Subject: Looks like bad weather From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 17:10:22 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: ADAM POSEN GLOBAL IMBALANCES IN 2006 Batten down the hatches in case the economic storm hits People complain about the weather all the time, but no one does anything about it. So it goes with the potential economic storm that will be generated by the inevitable adjustment of global imbalances. We are told repeatedly that the US current account deficit is unsustainable, that the US housing bubble and government deficits bring the day of reckoning closer and that underlying protectionist pressures imperil the Doha round of trade negotiations, if not the entire trading system. The recommended policy responses are limited to those that would simply bring on the adjustment contraction of US domestic demand, direct political conflict with agricultural interests, a sharp dollar decline, rising interest rates - a little bit earlier and perhaps only a little less severely. Yet, we can at least prepare for bad weather before it hits. Imagine if knowing that New Orleans was likely someday to be hit by a powerful hurricane had actually induced reasonable preparations. Levees could have been built more strongly, evacuation plans drawn up, early warning systems made credible to suspicious citizens. No one could have prevented Katrina, but the damage from it could have been significantly reduced. Similarly, there are policy steps that should be taken to batten down the global economy ahead of a potentially severe shock from renewed trade protectionism or dollar adjustment. Little has been done to prepare, however, because policymakers have little incentive to plan ahead. Trade negotiators and the special interests trying to constrain them benefit from pursuing a strategy of brinkmanship and so will do nothing to reduce the chances or costs of a Doha crack-up. The US and Chinese finance officials have not yet gone to the brink over revaluing the renminbi, but they are sufficiently tempted to draw lines in the sand that they, too, have little interest in lowering the stakes of economic conflict. If the governments of the big economies wanted to learn from Katrina, though, they would take action to limit the damage that resolving the current global imbalances could bring. First, they should strengthen economic linkages. Foreign direct investment and capital flows link economies even when trade barriers constrain commerce. The US, the European Union and Japan (Mundell!) could reverse the effect of their recent decisions to block cross-border mergers by simplifying the process in three ways: agreeing on a narrow definition of what constitutes a 'national security' exception; bringing accounting standards negotiations to a close, which would remove uncertainty for prospective investors; and publicly repudiating the often-invoked image of foreign investors as 'vultures' who prey on employees. All this would help protect the ties between economies, encouraging continued cross-border integration of production as well as flows of capital, whatever happens with the trade round. Second, they should enhance financial stability. Financial fragility is the primary means by which limited shocks get escalated into macroeconomic crises. Right now, with interest rate spreads at historic lows, any international adjustment that pushed up interest rates and reversed current account surpluses outside the US could lead to sharp declines in asset values and therefore in financial sector capital. Bank supervisors in the big economies should be tightening their scrutiny and encouraging increased provisioning by banks. Financial regulators should be warning householders of the risks presented by investments that have appeared stable in recent years. Where crisis response infrastructure is lacking - as arguably the decentralised system in the EU is - now would be a good time to rationalise. Third, they must commit to macro-economic stabilisation. Central banks and budgetary officials could reassure the public that they will respond strongly to swings in growth (thereby avoiding the mistakes of Japanese officials in the 1990s and EU officials in recent years). In fact, if they credibly commit to stabilisation policy, private-sector expectations may limit overshooting of exchange rates and investment levels. For the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank, this is a matter of adopting inflation targets that would oblige monetary policy to offset excessive movements in prices up or down; for the budgetary authorities, this means giving automatic stabilisers full room to work (for example, by the EU reworking the stability and growth pact) or authorising sufficient unemployment benefits in the US and Japan. There are constructive measures that governments can and should take to prepare for the adjustment process, independent of their present politically determined approaches to trade negotiations or exchange rate policy. They probably have time to do so before the storm arrives. The US practice of selling off assets to fund a consumption boom today may be a lousy idea for anyone who cares about future American income, but that does not make it immediately unsustainable. As 2005, 2004 and 2003 have shown, there is plenty of foreign appetite for US assets and thus room for the current account deficit to continue to expand. Given growth differentials and liquidity of investment assets, both still favouring the US over other markets, 2006 will probably show more of the same. Instead of wondering why the hurricane has not yet hit, let us take advantage of that fact to prepare for when it comes. The writer is senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington FT WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 28 2005

Subject: Muslim Women in Europe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 10:38:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/international/europe/29women.html?ex=1293512400&en=ee7e9a1030c0c599&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Muslim Women in Europe Claim Rights and Keep Faith By MARLISE SIMONS PARIS - Hanife Karakus, the soft-spoken daughter of Turkish immigrants, is a thoroughly European Muslim. She covers her hair with a scarf, but she also has a law degree and married the man of her choice. Matchmakers exerted no pressure. The couple met on the Internet. Perhaps even more telling, Mrs. Karakus this year became the first woman to lead one of France's 25 regional Islamic councils. 'At first, the men didn't speak to me,' she said. 'They were uncomfortable. They didn't know how to work with a woman.' Mrs. Karakus, 24, does not call herself a feminist; she simply says she is a French lawyer. But she qualifies as part of a quiet revolution spreading among young European Muslim women, a generation that claims the same rights as its Western counterparts, without renouncing Islamic values. For many, the key difference is education, an option often denied their poor, immigrant mothers and grandmothers. These young women are studying law, medicine and anthropology, and now form a majority in many Islamic studies courses, traditionally the world of men. They are getting jobs in social work, business and media, and are more prone to use their new independence to divorce. Also, French, English, German or Dutch may be their native languages. 'We are not fully accepted in France, but we are beginning to be everywhere,' said Sihem Habchi, 30, who was born in Algeria, grew up in France and works as a multimedia consultant. Unlike their homebound elders, these emancipated Muslim women use the Internet and spend hours in proliferating Islamic chat rooms. Web sites are now favorite trysting places, a chance for risk-free 'halal dating,' that is, interacting with men in a way that violates no social or religious codes. In the crowded immigrant suburbs ringing Paris, the scene of recent riots mostly led by young Muslim men, high school teachers say girls are the most motivated students because they have the most to gain. In interviews in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, young women repeated this belief like a mantra: studying offers an escape from the oppressive housing projects, from controlling young Muslim radicals and from strict social codes enforced by fathers and brothers. 'We all understood that education was our passport to freedom,' said Soria Makti, 30, the daughter of an Algerian factory worker, who left her Marseille housing project and is a museum curator in the city. The emancipation of Muslim women, like that of Western women before them, is often slow and sometimes deeply painful when women feel they must break with their families. But nowhere is this quiet new form of Islamic feminism more evident than in the realm of religion, the centuries-old domain of men. Young women are increasingly engaging in Islamic studies, a fast-growing field across Europe that offers a blend of theology, Koranic law, ethics and Arabic. Diplomas from the two-year courses allow women to teach in mosques and in Islamic schools, or to act as religious advisers. 'This is a big shift,' said Amel Boubekeur, a social scientist at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, who is writing her doctoral thesis on Europe's 'new Islamic elites.' 'Instead of having to be passive, women now become teachers,' she said. 'It used to be taboo for women to recite the Koran.' But now, she added, 'It offers them a new prestige, new jobs and, not least, it gives them a stronger voice in dealing with their parents, brothers and husbands.' In fact, Ms. Boubekeur said, women found religious texts more effective than secular arguments. Today, Islamic studies courses, often taken on weekends and accessible to secondary school graduates, are expanding in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. In the six institutes for Islamic studies in France, almost 60 percent of this year's nearly 1,000 students are women. La Grande Mosquée in Paris, a large white and green compound from the 1920's with a finely chiseled minaret and students milling about under arcades, is France's leading religious institution. It has its own theological school, largely financed by Algeria. Abdelkrim Bekri, the director, said that the school started a program in 2002, unavailable elsewhere, to train young women as spiritual counselors for hospitals and prisons, much like the ministry of Christian chaplains. Twenty women had graduated, and others were in training, he said. 'There is a great need here,' he said. Although women are not allowed to perform the most prestigious ritual of leading the mosque in Friday Prayer, Ms. Boubekeur said women were pushing to have a voice and participate in religious debates. 'What is new is that they want direct access to religion, without depending on the rigid views of the clergy,' she said. Change can be measured in other small steps. At the Islamic University of Rotterdam, a small group of theology students, most of them speaking Dutch but all tightly veiled, chatted after classes about the need to end the social segregation of men and women. 'In class, we sit anywhere we choose,' said a student who gave her name only as Aisha. 'In the mosques, we don't want to sit in separate or hidden spaces.' Ertegul Gokcekuyu, the university registrar, said more than 60 percent of his students were women. 'The motivation of the girls is very remarkable,' he said. Mrs. Karakus, who heads the Muslim Council in Limoges, has not studied theology, but her tasks, long the work of men, touch on religion as well. She has negotiated with local authorities to obtain plots for Muslim burials at the local cemetery, and has reserved sites for the slaughter of sheep for Eid-el-Kebir, a major Muslim holiday. She also helps to organize courses for imams who arrive with little knowledge of French or French traditions. As educated Muslim women assert themselves, they appear to be forging a strand of Euro-Islam, a hybrid that attempts to reconcile the principles laid out in the Koran with life in a secular, democratic Europe. 'I tell women, 'We can honor the Koran from our perspective and apply it to our experience today,' ' said Dounia Bouzar, an anthropologist who is both Algerian and French. 'We must recover the religious texts and free them from an exclusively male interpretation that belongs to the Middle Ages. Most important right now is that women get into the universities.' The implications of women flocking to Islamic studies are disturbing to some, who see a potential for them to become radical. Tokia Saifi, a former deputy minister for development who remains one of the few women of Arab descent to reach a high post in the French government, said she worried that many young people studied religion because it was socially acceptable, not because it was an informed choice. 'I see it as a regression,' she said. 'It means we need less discrimination, more ways to promote integration.' Such debates are far from the concerns of Muslim girls who are harassed or punished for being too Western. Latifa Ahmed, 25, arrived in the Netherlands from Morocco when she was 8. As she grew up near Amsterdam, her family turned against her because she preferred to be with her Dutch classmates. 'They were bad, they were infidels, I was told,' she said. 'My parents and my brothers started hitting me.' Ms. Ahmed, who lived at home until she was 23, said, 'I was going crazy from all the fights and the lies, but I was afraid to run away and lose my family.' One evening, when she returned from a concert with a Dutch friend, her father yelled, ' 'Let's take a knife and we'll finish with her,' ' she said. 'He didn't kill me, but he put a curse on me. It was very frightening.' She ran away, and although she lives in another city, she said she was still afraid of her brothers, who had sworn to kill her. She has put herself through college doing odd jobs and does not care about religion. 'I don't feel discriminated here,' she said. 'Moroccan girls can find work easier than Moroccan boys. Boys have a bad name.' Changes in the lives of Muslim women in Europe are uneven. Many are still pressed into arranged marriages, while others are finding independence. Change is hard to measure in France, where the law forbids the census to collect data by ethnic origin or religion. But in the Netherlands one telling signal is the rise in divorce among immigrants. According to Dutch government statistics, divorces among Moroccan families have increased by 46 percent since 2000, and among Turkish families by 42 percent in that period, with a majority believed to be instigated by wives. Women are also often at the forefront of liberal tendencies among Muslims, publishing critiques and studies about the obstacles and abuses women face. In Germany, Seyran Ates, a Turkish-born German lawyer, and Necla Kelek, a Turkish-born sociologist, have recently published books that have been read widely on the oppression of Muslim girls by their own families. Ms. Kelek's book 'The Foreign Bride,' a best seller, denounces the plight of often illiterate girls, brought from the Turkish countryside 'as modern slaves' for their husbands and in-laws in Germany. Other women are fighting for change through the law. Mimount Bousakla, whose family is from Morocco, is a member of Parliament in Belgium. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, is one in the Netherlands. They were reared as Muslims, and have pressed for policies to aid women, including raising the legal age for marriage to protect young 'imported' brides and imposing tougher sentences on men who kill women to save the honor of their families. In France, a movement called 'Neither Whores nor Doormats,' begun in 2003, helps many Muslim women who have been abused get services from lawyers, doctors or psychologists. As Muslim women take advantage of democracy and civil liberties in Europe, the question remains whether the impact of an educated minority will be continually blunted by the arrival of often poorly educated young brides from North Africa, Pakistan, Turkey and the Middle East. And as Europe rethinks its faltering integration policies, the place of Muslim women is a new target of scrutiny. Critics, including immigrants themselves, argue that in the name of respecting other cultures, Europeans have allowed the oppression of Muslim women in their midst. Increasingly, women are saying that integration policies have been too male-oriented and must focus more on women. Senay Ozdemir, a Turkish-born Dutch citizen and the editor of Sen, a new glossy magazine aimed at immigrant women, is among those voices. Sen means you in Turkish. 'Obviously women are a key to integration,' Ms. Ozdemir said. 'If the woman cannot or will not integrate in a new country, it affects the whole family. She will isolate her children.'

Subject: Nick's Cultural Revolution From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 10:36:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/arts/television/29nick.html?ex=1293512400&en=962cc0588935a2c6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Nick's Cultural Revolution By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI - When Nickelodeon's popular 'Kids' Choice Awards' program came to China last month, the producers were forced to make some serious modifications. There would be no voting on favorite burp. Nor would children judge which movie character was the best at breaking wind. There was, however, sliming, a highlight of the American version of the show, which involves dumping, squirting and otherwise propelling green gooey stuff at people. And adults repeatedly were whacked by children - with balloon bats, of course - just to give the Chinese a taste of the freedoms afforded to children in the United States. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the show's national television broadcast was that children in China seemed to think that even this much kinder, gentler version of the program was wonderfully, outrageously transgressive. 'This is just so much fun,' said Wang Yinong, a shy 12-year-old girl who watched the show at home with her parents in Shanghai. 'I'd really like to go there and do the same thing: slime people.' Sliming remains a novelty in China. While every American industry that comes here faces its own obstacles, the bar that exporters of children's television programming must vault is particularly high: a traditional culture of respect for parents and authority reinforced by decades of Communist discipline and the ruthless competitiveness of an educational system that favors rigor over imagination. Still, Viacom, which dominates youth-oriented programming in the United States and other parts of the world with its MTV and Nickelodeon networks, is aggressively courting Chinese youngsters, hoping to introduce them to its brand of playfully antiauthoritarian programming. After all, China has roughly 300 million people younger than 14, and Viacom executives warm to the idea of capturing even a sliver of a demographic that now exceeds the population of the entire United States. 'There's no such thing as a global strategy without China,' said Bill Roedy, vice chairman of MTV Networks and a prime mover behind Viacom's international planning. Viacom already has a 24-hour MTV channel in southern Guangdong province. China Central Television and the Shanghai Media Group broadcast Nickelodeon's 'Wild Thornberries' and 'CatDog' cartoons. 'SpongeBob SquarePants' is due to premiere here next month. But with television programming in China entirely state-controlled, Western media companies must negotiate every nuance of programming. And experts say that parents here may be even more restrictive than the government, viewing American-style television as too unruly. 'It wouldn't be surprising if the government said no to programs like these,' says Lei Weizhen, who teaches about television at People's University in Beijing. 'The public may question whether or not these shows are good for Chinese children.' In the cutthroat competition of contemporary Chinese society, parents invest heavily in what is often their only child. Urban children especially may attend school from 7 a.m. till 4 p.m., followed by hours of homework, music lessons and other enrichment courses. Deviating from this rigorous program is not encouraged. 'We don't allow him to watch too much TV,' Qiu Yi, a 41-year-old advertising salesman in Shanghai, said of his 11-year-old son. 'I'm not against cartoons. But I try to encourage him to watch documentaries on dinosaurs and the Second World War. These programs are useful to his study.' What's on television in China seems to be not all too dissimilar from what's happening in the classroom. Youth programming in China tends to be dry, conservative and pedantic. It consists mostly of quiz shows, team competitions and endless lineups of youngsters, dressed uniformly, standing at attention and answering questions like Boy and Girl Scouts. Indeed, in a society where authorities worry about a little anarchy quickly getting out of hand, there are no rock fashion shows, no 'Wild 'N Out' or 'Homewrecker,' no Chinese-made 'SpongeBob SquarePants' and certainly no Chinese equivalent of 'Beavis and Butt-Head.' 'The children would probably love these shows, but the parents may find them hard to accept,' said Xie Limin, a vice dean at the Shanghai Normal School. 'Traditional Chinese culture requires children to behave in every moment of their life.' The names of children's programs here often reveal their content: 'Seeking Answers to 100 Questions,' 'Reading Books,' 'Visiting Schools,' 'Chess Boy' and 'Studying the Arts.' 'The Big Windmill,' a nationally broadcast program on China Central Television, recently featured a typical skit. It involved a couple of people who opened a new hotel and then overcharged travelers for their stay. Two of these travelers turned out to be government investigators, looking into just such crimes. The message of this show, which is intended for children 3 to 14? 'Don't lie or cheat customers! And beware of undercover authorities!' But even some educators and parents say that Chinese television's striving for the didactic skews too far to the dull and unimaginative, which is why some families buy pirated DVD's of popular Japanese cartoons. It is also why Viacom and other media giants are betting that China will change and develop a taste for some of the same hyperactive programs that are so attractive to young people in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world. 'A lot of children's programming is really bad in China,' said Li Yifei, managing director of MTV Networks China and considered one of the most powerful women in Chinese television. 'It's condescending and more about lecturing to children. Fun - that's what's desperately needed.' And experts here note that many Chinese children are already well plugged into global entertainment: They carry cellphones, download music on their MP3's, sometimes dye their hair blond and even, on occasion, wear baggy pants and talk in their own hip-hop way. 'In terms of their appearance, I don't think you can tell a Chinese kid from a Western kid anymore,' said Hung Huang, chief executive of China Interactive Media Group, a media and publishing company in Beijing and a longtime observer of youth trends. 'They've got that whole hip-hop look. They listen to Linkin Park, Eminem and 50 Cent. But they probably identify a little more with Japanese and Korean kids, who grow up with the same pressures to conform and succeed.' 'The Kids' Choice Honors,' as the program was called here, was an early step in establishing a Nickelodeon presence in China, though the government forbade the use of the Nickelodeon logo, which is ubiquitous in the network's programming elsewhere. There were other compromises as well. The show's producers felt compelled to tone down the program, eliminating not just onstage burping and flatulence but also appearances by male celebrities dressed up as women. When the show was taped in Beijing, the children in the audience cheered loudly and waved banners. But they voted for their favorite scientist, rather than a favorite movie star. And their Chinese pop idols mostly sang saccharine lyrics to an audience better described as adoring than raucous. Viacom executives say China is simply not ready for certain things. A Green Day video was banned because of provocative images of the United States Army. 'Hung Up,' a recent Madonna video, 'got some protests from older age group viewers, saying it is too vulgar,' Ms. Li said. 'Maybe the audience tolerance is much lower,' said Ms. Li. 'They haven't seen as much.'

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 09:18:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/28/05 Australia 16.9 Canada 29.3 Denmark 26.1 France 12.6 Germany 12.4 Hong Kong 9.4 Japan 26.7 Netherlands 16.7 Norway 26.0 Sweden 12.1 Switzerland 17.6 UK 8.1

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 09:17:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/28/05 Australia 25.4 Canada 25.5 Denmark 44.3 France 28.5 Germany 28.2 Hong Kong 9.1 Japan 45.1 Netherlands 33.2 Norway 40.4 Sweden 33.2 Switzerland 35.3 UK 20.1

Subject: Blue-Collar Napa Joins the Gold Rush From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 07:23:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/dining/28napa.html?ex=1293426000&en=9a4b0be4bd10e757&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Blue-Collar Napa Joins the Gold Rush By R. W. APPLE Jr. NAPA, Calif. YOU can size up the new Napa and the old in a single sidelong glance down the 800 block of Main Street, where a jampacked tapas spot and a welcoming bistro rub shoulders with a bar that has been shuttered since 1975 and an Asian cafe whose fading sign advertises that great Chinese-American gastronomic anachronism chop suey. This has always been a blue-collar city, home for decades to many of the workers at the nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which is now closed. As vineyards filled the valley north of here over half a century, Napa has been content to leave the tourists, the inns, the boutiques and the fashionable watering holes to St. Helena, Yountville and other 'upvalley' towns and villages. For many years, Napa's only consequential restaurant was the bubbly, locally beloved little Bistro Don Giovanni, which is not really in the city at all but out on busy Highway 29, which skirts Napa to the west. Come the culinary revolution: suddenly there are a dozen worthwhile dining destinations in town. Malpeque oysters on the half shell, roasted quail and braised pork belly are displacing pizza and burgers as foods of choice in this city of 75,000 about an hour northeast of San Francisco, and visitors are flocking here to try them. 'We used to drive up to Oakville or Calistoga to eat,' said Mark Pope, the wine-loving owner of the Bounty Hunter, one of the more idiosyncratic of the new Napa restaurants. 'Now a lot of people there drive here.' None of the chefs working in Napa is likely to knock Thomas Keller, the king of Napa Valley cuisine, off his throne anytime soon. Like its Manhattan progeny, Per Se, his Yountville flagship, the perennially booked-up French Laundry, wins fresh acclaim every week for the originality and consistency of its American-modern haute cuisine. But James McDevitt's winning Asian-accented food at Budo and Victor Scargle's accomplished offerings at Julia's Kitchen, the newly invigorated restaurant at Copia: the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts can easily stand comparison with such established, often-honored places as Terra and the Martini House, both in St. Helena. And Napa is rich in small, modestly priced grills, bistros and brasseries. Some of the impetus for change came from the opening of Copia, a culinary museum and cultural center, in 2001 and the reopening of the Napa Valley Opera House in two stages in 2002 and 2003, following a lengthy campaign that saved that 1880 building from demolition. The opera house now regularly stages dance, recitals and concerts of many kinds. Equally important, however, have been the valley's swiftly changing demographic patterns. 'Hip young people who wanted to live in the wine country found that they couldn't afford housing farther north,' said Patricia Perini, a documentary-film maker who worked on the campaign to save the opera house. 'So after a while they started buying up workers' bungalows in the city of Napa and restoring them.' Soon they found themselves spoiled for choice at dinnertime as restaurants proliferated - Cole's Chop House, a first-class steak joint; ZuZu, the tapas bar, which construes its genre broadly, with plenty of not-so-Spanish but oh-so-good dishes like hummus with grilled lamb and goat yogurt; and NV, a clublike establishment also riding the trend toward small plates, owned by Peter Halikas, who once cooked at Gary Danko in San Francisco. NV? The letters don't stand for nonvintage, Napa Valley or anything else, or so Mr. Halikas insists. Copia has struggled financially since its opening. (In the interest of disclosure, I should mention that I served for a brief period as an honorary trustee of Copia in the years when it was under construction.) But Julia's Kitchen, named for Julia Child, an early backer of the center, has clearly turned a corner. A softened look in the dining room and a talented new team in the kitchen are reeling in the customers. Nicole Plue, a pastry chef who made her name at Hawthorne Lane in San Francisco and Eleven Madison Park in New York, turns out delicate, enticing desserts at Julia's, among them a cookie-crust tart with a stack of mini-crepes, both flavored with California's daintily perfumed Meyer lemons. I can't wait to try the butterscotch pot de crème, which was off the menu on my visit. Ms. Plue's work tracks well with that of Mr. Scargle. He, too, is more interested in immediacy of flavor than in flourishes. He uses local ingredients ignored by others, like petrale sole, and he coaxes every bit of potential from his duck breast with his brussels sprouts and from braised chicken bathed in a marjoram-flavored jus. Many of his herbs and vegetables come from a 3½-acre garden adjacent to the dining patio. At Budo Mr. McDevitt and his wife, Stacey, have created a rectangular, high-ceilinged dining room, accented with ornamental ironwork at either end. In the center stands a long stone-top serving counter that was crowned, when I visited, by an enormous display of flowers and fruits, including persimmons still on their branches. The son of a Japanese mother and an American father, Mr. McDevitt expertly combined the two elements of his heritage at Hapa, near Phoenix, which he sold in 2003 to move to California, and he works similar wonders at his new restaurant in Napa. The Asian aesthetic is as evident in the fastidiousness of his dishes' presentation as in the arc of their flavors. An eye-popping selection of sashimi is arrayed, for example, on a glistening glass plate: crimson big-eye tuna; hamachi (yellowtail) with mango and hijiki seaweed on a forest-green shiso leaf; a Nantucket bay scallop in its shell, moistened with sparkling wine and topped with American sturgeon caviar; a Santa Barbara sea urchin poised on a lime slice; yellowfin tuna or ahi, firm and mild-tasting; flakes of fluke with wasabi. I hated the thought of finishing this piscine masterpiece so much that I must have dawdled over it for all of 20 minutes. As you may gather, fish is Mr. McDevitt's thing, and he brings in fine specimens from all over, including Maine lobster, opakapaka (pink snapper) from Hawaii and barramundi from Australia. I sneaked a taste of his John Dory, from New Zealand, with a superb sake beurre blanc. But the Midwesterner in me could not resist the kurobuta pork chop from a small Iowa farm, and instinct did not fail me. Rich, bronzed and profoundly piggy-tasting, it had been treated to a sourish tamarind glaze and came with contrasting sides (Japanese sweet potato purée, honey-roasted onions). For me Budo is the best thing to hit the area in many a moon, though I fear that it is having trouble winning the kind of local following that it deserves. I was much less excited by Press (as in wine press), up the highway toward St. Helena. Its pedigree is impeccable. The principal owner is Leslie Rudd, the proprietor of Dean & Deluca and of Rudd Vineyards and Winery, and one of his partners is Reuben Katz of the Culinary Institute of America. The chef is Keith Luce, late of Chicago's esteemed Spruce. But bloodlines and past performance don't always count; if you don't believe me, ask anyone recently betrayed by The Daily Racing Form. As Mr. Rudd wrote in a letter to me in the spring, Chez L'Ami Louis, the bare-bones Paris bistro famous for its mythic roast chicken and rare côte de boeuf, provided the inspiration for his new place. The idea, he said, is to serve 'the best regional ingredients, very simply prepared and presented,' and that's exactly the problem. Minimalist cuisine leaves little margin for error. My 16-ounce Angus strip from a Kansas farm ($48, no less) hit the spot, rosy and tender inside, beneath a salty, oxblood-colored crust. But the $36 chicken for two, turned on a spit in a big fireplace at one end of the dining room, missed the target. Carved at tableside, it was as dry as a Thanksgiving turkey cooked by a nervous neophyte, miles less tasty than California's choicest bird - the roasted chicken at Zuni in San Francisco. My dining partners, valley dwellers, reported confronting the same problem on earlier visits. For me, though, the crushing letdown was the potato and garlic cake, a near replica of another of Louis's trademark dishes. Louis's version is one of the masterpieces of Paris, worthy of induction into the Académie Française. It is one of the many reasons that I, an unapologetic potato freak, celebrated my 70th birthday there. Unhappily, what Mr. Luce sent out was unpleasantly mealy, possibly as a result of his use of russet potatoes instead of the firmer and waxier French varieties used at Louis. Ah, well. The high-ceilinged room's oversize windows give captivating views of the mountains on either side of the valley, the service is efficient and affable, and the long all-Napa wine list is stuffed with treasures, extravagant and less so. The Bounty Hunter began life as the retail offshoot of Mr. Pope's catalog wine business, and it shows. Bottles line the walls (although you may not notice them at first, because it's hard to take your eyes off the towering stuffed bears that flank the door), and the kitchen is the size of a stall shower for two. Fortunately, a grill and a smoker out back give Jake Southworth, the chef, a little more flexibility. It's good times all the time at the Bounty Hunter, whose brick walls, stamped-tin ceiling and marble-top tables give it the feeling of a saloon. Go at lunch, and you'll encounter winemakers and politicians; turn up at dinner, and you'll meet tourists and locals celebrating a birthday. 'It needs to be fun,' said Mr. Pope, the son of a Michigan welder. 'If you go too highbrow, it won't appeal to people on vacation.' As casual as it is, the cooking is based on prime ingredients, cooked with care but without undue fuss. Take the lunchtime sandwiches: a succulent cheeseburger with just the right amount of fat (Wednesdays only, unless you get lucky); a 'T.L.B.' made with house-smoked turkey, perfectly crisp baby greens, Nueske's nonpareil bacon from Wisconsin and chipotle mayonnaise; and tender pulled pork barbecue on soft buns, which would earn the grudging respect of even the pickiest North Carolinian. It prompted my friend Stan Bromley, the recently retired general manager of the Four Seasons in San Francisco, to exclaim uncharacteristically, 'Oooh, now that's a real saliva driver!' Evenings you can order cowboy steak or assorted sausages. Thursdays through Sundays, try remarkably moist whole chicken cooked on the grill with a lime inside or smoked pork ribs - fat, juicy, expertly charred hunks of meat served with red (tomato-based) and yellow (mustard-based) barbecue sauces. The chicken is a steal at $20, salad included, and so are Mr. Pope's wines, 40 by the glass, 400 by the bottle. If the Bounty Hunter excels at old-fashioned American comfort food, Pilar excels at sophisticated modern dishes from around the world. A spartan, low-key storefront decorated with culinary woodcuts and oversize blown-glass replicas of fruits and vegetables, Pilar shares with the Bounty Hunter a nice lack of pretension. Didier Lenders and Pilar Sanchez, husband and wife, have both cooked in big-time Napa Valley kitchens (Meadowood, Greystone at the Culinary Institute of America), and both cook at Pilar, although Ms. Sanchez, a tiny figure in T-shirt and blue jeans, also helps out in the dining room. Serrano ham with snappy Manchego cheese and fig compote made a fine nibble with a glass of white wine before settling down to the heavy lifting. Then technical polish came to the fore, in plump grilled Monterey Bay sardines, their richness cut by a fennel and celery slaw and pickled red torpedo onions, and lightly sautéed Nantucket Bay scallops with mottled brown-and-beige skins, riding atop an unctuous black squid-ink risotto. A baked Belgian chocolate 'mousse' - more like a candy bar made for chief executives, it seemed to me - sent me sated and happy into Main Street. Angèle, a buzzy French-style brasserie, started fast, stumbled and seems lately to have recovered its balance under a new chef, Tripp Mauldin. The Rouas family, one of the legendary restaurant clans of the Bay Area, runs the place, which is tucked into one end of the 19th-century Napa Mill, overlooking the meandering Napa River. Lunching alone on a chilly Friday with every seat in the restaurant filled, I was pleased with the unusually large selection of half-bottles of wine and by the assortment of fresh Atlantic and Pacific oysters, correctly opened and well iced. A roasted beet, goat-cheese and mâche salad - what a terrific combination - and crisp sweetbreads with bacon, chestnuts and braised fall vegetables almost made me forget that the blanquette de veau, a brasserie classic that the critics and several of my friends had raved about, was absent from the menu. When I asked why, a waitress told me that the new chef had decided against continuing it. Consider this an appeal, Mr. Mauldin, to change your mind.

Subject: Billionaire Builder of China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 07:22:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/business/worldbusiness/29titans.html?ex=1293512400&en=3c5dd9c89b730a78&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Billionaire Builder of China By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI - There are only 10 known billionaires in China, and he is one of them. His name is Xu Rongmao, and he is no Donald Trump, Sam Zell or Mortimer Zuckerman. He's bigger. Mr. Xu, who is the chairman of the Shimao Group, controls much more land than any private developer in America and builds luxury real estate projects that put even Mr. Trump to shame for their sheer scale and flamboyance. But unlike the ubiquitous Mr. Trump - who is never at a loss for words and goes out of his way to attract the attention of cameras - Mr. Xu almost never grants interviews and is highly secretive about his operations. For all his reserve, Mr. Xu, a former textile factory worker, is one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs and a prime example of the nation's first generation of real estate tycoons. 'I don't know much about Mr. Xu, but Shimao has this uncanny ability to find the right projects at the right time,' says Michael T. Hart, director of research in Shanghai at Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting firm. 'Their North Bund project has one of the best views in all of Shanghai.' In a country that started permitting people to buy homes only in the 1980's, developers like Mr. Xu (pronounced SHOO) found a way to gain rights to prime land in the nation's biggest cities. Now they reap huge profits by building large residential projects, often with hotels and other commercial buildings. An industry that emerged only a decade ago suddenly has annual sales of $130 billion, making real estate one of the biggest engines in this nation's roaring economy. The growth has helped propel Mr. Xu to No. 9 on the Forbes list of the richest people in China. With $1 billion in net assets, he runs two publicly listed real estate companies and a collection of private offshore companies, and is overseeing $9 billion in projects. The Shimao Group is expected to complete building about 145 million square feet of property by 2010, more than the entire 120 million square feet controlled by Sam Zell of Chicago, the commercial real estate baron who is the biggest individual property owner in the United States. By all accounts, Mr. Xu, who in his listed companies uses his Cantonese name, Hui Wing Mau, is a pioneer, willing to take big gambles. Through Shimao, he created one of China's first luxury real estate brands. He bought prime land in Shanghai in the late 1990's when others, fearing that the city was becoming overbuilt, were fleeing the market. And now, with housing prices rising, the Shimao Group is so profitable that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are negotiating to take the company public in 2006. Several of China's other real estate tycoons share Mr. Xu's rags-to-riches story. The developer of Shanghai's new Citigroup building, for example, was once a truck driver from impoverished Jiangxi Province. But little is known about Mr. Xu, 55, particularly how he earned his early fortune and developed his network of powerful political allies, who include several high-ranking Communist Party officials. He turned down repeated requests for an interview for this article, as did many other major Chinese developers. Some privately admitted they simply did not want the publicity and scrutiny in a country still officially communist and uneasy about the creation of individual wealth. 'The nail that sticks up gets hammered,' said Jack J. T. Huang, chairman of Asia for the law firm Jones Day, citing a common Chinese saying that is also popular in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. 'No one wants to be that nail and talk about this kind of business.' Perhaps for good reason. China's real estate industry, like those in many other places, has been dogged by scandal - tales of illegal land grabs, corruption, government bribery, shoddy construction work and the forced relocation of millions of peasants and urban poor. Yet almost everyone with means in China these days seems to want to play the real estate game. Of the 50 richest Chinese, according to Forbes's rankings in 2005, half rely on real estate as one of their primary businesses. People who have worked with Mr. Xu, a sprightly looking man with well-groomed black hair, say that he leaped to the top after he bought a collection of distressed properties in Shanghai in the late 1990's and began a huge riverfront development in the city's Pudong district, where some apartments now sell for more than $4 million. 'He's just smart,' said one developer who spoke anonymously out of fear of angering government officials. 'He got a lot of his land at ridiculously low prices, ridiculous. He knew where to go and when to buy.' Mr. Xu's start was inauspicious. Like just about every person in China who came of age in Communist China, he started out poor. He grew up in Shishi, an entrepreneurial city in coastal Fujian Province, the oldest of eight children born to a machinery worker and a doctor. After graduating from high school during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, he was sent to the countryside to work as a barefoot doctor. In the late 1970's, he went to Hong Kong and worked in a textile factory. Then, he told friends, he got lucky and made a small fortune trading stocks. By the mid-1980's, he was investing in textile factories in western Gansu Province. His leap into real estate began in 1988 when he agreed to invest $1.2 million in a knitting factory in his hometown. Some say he intended all along to build a hotel instead, even though investments in private hotels were forbidden. 'He told others the construction was a factory,' said Cai Shijia, a Fujian official who worked with Mr. Xu. 'But the truth was, he was building a hotel. 'The construction on that land was all implemented according to hotel designs and standards. And as soon as the construction was completed, the government policy changed. Xu Rongmao became the owner of the first private three-star hotel in China.' Mr. Xu then plowed millions into developing residential complexes and resorts in Fujian. Along the way, he struck up friendships with powerful political figures, including Fujian's party secretary, Chen Guangyi, whom he had known in Gansu Province, and Jia Qingli, who succeeded Mr. Chen in Fujian before moving to Beijing to became a member of the Politburo. Mr. Xu recently met with Mr. Jia, who still holds a high position and was one of the highest-ranking Communist Party officials under Jiang Zemin, the former president. For all his personal connections, people close to Mr. Xu say much of his success came from his willingness to take risks and his ability to spot opportunities ahead of others. When business dried up in Fujian, he moved his family to Australia, where he invested in real estate in the early 1990's. Then he pushed his way into Beijing and Shanghai just before housing prices there took off. He made money the same way other developers in China have: he negotiated with government officials to acquire cheap land, often with a small down payment, by limiting the commitment to a small initial phrase; then created a design for a new building that could serve as the template for a larger development. 'You can use Phase I cash to pay for Phase II or III,' says one Shanghai developer who has observed Shimao's projects. 'It's all about cash flow - it's about how you use the money. That's how these guys got off the ground. The early guys were visionaries and now they're ridiculously wealthy.' The system in China favors developers. Homebuyers pay far in advance of their move-in date, often more than a year ahead of construction. Developers often use that presale money to build the project or buy additional land elsewhere. 'That was one way to go from a small amount of money to making a lot of cash,' said Mr. Hart at Jones Lang LaSalle. 'Many of these guys weren't necessarily good at developing, but they were in the right place at the right time.' Mr. Xu has worked the system to perfection. Following the money at Shimao, however, is difficult. Adapting a method honed to perfection by overseas Chinese, the Xu family controls a labyrinthine collection of public and private companies, official filings in China show, including offshore entities. The companies swap property, finance one another's projects and seem to shift profits around. For instance, the Shanghai Shimao Group, which is listed in Shanghai, said it had revenue of $280,000 in 2003 but profit of $16.3 million. A year later, revenue jumped to $134 million, with profit of $20 million. And in one of many related-party transactions, Shimao International, a company listed in Hong Kong, said it bought 100 percent of a company called Value Added from Dynamic Keen Developments, which was wholly owned by Mr. Xu. Value Added owned a construction company set up by Mr. Xu to develop a project on the China-Russia border. Avoiding investment bankers, two of his companies went public in Hong Kong and Shanghai a few years ago by acquiring listed companies and changing their names, in what is called a 'back-door' listing. The bulk of the Shimao Group's holdings would create a third company, which could go public soon. Real estate experts here say many developers create project companies and engage in related-party transactions, partly for tax reasons. Indeed, Mr. Xu operates another Shimao company. One public filing says the 'ultimate holding company' for Shimao's pieces is a shell corporation created in the British Virgin Islands called Perfect Zone. Shimao has acquired huge tracts of riverfront land in some of China's biggest cities and has used it to build developments packed with signature features, including gardens, palm trees, villas and luxury high-rises outfitted with marble interiors. In Harbin, Shimao acquired 43 million square feet in an area the city government is redeveloping, and then received approval to build a huge project north of Harbin, on both sides of the China-Russia border. The project includes a casino that would operate just over the border in Russia, escaping the legal prohibition on gambling everywhere in China but Macao. Meanwhile, the government has begun an aggressive campaign to crack down on gambling elsewhere along its borders. In Wuhan, Shimao outbid the Hong Kong billionaire Li Kai Shing and agreed to pay $380 million to develop 9.4 million square feet in the historic area of the provincial capital. With the market slowing because of worries about a looming real estate bubble, Mr. Xu and his management team, which includes his son and daughter, are stepping up their investments. They have lined up international architects and five-star hotels to work with them. People who work with Mr. Xu say he maintains his close ties to government officials and often makes large charitable donations to help stay in their good graces. When the chief executive of Warner Brothers Entertainment went to Beijing to meet Wu Yi, China's vice prime minister, Mr. Xu was there, too. And he often visits with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Next up for Shimao? An initial public stock offering in Hong Kong early next year, which could value the company at billions of dollars and catapult Mr. Xu to the No. 1 spot on China's rich list. The name his parents gave him, Xu Rongmao, seems apt: in Chinese, it can be translated as 'Wealth and Success.'

Subject: When Chinese Sue the State From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 06:06:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/international/asia/28land.html?ex=1293426000&en=4f88869907b708e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 When Chinese Sue the State, Cases Are Often Smothered By JOSEPH KAHN SHIQIAO, China - The peasants surrounded the clerk in the busy court anteroom, badgering him to let them sue the officials who had seized their land. No, no, the clerk said, shaking his head and waving his hands, as the peasants recalled it. They were wasting his time and theirs. But as they withdrew, their legal papers remained on his desk in plain sight. Maybe, the peasants hoped, that meant the clerk had tacitly accepted their application to sue. 'In two years of trying every option under the law, this was a moment of optimism,' said Li Huitang, a leader of peasant resistance in Shiqiao, a village in Hebei Province, in northern China. 'We hoped he might rule on our request.' Even a written rejection would have been a bonanza, enabling them to appeal to a higher court. But it was not to be. The clerk soon called Mr. Li's home, ordering him to retrieve the documents. When Mr. Li declined, the clerk mailed them back in a plain manila envelope, unmarked, unprocessed and officially ignored. China's legal system often hands down verdicts that the powerless consider unfair. But a bigger problem is that courts often refuse to issue any verdict at all - or even acknowledge that some bothersome legal complaints exist. The English translation is simply 'put on the record' or 'register a case,' but in China 'li'an' is so fraught with official meddling that for many with complaints against the government, the judicial system is closed for business. Since Communist China first created the semblance of a modern legal system a quarter-century ago, criminal cases - the state suing individuals - mostly go through the courts. Private citizens and businesses now often resolve civil disputes in court. But the third and most sensitive use of the judicial system, a 1989 statute that entitles people to sue the state, remains a beguiling fiction, scholars say. 'The number of people wanting to sue the government is large and growing,' says Xiao Jianguo, a legal scholar at People's University in Beijing who has studied the issue. 'But the number of people who succeed in filing cases against the government is miniscule. So you could say there is a gap between theory and practice.' Though fast-rising China wants to persuade the outside world that it is governed by law, pressure to improve the system comes mainly from within. Protests are erupting around the country over land seizures, pollution, corruption and abuse of power, with 74,000 officially recorded incidents of mass unrest in 2004. China's leaders know they need to manage such unrest. Indeed, President Hu Jintao says 'democratic rule of law' is a crucial ingredient of his plan to build a 'harmonious society.' Such pledges spread awareness of legal rights, but have yet to change legal procedures. It is not clear how many protests follow failed attempts to settle disputes in court. But lawyers say the judicial system bars its doors to so many contentious cases that it effectively forces people to take to the streets. That is what happened here in Shiqiao, where residents protesting the loss of prime farmland for a government-backed road, office and residential development tried suing to protect their land-use rights. They met Kafkaesque obstacles at every turn. The only party that used the courts successfully was the state-linked construction company. It won an injunction in March declaring peasants' protests illegal. Every Man for Himself On the scale of land deals in China today, where hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland are converted each year into factories, shopping malls and housing, Shiqiao's 33 acres are just a tiny window box along the bank of the muddy Fuyang River in southern Hebei Province. Yet the dark, fertile soil and good irrigation made it prime land for growing vegetables. Scores of families depended on small plots there to earn a steady income selling cabbages, cucumbers and beans to city dwellers nearby. That was true until early 2004, just before spring planting, when the Fengfengkuang district of Hebei instructed peasants in Shiqiao to stay off their land. The Binhai Construction Company, linked to the district's construction bureau, was to build a road and housing there to 'raise the city's status.' Farmers who lost land would be compensated according to the National Land Management Law, a government notice said. For villagers, it was a call to arms. Peasants cannot own their land outright. Their land-use contracts remain firmly under the government's thumb, nominally to guard against the loss of arable land. The controls actually provide a perverse incentive for local officials to seize and develop as much farmland as possible. Farmers need only be compensated for lost farm income, generally far below soaring real estate market values. Government-linked middlemen can make a fortune. 'It's every man for himself,' says Li Yonglu, a 64-year-old resident who has taken part in the campaign against the Fengfengkuang district government. 'You get what you fight for, and no more.' Officials in Fengfengkuang did not respond to requests to talk about the matter. But in official documents and propaganda posters, they said that the development of Shiqiao's land met all local and national requirements and that peasants were compensated fairly. The district did offer compensation, from $2,500 to $5,000 a mu, a sixth of an acre. But local rumors had it that the market value exceeded $35,000 a mu and that government agents were pocketing the difference. Some villagers took the money. Others refused to cooperate. Mr. Li, who wears a French-style beret and once served as the leader of a collective farming brigade in Shiqiao, spurred opposition. He was joined by Li Huitang, a heavyset, gregarious man of 45. They share a family name but are not directly related. The two men filmed a short documentary praising their ancient alluvial soil. A narrator, speaking in a deep baritone, recited central government policies to prevent the loss of farmland. Beijing seemed like a possible ally. In the spring of 2004, the National People's Congress, the party-controlled legislature, passed China's first property rights law. Newspapers and television broadcasts heralded the leadership's commitment to govern 'according to law.' In Shiqiao, the principles seemed abstract, but potent. The local activists read national land laws and concluded that the laws protected their land-use contracts. The local government could not cancel those contracts against their will, they said. They decided to sue. An attorney in a neighboring city drafted the lawsuit. The two Mr. Lis brought it to Fengfengkuang's court. A clerk read their application, then disappeared for consultations. When he returned, he said the court would take the case, but only if they paid a filing fee of $2,300. The fee, several times their annual per capita income, seemed intended to scare them away. And in fact many villagers scoffed at paying even a small share. But the Lis rallied 11 families to join them. By the summer of 2004, they had the money. The case was established. That proved to be the low hurdle. Months passed with no trial date. They demanded explanations. Finally, early this year, they were granted an audience with Chen Xiuying, the top local court official. Ms. Chen, according to Li Huitang and two others who attended the meeting, struck a sympathetic tone. The court would like to see the case go to trial, but the matter was unfortunately too sensitive. 'She told us the court did not have the power to challenge the government,' Li Huitang said. 'It might be better for everyone if we withdrew the case. She said if we did, she would refund the fee.' Ms. Chen, reached in her court office, hung up the phone when asked about the exchange. Her phone was later answered by someone else, who said Ms. Chen had left town on business. Mr. Li said he declined to withdraw: 'I told her the law is either a tool that can be used by the people, or it isn't. You can't offer it and then take it away.' Street Justice Binhai Construction did not wait on the courts. It laid a broad new road, paved in concrete, through Shiqiao's old vegetable plots. Other sections were cordoned off by a high wall, decorated with billboards that show a river flowing through rich fall foliage. Behind the wall, high-rise residences sprouted. Frustrated by the court setback, the two Mr. Lis began a campaign of civil disobedience. They planted themselves in front of bulldozers, harassed workers and generally disrupted construction. On March 18, Binhai filed its own civil lawsuit naming Li Yonglu as a defendant, seeking an injunction against his interference. Four days later, the court issued a peremptory ruling without trial. Li Yonglu's actions were declared illegal. Local officials distributed copies of the ruling to every resident in Shiqiao, villagers said. A party boss read the text of the decision over the village's loudspeakers. It did not stop the Lis. They and other villagers said they were outraged that the court acted so quickly after suppressing their own suit. 'I discovered that the law is what they say,' Li Yonglu said. 'What they practice is power.' On March 25, Fengfengkuang dispatched the local police and paramilitary troops to stop the interference. The deployment brought hundreds of villagers from their homes. A tense standoff turned into a minor riot when the police confiscated cameras some local residents were using to record the event, participants said. Li Huitang's younger brother said he suffered a gash in his forehead when police officers ripped his camera off his neck. An elderly man fell and was trampled, photographs show. Villagers turned unruly and began smashing windows and trying to overturn police cars. Fifteen local residents went to jail; three remain behind bars nine months later, relatives said. Such conflagrations have become a fixture of rural life in boom-time China. Many go unnoticed or face reporting bans in the national news media. But shortly after the Shiqiao protest, in nearby Dingzhou City, a government effort to quell a land protest captured attention all over China. Hundreds of hired thugs armed with hunting rifles and clubs forced villagers to give up land for a power station. Six farmers died and dozens were injured in a bloody crackdown captured by a farmer's video camera. For Beijing, that went too far. The Communist Party boss in Dingzhou and 26 others went on trial for the killings in early December. China's top judge, Xiao Yang, also inspected Hebei's courts following the Dingzhou incident. He told state news outlets that the courts too often treated important cases as 'hot potatoes' better left untouched, marginalizing the judicial system. 'If the courts bow to the government every time, the people will have no faith in the judicial process,' he warned. Neither Yes Nor No Those sentiments seem to be widely held among officials at the top. There is little evidence, however, that Hebei heeded his warning, at least when cases threatening strong local interests came before the courts. The two Mr. Lis gave the law another try. This time they found a prominent Beijing-based attorney, Zhou Shifeng, who often pursues difficult cases against the authorities. After an investigation, Mr. Zhou concluded that the Binhai project violated national land laws, which require State Council approval to develop prime farmland. They could sue Hebei Province for allowing the project to proceed, he said. Mr. Zhou had low expectations. China's administrative law stipulates that cases against a local government must be filed first in its jurisdiction, where local party bosses hold sway. It can be appealed, but only after the local court rules or rejects the case. Courts legally must issue written rejection notices if they choose not take the case. But to avoid appeals, court clerks often decline to take possession of legal papers. No rejection notice is needed if the case does not, in China's political-legal cosmos, formally exist. 'The law is absurd,' Mr. Zhou said. 'But it is the only way.' In September Mr. Zhou, the two Mr. Lis and other villagers gathered at court in Shijiazhuang, Hebei's provincial capital. Qian Rendong, a court clerk, received them. They pleaded their case: they had legal right to sue; local officials had violated national land laws; their hope of obtaining justice depended on him. Mr. Qian, they said, was polite, but stubborn. He browsed through their papers and asked some questions, but in the end gave no ground. He urged them to appeal to higher authorities through the petition system rather than the courts. But whether out of deference or a simple oversight, he did not, as their session ended, hand back their documents. Technically, it seemed, he had accepted their application to sue. 'We talked excitedly among ourselves as we left the court,' Li Yonglu said. 'It seemed like a first step.' Two days later, Mr. Qian called Mr. Li's home. The papers must be collected immediately or he could not guarantee their safety. The case would not be registered and there would be no rejection notice, either. Mr. Zhou advised Mr. Li to stay home. They would press the clerk to reject the case in writing. Mr. Li said he was nervous - original documents he had spent months compiling were in the clerk's possession - but he held back. The risk, though, was not that the documents would be destroyed, but rather that they would be disregarded. Two weeks later they arrived by mail, incognito, at Mr. Zhou's office in Beijing. In Shiqiao's land case, it was the only verdict the court would render.

Subject: Marketing Fortified Food From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 05:59:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/business/28food.html?ex=1293426000&en=eb20a23d0989cd8f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Marketing Fortified Food to Those Leery of Drugs By MELANIE WARNER Ever since she gave birth to her fourth child in 2003, Michelle Celona, a 43-year-old part-time teacher in Philadelphia, had suffered from annoying bouts of constipation. Figuring it was the stress of carting three children around or the result of something that had changed in her body after pregnancy, she learned to live with it. But when the Dannon Company asked Ms. Celona in June if she wanted to participate in a two-week trial for Activia, a new fortified yogurt that the company said could help speed up what nutritionists delicately refer to as intestinal transit time, she jumped at the chance. 'I was skeptical that it would work,' she said. 'But if it's something I already like, then that's much better than popping a pill.' Dannon, the American division of the French company Group Danone, is counting on finding more people like Ms. Celona, who contend the yogurt worked as promised. The company expects to spend $60 million next year aiming at the 70 million Americans who suffer from digestive problems. With health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and digestive disorders all on the rise, a growing number of food marketers are selling what the food industry calls functional foods, which promise a host of health benefits, from cholesterol reduction to immunity improvements to easing of intestinal problems. Marketing solutions to health problems has traditionally been the realm of drug companies, but that is starting to change. As the baby boom generation ages and Americans become increasingly concerned about their health, packaged food companies see a big marketing opportunity. Television, radio and print commercials scheduled for February for Activia yogurt, which contains specific beneficial bacteria that work in the colon along with the body's own bacteria, will feature women talking about their irregularity problems. Activia will be available in supermarkets in mid-January. Elations, a new flavored beverage from a company run by a team of former Procter & Gamble executives, promises 'joint flexibility' and contains the nutritional supplements glucosamine, which is believed to play a role in cartilage formation and repair, and chondroitin, a natural component of cartilage that is thought to help with elasticity. Next month, PepsiCo will start selling a new version of its Tropicana orange juice containing three grams of fiber per serving (in the form of starch in which molecules have been rearranged to resist digestion). It will join several brands of Tropicana that are already enhanced with various vitamins and minerals and that profess to benefit the heart and the immune system and to make children's bones strong. In making such assertions, companies are dodging Food and Drug Administration regulations that require a rigorous approval process for health claims. Marketers are not required to get agency approval for claims that talk about the body's 'normal, healthy structures and functions,' only for references to specific diseases or health conditions. As a result, Dannon's marketing promises that Activia will help 'regulate your digestive system,' but the word 'constipation' is not used. Ads and packaging for Elations will refer to 'joint flexibility' and 'ease of movement,' not arthritis. Most major food and beverage companies say they are working on functional food projects, though some are taking a wait-and-see approach. At an investor meeting a little over a year ago, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, E. Neville Isdell, said carbonated soft drinks would be 'carriers of health and wellness benefits.' But the company has yet to market any such products. How big is the functional foods market? According to some reports, it could be huge. A study by Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that 48.4 percent of all Americans in 2002 suffered from at least one chronic health condition, from hypertension to asthma to heart disease, up from 44.7 percent in 1996. Marketing surveys also show that more Americans are interested in natural solutions to health issues. 'People are getting nervous about pharmaceuticals,' said Faith Popcorn, who runs BrainReserve, a marketing company. 'If it's food, people trust it more. And people are also so happy to hear that something they love to eat is also good for them.' Ms. Popcorn cites the Vioxx situation - in which millions of pain sufferers were told that the anti-inflammatory drugs they were taking might increase their risk of heart attacks - and the high price of drugs as factors spurring consumers to seek out drug-free remedies. According to a BrainReserve survey in 2004, 65 percent of people said they were using diet to treat an illness, whether through a low-fat regimen, a diet of organic food or a higher intake of certain kinds of food. While many scientists promote the healing powers of a diet based on whole grains and lots of fruits and vegetables, some are skeptical of the idea that specific conditions should be treated through packaged food products. Alice H. Lichtenstein, a senior scientist at the nutrition research center at Tufts University, says she believes that people who may be in need of additional nutrients, cholesterol-lowering plant sterols or extra fiber should get them through a multivitamin or pill-based supplement. 'The danger with this is that people will add food to their diet, rather than substitute, and then they'll end up consuming more calories, which would not be good,' Dr. Lichtenstein said. Food companies say many people do not like to take pills and find it easier to get nutrients or supplements in a food or a beverage that they may be consuming anyway. But getting people with high cholesterol to buy a cholesterol-lowering cereal or those with constipation to eat more yogurt has proven difficult. Over the last 10 years, many attempts to market functional foods have fallen flat. Marketing experts say Americans crave quick, simple solutions for better health, but they are also wary of big promises that do not ring true. In 1999, the Kellogg Company devoted extensive resources to Ensemble - a line of cereals, cookies, lasagna, frozen entrees and baked potato chips that contained psyllium, a soluble fiber that has been proved to reduce cholesterol - only to take it off the market nine months later because of poor consumer response. Similarly, analysts say that Cadbury Schweppes's 7UP Plus, a soda fortified with calcium and vitamin C and marketed as good for bones, has underperformed relative to other recent soda introductions. Several months ago, the company took out the vitamin C and said it would introduce two new flavors. Lauren Radcliffe, a Cadbury spokeswoman, said that the company remained excited about 7UP Plus and was planning an ad campaign for the first quarter of 2006. Harvey Hartman, chief executive of the Hartman Group, a Seattle consulting firm, said consumers might be likely to respond to health claims for certain foods or beverages, but soda was not one of them. 'Juice, yogurt, cereal, bars, these things make sense,' Mr. Hartman said. 'They're already perceived as being relatively healthy.' Coca-Cola's Minute Maid brand, for instance, has had strong sales for its Heart Wise orange juice with plant sterols. Sales for Heart Wise are up 39 percent over the last year, versus a decline of 3.5 percent for regular Minute Maid juice, according to Information Resources Inc., a marketing information company. Juan Carlos Dalto, chief executive of Dannon, said yogurt was an ideal food for health benefits. 'Yogurt is already perceived as a health product and most people realize that it already has bacterial cultures,' he said. 'With Activia, we're just adding a specific strain that offers a specific benefit.' Dannon's bacteria strain, Bifidus regularis, is part of a class of bacteria that already exists in the digestive systems of most healthy people. The company has sponsored four studies showing that among people who are irregular, consumption of one four-ounce container of Activia yogurt a day leads to as much as a 40 percent reduction in the amount of time it takes food to exit the digestive system. People with constipation or other digestive maladies may have a shortage of beneficial bacteria as a result of improper diet or heavy use of antibiotics, which tend to kill good bacteria along with the bad. 'We are saying that, after two weeks, Activia naturally regulates your digestive system,' said Andreas Ostermayer, Dannon's senior vice president for marketing. Scientists say that healthy bacteria, or probiotics, can be effective in helping to alleviate minor intestinal disorders, but certainly are not a cure-all remedy and may not work for everyone. The yogurt is already a blockbuster product for Groupe Danone in Europe and Asia. The company says sales of the product, which was introduced in France in 1997, have grown by 24 percent a year from 2000 to 2004 and it is now its fastest-growing product, representing 4.1 percent of Groupe Danone's 2004 sales of $16.2 billion. Mr. Ostermayer said that Dannon waited to release the product in the United States until the company had done extensive testing and believed it could get the marketing right. The company spent the last two years doing consumer tests and going to medical conferences to educate doctors about the benefits of probiotic bacteria. The Elations Company is also trying to foster a greater awareness among doctors of its particular ingredients. The company is promoting the findings of a recent arthritis study that was done independently and without involvement from the company. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the government's main vehicle for conducting medical research, showed that glucosamine and chondroitin were effective in treating pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee. Mr. Hartman, the Seattle consultant, said that while functional foods had always been a great idea, the category is an enigma. 'It hasn't been nearly as successful as people thought it would be,' he said. But Mr. Hartman added that if a manufacturer could crack the code, getting the product and the marketing right, the opportunity to appeal to the millions of Americans looking to food for health solutions was 'huge.'

Subject: Spurring Urban Growth in Vancouver From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 15:52:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/realestate/25nati.html?ex=1293166800&en=47a6f265a79b22f2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Spurring Urban Growth in Vancouver, One Family at a Time By LINDA BAKER Vancouver, British Columbia ELENITA TORRES and her husband, Dean Sherriff, didn't want to leave the city after having children. So about two years ago, the couple bought a two-bedroom, 1,440-square-foot town house in the Coal Harbour neighborhood, one of several waterfront developments that have sprung up in downtown Vancouver over the last few years. 'The area is safe, appealing and convenient,' said Ms. Torres, a Toronto native who owns a company with her husband that produces storyboard and art illustrations for movies. The couple live a few blocks from a large forested park and have enrolled their 5-year-old daughter, Sequoia, in a nearby child care center. They get to meet other families at a community center down the street. 'We have no intentions of moving,' Ms. Torres said. Over the last 10 years, cities across North America have attracted thousands of new residents to revitalized urban areas. Vancouver is no exception. About 40,000 people have moved into the downtown peninsula in the last 15 years; the downtown population is expected to reach 110,000 by 2015. But there is a difference between the urban growth taking place in Vancouver and the development occurring in many American cities. In the United States, many of the new urban residents are young professionals or older, wealthier people whose children are grown. In fact, enrollment in Portland, Ore., and Seattle public schools has dropped by thousands of students because of declining numbers of urban families with children. In Vancouver, the number of children living downtown has doubled since 1990; there are now 5,000 children living in the central core. Last year, the city opened the first new elementary school in an inner-city neighborhood in more than 30 years. 'We have to bus children out of the downtown because of the burgeoning numbers of school-age children,' said Michael Gordon, senior central area planner for Vancouver. 'It's happening more quickly than we expected.' Mr. Gordon, who is making a documentary about children in the city's new high-density neighborhoods, said the urban demographic is a result of ambitious policies established in the late 1980's, after the provincial government sold former Expo '86 world's fair property on the south side of the downtown peninsula to Li Ka-shing, one of Hong Kong's most powerful businessmen. As part of the $277 million deal, the city asked Mr. Li's company, Concord Pacific Developments, to provide an array of public amenities, including child care and community centers, parks, playgrounds and land for schools. Another goal was to set aside 20 percent of the housing units for low-income residents, and 25 percent for family-size units. The city's housing guidelines grew out of concerns that Vancouver was becoming an 'executive city' for the childless rich, Mr. Gordon said. 'As much as real estate is the ethos, there is also a consensus that this is a really important place and we have to do the right thing,' he said. On a recent Friday morning, children in the False Creek North neighborhood, site of the former Expo lands, streamed out of town houses and shimmering green glass residential towers and walked along the sea wall, a heavily used pedestrian and bicycle path, toward Elsie Roy Elementary School, which opened in the fall of 2004 directly on the marina. 'We're at capacity,' said the principal, Isabel Grant. 'It's a fabulous neighborhood.' The school has 330 children enrolled, and there is a waiting list for several grades. The bustling False Creek North community, which features 12-foot-wide sidewalks and double rows of street trees, houses a new Urban Fare grocery store, the Dorothy Lam Children's Center and the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Center, which offers arts, music and sports programs. There is no exterior distinction between affordable and market-rate housing. In one complex, two market-rate residential towers frame a midrise structure with low-income families and seniors. 'You quickly lose sight of the fact that one is market and one is subsidized,' said John B. Davidson, a local architect who helped develop the neighborhood plan. Ellen Clague and Michael Mortensen, who have two young children, live in a two-bedroom condo on the north side of the downtown peninsula. Their cylindrical glass high-rise is walking distance from the seawall, from Coal Harbour Community Center, which is underground and designed to resemble a submarine, and from the 1,000-acre Stanley Park, which features walking, biking and roller-skating trails, water parks, an outdoor swimming pool, several beaches and an aquarium. 'The element of spontaneity, surprise and fun in a city is wonderful for children,' said Ms. Clague, a Y.M.C.A. program coordinator. 'It's a giant cross section of society.' Large numbers of Pacific Rim and Eastern European immigrants, who are accustomed to high-rise living, also fuel Vancouver's downtown market, according to Michael Geller, a developer who managed the 880-unit Bayshore project in Coal Harbour. Most developers accept the 'social engineering' conditions the city has imposed, he said. Mr. Geller's $256 million development included, among other things, a seawall extension, two neighborhood parks and playgrounds, public art and a child care center. He also contributed to the community center and after-school facilities. The development was nonetheless profitable. 'Nobody is losing any money,' said Mr. Geller, who recently put his own three-bedroom Bayshore condo on the market for $1.9 million. Despite the public benefits, downtown Vancouver is not a utopia, residents and planners say. Housing prices are skyrocketing. An 800-square-foot condo sells for around $380,000, and on the water it would be double that, according to Bob Rennie, a local real estate agent. The city's housing guidelines encourage developers to reserve the first eight floors of residential buildings for family-size units and to design these apartments so they overlook outdoor play areas. But parents say the units, mostly two-bedrooms, are too small. 'When you have a boy and a girl, you need three bedrooms,' Ms. Clague said. She also said that the landscaping has not kept pace with the city's child-friendly amenity policy. Her 4-year-old son, Lucas, has toppled into the building's outdoor goldfish pond several times, she said. Mr. Gordon, who helped push for a new skateboard park in False Creek North, said the city also needs to provide more facilities for teenagers. But for many parents, the urban package is still hard to beat. Simon Hill, a magazine editor, enrolls his two children in False Creek Elementary School, which is on the seawall and has views of residential skyscrapers, snowcapped Grouse Mountain and English Bay. 'Just think of the mental landscape the kids are getting,' he said.

Subject: Africa's Brand of Democracy Emerges From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 15:19:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/africa/23uganda.html?ex=1290402000&en=b9846ace421fedc7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 By Fits and Starts, Africa's Brand of Democracy Emerges By MARC LACEY KAMPALA, Uganda - One way of judging the repressive nature of an African president is by standing in the center of that leader's capital city and calling him awful names. By that measure, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda could be worse. He is being called a dictator, a thug, a power-hungry autocrat and even harsher things than that these days, and for the most part he is taking it, not trying to round up or eliminate all those who dare speak ill of him, which has been done in this country in the past. On top of that, Mr. Museveni has been rather adept during his 19 years in power at rebuilding Uganda's tattered economy. He has won widespread praise for his early and activist leadership when it comes to combating AIDS. An erudite man, he speaks passionately of his desire for a modern, robust and, most of all, peaceful Uganda and he sounds very much as if he means it. But Mr. Museveni, billed during President Clinton's administration as one of Africa's new generation of enlightened, democratic leaders, has proved himself something far less grand than that. He and others like him - notably, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Paul Kagame of Rwanda - have disappointed those who were hoping for Western-style democracy to emerge in full flower in 21st-century Africa. But if they have fallen short of that goal - a naïve one, they say - they have succeeded in holding together troubled countries with undeveloped democratic institutions and traditions. If that has occasionally meant resorting to ugly and authoritarian methods, so be it, they say. That's African-style democracy, something the West would not understand. With a long tradition of tyrants in its midst, Africa does seem to have improved its leadership, even as television images from the eastern precincts of the continent recently seem to show a region in crisis. Mr. Museveni, however flawed, is nothing like the murderous Idi Amin or even Milton Obote, another Ugandan strongman of the past. Mr. Meles, Ethiopia's hard-line prime minister, is a far cry from the dictator he ousted, Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mr. Kagame, despite his tight grip on his country, did quell the ethnic slaughter in 1994 that was orchestrated by the government he replaced. But such leaders, promoted by Washington and other Western capitals as Africa's saviors, are increasingly seen as mere mortals. 'I don't think Museveni was ever the leader the world thought he was,' said Proscovia Salaamu Musumba, deputy president of the Forum for Democratic Change, a major Ugandan opposition group. 'It was an illusion.' The corruption is less blatant than it was with their predecessors, most here agree, the jailing of opponents far less prevalent. 'They are better than the ones before, but in their burning desire to remain in power they are the same,' said Ted Dagne, an Africa analyst with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. In what he called 'a policy blunder from which we have yet to recover,' American policy on Africa has focused too much on personalities, Mr. Dagne said. Perhaps the most prominent, and ambiguous, of those personalities is Mr. Museveni. While Uganda is preparing to hold its first multiparty presidential elections since he came to power 20 years ago, the government jailed the country's main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, last week, accusing him of treason. Mr. Besigye returned to Uganda from exile last month to huge enthusiastic crowds and declared himself a candidate for the 2006 elections. Now he is off the campaign trail and in Kampala's maximum security prison. Uganda's press, feisty and independent, frequently earns the wrath of the president, which happens in democracies the world over. But Mr. Museveni sometimes oversteps. His government has demanded that The Monitor, an independent paper, apologize and retract an article suggesting that Mr. Museveni offered the job of army chief to his younger brother, who declined, before settling on someone else. Government sanctions loom if the paper does not comply. The government has also put pressure on the paper to fire a reporter, Andrew Mwenda, who already faces sedition and other charges for reports that got under Mr. Museveni's skin. The police also entered the paper's printing plant the other night, objecting to an advertisement raising money for Mr. Besigye's legal defense. But Uganda at least has an independent press, a far cry from Eritrea, where reporters are in jail or in hiding and no voice other than that of President Isaias Afwerki is heard. He, too, was once one of Washington's favorite sons. African presidencies are no longer the lifetime positions they once were. In Kenya, Mwai Kibaki defeated the ruling party in 2002. In another display, 15 former African heads of state convened in Mali several months back to discuss the important role that retired leaders can play improving Africa from outside of government. Mr. Museveni should be on the verge of joining that group. But with his second and supposedly last term coming to a close, he pushed to have constitutional limits on his tenure lifted, allowing him to run again in elections next year. The question remains whether there is such a thing as African democracy. It's not a complete oxymoron. Rigging elections, while still part of the landscape, is becoming a cause for embarrassment, done surreptitiously. Putting up with criticism and dissent is increasingly seen as part of the job. For every leader who clings to power, there are others who go when it's time to go. Africa's heads of state do face extraordinary challenges, such as the scores or even hundreds of ethnic or tribal groups within their borders, as well as long histories with violent struggle. They have earned the right to define democracy for themselves and their countries - so long as they don't scrap democracy in the process. 'I believe he has been and still is a new generation of leader,' said John Nagenda, a top adviser to Mr. Museveni. 'But the almighty Americans are not going to decide the type of democracy in Uganda, no matter what they label him.'

Subject: Ferry Dispute Tests Ireland's Tolerance From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 13:00:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/business/worldbusiness/27strike.html?ex=1293339600&en=f1add312dd220e3f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Ferry Dispute Tests Ireland's Tolerance for Globalization By BRIAN LAVERY - International Herald Tribune DUBLIN - When nearly 100,000 people took to the streets of Ireland earlier this month to protest the hiring of cheap East European labor for Irish Ferries, they gave voice to old familiar fears about job security that many thought had been forgotten. The last time similar crowds demonstrated here over industrial issues was in 1979, when young people were leaving the country in droves to find work and Ireland's unemployment rate was hovering around 20 percent. These days, the Irish economy is no longer expanding at the double-digit rates of the 1990's, when it was called the Celtic Tiger, but it is still the fastest-growing in Western Europe. The country enjoys nearly full employment. But the outpouring of support for more than 500 unionized workers of Irish Ferries, who will be replaced by new workers, mainly from Latvia, who will work for less than half Ireland's minimum wage, is raising questions about whether the tolerance for globalization that helped bolster the Irish economy is waning. 'We have been a major beneficiary of outsourcing for the last couple of decades,' said Jim Power, chief economist at Friends First, an Irish subsidiary of the Dutch financial services firm Eureko, 'and now people are starting to see that it's a double-edged sword.' Sean Barrett, a professor of economics at Trinity College, Dublin, said, 'The Latvian sailor will become like the Polish plumber in Paris.' He was referring to the bogeyman invoked by French politicians trying to close the labor market to foreign workers. That prospect is starting to worry immigrant support groups, who say the ferry dispute comes at a critical time for newly arrived foreigners in Ireland. Bobby Gilmore, chairman of the Migrant Rights Center, a nonprofit group based in Dublin, said the dispute threatened to damage communities of newcomers trying to settle into a life in Ireland. 'They're beginning to see and understand that they're as vital to the Irish economy as anyone else,' he said. When the European Union expanded last year to include 10 new countries, mostly from the former Soviet bloc, Ireland, along with Britain, proudly kept its doors open to immigrants, while other countries, like France, sought to stem an influx of competitive labor. Of the 96,000 people who entered the Irish work force last year, 40,000 were migrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, according to the government statistics office. Young East Europeans, most of whom are well educated, work at building sites, wait on tables and work cash registers across the country. Up to now, that influx has not caused any local resentment, because the newcomers have not taken Irish jobs. But the tens of thousands of people who marched to the gates of the Irish Parliament were demonstrating because of the perception that that era may be coming to a close. Plans by Irish Ferries, a shipping and passenger ferry company, to register its ships in Cyprus so it can replace its staff with Latvians who will work for 3.60 euros an hour ($4.28), set off a nasty dispute three months ago. Passengers have been repeatedly stranded at sea as sympathetic dockworkers in Ireland and Wales refused to handle Irish Ferries' ships. In a gesture of protest, four crewmen locked themselves inside one ship's cabin three weeks ago, and have been there since. The company sent undercover security officers on board posing as passengers but denied reports it had considered using tear gas against employees who refused to leave the boats. The movement was reminiscent of a labor dispute in France in October that raised protests among unionized ferry workers and garnered the support of the French public, already concerned about high unemployment and outsourcing. The government's effort to privatize SNCM Ferries, which would have resulted in laying off about a fourth of its 2,400 employees, ended with a compromise that left the French state with a 25 percent stake in the company. As the ferry dispute unfolded in Ireland, it began to generate widespread public sympathy for Irish workers. Thousands of people lined the protest route earlier this month to applaud the demonstrators - a show of support that union activists said they had never seen before. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who is known as a skilled negotiator in labor disputes, condemned Irish Ferries' decision as 'deplorable.' But unions are concerned that public support may be for the wrong reasons. 'The sad thing is that some of it may be racist,' said Paul Smyth, the docks and marine branch secretary for the largest Irish union, Siptu, which is in negotiations with Irish Ferries. 'That's a huge issue of concern.' Mr. Gilmore said he feared that migrants in other industries, and in Ireland's growing black-market economy, would suffer worsening conditions if Irish Ferries successfully employed cheap labor from Latvia, and if other employers were tempted to follow its lead. Mr. Barrett, the economics professor, said: 'We've let the racist genie out of the bottle. It can create a lot of trouble, and we haven't seen it before.' The dispute may also have implications for Ireland's 20-year-old 'social partnership' model of industrial relations, which uses broad pacts among unions, employers' groups and the government to guarantee modest annual wage increases in return for promises to refrain from the strikes that often cripple other European countries. The pact expires next year, but Siptu said it would not negotiate a new deal if the Irish Ferries situation was not resolved. 'Social partnership seems to have come up short,' Mr. Power, of Friends First, said. 'This dispute does not send out very positive signals about the industrial relations climate in this country.'

Subject: 35 and Pregnant? Assessing Risk From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 11:58:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27brod.html December 27, 2005 35 and Pregnant? Assessing Risk Becomes Easier By JANE E. BRODY Dawn will be 35 when her first child is born in April. Based on her age alone, she has 1 chance in 270 that her fetus has Down syndrome, a genetic defect caused by an extra chromosome that results in mental retardation and other problems. In recent decades, many thousands of older women have been offered the option of having an invasive test - amniocentesis, or more recently chorionic villus sampling, known as C.V.S. - to find out for sure whether their babies would be born with the syndrome. The tests are costly and can sometimes result in miscarriage, not a happy outcome for any woman who wants a baby, let alone an older woman who may have tried for years to become pregnant. But Dawn, who lives in Brooklyn, did not have to rely on age alone to decide whether to have an invasive test to determine the likelihood that her baby would be free of this serious abnormality. Testing Blood and Sound Instead, in the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, she had three noninvasive tests, an ultrasound of the fetus and two blood tests. A third blood test, in the second trimester, showed a drastically reduced risk of Down syndrome, 1 in 9,000. 'With such a low risk, I'm not going to have amniocentesis,' Dawn said. For older pregnant women who would consider aborting a fetus with Down syndrome, noninvasive screening is fast becoming standard care in gynecological practices. And it now appears that such screening can be completed with great accuracy in the first trimester, before anyone other than the woman, her partner and her physician need know that she is pregnant. Based on a newly published study of more than 38,000 pregnant women, 117 of whom had a fetus with Down syndrome, a combination of three noninvasive tests conducted at 11 to 13 weeks of gestation was 87 percent accurate in predicting the presence of the syndrome in the fetus. The tests are an ultrasound evaluation of the thickness of the fetal neck, called nuchal translucency, and two blood tests, pregnancy-associated plasma protein A, or PAPP-A, and beta human chorionic gonadotropin, or H.C.G. Adding a second ultrasound of the fetal nasal bone may push the accuracy of these tests even higher, according to an editorial accompanying a report last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. These are indeed exciting findings, especially since many more women are now delaying pregnancy into their mid-30's and beyond, when the risk of Down syndrome increases exponentially. For those women who would consider aborting an affected fetus, the opportunity to assess the risk of Down by noninvasive tests early in pregnancy can be so reassuring that most would willingly forgo the riskier invasive procedures. In the editorial, Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson of the departments of obstetrics and gynecology and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston recounted the progress in prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. In the 1970's, all that was available for prenatal screening was amniocentesis, a procedure done at about 18 weeks gestation in which a small sample of amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus is removed by a large needle inserted through the woman's abdomen. Fetal cells in the fluid are then analyzed for a possible chromosomal abnormality, a process that takes up to two weeks. A Second-Trimester Decision If an abnormality is found, the woman can choose to have a second-trimester abortion, which is physically and emotionally more traumatic than one performed earlier in pregnancy. In the 1980's, researchers established that certain blood tests in the second trimester could predict the risk of Down syndrome in the fetus and thus enable many women to avoid having amniocentesis. These tests measured alpha-fetoprotein, or AFP; a hormone called unconjugated estriol; and H.C.G. in a woman's blood. Later, a fourth blood test for inhibin A improved the ability to predict the presence of the syndrome. Taken together, the results of these tests provided a risk estimate that could be higher or lower, often much lower, than that based solely on a woman's age. But the goal was earlier determination of risk and, as Dr. Simpson wrote, 'a dazzling series of noninvasive screening options for trisomy 21,' the extra chromosome causing the defect, emerged. In the first trimester, an ultrasound exam that measured fetal nuchal translucency and maternal blood tests for PAPP-A and H.C.G. were shown to be effective in estimating the risk of Down syndrome. Detection rates above 80 percent of affected fetuses were demonstrated using these first-trimester tests. One major study of 44,613 pregnancies, directed by Dr. K. H. Nicolaides and published last year in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, found a detection rate of 87 percent using measures of nuchal translucency, PAPP-A and H.C.G. Adding the absence or presence of the fetal nasal bone increased the detection rate to 97 percent, with 5 percent of the women undergoing an invasive procedure. More Effective Testing The new study compared the accuracy of first-trimester screening with that of second-trimester screening and a combination of both. It found that screening at 11 weeks of gestation was 87 percent accurate, and more accurate than screening one or two weeks later. The most accurate prediction, 96 percent, occurred when the tests at 11 weeks were combined with four noninvasive tests in the second trimester. Thus, the detection rate associated with tests in the second trimester was really no better than what Dr. Nicolaides and others found with first-trimester screening, which can result in many fewer invasive tests and allow for safer, earlier terminations of affected pregnancies. Of course, for a woman who wants to know for sure in her first trimester that her fetus is free of the syndrome, chorionic villus sampling can be done at about 10 or 11 weeks of gestation or, if she is further along in her pregnancy, she can have amniocentesis at 16 weeks. As Dr. Simpson said, 'In experienced hands, neither procedure seems to be as risky as once thought.' So, women whose risk of having a child with Down syndrome is high based on the noninvasive tests - as well as those seeking certainty about the absence of this genetic defect regardless of their risk- can be less concerned about miscarriages resulting from C.V.S. or amniocentesis. There are even better options on the horizon, Dr. Simpson said. Under study now is the ability to examine the fetal chromosomes in cells found in the woman's blood or in fetal cells shed into her cervix. Such studies would provide definitive evidence of the presence or absence not only of Down, but also of other genetic disorders that might run in the family. Such determinations could be made from only one noninvasive test and without having to do a single invasive one. As a result of such progress, women who will be 35 or older when their babies are born and who are willing to consider abortion could obtain a high level of reassurance by having noninvasive tests in their first trimester. Most important to the accuracy of this risk assessment is having the ultrasound exam done with the most modern equipment by a highly skilled sonographer who is experienced at measuring nuchal translucency. Even better would be a sonographer who could reliably determine the presence of a nasal bone in the fetus.

Subject: Heat for Taking Mexico as Client From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 09:06:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/business/media/28adco.html?ex=1293426000&en=2b3a510ae0419548&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Republican Strategist Is Taking Heat for Taking Mexico as Client By SIMON ROMERO DALLAS - Rob Allyn, the political consultant, meet Rob Allyn, the punching bag. A longtime Republican strategist, Mr. Allyn has found himself in the cross hairs of conservative critics in the last week after signing a contract with Mexico's foreign ministry to lead a campaign to strengthen the country's image in the United States. A CNN anchor asked Mr. Allyn whether Mexico was 'dabbling in U.S. policy' by hiring him as a marketer. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, describing Mexico as a 'corrupt, chaotic country' with 40 percent unemployment (it is closer to 4 percent) told him in another interview that he had his work cut out for him. Then protesters here in Dallas, where Mr. Allyn lives, held a news conference in front of the Mexican Consulate to assert that Mexico's government would have done better by hiring a Mexican-American firm. Allyn & Company is a unit of Fleishmann-Hillard, the public relations concern, itself part of the Omnicom Group, the international marketing company. 'I've had friends say on this latest one, should I congratulate you or extend condolences,' Mr. Allyn, 46, said in an interview at his office. Making news, rather than helping to shape it, is not what Mr. Allyn wants to do. Public relations consultants try to remain in the shadows. Perhaps that is impossible when the issue is as emotion-filled as immigration after the approval this month of a bill in the House of Representatives. That bill requires mandatory detention of many undocumented illegal immigrants, stiffer penalties for employers who hire them and a broadening of the immigrant-smuggling statute to include employees of social service agencies and church groups that offer services to undocumented workers. It also calls for building 700 miles of fence along the border with Mexico. Even some of the bill's supporters acknowledge that its requirements, once considered on the extreme fringe of the immigration debate, will make approval difficult in the Senate. Mr. Allyn's contract, worth about $720,000 over the next year, calls for him to represent Mexico in the United States in meetings with nongovernmental organizations; through polling and organizing tours of Mexican officials; and potentially with a small amount of advertising. Paramount among the Mexican government's concerns these days is fighting anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. More than 10 million undocumented immigrants live in this country, according to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly 500,000 undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, have moved to the United States each year since 2000, the Pew study said. The latest contract has a much higher profile than Mr. Allyn's last big foray into Mexican politics, in 2000, when he quietly helped orchestrate the campaign of President Vicente Fox. Attuned to sensitivities in Mexico over the involvement of foreigners in the country's elections, Mr. Allyn traveled to Mexico under pseudonyms like José de Murga and Alberto Aguirre to advise Mr. Fox on polling, wardrobe and speeches. Since then, Mr. Allyn has branched out to work on campaigns in other countries. He counts among his clients the Golkar Party in Indonesia; the prime minister of the Bahamas, Perry Christie; and, most recently, Dumarsais Siméus, the Haitian-born Texas millionaire who aspires to be elected president of Haiti. Mr. Allyn said most of his foreign political work is a result of his Republican contacts in Texas, where he did political consulting work for President Bush while he was governor of Texas, as well as worked for prominent Democrats like Mayor Laura Miller of Dallas and Mayor Bill White of Houston. Mr. Allyn is also co-chairman of Vox Global Mandate, a venture with other Omnicom companies, including GMMB and Mercury Public Affairs, to provide services from both Republican and Democratic strategists for political clients around the world. Still, none of his other campaigns generated as much controversy as his latest contract in Mexico. 'I know people roll their eyes and say the last thing we need to export from this country is spin,' said Mr. Allyn, a former writer, sitting next to a cutout from a magazine article describing him as Mexico's 'go-to gringo' in Texas. 'But everything you see there,' said Mr. Allyn, pointing to the skyline of downtown Dallas outside his window, 'was built largely by Mexican immigrants.' Few states have a Hispanic immigrant population as robust as Texas's. The United States Census Bureau said this year that Anglos make up less than half of the Texas population for the first time in more than a century, after a surge in the state's Hispanic population. Yet in Texas, Mr. Allyn said, a less-hostile view of immigration from Mexico generally holds sway because of a perception of interdependent economic ties with Mexico. He said one of his objectives would be educating people in other parts of the United States - particularly in nonborder states with fast-growing Mexican populations - about the economic importance of Mexico. After all, Mr. Allyn said, Mexico ranks ahead of Japan, China and Germany and behind only Canada as a trading partner with the United States. The most pressing part of his campaign may be dealing with an emerging schism in the Republican Party over immigration. Congressmen like Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia threaten to drown out the administration's guest-worker plan with proposals to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States. 'The conservative movement I signed up for stood for tearing walls down, not building them,' Mr. Allyn said. Many people in Mexico find it hard to comprehend how the debate over immigration has progressed to such a level. And amid the firestorm over Mr. Allyn's contract, there is a feeling among some Hispanics in the United States that their voice on the immigration debate has been shunted aside by political leaders in Washington and Mexico City. 'You don't promote Mexico by giving a contract to a friend who helped get you elected six years ago,' said Carlos Quintanilla, a Dallas entrepreneur who has publicly criticized Mr. Allyn's deal with Mexico's foreign ministry. 'You don't need an Anglo to advance Mexico's interests in the United States. It's a regression and a disconnect.' Shrugging, Mr. Allyn said he was steeling himself for more criticism. 'All I can say is that I'm working on my Spanish as hard as I can,' he said.

Subject: Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 08:44:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27canc.html?ex=1293339600&en=302dc7e6ec8c6570&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Slowly, Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets By GINA KOLATA Jay Weinstein found out that he had chronic myelogenous leukemia in 1996, two weeks before his marriage. He was a New York City firefighter, and he thought his health was great. He learned that there was little hope for a cure. The one treatment that could save him was a bone marrow transplant, but that required a donor, and he did not have one. By 1999, his disease was nearing its final, fatal phase. He might have just weeks to live. Then, Mr. Weinstein had a stroke of luck. He managed to become one of the last patients to enroll in a preliminary study at the Oregon Health & Science University, testing an experimental drug. Mr. Weinstein is alive today and still taking the drug, now on the market as Gleevec. Its maker, Novartis, supplies it to him free because he participated in the clinical trial. Dr. Brian Druker, a Howard Hughes investigator at the university's Cancer Institute, who led the Gleevec study, sees Mr. Weinstein as a pioneer in a new frontier of science. His treatment was based not on blasting cancer cells with harsh chemotherapy or radiation but instead on using a sort of molecular razor to cut them out. That, Dr. Druker and others say, is the first fruit of a new understanding of cancer as a genetic disease. But if cancer is a genetic disease, it is like no other in medicine. With cancer, a person may inherit a predisposition that helps set the process off, but it can take decades - even a lifetime - to accumulate the additional mutations needed to establish a tumor. That is why, scientists say, cancer usually strikes older people and requires an element of bad luck. 'You have to get mutations in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Dr. Druker says. Other genetic diseases may involve one or two genetic changes. In cancer, scores of genes are mutated or duplicated and huge chunks of genetic material are rearranged. With cancer cells, said Dr. William Hahn, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, 'it looks like someone has thrown a bomb in the nucleus.' In other genetic diseases, gene alterations disable cells. In cancer, genetic changes give cells a sort of superpower. At first, as scientists grew to appreciate the complexity of cancer genetics, they despaired. 'If there are 100 genetic abnormalities, that's 100 things you need to fix to cure cancer,' said Dr. Todd Golub, the director of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass., and an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. 'That's a horrifying thought.' Making matters more complicated, scientists discovered that the genetic changes in one patient's tumor were different from those in another patient with the same type of cancer. That led to new questioning. Was every patient going to be a unique case? Would researchers need to discover new drugs for every single patient? 'People said, 'It's hopelessly intractable and too complicated a problem to ever figure out,' ' Dr. Golub recalled. But to their own amazement, scientists are now finding that untangling the genetics of cancer is not impossible. In fact, they say, what looked like an impenetrable shield protecting cancer cells turns out to be flimsy. And those seemingly impervious cancer cells, Dr. Golub said, 'are very much poised to die.' The story of genes and cancer, like most in science, involves many discoveries over many years. But in a sense, it has its roots in the 1980's, with a bold decision by Dr. Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University to piece together the molecular pathways that lead to cancer. It was a time when the problem looked utterly complicated. Scientists thought that cancer cells were so abnormal that they were, as Dr. Vogelstein put it, 'a total black box.' But Dr. Vogelstein had an idea: what if he started with colon cancer, which had some unusual features that made it more approachable? Colon cancer progresses through recognizable phases. It changes from a tiny polyp, or adenoma - a benign overgrowth of cells on the wall of the colon - to a larger polyp, a pre-cancerous growth that, Dr. Vogelstein said, looks 'mean,' and then to a cancer that pushes through the wall of the colon. The final stage is metastasis, when the cancer travels through the body. 'This series of changes is thought to occur in most cancers, but there aren't many cancers where you can get specimens that represent all these stages,' Dr. Vogelstein said. With colon cancer, pathologists could get tissue by removing polyps and adenomas in colonoscopies and taking cancerous tumors in surgery. Colon cancer was even more appealing for such a study because there are families with strong inherited predispositions to develop the disease, indicating that they have cancer genes that may be discovered. So Dr. Vogelstein and his colleagues set out to search for genes 'any way we could,' Dr. Vogelstein said. Other labs found genes, too, and by the mid-1990's, scientists had a rough outline of what was going on. Although there were scores of mutations and widespread gene deletions and rearrangements, it turned out that the crucial changes that turned a colon cell cancerous involved just five pathways. There were dozens of ways of disabling those pathways, but they were merely multiple means to the same end. People with inherited predispositions to colon cancer started out with a gene mutation that put their cells on one of those pathways. A few more random mutations and the cells could become cancerous. The colon cancer story, Dr. Druker said, 'is exactly the paradigm we need for every single cancer at every single stage.' But scientists were stymied. Where should they go from there? How did what happens in colon cancer apply to other cancers? If they had to repeat the colon cancer story every time, discovering genetic alterations in each case, it would take decades to make any progress. The turning point came only recently, with the advent of new technology. Using microarrays, or gene chips - small slivers of glass or nylon that can be coated with all known human genes - scientists can now discover every gene that is active in a cancer cell and learn what portions of the genes are amplified or deleted. With another method, called RNA interference, investigators can turn off any gene and see what happens to a cell. And new methods of DNA sequencing make it feasible to start asking what changes have taken place in what gene. The National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute recently announced a three-year pilot project to map genetic aberrations in cancer cells. The project, Dr. Druker said, is 'the first step to identifying all the Achilles' heels in cancers.' Solving the problem of cancer will not be trivial, Dr. Golub said. But, he added, 'For the first time, we have the tools needed to attack the problem, and if we as a research community come together to work out the genetic basis of cancer, I think it will forever change how we think about the disease.' Already, the principles are in place, scientists say. What is left are the specifics: the gene alterations that could be targets for drugs. 'We're close to being able to put our arms around the whole cancer problem,' said Robert Weinberg, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Institute. 'We've completed the list of all cancer cells needed to create a malignancy,' Dr. Weinberg said. 'And I wouldn't have said that five years ago.' The list includes roughly 10 pathways that cells use to become cancerous and that involve a variety of crucial genetic alterations. There are genetic changes that end up spurring cell growth and others that result in the jettisoning of genes that normally slow growth. There are changes that allow cells to keep dividing, immortalizing them, and ones that allow cells to live on when they are deranged; ordinarily, a deranged cell kills itself. Still other changes let cancer cells recruit normal tissue to support and to nourish them. And with some changes, Dr. Weinberg said, cancer cells block the immune system from destroying them. In metastasis, he added, when cancers spread, the cells activate genes that normally are used only in embryo development, when cells migrate, and in wound healing. But so many genetic changes give rise to a question: how does a cell acquire them? In any cell division, there is a one-in-a-million chance that a mutation will accidentally occur, Dr. Weinberg notes. The chance of two mutations is one in a million million and the chance of three is one in a million million million million. This slow mutation rate results from the fact that healthy cells quickly repair damage to their DNA. 'DNA repair stands as the dike between us and the inundation of mutations,' Dr. Weinberg said. But one of the first things a cell does when it starts down a road to cancer is to disable repair mechanisms. In fact, BRCA1 and 2, the gene mutations that predispose people to breast and ovarian cancer, as well as some other inherited cancer genes, disable these repair systems. Once the mutations start, there is 'a kind of snowball effect, like a chain reaction,' Dr. Vogelstein said. With the first mutations, cells multiply, producing clusters of cells with genetic changes. As some randomly acquire additional mutations, they grow even more. In the end, all those altered genes may end up being the downfall of cancer cells, researchers say. 'Cancer cells have many Achilles' heels,' Dr. Golub says. 'It may take a couple of dozen mutations to cause a cancer, all of which are required for the maintenance and survival of the cancer cell.' Gleevec, researchers say, was the first test of this idea. The drug knocks out a gene product, abl kinase, that is overly abundant in chronic myelogenous leukemia. The first clinical trial, which began seven years ago, seemed like a long shot. 'The idea that this would lead to therapy was something you wrote in your grant application,' said Dr. Charles Sawyers, a Howard Hughes investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. 'It wasn't anything you believed would happen soon.' But the clinical trial of Gleevec, conducted at the Oregon Health & Science University, U.C.L.A. and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was a spectacular success. Patients' cancer cells were beaten back to such an extent that the old tests to look for them in bone marrow were too insensitive, Dr. Sawyers said. Gleevec is not perfect. It is expensive, costing about $25,000 a year. It is not a cure: some cancer cells remain lurking, quiescent and ready to spring if the drug is stopped, so patients must take it every day for the rest of their lives. And some patients are now developing resistance to Gleevec. Still, Dr. Sawyers says, 'Seven years later, most of our patients are still doing well.' Without Gleevec, he added, most would be dead. As for the future of cancer therapy, Dr. Golub and others say that Gleevec offers a taste of the possible. Dr. Golub said he expected that new drugs would strike the Achilles' heels of particular cancers. The treatment will not depend on where the cancer started - breast, colon, lung - but rather which pathway is deranged. 'It's starting to come into focus how one might target the problem,' Dr. Golub said. 'Individual cancers are going to fall one by one by targeting the molecular abnormalities that underlie them.' And some cancer therapies may have to be taken for a lifetime, turning cancer into a chronic disease. 'Seeing cancer become more like what has happened with AIDS would not be shocking,' Dr. Golub says. 'Does that mean cure? Not necessarily. We may see patients treated until they die of something else.' That is what Mr. Weinstein hopes will happen with him. The cancer is still there: new, exquisitely sensitive tests still find a few cells lurking in his bone marrow. And Gleevec has caused side effects. Mr. Weinstein says his fingers and toes sometimes freeze for a few seconds, and sometimes he gets diarrhea. But, he said, 'Certain things you put out of your mind because life is so good.'

Subject: Past Hot Times From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 07:13:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/earth/27warm.html December 27, 2005 Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming By ANDREW C. REVKIN Earth scientists with the longest frames of reference, particularly those whose specialties begin with the prefix 'paleo,' often seem to be the least agitated about human-caused global warming. This has been true even in 2005, a year that saw the biggest summer retreat of Arctic sea ice ever measured, a new sign that warming seas are rising at an accelerating pace and global temperatures continuing a sharp climb that began around 1990 and appears unmatched in 2,000 years. But these backward-looking experts have seen it all before. Recent studies have found that 49 million years ago the balmy Arctic Ocean, instead of being covered in ice, was matted with a cousin of the duckweed that cloaks suburban frog ponds. The forests on the continent now called Antarctica and on shores fringing the Arctic were once thick and lush. And through hundreds of millions of years, concentrations of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases that trap solar energy and prevent the planet from being an ice ball have mostly been far higher than those typical during humankind's short existence. Compared with that norm, the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide now from a binge of burning forests, coal and oil lasting for centuries (and counting) is but a blip In fact, the planet has nothing to worry about from global warming. A hot, steamy earth would be fine for most forms of life. Earth and its biological veneer are far more resilient than human societies, particularly those still mired in poverty or pushed to the margins of the livable. Only we humans have to be concerned, and species like polar bears that, like the poorest people, are pushed to an edge - in the bear's case the tenuous ecosystem built around coastal sea ice. Henk Brinkhuis, a paleoecologist and botanist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said it might be hard to get used to the idea, but the Arctic as we have known it for centuries 'is history.' He said this may spell doom for polar bears, a species that branched off from brown bears only about 250,000 years ago - an evolutionary blink of the eye. Still, this is a special case, not necessarily a blow to the prospects of mammals in general. The world's last huge warm spike, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum some 55 million years ago, preceded 'the biggest radiation in mammals ever,' Dr. Brinkhuis said. 'The first horses, cows, the first primates had their origin right around then,' Dr. Brinkhuis said. 'It may be that the extinction of the polar bear would be followed by all kinds of new species in return.' None of this means that humans should simply embrace their fossil-fueled potency without regard to the effects. In fact, many scientists say, if we value the world as it is, there are still strong, and purely self-serving, reasons to start curbing releases of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases. That long-scale earth history, while speaking of nature's vagaries, holds supporting evidence. It is rife with thresholds, points at which a little warming turns into a lot in a hurry. Avoiding such thresholds could forestall things that societies decide matter, like rapidly rising seas or a farewell to cherished Arctic icons. The Arctic, particularly, is filled with what amount to flippable climate switches, including natural repositories of carbon, like boggy tundra, that could emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases should the current warming trend pass certain points, said Jonathan T. Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. This could amplify warming and take the climate into a realm beyond anything experienced through human evolution. Another lesson of deep planetary history, Dr. Overpeck said, is that, once set in motion, such warm-ups can happen fast and then last a very, very long time. 'That's a condition that might be really hard to get out of for tens of thousands of years,' he said. Studies of the past also show that pace matters. The rise in temperature and greenhouse gases during the great heat wave 55 million years ago, while instantaneous on a geological time scale, took thousands of years to unfold. But the pace of the recent rise in carbon dioxide is as much as 200 times as fast as what has been estimated in past rapid climate transitions. Slowing that pace would help human endeavors as much as ecosystems, said David G. Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic systems science at the University of Manitoba. Those who speak of the potential benefits of warming, he noted, forget that a thawing, greening Arctic, for example, will not suddenly transform from spongy tundra to wheat-friendly farmland. 'You have to generate soil,' Dr. Barber said. 'It takes a long time to generate this kind of stuff. So it's not going to be an instantaneous sort of thing. There's going to be a lot of messiness in between.' Even for polar bears, there are reasons to think the end is not necessarily nigh. There was at least one significant period - the last gap between ice ages 120,000 years ago - when the global climate was several degrees warmer than it is today and they clearly squeaked through. So at least slowing or blunting the warming might allow them to squeak through once again. Dr. Barber said he was confident that biology would endure much of what humans throw at it. His concern is for the effects on people and the things they rely on or cherish. 'All of global warming has nothing to do with the planet,' Dr. Barber said. 'The planet will go on through its normal cycles, and it'll do its own thing. 'It only has to do with us - as people. Our economic side of things and our political side of things are really what are being affected by climate change. The planet could care less.'

Subject: Psychotherapy on the Road to ... Where? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:28:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27ther.html?ex=1293339600&en=a24a6dc3d375ea19&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Psychotherapy on the Road to ... Where? By BENEDICT CAREY ANAHEIM, Calif. - The small car careered toward a pile of barrels labeled 'Danger TNT,' then turned sharply, ramming through a mock brick wall and into a dark tunnel. A light appeared ahead, coming fast and head-on. A locomotive whistled. 'Uh-oh,' said one of the passengers, Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist and a pioneer in the study of positive emotions. But in a moment, the car scudded safely under the light, out through the swinging doors of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and into the warm, clear light that seemed to radiate from the Southern California pavement. 'Well,' Dr. Seligman said. 'I don't know that I expected to be doing that.' One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit Disneyland at the invitation of this reporter, Dr. Seligman was here in mid-December for a conference on the state of psychotherapy, its current challenges and its future. And a wild ride it was. Because it was clear at this landmark meeting that, although the participants agreed it was a time for bold action, psychotherapists were deeply divided over whether that action should be guided by the cool logic of science or a spirit of humanistic activism. The answer will determine not only what psychotherapy means, many experts said, but its place in the 21st century. 'In the 1960's and 1970's, we had these characters like Carl Rogers, Minuchin, Frankl; psychotherapy felt like a social movement, and you just wanted to be a part of it,' said Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, a psychologist who heads the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, which every five years since 1980 has sponsored the conference in honor of Dr. Erickson, a pioneer in the use of hypnosis and brief therapy techniques. 'Now,' Dr. Zeig continued, 'well, therapists are becoming more like technicians, and we're trying to find the common denominator from the different schools and methods to see what works best, and where to go from here.' The meeting brought together some 9,000 psychologists, social workers and students, along with many of the world's most celebrated living therapists, among them the psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Kernberg, the Hungarian-born psychiatrist and skeptic Dr. Thomas Szasz, and Dr. Albert Bandura, the pioneer in self-directed behavior change. 'This is like a rock concert for most of us,' said Peggy Fitzgerald, 56, a social worker and teacher from Sacramento, holding up a program covered in autographs. Ms. Fitzgerald said she attended war protests during the 1960's, and 'this has some of that same feeling.' Calls to arms rang through several conference halls. In the opening convocation, Dr. Hunter 'Patch' Adams - the charismatic therapist played on screen by Robin Williams - displayed on a giant projection screen photos from around the world of burned children, starving children, diseased children, some lying in their own filth. He called for a 'last stand of loving care' to prevail over the misery in the world, its wars and 'our fascistic government.' Overcome by his own message, Dr. Adams eventually fell to the floor of the stage in tears. Many in the audience of thousands were deeply moved; many others were bewildered. Some left the arena. At the conference, many said they found it heartening that psychotherapy was finding some scientific support. For example, cognitive therapy, in which people learn practical thought-management techniques to dispel self-defeating assumptions and soothe anxieties, has proved itself in many studies. The therapy, some participants said, has even attracted the attention of the Nobel Committee. The two men who developed it, Dr. Albert Ellis, a psychologist in New York, and Dr. Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, brought crowds to their feet. A frequent theme of the meeting was that therapists could not only relieve anxieties and despair but help clients realize a truly fulfilling life - an idea based on emerging research. In his talk, Dr. Seligman spelled out the principles of this vision, called positive psychology. By learning to express gratitude, to savor the day's pleasures and to nurture native strengths, a people can become more absorbed in their daily lives and satisfied with them, his research has suggested. A just-completed study at the University of Pennsylvania found that these techniques relieved the symptoms of depression better than other widely applied therapies, Dr. Seligman told the audience. 'The zeit is really geisting on this idea right now,' said Dr. Seligman, who has consulted with the military on how to incorporate his methods. Dr. Dan Siegel, a child psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of several speakers to emphasize how psychotherapy changes the wiring of the brain. For example, he said, brain imaging findings suggest that secure social interactions foster the integration of disparate parts of the brain. 'When I'm telling you my feelings, discussing memories, in this close relationship, I'm achieving better neurological integration,' Dr. Siegel said. 'I'm repairing the connections in the brain.' Many therapists at the conference said that if the field did not incorporate more scientifically testable principles, its future was bleak. Using vague, unstandardized methods to assist troubled clients 'should be prosecutable' in some cases, said Dr. Marsha Linehan of the University of Washington, who has developed a well-studied method of treating suicidal patients. Yet it was also apparent in several demonstrations of the spellbinding thing itself - artful psychotherapy - that some things will be difficult, if not impossible, to standardize. Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, research director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment in Miami, showed a film of the first session he conducted with a woman who was suicidal months after witnessing her boyfriend die in a traffic accident. After gently prompting her to talk about the accident, Dr. Meichenbaum then zeroed in on something he had noticed when the woman entered his office: she was clutching a cassette tape. He asked about the tape and learned that it was a recording of her late boyfriend's voice, expressing love for her. 'I play it over and over, and it makes me so depressed,' said the woman, in a tiny voice. And here Dr. Meichenbaum stopped the film and addressed the audience. 'The tape!' he said. 'When during the session do you go for the cassette tape? What do you do with the tape?' For several long moments not a creature stirred, not even a laptop mouse. This community of therapists was now trying to save a soul, a person who was alone and did not want to live. What to do with the tape? 'Consider between now and the next time I see you, in two days, consider whether you would be willing to play the tape,' Dr. Meichenbaum went on to say he had told the woman. 'I would be privileged and honored' to hear it. 'Why?' he now asked, turning to the audience. 'Because it not only increases the likelihood she'll return but empowers her to come back' and take an active role in therapy. Which is exactly what she did, he said. 'Now, is any research study ever going to tell you exactly the right thing to do when your client comes in with a tape of her dead lover's voice?' Dr. Meichenbaum asked. Most of the audience of more than 1,000 people wandered out of the talk wide-eyed. One, Terrina Picarello, 40, a marriage and family therapist from Greensboro, N.C., said, 'That is what you come for: inspiration.' Ms. Picarello said that the conference was well worth the money she spent, more than $800 in fees and travel, and the week she had taken off to attend, even though she found some of the presentations on marriage counseling disappointing. 'Way too much talking by the therapist, I thought,' she said, after one of them. 'It seemed so old-fashioned, like it was drawn from another era.' And there was the rub. As psychotherapy struggles to define itself for an age of podcasts and terror alerts, it will need ideas, thinkers, leaders. Yet the luminaries here, many of whom rose to prominence three decades ago, were making their way off the stage. And it was not clear who, or what, would take their place. Across the street at Disneyland, where just about any metaphor is available for the taking, Dr. Siegel was working out the meaning of the park for himself. A native of Los Angeles, he has many memories of visiting as a child, perhaps nowhere more so than the circular drive in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. 'The circle of choice,' he said, looking around. 'This is where you decide, where you think about your mood and which way you want to go - to Frontierland, Tomorrowland.' By all appearances in Anaheim, the field of psychotherapy has arrived at the circle of choice. The question is, How to get to Tomorrowland?

Subject: The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:26:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01eins.html?ex=1267851600&en=255ed5ddf8734523&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland March 1, 2005 The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome By DENNIS OVERBYE He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He threw a small bowling ball at his little sister and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her. There was in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be 'the new Copernicus,' proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubblegum. No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T- shirts, coffee mugs, posters and dolls. Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people like me who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring a giant detector in the bowels of a particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality. 'Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate,' said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. Could it happen again? 'Who or where is the next Einstein?' No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for some young researcher to be tagged 'the new Einstein,' so don't expect to hear any names here. 'It's probably always a stupid question,' said Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein. Dr. Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author, who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes. A Rare Confluence To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask, as well, about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame. Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated. Dr. David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics last year, said, 'Of course there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special.' Physics, many scientists like Dr. Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the miles of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors. 'Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems,' said Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. 'It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked.' But you never know. 'One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise,' said Dr. Witten, chuckling. 'Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?' In fact, physicists admit, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings. 'We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key,' said Dr. Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He likes to think, he added, that it will be solved by 'a Brazilian kid in a dirt floor village.' Dr. Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it. 'Einstein has lasted 100 years,' he said. 'The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years.' Looking the Part Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by 'Einstein.' Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th-century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves? Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry? Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this 'great adventure in thought,' as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general. The world was exhausted morally, mentally and economically from the Great War, which had shattered the pretensions of Enlightenment Europe. People were ready for something new and Einstein gave them a whole new universe. Moreover, the mark of this new universe - 'lights all askew in the heavens,' as this newspaper put it - was something everybody could understand. The stars, the most ancient of embodiments of cosmic order, had moved. With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science, the frizzy-headed sage of Princeton, the world's most famous Jew and humanity's atomic conscience. It helped that he wore his fame lightly, with humor and a cute accent. 'He was a caricature of the scientist,' said Dr. Krauss. 'He looked right. He sounded right.' When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards, an almost biological need to find order and logical consistency in science and in nature, the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality. Dr. Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario describes it as moral quality. 'He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics should explain everything in nature coherently and consistently,' he wrote last year in Discover. It was that drive that led him to general relativity, regarded as his greatest achievement. The other discoveries, in 1905, physicists and historians say, would have been made whether Einstein did them or not. 'They were in the air,' said Dr. Martin Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge University and Britain's astronomer royal. The quest for general relativity, on the other hand, was the result of 'pure thought,' Dr. Rees said. Dr. Peter L. Galison, professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard, described Einstein as 'somebody who had a transformative effect on the world because of his relentless pursuit of what the right principles should be.' Others said they were impressed that he never swerved, despite a tempestuous personal and political life, from science as his main devotion. 'He fixed his concentration on important problems, he was unvarying in that,' Dr. Krauss said. Another attraction of Einstein as an icon is his perceived irreverence, and the legend of his origin as an outsider, working in the patent office while he pursued the breakthroughs of 1905. (Not that he was necessarily humble because of that; letters from his early years show him pestering well-known scientists and spoiling for a fight so much that his girlfriend and future wife, Mileva Maric, was always counseling him to keep a cool head.) 'Part of the appeal is that he comes from nowhere and turns things upside down,' Dr. Galison said. 'That's the fantasy,' he explained, saying that science has always represented the possibility that someone without a privileged background could intervene and triumph through sheer ability and brainpower. There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet. In the cozy turn of the century, Dr. Galison said, Einstein was able to be a philosopher as well as a physicist, addressing deep questions like the meaning of simultaneity and often starting his papers by posing some philosophical quandary. But philosophy and physics have long since gone their separate ways. Physics has become separated from the humanities. 'Everything tells us science has nothing to do with the ideas of ordinary life,' Dr. Galison said. 'Whether that is good or bad, I don't know.' As a result no one has inherited Einstein's mantle as a natural philosopher, said Dr. Galison. We might have to settle for a kind of Einstein by committee. The string theorists have donned the mantle of Einstein's quest for a unified theory of all the forces of nature. In the last half-century various manifestations of modern science have made their way into popular culture, including chaos theory and the representation of information in bits and bytes, as pioneered by Dr. Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs engineer. The discovery of the double helix of DNA, the hereditary molecule, which laid the basis for the modern genetics, is probably the most charismatic result of modern biology. But the world is not awash in action figures based on James Watson and Francis Crick, the molecule's decoders. Meanwhile Einstein's role of symbolizing the hope that you could understand the universe has at least been partly filled by Dr. Hawking, whose books 'A Brief History of Time' and 'The Universe in a Nutshell' have sold millions, and who has even appeared on 'Star Trek' and 'The Simpsons.' 'People know him,' said Dr. Krauss, and his work on black holes has had a significant impact on the study of gravity and the cosmos, but he has not reinvented the universe. The Next Big Idea One reason nobody stands out is that physics has been kind of stuck for the last half-century. During that time, Dr. Witten said, physicists have made significant progress toward a unified theory of nature, not by blazing new paths, but by following established principles, like the concept of symmetry - first used by Einstein in his relativity paper in 1905 - and extending them from electromagnetism to the weak and strong nuclear forces. 'It was not necessary to invent quantum field theory,' said Dr. Witten, 'just to improve it.' That, he explains, is collective work. But new ideas are surely needed. Part of Einstein's legacy was an abyssal gap in the foundations of reality as conceived by science. On one side of the divide was general relativity, which describes stars and the universe itself. On the other side is quantum mechanics, which describes the paradoxical behavior of subatomic particles and forces. In the former, nature is continuous and deterministic, cause follows effect; in the latter nature is discrete, like sand grains on the beach, and subject to statistical uncertainties. Einstein to his dying day rejected quantum mechanics as ultimate truth, saying in a letter to Max Born in 1924, 'The theory yields much but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that he does not play dice.' Science will not have a real theory of the world until these two warring notions are merged into a theory of quantum gravity, one that can explain what happens when the matter in a star goes smoosh into a dense microscopic dot at the center of a black hole, or when the universe appears out of nothing in a big bang. String theory is one, as yet unproven, attempt at such a quantum gravity theory, and it has attracted an army of theorists and mathematicians. But, Dr. Witten speculated, there could be an Einsteinian moment in another direction. Quantum gravity presumes, he explained, that general relativity breaks down at short distances. But what, he asked, if relativity also needed correction at long distances as a way of explaining, for example, the acceleration of the universe? 'Relativity field theory could be cracked at long distances,' Dr. Witten said, adding that he saw no evidence for it. But when Einstein came along, there was no clear evidence that Newtonian physics was wrong, either. 'I would think that's an opportunity for an Einstein,' he said. Another Einsteinian opportunity, Dr. Witten later added in an e-mail message, is the possibility that Einstein's old bugaboo quantum mechanics needs correcting, saying that while he saw no need himself, it was a mystery what quantum mechanics meant when applied to the universe as a whole. Dr. Smolin of the Perimeter Institute said it should give physicists pause that their leader and idol had rejected quantum mechanics, and yet what everybody is trying to do now is to apply quantum mechanics to Einstein's theory of gravity. 'What if he were right?' asked Dr. Smolin, who said he also worried that the present organization of science, with its pressures for tenure and publications, mitigates against the appearance of outsiders like Einstein, who need to follow their own star for a few lonely years or decades. But as Dr. Krauss said, it only takes one good idea to change our picture of reality. Dr. Smolin said, 'When somebody has a correct idea, it doesn't take long to have an impact.' 'It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein,' he went on. 'When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know.'

Subject: London Calling, With Luck From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:22:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/movies/28matc.html?ex=1293426000&en=f0b942705179cce8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 London Calling, With Luck, Lust and Ambition By A. O. SCOTT Because Woody Allen's early films are about as funny as any ever made, it is often assumed that his temperament is essentially comic, which leads to all manner of disappointment and misunderstanding. Now and then, Mr. Allen tries to clear up the confusion, insisting, sometimes elegantly and sometimes a little too baldly, that his view of the world is essentially nihilistic. He has announced, in movie after movie, an absolute lack of faith in any ordering moral principle in the universe - and still, people think he's joking. In 'Match Point,' his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment. At the very beginning, Mr. Allen's hero, a young tennis player recently retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire said in 'The Gay Divorcée': that 'chance is the fool's name for fate.' Mr. Allen's accomplishment here is to fool his audience, or at least to misdirect us, with a tale whose gilded surface disguises the darkness beneath. His guile - another name for it is art - keeps the story moving with the fleet momentum of a well-made play. Comparisons to 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' are inevitable, since the themes and some elements of plot are similar, but the philosophical baggage in 'Match Point' is more tightly and discreetly packed. There are few occasions for speech-making, and none of the desperate, self-conscious one-liners that have become, in Mr. Allen's recent movies, more tics than shtick. Nor is there an obvious surrogate for the director among the youthful, mostly British and altogether splendid cast. If you walked in after the opening titles, it might take you a while to guess who made this picture. After a while you would, of course. The usual literary signposts are in place: surely no other screenwriter could write a line like 'darling, have you seen my copy of Strindberg?' or send his protagonist to bed with a paperback Dostoyevsky. But while a whiff of Russian fatalism lingers in the air - and more than a whiff of Strindbergian misogyny - these don't seem to be the most salient influences. The film's setting is modified Henry James (wealthy London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books; and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser - hunger, lust, ambition, greed. Not that the tennis player, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), seems at first to be consumed by such appetites. An Irishman of modest background, he takes a job at an exclusive London club, helping its rich members polish their ground strokes. He seems both easygoing and slightly ill at ease, ingratiating and diffident. Before long, he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the amiable, unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to the family box at the opera. From there, it is a short trip to an affair with Tom's sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a job in the family firm and the intermittently awkward but materially rewarding position of son-in-law to parents played by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton. When 'Match Point' was shown in Cannes last spring, some British critics objected that its depiction of London was inaccurate, a demurral that New Yorkers, accustomed to visiting Mr. Allen's fantasy Manhattan, could only greet with weary shrugs and sighs. Uprooting a script originally set in the Hamptons and repotting it in British soil has refreshed and sharpened the story, which depends not on insight into a particular social situation, but rather on a general theory of human behavior. London is Manhattan seen through a glass, brightly: Tate Modern stands in for the Museum of Modern Art; Covent Garden takes the place of Lincoln Center. As for the breathtaking South Bank loft into which Chris and Chloe move, it will satisfy the lust for high-end real estate that has kept the diehards in their seats during Mr. Allen's long creative malaise. In this case, though, what happens in the well-appointed rooms and fashionable restaurants is more interesting than the architecture or the décor. Mr. Rhys-Meyers has an unusual ability to keep the audience guessing, to draw us into sympathetic concord even as we're trying to figure him out. Is he a cipher or a sociopath? A careful social climber or a reckless rake? The first clue that he may be something other than a mild, well-mannered sidekick comes when Chris meets Tom's fiancée, an American actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), in a scene that raises the movie's temperature from a polite simmer to a full sexual boil. (The scene also quietly acknowledges a debt to 'A Place in the Sun,' George Stevens's adaptation of Dreiser's 'American Tragedy.' The parallels don't stop there. Mr. Rhys-Meyers's hollow-cheeked watchfulness recalls Montgomery Clift. Which makes Ms. Johansson either the next Elizabeth Taylor or the new Shelley Winters. Hmm). What passes between Chris and Nola is not only desire, but also recognition, which makes their connection especially volatile. As their affair advances, Ms. Johansson and Mr. Rhys-Meyers manage some of the best acting seen in a Woody Allen movie in a long time, escaping the archness and emotional disconnection that his writing often imposes. It is possible to identify with both of them - and to feel an empathetic twinge as they are ensnared in the consequences of their own heedlessness - without entirely liking either one. But it is the film's brisk, chilly precision that makes it so bracingly pleasurable. The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so much fun, and Mr. Allen's bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie this good is no laughing matter.

Subject: Ten Year International Dollar Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 11:28:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/26/95 - 12/26/05 Australia 11.3 Canada 14.4 Denmark 14.4 France 11.0 Germany 7.8 Hong Kong 5.5 Japan 0.1 Netherlands 8.2 Norway 12.0 Sweden 12.9 Switzerland 9.2 UK 8.7

Subject: Ten Year Domestic Currency Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 11:25:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/26/95 - 12/26/05 Australia 11.5 Canada 12.7 Denmark 15.8 France 12.3 Germany 9.3 Hong Kong 5.7 Japan 1.4 Netherlands 9.8 Norway 12.7 Sweden 14.9 Switzerland 10.6 UK 7.5

Subject: Huge Rise Looms for Health Care From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 07:48:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/nyregion/26benefits.html December 26, 2005 Huge Rise Looms for Health Care in City's Budget By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and MILT FREUDENHEIM When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed making new workers chip in more to its pension fund than current workers do, it was enough to send the union out on strike and bring the nation's largest mass-transit system to a halt for three days. But the cost of pensions may look paltry next to that of another benefit soon to hit New York and most other states and cities: the health care promised to retired teachers, judges, firefighters, bus drivers and other former employees, which must be figured under a new accounting formula. The city currently provides free health insurance to its retirees, their spouses and dependent children. The state is almost as generous, promising to pay, depending on the date of hire, 90 to 100 percent of the cost for individual retirees, and 82 to 86 percent for retiree families. Those bills - $911 million this year for city retirees and $859 million for state retirees out of a total city and state budget of $156.6 billion - may seem affordable now. But the New York governments, like most other public agencies across the country, have been calculating the costs in a way that sharply understates their price tag over time. Although governments will not have to come up with the cash immediately, failure to find a way to finance the yearly total will eventually hurt their ability to borrow money affordably. When the numbers are added up under new accounting rules scheduled to go into effect at the end of 2006, New York City's annual expense for retiree health care is expected to at least quintuple, experts say, approaching and maybe surpassing $5 billion, for exactly the same benefits the retirees get today. The number will grow because the city must start including the value of all the benefits earned in a given year, even those that will not be paid until future years. Some actuaries say the new yearly amount could be as high as $10 billion. The increases for the state could be equally startling. Most other states and cities also offer health benefits to retirees, and will also be affected by the accounting change. 'It's not likely that New York City has a way to fund current costs, its pension obligation and fund retiree health care without raising taxes or cutting services,' said Jan Lazar, an independent consultant specializing in city retirement finances. 'These are huge numbers, not a one-time cost.' The pay-as-you-go accounting method that New York now uses greatly understates the full obligation taxpayers have incurred because it does not include any benefits to be paid in the future. Most other state and local governments that offer significant health benefits to retirees use the same method and will also have to bring newer, larger numbers onto their books in the next two or three years. The increases will vary from place to place, but New York is expected to be at the high end because it offers richer benefits than many other cities and has many police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers who can retire with full pension at age 50. At the transit talks, pensions were pulled off the table in the end, and the final settlement is likely to reflect an increased health care payment by current workers, not retirees. But even though New York was pushed to a standstill over proposed changes in transit workers' pensions, virtually no one in government, outside of a tiny group of experts, is talking publicly about the far more daunting bill for citywide retiree health insurance. The total value of the pensions promised is probably bigger, but money has already been set aside to pay the pensions, to a significant degree. For retiree health care, nothing stands behind those promises except the expectation that taxes will be raised enough in the future to cover them. At last count, the city's biggest pension fund - the one for about 300,000 workers not covered by police, firefighter, teacher or school workers plans - said it had $42 billion set aside in trust for the $42.2 billion it owed. No money at all has been set aside for that same group of city employees' post-retirement health care. Determining the correct amount will be 'a tremendous undertaking,' a city official said, adding that rapid changes in the overall health care environment, including the Medicare and Medicaid programs, make it extremely difficult to see what future costs will be. No one really knows what the total health care obligation is for the 836,000 people already retired or now working for the city and state, much less who will pay for it. Neither side in the transit dispute, for example, has publicly mentioned retiree health care. A small group of city officials has been quietly working for months, gathering data on the dozens of city retiree health plans, large and small, but the process is not expected to be complete for months. Meanwhile, a handful of other states and cities have already done the same calculations. If their results are any guide, New York City and the state could ultimately find that they have each promised their retirees health care worth tens of billions of dollars. The transportation authority, a state entity whose retiree health care costs are partially borne by New York City, could find that it has already promised more than $5 billion worth of benefits to its current and future retirees. At the moment, the transportation authority is spending about $380 million a year on health care for its unionized workers. That covers both active workers and retirees; while a precise breakdown does not exist, citywide demographics suggest that about $165 million of that may be for retirees. Once the new accounting rule is in force, the transportation authority may find itself scrounging for 5 to 10 times that amount every year, $825 million to $1.6 billion, if an accounting rule of thumb devised by one of the chief credit rating firms, Fitch Ratings, holds up. By the time anybody knows for sure, the authority will probably be halfway through the union contract it is still struggling to complete. To find the money, the authority will have to turn to 'higher fares, less service, or more pressure on the city government to fork over subsidies,' said Robert A. Kurtter, an analyst with Moody's Investors Service who monitors New York's finances. The city's retirement system, meanwhile, will be struggling with the same problem on a much larger scale. The city has been offering free health care to its retirees for decades. In the private sector, companies that once offered health insurance for retirees began to stop doing so in the 1990's, for a number of reasons, including accounting rule changes like those now coming into effect for states and cities. Today, only 38 percent of companies with more than 200 workers offer retiree health insurance, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a group that analyzes city and state finances. An even smaller number of companies, 9 percent, pay any part of the premiums that can be used to buy optional supplements to Medicare for retirees over 65. New York City and the state both pay the full cost of Medicare supplements for their retirees. 'They've stuck with that, although the rest of the world has changed,' said Charles M. Brecher, research director of the Citizens Budget Commission and a professor of public and health administration at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. While the private sector was curtailing retiree benefits, New York City and the state have been preserving and even expanding benefits in bargaining with their unions. Both sides focused mainly on the current cost of the benefits. No one was paying much attention to the deferred cost of the benefits that would come due once current workers retired. Meanwhile, health costs resumed rising at double-digit rates, and a large share of the public work force began to reach retirement age. Currently, the city administers a big health plan for its workers and retirees and contributes to dozens of smaller retiree health plans that are run by individual unions and supplement the city's coverage. The calculations are now being done, privately, because of the accounting rule change. In 2004 the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, a nonprofit body that writes accounting rules for governments, issued a new standard for retiree medical plans. It roughly follows a similar standard issued in 1994 for public pension plans. But rather than requiring local governments to finance their retiree medical plans, the rule simply requires them to lay out a theoretical financing framework, then report how they are dealing with it. Localities that create trust funds will get certain financial rewards. Localities that do not put money behind their promises risk being punished by falling credit ratings. When a city's credit rating falls, it becomes harder and more expensive to issue bonds or otherwise borrow money. Municipal bond analysts at Moody's and Standard & Poor's said they were taking a wait-and-see stance. 'How the city addresses the burden is another question - by reducing the benefit or funding the cost, or allowing this liability to mount,' said Mr. Kurtter, of Moody's. If the amount grows, 'at some point it will create a credit issue,' he said. Mr. Kurtter said city officials have acknowledged privately that the amounts will be large, 'in the billions, they say.' Labor officials say that even though the change is just a new way of accounting, not a price increase in the conventional sense, they fear that putting a number on the city's promises for future retiree health care will lead to sticker shock and renewed calls to cut benefits. 'There's a lot of fear that this kind of disclosure will reignite the whole battle of who assumes retiree health costs,' said Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers and the chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee. 'Even though it should be a data point, it will be used as a hammer.'

Subject: Sign Up for New Drug Plan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 07:19:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/politics/23drug.html?ex=1292994000&en=b3ada8f0b69e9339&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Over a Million on Medicare Sign Up for New Drug Plan By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced Thursday that slightly more than a million of the 42 million Medicare beneficiaries had voluntarily signed up for the new prescription drug benefit, while 10.6 million had been enrolled automatically by the federal government or by health maintenance organizations. In addition, the administration said, Medicare will pay subsidies to employers who provide drug benefits to 5.9 million retirees, and the government is reviewing applications for subsidies from employers with 600,000 additional retirees. Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the data showed that 'the new prescription drug benefit is off to a strong start.' But Daniel N. Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a research and consulting company, said, 'We still have a long way to go.' He estimated that 17 million Medicare beneficiaries would receive drug coverage only if they voluntarily signed up for it. 'The stability of the new program depends on robust enrollment among higher-income seniors, who tend to be relatively healthy,' Mr. Mendelson said. Medicare, like any health insurer, needs large numbers of relatively healthy subscribers who will pay premiums without generating high costs. The Medicare drug benefit becomes available on Jan. 1. Enrollment began on Nov. 15. People have until May 15 to sign up. After that, they may face penalties in the form of higher premiums. Federal officials say they expect a surge in enrollment just before the May 15 deadline. In the Federal Register of Jan. 28, the administration predicted that 39 million people would receive drug coverage in 2006 through a Medicare drug plan or an employer-sponsored health plan subsidized by Medicare. In June, Secretary Leavitt scaled back the official estimate. He predicted that 28 million to 30 million people would receive drug coverage next year. He said those figures came from 'Wall Street analysts.' Many Medicare beneficiaries say they have been confused by the multiplicity of drug plans, with different premiums, deductibles, co-payments and covered drugs. But Mr. Leavitt and Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said they were pleased with enrollment to date, especially the response from employers. 'There had been predictions that employers would drop drug coverage, but that's proven wrong,' Dr. McClellan said. The law ignited political passions that exist to this day. Supporters and critics of the law seized on the new data in an effort to shape public perceptions of the drug benefit, which is likely to figure prominently in next year's Congressional elections. Those perceptions may also influence the success of the program, since they will be a factor in determining how many people enroll. Thus, Secretary Leavitt said, 'More than 21 million seniors and people with disabilities will get prescription drug coverage as of Jan. 1.' R. Alexander Vachon III, a health policy consultant for several Wall Street firms, said: 'Twenty-one million is impressive. But we don't know how many of those people already had drug coverage and how many will be getting it for the first time.' The administration said that 3.1 million of the 21 million beneficiaries had drug coverage from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program or from Tricare, the military health care plan. Daniel C. Adcock, a lobbyist at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said: 'Ninety-nine percent of retired federal employees in those two programs will not sign up for the Medicare drug benefit. They already have drug coverage superior to what Medicare provides.' Of the 10.6 million people automatically enrolled in Medicare drug plans, 6.2 million have been receiving drug coverage through Medicaid. Most of the others are in health maintenance organizations or other managed care plans.

Subject: No Left Turn From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:54:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27llosa.html?ex=1293339600&en=7c58c501bd2e5367&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 No Left Turn By ÁLVARO VARGAS LLOSA Washington IN 1781, an Aymara Indian, Tupac Katari, led an uprising against Spanish rule in Bolivia and lay siege to La Paz. He was captured and killed by having his limbs tied to four horses that pulled in opposite directions. Before dying, he prophesied, 'I will come back as millions.' To judge by the overwhelming victory of Evo Morales, an Aymara, in Bolivia's elections on Dec. 18, he kept his promise. Mr. Morales's election has been interpreted as confirmation that South America is moving left. Mr. Morales does not hide his admiration for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, and his proposals include the nationalization of the oil industry, the redistribution of some privately owned estates and the decriminalization of coca plantations in the Chapare region. He opposes the Free Trade Area of the Americas and blasts 'neoliberalism.' It would be a mistake, however, to think that Mr. Morales will become another Hugo Chávez even if that is his wish. The new Bolivian president will not have the resources that Venezuela commands and his popular base is shakier. Moreover, Brazil has an important presence in Bolivia and will be in a position to exercise a moderating influence. Unlike Venezuela, where skyrocketing oil prices brought Mr. Chávez a windfall that allowed him to build a strong social network based on patronage, Bolivia has little revenue. The only reason its fiscal account is not showing a $1 billion deficit is foreign aid, mainly from the United States. Because Mr. Morales's followers toppled the two previous presidents and forced the authorities to impose heavy royalties on multinational companies exploiting natural gas, foreign investment has dried up: only $84 million worth of investment came into the country this year. And the possibility of suddenly turning Bolivia's natural gas reserves (potentially a whopping 52 trillion cubic feet) into an exporting bonanza has been precluded by the cancellation of a project that sought to export natural gas to Mexico and California through Chilean ports. (Bolivia and Chile have been at odds since the late 19th century, when Bolivia lost its access to the sea to Chile in the War of the Pacific.) Bolivia's indigenous population, which wants results quickly, may also hold Mr. Morales in check. His party, Movement Toward Socialism, is a loose amalgam of competing social groups. If Mr. Morales tries to concentrate power, he will need a sturdy, permanent base of support that is by no means guaranteed. Furthermore, the residents of many provinces, especially in the east, are agitating for local autonomy and have warned that they will resist attempts to centralize even more power in La Paz. Bolivia has had left-wing governments before that were toppled by the same people who made them possible. President Carlos Mesa, who replaced Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 after violent demonstrations, had the support of the population when he reneged on natural gas contracts with foreign investors and led a virulent campaign against Chile. Yet the masses still turned against him, forcing his resignation in June. Finally, Brazil's pragmatic president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could also constrain Mr. Morales's ambitions. Brazil is now effectively Bolivia's only foreign investor, and its role is likely to grow even more crucial, because Mr. Morales promises to nationalize the subsoil and keep the high royalties on oil and natural gas exploitation that have kept out investors from other countries. Bolivia therefore will need Petrobras, the Brazilian energy giant, to expand its investments. Mr. da Silva has not been able to rein in Mr. Chávez, but he will have leverage over the more vulnerable Mr. Morales. Of course, whether Mr. Morales will draw closer to Mr. Chávez will in part depend on American policy toward Bolivia. And that, in turn, will depend on whether Mr. Morales decriminalizes coca growing. If he does so, the United States should not overreact, because nothing much will change. Even with the restrictions that are in place now, there are already as many plantations in Chapare as the demand for coca - and Bolivia's capacity to make cocaine from it - warrant. In any case, cocaine production and distribution will still be banned in Bolivia, Mr. Morales says. If Washington were to respond to coca decriminalization by hindering Bolivia's exports of clothing and jewelry to the United States, tens of thousands of families in El Alto, one of Mr. Morales's indigenous power bases, would lose their source of income, and anti-American sentiment would pull Mr. Morales leftward. Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently told me that the United States aims to eliminate its remaining protectionist measures (which hamper some South American economies by restricting United States imports of their goods). Few Latin Americans have heard about this endeavor. If the goal is to promote development and foster good relations across the hemisphere, eliminating protectionist policies will be far more effective than making coca plantations the paramount issue in Bolivia-United States relations. Fractious politics and ethnic tensions already make for a delicate situation in the Andes. Let's not make it worse.

Subject: Indians Find They Can Go Home From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:49:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/business/worldbusiness/26recruit.html?ex=1293253200&en=667b6a84d2dcd825&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Indians Find They Can Go Home Again By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India - Standing amid the rolling lawns outside his four-bedroom villa, Ajay Kela pondered his street in the community of Palm Meadows. One of his neighbors recently returned to India from Cupertino, Calif., to run a technology start-up funded by the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Across the street from Mr. Kela is another Indian executive, this one from Fremont, Calif., who works with the outsourcing firm Infosys Technologies. On the other side is the top executive of Cisco Systems in India, who returned here after decades in the Bay Area and New York. Also on the block is a returnee from the United Kingdom, who heads the technology operations of Deutsche Bank. Mr. Kela's neighborhood is just a small sample of a reverse brain drain benefiting India. The gated community of Palm Meadows in the Whitefield suburbs, and many others in the vicinity, with names like Ozone and Lake Vista, are full of Indians who were educated in and worked in the United States and Europe, but who have been lured home by the surging Indian economy and its buoyant technology industry. 'Nothing unusual about this lane at all,' said Mr. Kela, 48, who moved from Foster City, Calif., to Palm Meadows last year and is president of the outsourcing firm Symphony Services, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif. Nasscom, a trade group of Indian outsourcing companies, estimates that 30,000 technology professionals have moved back in the last 18 months. Bangalore, Hyderabad and the suburbs of Delhi are becoming magnets for an influx of Indians, who are the top-earning ethnic group in the United States. These cities, with their Western-style work environment, generous paychecks and quick career jumps, offer the returnees what, until now, they could only get in places like Palo Alto and Boston. And now they offer something else: a housing boom. Homes have tripled in value in Palm Meadows over the last 12 months, and rents have quadrupled. 'Expatriates are returning because India is hot,' said Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys Technologies, India's second-largest outsourcing firm, which recruited 25 returnees from top American schools for its 100-seat summer internship this year. 'There is an increasing feeling that significant action in the technology industry is moving to India,' he said. While most returnees are first-generation expatriates, second-generation Indians living in the United States are also returning, said Lori Blackman, a recruitment consultant in Dallas. 'Among them I sense an altruistic pull to return to India to help build their home country to a greater power than the country had ever hoped to achieve,' she said. But the trend is raising fears among American specialists that it could deplete the United States of scientific talent and blunt its edge in innovation. 'The United States will miss the talents of people of Indian origin who return to India,' said Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute in Washington, adding, that the moves could create greater possibilities for trade between the two countries. For many returnees, the newly challenging work environment in India has tied in neatly with personal reasons for returning, such as raising their children in Indian culture and caring for aging parents. 'When I left India 25 years ago, everybody was headed to the United States,' said Mr. Kela, who pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester and stayed two decades, working for companies like General Electric and AutoDesk. For India's best and brightest, a technology or engineering career was an irresistible draw to the United States, even until four or five years ago. 'But now they all want to get on the plane home,' said Mr. Kela, who returned with his wife and two children. Once a regular at Silicon Valley job fairs, trying to woo Indians back home, Mr. Kela no longer needs to sell India. He receives 10 résumés a month from people with decades of work experience in the United States yearning to relocate. With globalization, many Americans of Indian origin in the high-technology industry are looking at India as a 'career-enhancing move,' said Anuradha Parthasarathy, the chief executive of Global Executive Talent, a search firm in Menlo Park, Calif., who is swamped by such job-seekers. Many technology companies - multinationals and Indian outsourcing firms as well as start-ups - are eager to hire returnees with Western managerial experience or technology specialization. Companies based in the United States, like ipValue, a company in Palo Alto that commercializes intellectual assets for large technology companies like British Telecom and the Xerox Corporation, are helping accelerate the trend. When ipValue recently decided to expand its operations, it chose to do so in India. 'We are really betting on the Indian diaspora returning home,' said Vincent Pluvinage, its chief executive. The firm just hired a top executive from Oracle to head its Indian operations and expects a third of its 20-member team in India to consist of returnees by January 2006. The passage back is no longer an ordeal, because much has changed in India. Whereas watching a movie in a dingy hall was once a weekend high point, now fancy multiplexes, bowling alleys and shopping malls offer entertainment, and pizzerias and cafes are ubiquitous at street corners. Indians who once could choose between only two car models and fly a single airline find they have returned to a profusion of choices. Even as the lifestyle gaps between India and the West have narrowed rapidly, salary differences at top executive levels have virtually disappeared. Annual pay packages of a half-million dollars are common in Bangalore, but even for those taking a pay cut to return home, the lower cost of living balances smaller paychecks. Starting salaries for engineers are about $12,000 in India, versus $60,000 in Silicon Valley. But relocating is not without its challenges, as Venki Sundaresan, 38, discovered a year ago when, after 15 years abroad, he moved to India with his wife and twin daughters to be the information technology director of Cypress Semiconductor. In atypical fashion, Mr. Sundaresan scorned the 'soft landing' that many returning Indians seek by living in gated communities. Instead, to have the 'true Indian experience,' the family opted to live in the teeming Indiranagar neighborhood. For his 5-year-old twins, he spurned upmarket international schools popular with other returnees and enrolled them in a neighborhood school. Mr. Sundaresan owns an Indian-made car, a Maruti Baleno. 'We've already driven the Mercedes and the BMW in the United States,' he said. 'What is the point of dodging around Bangalore's potholes in a limo?' Living in Palm Meadows, Mr. Kela and his neighbor Sanjay Swamy, 41, who heads the Indian operations of Ketera Technologies, face very little transition anxiety. Mr. Swamy bought and moved into a Palm Meadows villa with his wife, Tulsi, a financial consultant, and 8-year-old son, Ashwin. The communities buffer returnees from Bangalore's bumper-to-bumper traffic, unpaved sidewalks and swarming neighborhoods. Mr. Kela; his 9-year-old daughter, Payal; and 6-year-old son, Ankur, enjoy riding bikes on weekends, and they often play cricket, which Mr. Kela is passionate about. His daughter is learning the classical Indian dances of Kathak and Bharatanatyam. For Halloween this year, Mr. Kela led his children on a trick-or-treat walk. Mr. Kela says he misses the freedom to drive anywhere or go on long hikes. Yet, life is comfortable, with two live-in maids, a full-time driver and another on call, all of whom are 'outrageously affordable.' His neighbor Mr. Swamy is immersed in building a Silicon Valley-style team in Bangalore, but with some local adjustments. When he learned that the company routinely received calls from prospective fathers-in-law of employees, asking to verify their ages, titles and salary details, Mr. Swamy wrote a memo titled 'HR Policy on Disclosing Employee Information to Prospective Fathers-in-Law.' 'While I want to be entirely supportive of ensuring that our confidentiality agreement does not result in your missing out on the spouse of your dreams,' Mr. Swamy said, 'I don't want competitors to use this as a ploy to get at sensitive information.'

Subject: He Said No to Internment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:48:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25korematsu.html?ex=1293166800&en=f5c77c494c3302ed&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 He Said No to Internment By MATT BAI In February 1942, a little more than two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which effectively decreed that West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry - whether American citizens or not - were now 'enemy aliens.' More than 100,000 Japanese-Americans reported to government staging areas, where they were processed and taken off to 10 internment camps. Fred Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants, was at the time a 23-year-old welder at Bay Area shipyards. His parents left their home and reported to a racetrack south of San Francisco, but Korematsu chose not to follow them. He stayed behind in Oakland with his Italian-American girlfriend and then fled, even having plastic surgery on his eyes to avoid recognition. In May 1942, he was arrested and branded a spy in the newspapers. In search of a test case, Ernest Besig, then the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Northern California, went to see Korematsu in jail and asked if he would be willing to challenge the internment policy in court. Korematsu said he would. Besig posted $5,000 bail, but instead of freeing him, federal authorities sent him to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah. He and Besig sued the government, appealing their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in a 6-to-3 decision that stands as one of the most ignoble in its history, rejected his argument and upheld the government's right to intern its citizens. After the war, Korematsu married, returned to the Bay Area and found work as a draftsman. He might have been celebrated in his community, the Rosa Parks of Japanese-American life; in fact, he was shunned. Even during his time in Topaz, other prisoners refused to talk to him. 'Allof them turned their backs on me at that time because they thought I was a troublemaker,' he later recalled. His ostracism didn't end with the war. The overwhelming majority of Japanese-Americans had reacted to the internment by acquiescing to the government's order, hoping to prove their loyalty as Americans. To them, Korematsu's opposition was treacherous to both his country and his community. In the years after the war, details of the internment were lost behind a wall of repression. It was common for Japanese-American families not to talk about the experience, or to talk about it only obliquely. Korematsu, too, remained silent, but for different reasons. 'He felt responsible for the internment in a sort of backhanded way, because his case had been lost in the Supreme Court,' Peter Irons, a legal historian, recalled in a PBS documentary. Korematsu's own daughter has said she didn't learn of his wartime role until she was a junior in high school. Korematsu might have faded into obscurity had it not been for Irons, who in 1981 asked the Justice Department for the original documents in the Korematsu case. Irons found a memo in which a government lawyer had accused the solicitor general of lying to the Supreme Court about the danger posed by Japanese-Americans. Irons tracked down Korematsu and asked if he would be willing, once again, to go to court. Perhaps Korematsu had been waiting all those years for a chance to clear his name. Or maybe he saw, in Irons's entreaty, an opportunity to vindicate himself with other Japanese-Americans. Whatever his thinking, not only did Korematsu agree to return to court but he also became an ardent public critic of the internment. When government lawyers offered Korematsu a pardon, he refused. 'As long as my record stands in federal court,' Korematsu, then 64, said in an emotional courtroom oration, 'any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.' The judge agreed, ruling from the bench that Korematsu had been innocent. Just like that, the legality of the internment was struck down forever. In the last decade of his life, Korematsu became, for some Americans, a symbol of principled resistance. President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Six years later, outraged by the prolonged detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Korematsu filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, warning that the mistakes of the internment were being repeated. Still, Korematsu's place among contemporaries in his own community remained obscured by lingering resentments and a reluctance to revisit the past. When he died from a respiratory illness in March, not a single public building or landmark bore his name. It wasn't until last month that officials in Davis, Calif., dedicated the Fred Korematsu Elementary School. It was an especially fitting tribute for Korematsu, whose legacy rested with a generation of Japanese-Americans who were beginning to remember, at long last, what their parents had labored to forget.

Subject: Guidant Foresaw Some Risks From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:37:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/business/24guidant.html?ex=1293080400&en=344ce8a8b0e0f668&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Files Show Guidant Foresaw Some Risks By BARRY MEIER Officials of the Guidant Corporation projected in an internal report that some patients might die as a result of short circuits in a company heart device, but it did not publicize the flaw because it apparently viewed the overall failure rate as acceptable, company records filed in connection with a lawsuit show. Guidant had also determined in mid-2002, a company report shows, that the consequences of the defibrillator's electrical failure, while rare, could be 'life threatening.' Despite that assessment, Guidant kept selling potentially flawed devices and did not notify doctors about the defect until last spring, when the problem was about to be made public. The Guidant documents were filed Thursday in a Texas state court by plaintiffs' lawyers in connection with a personal injury lawsuit involving the defibrillator, which is known as Prizm 2 DR. The records appear to be the first internal Guidant documents to have emerged in court filings since the company began facing a wave of lawsuits this year. A spokeswoman for Guidant, which is based in Indianapolis, said in an e-mail message yesterday that the company, as a matter of policy, did not comment on pending litigation. Guidant officials have previously said, however, that the company did nothing wrong. The emergence of the Guidant records could intensify the company's legal problems as well as intensify a broader debate about when manufacturers of heart devices should alert physicians about product risks. In addition, New York State and the city of Bethlehem, Pa., have filed lawsuits against Guidant seeking reimbursement for device-related health care costs. One of the Guidant records shows that the company projected in May, before disclosure of the defibrillator's problems, that about 0.15 percent of the units - or 15 units out of every 10,000 - were likely to short-circuit. In such episodes, Guidant estimated that 12 percent of the patients whose units failed, or about 1 in 10, would experience either a Severity Level 5 or Severity Level 4 event. A company chart defines Level 5 as death and Level 4 as life threatening. Another Guidant document filed in connection with the Texas lawsuit shows that the company determined in February that it would not reopen its own investigation into the device's problem until the number of failures exceeded a specific number at a given point. That acceptable failure rate, a chart on the document indicates, was about 15 devices a year, a rate of slightly more than one a month. The document does not state the internal standard that Guidant uses to notify doctors about product failures. Guidant did so in late May when it learned that The New York Times was preparing an article about the Prizm 2 DR failure. At that time, the number of device malfunctions reported to Guidant fell within the company's acceptable rate of failure, documents show. In a posting on its Web site yesterday, Guidant said that it knew of two patient deaths associated with short circuits in the Prizm 2 DR and five other patient deaths associated with short circuits in devices called the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2. The flaws are all associated with Guidant's use of an insulating material in a way that caused it to deteriorate. Dr. William H. Maisel, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said yesterday in a telephone interview that all heart device makers typically perform hazards assessments after discovering a device flaw. But Dr. Maisel said he remained troubled that Guidant did not disclose the data about the short circuits and the statistical analysis the company performed. 'For Guidant, these people are numbers,' said Dr. Maisel, who is the chairman of the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that reviews heart devices. 'Their descriptions are full of numbers. But for me, these patients are people.' Largely as a result of the Guidant episode, device makers, doctors and the F.D.A. are trying to develop uniform guidelines for manufacturers to disclose product flaws to physicians. Doctors can then weigh such risks against those posed by added surgery in deciding whether to replace a device early. Guidant initially said that it believed that the risk of replacing a Prizm 2 DR might outweigh those posed by the device itself. It was in early 2002 that Guidant learned from reports that the Prizm 2 DR was prone to short-circuiting. In April and November of that year, company engineers took steps to prevent the short from occurring. But Guidant, which has said the April fix appeared to cure the problem, kept selling older models out of inventory even after an improved one was available. In its June 2002 assessment, Guidant described the flaws 'overall health risk index' as 'very low.' At about the same time that Guidant discovered the problem with the Prizm 2 DR, the company was awaiting approval from the F.D.A. to market the Contak Renewal. Company officials have repeatedly declined to describe the steps they took, if any, at that time to determine if the Contak Renewal might also short-circuit. The Guidant documents at issue were filed late Thursday in a Texas state court in Corpus Christi by a plaintiffs' lawyer, Robert C. Hilliard. His motion is seeking to have a judge lift a confidential order governing Guidant records produced in connection with a lawsuit. Two patients, Beatrice O. Hinojosa and Louis E. Motal, are seeking damages from Guidant, citing, among other things, a failure to warn them about the unit's defects. The Texas lawsuit, which is scheduled to begin in late February, could be the first Guidant case in the current wave of lawsuits to go to trial.

Subject: Ghana's Uneasy Embrace From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:35:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/international/africa/27ghana.html?ex=1293339600&en=2dbae1fae37dfea6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Ghana's Uneasy Embrace of Slavery's Diaspora By LYDIA POLGREEN CAPE COAST, Ghana - For centuries, Africans walked through the infamous 'door of no return' at Cape Coast castle directly into slave ships, never to set foot in their homelands again. These days, the portal of this massive fort so central to one of history's greatest crimes has a new name, hung on a sign leading back in from the roaring Atlantic Ocean: 'The door of return.' Ghana, through whose ports millions of Africans passed on their way to plantations in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, wants its descendants to come back. Taking Israel as its model, Ghana hopes to persuade the descendants of enslaved Africans to think of Africa as their homeland - to visit, invest, send their children to be educated and even retire here. 'We want Africans everywhere, no matter where they live or how they got there, to see Ghana as their gateway home,' J. Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the tourism minister, said on a recent day. 'We hope we can help bring the African family back together again.' In many ways it is a quixotic goal. Ghana is doing well by West African standards - with steady economic growth, a stable, democratic government and broad support from the West, making it a favored place for wealthy countries to give aid. But it remains a very poor, struggling country where a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy tops out at 59 and basic services like electricity and water are sometimes scarce. Nevertheless, thousands of African-Americans already live here at least part of the year, said Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the African American Association of Ghana. To encourage still more to come, or at least visit, Ghana plans to offer a special lifetime visa for members of the diaspora and will relax citizenship requirements so that descendants of slaves can receive Ghanaian passports. The government is also starting an advertising campaign to persuade Ghanaians to treat African-Americans more like long-lost relatives than as rich tourists. That is harder than it sounds. Many African-Americans who visit Africa are unsettled to find that Africans treat them - even refer to them - the same way as white tourists. The term 'obruni,' or 'white foreigner,' is applied regardless of skin color. To African-Americans who come here seeking their roots, the term is a sign of the chasm between Africans and African-Americans. Though they share a legacy, they experience it entirely differently. 'It is a shock for any black person to be called white,' said Ms. Mann, who moved here two years ago. 'But it is really tough to hear it when you come with your heart to seek your roots in Africa.' The advertising campaign urges Ghanaians to drop 'obruni' in favor of 'akwaaba anyemi,' a slightly awkward phrase fashioned from two tribal languages meaning 'welcome, sister or brother.' As part of the effort to reconnect with the diaspora, Ghana plans to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., W. E. B. DuBois and others it calls modern-day Josephs, after the biblical figure who rose from slavery to save his people. The government plans to hold a huge event in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the end of the trans-Atlantic trade by Britain and the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence. The ceremonies will include traditional African burial rituals for the millions who died as a result of slavery. Estimates of the trade vary widely. The most reliable suggest that between 12 million and 25 million people living in the vast lands between present-day Senegal and Angola were caught up, and as many as half died en route to the Americas. Some perished on the long march from the inland villages where they were captured to seaports. Others died in the dungeons of slave castles and forts, where they were sometimes kept for months, until enough were gathered to pack the hold of a ship. Still others died in the middle passage, the longest leg of the triangular journey between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Of the estimated 11 million who crossed the sea, most went to South America and the Caribbean. About 500,000 are believed to have ended up in the United States. The mass deportations and the divisions the slave trade wrought are wounds from which Africa still struggles to recover. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to shake off its colonial rulers, winning its independence from Britain in 1957. Its founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania, and saw in African-Americans a key to developing the new nation. 'Nkrumah saw the American Negro as the vanguard of the African people,' said Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the African and African-American studies department at Harvard, who first traveled to Ghana when he was 20 and fresh out of Harvard, afire with Nkrumah's spirit. 'He wanted to be able to utilize the services and skills of African-Americans as Ghana made the transition from colonialism to independence.' Many African-Americans, from Maya Angelou to Malcolm X, visited Ghana in the 1950's and 60's, and a handful stayed. To Nkrumah, the struggle for civil rights in the diaspora and the struggles for independence from colonial rule in Africa were inextricably linked, both being expressions of the desire of black people everywhere to regain their freedom. But Nkrumah was ousted in a coup in 1966, and by then Pan-Africanism had already given way to nationalism and cold war politics, sending much of the continent down a trail of autocracy, civil war and heartbreak. Still, African-Americans are drawn to Ghana's rich culture, and the history of slavery. Ghana still has dozens of slave forts, each a chilling reminder of the brutality of the trade. At Elmina Castle, built by the Portuguese in 1482 and taken over by the Dutch 150 years later, visitors are guided through a Christian chapel built adjacent to the hall where slaves were auctioned, and the balcony over the women's dungeons from which the fort's governor would choose a concubine from the chattel below. The room through which slaves passed into waiting ships is the emotional climax of the tour, a suffocating dungeon dimly lit by sunlight pouring through a narrow portal leading to the churning sea. 'You feel our history here,' said Dianne Mark, an administrator at Central Michigan University who visited Elmina Castle, six miles from Cape Coast castle, in early December, tears welling in her eyes as she gazed across the massive, buttressed walls to the ocean. 'This is where our people are from. That is a deep, deep experience. I look at everyone and wonder, 'Could he have been my cousin? Could she have been my aunt?' ' Like any family reunion, this one is layered with joy and tears. For African-Americans and others in the African diaspora, there is lingering hostility and confusion about the role Africans played in the slave trade. 'The myth was our African ancestors were out on a walk one day and some bad white dude threw a net over them,' Mr. Gates said. 'But that wasn't the way it happened. It wouldn't have been possible without the help of Africans.' Many Africans, meanwhile, often fail to see any connection at all between them and African-Americans, or feel African-Americans are better off for having been taken to the United States. Many Africans strive to emigrate; for the past 15 years, the number of Africans moving to the United States has surpassed estimates of the number forced there during any of the peak years of the slave trade. The number of immigrants from Ghana in the United States is larger than that of any other African country except Nigeria, according to the 2000 census. 'So many Africans want to go to America, so they can't understand why Americans would want to come here,' said Philip Amoa-Mensah, a guide at Elmina Castle. 'Maybe Ghanaians think they are lucky to be from America, even though their ancestors went through so much pain.' The relationship is clearly a work in progress. Ghanaians are still learning of their ancestors' pivotal roles in the slave trade, and slave forts on the coast, long used to thousands of foreign visitors, have in recent years become sites for school field trips. When the United States and the United Nations gave Ghana money to rehabilitate and restore Cape Coast castle, the government agency responsible for the castle repainted it white. Residents of Cape Coast were thrilled to see the moisture-blackened castle spruced up, but African-Americans living in Ghana were horrified, feeling that the history of their ancestors was being, quite literally, whitewashed. 'It didn't go over too well,' said Kohain Nathanyah Halevi, an African-American who lives near Cape Coast. A recent African-American visitor to Cape Coast castle took the emotionally charged step through the door of no return, only to be greeted by a pair of toddlers playing in a fishing boat on the other side, pointing and shouting, 'obruni, obruni!' William Kwaku Moses, 71, a retired security guard who sells shells to tourists on the other side of the door of no return, shushed the children. 'We are trying,' he said, with a shrug.

Subject: Voice on China's 'Angry River' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:19:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/international/asia/26china.html?ex=1293253200&en=25d3622e12c095a0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Seeking a Public Voice on China's 'Angry River' By JIM YARDLEY XIAOSHABA, China - Far from the pulsing cities that symbolize modern China, this tiny hillside village of crude peasant houses seems disconnected from this century and the last. But follow a dirt path past a snarling watchdog, sidestep the chickens and ducks, and a small clearing on the banks of the Nu River reveals a dusty slab of concrete lying in a rotting pumpkin patch. The innocuous concrete block is also a symbol, of a struggle over law that touches every corner of the country. The block marks the spot on the Nu River where officials here in Yunnan Province want to begin building one of the biggest dam projects in the world. The project would produce more electricity than even the mighty Three Gorges Dam but would also threaten a region considered an ecological treasure. This village would be the first place to disappear. For decades, the ruling Communist Party has rammed through such projects by fiat. But the Nu River proposal, already delayed for more than a year, is now unexpectedly presenting the Chinese government with a quandary of its own making: will it abide by its own laws? A coalition led by Chinese environmental groups is urging the central government to hold open hearings and make public a secret report on the Nu dams before making a final decision. In a country where people cannot challenge decisions by their leaders, such public participation is a fairly radical idea. But the groups argue that new environmental laws grant exactly that right. 'This is the case to set a precedent,' said Ma Jun, an environmental consultant in Beijing. 'For the first time, there is a legal basis for public participation. If it happens, it would be a major step forward.' China's leaders often embrace the concept of rule of law, if leaving open how they choose to define it. For many people in China's fledgling 'civil society' - environmentalists, journalists, lawyers, academics and others - the law has become a tool to promote environmental protection and to try to expand the rights of individuals in an authoritarian political system. But trying to invoke the law is risky. Chinese nongovernmental organizations, few of which existed a decade ago, have taken up the Nu as a major cause. But the activism on the Nu and other issues has provoked deep suspicions by the Communist Party even as a broader clampdown against such NGO's has forced some to shut down. The government knows China has a drastic pollution problem and has passed new environmental laws. But top leaders also demand high economic growth and need to increase energy supplies to get it. The 'green laws' are becoming a crucible to test which side will prevail and whether ordinary people can take part in the process. The closed process that led to the Three Gorges Dam is what opponents of the Nu dams most want to avoid. In the late 1980's, a wide range of intellectuals and others tried in vain to force public hearings to discuss the environmental and social costs of a project that has flooded a vast region and forced huge relocations. Ultimately, opponents could only muster a symbolic victory as the final vote in the National People's Congress included an unusually high number of abstentions or nay votes. The central government is still deliberating how to proceed on the Nu. Domestic media coverage has been banned in recent months. Three central government ministries refused interview requests, as did provincial officials in Yunnan. Local officials along the Nu River, after initially agreeing to an interview, failed to reply to a list of written questions. Out in the jagged mountains along China's remote southwestern border, villagers in Xiaoshaba gather information about their future from rumors. In early December, a team of surveyors inventoried property and measured the narrow terrace of village farmland along the Nu. Several villagers say local officials have told them that everyone would be relocated around the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, which ends in early February - even if the dams have not yet been approved. 'If they tell me to move,' said one villager, Zhang Jianhua, 'I have no other choice.' A Legal Reprieve In the spring of 2003, a slender, studious man named Yu Xiaogang learned that the hydropower industry was eyeing the rivers of southwestern China. Mr. Yu, an environmental resources manager, knew that China believed that hydropower was a cleaner alternative for its energy shortages and that the Nu was considered one of the country's richest, untapped resources. But he and others believed that the Nu would be untouchable. The Nu, which translates as Angry River, roars out of the Tibetan Plateau east of the Himalayas and plunges through steep canyons just inside the border with Myanmar, formerly Burma, as it careers south before crossing the border. In China, it passes through a mountainous region with more than 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare or endangered animals and fish. Unesco said the region 'may be the most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem in the world' and designated it a World Heritage Site in the summer of 2003. 'We were very happy because we thought the Nu would be protected and would have no problems,' said Mr. Yu, who also led Green Watershed, an environmental NGO. But not long after the World Heritage designation, a state-run provincial newspaper announced that a public-private consortium planned to build 13 dams on the river. The project would be the largest cascade dam system in the world, and it appeared politically unstoppable. The majority partner, the China Huadian Corporation, was a state-owned goliath; the local government was a minority partner. In Beijing, the State Development and Reform Commission, a powerful government ministry, had approved the dams in August and planned to present the plan to the State Council, or the Chinese cabinet, for final approval. Construction would begin in September 2003. The environmental community was blindsided. More than 50,000 people, most of them from ethnic minority hill tribes, would be relocated. The Nu also was one of only two free flowing rivers in China. The State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA, the country's environmental watchdog, criticized the project in its official newspaper. But SEPA was considered one of the weakest ministries in the central government. Then, a snag arose - a bureaucratic delay, hardly uncommon in China. August became September and the proposal had not yet been presented for final approval. During the delay, a new environmental law took effect on Sept. 1. Based on an American model, the China Environmental Impact Assessment Law required comprehensive environmental reviews in the planning stages of major public and private development projects. Decades of relentless economic growth had left China with dire pollution problems and squandered natural resources. President Hu Jintao had made 'sustainable development' a new government mantra. The assessment law gave the environmental agency new powers to handle and approve environmental reviews before a project was approved. It also called for public participation, including hearings, as part of the review, though it did not detail specific guidelines. But it would take public pressure to force action on the Nu case. Despite its uniqueness and natural beauty, the Nu was not well known, largely because of its isolated location. In September 2003, an environmental conference in Beijing brought together academics, government environmental officials and NGO's to discuss the Nu. A month later, Pan Yue, the outspoken vice minister of the environmental agency, organized China's first 'Green Forum,' a public relations event that included Chinese music and film stars. One person at the forum was a woman named Wang Yongchen, a member of Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental NGO in Beijing. Initially, the Green Earth Volunteers had concentrated on tree planting and teaching children about the environment. But in recent years, the group had participated in efforts to stop a dam proposal in Sichuan Province. At the forum, Ms. Wang persuaded 62 celebrities and film stars to sign a petition in support of 'natural' rivers. She would later donate money to build 30 libraries in poor villages along the Nu. By early 2004, the controversy had attracted worldwide interest as 60 international organizations agreed to lobby the Chinese government about the Nu. Hundreds of volunteers in China called Unesco to protest the dam proposal. The country's most prominent NGO, Friends of Nature, embraced the cause, while an environmental group in Sichuan collected more than 10,000 signatures to stop the project. But the crucial factor was the Sept. 1 law. As the project appeared to be nearing approval, biologists, academics and environmentalists all argued that the government had not properly conducted an environmental review. In late winter, as Ms. Wang guided a tour of Chinese journalists, her cellphone rang. A friend informed her that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had temporarily suspended the project so that it could be 'carefully discussed and decided on scientifically.' Ms. Wang began to cry with joy. Later, some Chinese newspapers speculated that Mr. Wen's edict meant that the project was dead. Mr. Yu thought otherwise. 'I thought this was the first success of public participation,' he said. 'But I did not think the decision was final.' Opening a Closed Process Located a short drive from the city of Liuku, Xiaoshaba is like countless poor villages along the Nu. Peasants live in crude homes, some under the same roof as their livestock and chickens. Some villagers have never gone farther than Liuku; some have never left the village. But on a May afternoon in 2004, a bus arrived. Inside was Yu Xiaogang, and he wanted to take villagers on a trip. The prime minister's order to suspend the project had stunned developers and provincial officials. A delegation had hurried to Beijing to try to restart the process. At the same time, the government's environmental agency focused on the assessment review. Mr. Yu was anxious to get villagers involved because the law had highlighted public participation. Most villagers knew nothing about the project or how it would change their lives. 'I thought we must let the Nu River people have their voice,' Mr. Yu said. So he offered to take a small group of villagers to the site of the Manwan Dam on the upper reaches of Mekong River in the southern Yunnan. In 2002, Mr. Yu had written an assessment of the social costs of the Manwan project, a report later endorsed by the prime minister at the time, Zhu Rongji. Leaving from Xiaoshaba, Mr. Yu took 14 peasants on a daylong journey to the Manwan, where they found many people living as scavengers. 'They heard how the government made promises but didn't follow through,' Mr. Yu said. 'Ten years later, nobody cared about them. The Nu River people were shocked.' Mr. Yu later led a small group of peasants to a Beijing hydropower conference jointly sponsored by the United Nations and China's National Development and Reform Commission. As several speakers extolled the virtues of dams, the dusty group of peasants sat in the upper reaches of the auditorium. Mr. Yu was allowed to speak at a sub-session of the conference. The villagers had practiced giving speeches but were not granted a speaking slot. Meanwhile, momentum seemed to be shifting in favor of dam supporters. Prime Minister Wen had visited Yunnan to confer with provincial officials. Two prominent scholars toured the Nu - on a trip sponsored by dam developers - and attracted wide public attention by attacking the environmentalists. But that criticism was insignificant compared to a broader governmental crackdown under way against nongovernmental organizations. In the spring of this year, President Hu ordered an intensive examination of NGO's because of concerns of the role that environmental groups had played in helping to topple governments in Central Asia. In a secret speech to top officials, Mr. Hu warned that the United States was using such groups to try to foment social unrest. Before, NGO's had hoped that onerous licensing restrictions were about to be repealed. Instead, environmental groups and other NGO's across the country were closely scrutinized, with some losing their licenses. Some groups began to fear that the 'legal space' granted to the civil society would be tightened, or closed. In Yunnan, officials began to pressure opponents. Mr. Yu would not comment about whether he had come under pressure. But acquaintances say he that has been forbidden from traveling to international conferences and that officials have put pressure on him. In Beijing, the environmental assessment report was finished by this summer. But the Ministry of Water Resources, noting that government reports about international rivers were considered proprietary information, declared a small section of the assessment to be a state secret and forbade its release. Dam opponents said the section could remain secret but argued that publicizing the rest of the report was essential for public discussion of the project. The government still had not outlined the potential environmental risks or explained what would happen to relocated villagers. So on Aug. 31, opponents mailed a letter to the State Council and later posted it on the Internet. It cited Chinese law and said any decision without public participation 'lacks public support and cannot tolerate history's scrutiny.' Nearly four months later, the government had not responded. An Uncertain Future A traffic sign on the narrow, unpaved road that passes through Xiaoshaba carries a propaganda message: 'A Model Village for Democratic Rule of Law.' A short walk away, beside the concrete block marking the proposed first dam, Guan Fulin, 55, said she had spoken to the surveyors who measured the village land in early December. 'The officials told us it is definitely going to happen,' Mrs. Guan said. She trusted that the government would take care of her but admitted that she did not yet know how she would be compensated or where she would go. Pointing to the village, she said, 'All these people will be moving.' If so, it would likely signal the start of a hydropower gold rush in Yunnan Province. One study estimated that China might build enough new dams, most of them in Yunnan, to double its hydroelectric output in the next five years. One plan would inundate one of the most popular tourist attractions in China - Tiger Leaping Gorge. Part of the frenzied hydropower development is driven by the thirst for new energy supplies. But part of it is caused by the breakup of the state monopoly that once controlled electrical generation in China. That breakup left regional state-owned energy giants who were each assigned 'assets' - like rivers or coal deposits. Each faces competitive pressures to develop new power plants quickly in order to claim market share. Mr. Ma, the environmental consultant in Beijing, said environmentalists understood that China faced a complex challenge in developing new energy sources even as it must reduce pollution. But he said this intense pressure to develop was why laws that provide oversight and public review must serve as safeguards. 'Before the Nu River proposal, you would hear about opposition to certain projects,' Mr. Ma said. 'But it was all based on the tremendous courage of individuals. This time, we see progress in Chinese law that makes it possible for a more systemic challenge.' He added: 'There is now more awareness of environmental rights and the rights of people as citizens. For such a major problem, they believe they have the right to know about it and at least have their views heard.' The dispute over the Nu seems at a standstill. Ultimately, the decision on holding hearings may fall to the prime minister. Earlier this year, Unesco issued a statement expressing its 'gravest concerns' about the potential damage to the World Heritage Site. In October, environmentalists boycotted a dam conference linked to the National Reform and Development Commission. Organizers had promised to show parts of the assessment report, but environmentalists believed it was an effort to avoid full public hearings. Ms. Wang, of the NGO Green Earth Volunteers, described the dilemma in simple terms. 'If the law is not enforced, what shall we do?' she asked. 'We have this law. Why doesn't this law work?'

Subject: Keeping Hope Alive From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 05:44:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/health/24patient.html?ex=1293080400&en=ece27aecb0f2101d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Doctors' Delicate Balance in Keeping Hope Alive By JAN HOFFMAN Dr. Joseph Sacco's young patient lay gasping for breath; she had advanced AIDS and now she was failing. Assessing her, Dr. Sacco knew her medical options amounted to a question of the lesser of two evils: either the more aggressive ventilator, on which she would probably die, or the more passive morphine, from which she would probably slip into death. But there was also a slender chance that either treatment might help her rally. He also knew that how he presented her options would affect her decision, the feather that would tip the balance of her hope scale. As Dr. Sacco, a palliative care specialist at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, spoke to the woman on that chilly morning earlier this month, her eyes widened with terror: no intubation. He ordered morphine. He agonized about his approach. 'She's only 23,' he said later that day. 'Maybe I was too grim. Maybe I was conveying false hopelessness to her. Maybe I just should have said, 'Let's put you on the ventilator.' I may have spun it wrong.' The language of hope - whether, when and how to invoke it - has become an excruciatingly difficult issue in the modern relationship between doctor and patient. For centuries, doctors followed Hippocrates' injunction to hold out hope to patients, even when it meant withholding the truth. But that canon has been blasted apart by modern patients' demands for honesty and more involvement in their care. Now, patients may be told more than they need or want to know. Yet they still also need and want hope. In response, some doctors are beginning to think about hope in new ways. In certain cases, that means tempering a too-bleak prognosis. In others, it means resisting the allure of cutting-edge treatments with questionable benefits. Already vulnerable when they learn they have a life-threatening disease or chronic illness, patients can feel bewildered, trapped between reality and possibility. They, as well as doctors, are discovering that in the modern medical world, hope itself cannot be monolithic. It can be defined in many ways, depending on the patient's medical condition and station in life. A dying woman can find hope by selecting wedding gifts for her toddlers. An infertile couple moves on toward adoption. The power of a doctor's pronouncements is profound. When a doctor takes a blunt-is-best approach, enumerating side effects and dim statistics, in essence offering a hopeless prognosis, patients experience despair. A radiation oncologist told Minna Immerman's husband, who had brain cancer, that he had less than two years to live. 'That information was paralyzing,' Mrs. Immerman said. 'It wasn't helpful.' But when a doctor suggests that an exhausted patient try yet another therapy, in the hope that it may extend survival by weeks, the cost is also considerable - financially, physically and emotionally. 'We have to find a less toxic way to manage their hope,' said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, an internist and Harvard professor who is writing a textbook about prognosis. Efforts are being made across the medical community to grapple with the language and ethics of hope. Some medical schools pair students with end-stage disease patients so students can learn about anguish and compassion. Numerous studies have examined what doctors say versus what patients hear and the role of optimism in the care of the critically ill. Patient advocates have been teaching doctors how patients can be devastated or braced by a turn of phrase. A consensus is emerging that all patients need hope, and that doctors are obligated to offer it, in some form. To Dr. Sacco's boundless relief, his patient rallied. He began counseling her to take her AIDS medications, to find an apartment, a job. He wrote in an e-mail message: 'We prognosticate because people ask us to and trust our judgment. They do not know the depth of our uncertainty or that no matter how good or experienced we are, we are often wrong. That is why choosing where to put the feather is so damn hard.' False Hopelessness Robert Immerman, a 56-year-old Manhattan architect, knew that his brain cancer - a glioblastoma, Grade 4 - meant terrible news. After the tumor was removed, he asked the radiation oncologist his prognosis. 'The doctor was pleasant,' Minna Immerman recalled, 'as if he was telling you that hamburger was $2.99 a pound. He just said the likely survival rate with this tumor was, on the outside, 18 months. 'Bob purposely forgot it,' she said. 'I couldn't.' After radiation, Mr. Immerman began chemotherapy. But after one treatment, his white blood cell count dropped so precipitously that it was no longer an option. 'The medical oncologist said, 'The chances of survival with or without chemo are very, very slight,' ' said Mrs. Immerman, a special-education teacher. 'I think she was trying to make us feel better. What I heard was: 'With or without chemo, this won't end well, so don't feel so bad.' ' Mr. Immerman got scans every two months. Mrs. Immerman watched the calendar obsessively. Twelve months left. Six months. 'As time passed, instead of feeling better, I felt like it was a death sentence and it was winding down,' she said. She sweated the small stuff: should they renew their opera subscription? Mr. Immerman turned out to be one of those rare people who reside at the lucky tail end of a statistical curve. In February, it will be 10 years since he learned his prognosis. He is well. For years, Mrs. Immerman was shadowed by fear and depression about his illness, before she finally allowed herself to breathe out with gratitude. Candid exchanges about diagnosis and prognosis, especially when the answers are grim, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Hippocrates taught that physicians should 'comfort with solicitude and attention, revealing nothing of the patient's present or future condition.' A dose of reality, doctors believed, could poison a patient's hope, the will to live. Until the 1960's, that approach was largely embraced by physicians. Dr. Eric Cassell, who lectured about hope in November to doctors in the Boston area, recalled the days when a woman would wake from surgery, asking if she had cancer: ' 'No,' we'd say, 'you had suspicious cells so we took the breast, so you wouldn't get cancer.' We were all liars.' Treatments were very limited. 'Now when we're truthful,' Dr. Cassell added, 'it's in an era in which we believe we can do something.' Doctors in many third world countries and modernized nations, including Italy and Japan, still believe in withholding a bad prognosis. But the United States, Britain and other countries were revolutionized in the late 60's by the patients' rights movement, which established that patients had a legal right to be fully informed about their medical condition and treatment options. Now, whether a patient comes in complaining of a backache, a rash or a lump in the armpit, many doctors interpret informed consent as the obligation to rattle off all possibilities, from best-case to worst-case situations. Honesty is imperative. But what benefit is served by Dr. Dour? 'There are doctors who paint a bleaker picture than necessary so they can turn out to be heroes if things turn out well,' said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford medical school, 'and it also relieves doctors of responsibility if bad things happen.' The fear of malpractice litigation after a bad outcome, he said, also drives doctors to be stunningly explicit from the outset. The medical community has nicknames for this bluntness: truth-dumping, terminal candor, hanging crepe. But some social workers call it false hopelessness. Given a time-tied prognosis, many patients become withdrawn and depressed, said Roz Kleban, a supervising social worker with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. 'Telling someone they have two years to live isn't useful knowledge,' she said. 'It's noise. Whether or not that prediction is true, they lose their ability to live well in the present.' Health care providers debate the wisdom of giving patients a precise prognosis: 'There's an ethical obligation to tell people their prognosis,' said Dr. Barron Lerner, an internist and bioethicist at Columbia University medical school, 'but no reason to pound it into their heads.' Others say that doctors should make sure they can explain the numbers in context, with the pluses and minuses of treatment options, including the implications of choosing not to have treatment. Though many patients ask how long they have to live, thinking that amid the chaos of bad news, a number offers something concrete, studies show that they do not understand statistical nuances and tend to misconstrue them. Moreover, though statistics may be indicative, they are inherently imperfect. Many doctors prefer not to give a prognosis. And, studies show, their prognoses are often wrong, one way or the other. Where does this leave the frightened patient? Meg Gaines, director of the Center for Patient Partnerships, a patient advocacy program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, thinks false hopelessness is more debilitating than false hope. 'I tell people to ask the doctor, 'Have you ever known anyone with this disease who has gotten better?' If the answer is yes, just say, 'So let's quit talking about death and talk about what we can try!' ' Some patients do triumph against grotesque statistical odds; others succumb even when the odds are piled in their favor. But willful ignorance, she cautioned, can be dangerous. 'People should know about prognosis to the extent that it's necessary to make good decisions about monitoring your health care,' she said. 'You can't be an ostrich in the sand. When the stampeding rhinoceri are coming, you have to be able to get out of the way.' False Hope Perhaps just as harmful as false hopelessness, many experts believe, is false hope. 'If one patient in a thousand will live with pancreatic cancer for 10 years,' said Dr. Christakis of Harvard, and doctors hold out that patient as a realistic example, 'we have harmed 999 patients.' False hopelessness, in the name of reality, dwells on the dark view of a patient's condition, prematurely foreclosing possibility and a spirited fight. False hope sidesteps reality, leaving patients and family members unprepared for tragedy. When Anna Kyle was in labor, the umbilical cord dropped ahead of the baby, who was deprived of oxygen for critical moments. Mrs. Kyle had an emergency Caesarean section. The baby had to be resuscitated. The nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit told Mrs. Kyle, of Lonoke, Ark., that her son was a 'good baby,' because he didn't cry or fuss. Later, when he had developmental delays, her hopes were at war with her nagging fears. But doctors kept saying the child might outgrow them. Her son, now 5, received a formal diagnosis last year. 'Nobody wanted to say, 'Your kid has autism, your kid is mentally retarded, your kid will be in diapers most of his life,' ' said Mrs. Kyle, whose husband earns $10 an hour as a truck driver. 'It hurts, it's nasty, ugly stuff, but it has to be said, so kids can get the therapy they need as early as possible.' Because patients hunger for good news, experts say that doctors should choose their words carefully: 'If you get into the language of hope, you run the risk of over-promising things,' said Dr. Lerner of Columbia. The more useful discussion for patients, he added, is, 'what hopeful things can I do?' In his November lecture on hope, Dr. Cassell said that patients do not need 'false hope that is personified in useless therapy with nontherapeutic effect.' False hope is both a hangover from the centuries-old belief that doctors should withhold bad news, and a practice newly infused by the explosion of so many medical treatments and the tenuous promise held out by clinical trials. Consider the cost of false hope, experts note: not only the physical and emotional agony of dying patients who try last-ditch, occasionally unproven treatments, but also the depletion, financially and psychologically, of the patients' survivors. 'The battle cry of our culture is, 'Don't just stand there - do something!' ' said Dr. Richard Deyo, a Seattle internist and professor at the University of Washington who writes about the high cost of false hope. He added, 'Physicians have a natural bias for action, whereas it may be more honest to say, 'Whether I do something or not, the result is likely to be the same.' ' A 1994 study showed that Americans have greater faith in medical advances than people in many other countries. Thirty-four percent of Americans believed that modern medicine 'can cure almost any illness for people who have access to the most advanced technology and treatment.' By contrast, only 11 percent of Germans held the same belief. Accompanying the medical advances, however, are an increasing number of physician subspecialties. One downside is that patients hear from a variety of voices, and they can become inadvertently misled. Pat Murphy, a nurse and grief counselor who heads the family support team at University Hospital in Newark, said that, for example, when a patient has a critical stroke, a cardiologist, among others, will be called in for an evaluation: 'The doctor might say, 'This is a strong heart' and then he leaves,' she said. 'The patient will probably never regain consciousness. But the 'parts people' talk to the family out of context, and the family thinks they're hearing good news.' Another result of this medical renaissance is thousands of clinical trials. Phase 1 trials often try out doses of an unapproved drug; perhaps only 5 percent of volunteers may derive any benefit. 'Most people think they don't want to be an experiment,' said George J. Annas, author of 'The Rights of Patients.' But, he said, when desperately ill patients learn about a trial, 'all of a sudden there's no difference in their minds between research and treatment.' A 2003 study of advanced-stage cancer patients who volunteered for Phase I trials showed that at least three-quarters of them were convinced they had a 50 percent chance or greater of being helped by the drug. Because patients listen selectively, it can be difficult to tease out who owns responsibility for false hope: Patricia Mendell, a New York psychotherapist who works with fertility patients, noted: 'A doctor can tell a patient she has a 95 percent chance of an I.V.F. cycle not working. But the patient will feel it's her right to try for that 5 percent. ' Indeed, false hope can represent a complex entwining between terrified patient and well-intended doctor: both want the best outcome, sometimes so intensely that what emerges is a collective denial about the patient's condition. Hope Elissa J. Levy was a winter sports jock, with a buoyant social circle and a power job on Wall Street. But in January 2002, she received a diagnosis of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, a less common version of the disease, for which there are few treatments and no known cures. Soon, Ms. Levy needed a cane, and could scarcely walk a block. Pain and fatigue dogged her. Her quick brain grew foggy, her right hand floppy. She cut back her new job as a deputy director of a Bronx charter school to three days a week. In the mornings, her mother had to help dress her. But though her body sagged, her neurologist helped prop up her spirits. 'Often I would come in crying,' Ms. Levy said, 'and he would hold my hand and say, 'We'll figure this out together.' Or 'We can hope that this treatment works.' ' Given the gravity of her disease, was it appropriate for the doctor to stoke her hope? 'Hope,' wrote Emily Dickinson, 'is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul.' Imprecise and evanescent, hope is almost universally considered essential to the business of being human. Few can define hope: Self-delusion? Optimism? Expectation? Faith? And that, say experts from across a wide spectrum, is the point: hope means different things to different people. When someone's medical condition changes, that person's definition of hope changes. A hope for a cure can morph into a hope that a relationship can be mended. Or that one's organs will be eligible for donation. For so many, hope and faith are inextricably linked. 'Truly spiritual people are amazing, ' said Ms. Murphy of University Hospital. 'Until the moment of death, families pray for a miracle and then at the moment of the death, they say, 'This is God's will' and 'God will get us through this.' ' As health care providers struggle with whether, how and when doctors should speak of hope, a consensus is building on at least two fronts: that what fundamentally matters is that a doctor tells the truth with kindness, and that a doctor should never just say, 'I have nothing more to offer you.' More doctors are embracing palliative care specialists as partners who work with critically ill patients and their families to help them redefine their hopes, from the improbable to the possible. Many doctors, whose specialties range from neurosurgery to infertility, retain therapists to counsel patients. 'Hope lives inside a patient and the physician's behavior can either bring it out or suppress it,' said Dr. Susan D. Block, a palliative care leader at Harvard. 'When a patient has goals, it's impossible to be hopeless. And when a physician can help a patient define them, you feel like a healer, even when the patient is dying.' Dr. Spiegel, the Stanford psychiatrist, recalled a woman who knew her death from cancer was imminent: 'She had 15-minute appointments scheduled all day with relatives, to set them straight on how to live their lives. Then she was going to die. This was a hopeful woman.' Harvard's medical school matches first-year students with critically ill patients - in essence, the patients become the teachers. One patient, Dr. Block recalled, was a high school teacher dying from lymphoma, who agreed with alacrity to participate. When her husband came into her room, the patient said, with tears in her eyes, 'Honey, I have one last teaching gig.' Last April, Ms. Levy's doctor started her on a drug that is still in clinical trials, but has long been available in Europe. Shortly after she began taking the daily pill, she went for a checkup and lay down on his examining table. He asked her to lift her leg. Normally, Ms. Levy struggled to budge her leg. But having taken the drug, she flung her leg into a 90-degree angle. She gasped. Usually, when her doctor pressed one finger against her leg, it collapsed. Now he pushed with his open hand. She held steady. Both she and her doctor grew teary-eyed. Finally, she walked down the hall without her cane. Both patient and doctor wept openly. The drug does not cure her disease; it treats symptoms. But Ms. Levy, 37, now walks 20 blocks at a clip, works four days a week, goes to the gym. She is dating. A recent test showed that her disease has not progressed. In a sense, Ms. Levy's relationship with her doctor combined the best of the old and new worlds. He was hopeful but also candid. And he could offer her promising treatments, including one that, at least temporarily, seems to help. 'And if I start feeling bad again?' Ms. Levy said. 'I have hope that I'll feel good again.'

Subject: Drug Prices Tend to Rise From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 05:36:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/business/26rahr.html?ex=1264482000&en=b7a98ed123fabd1f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland January 26, 2005 Making a Fortune by Wagering That Drug Prices Tend to Rise By STEPHANIE SAUL Stewart Rahr's new $45 million East Hampton estate, the most expensive house ever purchased in New York State, is just across the pond from Steven Spielberg's. Mr. Rahr plays golf with Donald Trump and practices putting on an indoor green in the basement of his warehouse in Queens. He and his wife, Carol, last drew attention in 2003 when they bought four works of art, including a Renoir and a Picasso, in one sitting at Sotheby's. But as he becomes increasingly visible as one of New York's wealthiest men, Mr. Rahr, a 58-year-old law school dropout, is girding himself for the elimination of the system that helped generate his fortune. His success offers a rare glimpse into a lucrative but little-known corner of the pharmaceutical industry - the once-mundane business of delivering drugs from manufacturers to pharmacies. Over the last 20 years, the packing and shipping of drugs evolved into a game of arbitrage, called speculative buying, with distributors like Mr. Rahr wagering on drug price increases. This common industry practice seems more fitting to a casino than a distribution warehouse. And in the 1990's and the early years of this decade, with prices far outstripping inflation, it was a sure bet. Knowing that drug manufacturers typically increased prices at the same time, often in January, drug middlemen like Mr. Rahr, the sole owner of Kinray, which is based in Queens, made millions by overstocking their warehouses before manufacturers announced price increases. By acquiring extra inventory at the lower price, distributors made quick profits once they sold the drugs at higher prices a short time later to retail pharmacies. Prescription drug prices are a combustible political issue, and manufacturers feel intense pressure to restrain them. With their historically large profits threatened, and with regulators questioning aspects of the speculative buying system, the manufacturers have taken steps to shut it by limiting distributors to just one month's worth of inventory. Drug manufacturers have also begun using special software to help detect speculative buying. Mr. Rahr would not disclose exactly how much he made through speculative buying. Goldman Sachs estimated that the distribution industry, which is dominated by three large public companies, made 60 percent of its profit, or $980 million, from speculative buying in 2001, when the practice was at its peak. More recently, Goldman Sachs estimated speculative buying's contribution at 40 percent of profits. Mr. Rahr, who honed the practice with the help of a computer program, said that his profit from the practice never reached 40 percent. Mr. Rahr also said that his and other distributors' fees accounted for a tiny portion of the cost of drugs to consumers, with manufacturers taking the major share of profits. 'We're talking an infinitesimal impact on the consumer, based on the total cost of the health care industry,' Mr. Rahr said. 'Whether there is spec buying or not is not the greatest factor in the high cost of pharmaceuticals.' In some ways, the practice helped drug manufacturers, who relied on speculative buying in lieu of paying distributors to get drugs to pharmacies. In effect, it was a form of hidden compensation that never showed up as a cost to manufacturers. But speculative buying fostered many problems, industry analysts and economists said. Some say it played a role in drug cost inflation by adding an incentive for manufacturers to raise prices repeatedly. It also sometimes gave drug makers false signals that products were in demand, prompting them to turn out excess product. By encouraging distributor stockpiling, the system also led to shortages in some regions of the country, a situation known as a 'stock out' and one that the industry does not like to discuss. Last year, Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $150 million to settle allegations, without admitting or denying guilt, that it misled investors by aggressively encouraging wholesalers to flood their warehouses, thus artificially inflating its sales. The case, brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, was the beginning of the end of speculative buying, as other manufacturers worried that they, too, might run afoul of securities laws. 'It was a dysfunctional model,' said Ken Abramowitz, an analyst and managing general partner at NGN Capital, a health care venture capital company in New York. Exactly how much retail drug prices have been affected by speculative buying is an open question. Adam J. Fein, a Philadelphia business economist, says that the end of speculative buying can reduce the rate of drug price inflation by one or two percentage points a year. Based on the 5.3 percent increase in retail drug prices in 2003, as calculated by IMS Health, a pharmaceutical-market research company, consumers could save $2.2 billion to $4.4 billion annually. Others agree that speculative buying created inflationary pressures, but are more concerned that ending the practice will drive up retail prices if distributors, who operate on slim profit margins, are forced to pass any costs to retail pharmacies. 'They'll have to make up their margins somewhere that they aren't getting from the manufacturer,' said Steven W. Schondelmeyer, a University of Minnesota professor who studies the economics of the pharmaceutical industry. 'They'll raise the prices to the pharmacies. The pharmacies have very thin margins to begin with, and all they can do is pass it on to consumers.' Experts agree, however, that consumers will benefit in at least one way. Speculative buying helped foster a secondary pharmaceutical market, with some distributors reselling extra drugs they did not need to other distributors. 'It invited the risk of the type of counterfeit and adulterated market that we saw with some of the biotech drugs and Lipitor,' said Christopher McFadden, an analyst with Goldman Sachs. The shift away from speculative buying has put pharmaceutical distribution at a critical point, according to Mr. Fein, whose company, Pembroke Consulting, advises both manufacturers and distributors. 'Of course it's affected our business,' said Mr. Rahr, who said he had no plans to raise prices to compensate for the loss of profit from speculative buying. Instead, he said that his company was working harder to control costs and expand its territory. 'Volume, volume, volume,' he said. The transformation has also affected bottom lines at the three large public pharmaceutical distribution companies - AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. Today, they deliver 90 percent of the $220 billion in drugs sold in the United States. As distributors try to recoup, they have become engaged in what Mr. Fein said were tough negotiations with manufacturers, asking that they pay fees for distributing drugs to pharmacies. 'The question is, How much more value or how much more fees is the manufacturing community going to be willing to pay?' Mr. McFadden said. 'It's kind of whatever you can negotiate.' In one of the first of these 'fee for service' deals, Eli Lilly recently announced it had struck an agreement with Cardinal Health, but neither side disclosed terms. Last week, Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, announced that it had broken off negotiations with Cardinal Health and warned patients of potential disruptions in the supply of drugs to treat Alzheimer's, epilepsy and gastrointestinal problems. Three days later, the companies announced that they had reached a deal, after all. Pfizer, the giant pharmaceutical manufacturer, said last week that it would not negotiate fee agreements with distributors. 'Someone like Pfizer says, 'the fact that you lost money is not my problem,' ' said Mr. Abramowitz, the health care analyst. As his profit margin narrows - Mr. Rahr describes it as 'razor thin' - Mr. Rahr is expressing confidence that Kinray will prosper even without speculative buying, based on its efficiency, low costs and the fact that he has no debt. His company has established a national telemarketing office that makes cold calls to pharmacies across the country. Mr. Rahr, whose company employs about 1,000 people, is expanding his business in home health equipment like walkers and bedpans, as well as generic drugs, both areas with higher profit margins than brand-name drugs, where he makes less than 2 cents on the dollar. 'We do all this work for pennies,' Mr. Rahr said. 'But like my father said, 'pennies do add up to dollars.' ' Last year, the pennies added up to $3.1 billion in sales. Mr. Rahr's business, he said, is dependent on a large computer-operated picking system that fills orders from among 34,000 items in the company's 400,000-foot warehouse. The items, he said, include anything a drugstore would sell. 'I'd be out of business without this technology,' he said. Despite his wealth, Mr. Rahr still exudes Queens from every pore. He is gregarious and down to earth, perpetually tanned, and seems both proud of his success and slightly apologetic about it, emphasizing that he still wears a $19.95 watch and drives himself to work in a 10-year-old Jeep Cherokee. He loves to tell stories about how a headwaiter or a security guard stopped him because he was wearing his usual attire, a baseball cap and jeans. 'My wife's used to it,' he said. 'I identify with the underdog.' He specializes in sales to 3,000 independent drugstores in seven Northeastern states. Mr. Rahr says he controls 75 percent of that market. Among the druggists, Kinray is known for its easy-to-use Web site. It has been 36 years since Mr. Rahr dropped out of New York Law School and persuaded his father, Joseph Rahr, not to sell the family's retail pharmacy in Brooklyn, which also supplied a few other drugstores. Mr. Rahr recently described the rejection he felt at first, when he tried to expand the wholesale business. 'I used to call the pharmacies and I would call and say, 'Kinray,' and they'd say, 'Nothing for you today.' And after about three or four in a row, I would get, 'Here's three aspirin for you and two Colgate toothpaste and one Mennen Speed Stick, if I were lucky,' ' Mr. Rahr recalled. 'And the sound of them hanging up on me, the 'nothing for you today,' just started to make me feel like I had to do something to get to become the primary jobber in these stores.' In 1973, Mr. Rahr and his wife, now a partner in a Manhattan jewelry design firm, Beach to Ballroom, bought their first home on one acre in suburban Dix Hills, N.Y. The Hamptons estate is considerably more grand, and Mr. Rahr sees it as his crowning achievement. It sits on 25 acres. The main house is 18,000 square feet, with 8 bedrooms and 14 baths, a private 2,000-foot beach with its own dock and boathouse, a waterside heated pool with waterfall and whirlpool, a tennis court and viewing pavilion, and a greenhouse. Mr. Rahr said that buying the property was an emotional experience for him. 'Here we were, 32 years later, walking on a much larger estate and feeling blessed that we were able to be in this position,' he said. Mr. Rahr says he has never borrowed a penny, so in a few days, when the deal closes on the oceanfront mansion, called Burnt Point, he will pay cash.

Subject: Move Over, Mondrian From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:42:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/books/26illu.html?ex=1293253200&en=a8a6205e90aafddb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Move Over, Mondrian: It's Miffy's Turn By KATHRYN SHATTUCK To thousands of preschool-age viewers in the United States each morning, Miffy is the resolute television bunny seen tootling around the Noggin channel on her red scooter. But to millions of European children from an era when pablum wasn't served up with the remote, Miffy sprang not from a rabbit hutch in Cableland but from a book. In fact, since her birth in 1955, Miffy has become so popular in her home country, the Netherlands, that Dick Bruna, her creator, is popularly known as 'Miffy's father.' It makes sense, then, that Mr. Bruna's illustrated characters, who decorate signposts along the beaches of the Dutch North Sea and adorn posters for the Red Cross and Amnesty International, should greet visitors to 'Dutch Treats: Contemporary Illustration From the Netherlands,' an exhibition of about 80 works by 14 children's book illustrators whose forays into whimsy have beguiled readers of all ages for half a century. There is the old guard and the new - from the ubiquitous images by Mr. Bruna and Max Velthuijs, best known for the moral tales played out by his alter ego, Frog, to the inventive creations of relative newcomers, like Jan Jutte, illustrator of 'Get Up!' (1998), and Annemarie van Haeringen, who has won three Golden Brush awards, the top prize in the Netherlands for children's book, for works like 'The Princess With the Long Hair' (1999) and 'Bear Fancies Butterfly' (2004). The exhibition, presented by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., will remain at the UBS Art Gallery, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, through Feb. 24, before moving to the Carle, where it will be on view from March 28 through July 9. 'We wanted to show very interesting children's books illustrators that are seen as normal artists in the Netherlands,' Truusje Vrooland-Löb, an expert on Dutch children's literature and the show's curator, said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam last week. 'Their work can hang on the wall as well as any other artwork.' Indeed, to view the illustrations in their original larger formats, with pencil marks, brush strokes and layered paper in high relief, is akin to watching a book's characters come to life and walk off the pages. Colors pop, details lost in pint-size renderings re-emerge and flat images suddenly gain dimension. Stare at Miffy head on, and Mr. Bruna's sculptural training becomes evident as the figure's straightforward unshaded body, outlined in firm ink strokes, assumes rounded proportions, colored in the primary hues favored by Mondrian and Matisse, two of his inspirations. 'I hope that the child's imagination is stimulated to see things in their simplest form,' Mr. Bruna says in the tiny booklet that accompanies the exhibition, 'so that life, with all its complications, becomes a little clearer.' Jip and Janneke, the terrible twosome who run through Fiep Westendorp's illustrations for books like 'The Wave' (1978), inevitably appear in silhouette, a pair of pointy-nosed, pitch-black cutouts with holes for eyes, superimposed on frothy color washes. 'These characters are so well known they're really part of the pictorial culture of the Netherlands,' Ms. Vrooland-Löb said. Yvonne Jagtenberg's 'Lady of Stavoren' (2000), starring a wimpled woman and a toothsome wolf, reveals the tattered edges of hand-torn paper layered in a collage. Its medieval setting and dour, muddy colors à la Edward Hopper - she's a fan - evoke a sophistication seldom seen in juvenile literature. But her latest works, centered on a redheaded mop-top named Balotje, or Kate in English, has all the innocence of a coloring book. 'Every story had its own atmosphere, and I want to evoke it,' Ms. Jagtenberg said by telephone. She has illustrated about 100 books and, at 38, is the youngest artist in the exhibition. 'Balotje is very young, and so she is done in crayon. The first thing children work with is their crayon, and you see it in their artworks, too. It's so direct that you see the soul of the children.' In Thé Tjong-Khing's pen-and-ink drawings for books like 'Little Sophie and Lanky Flop' (1985), minuscule crosshatches cause his feathery characters, produced by a few swift strokes and a lot of white space, to jump to the fore. Seen up close, you would swear there are at least a million of the tiny marks. Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Tjong-Khing, 72, whom Ms. Vrooland-Löb called 'one of the grand old men in Dutch illustrators,' had a career in erotically charged comic strips before abandoning that work for his first love, children's books. So, too, Philip Hopman dumped dreams of becoming a fashion designer because 'it was soon clear that I didn't have the talent,' he said in a telephone interview. 'I could draw, though. I was very influenced by Thé Tjong-Khing. His way of looking at things is remarkable, and he has a good eye for detail. He taught me to focus on what you want to say, and then tell a different story behind things.' Mr. Hopman's images, too, are chockablock with activity and hidden meanings. Consider a scene from 'Tamer Tom' (1994), in which a menagerie runs amok: a hippopotamus hoists a tiger into a tree; another hippo is ridden by a white-collared rabbit straight out of 'Alice in Wonderland'; a harnessed ferret is lassoed by a friend; and hedgehogs jump through hoops. 'I usually draw people, more or less,' Mr. Hopman said. 'I recently drew a very big rhino on a Harley-Davidson, a mid-life-crisis type of man with a cowboy hat on. Everyone knows that person.' Mr. Hopman, 44, recently abandoned the hurly-burly of Amsterdam for his childhood home a few miles away. 'I changed my father's tulip barn into a studio with light coming through the roof,' he said. 'It's right by the dunes and the sea, and very peaceful. It gives me a sort of rest, a focus on work.' 'It takes me a long time to think out the characters,' he continued, 'to start scribbling, to start figuring out the direction I'm going to go.' Wouldn't a computer speed up the process? 'Oh no, never!,' he said. 'I'm really old-fashioned. I just don't speak the language of the computer. I don't like the medium. I like paper and feeling the scratch of ink. It really works in my hand. It's much easier than writing.' Unlike Mr. Bruna and Ms. Jagtenberg, who often write the texts that accompany their drawings, Mr. Hopman only recently found comfort in words. 'Every Time I Think of You,' the first of his books to contain both his text and his illustrations, will be published next month. 'It's about love,' Mr. Hopman said. He has no children of his own, but he does have godchildren who routinely show up in his books in one guise or another. 'I think I stopped my development at 8, and so we get along like a house on fire,' he added. And though the art of these illustrators has made them famous in a very adult way - substantial royalty checks, works in major museums - for them success is apparently sweeter when viewed through small eyes. 'What's so nice when you make picture books is that nobody knows who you are,' Ms. Jagtenberg said. 'I'm not an actress; I'm not a famous person. But for children, you are famous. They want to touch you. And that's nice, too.'

Subject: Formats While DVD's Burn From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:14:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/technology/25cnd-format.html?ex=1293166800&en=4c96fefeee322675&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Fiddling with Formats While DVD's Burn By KEN BELSON The war for control of the next-generation DVD is approaching a critical juncture: next week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, companies championing the two competing high-definition DVD standards - Blu-ray and HD DVD - will unveil their lineups of new players and movie titles. There are growing signs, though, that the battle for supremacy in this multibillion-dollar market may yield a hollow victory. As electronics makers, technology companies and Hollywood studios haggle over the fine points of their formats, consumers are quickly finding alternatives to buying and renting packaged DVD's, high-definition or otherwise. 'While they fight, Rome is burning,' said Robert Heiblim, an independent consultant to electronics companies. 'High-definition video-on-demand and digital video recorders are compelling, and people will say, 'why do I need it?' ' when considering whether to buy a high-definition player. The fight between the Blu-ray and HD DVD groups is based on different views of what consumers want. The HD DVD camp, led by Toshiba, assumes that consumers will buy high-definition DVD's and players, but only at the right price. So it is improving existing DVD technology, which can be made cheaply and quickly. The Blu-ray group figures that something brand new is needed to get consumers interested, so it is developing discs with enough capacity to allow for innovative features in the future. Both sides agree, however, that now is the time to introduce high-definition DVD discs and players. Sales of high-definition televisions, with their sleek design and superior picture and sound quality, are soaring, and the major networks are broadcasting more programs in high-definition. Game makers like Sony see high-definition video games as a way to boost console sales, and Hollywood hopes that high-definition discs will offset slumping sales of current-generation DVD's in the $19 billion prepackaged disc market. Yet the alternatives to these new players and DVD's are growing by the day. The most promising is the on-demand programming, both standard and high-definition, being offered by cable companies. The percentage of cable customers who watch television on-demand has doubled in the past year, to 23 percent, according to the Leichtman Research Group. With thousands of free movies available at any time, consumers have fewer reasons to rent a DVD at Blockbuster or buy a new one at Best Buy. They are also likely to think twice before spending $1,000 or more for a new high-definition DVD player, or $25 or so to own a disc of a movie they might already have in standard definition. Of course, these newfangled ways of watching video are still a small piece of the overall video market, and industry executives and analysts say they expect most consumers to continue buying prerecorded DVD's for years to come. They also say they believe that high-definition programs - and the televisions to watch them on - are the way of the future. The question is how consumers will get that programming. Even without these alternatives, high-definition DVD's face a dicey start. The inability of the Blu-ray group and HD-DVD camp to agree on a single standard means that consumers must consider two sets of machines in the stores. Except for avid technophiles, consumers are likely to wait out the standards battle, lest they get stuck with a player that becomes obsolete if the other format wins. Machines will also be expensive - $1,000 or more - and consumers will need a television capable of playing high-definition programs, which can easily cost several thousand dollars more. The list of movies available in the formats will be skimpy at first. Sony, which leads the Blu-ray group, has said that its new video game consoles due out this spring will play Blu-ray DVD's. But few industry analysts expect consumers to buy the game machine just to watch movies. In the meantime, other companies are making it easier to watch and copy high-definition movies. Scientific-Atlanta has a new set-top box with a digital video recorder and DVD recorder built in, so cable subscribers can use a single machine to record programming and burn it onto blank discs. 'Consumers are getting hooked on video-on-demand and the flexibility of moving content around the home,' said Ted Schadler, an industry analyst at Forrester. 'Once you open that Pandora's box, you can't close it. The battle over the format is silly. For the product to grow, they have to promote the benefits of HD, not battle each other.' Yet the two sides are digging in their heels, not shaking hands. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and other backers of the Blu-ray format expect to flood stores next year with high-definition DVD players, and half a dozen studios will make movies for their machines. Not to be outdone, the HD DVD camp led by Toshiba has won endorsements from Microsoft and Intel. Hewlett-Packard, a member of the Blu-ray group, agreed last week to work with the HD DVD camp as well. These allies say that the wall between computers and consumer electronics is blurring and that the new formats should let users move movies and other content among various devices seamlessly. Not surprisingly, they see computers at the main conduit, not standalone electronic devices. 'If PC's don't adopt these technologies, it will be a ho-hum 2006' for next-generation DVD's, said Maureen Weber, the general manager of the personal storage group at Hewlett-Packard. 'It all boils down to Microsoft and Sony wanting to dominate the connected home. It's a showdown between consumer electronics and personal computers over convergence.' Ms. Weber, like many other executives, acknowledges that the longer the format battle continues, the higher the likelihood that consumers will find other solutions, including video-on-demand. Comcast, the country's largest cable provider, already gives its 20 million subscribers access to 3,800 movies and television shows. The 44 percent of Comcast's subscribers who have the set-top box needed to see on-demand programs have watched more than 1 billion of them so far this year. There are signs that rising on-demand viewing is denting DVD sales and rentals, a worrying sign for Hollywood executives who increasingly rely on disc sales to offset the rising cost of producing movies. Since consumer electronics makers and Hollywood studios earn much of their profit on sales margins, they will feel the pinch if these new viewing options grab even 5 or 10 percent of video market. A poll by the Starz Entertainment Group this month showed that 60 percent of those who watch on-demand video buy fewer DVD's, while 72 percent of those surveyed are renting fewer movies. Starz has also broadened the definition of on-demand with Starz Ticket, which lets users download movies to their laptops or other devices for $12.95 a month. The service includes a rotation of 300 movies that can be watched multiple times and, like a digital video recorder, paused, rewound and fast-forwarded. Like store-bought DVD's, they also include directors' cuts, foreign language versions and other bonus material. 'We're on the verge of another major shift in terms of how consumers receive video,' said Tom Southwick, a spokesman for the Starz Entertainment Group. 'What's happening in the video arena is just like what is happening in the MP3 market. Over time, there's going to be so much available with cable on-demand and the Internet that having a library of tapes that you buy or borrow will become inconvenient.' For now, none of the Starz Ticket movies are in high-definition because typical broadband connections are too slow to make downloads feasible. The current generation of discs hold up to 8.5 gigabytes of memory, not enough for a full-length movie in high-definition. Consumer habits also die hard. 'You can change technology all you want, but you can't change people,' said Andy Parsons, a Blu-ray group spokesman who noted that the vast majority of music fans still buy CD's. 'Average folks still want to watch the movie and buy it. It's presuming a lot to think that they will replace the model they've used for decades.'

Subject: Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:08:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25dee.html?ex=1293166800&en=5e51192381477d9e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore By DAPHNE MERKIN At the height of her spectacularly short-lived fame, coverage of everything from her dietary habits to her taste in men was enormous, with approximately 15 magazine articles appearing every month. The thing is, it all happened so fast, was over practically before it began, that we can almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: a blip on the monitor, a media invention, an adorable incarnation of a feminine ideal of the reluctant or unwitting nymphet, rather than a flesh-and-blood creature with needs and wishes (not to mention raging demons) of her own. The lightning speed with which Sandra Dee was first heralded and then discarded may have been just another example of the 'now you see her, now you don't' phenomenon endemic to the fever-dream of Hollywood, but it also suggests the dark 'Miss Lonelyhearts' side of the American manufacture of celebrity - the ruthlessness that drives it and the despair it feeds off. She went from being discovered in 1956, at 12, to winning a Golden Globe Award in 1958, to being hailed by The Motion Picture Herald in 1959 as the 'Number One Star of Tomorrow,' based on her promising pigtailed debut in the sterling weepie 'Until They Sail' as well as her performance in 'The Reluctant Debutante.' Less than a decade later, her career all but ended when she was dropped by Universal, after her divorce, at age 22, from the crooner Bobby Darin. 'Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was,' Dee told The Newark Evening News in 1967. In truth, she never entirely disappeared from the collective imagination, and therein lies one of many painful paradoxes (she was, for instance, among the last actors to be dropped as a contract player before the studio system expired) in what turns out to be a story too full of them. Her moment as 'a junior Doris Day,' as she once put it, or 'a Tinkertoy,' as an underwhelmed journalist once put it - although she early on demonstrated a far greater range of acting talent than she would later be remembered for - may have been vastly abbreviated, but there's no forgetting that fluffy neon concoction of a name, or what it stood for. Even if you never caught her in her glory days as Gidget or Tammy, Dee's legacy as an eclipsed and parodied icon, a cinematic reference that signifies everything blond and unviolated about the 50's, was assured by her immortalization in a catchy song from 'Grease.' Its broadly winking lyrics are declaimed by Rizzo, the designated high-school Bad Girl, at a pajama party and are aimed at converting the goody-two-shoes newcomer Sandy to a life of carnal sin: 'Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee/lousy with virginity/Won't go to bed till I'm legally wed,/I can't, I'm Sandra Dee.' Precisely because of the mythic stature we endowed her with, it's hard to believe that the wisp of a girl who cavorted decorously on-screen with John Saxon and Troy Donahue, in a time before teenagers of either sex thought to have their tongues pierced, lacked the grace to fade out, had the temerity to live on - and so unfetchingly, her life marred by chronic anorexia, alcoholism and depression - after we were no longer paying her any mind. Dee's death last February at age 60 (her official age was obscured from early childhood, when her mother added two years to it; many obituaries listed her age at the time of her death as 62), of complications from kidney disease, impels us to retrieve her from her vacuum-packed, nostalgia-inducing state as an idealized adolescent prototype. This in turn raises a possibility almost too disturbing to contemplate: how to envision Sandra Dee as middle-aged, as anything other than a bubbling and bikinied beach babe, the candied yin to Annette Funicello's sultry yang, the sweet and genteelly chaperoned box-office ingénue whose popularity once rivaled Elizabeth Taylor's and whose elopement at 16 with the scrappy Bronx-bred Darin, after a one-month courtship on the set of a forgettable movie ('Come September'), spoke to a girlishly starry-eyed fantasy of romance. Then again, the 'darling, pink world,' as she herself characterized it, that Sandra Dee was thought to inhabit by her fans had always been a grotesque mockery, plagued not by an overripened case of virginity but by childhood incest. The girl with brimming brown eyes and a fizzy lilt to her voice was born Alexandria Zuck in Bayonne, N.J. Her parents divorced when she was 5; her father, a bus driver, disappeared from her life shortly thereafter, and her mother, Mary, married a much-older real-estate entrepreneur named Eugene Duvan within a few years. According to Dee's own account, as relayed by her son, Dodd Darin, in his touching and unglamorized memoir of his parents, 'Dream Lovers,' her lifelong battle with anorexia - which would lead to three hospitalizations in her midteens, cardiac distress and multiple miscarriages - began with Mary's bizarre approach to her daughter's meals: 'My mother fed me with a spoon until I was 6 years old. She would make me a bowl of oatmeal. She'd crack an egg into it, raw, and. . .cold and lumps and streaks, I had to eat it all.' Worse yet, Dee's devoted but manipulative mother turned a conveniently blind eye to the defiled sexual appetites of her new husband. Duvan, who liked to tease his wife that he married her 'just to get Sandy,' started having sex with his beautiful stepdaughter when she was 8 and continued doing so almost until his death when she was 12. After her divorce from Darin, Dee never remarried. The former teenage sweetheart who had once received more fan mail than Rock Hudson became an anxious recluse whose primary connections were with her mother and her son. A cover profile in People magazine in 1991 depicted her as a damaged and isolated survivor - Dee poignantly expressed a wish to do a TV series, 'because I want a family. I can have that if I'm part of a show' - and her son's portrait of her in his book only deepened the shadows. Dee had plans to write an autobiography and in 1996 did a brief stint as an infomercial spokeswoman for an anti-aging cream. Last year she was played by Kate Bosworth in Kevin Spacey's movie about Bobby Darin, 'Beyond the Sea.' Sandra Dee's dazzling wreck of a life - the implausibly meteoric ascent followed by the long fall - would, I suppose, make for a perfect Lifetime special. Or, better yet, a searing biopic all its own, underscoring the gap between the glossy image and the nightmarish reality. It would, that is, if the truth weren't so unbearably sad, revealing a tale of ravaged innocence under cover of familial enmeshment leading to a wasteland of self-destruction. The problem with a story like this one, at least from a filmmaker's point of view, is that it isn't even a cathartic tear-jerker. There is no fortifying moral to be drawn from it, no redemptive 'Oprah' ending hovering in the wings. Look at her, she's Sandra Dee, lousy with debility. Tickets, anyone?

Subject: Insider to Apostate From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:06:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24wilkerson.html December 24, 2005 Ex-Powell Aide Moves From Insider to Apostate By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON IT was in early 2004, the beginning of President Bush's re-election campaign, that Lawrence B. Wilkerson first printed out a letter saying he wanted to quit as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. 'In essence it said, 'Dear Mr. President, I find myself at variance with a majority of your foreign policies and even your domestic policies and therefore I respectfully submit my resignation,' ' Mr. Wilkerson recalled recently. But the letter remained in a desk drawer for the rest of Mr. Bush's first term. Nearly two years later, Mr. Wilkerson, a 60-year-old retired United States Army colonel, has finally completed his journey from insider to apostate. Alone among those who surrounded Mr. Powell in the first term, he is speaking out critically, assailing the president as amateurish, especially compared to the first President Bush, and describing the administration as secretive, inept and courting disaster at home and abroad. Nor has he spared his former boss, whom he says was overly preoccupied with 'damage control' for policies set by others. 'What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made,' Mr. Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation in October. 'And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either,' he added in the speech. Mr. Wilkerson has also attacked the Bush administration for allegedly condoning torture and setting lax policies on treatment of detainees that led, he charges, to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the black eye they gave to the United States Army. SINCE starting to speak out a few months ago, Mr. Wilkerson has become something of a Washington celebrity. He has given interviews and speeches, appeared on television, written op-ed articles and taken telephone calls from journalists and senators. He has juggled book offers but says he has no plans to write anything that would seem to exploit his newfound fame. Soon he will begin teaching jobs at George Washington University and the College of William and Mary, where he may write a book on presidential decision-making since World War II. Though Mr. Powell has kept his silence about his former aide, he has let it be known through friends that he objects to the charges, especially the suggestion that he was overly loyal to President Bush. 'It's very painful for me,' Mr. Wilkerson says. 'I've lost a friend of 16 years. I won't say I've lost him, but the estrangement is palpable.' One e-mail message he says he got from Mr. Powell complained tersely, 'Don't characterize my loyalty.' On the other hand, Mr. Wilkerson says that Mr. Powell won crucial policy battles in making sure that the issue of Iraq was taken to the United Nations and in battling Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney for the cause of improving relations with Europe, encouraging negotiations with North Korea and Iraq, and avoiding confrontations with Russia and China. He says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realized, after studying the matter, had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. Army discipline is something Mr. Wilkerson says he has understood since Vietnam, where he flew helicopters starting in 1969. 'I've been there,' he said. 'I've stood on the hot parade ground as a pilot. I've cursed generals.' He added, 'I understood the bestiality that comes over men when they're asked to use force for the state.' He recalled that a battalion commander once declared an area a free-fire zone, 'which means that anything that moves, you shoot it.' One of his gunners killed a 13-year-old girl, Mr. Wilkerson says, adding, 'I will always live with that for the rest of my life.' After the Wilkerson attacks, administration spokesmen avoided any official response. But many administration officials have acknowledged their displeasure. A half-dozen former colleagues of Mr. Wilkerson's at the State Department, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name out of deference to Mr. Powell's silence, said they were not especially surprised that he had begun to speak out, but that they found his criticisms unseemly. A former colleague said it seemed Mr. Wilkerson was motivated by his concern about what had happened to the Army as a result of allegations of prisoner mistreatment and poor decisions on the Iraq war. 'Larry loves the Army, and he loves the people in the Army,' said a former State Department official. 'As somebody who thinks of himself as a leader of people, my sense is that he couldn't be silent anymore.' BORN in South Carolina, the son of a bombardier in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Mr. Wilkerson bounced around the country growing up while his father worked after the war as an insurance executive. Months before he was to graduate from Bucknell in 1966, he decided to enlist. But without a college degree, he found that only the Army would let him fly. After Vietnam, Mr. Wilkerson received advanced degrees in international relations and national security, and served on the faculty of the United States Naval War College at Newport, R.I., and as director of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. In 1989 he was hired as a speechwriter and top aide by Mr. Powell, who had left the post of national security adviser under President Reagan and later became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 'Larry has two qualities that Powell appreciated,' recalls another top aide to the former secretary. 'First, he could always find the big picture in whatever was going on. Second, he always tore things apart. He never takes things at face value, and what he's doing now is a kind of exaggeration of what he used to do internally.' Mr. Powell turned to Mr. Wilkerson to go with him to the C.I.A. to sort through the mounds of material prepared to buttress the case against Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Iraq war, for the lengthy presentation the secretary gave on Feb. 5, 2003, at the United Nations Security Council. 'He found that the draft didn't have the sourcing and backing that we wanted and he tore the whole thing apart and put it back together,' the former State Department official recalled. 'He was Powell's internal iconoclast.' Mr. Wilkerson recalls the preparation of the Feb. 5 presentation, which Mr. Powell has acknowledged will be remembered as a blot on his career because of its mistakes on intelligence, as an exercise in frustration. It was an embittering experience for everyone at the State Department, Mr. Wilkerson says, to be saddled with presenting what turned out to be false information at the United Nations, and also to have been sidelined in the running of postwar Iraq by the Pentagon. 'When I rationalize for myself not resigning, I did it by saying, 'This is the only sane member of this administration,' ' Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Powell.

Subject: Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:41:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/international/africa/25durban.html?ex=1293166800&en=6f928ad671f131fe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa Protest Sluggish Pace of Change By MICHAEL WINES JOHANNESBURG - Sending what some call an ominous signal to this nation's leaders, South Africa's sprawling shantytowns have begun to erupt, sometimes violently, in protest over the government's inability to deliver the better life that the end of apartheid seemed to herald a dozen years ago. At a hillside shantytown in Durban called Foreman Road, riot police officers fired rubber bullets in mid-November to disperse 2,000 residents marching to the municipal mayor's office downtown. Two protesters were injured; 45 were arrested. The rest burned an effigy of the city's mayor, Obed Mlaba. Their grievance was unadorned: since Foreman Road's 1,000 shacks sprang up nearly two decades ago, the only measurable improvements to the residents' lives amounted to a single water standpipe and four scrap-wood privies. Electricity and real toilets were a pipe dream. Promises of new homes, they said, were ephemeral. 'This is the worst area in the country,' said one resident, a middle-aged man who identified himself only as Senior. 'We don't so much need water or electricity. We need land and housing. They need to find us land and build us new homes.' In Pretoria that week, 500 shantytown residents looted and burned a city council member's home and car to protest limited access to government housing. Two weeks earlier, protesters burned municipal offices in Promosa after being evicted from their illegal shanties. In late September, Botleng Township residents rioted after a sewage-fouled water supply caused 600 cases of typhoid and perhaps 20 deaths. And just Thursday, Cape Town officials warned residents of a vast shantytown near the city airport that they faced arrest if they tried to squat in an unfinished housing project nearby. South Africa's safety and security minister said in October that 881 protests rocked slums in the preceding year; unofficial tallies say that at least 50 were violent. Statistics for previous years were not kept, but one analyst, David Hemson of the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, estimated that the minister's tally was at least five times the number of any comparable previous period. 'I think it's one of the most important developments in the postliberation period,' said Mr. Hemson, who leads a project on urban and rural development for the council. 'It shows that ordinary people are now feeling that they can only get ahead by coming out on the streets and mobilizing - and those are the poorest people in society. That's a sea change from the position in, say, 1994, when everyone was expecting great changes from above.' In fact, the government has made great changes. Since 1994, South Africa's government has built and largely given away 1.8 million basic houses, usually 16 feet by 20 feet, often to former shantytown dwellers. More than 10 million have gained access to clean water, and countless others have been connected to electrical lines or basic sanitation facilities. Yet at the same time, researchers say, rising poverty has caused 2 million to lose their homes and 10 million more to have their water or power cut off because of unpaid bills. And the number of shanty dwellers has grown by as much as 50 percent, to 12.5 million people - more than one in four South Africans, many living in a level of squalor that would render most observers from the developed world speechless. For South African blacks, the current plight is uncomfortably close to the one they endured under apartheid. Black shantytowns first rose under white rule, the result of policies intended to keep nonwhites impoverished and powerless. During apartheid, from the 1940's to the 1980's, officials uprooted and moved millions of blacks, consigning many to transit camps that became permanent shantytowns, sending others to black townships that quickly attracted masses of squatters. Privation led millions more blacks to migrate to the cities, setting up vast squatter camps on the outskirts of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other cities. From its first days, South Africa's black government pledged to address the misery of shanty life. That the problem has instead worsened, social scientists, urban planners and many politicians say, is partly the result of fiscal policies that have focused on nurturing the first-world economy which, under apartheid, made this Africa's wealthiest and most advanced nation. The government's low-deficit, low-inflation strategy was built on the premise that a stable economy would attract investment, and that the wealth would spread to the poor. But while the first-world economy has boomed, it has failed to lift the vast underclass out of its misery. Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent many analysts say; the government, which does not count those who have stopped looking for work, says joblessness is lower. Big industries like mining and textiles have laid off manual laborers, and expanding businesses like banking and retailing have failed to pick up the slack. Many of the jobless have moved to the slums. So far, the shantytown protests have focused exclusively on local officials who bear the brunt of slum dwellers' rage. But while almost all those officials belong to the governing African National Congress, and execute the party's social and economic policies, 'the poor haven't made the connection as yet,' said Adam Habib, another scholar at the Human Sciences Research Institute who recently completed a study of South Africa's social movements. On the contrary, national support for President Thabo Mbeki's governing coalition appears greater than ever before. Still, Mr. Mbeki has been visiting shantytowns and townships, promising to increase social spending and demanding that his ministers improve services to the poor. For now, nearly half the 284 municipal districts, charged with providing local services, cannot, the national ministry for local government says. Their problems vary from shrunken tax bases to inconsistent allotments of national money to AIDS, which has depleted the ranks of skilled local managers. Incompetence and greed are rife. In Ehlanzeni, a district of nearly a million people in Mpumalanga Province, 3 out of 4 residents have no trash collection, 6 out of 10 have no sanitation and 1 in 3 lack water - and the city manager makes more than Mr. Mbeki's $180,000 annual salary. The frustrations of slum dwellers began to boil over in mid-2004, when residents in a shantytown near Harrismith, about 160 miles southeast of Johannesburg, rioted and blocked a major freeway to protest their living conditions. The police fatally shot a 17-year-old protester. Since then, demonstrations have spread to virtually every corner of the nation. In Durban, the city is erecting some 16,000 starter houses a year, but the shanty population, now about 750,000, continues to grow by more than 10 percent annually. The city's 180,000 shanties, crammed into every conceivable open space, are a remarkable sight. Both free-standing and sharing common walls, they spill down hillsides between middle-class subdivisions, perch beside freeway exits and crowd next to foul landfills. They are built of scrap wood and metal and corrugated panels and plastic tarpaulin roofs weighed down with concrete chunks. Their insides are often coated with sheets of uncut milk and juice cartons, sold as wallpaper at curbside markets, to keep both the wind and prying eyes from exploiting the chinks in their shoddily built walls. The 1,000 or so hillside shanties at Foreman Road are typical. A standpipe at the top provides water, carried by bucket to each shack for bathing and dishwashing. At the bottom, perhaps 400 feet down a ravine, are four hand-dug, scrap-wood privies - each one, on this day, inexplicably padlocked shut. Residents say they seldom trek down to the privies, relieving themselves instead in plastic bags and buckets that can be periodically emptied or thrown away. The one-room shacks provide the rudest sort of shelter. A bed typically takes up half the space; a table holds cookware; clothes go in a small chest. There is no electricity, and so no television; entertainment comes from battery-powered radios. Residents use kerosene stoves and candles for cooking and heat, with predictable results. A year ago, a wind-whipped fire destroyed 288 shacks here. A fire at a Cape Town shantytown early this month left 4,000 people homeless. A few shacks are painted in riotous colors or decorated with placards hawking milk or tobacco, or shingled with signs ripped from light poles, once posted to warn that electricity thieves had left live power lines dangling in the street. The residents say Mayor Mlaba promised during his last election campaign to erect new homes on the slum site and on vacant land opposite their hillside. Instead, however, the city proposed to move the slum residents to rural land far off Durban's outskirts - and far from the gardening, housecleaning and other menial jobs they have found during Foreman Road's 16-odd years of existence. Lacking cars, taxi fare or even bicycles to commute to work, the residents marched in protest on Nov. 14, defying the city's refusal to issue a permit. The demonstration quickly turned violent. Afterward, in an interview that he cut short, a clearly nettled Mayor Mlaba argued that the protest had been the work of agitators bent on embarrassing him before local elections next year. 'Of course it's political,' he said. 'All of a sudden, they've got leaders. There weren't any leaders yesterday. Are they going to be there in 2006 or 2007, after the elections?' Also suspecting agitators, South Africa's government reacted initially to the shantytown protests by ordering its intelligence service to determine whether outsiders - a 'third force' in the parlance of this nation's liberation struggles - sought to undermine the government. Residents here scoff at that. 'The third force,' said the man called Senior, 'is the conditions we are living in.' In a shack roughly 7 feet by 8 feet, a third of the way down Foreman Road's ravine, Zamile Msane, 32, lives with her 58-year-old mother and three children, ages 12, 15 and 17. Ms. Msane has no job. A sister gives her family secondhand clothes, and neighbors donate cornmeal for food. In seven years, she has fled three wildfires, in 1998, 2000 and 2004, losing everything each time. Yet Ms. Msane, who came here from the Eastern Cape eight years ago, said she would not return to the farm where she once lived, because there was nothing to eat. Ms. Msane said she joined the Nov. 14 march for one reason. 'Better conditions,' she said. 'It's not good here, because these are not proper houses. There's mud outside. We're always living in fear of fires. Winter is too cold; summer is too warm. Life is so difficult.'

Subject: Re: Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 23:54:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thanks for the article Emma and compliments of the season to you. The article is packed with many shocking statistics, most of which I agree with. There is however a few stats that apear to be slanted or skewed, also none of the 'good stats' are included. For example the article states, 'Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent..' That statement is simply untrue. There are really only two organizations that monitor unemployment in South Africa, the national Human Resources Statistics (funded by the government) and the UNISA (University of South Africa). I worked with both organizations in definition of this exact stat. There is an issue over the 'informal sector' which is a large employer and is not reflected in the stats. Now I remember clearly that in 1994 the stats showed 40% unemployment - so to say it was 26% back then is simply a lie. To say it is 40% today is also a lie. It more like the other way around. 40% back in 1994 and 26% today. That is a significant drop in 10 years. Inflation in the Apartheid led South Africa was 12%, today it hovers below 4%. Back then the economy ran at an outrageous deficit, today it is in surplus. Back then growth was negative (net loss of companies) since 1994 we have seen South Africa's longest period of economic growth in their entire history. Also keep in mind that up until 1990, South Africa had a Mickey Mouse sized economy based primarily on the mining (which was an incredible employer of tens of thousands of people). Today we live in different world, changing prices of minerals has seen many mines close down (creating high unemployment) yet South Africa has succeeded to diversify their economy to become a highly and fully industrialised economy. For example, today South Africa is the world's second largest manufacture of new car parts. Next time you see a BMW 3 series, think to your self, that car was fully made with African hands. South Africa's old economic base consisted of 6 million tax payers (about 90% white population). Today the economic base is 10 million people showing that in 4 years, 4 million new tax payers have 'arrived' all of which are non white. In essence South Africa has succeeded in beating the 'Trickle Down Effect' and has succeeded in an amazing program of 'Economic Democratisation'. This has been done through their Affirmative Action Plan. With the additional 4 million tax payers/buyers, one can easily understand how South Africa has continued to fuel its own economic boom. Now the problem: Well South Africa has a population of 40 million (and growing). Only 10 million are lucky to enjoy the fruits of its economic boom. There's plenty of work to be done. There is also plenty anger by those who are not participating, especially when they see their various leaders be consistently caught in corruption scandals and their services are not happening. Here's the weird part, why does the majority of black South Africans continue to vote for the current government in growing numbers? The leading ANC party's leadership has over the last 10 years grown? Why? I really wish that these angry mobs would vote against the government and send a democratic message..... but hey...

Subject: Too Big? Too Small? Midsize From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:39:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25midcap.html?ex=1293166800&en=a5937284255de011&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Too Big? Too Small? Midsize Seems Just Right for Stocks By J. ALEX TARQUINIO SMALL-CAP stocks dished out supersized returns in recent years. But in 2005, shares of midsize companies have been serving up the best results - a trend that some market strategists predict will continue. Small-cap stocks, those of companies with market capitalization of less than $2 billion, tend to shine when stocks in general are emerging from a bear market. But by this stage in the economic recovery, strategists say that midcap stocks - those of companies with market caps of roughly $2 billion to $15 billion - have many advantages over smaller stocks. 'I'm concerned about small caps, which have begun to lag,' said Stuart Schweitzer, global markets strategist at J. P. Morgan Fleming, the asset management arm of J. P. Morgan Chase. Small caps can be very sensitive to changes in interest rates, he said, while midcaps are more insulated from such movements. Some analysts expect that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates at least through next spring. Midcaps certainly sprinted ahead of small caps this year. The Russell 2000 index - a common proxy for small-cap stocks - is up 5.35 percent, compared with a 13.9 percent gain in the Russell Midcap index. And many investors are betting that midcaps will keep outperforming the small fry next year. In the first three quarters of 2005, investors put more than $21 billion into midcap mutual funds, while putting less than $3 billion into small-cap funds, according to Lipper. Although midcaps are more liquid than small caps, Mr. Schweitzer said the stocks were still small enough that if money kept flowing into midcap funds at that pace, midcap stocks could be pushed sharply higher. Opinion is more divided over how large caps will fare in 2006. This year, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which includes many such stocks, is up 4.68 percent, and investors took more than $50 billion out of large-cap funds in the first three quarters. Mr. Schweitzer said he thought that large stocks in general - those in the S.& P. 500, but not necessarily the biggest - might outperform midcap stocks. But he predicted that the performance gap between large and midsize stocks would be modest when compared with that between large and small stocks. Some strategists say the heavyweights are undervalued. The 25 largest companies in the S.& P. 500 account for 43 percent of the earnings. At the end of 2003, they were also 43 percent of its market capitalization. But that figure has fallen steadily, to around 40 percent, said Henry McVey, chief United States investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. Although Mr. McVey said he thought that money would eventually move back into megacap companies - as the largest are often called - he said that many of these companies would need to restructure before they could lure investors back. Meanwhile, he is advising investors to lean toward midcaps. But Satya Pradhuman, the chief small-cap strategist at Merrill Lynch, who analyzes trends for companies valued below $8 billion, says he sees a fundamental shift away from domestic megacap stocks and toward a host of asset classes that include small-cap and midcap stocks, but also emerging-market debt and equities, high-yield bonds and private equity funds. 'This is a bigger trade,' he said. 'Investors are looking at these other asset classes because they aren't confident in earnings growth.' Mr. Pradhuman said he thought that Wall Street earnings estimates were pegged too high in general, and that there was very little room for positive surprises over the next two to three quarters. 'I don't see an ugly equity market,' he said. ' I just think the earnings hurdles are too high.' Within the midcap category, many strategists say, growth stocks could stand out next year. Although midcaps are often more stable than small caps, 'they aren't sprawling enterprises yet,' Mr. McVey said. So they can grow at a faster clip than many large-cap companies. Some managers of midcap funds predict that sector selection will be less important next year than it has been in 2005 - a year when energy and utilities stocks have trounced the broader stock market and when the managers have had to avoid some troubled industries, like automobiles, to keep from lagging behind their peer group. For instance, the opportunities could shift next year within the energy and technology sectors, said William D'Alonzo, who manages the Brandywine fund, which invests in companies of all sizes; the average market capitalization of its portfolio companies is around $9 billion. Mr. D'Alonzo said he thought that many technology companies had been chasing consumer dollars in recent years because corporations and governments had reined in their own spending. But he predicted that consumer spending would start to lag, while corporate and government spending on information technology would pick up. The Harris Corporation, a $6 billion company based in Melbourne, Fla., is among the fund's holdings that could benefit if Mr. D'Alonzo is correct about this trend. Harris sells communications equipment, primarily to government and the American space and military industries. The company's earnings grew 62 percent in the third quarter, the fifth consecutive quarter that they exceeded analysts' estimates, Mr. D'Alonzo said. Within energy, he has limited the fund's exposure to the big energy suppliers, like Exxon Mobil, while emphasizing smaller oil and gas services companies. He said he likes Weatherford, one of the fund's 10 largest holdings, because he thinks that its drilling business would be largely insulated from oil price swings. Although the mean estimate from analysts for Weatherford's 2006 earnings has risen to $3.99 a share, from $3.14 in May, Mr. D'Alonzo said he thought that the company's earnings could exceed even that higher estimate next year. Christopher McHugh, the lead manager of the Turner Midcap Growth fund, tries to match the sector weightings in the Russell Midcap Growth index, though he will emphasize certain industries. He is currently favoring semiconductor and networking companies, while limiting software stocks to just 2 percent of the portfolio. He also likes some specialty retailers. Urban Outfitters, a $5 billion company based in Philadelphia, is among the retail stocks in the portfolio. Mr. McHugh said he thought that the company could increase its earnings - regardless of the general direction of consumer spending - by opening new stores, because the chain is relatively small as compared with other specialty retailers like the Gap. He said he thought that Urban Outfitters could increase its stores' total square feet by 20 percent next year. Mr. McHugh likes smaller technology companies, where he also sees room for earnings growth. He points to one of the fund's holdings, F5 Networks, a $2 billion company based in Seattle that helps companies manage their Internet traffic. Mr. McHugh said he thought it could increase earnings in 2006 by 20 percent, which would beat Wall Street analysts' estimates. Although midcaps may be the flavor of the moment, Mr. Pradhuman, the Merrill Lynch strategist, warns risk-adverse investors to think twice before jumping in with both feet. He also advises all types of investors not to venture into midcaps if they will need the money back soon. While these stocks tend to be more stable than small caps, they are often more volatile than shares of larger companies. 'As much as we like this asset class, it's not for everyone,' he said.

Subject: Labor's Lost Story From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:06:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801227_pf.html November 29, 2005 Labor's Lost Story By E. J. Dionne Jr. Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Co. executive. Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: 'You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW.' To which Reuther snapped: 'And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either.' The historian William L. O'Neill tells this story in 'American High,' his fine and appropriately titled book about the 1950s, a time when 'autoworkers were the best-paid production line operatives in the world.' It helps explain why General Motors' layoffs of 30,000 workers, announced last week, have become a new litmus test in American politics. Almost everybody right of center sees the job losses as inevitable, the result of the American auto industry's failure to meet foreign competition and the 'excessively' generous wages, health benefits and, especially, retirement programs negotiated by Reuther's union. The believers in inevitability inevitably cite the economist Joseph Schumpeter to the effect that capitalism 'is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is, but never can be, stationary.' It is capitalism's gift for 'creative destruction,' Schumpeter argued, that guaranteed new consumer goods, new methods of production and new forms of organization. A different story is told left of center, though it will come as no shock that progressives can't quite agree on a single narrative. The left is united in talking about rising health care costs and the fact that most of our foreign competitors have government-run health insurance systems that take the burden of health care off employers. The iconic number: providing health care for workers and retirees accounts for $1,500 in the cost of each American-made car. Critics of globalization tell an additional story of how free trade is sending many of our best-paying blue-collar jobs offshore. There is also the decline of union membership, a chicken-and-egg tale, since private-sector unions historically were strongest in the older manufacturing industries such as steel and cars. The UAW's numbers tell the story: 1,619,000 members in 1970, 1,446,000 in 1980, 952,000 in 1990, 623,000 in 2004. Where have you gone, Walter Reuther? The contrast between these two accounts explains why economic conservatives currently hold the upper hand in America's political debate. The conservatives have a single, coherent story and stick to it: Economic change is good for everyone, especially for consumers, who get better stuff at lower prices. The fact that 'producer groups' (such as those unions) are losing their 'monopolies' and their capacity for 'rent seeking' is cheered as progress. The left's narrative is less compelling not only because there is no single story but also because few on the left attack the current system with the same gusto the right brings to defending it. Gone, for good reason, is the time when significant parts of the left called for 'government ownership of the means of production.' Much of the left accepts a certain amount of creative destruction because, in Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase, there is no alternative. But this muddle reflects a default on parts of the left and, especially, within the Democratic Party. Because so many Democrats fear that they might sound like -- God forbid! -- socialists, they are unwilling to challenge the right's core story. Capitalism, all by itself, would never have achieved the rising living standards that were the pride of the United States in O'Neill's 1950s and still are today. The rules enforced by the National Labor Relations Board made it possible for Reuther's union to organize by protecting workers' rights. Cheap 30-year mortgages, which became the norm because of Federal Housing Administration guarantees, created a nation of homeowners. As medical costs rise, more Americans will need government help. More employers will need to offload the costs of medical insurance to avoid bankruptcy. Yes, that's 'socialized medicine,' just like Medicare. But don't tell anyone. The phrase plays terribly in focus groups. For 60 years New Dealers and social democrats, liberals and progressives, turned Schumpeter on his head. They insisted that few would embrace capitalism's innovations if the system's tendency toward creative destruction was not balanced by public innovations to spread the bounty and protect millions from being injured by change. It's a compelling story. Walter Reuther knew it well. Too bad it isn't told very often anymore.

Subject: What Makes a Nation More Productive From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 06:26:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25view.html?ex=1293166800&en=73bad124c56d1572&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 What Makes a Nation More Productive? It's Not Just Technology By DANIEL GROSS IN 2001, the stock market meltdown and a brief recession threw cold water on the widely held belief that the United States economy, juiced by a technological revolution, had entered a new era of limitless, inflation-free growth. But today, as bubble-era books like 'Dow 36,000' collect dust on library shelves, evidence is mounting that there may be a new economy after all. In the late 1990's, growth in labor productivity - the amount of output per hour per worker - kicked into a higher gear. From 1996 through 1999, it grew at a blistering annual rate of 2.5 percent, compared with 1.4 percent from 1972 to 1995. Economists generally believed that the higher rate was a byproduct of the new economy. Much of the growth was spurred by the highly productive businesses that made information technology products - companies like Dell, Intel and Microsoft - and by their customers, who spent heavily to deploy productivity-enhancing PC's and software. 'About half of the growth resurgence from 1995 to 2000 was due to I.T.,' said Dale Jorgenson, university professor at Harvard and a co-author of the recently published 'Information Technology and the American Growth Resurgence.' As the technology investment boom of the 1990's gave way to bust in 2000, many analysts feared that the productivity gains would dissipate. Instead, productivity since 2000 has grown at a substantially higher pace than it did in the late 1990's. And productivity growth is still strong. This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that productivity in the third quarter was up 3.1 percent from the same quarter last year. A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, found that sectors other than technology have been driving the growth in the post-bust years. 'The I.T.-producing industry itself, with its extraordinarily rapid pace of change, certainly has contributed to overall productivity growth,' said Martin Baily, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, based in Washington. 'But now we're getting a bigger share from the rest of the economy.' Mr. Baily, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, was co-author of the McKinsey report with Diana Farrell, the director of McKinsey Global. In the late 1990's, McKinsey found that six of the economy's 59 sectors accounted for virtually all productivity growth. Among the biggest contributors were new-economy industries like telecommunications, computer manufacturing and semiconductors. But from 2000 to 2003, the top seven sectors accounted for only 75 percent of the productivity increase. And five of the top contributors were service industries, including retail trade, wholesale trade and financial services. That is surprising, since economists have generally believed that it is much harder for service industries to reap sharp productivity gains than it is for manufacturers. To be sure, service industries have become more productive in recent years by continuing to invest in information technology. Yet there are also other factors at work. 'I.T. is a particularly effective enabling tool,' Ms. Farrell said. 'But without the competitive intensity that drives people to adopt innovation, we wouldn't see these kinds of gains.' To compete with Wal-Mart, for example, retailers of all stripes have been working furiously to gain scale, to manage supply chains and logistics more effectively, and to negotiate better terms with suppliers and workers. A similar dynamic has played out in the finance sector, where there has also been a huge gain in productivity. It is likely that competition and structural changes are responsible for those gains - both in the late 1990's and in recent years. Commissions for stock trades have fallen sharply amid relentless competition; spreads in stock trading have narrowed, thanks to rules promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission; and trading volume has risen, thanks to the proliferation of investors. Add it up, and you have more volume at lower cost to the customer. And when the stock market cooled after the Internet bubble, companies in the once-hot financial sector began to focus on cutting costs and eliminating unprofitable operations. Those moves further bolstered productivity. One mystery of recent years has been the enduring gap in productivity growth between the United States and Europe. In this case, another structural force - regulation - may be at work. 'In economies with less regulation, companies can use information communications technology that link sectors to one another in ways that create joint productivity,' said Gail Fosler, executive vice president and chief economist at the Conference Board. Because domestic retailers don't face the same sorts of restrictions on working hours and road use that European retailers do, for example, the Americans have been better able to use technology to manage trucking fleets, deliveries and inventory. The encouraging news, some economists say, is that a major breakthrough in information technology is not required to fuel further productivity growth. 'It's not research and development that cause the big gains in productivity,' Professor Jorgenson said. 'The real drivers are things like competition, deregulation, the opening of markets and globalization.' AS the gospel of increased productivity spreads to a wider range of sectors, more companies keep trying to figure out how to do more with the same amount of labor - or with less. For macroeconomists, that is good news. But there is a downside. In the past few years, payroll job growth has been far less robust than usual for post-recessionary periods. And because high productivity means that the economy can grow smartly without the addition of new jobs, some job seekers might wish that companies were a tad less efficient. Mr. Baily says that there does not have to be a trade-off between productivity and job creation. 'Historically, in the U.S. and in other countries, periods of rapid productivity growth have been periods of strong employment growth,' he said. That was certainly the case in the late 1990's. Why has the experience been different in the last several years? 'The loss of manufacturing jobs after 2000 was just huge, and those jobs haven't come back,' Mr. Baily said. The Big Three automakers have shed tens of thousands of jobs since 2000 because of competitive pressures and a drop in demand for their products. And it is likely that General Motors and Ford would be retrenching even if productivity in the service sector was growing at a much slower rate. 'It's hard to blame productivity growth for a lot of manufacturing job losses,' Mr. Baily said.

Subject: Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 06:15:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25japan.html?ex=1293166800&en=32ab31a39ab94fe6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt By MARTIN FACKLER KASHIWA, Japan FOURTEEN years ago, Yoshihisa Nakashima looked at this sleepy suburb an hour and 20 minutes from downtown Tokyo and saw all the trappings of middle-class Japanese bliss: cherry-tree-lined roads, a cozy community where neighbors greeted one another in the morning and schools within easy walking distance for his two daughters. So Mr. Nakashima, a Tokyo city government employee who was then 36, took out a loan for almost the entire $400,000 price of a cramped four-bedroom apartment. With property values rising at double-digit rates, he would easily earn back the loan and then some when he decided to sell. Or so he thought. Not long after he bought the apartment, Japan's property market collapsed. Today, the apartment is worth half what he paid. He said he would like to move closer to the city but cannot: the sale price would not cover the $300,000 he still owes the bank. With housing prices in the United States looking wobbly after years of spectacular gains, it may be helpful to look at the last major economy to have a real estate bubble pop: Japan. What Americans see may scare them, but they may also learn ways to ease the pain. To be sure, there are several major differences between Japan in the 1980's and the United States today. One is the fact that property prices rose much faster and more steeply in Japan, partly because speculators used paper profits from a booming stock market to invest in property, insupportably leveraging the prices of both higher and higher. Another difference is that the biggest speculators in Japan's frenzy were deep-pocketed corporations, and they pumped up the commercial property market at the same time that home prices were inflating. Still, for anyone wondering why even the possibility of a housing bubble in the United States preoccupies so many economists, it is worth looking at how the property crash in Japan helped to flatten that economy, which is second only to that of the United States, and to keep it on the canvas for more than a decade. And as American homeowners contemplate what might happen if their property values fell -particularly if they fell hard - there are lessons in the bitter experiences of their Japanese counterparts like Mr. Nakashima. JAPAN suffered one of the biggest property market collapses in modern history. At the market's peak in 1991, all the land in Japan, a country the size of California, was worth about $18 trillion, or almost four times the value of all property in the United States at the time. Then came the crashes in both stocks and property, after the Japanese central bank moved too aggressively to raise interest rates. Both markets spiraled downward as investors sold stocks to cover losses in the land market, and vice versa, plunging prices into a 14-year trough, from which they are only now starting to recover. Now the land in Japan is worth less than half its 1991 peak, while property in the United States has more than tripled in value, to about $17 trillion. Homeowners were among the biggest victims of the Japanese real estate bubble. In Japan's six largest cities, residential prices dropped 64 percent from 1991 to last year. By most estimates, millions of homebuyers took substantial losses on the largest purchase of their lives. Their experiences contain many warnings. One is to shun the sort of temptations that appear in red-hot real estate markets, particularly the use of risky or exotic loans to borrow beyond one's means. Another is to avoid property that may be hard to unload when the market cools. Economists say Japan also contains lessons for United States policy makers, like Ben S. Bernanke, who is expected to become chairman of the Federal Reserve at the end of January. At the top of the list is to learn from the failure of Japan's central bank to slow the rise of the country's real estate and stock bubbles, and then its failure to soften their collapse. Only recently did Japan finally find ways to revive the real estate market, by using deregulation to spur new development. Most of all, economists say, Japan's experience teaches the need to be skeptical of that fundamental myth behind all asset bubbles: that prices will keep rising forever. Like their United States counterparts today, too many Japanese homebuyers overextended their debt, buying property that cost more than they could rationally afford because they assumed that values would only rise. When prices dropped, many buyers were financially battered or even wiped out. 'The biggest lesson from Japan is not to fall into the same state of denial that existed here,' said Yukio Noguchi, a finance professor at Waseda University in Tokyo who is perhaps the leading authority on the Japanese bubble. 'During a bubble, people don't believe that prices will fall,' he said. 'This has been proven wrong so many times in the past. But there's something in human nature that makes us unable to learn from history.' In the 1980's, Professor Noguchi said, the frenzy in Japan reached such extremes that companies tried to outbid one another even for land of little or no use. At the peak, an empty three-square-meter parcel (about 32 square feet) in a corner of the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo sold for $600,000, even though it was too small to build on. Plots only slightly larger gave birth to bizarre structures known as pencil buildings: tall, thin structures that often had just one small room per floor. As a result, Japan's property market in the 1980's was much more fragile than America's today, Professor Noguchi said. And when the market fell, it fell hard. Because of all the corporate speculation, the collapse wiped out company balance sheets, crippled the nation's banks and gave the overall economy a blow to the chin. Since 1991, Japan has spent 11 years sliding in and out of recession. It is only now showing meaningful signs of recovering, with the World Bank forecasting that Japan's economy will grow by a solid 2.2 percent this year Despite the differences, Professor Noguchi said he also saw parallels between Japan then and America now. Last year, as a visiting professor at Stanford, he said he read real estate articles in local newspapers that sounded eerily familiar. Houses were routinely selling for $10 million or more, he said, with buyers saying they felt that they had no choice but to buy now, before prices rose even further. 'It was déjà vu,' Professor Noguchi said. 'People were in a rush to buy, and at extraordinary prices. I saw this same haste psychology in Japan' in the 1980's. 'The classic definition of a bubble,' he added, 'is people buying on false expectations about future prices, and buying with the hope of selling in the future.' Economists and real estate experts see other parallels as well. In the 1980's, the expectation of rising real estate prices made many Japanese homebuyers feel comfortable about taking on huge debt. And they did so by using exotic loans that required little money upfront and that promised low monthly payments, at least for a short time. A similar pattern is found today in the United States, where the methods include interest-only mortgages, which allow homebuyers to repay no principal for a few years. Japan had its own versions of these loans, including the so-called three-generation loan, a 90- or even 100-year mortgage that permitted buyers to spread payments out over their lifetimes and those of their children and grandchildren. But when property prices dropped in Japan, homeowners found themselves saddled with loans far larger than the value of their real estate. Many fell into bankruptcy, especially those who lost their jobs or took pay cuts as declining property prices helped to incite a broader recession. From 1994 to 2003, the number of personal bankruptcies rose sixfold, to a record high of 242,357, according to the Japanese Supreme Court, which tracks such data. Even many of those who avoided financial collapse found themselves marooned in homes that they never intended as lifelong residences. For many Japanese homebuyers in the 1980's, land prices had risen so high that the only places they could afford were far from central Tokyo. Many went deep into debt to buy tiny or shoddily built homes that were two hours away from their offices. Now, after years of tumbling land prices have made Tokyo more affordable again, few people are shopping for homes in the distant suburbs. That has led to severe declines in property values in these outlying areas, leaving many people with homes that are worth less than the balance on their mortgages from a decade or more ago. Mr. Nakashima, who bought the apartment here in Kashiwa, said it would take him at least another decade to whittle down his loan to the point that he could pay it off by selling his home. And this assumes that the apartment does not drop further in value - a real possibility, because lower prices in Tokyo have led to a recent boom in construction of newer apartments in neighborhoods closer to downtown. 'We can't sell and get something better because we'll take such a huge loss,' said Mr. Nakashima, a serious man who recounts his story with careful precision, sometimes pausing to check dates. 'The collapse of the bubble robbed us of our freedom to choose where we can live.' He rues the idea that homes came to be seen as just another investment. 'Homes should be different from stocks,' he said. 'They shouldn't be the object of speculative investing. If home prices move too much, they can ruin your life.' Mr. Nakashima says he is resigned to spending the rest of his days in Kashiwa. It is peaceful here, after all, he said. There is also a bit of history: he pointed to two tree-covered mounds in a corner of the apartment complex that are said to contain the severed heads of samurai killed in a battle here five centuries ago. Some economists say that there are probably millions of people like Mr. Nakashima, trying to make the best of life in homes that are distant from work and for which they grossly overpaid. 'There is a whole generation of homebuyers stuck out in far suburbs,' said Atsushi Nakajima, chief economist at the research arm of the Mizuho Financial Group in Tokyo. 'It's sad, but Japan has basically forgotten about them, and is moving on. They are just left out there.' Mr. Nakajima said he had barely missed being stuck out there himself. In 1991, he was looking at a 100-square-meter apartment (1,080 square feet) for about $600,000 about two hours outside Tokyo. He said his wife stopped him. Six years later, he spent the same amount to buy a more spacious house in a downtown neighborhood. 'Maybe my wife should be the economist,' he said. Now that Japan's real estate market is finally showing signs of recovering from the 1991 collapse, economists say it offers a lesson for Americans in how to end - and not to end - a long slide in property prices. For years after the real estate bubble burst, the Japanese government tried to resuscitate the market and other parts of the economy with expensive public works projects, but they were so poorly planned that they succeeded only in inflating the national debt. NOT until the late 1990's did the government try a new tack: deregulation. To kick-start the economy, Tokyo started loosening restrictions on the financial industry. While most of this effort was aimed at reviving the banking industry, it also allowed investors to create real estate investment trusts, essentially mutual funds that invest in commercial property. A few years later, the government also eased building codes, such as height limits, and cut approval times for building permits. Economists and real estate executives credit these changes with bringing new money into the market, and with making redevelopment easier. The results are visible in a boom that is dotting the Tokyo skyline with cranes and new high-rises. They are also visible in statistics. Residential home prices in Tokyo rose 0.5 percent in the 12 months through July, the first gain in 15 years, the government said in September. Nationwide, land prices are still down, but the pace of decline has slowed to a crawl, the government said. 'Deregulation revived the Tokyo land market,' said Toshio Nagashima, executive vice president at Mitsubishi Estate, one of Japan's largest real estate companies. He said the changes were one reason that his company committed to spend $4.5 billion by 2007 to build six skyscrapers in the central Marunouchi financial district. Japanese economists say the United States is not likely to suffer a decline that is as severe or long-lasting as Japan's, because they see a more skilled hand at the tiller of the American economy: the Federal Reserve. Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, failed to curb the stock and real estate bubbles until mid-1989, when it was too late and prices were sky-high, they said. When it did take action, it moved faster and more drastically than Japan's overinflated land and stock markets could handle, raising its benchmark interest rate to 6 percent from 2.5 percent over 15 months. Economists say that this pulled the rug out from under both markets at the same time. Akio Makabe, a finance professor at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, says the Fed has been more deft in handling the rise in America's property market, which he believes is definitely in a bubble. He praised the Fed for apparently learning from Japan's mistakes, tightening more gradually and taking the economy's pulse as it does so. 'Japan shows the importance of avoiding a hard landing,' Professor Makabe said. 'Avoid big shocks. That is the biggest lesson of Japan's bubble.'

Subject: Tidings of Pride, Prayer and Pluralism From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 05:58:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/books/review/25meacham.html?ex=1293166800&en=fc91792ba74cb6a1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Tidings of Pride, Prayer and Pluralism By JON MEACHAM On this morning of all mornings, the story of Christianity can seem smooth, straightforward, even sweet. With its angels and shepherds and luminous star in the sky, Christmas understandably tends to the cheerful; the faithful ponder the crèche, not the cross. Amid all this, it is unsettling to recall that Christianity is a confounding, often paradoxical faith. A father who sacrifices his son? A king who dies a criminal's death? A God whose weakness is his strength? Even St. Paul admitted that faith in Jesus required, if not what Samuel Taylor Coleridge later called a 'willing suspension of disbelief,' then at least an honest acknowledgment that much about the new religion surpassed understanding. There were often as many questions as answers. When the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is to bear Jesus, her first, shaky words are: 'How can this be, since I know not a man?' On the morning of the Resurrection, terrified by the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene runs to Peter and John to say: 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' We do not know. And so it was that the faith now confessed by two billion people was born in fear and confusion. Christianity is difficult, both in practice and in theory. Following in the Judaic tradition of valuing human reason, Christians treasure the mind as a gift of God, and the faithful are called to use his gifts to the fullest; to fail to do so is a sin. Every believer, says the author of the First Epistle of St. Peter, should 'be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' The admonition is a good one, for it encourages the faithful to ask questions, and in asking questions, one enters the debate about God and man that began with the ancient pagans. The suggestion that Christianity is a matter of both intellect and imagination, however, has fallen from popular favor. Many secularists see the whole business as fanciful, or, at best, as a comforting tale impossible to square with empirical truths. To literalist believers, imagination is beside the point: in their eyes, inerrant Scripture teaches humankind all it really needs to know. The current clash between secularism and religion in America is not new, but it is fierce. From Salem in the 17th century, to the Scopes trial in the 20th, to abortion rights, stem-cell research and 'intelligent design' in the 21st, it appears that such conflicts will, as Jesus said of the poor, be always with us. Now as in the past, it is fashionable for many on the left to caricature the faithful as superstitious and stiff-necked; on the right, conservatives attack the skeptical with anything but Christian charity. Yet whether one believes or disbelieves, many of us would like to see a calmer, more measured conversation about faith and reason than we have had in recent years. We might well begin with those on each extreme acknowledging that life is essentially mysterious: the world does not lend itself to simple explanation. 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!' Paul wrote. 'How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!' For the secular, there is Hamlet: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' In my view, allowing for the existence of a transcendent order seems sounder than flatly denying the possibility altogether. 'Reason itself is a matter of faith,' G. K. Chesterton wrote. 'It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.' Light can neither enter into nor emanate from a closed mind, and intellectual humility - acknowledging what we do not, and cannot, know - is often the beginning of wisdom. There is not much humility to be found in the pages of Rodney Stark's provocative new book, 'The Victory of Reason.' If one had been asked to choose in the ninth century A.D. which part of the world would dominate the others for much of the coming millennium, one would almost certainly have put money on the world of Islam - not on Western Europe. Why Europe and its New World colonies rose to pre-eminence after the close of the Middle Ages is arguably the single greatest puzzle of modern history. Stark, however, is not puzzled. His answers are crisp, certain and to the point. Four decades ago the historian William McNeill credited Europe's ascent to its taste for war, its navigational techniques and its resistance to disease; more recently - and more vividly - Jared Diamond argued that guns, germs and steel decided the fate of the world. Now comes Stark, a prolific sociologist of religion, with a different argument. 'Christianity,' he writes, 'created Western Civilization.' He believes that the Christian emphasis on reason was the motive force in the West's rise to global dominance: 'While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.' Stark is right to argue that the idea that Christianity is incompatible with reason, a line of thought running from Celsus in the late second century to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, does not withstand historical scrutiny. In many ways, Christianity was a force for good in the West - though as the Inquisition, pogroms and centuries of intolerance show, it could also be a force for evil, a fact believers ought to confront, confess and guard against. Stark is apparently not one for such confrontation and confession, and therein lies a problem with his argument: he is offering an absolutist answer to one of history's most complex questions. Intent on demolishing the familiar secular thesis that religion impeded progress in economics, science and politics, Stark gets carried away. Crediting Christianity with the good things of life while neglecting the faith's shortcomings, he takes only the most fleeting account of the cultural, philosophical and religious tributaries that helped create the West's mighty river. 'Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls,' he writes. 'Without a theology committed to reason, progress and moral equality' - all of which could describe faiths other than Christianity - 'today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: a world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys and pianos. . . . A world truly living in 'dark ages.' ' For Stark, Christianity was the only thing standing between us and such a gloomy fate, for, he writes, the Christian love of reason helped create the whole idea of progress in all fields of human endeavor. Christianity was unquestionably an enormous factor in the story of Western progress. But there were others. Geography (Islam coveted Byzantium, not Europe), economics (Europe was less dependent on the vagaries of agriculture than other parts of the world) and tradition (in the form of the contributions of other cultures) were essential, too. China created gunpowder and paper and the compass; before the monks could preserve the manuscripts of the classics, Islam rescued the works of Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, laid strong foundations in science and medicine and helped create a global market linking Europe with the East through the Islamic world. History did not begin with Augustine or Aquinas. To return to Chesterton, a view like Stark's overlooks the role of tradition - the handing on of the work of previous generations. Tradition, Chesterton wrote during the Edwardian Age, 'means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. . . . We will have the dead at our councils.' Stark declines to acknowledge the debt Christians owe their Islamic, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist fathers. He fails to count all the ballots of the dead and does not really care to: in his eyes, the future not only belonged to Christianity -Christianity basically created the future. In the early years of the faith, he writes, 'the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase their understanding of Scripture and revelation. Consequently, Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past.' Yet Christianity has never had a monopoly on rational theology or on a concern for the future. Greece and Rome came first, and without the classical principle of 'noncontradiction' - the idea that a faith could assert, for example, that 'Jesus is Lord' and no one else is - it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, for Christianity to express its faith in doctrine. Judaism and Islam, meanwhile, have long histories of approaching scripture allegorically and critically. Stark quotes the Koran as evidence of Islam's supposed innate emphasis on fundamentalism: the text, the verse says, is 'the Scripture whereof there is no doubt.' Many Christians, though, have taken the words of II Timothy - 'all Scripture is inspired by God' - to mean that the Bible is inerrant. The fact that Jesus himself spoke so often in parables signals the nature and richness of the Jewish approach to theology and philosophy. Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew, was a seminal interpreter of Scripture and tradition. His application of classical thought, logical rigor and literary criticism to Jewish texts foreshadowed and shaped the rationality Stark attributes to Christian thinkers. (Philo is not mentioned in the book.) Talmudic and Rabbinic Judaism are built on argument and reflection. Maimonides, who flourished under Islamic rulers, argued that the discoveries of science and philosophy could not be incompatible with the truths ordained by God (Maimonides is not mentioned either). In Islam, every verse of the Koran, meanwhile, is an 'ayah,' or a 'sign,' to ponder in order to recognize and understand the divine. One of the four basic 'roots' in Islamic jurisprudence is reasoning. 'The Victory of Reason' is more polemic than history, which is too bad, for Stark is on to something important. The author of many books, including the brilliant 'Rise of Christianity,' he is a consistently interesting writer, and provocation is not necessarily a bad thing. Big debates sometimes need to be shaken up, and intellectual life would be much the poorer without writers advancing bracing, if incomplete, arguments. In this case, Stark is most likely being deliberately contrarian in the hope that his argument will penetrate minds long fortified by Mencken-like snobbery about the Christian intellectual tradition. To me, however, the most relevant lesson of the book is not how much Christianity has done for the world through reason, but how much reason has done, and still must do, for Christianity. From Paul to Origen of Alexandria and beyond, the faith has fueled much intellectual good. In 1925, Alfred North Whitehead, whom Stark cites, argued that Christianity helped make Western science possible. It was the Christian idea of God, 'conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher,' Whitehead wrote, that rewarded reasoned thinking and exploration. Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism, it is true, are not monotheistic - there is, to use Whitehead's imagery, no single philosophical Jehovah. Yet each culture has made its share of contributions to the rising tide of civilization, from developments in mathematics, the sciences and rational philosophy in India to philosophical thought and early inventions in China to the flowering of thought, high culture, economic systems and scientific achievement in medieval Islamic societies. Christianity has also had its share of dark intellectual hours. Stark mentions Galileo only twice, both times in passing, which is unfortunate, for there were voices in the Galileo affair arguing for a more reasoned reaction to the new science than condemnation and house arrest. It was Galileo who understood, better than his persecutors, how to reconcile apparent contradictions between faith and science. If reason leads humankind to discover a truth that seems to be incompatible with the Bible, Galileo argued, then the interpretation of Scripture, not the rational conclusion, should give way. In this he was echoing Augustine, who wrote: 'If it happens that the authority of sacred Scripture is set in opposition to clear and certain reasoning, this must mean that the person who interprets Scripture does not understand it correctly.' Such is the intellectual footwork of a believer who is unprepared to allow the possibility that the Bible might be fallible, but Augustine's work enables Christians to take advantage of scientific and social advances without surrendering the ultimate authority of revelation. Guided by these lights, despite its sins and shortcomings, the church has ultimately removed the biblical support for the ideas that the earth, not the sun, is the physical center of the universe, that slavery is divinely ordained or that women are property. In the West, a combination of curiosity and courage, one with roots in both classical and monotheistic thinking, enabled Europeans to set out, learn from other cultures and put that borrowed knowledge to work, often on a grand scale. As Bernard Lewis and others have pointed out, Europe had more reason to be interested in Islam than Islam did in Europe. Christianity's holiest places were under Muslim control after earlier, short-lived crusader kingdoms in Jerusalem. Islam was also a military threat to Europe; on two occasions, one in the 16th century, the other in the 17th, the Turks nearly conquered Vienna. The Western hunger for information and invention was not intrinsically Christian. It was, rather, intrinsically human. That the questing Europeans were Christian was not insignificant, but their faith in Jesus was hardly their sole motive. Stark is to be commended for celebrating the rational element of Christian religion and culture - a part that deserves celebration and needs to be recovered. To paraphrase John Donne, though, Christian Europe was not an island. To act as if it were amounts to a sin of pride - and, as the Book of Proverbs says, 'Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' Pride is fueling an unhappy trend toward Christian self-satisfaction in the United States. Though roughly 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, conservative evangelicals have long felt themselves under siege, particularly since the 1962 Supreme Court decision banning government-written prayer in public schools. In reaction they have spent the ensuing four decades becoming a major political force. Instead of reading Stark as an amicus brief for the faith, though, believers might be best off taking his case for an intellectually curious Christianity to heart. Such a faith might profitably begin with a consideration of Augustine, who argued for the significance not only of reason but of free will - the idea that people have it within their power to choose to accept God and follow his commandments in the hope of attaining everlasting life. We are also free to choose another course, one leading, in religious terms, away from God. This is not esoteric theology, for free will is linked to a question central to American life: religious liberty. If the prevailing culture can coerce the reluctant to say prayers they do not wish to say, then faith is no longer a matter of free will. To render religion compulsory cheapens it and turns the entire enterprise into a sinful one, for the majority is making an idol of itself by compelling obedience - something God himself refuses to do. An important new book, 'Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously,' edited by Barbara A. McGraw and Jo Renee Formicola, lays out the history of tolerance in the United States while urgently reminding us what is at stake when we speak, as we so often do, of 'church and state' or 'moral values' or 'the culture wars.' A series of essays by various contributors, the volume discusses religion in America's public square from the perspective of different traditions and recovers early American thought on the connection between God and politics. Exploring John Locke's influence on the founders, McGraw writes that, contrary to prevailing academic sentiment, Locke was not a 'secular' philosopher. 'Locke did not reject religion,' she writes. 'Instead, he shifted to a different religious idea based on a very simple theology: there is God, and God communicates with the people.' Hence the centrality of religious liberty. 'This is why freedom of conscience must be preserved: so that the people can listen for and hear the voice of God and participate in society according to that call,' McGraw says. By 'God,' the founders meant many things. They referred to a supernatural presence by the following terms: 'Supreme Governor of the Universe,' 'Governor of the Universe,' 'the Universal Sovereign,' 'Nature's God,' 'Creator,' 'Supreme Judge of the World' and 'Divine Providence.' McGraw coined the term 'America's Sacred Ground' a few years ago, a social science construct with subsidiary parts called the 'Civic Public Forum' and the 'Conscientious Public Forum,' about which the contributors speak as though these were geographical places (for example, such and such issue should be debated on 'America's Sacred Ground' in the same way one would say something should be debated in, say, Boston or Atlanta). The technical terms are distracting, but distraction is a small price to pay for the book's valuable insights and welcome spirit of moderation. The politics of what is called, depending on where you stand, the 'religious right' or 'the faith-based community' are put in devastating historical context. In the volume's best essay, Derek H. Davis examines what he calls 'The Baptist Tradition of Religious Liberty,' invoking the denomination's history of insisting that the church follow Jesus' lead in rendering to God those things which are God's, and to Caesar those things which are Caesar's. 'According to traditional Baptist belief, a government that gives preferential treatment to certain religious beliefs breaches the eternal and inalienable rights of each individual,' Davis writes, 'and disobeys the will of God' - a message that will probably surprise some in the pews and pulpits of politically active congregations. John Leland, an 18th-century Baptist evangelist who worked with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to secure religious freedom in Virginia, wrote: 'Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in doing so.' Leland's image of the free man going about his business, answerable only to himself and his conscience so long as he does no harm to others, turns our attention away from theology and politics to what religion actually is for most people: the prayers they say, the emotions they feel, the questions they ask. In a lovely, interesting new book, 'Prayer: A History,' Philip and Carol Zaleski explore this most personal of religious practices in an ecumenical spirit. Defining prayer as an 'action that communicates between human and divine realms,' the authors trace its long and rich history, from evidence of Neanderthal prayers for the dead to Franny's 'Jesus Prayer' in J. D. Salinger's 'Franny and Zooey.' Thomas Merton called the exercise 'a raid on the unspeakable'; Solomon beseeched the Lord to grant 'whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by any man or by all thy people Israel'; Ramakrishna sought 'God-Consciousness' through spiritual rapture. The beginning of tragedy, it has been said, came when a suffering mortal first raised his hands to the heavens and cried, 'Why?' This, too, is a prayer, a manifestation of the longing to make sense of the insensible. For many, the answer has led them to become one of the children of Abraham. For many others, the answer lies with the Buddha's Dharma (or Teaching), or with Brahman, or with the Tao, or with Confucius. For many others, the answer comes from the sciences or from secular philosophy. The common thread is the search for comfort and order in a world that inevitably falls short of our expectations. The common hope is that perhaps one day, as St. John the Divine said in an echo of Isaiah, 'there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.' On Christmas morning 1825, John Henry Newman, a young man of ferocious intellect and intense faith who had just been ordained an Anglican priest (he would die a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church), preached a sermon while a curate of St. Clement's Church, Oxford. 'It is a day of joy: it is good to be joyful - it is wrong to be otherwise,' Newman said. 'Let us seek the grace of a cheerful heart, an even temper, sweetness, gentleness and brightness of mind, as walking in His light and by His grace.' Such was the view of a questing and committed Christian, a view not so different from that of Robert Ingersoll, the 19th-century American agnostic. 'Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget - a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds - a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.' Newman thought the brightness came from the Christ child; Ingersoll from simple human kindness. The important thing is that both detected light and each cherished it according to the dictates of his own mind and his own heart - an encouraging sign that there is more than one way to overcome the darkness.

Subject: Cold Slap of Rejection From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 05:57:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/sports/ncaafootball/25haverford.html?ex=1293166800&en=9a7ec47fc3208da3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Admissions and the Cold Slap of Rejection By BILL PENNINGTON Kevin Friedenberg was certain he had played by all the rules of the college recruiting game. A top high school lacrosse goalie from Needham, Mass., he had e-mailed coaches to promote himself and had attended showcase camps and tournaments. An A student who said he had College Board scores equivalent to 1,380 on the two-part SAT, Friedenberg narrowed his choices to three Division III institutions, including Haverford, a small, selective liberal arts college. Friedenberg twice visited the Haverford campus outside Philadelphia, with astute questions for the lacrosse coach, Mike Murphy: Could he study a year abroad? How many advanced placement high school courses did he need to take? Did Haverford need a goalie? Would the coach support him in admissions? Assured he was in the top half of the list of athletes Murphy would forward to admissions, Friedenberg completed Haverford's binding early-decision application in November. He spurned overtures from Swarthmore College and Connecticut College. 'I thought I had all my bases covered,' Friedenberg said. 'But what I got in the mail was a thin letter.' A thin letter, as opposed to an envelope thick with acceptance forms, is code for a rejection. 'I was completely shocked,' said Friedenberg, whose application was not among the few deferred to Haverford's regular decision process in the spring. 'I didn't know what to do. I have to get back in touch with all those coaches again, but they've probably already recruited their goalies and moved on without me. 'It's going to be difficult to get into these great schools now without the support of a coach. My fear is I'll be left with no place to go, and maybe, not play lacrosse in college at all.' A month ago, Friedenberg talked about how the recruiting process had been good to him. 'This definitely puts a different spin on it,' he said last week. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time. I have seen the other side of it.' Haverford accepted 101 of 237 early-decision applicants this month, and 37 of those were athletes who had been endorsed by a coach at the college. Haverford officials granted The New York Times access to most of the decision-making involving the recruited athletes, and to the interaction between the athletic and admissions departments, on the condition that applicants' identities be revealed only with their permission. In Houston last week, John-Paul Cashiola, another lacrosse goalie, received a thick envelope from the Haverford admissions office. Cashiola had also marketed himself to coaches, spending almost $5,000 to fly to three recruiting events in the Northeast this year. Cashiola, who attends a private school, said he had a 3.1 grade-point average and scored 1,200 on the SAT. Neither of his parents attended college, a plus in the admissions process, and his mother is Nicaraguan; Cashiola said that made him a minority candidate. 'I'll be the first to tell you that lacrosse had a huge role in my admission to Haverford,' Cashiola said in a telephone interview. 'Lacrosse had to be a tool to get into a better school.' Being recruited was a job to Cashiola, who found work cutting lawns and doing housecleaning to raise money for his flights to showcases. 'My mom would say, 'More money for another trip?' ' Cashiola, 18, said. 'But I would tell her, 'This trip could be the deciding factor.' It paid off. Every penny was worth it.' The decisions on Friedenberg and Cashiola were typical if opposite outcomes to a subjective, unpredictable and imprecise process, one ultimately decided by a committee of seven Haverford admissions officers. Athletic prowess gave some candidates a clear edge toward admission - in 10 cases in particular. But of the 71 recruited athletes in the early-decision pool, 31 were rejected. Three athletes endorsed by coaches were deferred to the regular admissions pool. One athlete was rejected for having received two C's in the first semester this year. Another was rejected in part because two of the five required SAT scores were below 600, although the 650 average was in the acceptable range. Another athlete had a 3.9 G.P.A. But the admissions officers discovered that the applicant's high school grading scale extended to 5, not 4, which meant rejection. Another athlete had good credentials (A-minus average and 1,310 SAT) but few activities or apparent interests besides sports. That troubled the committee and led to a rejection. Yet another athlete never went to Haverford for an interview and did not show interest in the college until this past fall, making the committee uneasy. Another rejection. But there were several cases in which athletics seemed to have tipped the decision in a borderline applicant's favor, other cases in which a recruited athlete might have been accepted without a coach's assist and others in which athletics played a major factor. Ben Regan-Sachs is a right-handed pitcher from Bethesda, Md., who attended his first recruiting showcase when he was in eighth grade. He was recruited by Division III baseball coaches from Virginia to Massachusetts. An A student at the respected Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School with a mid-1,300 SAT, Regan-Sachs is also a competitive chess player who had a lengthy list of extracurricular activities. Regan-Sachs was endorsed by Haverford's baseball coach, Dave Beccaria, and had made a number of visits to the campus. His early-decision application was accepted. 'I think my grades and G.P.A. put me in the ballpark,' Regan-Sachs said. 'Athletics may have helped me get noticed at Haverford. By the time I applied, it was not the first time they had heard of me.' Monica Stegman of Sparta, N.J., was on the list submitted by Wendy Smith, Haverford's women's soccer coach. Stegman ranked in the top 5 percent of her class and had a 1,380 SAT, including a perfect 800 on the math portion. She was accepted. 'I always thought I was a strong candidate for Haverford,' she said. 'I knew being recruited wouldn't hurt, but I wasn't going to rely on it.' Another top athlete was first in her class and had taken demanding courses at an urban high school that rarely sends students to Haverford. That intrigued Jess Lord, the dean of admissions, because the college is trying to diversify. 'But her test scores were way off profile for us,' Lord said. 'They were 100 to 150 points below our median - on each test.' The median SAT for Haverford's current freshman class was 1,380. The median for those accepted, including students who eventually chose to go elsewhere, was 1,420. Despite the applicant's lower test scores, she was high on a coach's list. Lord left his office to consult with Greg Kannerstein, the athletic director, and the coach. Lord wanted to know whether the athlete could be an impact player. With a strong recommendation from athletics, Lord pushed for the candidate's admission. 'We're looking for multiple ways a student can contribute to the campus,' Lord said. 'This student is deserving of being here for many reasons. The athletic component just made it certain.' Another athlete was typical for a Haverford applicant: class rank in the top 10 percent with a 1,370 SAT. Recommendations from teachers and the evaluation from the admissions department interview were good but not great. 'That kid, at first glance, probably gets lost in the shuffle,' Brian Walter, an associate dean for admissions, said. 'There's nothing negative in the file, but we're dealing with pretty rarefied air here, so something has to make that student stand out.' In this case, the applicant was ranked No. 1 on a coach's list. That was enough to grant extra consideration and, eventually, acceptance. But being No. 1 on a coach's list and lobbying by the athletic department did not guarantee acceptance. Five of 13 athletes at the top of coaches' lists were not accepted, although three of those five were deferred. The admissions officers, however, kept a tally of how recruited athletes in each sport fared. If a coach had a list of five athletes and the first four had been rejected, when the fifth came up, Walter informed the committee. It did not mean that any of the five candidates would be admitted, but the committee considered whether it had been too harsh in the previous four cases. It was rare for a team to be shut out. Lord, the dean of admissions, conceded that the process was fickle. 'If the same seven people met in our committee room next week and did the whole thing again, it's likely we would not admit the same 101 applicants,' he said. 'There is a