
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/health/10chen.html?hpw

Four years ago at age 78, R., a retired professional known as much for her small-town Minnesotan resilience as her commitment to public service, developed a fleeting rash over her left chest. The rash, which turned out to be shingles, or herpes zoster, was hardly noticeable.

For close to a year afterward, R. wrestled with the searing and relentless pain in the area where the rash had been. “It was ghastly, the worst possible pain anyone could have,” R. said recently, recalling the sleepless nights and fruitless search for relief. “I’ve had babies and that hurts a lot, but at least it goes away. This pain never let up. I felt like I was losing my mind for just a few minutes of peace.”

Shingles and its painful complication, called postherpetic neuralgia, result from reactivation of the chicken pox virus, which remains in the body after a childhood bout and is usually dormant in the adult. Up to a third of all adults who have had chicken pox will eventually develop one or both of these conditions, becoming debilitated for anywhere from a week to several years. That percentage translates into about one million Americans affected each year, with older adults, whose immune systems are less robust, being most vulnerable. Once the rash and its painful sequel appear, treatment options are limited at best and carry their own set of complications.

While the search for relief costs Americans over $500 million each year, the worst news until recently has been that shingles and its painful complication could happen to any one of us. There were no preventive measures available.

But in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new vaccine against shingles. Clinical trials on the vaccine revealed that it could, with relatively few side effects, reduce the risk of developing shingles by more than half and the risk of post-herpetic neuralgia by over two-thirds. In 2008, a national panel of experts on immunizations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went on to recommend the vaccine to all adults age 60 and older.

At the time, the shingles vaccine seemed to embody the best of medicine, both old school and new. Its advent was contemporary medicine’s elegant response to a once intractable, age-old problem. It didn’t necessarily put an end to the spread of disease, in this case chicken pox; but it dramatically reduced the burden of illness for the affected individual. And, most notably, its utter simplicity was a metaphoric shot-in-the-arm for old-fashioned doctoring values. Among the increasingly complex and convoluted suggestions for health care reform that were brewing at that moment, here was a powerful intervention that relied on only three things: a needle, a syringe and a patient-doctor relationship rooted in promoting wellness.

Not.

In the two years since the vaccine became available, fewer than 10 percent of all eligible patients have received it. Despite the best intentions of patients and doctors (and no shortage of needles and syringes), the shingles vaccine has failed to take hold, in large part because of the most modern of obstacles. What should have been a widely successful and simple wellness intervention between doctors and their patients became a 21st century Rube Goldberg-esque nightmare.

Last month in The Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Colorado in Denver and the C.D.C. surveyed almost 600 primary care physicians and found that fewer than half strongly recommended the shingles vaccine. Doctors were not worried about safety — a report in the same issue of the journal confirmed that the vaccine has few side effects; rather, they were concerned about patient cost.

Although only one dose is required, the vaccination costs $160 to $195 per dose, 10 times more than other commonly prescribed adult vaccines; and insurance carriers vary in the amount they will cover. Thus, while the overwhelming majority of doctors in the study did not hesitate to strongly recommend immunizations against influenza and pneumonia, they could not do the same with the shingles vaccine.

“It’s just a shot, not a pap smear or a colonoscopy,” said Dr. Laura P. Hurley, lead author and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver. “But the fact is that it is an expensive burden for all patients, even those with private insurance and Medicare because it is not always fully reimbursed.”

Moreover, many private insurers require patients to pay out of pocket first and apply for reimbursement afterward. And because the shingles vaccine is the only vaccine more commonly given to seniors that has been treated as a prescription drug, eligible Medicare patients must also first pay out of pocket then submit the necessary paperwork in order to receive the vaccine in their doctor’s office. It’s a complicated reimbursement process that stands in stark contrast to the automatic, seamless and fully covered one that Medicare has for flu and pneumonia vaccines.

Despite this payment maze, some physicians have tried to stock and administer the vaccine in their offices; many, however, eventually stop because they can no longer afford to provide the immunizations. “If you have one out of 10 people who doesn’t pay for the vaccine, your office loses money,” said Dr. Allan Crimm, the managing partner of Ninth Street Internal Medicine, a primary care practice in Philadelphia. Over time, Dr. Crimm’s practice lost thousands of dollars on the shingles vaccine. “It’s indicative of how there are perverse incentives that make it difficult to accomplish what everybody agrees should happen.”

Even bypassing direct reimbursement is fraught with complications for doctors and patients. A third of the physicians surveyed in the University of Colorado study resorted to “brown bagging,” a term more frequently used to describe insurers who have patients carry chemotherapy drugs from a cheaper supplier to their oncologists’ offices. In the case of the shingles vaccine, the study doctors began writing prescriptions for patients to pick up the vaccine at the pharmacy and then return to have it administered in their offices. However, the shingles vaccine must be frozen until a few minutes before administration, and a transit time greater than 30 minutes between office and pharmacy can diminish the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Dr. Crimm and the physicians in his office finally resorted to what another third of the physicians in the study did: they gave patients prescriptions to have the vaccine administered at pharmacies that offered immunization clinics. But when faced with the added hassles of taking additional time off from work and making a separate trip to the pharmacy, not all patients followed through. “Probably about 60 percent of our patients finally did get the vaccine at the pharmacy,” Dr. Crimm estimated. “This is as opposed to 98 percent of our patients getting the pneumonia and influenza vaccines, immunizations where they just have to go down the hall because we stock it, roll up their sleeves then walk out the door.”

With all of these barriers, it comes as no surprise that in the end only 2 percent to 7 percent of patients are immunized against shingles. “There’s just so much that primary care practices must take care of with chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes and heart disease,” Dr. Hurley noted. “If a treatment isn’t easy to administer, then sometimes it just falls to the bottom of the list of things for people to do.”

“Shingles vaccination has become a disparity issue,” Dr. Hurley added. “It’s great that this vaccine was developed and could potentially prevent a very severe disease. But we have to have a reimbursement process that coincides with these interventions. Just making these vaccines doesn’t mean that they will have a public health impact.”

Pressed to End Embargo, Israel Looks for New Policy

2010-06-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Pressed to End Embargo, Israel Looks for New Policy
By ETHAN BRONNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/world/middleeast/11gaza.html?hp

GAZA — Three years after Israel and Egypt imposed an embargo on this tormented Palestinian strip, shutting down its economy, a consensus has emerged that the attempt to weaken the governing party, Hamas, and drive it from power has failed.

In the days since an Israeli naval takeover of a flotilla trying to break the siege turned deadly, that consensus has taken on added urgency, with world powers, anti-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and some senior Israeli officials advocating a shift.

In its three years in power Hamas has taken control not only of security, education and the justice system but also the economy, by regulating and taxing an extensive smuggling tunnel system from Egypt. In the process, the traditional and largely pro-Western business community has been sidelined.

This may be about to change.

“We need to build a legitimate private sector in Gaza as a strong counterweight to extremism,” Tony Blair, who serves as the international community’s liaison to the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview, reflecting the view of the Obama administration as well. “To end up with a Gaza that is dependent on tunnels and foreign aid is not a good idea.”

Businessmen in Gaza say that by closing down legitimate commerce Israel has helped Hamas tighten its domination. And by allowing in food for shops but not goods needed for industry, Israel is helping keep Gaza a welfare society, the sort of place where extremism can flourish.

“I can’t get cocoa powder, I can’t get malt, I can’t get shortening or syrup or wrapping material or boxes,” lamented Mohammed Telbani, the head of Al Awda, a cookie and ice cream factory in the central town of Deir el Balah. “I don’t like Hamas and I don’t like Fatah. All I want is to make food.”

Israeli officials say they have been working for months on a change of policy, but want to guard against helping Hamas or bringing renewed rocket attacks on Israel. They are less convinced than foreign leaders about the benefits of a full-scale tilt toward the business community, but they see room for increased activity.

“Hamas is strong,” acknowledged Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli Defense Ministry official in charge of Palestinian civilian issues, in an interview. “It controls Gaza, and it doesn’t look like that is going to be changed in the coming months or maybe years. But we must protect our security while helping interests in Gaza that are not under Hamas’s control.”

For Israel, any shift in Gaza is complicated by the fact that Hamas has been holding one of its soldiers for four years. In addition, Israel does not want Hamas or its associates to gain credit for new relief.

This is a problem for Olfat al-Qawari, stuck in a makeshift tent with her husband and six children 18 months after their house was destroyed by an Israeli invasion. The Qarawis expected to get a donated trailer last year, but it went to a family loyal to Hamas, she said.

When a charity official told her that she would receive one of 200 prefabricated homes arriving on the aid flotilla, she was elated. When the Israeli Navy confiscated the cargo in the raid that killed nine Turks, she fell into despair. The group that had promised her the house was the Islamic Turkish charity known by the initials I.H.H., a sponsor of the flotilla.

Mehmet Kaya, who runs the I.H.H. office in Gaza, said his group sponsors 9,000 orphans, helps with a hospital and runs job skills training sessions. He said that the flotilla carried not only the 200 prefabricated houses but enough building materials for another 200. He was the one who promised Ms. Qarawi a house.

“We only work through Hamas, although we don’t limit our aid to its followers,” he said. “We consider Israel and the United Nations to be the terrorists, not Hamas.”

The I.H.H. cargo is sitting at the border in Israel, which is trying to find a more appealing partner to distribute it. That may prove difficult. Meanwhile, Turkish flags are fluttering across Gaza, people are giving their babies Turkish names, and Ms. Qarawi still lives in a tent.

“I fear we will die here,” she said of the rusting metal pipes and frayed plastic sheeting that serve as her home in the village of El Atatra in northwest Gaza. “They won’t have to move us far,” she added with dark mockery. “The cemetery is up the road.”

In truth, most of the post-war tents are gone now, and daily life is neither as awful as many abroad assert nor as untroubled as Israel insists. Instead, it has a numbing listlessness.

“In Gaza, no one is dying,” said Amr Hamad, deputy secretary general of the Palestinian Federation of Industries. “But no one is living.”

For Omar Shaban, who runs a research center called Pal Think, the key to understanding the impact of the siege and Hamas rule is to understand Gaza.

“Don’t compare us with Sudan or Haiti,” he said. “We are an educated people with 2 percent illiteracy. But Israel’s effort to say that everything is O.K. here is ridiculous. I can’t travel. Students are trapped.”

In June 2007 after winning parliamentary elections the previous year and uneasily sharing power with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, Hamas took full control in a four-day civil war, leaving the Palestinian Authority restricted to the West Bank.

Israel imposed the embargo, permitting in charitable goods and letting out people with medical emergencies. It invaded in late 2008 to stop a flow of rockets and destroyed thousands of buildings. With almost no construction materials allowed in, Gazans have scrounged from the rubble to create their own, but there has been only limited rebuilding.

Egypt, which dislikes Hamas for its Islamist ideology and Iranian backing, imposed the same closing from the south.

The idea was that the West Bank would prosper while Gaza would fester. That has happened, but it has done less to change the power dynamic than expected and has caused much suffering.

Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization said that both chronic and acute malnutrition have crept up, and hospitals wait up to a year for vital equipment like CT scanners, X-ray parts and infusion pumps. Mr. Hamad of the industries federation estimated that political loyalties in Gaza divided into equal thirds: pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian Authority and independent, many in the private sector. He has been telling foreign officials that if they helped foster businesses, there could eventually be a majority coalition of non-Hamas parties here.

Under current circumstances, he said, the soil for extremism remained fertile.

Markets Up Sharply on Jobs Report

2010-06-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

Markets Up Sharply on Jobs Report
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11markets.html?hp

Stocks surged Thursday on Wall Street after positive reports on the United States jobs market and Chinese exports provided some relief to two issues that have had investors on edge for more than a month.

At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 204.73 points, or 2.1 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 2.1 percent, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 1.8 percent.

Investors have sent stocks sharply lower for more than a month because of concerns that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis would slow economic growth worldwide and high unemployment would stall a United States recovery.

Asian and European markets rose after China said exports rose 48.5 percent in May, while imports jumped 48.3 percent. The jump in tradeprovides some relief that mounting debt problems in Europe might not halt a global economic recovery. The 27-nation European Union is China’s largest trading partner.

Economic recovery in China and other developing nations has outpaced a rebound in more developed economies, so a pullback there would deal a blow to global growth.

The euro, which is used by 16 countries in Europe, rose to $1.2129 Thursday. The currency has become an indicator of investor confidence in Europe’s economy. It has also heavily influenced global stock markets in recent weeks because of concerns that rising debt in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal would upend a global economic recovery.

While investors worry about how Europe’s debt problems could affect the rest of the world, there are also concerns about continued high unemployment in the United States. High unemployment remains one of the biggest obstacles to a strong domestic rebound.

A Labor Department report Thursday said new claims for unemployment fell by a less-than-forecast 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 456,000. While that figure fell short of economists’ forecast for a drop to 448,000, investors were heartened by data showing total claims last week dropped by the largest amount in almost a year. Total unemployment benefit rolls fell by 255,000 to 4.5 million.

The drop in total claims provides some hope that laid-off workers are starting to find new jobs. It was welcome relief after the Labor Department said last week that private employers slowed their hiring in May to the lowest levels since January.

Job creation is considered vital to a sustained recovery in the United States and consistently positive jobs data could provide confidence to investors after worries about Europe’s troubles have overwhelmed global markets for more than a month.

Julia Werdigier contributed reporting.

Nevada Challenger Lifted by Tea Party Ardor

2010-06-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

Nevada Challenger Lifted by Tea Party Ardor
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/politics/10nevada.html?hp

Even among the nation’s most febrile political contests, few choices are as stark as the one Nevada voters will make between a circumspect four-term senator, one of the most visible emblems of Democratic power in Washington, and a largely unknown former state lawmaker with 10 grandchildren, whose fondness for weightlifting and for her .44 Magnum won the ardor of the

Faced with the newly minted Republican Party candidate, Sharron Angle, the senator, Harry Reid, who is the majority leader, will now have to contend with a highly unpredictable electorate. It’s one that handed Barack Obama an overwhelming victory in 2008, but now burdened with a protracted recession and ever-relishing its role as national political barometer, has begun this season to demonstrate its ire against incumbents.

So far, Ms. Angle’s base of operations has been limited largely to her Reno living room, where a group called the “lick ’n’ stickers” meets each week to run her grass-roots network. And, voter registration numbers work in Mr. Reid’s favor; there are 579,750 registered Democrats in the state versus 468,245 Republicans. He is also clearly counting on the aggressive Democratic political operation that helped Mr. Obama win a state that has leaned Republican in recent years.

Further, Ms. Angle — the Tea Party-blessed candidate who bested her two better-financed competitors in Tuesday’s primary — is an untested statewide candidate whose positions as a lawmaker put her firmly to the right of most mainstream Nevada voters. The hot lights of national exposure can be a liability for new — and overly loquacious — candidates, as Rand Paul, the Republican Senate nominee from Kentucky, quickly found.

Yet Ms. Angle is well positioned to use Mr. Reid’s deep connections with the Obama machine against him in a state where the president’s popularity has faltered over the last year and where the demonstration of independence is a badge of honor.

History would suggest that a victory in November for Ms. Angle is far from impossible. She will be aided by Mr. Reid’s role as the highly visible symbol for what critics in Nevada, one of the most economically hard-hit states, see as the Obama administration’s fiscal overreach. In 1982, a four-term incumbent, Senator Howard Cannon, whose power, while less than Mr. Reid’s, was not insignificant in Washington, lost his Senate seat during a recession to Chic Hecht, a Republican who leaned hard to the right.

In this quintessential swing state, anything truly goes.

“Angle can beat Reid if she can avoid being defined as too right-wing even for conservatives, which, given her history, will be hard for her to avoid,” said Michael Green, a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada. “If even worse economic news came out, it presumably could help her.”

Largely unknown outside her legislative district in Reno until she began her Senate campaign, Ms. Angle has seen her political positions come into sharp relief in recent weeks, illuminated by her votes, the legislation she sponsored and her campaigns during her time as a state assemblywoman from 1998 to 2006.

Among her detractors and her supporters she is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature. She is also a tireless campaigner. When a 2002 redistricting forced her to face off with a wildly popular Republican incumbent, Greg Brower, she went door to door nightly, won and ended his political career.

“In the building we used to have a joke called 41 to Angle,” said Sheila Leslie, a Democratic assemblywoman from Reno who served with Ms. Angle. “She took great pride in voting no for everything. We have some very conservative people in the assembly, but she was the only one voting no on a technical cleanup bill. The lobbyists didn’t talk to her, the legislators wouldn’t talk to her, because when you vote no on everything no one wants to deal with you.”

She was best known for sponsoring an unsuccessful bill that would have required the “dissemination of information concerning the scientific link between induced abortion and increased rate of breast cancer.”

Several calls to her spokesman, Jerry Stacy, were not returned, and then his cellphone voice-mail box shut down. The Web site sharronangle.com was broken much of the day.

Many of her positions — she favors the privatization of Medicare and Social Security, supported a program based on Scientology that would have offered massages to some prison inmates and did not support unemployment insurance in a state with among the highest jobless rates in the nation — have alienated Republicans as well.

“I would say there are a lot of Republicans who will find it difficult to support Sharron Angle,” said State Senator William J Raggio, a Republican who has served in the Legislature since 1972. “Abolishing the Department of Education, phasing out Social Security, those are pretty extreme positions. I think any incumbent is vulnerable, but you have to have somebody that is also acceptable if you’re going to win.”

Ms. Angle has long demonstrated larger ambitions. In 2006, she barely lost her primary race for Congress against Secretary of State Dean Heller, and in 2008 she tried to take on Mr. Raggio, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, both times with scant money in her campaign coffers.

When the party’s greatest hope for beating Mr. Reid, Sue Lowden, imploded in a sea of gaffes and split some of the vote with a third competitor, Danny Tarkanian, Ms. Angle, 60, at last found her spot on a statewide ticket Tuesday night.

Ms. Angle’s tenacious ways may give Mr. Reid a headache.

“She just pounds the pavement,” said Don Gustavson, a fellow Republican assemblyman from Sparks. “I don’t care where she goes, she is always the last one to leave the room. She has a house full of volunteers who meet in her living room every week called the lick ’n’ stick group. She campaigns in that truck of hers and just works hard.”

Frank Bushey, pastor of Fellowship Community Church, a Southern Baptist church in Reno where Ms. Angle has been a member for several years, said, “Sharron is a great lady.”

Mr. Bushey said that his church was “mostly blue collar” and that Ms. Angle’s husband had been a deacon for many years, while she sometimes taught women’s classes.

“She is a godly woman,” he said. “She has all the attributes of Jesus.”

New Ground Zero Deal Gives Plaintiffs $712.5 Million

2010-06-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

New Ground Zero Deal Gives Plaintiffs $712.5 Million
By A. G. SULZBERGER and MIREYA NAVARRO
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nyregion/11zero.html?hp

The city and about 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers at ground zero said Thursday that they had negotiated a new settlement under which the city’s insurer kicks in more money and the plaintiffs’ lawyers reduce their legal fees to give the workers more compensation for health damages.

A federal judge rejected an earlier settlement in March. After nearly three months of renegotiations, the city’s insurer, the WTC Captive Insurance Company, has agreed to increase its payout to plaintiffs to $712.5 million. The previous terms called for payouts of $575 million to $657.5 million.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers have also agreed to reduce their fees to a maximum of 25 percent of the settlement amount, down from the 33.33 percent called for in contingency agreements that their clients signed. As a result, the plaintiffs will get to keep an additional $50 million, the lawyers said. .

“This settlement ensures guaranteed, immediate and just compensation to the heroic men and women who performed their duties without consideration of the health implications,” said Marc J. Bern, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

“Our commitment to our clients has never wavered in the seven years since we took on this litigation and we have done everything within our power, including reducing the fees we agreed to with each of our clients, to achieve the best possible outcome,” he said.

The parties went back to the negotiating table in March after their original settlement was rejected by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of United States District Court in Manhattan, who has been overseeing the cases since 2003. The judge said the old accord did not offer enough compensation to the plaintiffs and that the lawyers were getting too big a cut.

The workers sued the city and its contractors over respiratory illnesses and other injuries they say they suffered at the World Trade Center site because they were not given protective equipment or adequate supervision.

The city filed papers with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to challenge Judge Hellerstein’s authority to block the settlement. But at the same time, its lawyers sought to accommodate him to salvage the agreement, which has to be approved by 95 percent of the plaintiffs.

Judge Hellerstein was kept informed of the newly negotiated terms and has indicated that he believes that the modified settlement is “fair and reasonable,” according to a statement released by the lawyers.

Push for BP to Halt Dividends Hits Resistance in Britain

2010-06-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

Push for BP to Halt Dividends Hits Resistance in Britain
By JULIA WERDIGIER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11bp.html?hp

LONDON — British investors in BP are growing increasingly frustrated with the White House’s involvement and comments about the company’s efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and partly blame politicians for the sharp share price drop.

Read All Comments (70) »
BP’s shares, which are widely held by pension funds here, dropped 7 percent in London on Thursday because of concerns about the costs for the oil cleanup. The shares fell more than 40 percent since a fatal explosion at an oil rig in April and the start of the leak, wiping more than £50 billion, or $73 billion, from the company’s market value.

Shares, however, were 11.9 percent higher Thursday in New York trading after falling 15.8 percent on Wednesday. The drop came after lawmakers in Washington have called on BP to suspend its dividend and advertising to pay for the cleanup and a senior official said the Justice Department was “planning to take action.”

Investors were particularly furious about the suggestions that BP should not pay a dividend until it cleaned up the oil spill. Most shareholders rejected concerns that the costs of a cleanup and possible damages could force BP into Chapter 11 and said the drop in the share price is not justified by the value of BP’s assets.

“BP has many problems in the U.S.,” Justin Urquhart Stewart, co-founder of Seven Investment Management in London, said. “One of them is that it has the word British in its title.”

In a statement on Thursday, the company reiterated that stopping the oil leak, cleaning up the spill and dealing with any potential damage claims remained its top priority and that it had a “significant capacity and flexibility in dealing with the cost of responding to the incident, the environmental remediation and the payment of legitimate claims.”

Iain Armstrong, an analyst at investment manager Brewin Dolphin in London agreed with BP that the company has enough money to pay for the cleanup efforts and also rejected any potential concern that the company might not be able to pay for its debt.

“It’s gotten completely out of hand,” Mr. Armstrong said. “It’s a totally over-politicized situation. There is a disconnect between reality and BP being totally lambasted.”

“Ironically, by being extremely strong financially, BP has become a target here,” he said.

BP, which earned more than $16 billion last year and about $6 billion in the first quarter, said Thursday the cost of the clean-up and containment efforts was now $1.43 billion. Last year, the company paid about $10.5 billion in dividends.

Mr. Armstrong said that President Obama should not forget that 40 percent of BP shares are held by U.S. shareholders. “So he’s not doing them any favors either,” he said.

BP said in a statement Thursday that it noted the most recent share price drop but that it “is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”

Peter Hitchens, a research analyst at Panmure Gordon in London, said most analysts and investors in Britain are “more relaxed” about the future of BP than their U.S. counterparts partly because of the geographic distance. “We don’t have all the press coverage that’s over there and we’re further away from U.S. politics,” he said. “We have a more rational view.”

Indeed some investors said they see the recent decline in BP’s share price as a buying opportunity. But as oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico they also acknowledge that while BP would probably be able to pay for the cleanup costs, the real question is whether it would be able to weather the political storm.

In a report Thursday, the International Energy Agency said the ongoing oil spill could prove to be a “game changer” because it could restrict future undersea oil development and limit supply.

“Emotion is understandably running high, and the way deepwater hydrocarbon developments are approved, operated and regulated will of course be thoroughly examined and potentially amended,” the agency said in its monthly oil market report.

Mr. Hitchens said the situations has now “gone beyond what’s rational” and some investors might start to fear that BP could be kicked out of the United States.

London’s Mayor Boris Johnson said Thursday that the drop in BP’s shares was slowly becoming a political issue in Britain.

“When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP and the BP share price and the vital importance of BP then I do think it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on international airwaves,” he told BBC radio Thursday.

“What people forget is that if anyone breaks a pipeline, you’d thank god that it was a company that can actually pay for it,” Mr. Urquhart Stewart said.

Some business leaders on Thursday urged the British government to defend BP.

But Reuters quoted Prime Minister David Cameron as saying, “This is an environmental catastrophe. BP needs to do everything it can to deal with the situation, and the U.K. government stands ready to help. I completely understand the U.S. government’s frustration.”

Earlier, a spokesman for Mr. Cameron said the prime minister would be discussing the issue with President Obama in a weekend telephone call.

David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.

AT&T Said to Expose iPad Users’ Addresses

2010-06-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

AT&T Said to Expose iPad Users’ Addresses
By MIGUEL HELFT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/technology/10apple.html?th&emc=th

A group of hackers said Wednesday that it had obtained the e-mail addresses of 114,000 owners of 3G Apple iPads, including those of military personnel, business executives and public figures, by exploiting a security hole on AT&T’s Web site.

The group, which calls itself Goatse Security and says it specializes in exposing security vulnerabilities, also obtained the identification number that those iPads use when they communicate over AT&T’s network, known as an ICC-ID, according to a member of the group who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

AT&T acknowledged the breach, which was first reported by Gawker late Wednesday, but the company sought to minimize its importance.

“AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC-IDs,” AT&T said in a statement. “The only information that can be derived from the ICC-IDs is the e-mail address attached to that device.”

AT&T said that by Tuesday it had turned off the feature on its Web site that allowed the group to find the e-mail addresses.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

The incident is likely to be a public relations black eye for AT&T, which is Apple’s partner for wireless service on the iPhone and iPad in the United States. But security experts said it was not clear whether the breach would have serious consequences for those whose information was obtained.

Even in the wrong hands, e-mail addresses are of limited use beyond sending junk e-mail or attempting to pull people in with so-called phishing attacks, security experts said. What is more, e-mail addresses can be easy to guess. Members of the military are permitted to use only unclassified addresses on devices like the iPad.

But experts said that ICC-ID numbers could, in the right hands, be used to get other information, like an iPad’s location.

The breach “should be worrying people a lot,” said Nick DePetrillo, an independent security consultant.

Michael Kleeman, a communications network expert at the University of California, San Diego, said that AT&T should never have stored the information on a publicly accessible Web site. But he added that the damage was likely to be limited.

“You could in theory find out where the device is,” Mr. Kleeman said. “But to do that, you would have to gain access to very secure databases that are not generally connected to the public Internet.”

The list of e-mail addresses included military personnel, staff members in the Senate and the House, and people at the Justice Department, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security, said the group member. Private-sector addresses that were exposed include those of executives at The New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Condé Nast, Viacom, Time Warner, the News Corporation, and HBO, the person said.

AT&T said it would notify affected customers. “We apologize to our customers who were impacted,” it said.

Nick Bilton contributed reporting.

Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News

2010-06-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html?th&emc=th

When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.

“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ”

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

To some critics of the response effort by BP and the government, instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials’ filtering what images of the spill the public sees.

Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP.

“I think they’ve been trying to limit access,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who fought BP to release more video from the underwater rovers that have been filming the oil-spewing pipe. “It is a company that was not used to transparency. It was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did.”

Officials at BP and the government entities coordinating the response said instances of denying news media access have been anomalies, and they pointed out that the company and the government have gone to great lengths to accommodate the hundreds of journalists who have traveled to the gulf to cover the story. The F.A.A., responding to criticism following the incident with Southern Seaplane, has revised its flight restrictions over the gulf to allow for news media flights on a case-by-case basis.

“Our general approach throughout this response, which is controlled by the Unified Command and is the largest ever to an oil spill,” said David H. Nicholas, a BP spokesman, “has been to allow as much access as possible to media and other parties without compromising the work we are engaged on or the safety of those to whom we give access.”

Anomalies or not, reporters and photographers continue to be blocked from covering aspects of the spill.

Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,’ ” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. “No further elaboration” was given, Mr. Gulley added.

Mr. Nelson has asked the Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, for an official explanation, the senator’s office said.

Capt. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman, said that about a week into the cleanup response, the Coast Guard started enforcing a policy that prohibits news media from accompanying candidates for public office on visits to government facilities, “to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials.”

In a separate incident last week, a reporter and photographer from The Daily News of New York were told by a BP contractor they could not access a public beach on Grand Isle, La., one of the areas most heavily affected by the oil spill. The contractor summoned a local sheriff, who then told the reporter, Matthew Lysiak, that news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to get access to the beach.

BP did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.

"For the police to tell me I needed to sign paperwork with BP to go to a public beach?" Mr. Lysiak said. "It's just irrational."

In the first few weeks after the oil rig explosion, BP kept a tight lid on images of the oil leaking into the gulf. Even when it released the first video of the spewing oil on May 12, it provided only a 30-second clip. The most detailed images did not become public until two weeks ago when BP gave members of Congress access to internal video feeds from its underwater rovers. Without BP’s permission, some members of Congress displayed the video for news networks like CNN, which carried them live.

For journalists on the ground, particularly photographers who hire their own planes, one of the major sources of frustration has been the flight restrictions over the water, where access is off limits in a vast area from the Louisiana bayous to Pensacola, Fla. Each time they fly in the area, they have to be granted permission from the F.A.A.

“Although there’s a tremendous amount of oil, finding out exactly where it’s washing ashore or where booming is going on is very difficult,” said John McCusker, a photographer with The Times-Picayune. “At 3,000 feet you’re shooting through clouds, and it’s difficult to tell the difference between an oil slick and a shadow from a cloud.”

A spokeswoman for the agency, Laura J. Brown, said the flight restrictions are necessary to prevent civilian air traffic from interfering with aircraft assisting the response effort.

Ms. Brown also said the Coast Guard-F.A.A. command center that turned away Southern Seaplane was enforcing the essential-flights-only policy in place at the time; and she said the BP contractor who answered the phone was there because the F.A.A. operations center is in one of BP’s buildings.

“That person was not making decisions about whether aircraft are allowed to enter the airspace,” Ms. Brown said.

But the incident with Southern Seaplane is not the only example of journalists being told they cannot go somewhere simply because they are journalists. CBS News reported last month that one of its news crews was threatened with arrest for trying to film a public beach where oil had washed ashore. The Coast Guard said later that it was disappointed to learn of the incident.

Media access in disaster situations is always an issue. But the situation in the gulf is especially nettlesome because journalists have to depend on the government and BP to gain access to so much of the affected area.

Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, likened the situation to reporters being embedded with the military in Afghanistan. “There is a continued effort to keep control over the access,” Mr. Oreskes said. “And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it’s still a problem because it’s still access obtained through the government.”

Views Show How a North Korean Policy Spread Misery

2010-06-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Views Show How a North Korean Policy Spread Misery
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/asia/10koreans.html?th&emc=th

YANJI, China — Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury. His state employer had not paid him for so long that he had forgotten his salary. Indeed, he paid his boss to be listed as a dummy worker so that he could leave his work site. Then he and his wife could scrape out a living selling small bags of detergent on the black market.

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30.

Last month the construction worker sat in a safe house in this bustling northern Chinese city, lamenting years of useless sacrifice. Vegetables for his parents, his wife’s asthma medicine, the navy track suit his 15-year-old daughter craved — all were forsworn on the theory that, even in North Korea, the future was worth saving for.

“Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.”

North Koreans are used to struggle and heartbreak. But the Nov. 30 currency devaluation, apparently an attempt to prop up a foundering state-run economy, was for some the worst disaster since a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the mid-1990s.

Interviews in the past month with eight North Koreans who recently left their country — a prison escapee, illegal traders, people in temporary exile to find work in China, the traveling wife of an official in the ruling Workers’ Party — paint a haunting portrait of desperation inside North Korea, a nation of 24 million people, and of growing resentment toward its erratic leader, Kim Jong-il.

What seems missing — for now, at least — is social instability. Widespread hardship, popular anger over the currency revaluation and growing political uncertainty as Mr. Kim seeks to install his third son as his successor have not hardened into noticeable resistance against the government. At least two of those interviewed in China hewed to the official propaganda line that North Korea was a victim of die-hard enemies, its impoverishment a Western plot, its survival threatened by the United States, South Korea and Japan.

South Korea’s charge that North Korea sank one of its warships, the Cheonan, in March was just part of the plot, the party official’s wife said.

“That’s why we have weapons to protect ourselves,” she said while visiting relatives in northern China — and earning spare cash as a waitress. “Our enemies are trying to hit us from all sides, and that’s why we lack electricity and good infrastructure. North Korea must keep its doors locked.”

Others were more skeptical of the government’s propaganda, but still cast war as an inevitability. “We always wait for the invasion,” said one former primary school teacher. “My son says he wishes the war would come because life is too hard, and we will probably die anyway from starvation.”

They and other North Koreans spoke only on the condition that they could withhold their names in discussions largely arranged by underground churches operating in China just across the border. If they were identified as traveling or working in China illegally, they could be deported and imprisoned, along with their relatives.

About half of those interviewed said they planned to return to North Korea; the other half hoped to defect to South Korea.

On many details, their accounts, given separately, dovetailed. They also reinforced descriptions by economists and political analysts of a stricken nation.

A Reeling Economy

Citing aerial photos of plumeless smokestacks, economists say roughly three of every four North Korean factories are idle. The economy has been staggering badly since 2006, when Kim Jong-il pulled out of multinational talks aimed at ending his nuclear weapons program. The sinking of the Cheonan will further damage the economy: South Korea has suspended nearly all trade, depriving the North of $333 million a year from seafood sales and other exports.

When the Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945, South Korea was poorer than its neighbor. Now its average worker earns 15 times as much as an average North Korean, according to cost-of-living-adjusted data. The number of defectors who make it through China to South Korea has steadily risen for a decade, hitting nearly 3,000 last year.

Infant and maternal mortality rates jumped at least 30 percent from 1993 to 2008, and life expectancy fell by three years to 69 during the same period, according to North Korean census figures and the United Nations Population Fund.

The United Nations World Food Program says one in three North Korean children under the age of 5 are malnourished. More than one in four people need food aid, the agency says, but only about one in 17 will get it this year, partly because donors are reluctant to send aid to a country that has insisted on developing nuclear weapons.

The currency devaluation has only heightened the suffering. Its aim was to divert the proceeds of North Korea’s vast entrepreneurial underground — its street markets — to its cash-starved government businesses.

The markets are the sole source of income for many North Koreans, but they flout the government’s credo of economic socialism. Theoretically, everyone except minors, the elderly and mothers with young children works for the state. But state enterprises have been withering for 30 years, and North Koreans do all they can to escape work in them.

Farmers tend their own gardens as weeds overtake collective farms. Urban workers duck state assignments to peddle everything from metal scavenged from mothballed factories to televisions smuggled from China.

“If you don’t trade, you die,” said the former teacher, a round-faced 51-year-old woman with a ponytail. She went from obedient state employee to lawbreaking trader, but could not escape her plight.

She taught primary school for 30 years in Chongjin, North Korea’s third-largest city, with roughly 500,000 people. What once was an all-day job shrank by 2004 to morning duty; schools closed at noon. At least 15 of her 50 students dropped out or left after an hour, too hungry to study.

“It is very hard to teach a starving child,” she said. “Even sitting at a desk is difficult for them.”

Teachers were hungry, too. Her monthly salary scarcely bought two pounds of rice, she said. A university graduate, she pulled her own child out of the third grade in 1998, instead sending her to a neighbor to learn to sew.

She quit in 2004 to sell corn noodles outside Chongjin’s main market, an expanse of stalls and plastic tarpaulins half the size of a city block where traders mainly sell Chinese goods, including toothpaste, sewing needles and DVDs of banned South Korean soap operas.

But noodles were barely profitable, so she tried a riskier trade in state-controlled commodities: pine nuts and red berries used in a popular tea. That scheme collapsed in October. After she and her partners collected 17 sacks of goods from a village, a guard at a checkpoint confiscated them all instead of taking a bribe to let them pass. She was left with $300 in debt.

Like her, the construction worker, a rail-thin 45-year-old with a head for numbers, figured that private enterprise was his family’s only salvation. But as a man, it was harder for him to shake off his work assignment.

On paper, he said, a Chongjin state construction company employs him. But the company has few supplies and no cash to pay its employees. So like more than a third of the workers, the worker said, he pays roughly $5 a month to sign in as an employee on the company’s daily log — and then toil elsewhere.

Such payments, widespread at smaller state companies, are supposed to keep companies solvent, said one 62-year-old woman who is a trader in Chongjin. Even a major enterprise like the city’s metal refinery has not paid salaries since 2007, she and others said, though workers there collect 10 days worth of food rations each month.

“How would the companies survive if they didn’t get money from the workers?” she asked without irony.

Recently, the construction worker’s firm has been more active. The state has resurfaced Chongjin’s only paved road and built a hospital and a university for the 2012 centennial of the birth of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il’s father and North Korea’s founder.

But the burst of projects bore a cost: each family was required to deliver 17 bags of pebbles every month to its local party committee. The construction worker enlisted his elderly parents to scour creek beds and fields for rocks that the family smashed by hand into grape-size stones.

With no state salary, he earns money by his wits. Every October, he sells squid caught from a boat he pilots in treacherous coastal waters. In other months, he bicycles about 20 miles every day looking for goods to sell, typically detergent bought from a factory that is resold by his wife at a 12 percent markup on a purple tarpaulin outside the main market.

The government periodically tries to rein in the markets, regulating prices, hours, types of goods sold, the sellers’ age and sex and even whether they haul their wares on bicycles or their backs.

Savings Wiped Out

In one 2007 Central Committee communiqué, Kim Jong-il complained that the markets had become “a birthplace of all sorts of nonsocialist practices.” The Nov. 30 currency devaluation upended them. The state decreed that a new, more valuable won would replace the old won, but that families could trade only 100,000 won, about $30 at the black market rate, for the new one. The move effectively wiped out private stores of money.

To cushion the blow, workers say, they were promised that their salaries would be restored if they returned to their government jobs. In fact, the construction worker and others say, they got one month’s pay, in January, before salaries again disappeared.

Some with political connections skirted the worst. One woman from Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city, said the local bank director allowed her relatives to exchange three million won, 30 times the official limit.

The party official’s wife, hair softly curled, a knock-off designer purse by her side, boasted about her six-room house with two color televisions and a garden. In the next breath, she praised devaluation as well-deserved punishment of those who had cheated the state, even though she acknowledged that it led to chaos and noted that a top finance official was executed for mismanaging the policy.

“A lot of bad people had gotten rich doing illegal trading with China, while the good people at the state companies didn’t have enough money,” she said. “So the haves gave to the have-nots.”

The former teacher gave all she had. After her creditors stripped her of all her money, she said, she walked across the frozen Tumen River at night and into China to seek help from her relatives there. Famished and terrified, she said she banged randomly on doors until a stranger helped her contact them.

Now safe in her relatives’ home, she said, she marvels over how they enjoy delicacies like cucumbers in winter. But temporarily deserting her son and daughter, both in their mid-20s, has left her so guilt-ridden that she sometimes cannot swallow the food set in front of her. “I don’t know whether my children have managed to get some money, or whether they have starved to death,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

For the construction worker, his sister’s news of the coming devaluation unleashed a furious scramble to salvage the family nest egg. He emptied the living-room cabinet drawer that held their savings and split it with his wife and daughter, telling them, “Buy whatever you can, as fast as you can.”

The three bicycled furiously to Chongjin’s market. “It was like a battlefield,” he said.

Thousands of people frantically tried to outbid one another to convert soon-to-be worthless money into something tangible. Some prices rose 10,000 percent, he said, before traders shut down, realizing that their profits soon would be worthless, too.

The three said they returned home with 66 pounds of rice, a pig’s head and 220 pounds of bean curd. The construction worker’s daughter had managed to purchase a small cutting board and a used pair of khaki pants. Together, he said, they spent the equivalent of $860 for items that would have cost less than $20 the day before.

His daughter tried to comfort him. “Father, I will keep this pair of pants until I die!” she pledged. He told her the cutting board would be her wedding gift.

“At that moment, I really wanted to kill myself,” he said. He gestured toward the safe-house window and beyond toward nighttime Yanji, brightly lighted and humming with traffic. “It is not like here,” he said. “Here, it is not a big deal to make money. There, it is suffering and suffering; sacrificing and sacrificing.”

He said he lay awake night after night afterward, fixated on the navy track suit his daughter had coveted. She had said it put her thick winter sweater and plain trousers to shame. He had put her off because the cheapest ones were nearly $15. When she brought it up once too often, he had cursed and shouted, “People in this house need to eat first!”

“I cannot describe how terrible I feel that I didn’t buy that for her,” he said, his voice trembling.

A Profound Isolation

Those North Koreans who have never crossed the border have no way to make sense of their tribulations. There is no Internet. Television and radio receivers are soldered to government channels. Even the party official’s wife lacks a telephone and mourns her lack of contact with the outside world. Her first question to a foreigner was “Am I pretty?”

Slowly, however, information is seeping in. Traders return from China to report that people are richer and comparatively freer, and that South Koreans are supposedly even more so. Some of the traders have cellphones that are linked to the Chinese cellular network and can be surreptitiously borrowed for exorbitant fees.

Punishment for watching foreign films and television shows is stiff. The trader said a 35-year-old neighbor spent six months in a labor camp last year after he was caught watching “Twin Dragons,” a farcical Hong Kong action film starring Jackie Chan. Yet to the dismay of the former teacher, her 26-year-old son takes similar risks.

Her sister is married to a government official in the capital, Pyongyang, she said, but neither is a fan of Kim Jong-il. On her most recent visit, she said, her sister whispered to her, “ ‘People follow him because of fear, not because of love.’ ”

Since the currency devaluation, she and others say, people are noticeably bolder with such comments.

“Now, if you go to the market, people will say anything,” the construction worker said. “They will say the government is a thief — even in broad daylight.”

His wife was not among them. For weeks after the devaluation, he said, she lay on a living-room floor mat, immobilized by depression. “I had no strength to say anything to her,” he said.

Finally, he told her to get up. It was time to start over.

Su-Hyun Lee contributed research from Seoul, South Korea.

Calif. Voting Change Could Signal Big Political Shift

2010-06-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Calif. Voting Change Could Signal Big Political Shift
By JESSE McKINLEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/politics/10prop.html?th&emc=th

SAN FRANCISCO — The time for tinkering is done.

That was the message Californians sent when they voted Tuesday to radically rejigger elections in the nation’s most populous state. Under Proposition 14, a measure that easily passed, traditional party primaries will be replaced in 2011 with wide-open elections. The top two vote-getters — whatever their party, or if they have no party at all — will face off in the general election.

Supporters argue that without parties picking candidates for the general election, moderates and independents will move to the fore, and voters will pay more attention to the electoral process.

Critics of the measure say it will give a huge advantage to candidates who have the most money or the widest name recognition.

That no one actually knows what the real effect of Proposition 14 will be seems almost beside the point to frustrated voters. What mattered, supporters said, is that something fundamental about politics — anything fundamental — had been changed.

As supporters celebrated, they promised to bring the so-called “top two” system to a state near you, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leading the charge — though his second term, plagued by budget meltdowns and plunging popularity, was, analysts said, one of the leading motivators for the measure.

Whether the measure will empower more independent voters — who were already allowed to vote in Democratic or Republican primaries, provided they requested a ballot — remains to be seen. But what did seem certain was that California was again poised to capture the mood of the country, just as it did in 1978 with Proposition 13, which distilled widespread antitax sentiment into a cap on property taxes.

This time, it is the anger of the electorate that Californians have bottled, experts said, even if they are not totally sure what they are doing.

“I don’t know that people really knew what they were voting for,” said Bruce Cain, director of the University of California Washington Center, based in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Cain said the state of the state — high unemployment, record foreclosures and a palpable anger at legislators — had primed the pump.

“When people get mad,” he said, “they lash out.”

But just as with Proposition 13 — which required a two-thirds majority for the Legislature to increase revenue through new taxes — Proposition 14 could come with a raft of unintended consequences, opponents say. They cited a potential rise in fringe candidates as well as the marginalization of small parties.

“Big business and big government won yesterday,” said Christina Tobin, chair of StopTopTwo.org, a leading opponent of the measure, which was heavily outspent by the “Yes” side.

One probable impact was an increase in litigation; both major parties suggested that they were weighing how to stop the implementation of Proposition 14 before its scheduled start in 2011.

Proposition 14 is based on a system in place in one other state, Washington, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2008. Louisiana uses a similar open system, but requires state and local candidates to gain a majority in primaries to win election or face a runoff.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schwarzenegger was being hailed by backers as a political winner and an agent of change, as he trumpeted Proposition 14’s promise of encouraging moderates — who, the argument goes, are shunned by highly partisan primary voters. He also acknowledged the rising role of independents, who now make up one in five voters in the state.

“We in California have said we’ve got to come to the center, we’ve got to bring everyone together in order to solve problems,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said at a news conference in Los Angeles. “And I think the rest of the nation eventually will find out this is exactly where the action is.”

What is also certain is that voters liked Proposition 14; it won in 56 of the state’s 58 counties, with the only two detractors coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Orange, the conservative bastion in the south, and San Francisco, the liberal paradise in the north.

Despite that mandate, Ron Nehring, the chairman of the Californian Republican Party, which opposed the proposition alongside the state’s Democrats and four smaller parties, said the measure would actually take power away from the mass of primary voters and hand it instead to a smaller group of party leaders and loyalists who would decide their candidates in conventions and caucuses. A single handpicked candidate would then get support, he said, while challengers would be shunned.

“Ninety-nine percent of the Republicans that were involved in choosing our candidates are now excluded from choosing our candidates,” Mr. Nehring said. “In the future this decision will be made by no more than a few thousand and, in most cases, a few dozen.”

California voters may not be finished with their shake-up. The November ballot, after all, will include a measure to tax and regulate marijuana, as well as possibly including proposals to eliminate the two-thirds majority for passing a budget and further limit legislators’ time in office. (California was one of the first states to adopt term limits in 1990.)

All of those elections will likely pivot on the ability to draw independents, who were ecstatic about Proposition 14’s passage.

“There is now a new political force in California,” said Royce D’Orazio, a stand-up comic who works as the Los Angeles chapter organizer for the group independentvoice.org, who spoke at the governor’s side on Wednesday. “To all our brothers and sisters in states across this country, help is on the way.”

For his part, Mr. Schwarzenegger seemed pleased by his victory — “this is, by the way, national news,” he said — but still tried to temper expectations for an electorate hungry for anything new.

“It will not solve all the problems,” the governor said. “But it will change a lot.”

Stanley Cup lands in Chicago, Hawks party on/Blackhawks Win First Stanley Cup in 49 Years

2010-06-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

Stanley Cup lands in Chicago, Hawks party on
By Joel Hood, Rob Hart, Stacy St. Clair, Randi Belisomo, Duaa Eldeib, and Jeremy Gorner
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 10, 2010 12:01 PM
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/06/hawks-stanley-cup-land-at-ohare.html

Firetrucks salute the arriving Blackhawks at O'Hare this morning. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

And the party continues.

The Blackhawks embarked on a pre-dawn pub crawl after returning from Philadelphia with a beer-soaked Stanley Cup.

From a private terminal at O'Hare International Airport, the team moved on first to Harry Caray's restaurant in Rosemont where from the outside, players could be spotted in the restaurant drinking beer, although champagne glasses were arranged on one table.

Afterward some teammates went to The Pony Inn, 1638 W. Belmont Ave. in the city.

They were still enjoying themselves at 7 a.m., with large crowds outside and bouncers protecting their privacy. Hundreds of screaming fans swarmed the players' waiting limos as they waited for a glimpse of the city's newest champions.

At the backdoor of the bar, several kids asked for a peek at the Stanley Cup. When Captain Jonathan Toews heard about it, he went out back to let them see it.
Meanwhile, those inside the bar said his teammates downed Jaegerbombs, the ubiquitous celebratory drink consisting of a Jaegermeister shot dropped into a glass of Red Bull. The players also downed caffeine-heavy sodas to help keep themselves awake.

By 9 a.m. the Pony party had broken up. Defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson, who was the last to leave the bar, could not find a taxi on Belmont so he climbed into a Chicago Police car and was spirited away.

Toews and a few friends headed to the Ann Sather restaurant, 909 W. Belmont Ave. After ordering the Swedish diner's famous cinnamon rolls and a bagel sandwich, he took pictures with young fans and accepted their congratulations.

"He's about to have breakfast," general manager Adolfo Martinez said.

Toews left shortly before 10 a.m.

On the West Side, Blackhawks assistant coach Mike Haviland met a swarm of reporters as he pulled up to the Palace Grill, a popular team hangout, in a dark limousine.

Haviland said Philadelphia fans -- some of whom booed the Hawks during the Stanley Cup presentation -- were more gracious as the team left the City of Not-So-Brotherly Love.

"They were very classy," he said. "It's obviously a surreal thing to win it. But certainly they were very classy."

The road-weary Blackhawks arrived at a private terminal at O'Hare International Airport shortly before 4 a.m, little more than six hours after their thrilling 4-3 overtime victory over the Flyers in Philadelphia.

Toews emerged from the plane hoisting the cup above his head. He and the rest of the Hawks, some bleary eyed and reeking of champagne, paraded the cup around the terminal lobby before pausing to meet with reporters.

That was our moment as a team, and we took full advantage of it," Toews said at the airport. "Everybody is excited about it."

It was a brief and somewhat muted return to Chicago as the public was barred from the private terminal. The only fanfare was fire trucks shooting giant arcs of water as the plane approached the terminal.

"It didn't matter where we won it," Toews said. "We're as excited as we could be."

Toews held the cup aloft, then passed it to teammate Brian Campbell, who gave it to a jubilant Patrick Kane, whose overtime goal was the game winner.

Coach Joel Quenneville said team members will be forever linked by this championship.
"We will always walk together the rest of our lives," Quenneville said. "They should enjoy it. They should cherish it."

Players were mum about where the cup will go from here. Toews, flashing a wide grin, said he and his teammates will take good care of it.

"We'll probably parade it around town," Toews said. "It'll be awesome."

A reporter asked Toews if the championship had sunk in on the plane ride home.

"Slowly, slowly," he said. "I think it might be a while."

Toews said the plane ride was rowdy, befitting one of the youngest teams in the NHL and a Stanley Cup celebration nearly 50 years in the making.

"No one was sitting down, nobody was relaxing," Toews said. "It was pretty loud in there."
What kind of shape did the team leave the plane in?

"It's probably not as nice as it was before," he said.

Quenneville echoed how proud he was of the Hawks, particularly how they ended the series.

"I thought we played our two best games when it counted most," Quenneville said. "It was a great moment. I'm happy for the fans in Chicago. It was a great night."

Blackhawks Win First Stanley Cup in 49 Years
By JEFF Z. KLEIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/sports/hockey/10flyers.html?th&emc=th

PHILADELPHIA — A 49-year-old Stanley Cup drought ended in a flood of anxiety.

Patrick Kane, the 21-year-old winger, scored 4 minutes 6 seconds into overtime Wednesday, lifting the Chicago Blackhawks over the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-3, and giving Chicago its first Cup since 1961.

The Blackhawks had come up empty in five finals since their last Cup victory until Kane scored his third goal of the series. It came suddenly on a shot from the bottom of the right circle that whizzed under the stick and pads of Flyers goalie Michael Leighton.

Many in the crowd at the Wachovia Center did not know that a goal had been scored until they saw Kane and his teammates throw their sticks in the air in celebration.

No red light went on, and both teams had to wait several moments until the officials confirmed the goal after reviewing the replay and searching for the puck in the padding at the back of the net. But Kane did not need a review.

“I shot, I saw it go right through the legs, sticking right under the pad in the net,” he said. “I don’t think anyone saw it in the net. I booked it to the other end. I knew it was in. I tried to sell the celebration a bit.”

He added: “I think some guys were still kind of a little iffy to see if the puck was in the net. I saw the coaches there pointing at the puck and jumping around. It’s pretty surreal right now for sure.”

Chicago Coach Joel Quenneville described the view on the bench.

“When it went in, I don’t think too many people knew it,” he said. “But it made a funny strange sound. Like the back of the leather and the back of the net. And I asked Kaner where did it go in? He said it went in long pad, five hole, in that area,” he continued.

“When they lifted up the net, when they went searching for the puck, it was underneath in there deep. They lifted it up, it fell through. We knew that was the winner.”

The last time the Blackhawks were champions, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were young Chicago stars playing with curved sticks, Glenn Hall stood bare-faced in the goal, and John F. Kennedy was president.

Jonathan Toews, the Chicago captain, was named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. He finished second in overall playoff scoring, but had played unevenly in the finals, with three assists and a minus-5 mark.

Nevertheless, he was a force on face-offs throughout the series, winning 97 and losing only 52, and for his preternatural leadership abilities.

“This is the best feeling you can ever get playing hockey, and I just can’t believe it’s happening," Toews said.

He and his teammates Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, both defensemen, won the Stanley Cup and Olympic gold medals with Team Canada in February. The trio joined Ken Morrow (Team USA and the Islanders in 1980), Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan (both Canada and the Red Wings in 2002) in this exclusive club.

The Cup drought was the second longest in league history, after the Rangers’ 54-year sojourn in the wilderness, which ended in 1994.

The Blackhawks seemed to be hanging on for a narrow victory in the third period against a furious Flyers attack, but they did not hold on in regulation. Philadelphia’s Scott Hartnell scored with 3:59 left for his second goal of the night, sending the game to overtime.

But Kane’s goal, which came after the Flyers had at least four clear chances at the Chicago net in the extra session, made the road team winners for the first time in the series.

It was a victory typical of this series: not well played, but exciting and unpredictable. Like the Olympic gold medal game at Vancouver in February, it ended memorably, in overtime.

John Madden threw his gloves into a corner after Kane scored, picked them up after he thought the goal might not count, then threw them again.

“It was like we won two Cups tonight,” said Madden, a former Devils wing. “It was pretty weird.”

Flyers fans stood and saluted their resilient team, then booed loudly as the Blackhawks paraded the Cup around the ice.

The Flyers had earned a berth in the playoffs on the last day of the regular season by winning a shootout against the Rangers and were seemingly eliminated in the Eastern Conference semifinals, trailing the Boston Bruins by three games to none, and by 3-0 in Game 7 in Boston. But the Flyers rallied to become the third N.H.L. team to win a best-of-seven-game series after trailing by 0-3.

The Blackhawks, with a 17-7 shooting advantage, were the better team in the opening period, but the score was tied at the first intermission after Dustin Byfuglien and Hartnell traded power-play goals.

The Blackhawks held the edge in play in the second period as well, outshooting the Flyers by 10-6. But they fell behind when Danny Briere, the leading scorer of the finals, beat Chicago goalie Antti Niemi on a play that started when Keith tripped over Hartnell’s skate.

Patrick Sharp tied the score by finishing a fine passing play with a shot from 21 feet that beat Leighton to the short side at 9:58 — a soft goal, but not quite as soft as Kane’s overtime winner. Andrew Ladd tipped in Niklas Hjalmarsson’s shot at 17:43, and the Blackhawks were ahead by 3-2 entering the third period.

Niemi, who had a shaky series, stopped 21 of 24 Flyers shots and ended with an .882 series save percentage. He became the first Finnish goalie to backstop his team to a Stanley Cup. Leighton ended with 37 saves on 41 shots. His save percentage in the series was .876.

The Flyers’ line of Hartnell, Danny Briere and Ville Leino was by far the best for either team in the series. Briere led the series in scoring with 3 goals and 10 assists for 13 points. Leino — a rookie even though he is 26 and who had already been named the most valuable player in the Finnish SM-liiga, Europe’s second-best professional league — had 7 goals and 14 assists for 21 points in the playoffs. That tied him for the postseason rookie scoring record, set by Dino Ciccarelli of the Minnesota North Stars in 1981.

It was the sixth straight final series that the Flyers have lost. That ties them with the Maple Leafs of 1933-40 and the Red Wings of 1956-95 for most consecutive finals lost.

At one point they ranked 29th in the 30-team league, but Peter Laviolette, who won the Stanley Cup in 2006 with a lightly regarded Carolina team, took over as coach in December.

“It hurts a lot,” said the Flyers captain Mike Richards, who had a quiet finals. “At the end, they got the last bounce.”

Chicago’s Stan Bowman, 36, became the youngest general manager to win the Cup. The son of the legendary coach and manager Scotty Bowman, Stan Bowman was in his first year at the helm of the Blackhawks.

It was also the first Stanley Cup for Blackhawks Coach Joel Quenneville, one of only three men to participate in at least 800 N.H.L. games as both a player and a head coach. His name is already engraved on the Cup, from when he was an assistant with Colorado in 1996. Now it will be etched onto the silverware with the 2010 Blackhawks.

The same is true of Marian Hossa, the first player to reach the Stanley Cup finals in three straight years with three different teams. After losing with the Penguins and the Red Wings the last two years, he finally won Wednesday.

Hossa was the first person Toews passed the Cup to.

“What a relief,” Hossa said. “I’m so happy to finally do this.”

On the ice after the game, the Blackhawks and their family, friends and fans celebrated as 2010 was added to the club’s previous Cup victories, in 1961, ’38 and ’34.

Kane, whose summer was marked by controversy when he and a cousin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after they got into a late-night dispute over a fare with a Buffalo cab driver, ended the season in glory, with the 16th overtime goal to win the Stanley Cup.

On the ice he was being horsecollared by his jubilant friends and showed the television audience his “famous cousin.”

“Got to shout out to my people back in Buffalo, my hometown,” Kane said. “I have four buddies who drove all the way to come out here; my five family members; three sisters, three beautiful sisters. My mom and dad. What a feeling, I can’t believe it. We just won the Stanley Cup.”

Dave Caldwell contributed reporting from Philadelphia.

Mystery S.C. nominee has pending felony charge

2010-06-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

Mystery S.C. nominee has pending felony charge
By John Cook
Copyright by Yahoo! News
June 9, 2010
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2500

Alvin Greene has been on the phone all day. That's to be expected for the guy who just won South Carolina's Democratic Senate primary and is facing incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November. But everyone calling Greene has just been trying to find out who the heck he is — and one thing reporters learned Tuesday is that a criminal complaint was sworn out against him last year for allegedly showing obscene photos to a South Carolina college student and suggesting they go to her dorm room.

Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign — no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.

The result has baffled political observers, who had heavily favored Rawl — a former state legislator, attorney and prosecutor who had the edge inasmuch as he actually campaigned and tried to win. Many in South Carolina (which has grandly lived up to its reputation as a political circus this year) suspect that somewhere, a crafty GOP political operative is snickering.

As far as the local political press can discern, the only positive step Greene took toward campaigning was when he plunked down a $10,400 check in March to satisfy the state's filing fee and get on the ballot. He never registered a campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission or filed a financial disclosure with the Senate Ethics Committee.

So why did he run, and how did he win? "I campaigned," Greene, who spoke rapidly and seemed distracted, told Yahoo! News in a brief interview. "It was a low-budget campaign. I funded it 100 percent out of my own pocket, and kept it simple — it was old-fashioned." Asked what, precisely, that campaign consisted of, and how much he spent on it, Greene demurred. "Not much. I had friends helping me."

He said he hasn't yet reached the $5,000 spending limit that triggers a requirement to file with the FEC, despite having spent that $10,400 filing fee (a pretty penny for someone with no job). Like any good politician, Greene tried to deflect questions about the particulars of his campaign to talk of "the issues."

"I graduated from the University of South Carolina," he said. "We have more unemployment than any other time in South Carolina history. Hold on, I have another beep."

Shortly after his Yahoo! News interview, the Associated Press reported that Greene was arrested in November on the obscene photo complaint. Charges are pending, and he hasn't entered a plea. One could, of course, note that such charges wouldn't necessarily hurt a candidate in a Palmetto state election season that's featured plenty of sensational sexual charges.

Greene's candidacy has raised suspicions that he may have been induced to run by Republican operatives in order to sow dissension in the Democratic ranks. It's not uncommon in South Carolina for Republicans to recruit African-American challengers to run against white frontrunners in Democratic primaries in the hope of drumming up racial tensions. (Greene is black.) The straw candidates aren't supposed to win — they're just supposed to create a racially divisive primary to damage the candidate's ability to put together a coalition in the general election.

It's nothing new to Nu Wexler, the former executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "In 2004, on the last day you could file to run in the primary, we were wrapping things up when an SUV with a Bush-Cheney sticker dropped off three black guys who came in to file to run in some local races, and they all paid the filing fee with sequentially numbered cashier's checks from a local credit union," he said. In 1990, famed South Carolina political consultant Rod Shealy was convicted of violating campaign laws after recruiting a black candidate to run in a GOP primary for lieutenant governor in the hope of drawing out racist voters — a maneuver he thought would bolster support for his candidate.

Greene denies that he's a plant. But even if he is, the lack of an actual campaign seems to indicate that whatever plan he might have been a part of was quickly abandoned. Wexler says there may never have even been much of a strategy: "You have consultants doing this kind of thing just because they get bored, and they want something to tell good stories about. It's almost like fraternity pranks."

Greene's success is a testament both to the lackluster quality of the campaign run by Rawl (who raised $186,000 and ran ads) and to the, um, peculiar voting habits of South Carolinians. State Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler speculated to AP that Greene won because his name came before Rawl's on the ballot. Wexler says Greene is a "big name in South Carolina."

We called the South Carolina Democratic Party to ask if it intends to support Greene's candidacy, but haven't heard back. It could attempt to challenge Greene's win by claiming that he didn't pay the filing fee out of his own pocket — which, if true, would be a federal crime. "It puts them in a tough position," Wexler said. "You can't exactly start challenging the filing fees of every candidate."

Bernanke Says the Federal Debt Is ‘Unsustainable’

2010-06-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

Bernanke Says the Federal Debt Is ‘Unsustainable’
By SEWELL CHAN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/business/economy/10fed.html?hp

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday that “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path,” but also recognized that the “exceptional increase” in the deficit had been necessary to ease the recession.

Mr. Bernanke’s comments before a hearing of the House Budget Committee, reiterated his view that the economic recovery would likely be slow and painful for many Americans. The Fed projects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, to rise about 3.5 percent this year — a pace barely above that needed to keep pace with the growth in the labor force.

Mr. Bernanke noted some improvements in consumer spending — particularly on durable goods — and in business investments in software and equipment, but also cautioned that “underlying housing activity appears to have firmed only a little since mid-2009, with activity being weighed down, in part, by a large inventory of distressed or vacant existing houses and by the difficulties of many builders in obtaining credit.”

The chairman offered a somewhat positive assessment of the debt crisis in Europe.

“If markets continue to stabilize, then the effects of the crisis on economic growth in the United States seem likely to be modest,” he said. “Although the recent fall in equity prices and weaker economic prospects in Europe will leave some imprint on the U.S. economy, offsetting factors include declines in interest rates on Treasury bonds and home mortgages as well as lower prices for oil and some other globally traded commodities.”

In response to a question, Mr. Bernanke said that he expected to the economy to grow at a “modest pace” this year .

But what is likely to be the most closely watched part of Mr. Bernanke’s testimony, on fiscal policy and his comments about the budget, will offer little comfort to either Democrats or Republicans.

“A variety of projections that extrapolate current policies and make plausible assumptions about the future evolution of the economy,” Mr. Bernanke said, “show a structural budget gap that is both large relative to the size of the economy and increasing over time.”

Mr. Bernanke defended the extraordinary responses to the recession as necessary and said “the budget deficit should narrow over the next few years.”

But he also has emphasized the risks associated with the aging of the population. This year, he said, there are about five Americans between the ages of 20 and 64 for each person aged 65 or older. By the time most of the baby boomers have retired in 2030, he warned, there would be only three.

“In addition, government expenditures on health care for both retirees and non-retirees have continued to rise rapidly as increases in the costs of care have exceeded increases in incomes,” Mr. Bernanke said. “To avoid sharp, disruptive shifts in spending programs and tax policies in the future, and to retain the confidence of the public and the markets, we should be planning now how we will meet these looming budgetary challenges.”

Mr. Bernanke did not disclose his views on either the timing or the composition of the steps to meet those challenges — in a question-and-answer session with the broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson on Monday night, Mr. Bernanke said he, like Congress, was awaiting the conclusions of a bipartisan fiscal commission appointed by President Obama.

U.N. Approves New Sanctions to Deter Iran

2010-06-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

U.N. Approves New Sanctions to Deter Iran
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/middleeast/10sanctions.html?th&emc=th

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council leveled its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program on Wednesday, but the measures did little to overcome widespread doubts that they — or even the additional steps pledged by American and European officials — would accomplish the Council’s longstanding goal: halting Iran’s production of nuclear fuel.

The new resolution, hailed by President Obama as delivering “the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government,” took months to negotiate and major concessions by American officials, but still failed to carry the symbolic weight of a unanimous decision. Twelve of the 15 nations on the Council voted for the measure, while Turkey and Brazil voted against it and Lebanon abstained.

The United States and Europe acknowledged before negotiations started that they would not get the tough sanctions they were hoping for, promising to enact harsher measures on their own once they had the imprimatur of the United Nations. Congress is expected to pass a package of unilateral sanctions against Iran, and European leaders will begin discussing possible measures at a summit meeting next week.

“We would want to have a tough translation of the resolution,” said Gérard Araud, the French envoy to the United Nations.

But Iran has defied repeated demands from the Security Council to stop enriching nuclear fuel, and immediately vowed to disregard the new sanctions as well. Despite earlier resolutions, Iran has built new, sometimes secret, centrifuge plants needed to enrich uranium — and has enriched it to higher levels of purity.

The main thrust of the sanctions is against military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy. Though Iran insists that its efforts are strictly for peaceful purposes, its actions have raised suspicions in the West. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that Iran’s leaders were actively weighing whether to develop a nuclear weapon.

“Whether or not there should be a move toward a breakout capacity or toward weapons, there is a lot of debate within the leadership,” Mrs. Clinton said, without providing evidence.

Diplomats from Brazil and Turkey, which negotiated a deal with Iran last month to send some of its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for access to fuel for a medical reactor, criticized the sanctions as derailing a fresh chance for diplomacy.

“We do not see sanctions as an effective instrument in this case,” said Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil’s representative to the United Nations.

The five permanent members of the Security Council issued a separate statement emphasizing that diplomacy remained an important option, and Mr. Obama, in a lengthy statement at the White House, left the door open to negotiations.

“This day was not inevitable,” he said. “We made clear from the beginning of my administration that the United States was prepared to pursue diplomatic solutions,” arguing that the Iranian leadership had refused to engage.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered few indications of being swayed by the current resolution, saying during a visit to Tajikistan that sanctions are “annoying flies, like a used tissue.”

Iran’s envoy to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, also enumerated a long list of grievances over what he called outside interference in Iranian affairs, vowing before the Security Council that Iran would “never bow.”

In addition to concentrating on activity by the Revolutionary Guards, the sanctions tighten measures previously taken against 40 individuals, putting them under a travel ban and asset freeze, but the resolution adds just one name to the list — Javad Rahiqi, 56, the head of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center.

The sanctions require countries to inspect ships or planes headed to or from Iran if they suspect banned cargo is aboard, but there is no authorization to board ships by force at sea. Iran has also proved itself adept at obscuring its ownership of cargo vessels.

Another aspect of the sanctions bars all countries from allowing Iran to invest in their nuclear enrichment plants, uranium mines and other nuclear-related technology, and sets up a new committee to monitor enforcement.

The United States had sought broader measures against Iran’s banks, insurance industry and other trade, but China and Russia were adamant that the sanctions not affect Iran’s day-to-day economy. Washington and Beijing were wrangling down to the last day over which banks to include on the list, diplomats said, and in the end only one appeared on the list of 40 new companies to be blacklisted.

The Chinese ambassador, Li Baodong, said his country’s conditions on the sanctions were that they not harm the world economic recovery and not affect the Iranian people or normal trade.

“With time, we got a resolution that we felt was very meaningful and credible and significant,” said Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations. “But had we wanted a low-ball, low-impact resolution, we could have had that in a very short period of time.”

In the end, both Iran’s energy sector and its central bank were mentioned with somewhat tortured wording in the opening paragraphs. But administration officials said that buried in the resolution were specific phrases — they called them "hooks” — that would provide a legal basis for European and other nations to impose tougher, broader sanctions than many Security Council members were willing to adopt.

The new sanctions also ban selling Iran heavy weapons, specifically battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile systems.

“Nobody is suggesting that these sanctions are not going to have an impact,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The question is whether they will put sufficient pressure on Iran to come back to the negotiating table in a more earnest and a more compromising mood.”

Mr. Takeyh questioned whether measures like the weapons ban could have the unintended consequence of driving Iran toward developing a nuclear weapon because it could not get other arms.

On the economic front, studies by the United States government have cast doubt on the efficacy of sanctions, and the World Trade Organization’s Web site indicates that major buyers of Iranian exports include Japan, the European Union, China and India.

“Not too shabby for an alleged pariah state,” said Steven E. Miller, the director of the International Security Program at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “It does sort of raise the question of who exactly we are persuading with our relentless campaign to isolate Iran.”

Restricting a few dozen additional companies “would seem like a thin reed on which to base a policy,” Mr. Miller added. “I think that by default we end up with sanctions because we don’t know what else to do.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Mom: 'They are my babies' - Conjoined twins locked in battle for life

2010-06-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Mom: 'They are my babies' - Conjoined twins locked in battle for life
By Deborah L. Shelton, Tribune reporter
8:04 p.m. CDT, June 8, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-conjoined-twins-20100608,0,7194206,full.story

Lying face to face, with one arm draped around the other, Kaydon and Kameron appear to be locked in a loving embrace.

But the boys, not yet 3 months old, have no choice but to hug each other every minute of every day. They are conjoined twins who share a liver and a single malformed heart.

Doctors discussed terminating the pregnancy with the mother, Brianna Manns, 21, after they determined the twins were not likely to survive. But Manns said abortion was never an option.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>

"I am a strong believer in not having abortions — very, very strong," said Manns, taking a break from the neonatal intensive care unit at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, where her sons are hospitalized. "And they are my babies."

The boys, born March 31, have lived longer than doctors predicted, but they are critically ill. Medical experts say they cannot be separated and are not candidates for a heart transplant because of their complicated anatomy. They cannot breathe without a ventilator and are fed through tubes. Periodically, the babies go into distress and must be resuscitated to prevent them from dying.

Manns has declined to sign a do-not-resuscitate order, saying she wants to give her children every chance at survival. "There must be a reason why I have special babies like this," she said.

But the process has been agonizing for doctors and nurses at the medical center, some of whom worry that their interventions might be going too far. They don't want the babies to suffer.

"We empathize with her, but as health care providers, knowing what we know, we don't want to see the babies die in an agonizing way," said neonatologist Dr. Helen Kusi. "That's where we are not on the same page with her. We haven't given up, but we have to face reality."

Swirling around the two boys is a host of questions. How much intervention is too much — medically, financially and ethically? Are the hospital's measures extending life — or prolonging death?

Twins are rarely born conjoined, but parents and health professionals frequently grapple with dilemmas about treating severely ill infants. Parents of these babies often find it difficult to turn off life-sustaining machines or stop treatment even when there is little or no hope of recovery, medical experts say.

In Manns' case, doctors have been wrong before about the twins' survival chances, first saying they would be stillborn, fueling her hopes that they could be wrong again.

On her visit, Manns caressed the babies' coal-black hair, stroked their silky smooth backs and cradled their delicate hands. The first-time mother hovered over their isolette in a darkened room of the NICU and turned on a Fisher-Price musical toy that serenaded the boys with a lullaby. Nearby hung a photo of Manns and the boys' father, Eric Hayes, wearing yellow hospital scrubs.

The twins' multiple medications, heart monitors, intravenous tubes, tracheotomy tubes and ventilator have not undermined Manns' faith that the babies will survive. She is supported in her decisions by members of both her family and the father's family.

"At the end of the day, it's God's say-so," she said. "I believe in God 100 percent. Yes, the machines are man-made. But God gave them those machines as well. Everything goes back to God."

Doctors say they recognize Manns' difficult situation, as well as their obligation to do what she decides is best for the boys. But they also feel an ethical obligation to spare the babies unnecessary suffering, a dilemma that a medical center ethicist said has caused some of the infants' caretakers "moral distress."

"Sometimes, goals conflict," said Lisa Anderson-Shaw, director of the medical center's clinical ethics consult service. "As much as we might want to fix all that ails these babies, it's just not possible."

At the same time, hospital staff understand Manns' position and want to support her during an emotionally wrenching experience, Anderson-Shaw said.

Thoracopagus twins, the most common type of conjoined infants, are united at the thorax, facing each other, and often share a fused or deformed heart.

The upper chambers of the Manns twins' single heart, known as the right and left atria, have a large hole between them, as do the lower pumping chambers, called the right and left ventricles. As a result, deoxygenated "blue" and oxygenated "red" blood are constantly mixing.

The twins also have other abnormalities of the heart and surrounding blood vessels. Most of the boys' shared liver is in Kameron's body. Both boys have undeveloped lungs, among other problems. Before Manns arrived for her visit, Kameron started having seizures for the first time, and his kidneys appeared to be failing.

Dr. Eric Strauch, associate professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said he has successfully separated two sets of twins connected at the atria but that no twin connected at the ventricles has survived separation surgery. Manns' children share both types of chambers.

The hospital sought an outside opinion from a cardiologist and forwarded medical records to other medical centers after the boys' family members asked for additional evaluations.

Manns' mother, Yolanda Butler-Hamer, has scoured the Internet searching for medical centers that might consider the boys for possible separation surgery and a heart transplant. So far, none contacted by the family or the hospital think it is possible. Strauch said he sees at least one or two cases a year of thoracopagus twins, but most cannot be saved. The Manns twins "didn't have enough cardiac chambers, and there were too many cardiac abnormalities to successfully separate them," he said.

One of the twins' worst days was May 17, when their heart and breathing rates plummeted. Their parents rushed to the hospital, where they were told to say their goodbyes. The boys rebounded, but their conditions have become less stable.

"They would have died on the 17th if not for the aggressive intervention," Kusi said. "This is where the pain comes from. If we had left the children alone they would have died, but because we can push medications and fluids, we resuscitated them back."

Anderson-Shaw said the hospital's goal is quality of life that includes comfort care and pain management.

"We're not providing them curative therapy, we are just prolonging the dying process," she said. "They are growing, but their organs will fail."

The expense of treating critically ill children whose chance of survival is slim raises larger social issues. The hospital bill, which is being charged to Medicaid, was about $792,000 as of June 1.

Manns says she will never stop trying to get the best for her boys. A homemaker for clients of a home care company, she spends up to two hours on public transportation getting to and from the hospital.

"It's tough, but I don't let it overshadow what I see every day," said Mann. "I will not give up. I will never give up. My boys have not stopped fighting, so why should I?"

Both sides of the family have bonded with the twins. The boys have regular visitors, including their paternal grandmother, Celinda Hayes. "They are my heart," she said.

Manns said she prays often for her little boys, hopeful that they will live as long as possible.

"I pray for strength, wisdom and guidance every night," she said.

dshelton@tribune.com

About conjoined twins

•There are nearly a dozen types of conjoined twins. Thoracopagus twins, who are joined at the thorax, make up about 40 percent of all cases.

•About 40 percent to 60 percent of conjoined twins are stillborn, and another 35 percent survive only one day. The overall survival rate of conjoined twins is somewhere between 5 percent and 25 percent.

•Because conjoined twins are genetically identical, they are always the same sex. They develop from the same fertilized egg and share the same amniotic cavity and placenta.

•More male twins conjoin in the womb than female twins, but conjoined girls are three times as likely as boys to be born alive. About 70 percent of all conjoined twins are girls.

•Fraternal twins occur when a woman releases two eggs instead of the usual one and they are fertilized by separate sperm. Identical or paternal twins occur when a single, fertilized egg divides and separates. With conjoined twins, the single fertilized egg does not fully separate and develops into conjoined fetuses.

SOURCE: University of Maryland Medical Center
Get news, sports, and entertainment alerts on your mobile phone >>

Chinese labour unrest spreads

2010-06-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

Chinese labour unrest spreads
ByTom Mitchell in Hong Kong and Robin Kwong in Taipei
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 9 2010 06:18 | Last updated: June 9 2010 06:18
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28c02300-7381-11df-ae73-00144feabdc0.html

About 2,000 workers clash with police during strike protests outside the Taiwan-funded KOK Machinery rubber factory in Kunshan, in east China’s Jiangsu province

Chinese labour protests that have forced shutdowns at foreign factories have spread beyond south China’s industrial heartland, posing a dangerous new challenge for Beijing.

Workers at a Taiwanese machinery factory outside Shanghai clashed with police on Tuesday, leaving about 50 protesters injured. The confrontation represented an escalation of recent industrial action in the country, which until this week had been largely peaceful and concentrated in the southern province of Guangdong.

The violence at KOK International in Kunshan, a factory town in southern Jiangsu province, came just a day after Honda struggled to contain the fallout from its second strike in as many weeks. That strike, at Foshan Fengfu Autoparts, a joint venture majority held by a Honda subsidiary, forced the Japanese carmaker to suspend production at its car assembly plants in nearby Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.

The workers at Foshan Fengfu, which employs 492 people, appeared to have been inspired by a successful strike last week at another Honda components supplier which ended only after the company agreed to a 24-33 per cent wage hike.

Honda said the strike was continuing on Wednesday morning, contradicting a report by the official Xinhua news agency that workers had “completely dispersed” after the supplier, which makes exhaust components for its parent, agreed to come back with an adjusted wage offer in ten days’ time.

The unrest in Foshan suggests that strikes are proliferating faster than local governments and the official All China Federation of Trade Unions – which workers have largely circumvented in their recent protests – can resolve them.

While there is no evidence that workers at different factories are co-ordinating their activities, the success of the first Honda strike has emboldened workers by demonstrating that mass action can yield results.

In a typical example, on June 6 about 300 workers at a Taiwanese audio components factory in Shenzhen, the special economic zone bordering Hong Kong, blocked roads to protest against a change in their shift schedules. A spokesman for Merry Electronics said the situation was quickly defused.

“We had decided at the beginning of the year to raise wages 10 per cent by July 1, but had never announced this to the staff,” Tseng Chin-tang said. “We took advantage of Sunday’s event to let our staff know about the increase.”

Merry Electronics had been paying its staff Rmb950 ($140) a month, in line with regional minimum wage rates, before the increase to Rmb1,050.

Chinese export hopes boost confidence

2010-06-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

Chinese export hopes boost confidence
By Jamie Chisholm, Global Markets Commentator
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 9 2010 08:46 | Last updated: June 9 2010 13:19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1a36b2ec-7384-11df-bc73-00144feabdc0.html

Wednesday 12:15 BST. Reports of a surge in China’s exports has lent support to riskier assets, though the spectre of the eurozone debt crisis continues to menace investors.

The FTSE All-World equities index is up 0.2 per cent and commodities are higher after Reuters reported that a senior Chinese government official had claimed the nation’s exports jumped 50 per cent in May compared with the previous year.

This has raised hopes that such expansion points to a more robust level of global demand than previously believed – a trend perhaps capable of counteracting the fallout from the eurozone crisis.

US equity futures have reversed much of an early loss and are now pointing to a flat opening for Wall Street. The Shanghai stock market has enjoyed its best day for two weeks, bouncing off 12-month lows with, at one stage, a 3 per cent advance.

However, worries linger about the eurozone. The euro is again softer versus the dollar and remains close to an eight-year low versus the yen. Meanwhile, a record €365bn was lodged with the European Central Bank overnight, as the bloc’s banks remain wary of lending to their peers.

Such concerns are not restricted to the eurozone, of course. Comments by rating agency Fitch on the formidable difficulties facing the UK’s public finances reminded investors that budgetary problems were widespread in much of the developed world and spooked markets on Tuesday.

But it is not just fiscal issues that are hurting sentiment. The symbiosis of fiscal and monetary policy is also affecting investors’ attitude towards Jean-Claude Trichet, with Bloomberg saying almost half of those who expressed an opinion on the ECB president viewed him negatively, compared with 27 per cent in January.

The lack of confidence in major institutions, both regulatory and corporate, is a rolling feature of the recent market turmoil. Still, traders will be keen to hear what Mr Trichet says about monetary and fiscal conditions in the eurozone in the press conference following Thursday’s ECB interest rate decision. The Bank of England will also deliver its verdict on monetary policy tomorrow.

☼ Factors to Watch. The strength of the Brazilian economy should be confirmed when the central bank is expected to raise interest rates by 75 basis points to 10.25 per cent later today. The US Federal Reserve publishes its “Beige Book”. Traders will want to see more evidence that commercial activity is strengthening. ☼

● Asia. Shanghai turned an initial loss into a 2.8 per cent gain following the export report. Hong Kong rose 0.7 per cent. However, the news came too late to have any impact on some of the region’s markets. Sydney could only manage a 0.1 per cent advance, while Tokyo lost 1 per cent as a stronger yen and worries about demand from Europe continued to weigh.

● Europe. Wall Street’s rise overnight and the news out of China provided an early sharp lift for the continent’s bourses. However, just like on Tuesday, sellers quickly moved in to pare gains and the FTSE Eurofirst 300 is now up 0.6 per cent and London’s FTSE 100 is down 0.1 per cent, hobbled by another heavy per fall in BP shares.

● Forex. The euro has pared some of its early losses as risk appetite has picked up. But the single currency is still down 0.1 per cent versus the dollar at $1.1962 and off 0.2 per cent at Y109.39 – close to four- and eight-year lows, respectively.

The dollar index, which tracks the buck against a basket of its peers, is up 0.2 per cent at 88.23.

● Debt. The improved mood is curtailing the buying of sovereign havens. The yield on US 10-year Treasuries is up 1 basis point at 3.2 per cent. The US will auction $21bn of 10-year notes later today.

However, a €4.63bn auction of new German two-year notes saw high demand on Wednesday, suggesting an underlying risk aversion among investors. Ten-year Bund yields are tracking the broader trend and are up 1 basis point at 2.54 per cent.

Eurozone “peripheral” sovereign bond yields are a touch lower.

● Commodities. Hopes of better demand from China are boosting the complex. Oil is up 1 per cent at $72.73 a barrel, having been little affected by OPEC’s trimming of its projections for global demand. Copper is up 2.5 per cent at $6,280 a tonne.

Gold is up 0.1 per cent at $1,235 after hitting a new nominal high of $1,251 an ounce on Tuesday.

Follow Jamie Chisholm’s market comments on Twitter: @JamieAChisholm

Wednesday’s Market Menu
What’s affecting risk appetite

Risk on

● China: export report bolsters growth hopes

● Japan: better-than-expected machinery orders

Risk off

● Bank stress: overnight deposits at ECB hit record high

● Euro: still under pressure, while gold demand signals risk aversion

● Strikes: China walkouts ultimately good for workers, bad for margins

● The depth of the negativity towards the prospects for the eurozone were summarised by a Bloomberg survey of global investors, which found that less than a quarter of respondents thought that the region’s €750bn support package would prevent the monetary union’s break up or a member nation’s default.

Legacy for One Billionaire: Death, but No Taxes

2010-06-09T05:22:00.001-07:00

Legacy for One Billionaire: Death, but No Taxes
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/09estate.html?hp

A Texas pipeline tycoon who died two months ago may become the first American billionaire allowed to pass his fortune to his children and grandchildren tax-free.

Dan L. Duncan, a soft-spoken farm boy who started with $10,000 and two propane trucks, and built a network of natural gas processing plants and pipelines that made him the richest person in Houston, died in late March of a brain hemorrhage at 77.

Had his life ended three months earlier, Mr. Duncan’s riches — Forbes magazine estimated his worth at $9 billion, ranking him as the 74th wealthiest in the world — would have been subject to a federal tax of at least 45 percent. If he had lived past Jan. 1, 2011, the rate would be even higher — 55 percent.

Instead, because Congress allowed the tax to lapse for one year and gave all estates a free pass in 2010, Mr. Duncan’s four children and four grandchildren stand to collect billions that in any other year would have gone to the Treasury.

The United States enacted an estate tax in 1916, and when John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire, died in 1937, his estate paid 70 percent. Since then, the rates have fluctuated, but this is the first time the tax has been repealed altogether.

The bonanza in tax savings for Mr. Duncan’s descendants is sure to be unsettling to those who have paid estate taxes on more modest wealth — until Jan. 1 of this year, it applied to any estate valued at more than $3.5 million, taxing only the money exceeding that threshold, or $7 million for a couple’s estate.

Although the tax affects only about 5,500 estates a year, it is such an incendiary issue that when Congress unexpectedly let it lapse at the end of 2009, financial advisers warned that it might play a macabre factor in the end-of-life decisions being weighed by heirs of elderly Americans. Some estate lawyers worried that tax considerations might prompt their clients to keep an ill relative on life support through the end of 2009 to get the favorable treatment — or worse, resist life-prolonging measures to hasten a relative’s demise before the end of 2010.

The one-year lapse in the estate tax was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001, an accounting quirk in his package of tax cuts. Although Democrats pledged to close that gap and reinstate a tax for 2010 when they took control of Congress, they failed to reach an agreement last December. The Senate Finance Committee is now trying to forge a compromise that would reinstate the tax, but even if that effort succeeds, it is unclear whether any changes might be retroactive and applied to those who have died so far in 2010.

Many lawyers say Mr. Duncan’s heirs have the means and motivation to wage a fierce court battle to challenge the constitutionality of any retroactive tax.

Representatives of Mr. Duncan’s family, his estate and his business interests did not return calls about the matter. Mr. Duncan’s will, which is on file at the Harris County Probate Court in Houston, was written in 2006 and amended in 2008, a time when most estate planners assumed that Congress would not allow the tax to lapse. Federal law has long allowed an unlimited amount of assets to pass untaxed to a surviving spouse, and Mr. Duncan left his home and ranch to his wife of more than 20 years, Jan, along with stock valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

But the bulk of his estate is left to his children and grandchildren, and would have been taxable in 2009 or 2011.

In addition to personal effects bequeathed to his descendants — boats, jewelry, automobiles, shotguns and a 5,500-acre Texas hunting ranch stocked with wild game — he passed on his holdings in EPCO and Dan Duncan L.L.P., two entities in the natural gas and pipeline empire he built. The stock involved includes more than 100 million shares in Enterprise GP Holdings, which closed at $43.23 the last trading day before Mr. Duncan died. That asset alone could have resulted in a $2 billion estate tax.

The Treasury collected more than $25 billion in estate taxes in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available.

Elaborate estate plans with sophisticated trusts are often made many years before death to reduce estate taxes owed by the richest.

Advocates of the tax say it is unconscionable that Congressional leaders have allowed the richest Americans to reap a new tax break at a time when deficits are soaring and the income gap between wealthy and poor citizens remains near historic levels.

“The ultrawealthy in this country will still be able to pass on enormous wealth to the next generation,” said Chuck Collins, who studies income inequality and has worked with billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to promote an estate tax. Mr. Collins argues that the tax is a “recycling program for economic opportunity.”

But opponents, who label it a death tax, say it is unfair because it taxes the same income twice — once when it is earned and again when it is passed on to heirs.

Mr. Duncan’s eldest daughter, Randa Duncan Williams, is serving as executor of the estate and is a voting member of the family trust that will now control her father’s interest in Enterprise GP Holdings.

Should the family trust sell these inherited shares, capital gains taxes would presumably be owed on the difference between Mr. Duncan’s original cost, which could be quite low, and their market value when sold. Capital gains taxes are capped at 15 percent.

Ms. Williams, who has served as a director and general partner at the family’s energy businesses for years, was deeply involved in her father’s philanthropic efforts and is expected to continue much of that charitable work.

During his life, Mr. Duncan contributed to a wide assortment of wildlife foundations and community institutions like the Houston Zoo and Houston Museum of Science, and an assortment of medical institutions. The various medical centers at Baylor College of Medicine received more than $250 million from Mr. Duncan and his wife, with more than $100 million used to found the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center.

Mr. Duncan’s will designates a handful of nonprofit groups and charitable foundations that will receive donations, all of which would have been tax-exempt even in years when the estate tax was in effect.

An avid big game hunter — Mr. Duncan has more than 500 entries in the Safari Club International record book for killing animals including polar bears, rhinoceroses, bighorn sheep, lions and elephants — he made a $1 million donation in his will to the Shikar Safari Club International Foundation.

The will also directs that any money or assets not otherwise specified for a relative or charity be deposited into two family charitable trusts, which can be used to donate to causes deemed worthy by his heirs.

New York Times Editorial: Keeping Politics Safe for the Rich

2010-06-09T05:15:00.000-07:00

New York Times Editorial: Keeping Politics Safe for the Rich
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09wed1.html?th&emc=th

In a burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upended the gubernatorial race in Arizona, cutting off matching funds to candidates participating in the state’s public campaign finance system. Suddenly, three candidates, including Gov. Jan Brewer, can no longer receive public funds they had counted on to run against a free-spending wealthy opponent.

The court’s reckless order muscling into the race was terse and did not say whether there were any dissents, though it is hard to imagine there were not. An opinion explaining its reasoning will have to wait until the next term, assuming it takes the case, but by that time the state’s general election will be over and its model campaign finance system substantially demolished.

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

Arizona’s clean elections program was established by the state’s voters in 1998 after a series of scandals provided clear illustrations of money’s corrupting influence. In particular, the program was prompted by the AzScam scandal of 1991, in which many state legislators were recorded accepting contributions and bribes in exchange for approval of gambling legislation.

The system gives qualifying candidates a lump-sum grant for their primary or general election races in exchange for which the candidates agree not to raise large private contributions. If an opposing candidate is not participating in the system and spends more than the lump-sum grant, the participating candidate qualifies for additional matching funds.

It was those matching funds that produced a challenge from well-financed candidates, backed by the Goldwater Institute and other conservative interests. The candidates argued that the matching funds “chilled” their freedom of speech because they were afraid to spend more than the limit that triggered the funds. A lower court agreed with that pretzel logic, but last month a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed. It said the speech of the plaintiffs had not been chilled. “The essence of this claim is not that they have been silenced,” the panel said, “but that the speech of their opponents has been enabled.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court eliminated the Millionaires’ Amendment, which let Congressional candidates raise more money when running against candidates who pay for their own campaigns. In January, in the Citizens United case, the court eliminated limits to campaign spending by corporations. Both cases cited the First Amendment rights of the wealthy, and in that depressing sequence, state finance programs would be the court’s next conquest.

If the court pushes on with its chainsaw, cutting down programs that trigger matching funds, it would threaten systems in Connecticut and Maine, and judicial-race financing systems in Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere. It might even shake New York City’s system, which provides higher matching funds when a well-financed opponent does not participate in the system. Candidates with no prospect of matching funds would be reluctant to join a system that limits their spending. Unless the court veers from its determined path, there will be no limit to the power of a big bankbook on politics.

Afghanistan Strategy Shifts to Focus on Civilian Effort

2010-06-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan Strategy Shifts to Focus on Civilian Effort
By ROD NORDLAND
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/world/asia/09kandahar.html?th&emc=th

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The prospect of a robust military push in Kandahar Province, which had been widely expected to begin this month, has evolved into a strategy that puts civilian reconstruction efforts first and relegates military action to a supportive role.

American development officials visited Kandahar University on Tuesday as Canadian soldiers patrolled around the campus.

The strategy, Afghan, American and NATO civilian and military officials said in interviews, was adopted because of opposition to military action from an unsympathetic local population and Afghan officials here and in Kabul.

There are also concerns that a frontal military approach has not worked as well as hoped in a much smaller area in Marja, in neighboring Helmand Province.

The goal that American planners originally outlined — often in briefings in which reporters agreed not to quote officials by name — emphasized the importance of a military offensive devised to bring all of the populous and Taliban-dominated south under effective control by the end of this summer. That would leave another year to consolidate gains before President Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops.

In fact, there has been little new fighting in Kandahar so far, and the very word “offensive” has been banished.

“We cannot say the term offensive for Kandahar,” said the Afghan National Army officer in charge here, Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai. “It is actually a partnership operation.”

The commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, insisted that there never was a planned offensive. “The media have chosen to use the term offensive,” he said. Instead, he said, “we have certainly talked about a military uplift, but there has been no military use of the term offensive.”

Whatever it is called, it is not happening this month. Views vary widely as to just when the military part will start. General Zazai says it will begin in July but take a break for Ramadan in mid-August and resume in mid-September. A person close to Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, says it will not commence until winter, or at least not until harvests end in October. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

American officials, on the other hand, say it has already begun, not with a bang, but with a steady increase of experts from the United States Embassy and NATO and aid workers — a “civilian surge” — accompanied by a quiet increase in American troops to provide security for them. The Americans strongly deny that they planned an offensive they are now backing away from.

Whereas in Marja the plan was to carry out a military assault to oust the Taliban, followed by rapid delivery of government services, in Kandahar the approach is now the opposite. Civilian aid workers, protected by an increased military force, will try to provide those services first, before any major military action.

“This is not going to be a door-to-door military campaign,” said one American civilian official, who requested anonymity in line with his agency’s policy. “You’ll see more Afghan National Police checkpoints, but it’s not going to be an aggressive military campaign. They’ve looked at it and realized it wouldn’t work.”

The troops have been arriving on schedule; for the first time, Afghanistan now has more American soldiers than Iraq does. Some 94,000 are here, compared with 92,000 in Iraq, with roughly half of them in Helmand and Kandahar, though the full troop levels will not be reached until August.

The United States Marine Corps assault on Marja that began on Feb. 13 was called Operation Moshtarak Phase II (after the Dari word for “together”), and planners initially called the Kandahar offensive Operation Moshtarak Phase III. Now Phase III has a new name, Operation Hamkari (Dari for “cooperation”).

“I’m not sure exactly what happened at the political level above us, but the very name of the thing changed,” said one NATO official in Kandahar, whose government’s policy requires that his name be withheld.

It is not so much what happened as what did not. Marja did not go nearly as well as hoped, and the area is still not sufficiently controlled for the local government’s activities to resume or take root.

Marja, with 60,000 residents, is far smaller than Kandahar, with more than a million in the city and the surrounding districts. If Marja was hard, planners worried, what might Kandahar be?

Then on April 4, President Hamid Karzai held a shura, a tribal assembly, with 1,500 local leaders in Kandahar. “He certainly took away the impression that people didn’t want to see Ramadi or Falluja on the streets of Kandahar, and I think we all said ‘Amen’ to that,” General Carter said.

In fact, Mr. Karzai promised local people that there would not be a Kandahar offensive. “You don’t want an offensive, do you?” he asked the crowd, to general acclamation. “There will be no operation until you are happy.”

Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Wardak said the new approach was adopted after officials considered the mistakes made in Marja and the much larger scale of Kandahar.

“We have learned lessons, also, which we will apply in the future,” he said in an interview this week. “About Kandahar, it is a different type operation, it is not like Marja, it is not going to be that kinetic.” (Kinetic is military jargon to describe fighting.)

Instead, the emphasis has been placed on strengthening provincial reconstruction teams, once run by Canadians, with American employees — from the embassy, the Agency for International Development and the Department of Agriculture — in six crucial districts around Kandahar.

The Kandahar civilian operation increased to 110 Americans from 8 last year, with 50 more on their way this summer, United States officials say. They are providing subsidized seeds and tools, carrying out cash-for-work programs and even hiring employees for Afghan government offices here.

The program for agricultural vouchers alone has been given a quarter of a billion dollars to spend in southern Afghanistan, $90 million of that in Kandahar. “It’s huge,” said one official. “We’ve employed 40,000 people in cash for work.”

The idea, said Frank Ruggiero, the senior United States Embassy official in the south, is to make sure “the government at the most basic level, the district level, is able to provide some services so that people who are sitting on the fence are able to say, well, the government has something to offer.”

A key to being able to do that is the steady increase of troops from the United States and other NATO nations for protection.

Until 2009, a Canadian battle group of 1,300 troops was responsible for all of Kandahar and could do little more than keep the Taliban from taking the city — while leaving the insurgents free to operate in the surrounding districts. Canadian civilians working on provincial reconstruction rarely left their base.

Since last year, the United States Army has brought in the Second Stryker Brigade, a battalion of the 82nd Airborne, parts of the Fourth Infantry Division and a cavalry squadron, for the crucial outlying districts, as well as a military police battalion in the city of Kandahar itself.

“The military presence bought us the political space and oxygen this fall to start putting projects in to remedy grievances in the districts and more recently in the city itself,” said an American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with United States Embassy policy.

Their biggest obstacle has been getting more aid delivered by Afghans rather than by Americans, so that the Afghan government gets the credit for it.

Qualified Afghans who might work for the government have been scared away by a Taliban assassination campaign; others were siphoned off by the United Nations and relief groups that pay far higher salaries.

As a result, American civilian officials are urgently recruiting Afghans in an attempt to speed up delivery of services before fighting increases this summer, as many expect it will — offensive or no offensive.

“We’ve seen some huge strides,” said Katya Sienkiewicz, who runs A.I.D.’s agriculture vouchers program in Kandahar. “Everything is up for grabs this summer; we’re racing to get as much done as we can before operations start in.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Lincoln Bucks Tide; Business Leaders Win in California

2010-06-09T05:09:00.000-07:00

Lincoln Bucks Tide; Business Leaders Win in California
By JEFF ZELENY and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/us/politics/09elect.html?th&emc=th

WASHINGTON — Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas survived a tough challenge from her party’s left wing on Tuesday to capture the Democratic nomination in a runoff primary election, resisting the anti-incumbent wave that has defined the midterm election year.

Mrs. Lincoln withstood a multi-million-dollar campaign against her from organized labor, environmental groups and liberal advocacy organizations from outside Arkansas as she prevailed over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. She faces a difficult contest in the fall, but her victory challenges the suggestion that voters are poised to oust all officeholders.

“We proved that this senator’s vote is not for sale and neither is yours,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “We took on the outside groups seeking to manipulate our votes.”

In California, Republican primary voters chose female business executives to run for Senate and for governor after both crushed their opponents.

Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, beat Tom Campbell, a former congressman, and Chuck DeVore, whose candidacy drew the backing of many Tea Party activists. She will face the incumbent senator, Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, in the fall.

Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay and a billionaire, had invested a small share of her personal fortune to prevail in the governor’s race over Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, who put $24 million of his own money into his primary campaign. She will challenge Jerry Brown, the state’s Democratic attorney general, who was first elected governor of California three decades ago.

In Nevada, Sharron Angle, a candidate backed by the Tea Party, defeated two establishment Republicans — including Sue Lowden, a former state party chairwoman — to win the nomination to challenge Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, this fall. Mr. Reid is widely viewed as one of the most endangered Democrats, facing a strong tide of disapproval from Nevada voters.

The nomination of Ms. Angle could provide a boost to Mr. Reid’s hopes, and Mr. Reid’s aides said they were preparing to seize on positions she has taken to try to portray her as out of touch with most Nevada voters. For example, she has called for the privatization of Social Security, the elimination of the Department of Energy, and cutting back regulation on Wall Street, all positions that could give Mr. Reid’s well-financed campaign ammunition to use in television advertisements against her. She also does not have the organization or financial resources that Mr. Reid is bringing to the race.

In South Carolina, Nikki Haley moved closer to becoming the first female governor of South Carolina as she strongly outpaced three Republican primary rivals in one of the most divisive contests in a series of primaries in 11 states across the country that will further shape the contours of the midterm election season.

It was the busiest primary day so far this year, a coast-to-coast series of contests that amplified many of the existing themes that have crystallized as the parties select their nominees for governor, the House and the Senate against a backdrop of high unemployment and a sullen economy. But the results also underscored the individuality of the midterm campaign and the unpredictability of the next five months.

California voters approved a proposition revamping the way local, state and some federal candidates are chosen in primaries, effectively eliminating closed one-party nominating contests in favor of open primaries. Under the system, primaries — not including presidential ones — are open to all candidates, regardless of party. The two top vote-drawers go on to face each other in a general election

The proposal, its backers said, is intended to try to break a pattern where candidates are encouraged to appeal to the most partisan members of their party in order to win primaries.

The victory by Mrs. Lincoln produced the biggest surprise — even to some of her supporters — and a significant blow to a coalition of left-leaning groups, which had spent the day arranging interviews to explain how they had toppled a two-term senator.

Her triumph may have been seen by some incumbents, who have been viewing the coming general election with growing fear, as a glimmer of hope on an otherwise bleak horizon. But she won after a personal intervention by one of Arkansas’ favorite sons — former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned aggressively on her behalf.

And for all the support that Mr. Halter drew, he was still in a position where he was trying to win an election in a relatively conservative state while running with the backing of some of the most liberal groups in the country, including MoveOn.org and labor unions.

In South Carolina, Ms. Haley overcame accusations of infidelity and benefited from the endorsement of Sarah Palin in a contest that lived up to the state’s reputation for anything-goes politics. But she fell short of claiming an outright majority, setting up a runoff against Representative J. Gresham Barrett, a four-term congressman. They were part of a four-way Republican field seeking to succeed Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, who confessed to an affair with an Argentine woman last year and was restricted from seeking re-election by term limits.

“We had the kitchen sink thrown at us,” Ms. Haley said in an interview on Tuesday. “We are a state of great people. We are a state of dirty politics.”

In recent weeks, Ms. Haley, 38, had been twice accused of infidelity, which she fiercely denied. She rose in the polls by promising to break an entrenched network that has dominated state politics in South Carolina for decades and she portrayed the unsubstantiated charges of sexual affairs as retaliation for taking on special interests.

Ms. Haley, an Indian-American, would also become the first racial minority to be elected governor of South Carolina. Democrats nominated Vincent Sheheen on Tuesday, but Republican candidates in South Carolina hold a considerable advantage in the fall.

Last month, Ms. Haley took a sharp leap in the polls after endorsements and campaign visits from Ms. Palin and Jenny Sanford, the popular former first lady. Ms. Haley had trailed far behind her three Republican rivals in fund-raising and visibility. After she voted Tuesday, she was asked whether she wanted to be seen as a barrier-breaker politician.

“These stereotypes of South Carolina are very different from what South Carolina actually is,” she said. “If I win, I want it to be historic in the nature that South Carolina is moving forward for reform.”

In Nevada, Jim Gibbons, the state’s embattled Republican governor, lost a nomination for a second term to Brian Sandoval, a former state assemblyman. Mr. Gibbons, whose term has been marked by a series of scandals, a very public divorce and a financial crisis, became the first governor in the history of Nevada to lose his seat in a party primary.

In Iowa, Republicans nominated Terry Branstad, who served as the state’s governor from 1983 to 1999, to run again. He prevailed in a three-way primary and will face Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, in the fall.

In another South Carolina race, Representative Bob Inglis, a Republican who has occasionally broken with his party on national security and social issues, was forced into a runoff against Trey Gowdy.

In the only contest of the night that will send a new lawmaker to Congress, voters in the northwest corner of Georgia elected a former State House member, Tom Graves, to fill a House vacancy created when Representative Nathan Deal left to run for governor. It was a low-turnout election and is expected to be the last special Congressional election before November, meaning that any new vacancies will be filled on Nov. 2.

In Virginia, Robert Hurt, a state senator, easily won a contested Republican primary to challenge Representative Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat, in November. Mr. Perriello is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents because of his votes for both the Democratic health care bill and climate change measures.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Lexington, S.C.., and Shaila Dewan from Little Rock, Ark.

Mike Rogers's New Target: Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk/New Mark Kirk gay rumors arise

2010-06-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

Mike Rogers's New Target: Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk
Copyright By Advocate.com Editors
Posted on Advocate.com June 01, 2010
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/06/01/Mike_Rogers_Targets_Rep_Mark_Kirk/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advocate.com+Daily+News%29&utm_content=Twitter

Following last week's historic House vote to begin the process of repealing "don't ask, don't tell," gay activist Mike Rogers has a new target on Capitol Hill.

Citing multiple sources in a Tuesday Blog Active post, Rogers, long known for outing closeted politicians with antigay voting records, alleged that Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who voted against DADT repeal, is gay.

Rogers wrote that following the DADT House vote on Thursday, several sources called him regarding Kirk's sexuality — including two unidentified men who claimed to have had sexual relations with Kirk.

Rogers also wrote that Kirk had obliquely disclosed his sexual orientation to him at a 2004 party in Washington, D.C.

"I was introduced to [Kirk] by the person I came with and at the time did not realize he was a member of the House," Rogers wrote. "As my friend walked away, Kirk asked me if the man who introduced us was 'single or attached.' When I said that he had a partner Kirk replied disappointingly, 'Oh, well.' At the end of that interaction I walked away and didn't think much of it at the time."

Rogers's previous outings have included Florida representative Mark Foley and Virginia representative Ed Schrock, who dropped his reelection bid in 2004 after Rogers posted explicit voice-mail messages from the two-term congressman made to a gay hook-up phone service.

A spokesman for Kirk has not yet responded to requests for comment on Rogers's post.

Kirk, a fifth-term congressman who is running for U.S. Senate, received an 85% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, in part for his support of hate-crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Kirk lost the group's endorsement for the race to fill the seat to be vacated by Roland Burris, however, after the DADT vote last week.

Read Rogers's post here.

New Mark Kirk gay rumors arise
Copyright by The Windy City times
2010-06-09
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=26852

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk is once again the subject of gay rumors, as blogger Mike Rogers—who has a reputation for outing politicians—is claiming that Kirk is a closeted gay man, according to Huffington Post.
On his site, Rogers' BlogActive, Rogers said that he is bringing up the issue of Kirk's sexuality after sources contacted him after Kirk voted against repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." ( The LGBT-rights organization Human Rights Campaign is backing Kirk's opponent, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, after Kirk's vote. ) Rogers is claiming that two men said they had sexual relations with Kirk while he attended college; Rogers also said that Kirk referred to his own homosexuality when they met at a party several years ago.

This is not the first time Kirk's sexuality has been discussed. In December, during the GOP primary race for President Barack Obama's old seat, Windy City Times reported that Republican Andy Martin claimed in a radio ad that "Illinois Republican leader Jack Roeser said there is a 'solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual.'"

Kirk's campaign manager, Eric Elk, said in a statement that " [ t ] he ad is not true and is demeaning to the political process." In a press conference held Dec. 28, 2009, openly gay Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jacob Meister criticized Martin.

Kirk recently told a WGN-TV reporter that he is not gay, and that people only make assumptions about his sexuality because he is divorced.

Meanwhile, Kirk has apologized for inaccuracies he has stated about his military career, according to the Chicago Tribune. Among the misstatements were that he served in the Gulf War and that he was attacked while flying missions over Iraq. Appearing before the Tribune's editorial board, Kirk said, "I would describe them as mistakes ... and for me going forward if you see a problem, fix it."