THE MIAMI HERALD 10 JANUARY 2011 by Miami Herald Ecuador

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INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

Congresswoman shot in Arizona BY MARC LACEY AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN New York Times Service

possible accomplice was called of as it turned out to be a cab driver who has been cleared of involvement in the attack. Giffords, 40, who the authorities called the target of the attack, was said to be in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

TUCSON — Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 other people were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened ﬁre outside a supermarket where Giffords was meeting with constituents. Six of the victims died, among them John M. Roll, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said. A 22-year-old suspect was in custody, law enforcement ofﬁ- • TURN TO GIFFORDS, 2A cials said. An earlier search for a n SUSPECT’S CAMPUS TROUBLES, 5A

TIM CHAPMAN/THE MIAMI HERALD, FILE 2005

IN THE DOCK: Cuba and Venezuela say the lowly charges against Luis Posada Carriles, left, show that Washington is coddling a world-class terrorist. Others say the charges of perjury, rather than terrorism or murder, may be more effective.

Anti-Castro plotter’s trial starts

U.S. prosecutors opt for lowly charges in the hope for a conviction BY JUAN O. TAMAYO AND JAY WEAVER jtamayo@MiamiHerald.com

Luis Posada Carriles has been accused of killing 73 people by bombing a Cuban airliner, plotting to kill Fidel Castro by blowing up a jam-packed auditorium in Panama and masterminding a string of blasts in Havana that killed one tourist. But when the Miami exile goes on trial Monday in a federal court in Texas, he will be facing only 11 counts of lying under oath and related offenses — mostly because he denied to U.S. immigration ofﬁcials any role in the Havana blasts. The Cuban and Venezuelan governments say the lowly charges show that Washington is coddling a world-class terrorist. Others say the charges of perjury, rather than terrorism or murder, are akin to trying Al Capone for tax evasion: maybe lowly, but effective. “They wisely chose a perjury case,” said Thomas Scott, a former federal judge and U.S. attorney in Miami. “On that issue, they’ve got a reasonable shot of conviction.” The case has been ﬁve years in

‘They wisely chose a perjury case; on that issue, they’ve got a reasonable shot of conviction. — THOMAS SCOTT, former federal judge and U.S. attorney

A contract writer for The New York Times, Bardach fought the government subpoenas in an attempt to avoid turning over the tapes and testifying about them in court. “It’s either testify or go to jail,” she told The Miami Herald last week. Bardach and Times staff writer Larry Rohter wrote a series of stories in 1998 about militant Cuban exiles, including one reporting that Posada had confessed in the taped interview to the bombings that hit Havana tourist spots in 1997, killing an Italian man. “We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” the story quoted Posada as saying. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore.” During interviews with U.S. immigration ofﬁcials in 2005, however, Posada denied he had confessed to Bardach and claimed that he had misheard some of her questions and misspoke in some of his answers because his English was not ﬂuent. “I am saying that is not true,” Posada said in Spanish when he gave sworn testimony in El Paso during one of several hearings

the making, since the CIA-trained explosives expert and inveterate hatcher of anti-Castro plots turned up in Miami in 2005. If convicted, Posada Carilles, who is 82 years old, could get from ﬁve to eight years in prison. Many of the 560 ﬁlings in the case so far remain sealed — not available to the public — including items related to Posada’s CIA history and his taped interview with author Ann Louise Bardach. Justice Department attorneys asked for the seals. But it’s clear that Bardach, who was subpoenaed by prosecutors, will be a critical witness. Her role: To authenticate her recordings of a 1998 interview with Posada in which he allegedly confessed to orchestrating the • TURN TO PLOTTER, 4A Havana blasts.

CHRIS MORRISON/AP

QUICK RESPONSE: Emergency workers gather at the scene of a shooting involving Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., at a Safeway grocery store in Tucson on Saturday.

British middle class feeling squeezed BY ALAN COWELL New York Times Service

the theater in their chauffeured Rolls-Royce limousine. “Off with their heads,” some hooded ﬁgures were heard to chant as they milled around the car, smashing a window and spattering it with white paint. Someone poked the duchess with a stick through an open window. As Queen Victoria might have said, the royal couple were not amused: to judge from their shocked facial expressions, the specter of the republican Oliver Cromwell might almost have risen up before them on Regent Street. But, beyond such images, the

LONDON — When people here talk of class war, it is all too easy to think of its symbols and sartorial stereotypes: ﬂat-capped workers versus the ermined elite; blue-collar strikers challenging the pinstriped standard-bearers of privilege. Indeed, demonstrators roaming the streets of London in December to protest a surge in university tuition fees chanced upon a convoy of police motorcycle outriders and security guards escorting a tuxedoed Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, as they headed to • TURN TO BRITAIN, 2A

U.S. prosecutors subpoena Twitter records in WikiLeaks case BY SCOTT SHANE AND JOHN F. BURNS New York Times Service

WASHINGTON — U.S. Prosecutors investigating the disclosure of thousands of classified government documents by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks have gone to court to demand the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena. The subpoena is the first public evidence of a criminal investigation, announced in December by U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., that has been urged on by members of Congress of both parties but is fraught with legal and political difficulties for the Obama administration. It was denounced by WikiLeaks, which has so far made public only about 1 percent of the quarter-million confidential diplomatic cables in its possession but has threatened to post them all on the Web if criminal charges are brought.

15 DECAPITATED BODIES FOUND IN MEXICO, 4A

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Dozens of Pentagon and State Department officials have worked for months to assess the damage done to U.S. diplomatic and military operations by the disclosures. In recent weeks, Justice Department officials have been seeking a legal rationale for charging Assange with criminal behavior, including whether he had solicited leaks. The move to get the information from five prominent figures tied to the group was revealed late Friday, when Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland’s Parliament, received an e-mail notification from Twitter. In the message, obtained by The New York Times, the company told her it had received a legal request for details regarding her account and warned that the company would have to respond unless the matter was resolved or “a motion to quash the legal process has been filed.” The subpoena was attached. The subpoena was issued by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern Dis-

Gonggrijp and Jacob Appelbaum. The request covers addresses, screen names, telephone numbers and credit card and bank account numbers, but does not ask for the content of private messages sent using Twitter. Some published reports in recent weeks have suggested that the Justice Department may have secretly impaneled a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, which often handles national security cases, to take evidence in the WikiLeaks inquiry. But the subpoena, unsealed by a Jan. 5 court order at the request of Twitter’s lawyers, was not issued by a grand jury. In Twitter messages, WikiLeaks conﬁrmed the subpoena and sugBERTIL ERICSON /AP-SCANPIX gested that Google and Facebook HO/AP WANTED: Julian Assange, at right, and Icelandic lawmaker might also have been issued such legal demands. Ofﬁcials for FaceBirgitta Jonsdottir, at left, have both had their Twitter records book declined to comment, and subpoenaed. Google did not immediately retrict of Virginia on Dec. 14 and asks ing a court-martial under suspicion spond to an inquiry. for the complete account informa- of leaking materials to WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks suggested that the tion of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the as well as Jonsdottir, Assange and Army intelligence specialist await- two computer programmers, Rop • TURN TO SUBPOENA, 2A

SOUTHERN SUDAN VOTES ON SECESSION, 6A

INDEX FED OFFICIAL SAYS DEBT-BUYING WILL HELP, BUSINESS FRONT

SEAHAWKS, JETS, RAVENS ADVANCE, SPORTS FRONT

NEWS EXTRA...............3A THE AMERICAS.......... 5A OPINION....................... 7A COMICS & PUZZLES.. 6B

1/10/2011 4:58:29 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

FROM THE FRONT PAGE

MiamiHerald.com

THE MIAMI HERALD

British middle class feels squeezed • BRITAIN, FROM 1A

class struggle here is being redefined in a much more nuanced — and ominous — way that could leave millions feeling betrayed. Upending British political traditions, the battle lines are being redrawn under a coalition government led by Conservatives whose political fortunes once rested on those who had either settled comfortably into middle-class privilege, or aspired to do so. And, it is a slice of that same — “squeezed middle” — a term borrowed from former U.S. President Bill Clinton by the opposition leader Ed Miliband to denote what was once called the lower middle-class — which feels singularly threatened by the coalition’s contentious plans to reduce Britain’s crippling deficit through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. “Everybody knows that it’s poor and middle-income families that will be hit the hardest,” Miliband said this past week as he campaigned in northwest England ahead of a local vote on Thursday that will offer a first elector-

al test of the political mood since the national ballot last May. Those few months have brought what Gavin Kelly, a former advisor to the Labour leadership, called “the biggest squeeze on living standards since the 1970s.” “The typical working household is now poorer in real terms than it was a year ago,” he wrote in the New Statesman. “Millions of families are living through a prolonged, personal recession.” Prime Minister David Cameron likes to say that Britons are “all in this together.” In fact, the spending cuts and higher taxes seem to focus on those in the not-rich, not-dirt-poor middle rather than those at the extremes of the economic spectrum. In recent months, the brittle coalition of Conservatives and the minority Liberal Democrats has served notice of plans to cut child beneﬁts for better-paid Britons earning more than €44,000, or about $68,000, a year, and to reduce other tax breaks initially designed to offset the cost of raising

CARL COURT/AFP-GETTY IMAGES

FEES FRACAS: Police officers clash with protesters during student demonstrations in London in December. University tuition fees are to be raised from £3,300 a year to a maximum of £9,000 in 2012 — prompting not only the protests but also a rush for university places before the increases take effect. children. University tuition fees, free or inexpensive for earlier generations, are to be raised from €3,300 a year to a maximum of €9,000 in 2012 — prompting not only

the demonstrations that threatened the royal couple but also a rush for university places before the increases take effect. Coincidentally, gas prices

Congresswoman shot in Arizona • GIFFORDS, FROM 1A

Giffords remained unconscious Saturday night, said C.J. Karamargin, her spokesman. U.S. President Barack Obama said at a news conference that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, was on his way to Arizona to oversee the investigation. Investigators identified the gunman as Jared Lee Loughner, 22, and said he was refusing to cooperate with the authorities and had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Pima Community College said Loughner had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police. The authorities were seen entering the Loughner family house about five miles from the shooting scene. The shootings raised questions about potential political motives, and Dupnik blamed the toxic political environment in Arizona. There were immediate national re-

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verberations as Democrats denounced the fierce partisan atmosphere in Giffords’ district and top Republicans quickly condemned the violence. Mark Kimble, an aide to Giffords, said the shooting occurred about 10 a.m. in a small area between a U.S. flag and an Arizona flag. He said he went into the store for coffee and that, as he came out, the gunman started firing. Giffords had been talking to a couple about Medicare and reimbursements, and Roll had just walked up to her and shouted “Hi” when the gunman, wearing sunglasses and perhaps a hood of some sort, approached and shot the judge, Kimble said. “Everyone hit the ground,” he said. “It was so shocking.” The U.S. Capitol Police, which is investigating the attack, cautioned lawmakers “to take reasonable and prudent precautions regarding their personal security.” Because of the shootings, House Republicans postponed all legislation to be considered on the floor this week, including a vote to repeal the healthcare overhaul.

The House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., said lawmakers needed to “take whatever actions may be necessary in light of today’s tragedy.” Speaking of Giffords’ condition, Rhee said at a news conference, “I can tell you at this time, I am very optimistic about her recovery.” He added, “We cannot tell what kind of recovery, but I’m as optimistic as it can get in this kind of situation.” Several aides to Giffords were wounded, and her director of community outreach, Gabe Zimmerman, 30, was among those killed. The Arizona Republic said that the girl who died had been identiﬁed as Christina Taylor Green, a thirdgrader. The others killed were Dorothy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79. Giffords, who represents the 8th District, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the state’s tough immigration law, which is focused on identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, and she had come under criticism for her vote in favor of the healthcare law.

Friends said she had received threats over the years. Roll had been involved in immigration cases and had received death threats. The police said Giffords’ district office was evacuated late Saturday after a suspicious package was found. Officers later cleared the scene. Giffords, widely known as Gabby, had been speaking to constituents in a store alcove under a large white banner bearing her name when a man surged forward and began firing. He tried to escape but was tackled by a bystander and taken into custody by the police. The event, called “Congress on Your Corner,” was outside a Safeway supermarket northwest of Tucson and was the first opportunity for constituents to meet with Giffords since she was sworn in for a third term Wednesday. Giffords was part of the Democratic class of 2006 that swept Democrats into the majority in the House. She narrowly won re-election in November, while many fellow Democrats were toppled and the House turned to Republican control.

went up, along with railroad, bus and subway fares. Just this week, moreover, the government raised the value added tax across a vast array of goods and services

from 17.5 percent to a record 20 percent, provoking a stampede of last-minute consumption before the increase took effect. One news photographer recorded a man struggling with a newly acquired 42-inch ﬂat-screen television as he boarded a bus. It was hardly the stuff of tumbrels rolling or red ﬂags lofted or royal heads severed. But the increases have inspired a kind of anxiety that some analysts here liken to the disaffection fueling the advance of the Tea Party movement in U.S. politics, an alienation of millions whose aspirations and assumptions seem be slipping away along with the pounds in their purses, replaced by a sense that, in contrast to a previous government’s vaunted promise, things can only get worse. The privations are threatening to coalesce this year in a land that is particularly vulnerable to economic retreat: by the standards of other leading European economies, many Britons are cash-poor and debt-heavy, yet dependent on an economy in thrall to Main Street spending.

U.S. prosecutors subpoena Wikileaks’ Twitter records • SUBPOENA, FROM 1A

United States was hypocritical for promoting an “Internet Freedom” initiative and decrying Iran’s interference with activists’ use of the Internet while pursuing a criminal investigation of the group’s activities. A State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said that Internet freedom “has always coexisted with the rule of law” and “does not mean that the Internet can be used to harm others,” such as people who might be at risk if they were identified in diplomatic cables that were made public. Of the five individuals named in the subpoena, only two — Manning and Appelbaum — are U.S. citizens. The others are an Australian, Assange; Jonsdottir, of Iceland; and Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen. This raised the possibility of a diplomatic quarrel — other nations whose citizens are involved in such subpoenas could argue that U.S. laws were being used to stifle free communications between individuals who were not U.S. citizens and who were not in the United States at the time of the messages. Reached by telephone in Iceland, Jonsdottir said that she would be contesting the court action. She said that she had not exchanged sensitive information using her Twitter account, “but it’s just the fact that another country would request this sort of personal information from an elected official without having any case against me.” Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and writer who posted the subpoena on his blog at Salon.com, suggested investigators may be focusing on the first of the disclosures of which Manning has been accused — a military video depicting two U.S. helicopters in Iraq in 2007 firing at people on the ground who included two Reuters journalists, both of whom were killed. An edited version of the video listed Assange, Jonsdottir, and Gonggrijp as producers. Leak prosecutions have been rare and have almost always focused on government employees who disclose classified information, not on journalists or others who publish it. In its first two years, the Obama administration has charged five current or former government employees for such leaks, a record. But there has never been

a successful prosecution of a nongovernment employee for disseminating classified information. Most legal experts believe that efforts to bring criminal charges against WikiLeaks volunteers would face numerous practical and legal obstacles, and some human rights organizations and constitutional scholars have said such a prosecution could damage press freedom. Technology and telecommunications companies receive thousands of subpoenas and court orders every year in which the authorities demand a broad range of information about their customers, from the content of their e-mails, to the Internet Protocol addresses of their computers, to their files that are stored online and location data from their cellphones. The volume of requests has become so large, and the rules guarding personal information so patchy, that in March a coalition of Internet companies and communications carriers teamed up with civil liberties groups in an effort to lobby Congress. The coalition, Digital Due Process, wants to strengthen the privacy protections for online information and simplify the laws governing access to those records by law enforcement authorities. WikiLeaks faced severe criticism after it posted military documents from the war in Afghanistan in July without removing the names of Afghan citizens who had assisted the United States. Since then, WikiLeaks has become far more cautious, stripping names out of Iraq war documents posted online and moving slowly in publishing the 251,287 diplomatic cables it obtained. But Assange has posted an encrypted “insurance” file on several websites containing all or most of the unpublished cables and possibly other classified documents. Thousands of supporters around the world have downloaded the file, and Assange has suggested that if legal action is taken against him or the organization, he would release the encryption key and make the documents public. “If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,” Assange said in an online interview with readers of The Guardian in December.

1/10/2011 5:25:19 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

NEWS EXTRA

U.S. to counter Chinese arms buildup BY ELISABETH BUMILLER New York Times Service

DAN BALILTY/AP

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS: Former Greek Patriarch Irineos I looks down from the roof of his apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Pentagon is stepping up investments in a range of weapons, jet fighters and technology in response to the Chinese military buildup in the Pacific, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on the eve of his visit to Beijing. Despite billions of dollars in proposed Pentagon budget cuts that Gates announced this past week, he said that the Chinese development of its first radarevading fighter jet, as well as an antiship ballistic missile that could hit U.S. aircraft carriers, had persuaded him to make improvements in U.S. weaponry a priority. “They clearly have potential to put some of our capa-

bilities at risk, and we have to pay attention to them, we have to respond appropriately with our own programs,” Gates said. At the same time Gates doused China’s proud rollout this past week of its new stealth ﬁghter jet, the J-20, saying that even though it was a matter for concern, there “is some question about just how stealthy” it is. Gates made his comments to reporters on his plane en route to Beijing, where he arrived Sunday for three days of talks with Chinese generals and President Hu Jintao that are meant to promote a more open and stable relationship between the United States and Chinese militaries.

It is unclear what effect Gates’s comments will have on the talks, which are occurring a week before Hu is to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington. The U.S. weapons that Gates was referring to included investments in a new long-range nuclear-capable bomber aircraft, which the Pentagon had stopped developing in 2009, as well as a new generation of electronic jammers for the Navy that are designed to thwart a missile from finding and hitting a target. At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, Gates said that the jammers would improve the Navy’s ability to “fight and survive” in waters where it is challenged.

Gates was also referring to continued investment in the Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon’s newest radarevading fighter jet. The Pentagon provided no estimate on Saturday of the total cost of the three programs or others meant to counter the Chinese buildup in the Pacific. Although Pentagon officials say that China is a generation or more behind the United States in military technology, Gates said he has been worried about the Chinese buildup in his four years as defense secretary. And acknowledged that the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had underestimated how quickly the Chinese could act.

Ousted patriarch held captive in Jerusalem Mickey gets a wand-waving rival BY JOSH LEDERMAN Associated Press

BY MICHAEL BARBARO

JERUSALEM — Six years ago, Irineos I was the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem with about 100,000 followers. Today, he sits behind locked doors in his Old City apartment, claiming he has been imprisoned by the successor who ousted him in a dispute over sale of church land to Israelis. The only way Irineos could speak to a reporter last week was through a wireless microphone hoisted at the end of a rope to his roof — in the same black shopping bag supporters use nightly to deliver him groceries. Reporters who tried to gain access to Irineos through the compound’s massive metal door were denied entry by church guards peering out through a crack. “They allow nobody out and nobody in to visit me,” said Irineos. “They are afraid of the people because I’m loved by the people, and I love the people,” he said into the AP microphone, peering over the edge of his roof. It is a harsh comedown for a man who ruled his flock for four years as a revered spiritual figure. Irineos said his successor, Theofilos III, will not allow attorneys, doctors or visitors to enter the home he has lived in for almost 40 years, which sits inside a large church-owned complex. He said he’s been detained for three years over his refusal to concede the patriarchate. Theofilos replaced Irineos in 2005 after allegations he sold church property to Israelis seeking to expand the Jewish presence in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state. Palestinians consider sale of land to Jews a serious crime. Most Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem are Palestinians.

New York Times Service

INNOCENT Irineos maintains he was unaware of the transactions and did nothing wrong. A report commissioned by the Palestinian Authority in 2005 concluded he didn’t participate in any of the sales. “I ask God every day to reveal the truth,” he said. “There is no patriarch. I’m the patriarch.” Political feuds inside the Greek Orthodox community, always complicated, have turned vicious in recent years. When Irineos was deposed, his defenders said the land sale charges were trumped up by his political opponents. The number of Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem has been dwindling for decades, as followers seek better economic opportunities elsewhere. Also, Christians speak of persecution by the Muslim majority in the West Bank, but always anonymously, fearing retribution. Irineos’ replacement was not recognized by the three governments with jurisdiction over the patriarchate — Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority — until 2007. A senior patriarchate official in Athens, Greece, denied Irineos is under house arrest, and several top aides to Theofilos declined to comment, other than to say Irineos is a liar. Theofilos made public Christmas appearances last week in Bethlehem, but was unavailable for comment. Two officials close to the Jerusalem patriarchate, one a prominent bishop who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, confirmed Theofilos is holding Irineos against his will over their feud and fears Irineos will try reclaim his old position. “The new patriarch is punishing the old one, keeping him behind closed doors to secure his position,” said Marwan Tubasi, head of the Council of Arab Orthodox Organizations and a Palestinian Authority official who works closely with church leaders. SOLITARY EXISTENCE Irineos said he spends his isolated days praying, reading and writing. He still wears the traditional black garb and hat of Greek Orthodox clergy. As Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas Thursday, Irineos said he performed Mass by himself, banned from entering a church just a few steps away. He offered blessings to supporters using a cellphone — his primary link with the outside world. From time to time supporters would shout greetings up to him from the street, and he responded with wishes for a happy new year. A Palestinian Muslim from Jerusalem’s Old City, who called himself Abu Amar, said he has been sending bread, vegetables and water up to the former patriarch, hauling it up by rope, for almost three years. Despite their difference in religion, he feels a humanitarian urge to provide for Irineos’ needs. “I had a good relationship with him, and I still do,” Amar said. “I cannot neglect him.” Israeli police said they haven’t responded to the alleged imprisonment because no complaint has been filed. Irineos believes his plight should be handled within the church and not through police intervention, and the power to free and redeem Irineos lies in God’s hands, said Daniel Robbins, an attorney who was able to visit Irineos twice in recent weeks. Robbins said while representing a different client in a case in which Irineos was a witness, a court order forced church officials to allow him to enter his home.

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Pottermania is supposed to be winding down. The final 784-page tome in the series has been published. Shooting for the last movie has wrapped up. And J.K. Rowling herself recently sent a text to Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays her boy wizard, with a message that was unmistakable: It’s over. But try telling that to the throngs at the new Harry Potter theme park here, where people are routinely turned away at the gate because of capacity crowds. Never mind long lines for rides inside; there are waits of up to two hours just to enter the Ollivanders merchandise shop, where staffers struggle to keep the shelves stocked with Potter-phernalia. The must-have Florida trinket these days is not a set of mouse ears. It’s a $30 wizard’s wand. “It was a bit expensive, but I had to have it,” said Steven Butler, 19, who flew down from Canada to visit the park, inside the Universal Orlando Resort here, and described the experience as “totally overwhelming.” The unexpected, turbocharged success of the $265 million Potter playland has not only given a new bounce to Rowling’s literary creation, it has also ignited a friendly hometown rivalry between Universal and Walt Disney World. For decades, Disney has ruled this theme-parkflecked peninsula — and the hearts and minds of its “I’m going to Disney World!” tourists — without a serious challenge. But judging by the swarms, it seems that many of them are, in fact, going to the Harry Potter park. Since the attraction opened a few months ago, Universal’s overall attendance for its parks here has surged by a million people, hitting record levels. Industry trade groups have showered it with prestigious awards. Local hotels are now offering Harry Pot-

MIAMI HERALD WIRE PHOTO

REVELING IN FANTASYLAND: Visitors throng a butterbeer outlet in Hogsmeade Village in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando in Florida. ter packages, with promises of special gifts. Even veterans of the theme park industry are arching their eyebrows. “Up until now, nobody ever said this or that is better than Disney,” said Duncan Dickson, a former Disney executive who teaches theme park management at the University of Central Florida. “The Hulk coaster at Universal is great. Manta, at SeaWorld, is very good. But it’s not better than anything at Disney.” And the Harry Potter park? “This is better,” he said. Mickey and Minnie are not exactly running scared. Disney World remains by far the No.1. lure in the region, drawing on its renowned attractions and a cultural legacy that remains the envy of the much smaller SeaWorld, Wet ’n Wild, Holy Land Experience and, yes, Universal. Even so, some see signs that the resort is a bit rattled by the upstart down the road. Soon after Universal opened the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Disney abruptly

stopped disclosing attendance for individual theme parks, in a move that some analysts said would spare it potentially unflattering headto-head comparisons with Universal. (Disney said it was part of sweeping changes to how its various businesses report their performance and was unrelated to Universal.) “Harry Potter is drawing guests away from the mouse house, and Disney still has no answer lined up,” wrote John Frost, an influential Disney blogger and an admitted fan of the company’s theme parks. “That’s very troubling.” Disney executives scoff at talk of Universal as a competitor, saying their real rivals are entire cities, like Las Vegas. Besides, they say, those who fly to Orlando for Harry Potter will inevitably make their way to Disney. “We welcome Harry Potter to Central Florida,” said Michael Griffin, a Disney vice president. “Because experience has shown us that any new offering in

this market helps draw additional visitors to our resort.” Disney executives describe themselves as admirers; the president of Disney World, Meg Crofton, who toured the Potter park, sent a congratulatory letter to her counterpart at Universal. And they may take heart from the fact that not everyone is fawning. After waiting two and a half hours to reach the door of Ollivanders a few days ago, members of the Cross family from Boca Raton, Fla., felt the sting of letdown. “It wasn’t that interesting,” said Kaylee, 15. “It was a little cheesy.” Her cousin, Gabriel Machado, said he preferred Disney World. “I grew up on it,” he explained. Disney could have added Harry Potter to its storehouse of storied characters — the company briefly flirted with the idea of building its own Harry Potter fantasyland, but its negotiations fizzled, according to many accounts, over creative control.

Rift in Arizona as Latino class is found illegal BY MARC LACEY New York Times Service

TUCSON — The class began with a Mayaninspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American. For all of that and more, Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Uniﬁed School District’s MexicanAmerican program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while

similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched. “It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he ofﬁcially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect Jan. 1. Although Shakespeare’s Tempest was supposed to be the topic at hand, Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. It was Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at chal-

lenging Tucson’s ethnic studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May. For the state, the issue is not so much The Tempest as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, The Pedagogy of The Oppressed and Occupied America, which Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated. The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of

the U.S. government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country. Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed. Augustine F. Romero, director of student equity in the Tucson schools, said the program was designed to make students proud of who they are and not hostile toward others. “All of our forefathers have contributed to this country, not just one set of forefathers,” he said.

1/10/2011 4:41:40 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

THE AMERICAS

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

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THE MIAMI HERALD

U.S. says it might reject Haiti election results BY LESLEY CLARK AND JACQUELINE CHARLES McClatchy News Service

WASHINGTON â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The Obama administration is not ruling out support of a move to toss out the results of Haitiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disputed presidential election if a soon-to-bereleased review calls for it. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clintonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, said the agency is waiting for the ďŹ ndings from a team of election experts convened by the Organization of American States to determine its course. Should the panel call for canceling the elections and/ or scheduling a do-over, Mills said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We obviously would be interested to understand how they came to those conclusions, would want to review whether or not those conclusions were one that we thought we, too, could support.â&#x20AC;? Twelve of the 19 candidates on the Nov. 28 presidential ballot have pressed for the elections to be canceled, citing massive fraud. At issue is whether current

President Rene Prevalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s choice, Jude Celestin, garnered enough votes over musician Michel â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sweet Mickyâ&#x20AC;? Martelly to advance to a runoff against former ďŹ rst lady Mirlande Manigat. The resulting furor has hampered efforts to ďŹ ght cholera, overshadowed reconstruction and sparked tension among a population preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the earthquake that killed more than 200,000. For days, unconďŹ rmed rumors have circulated about the ďŹ ndings in the ďŹ nal report, which is expected to be delivered to Preval either over the weekend or next week. Millsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; remarks constitute a shift for the United States, which has said it would like for Preval to pass the presidential sash over to an elected government that includes a president and members of both chambers of parliament. All would have to be redone if the elections are canceled. Kenneth Merten, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, told

McClatchy in December that the U.S. didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t back a transitional government. Haitiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told McClatchy last week that one of the best legacies of his and Prevalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s government would be to pass the government on to an elected successor, fearing that a provisional government would set back the country. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have to come out of the crisis with a result that is not putting too much at stake â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the stability that we have reached the last four years,â&#x20AC;? Bellerive said. After an electoral council announced that Celestin was in the runoff, Martellyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supporters spent three days setting the capital and major Haitian cities ablaze, destroying businesses. The fear of violence continues to loom no matter what the review ďŹ nds. Ultimately, the decision on whether to accept the OAS results and cancel the elections lies with Preval, who asked for the OAS mission in December.

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Government building burns in Venezuela, arson suspected BY JORGE RUEDA Associated Press

CARACAS â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A ďŹ re over the weekend largely destoyed a Venezuelan government ofďŹ ce belonging to the agency that handles land takeovers, and ofďŹ cials said there was evidence pointing to arson. The blaze damaged 70 percent of the regional headquarters of the National Land Institute in the western state of Zulia, Agriculture and Land Minister Juan Carlos Loyo said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a combination of evidence, very strong, that appears to suggest it was not a natural ďŹ re but one in which a group of individuals were involved,â&#x20AC;? Loyo said in comments broadcast by state television. He did not elaborate. The agency is in charge of carrying out land seizures as part of a socialistoriented program under which Venezuela President Hugo Chavezâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s government

is taking over big swaths of agricultural terrain. In December, ofďŹ cials accompanied by soldiers and pro-government farmers began taking control of 47 private ranches in Zulia covering more than 93 square miles â&#x20AC;&#x201D; about the size of the city of Seattle. Loyo said the land agency ofďŹ ce has backups of all the documents and information destroyed, so the ďŹ re should not hinder the takeovers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No matter what happens, there can be no intimidation,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The politics of social justice, the liberation of our lands, must continue.â&#x20AC;? The president of the national cattle ranchersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; association urged authorities to conduct a â&#x20AC;&#x153;serious and impartialâ&#x20AC;? investigation. Speaking by phone, Manuel Cipriano Heredia said he hoped the incident â&#x20AC;&#x153;does not get turned into an excuse to further threaten a national industry that, through the

effort of several generations, created their ranches from nothing in the middle of the forest.â&#x20AC;? Chavez has said the government will make part of the seized land available to the poor and use it to house thousands displaced by recent ďŹ&#x201A;oods and mudslides. The government says it has taken over about 8,750 square miles of rural land in recent years, targeting farmland that ofďŹ cials contend was either fallow or underused or whose ownership could not be proven through documents. The leftist leader has also expropriated or nationalized a growing list of businesses, pledging compensation in most cases, although payments have been spotty and there have been disputes. More than 200 businesses were seized in the past year, according to private-sector estimates.

Argentines held with drugs in Spain BUENOS AIRES â&#x20AC;&#x201D; (AP) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Four Argentines, three the sons of former highranking ofďŹ cials in their countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Air Force, were arrested in Spain for allegedly transporting almost a ton of cocaine in a private plane, an Argentine ofďŹ cial said. The plane belonging to the Argentine medical transport company Medical Jet

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took off from Moron west of Buenos Aires and landed in Barcelonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s El Prat airport on Jan. 2, Argentine Cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez told channel C5N on Friday. He said Spanish security forces found 1,984 pounds on the plane. Argentine media said the cocaine was almost pure with a value of more than about $39 million.

Four Argentine men were detained, including Gustavo and Eduardo Julia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sons of the late former head of the Air Force Jose Julia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and Gaston Miret, son of Jose Miret, the former Air Force brigadier who was secretary of planning during Argentinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1976-83 dictatorship, Fernadez said. The name of the fourth man was not given.

BERNARDINO HERNANDEZ/AP

CITY OF HORROR: Several separate violent incidents over the weekend in Acapulco, Mexico, have left more than 27 dead. Above, soldiers stand guard in the pacific resort city.

Bodies of 15 decapitated men found in Mexico BY TIM JOHNSON McClatchy News Service

MEXICO CITY â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Police have discovered the bodies of 15 decapitated men outside a shopping mall in Acapulco, Mexico, bringing the death toll over the weekend from 24 hours of raging drug violence in the PaciďŹ c Coast resort to 27, a top ofďŹ cial said. The headless bodies were found Saturday on a walkway outside the Playa Sendero shopping mall, about a mile from the sweep of high-rise hotels on the scenic bay that made Acapulco Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ rst famous beach resort. It was the largest single group of decapitation victims ever found in Mexico. Guerrero state prosecutor David Augusto Sotelo told the ofďŹ cial Notimex news agency that the daily death toll in Acapulco had risen to 27 victims. A statement by the Public Security ofďŹ ce in Guerrero state said police received a call at 12:44 a.m. local time, alerting them to a burning vehicle near Playa Sendero, a popular two-year-old shopping center with an indoor ice rink.

When state police arrived, they discovered a white Nissan sport utility vehicle on ďŹ re, and four other abandoned vehicles, one with its motor running, the statement said. Police also found the beheaded corpses â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and, some distance away, their heads, piled together. Nearby, two white posters with black lettering bore messages from a drug cartel. All the victims were male and appeared to be between 25 and 30 years old, the police statement said. The bodies were covered in sand and appeared to have been murdered elsewhere and dumped at the scene. Sotelo said in the late afternoon that seven of the victims had been identiďŹ ed, and two of them were 17-year-old males. Televisa, a national television network, said on its website that police in other parts of Acapulco found four bodies inside a taxi. One of the vehicles at the Playa Sendero mall was also found to have a head in it. How the other homicides occurred was not immediately clear. Police did not reveal the

messages left on the signs at the scene of the beheadings. But the Blog del Narco website posted numerous photos of the scene and said the posters were written on behalf of Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin â&#x20AC;&#x153;Shortyâ&#x20AC;? Guzman Loera, head of the Sinaloa Cartel. â&#x20AC;&#x153;To all citizens, extortion will no longer occur. Sincerely, Shorty Guzman,â&#x20AC;? said one poster, according to the website. The other poster said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;This will happen to anyone who tries to come into this turf,â&#x20AC;? it said. Acapulco has been roiled in a vicious battle among remnants of the Beltran Leyva drug gang, the La Familia cartel based in the state of Michoacan and now the Sinaloa cartel, all battling for control of a key drug smuggling corridor through the resort. Prior to Saturdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discovery, the largest single occurrence of beheadings was in Merida, the largest city in the Yucatan Peninsula, in August 2008, when 12 headless bodies were found. Most of the bodies had dragon tattoos.

Anti-Castro plotter faces trial for perjury in Texas â&#x20AC;˘ PLOTTER, FROM 1A

related to his request for asylum and efforts to ďŹ ght a deportation order against him. Prosecutors donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to prove he was responsible for the Havana blasts. They need only show that there was a crime, that Posada played some part in it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he lied when he denied any role in the bombings. Toward that end, prosecutors plan to present 3,500 pages of Cuban and Guatemalan government reports on the Havana bombings and call Cuban police ofďŹ cers as witnesses. In addition, FBI agents have records showing about $19,000 in wire transfers from Cuban exiles in New Jersey to Posada in El Salvador and Guatemala between October 1996 and January 1998. The FBI alleges the money was used to ďŹ nance the bombings. In a victory for the defense, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone denied a prosecution request for permission

to travel to Havana to depose two Salvadoran men, jailed in Cuba, who claim that Posada paid them to set off the bombs. But the bulk of the evidence would seem to pose a daunting challenge for his defense. Nonetheless, Posadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Miami attorney, Arturo V. Hernandez, remained upbeat last week. â&#x20AC;&#x153;My client is innocent of every single count of this indictment,â&#x20AC;? Hernandez said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The tapes, together with the other evidence in the case, are going to show that.â&#x20AC;? Whatever the outcome of the trial, it may well be the ďŹ nal chapter in the life of Posada, who will be 83 next month and is reported to be in ill health. Cuba and Venezuela accused him in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion plane in which 73 people died. A Venezuelan court acquitted him, but a new trial was ordered and in 1985 he escaped from prison and turned up in El Salvador, where he played a role in supplying the CIA-

backed Nicaraguan guerrillas known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Contras.â&#x20AC;? In 2000 he was arrested in Panama in connection with a plot to kill Castro with a bomb during a speech at a Panama City university. Convicted on a lesser charge and sentenced to eight years, he was pardoned after four and returned to El Salvador. He has denied both the Cubana de Aviacion and Panama allegations. Posada turned up in Miami in 2005 and held a very public news conference. Angry immigration authorities arrested him and took him to El Paso, where he was questioned under oath about the Havana blasts and how he had entered the United States. He claimed he had crossed Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land border with Texas and then traveled by bus to Miami. Prosecutors alleged that Cuban exiles transported him by boat from Mexico to South Florida, and charged him in 2007 with lying about how he entered the country.

Chile recognizes Palestinian state BY ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO New York Times Service

SAO PAULO â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Chile formally recognized an independent state of Palestine on Friday, becoming the seventh South American country to take such a step in the past month. The government of President Sebastian Pinera had been under growing pressure from the Chileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s large Palestinian population, more than 300,000, to recognize a Palestinian state. But the fact that so many countries in Latin America have done so at the same time underscores the unwillingness in the region to wait until Israel and the Palestinians resolve their disputes

over territory and other issues, political analysts said. The decisions by Latin American governments come in response to an effort by Palestineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s president Mahmoud Abbas to seek such recognition after the breakdown in negotiations. It was the announcement by Brazil on Dec. 3 that seemed to inspire other countries in the region to follow suit. Brazilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s president at the time, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who left ofďŹ ce last week, had tried to insert his nation into the Middle East peace negotiations and had forged warm relations with Iran, creating tensions with the United States.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Brazilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in this process is fundamental,â&#x20AC;? said Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. â&#x20AC;&#x153;To some degree, other South American governments are following Brazilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lead.â&#x20AC;? In addition to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela have announced support for a Palestinian state. Paraguay and Peru are expected to offer recognition soon, said Eugenio Tuma, a senator in Chile who pushed for the measure. â&#x20AC;&#x153;South American countries are acting every day with greater coordination,â&#x20AC;? Tuma said Friday.

1/10/2011 4:32:51 AM

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MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

Shooting suspect’s campus troubles led to suspension BY ASHLEY POWERS, MAEVE RESTON AND RICK ROJAS Los Angeles Times Service

TUCSON — The 22- yearold man suspected in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and at least 17 others outside a Tucson grocery store was suspended from a local community college last October for code of conduct violations and ultimately withdrew from the school voluntarily. Jared Lee Loughner attended Pima Community College between 2005 and 2010. From February to September of 2010, he was involved in five “classroom and library disruptions” that were handled by campus police, the school’s officials said late Saturday. He was suspended in late September after the college police found a video on YouTube in which Loughner claimed the college is “illegal” under the U.S. Constitution, officials said. School officials said police officers delivered a letter explaining the decision to his home, where they spoke with Loughner and his parents. He was told he could return to campus only for an appointment to discuss the disciplinary actions against him in early October. During

that meeting with campus ofﬁcials, Loughner withdrew from the school. Ofﬁcials said they sent a subsequent letter telling Loughner that if he planned to re-enroll “he must resolve his Code of Conduct violations and obtain a mental health clearance indicating, in the opinion of a mental health professional, his presence at the College does not present a danger to himself or others.” On Nov. 30, a YouTube user who appears to be Loughner posted a video that offered diatribes against the Pima Community College, calls the school “unconstitutional,” a “torture facility,” and refers to teachers as “con artists.” At one point, he castigates police for removing students from educational facilities for talking. “Removing you from the educational facility for talking is unconstitutional in the United States,” the text says. “This situation is fraud because the police are unconstitutional!” “Every Pima Community College class is always a scam!” he says. “Most people know all the subjects are for mind control and brainwash! The students are unconstitutionally paying for free education!

DAVID KADLUBOWSKI/AP

REMEMBRANCE: People gather outside University Medical Center for a prayer vigil for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson on Saturday. Giffords was shot in the head by a gunman who opened fire outside a grocery store killing a federal judge and four others in a rampage that rattled the United States. The students are attending a torture facility! You know the teachers are con artists?” Loughner attended Moun-

tain View High School in Tucson through his junior year, but Marana Uniﬁed School District Spokes-

woman Tamara Crawley said he did not return for his senior year in 2007 and never graduated. Crawley said the

district could not discuss whether Loughner had any disciplinary problems during his years at the school.

Portuguese TV star slain, castrated Life imprisonment BY DAVID B. CARUSO Associated Press

NEW YORK — A celebrity Portuguese television journalist was found castrated and bludgeoned to death in a New York City hotel, and his companion, a male model who had recently been a contestant on a Portuguese reality TV show, was in police custody. Workers at the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel discovered the mutilated body of the 65-year-old journalist, Carlos Castro, in his blooddrenched room at about 7 p.m. Friday. He had arrived in the United States in December in the company of his young boyfriend, the model Renato Seabra, to see some Broadway shows and spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square, a family friend said Saturday. There had been some friction between the two men toward the end of the trip, but nothing to suggest that anything horrible was about to happen, said the friend, Luis Pires, the editor of the Portuguese-language newspaper Luso-Americano in Newark, N.J. “I think that they were a little bit upset with each

other, for jealousy reasons,” Pires said. The couple saw the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, took in the movie The Black Swan, and were supposed to meet Pires’ daugh-

ter for dinner Friday when Seabra suddenly emerged in the lobby acting strangely, he said. “He told my daughter, ‘Carlos will never leave the hotel again,’ ” said Pires. He

ARMANDO FRANCA/AP

SAD END: Carlos Castro, right, a Portuguese television journalist, was found bludgeoned to death at a hotel in New York City. His boyfriend, a model, is the prime suspect.

said his daughter, distraught, fetched a hotel manager. Security guards opened the door to the room and found the body. Seabra left the scene, but was detained by police hours later, and was being evaluated at Bellevue Hospital. No charges had been filed against Seabra as of Saturday morning, the New York Police Department said. Police said the victim suffered serious head trauma. The medical examiner’s office will determine the cause of death. In 2010, Seabra was a contestant on a Portuguese TV show called A Procura Do Sonho, or Pursuit of a Dream, which hunts for modeling talent. He didn’t win the show but did get a modeling contract with designer Fatima Lopes, who developed the show and was a judge on it. Castro was admired in Portugal for his bravery in coming out as a gay man and “revealing the feminine side of his personality,” said Rui Pedro Tendinha, a film critic who knew Castro. He was a high-profile public figure as a TV personality, Tendinha said. “The way he died is causing a big commotion in Portugal,” he said.

sought for Ghailani BY BENJAMIN WEISER New York Times Service

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, N.Y., have asked a judge to impose a life sentence on Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Guantanamo detainee who was tried last fall in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. Ghailani, 36, was acquitted on Nov. 17 of more than 280 counts of conspiracy and murder in the attacks, while he was convicted of one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years for the count for which he was convicted. The bombings of the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people and injured thousands. Ghailani’s lawyers have asked for leniency for their client, saying he was “mistreated” while in U.S. custody, a government document that sought the life sentence shows. Ghailani’s lawyer, Peter E. Quijano, declined to comment on Friday. The defense ﬁled its own memorandum with the judge, which has not been made public.

After his capture, Ghailani was detained by the CIA and the military for nearly five years before he was moved into the civilian system in 2009. He is scheduled to be sentenced by the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, on Jan. 25. In arguing for life imprisonment on Friday, the office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, cited eviGHAILANI dence from the trial, including Ghailani’s purchase of a truck that was used to carry the bomb that blew up the embassy in Tanzania. To bolster their bid for a life sentence, prosecutors also cited evidence that they said “was not placed before the jury because it was not admissible.” In what appear to be new allegations, the government contended that Ghailani was given $500 by a senior operative of al Qaeda so that “as he fled from Africa using his false passport, he could bribe local immigration officials as necessary.”

Family ties help boost Divers find 1811 wreck of Perry ship off U.S. college admissions BY MICHELLE R. SMITH Associated Press

BY TAMAR LEWIN New York Times Service

A new study of admissions at 30 highly selective colleges found that legacy applicants get a big advantage over those with no family connections to the institution — but the beneﬁt is far greater for those with a parent who earned an undergraduate degree at the college than for those with other family connections. According to the study, by Michael Hurwitz, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, applicants to a parent’s alma mater had, on average, seven times the odds of admission of non legacy applicants. Those whose parents did graduate work there or who had a grandparent, sibling, uncle or aunt who attended the college were, by comparison, only twice as likely to be admitted. Legacy admissions have become an increasingly touchy issue for colleges. Admissions ofﬁcers mostly play down the impact of legacy status. But a growing body of research shows that family connections count for

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a lot — and Hurwitz’s study found a larger impact than previous studies. And at a time when admission to elite colleges has become increasingly competitive, critics say the legacy admissions advantage stands as an undemocratic obstacle to social mobility. Hurwitz’s study, published in Economics of Education Review, looked at data from 133,236 applicants for 2007 college admission, and analyzed the outcomes of the 61,962 who applied to more than one of the elite colleges. That allowed him to compare how much more likely they were to be offered admission where they had family connections. “I was able to take into account all the applicant’s characteristics,” Hurwitz said, “because they were the same at every school they applied to. About the only thing that would be different was their legacy status.” Among the 30 colleges, the legacy advantage varied enormously: one college was more than 15 times as likely to accept legacy applicants, while at another, the effect was insigniﬁcant.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A team of divers say they have discovered the remains of the USS Revenge, a ship commanded by U.S. Navy hero Oliver Hazard Perry and wrecked off Rhode Island in 1811. Perry is known for defeating the British in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie off the shores of Ohio, Michigan and Ontario in the War of 1812 and for the line “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” His battle ﬂag bore the phrase “Don’t give up the ship,” and to this day is a symbol of the Navy. The divers, Charles Buffum, a brewery owner from Stonington, Conn., and Craig Harger, a carbon dioxide salesman from Colchester, Conn., say the wreck changed the course of history because Perry likely would not have been sent to Lake Erie otherwise. Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the wreck. Buffum said he’s been interested in ﬁnding the remains of the Revenge ever since his mother several years ago gave him the book Shipwrecks on the Shores of Westerly. The book in-

cludes Perry’s account of the wreck, which happened when it hit a reef in a storm in heavy fog off Watch Hill in Westerly, R.I., as Perry was bringing the ship from Newport to New London, Conn. “I always thought to myself we ought to go out and have a look and just see if there’s anything left,” Buffum said. The two, along with a third man, Mike Fournier, set out to find it with the aid of a metal detector. After several dives, they came across a cannon, then another. “It was just thrilling,” Harger said. They made their first discovery in August 2005, and kept it secret as they continued to explore the area and make additional finds. Since then, they have found four more 42-inch-long cannons, an anchor, canister shot, and other metal objects that they say they are 99 percent sure were from the Revenge. Buffum and Harger say the items fit into the time period that the Revenge sank, the anchor appears to be the main one that is known to have been cut loose from the ship, and that no other

military ships with cannons have been recorded as sinking in the area. They have not discovered a ship’s bell or anything else that identiﬁes it as the Revenge, and all the wood has disappeared, which is not unusual for a wreck that old, they said. The Navy has a right to salvage its shipwrecks, and the two say they’ve contacted the Naval History & Heritage Command, which oversees such operations, in hopes the Navy will salvage the remains. A spokesman for the command did not immediately return messages seeking comment. If the Navy does not, they said they hope to raise the money for a salvage operation so the artifacts can be displayed at a historical society. They say they are concerned now that they are going public that other divers might try to remove objects from the site, which is a violation of the law. Many of the objects they found are in only 15 feet of water, although the area is difﬁcult to dive because of currents, they said. As for whether the wreck of the Revenge changed the

course of history, David Skaggs, a professor emeritus of history at Bowling Green State University, said Perry might not put it that way. Skaggs has written two books on Perry, A Signal Victory, about the Lake Erie campaign, which he coauthored, and a biography, Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S Navy. While Harger and Buffum say Perry was effectively demoted by being sent to the Great Lakes rather than getting another high seas command, Skaggs said the Great Lakes commission still gave Perry great prestige. Perry, a Rhode Island native, became known as the “Hero of Lake Erie” after he defeated a British squadron, becoming the first U.S. commander to do so. “Whether or not there is another officer that could have done as well as Perry did is one of those ‘mighthave-beens’ that historians are not prone to ask,” Skaggs said. Still, Skaggs said he was intrigued by the discovery. “It is certainly an interesting new find on the eve of the bicentennial of the War of 1812,” he said.

1/10/2011 3:49:07 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

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French hostages found dead after rescue mission BY STEVEN ERLANGER New York Times Service

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP-GETTY IMAGES

ENTHUSIASTIC: Women wait outside a voting station in Juba on Sunday, on the first day of a weeklong independence referendum expected to lead to the partition of Africa’s largest nation and the creation of the world’s 193rd U.N. member state.

Sudanese begin historic vote BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN New York Times Service

JUBA, Sudan — It’s not every day that a beleaguered, marginalized and persecuted people get a chance to vote for their own freedom. On Sunday, southern Sudan did. The lines were packed, thousands of people long, and many voters had been standing in place since 2 a.m. Salva Kiir, the president of southern Sudan, which has been semiautonomous since a peace treaty was signed in 2005, cast his ballot Sunday morning as the polls opened. Starting in the cool hours of the night, long before the polls even opened, people across this region began lining up at polling stations to cast their votes in a historic referendum on whether to declare independence. Jubilant crowds made clear which was the popular choice. “I feel like I’m going to a new land,” beamed Susan Duku, a southern Sudanese

woman who works for the United Nations. As the sun cleared the horizon and the voting began, the streets of Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, broke into a street party. Women were literally skipping around the polls. Young men thumped on drums. Others were wrapped in ﬂags. People were hollering, singing, hugging, kissing, smacking high-ﬁves and dancing as if they never wanted the day to end, despite the sun beating down and voting lines that snaked for blocks. Southern Sudan has suffered a lot, and after years of civil war, oppression and displacement, many people here saw the vote as an unprecedented chance at selfdetermination. The referendum ballot offered two choices, unity with northern Sudan or secession. Unity was represented on the ballot by a drawing of two clasped hands. Secession was a single open hand. Many people rely

on these symbols — more than three quarters of southern Sudanese adults cannot read. The referendum is the result of a decades-long liberation struggle and a U.S.backed peace treaty in 2005, which granted the south the right to self-determination. For Duku, the choice was simple. “Separation,” she said. “One hundred percent, plus.” Many people here spoke in almost biblical terms about lifting themselves out of bondage. Sudan is a deeply divided country, and for decades, the southern third, which is mostly Christian and animist, has been dominated by Arab rulers from the north. The Arab government prosecuted a vicious war against southerners, who have been chaﬁng for their own separate state even before Sudan’s independence in 1956. Voters on Sunday spoke of this legacy, and the poverty that has accompanied it. That was in evidence all around. Most

polling places were shoddily built schools or government offices with bald concrete floors, no lights, crumbly walls and rusted metal roofs. If southern Sudan becomes independent, it will be one of the poorest countries on earth. “But better to be free,” said Simon Matiek, a student. The voting will continue for the next week and preliminary reports indicated that it was going smoothly. The votes are expected to take at least a week to count. And if 60 percent of the registered voters cast ballots and the majority chooses secession, then the hard work begins. Before Sudan can amicably split into two — the south plans to declare independence in July — several sticky issues need to be resolved. The top two: sharing Sudan’s oil; and demarcating the border, including the flashpoint Abyei area, which both the north and south claim.

PARIS — Two Frenchmen kidnapped in Niger have been found dead after a rescue attempt on the border with Mali that involved the militaries of both Niger and France, the French government said. The hostages were kidnapped late Friday from a bar in Niamey, the Niger capital, reportedly by four armed men wearing turbans who attempted to take them into Mali. They were pursued by Niger’s military, with French military help, and were intercepted at the border Saturday. After a firefight, the hostages were found dead, the France’s defense minister, Alain Juppe, said in a statement. “The terrorists were intercepted at the Mali border and several of them were neutralized,” he said, using a euphemism for killed. “After the fighting, the two hostages were found dead.” Their names were not immediately released. Juppe said the operation was “coordinated” by French forces based in the region that participated in the firefight at the border. French officials said they believed the hostages were killed by their kidnappers. “At this stage, everything makes us believe that they were executed by the terrorists,” a military spokesman, Thierry Burkhard, told Reuters, adding that French special forces had intervened after one of their surveillance aircraft had spotted the kidnappers close to the Mali border. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abduction, but the assumption in Paris is that the act

Hotel demolished for Israeli apartments

Key ally rejoins Pakistan’s coalition BY SALMAN MASOOD AND J.DAVID GOODMAN New York Times Service

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s governing party has patched its coalition government back together, barely holding onto power but at a price that officials in Washington had feared: the collapse of reforms critical to stabilizing the nation’s economy. The bargain made on Friday underscored an increasingly urgent problem for both Pakistan and its international backers, especially the United States, which has pushed the government to improve its tax coll e c t i o n and make difficult economic choices to ensure the nation’s sol- GILANI vency. If the government wants to survive, the week’s turmoil indicated, that path may be impossible. The Obama administration did not publicly criticize Pakistani officials for the deal Friday, apparently deciding that a worse outcome would have been a collapse of the government when the United States is depending on it for help in fighting the war in Afghanistan. For the time being, then, Pakistan may remain dependent on international assistance, including billions of dollars in military and civilian aid from the United States, even as fewer than 2 percent of Pakistanis pay income tax, with many wealthy members of government among those who pay nothing.

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U.S. officials and the International Monetary Fund pushed the effort to close budget shortfalls but also to expand services and the government’s presence in the lives of Pakistanis. The absence of civil institutions has left an opening for hard-line mosques and militant groups to expand their power by providing the things the government does not, like education, healthcare and speedy justice. The power of Pakistan’s industrialists and landed elite in Parliament made raising income and agricultural taxes a treacherous route for the government, despite pressure from the monetary fund. Instead, the government led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and his Pakistan Peoples Party chose to raise fuel prices as the fastest and easiest way to increase revenues, before it struggled with more difficult tax reforms. Now even that tack has failed. All week Gilani struggled to save his coalition. On Thursday he announced that the government would resume its fuel subsidies. By Friday he had extended the economic concessions still further in a meeting with Muttahida Qaumi Movement officials, promising that his government would put off efforts to increase tax collection as well. The move was enough to regain the support of the MQM. Raza Haroon, a senior party leader, announced Friday that his party would rejoin the coalition for the sake of democracy and the country.

was carried out by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. In a communique, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France condemned the kidnapping and deaths of the two hostages as “a barbaric and cowardly act.” The death of the two Frenchmen brings to four the number of foreign hostages killed in the Sahel region — Niger, Mali, Algeria and Mauritania — in the past two years. A British man, Edwin Dyer, was kidnapped two years ago along with three other European tourists. His death was announced by AQIM in June 2009; the other three were released. In April 2010, a French engineer, Michel Germaneau, 78, was kidnapped in the north of Niger as he supervised the construction of a school for an aid organization. He was killed in July by AQIM, which said it was taking revenge for the deaths of AQIM fighters three days before in a French-Mauritanian raid in Mali. In September, five more Frenchmen, along with two Africans, were kidnapped in northern Niger on the site of a uranium mine worked by French companies. They are thought by French officials to be held in northeast Mali. In November, AQIM demanded that France negotiate the freedom of the hostages with Osama bin Laden and pull its troops out of Afghanistan. French officials say the vast territory in which AQIM operates is essentially lawless and is outside the sovereign reach of governments.

SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

RESCUE ACT: Fewer than 7.9 percent of the U.S. soldiers wounded in 2010 died, down from more than 11 percent the previous year and 14.3 percent in 2008. Above, a U.S. soldier carries an injured colleague near Marja, Afghanistan.

Survival rate of U.S. soldiers wounded in Afghan War rises BY C.J. CHIVERS New York Times Service

KHAKREZ DISTRICT, Afghanistan — Intensified fighting and a larger troop presence in Afghanistan in 2010 led to the highest U.S. combat casualties yet in the war, as the number of troops wounded by bullets, shrapnel and bombs approached that of the bloodiest periods of the war in Iraq. But the available data points to advances in the treatment of the fallen, as the rate at which wounded soldiers who died reached a wartime low. More than 430 U.S. service members died from hostile action in Afghanistan in 2010 through Dec. 21, according to official data released by the Pentagon last week at the request of New York Times. This was a small fraction of those struck. Nearly 5,500 U.S. troops were wounded in action — more

than double the total of 2,415 in 2009 and almost six times the number wounded in 2008. In all, fewer than 7.9 percent of the U.S. soldiers wounded in 2010 died, down from more than 11 percent the previous year and 14.3 percent in 2008. Medical workers attribute this improvement to several factors, among them changes in training for soldiers who administer ﬁrst aid, swifter movement of victims to hospitals and shifts in procedures in operating rooms. Equipment has also been a factor, including heavier armored vehicles more resistant to explosives and ﬁre-retardant uniforms and gloves. Doctors said a change in attitude about tourniquets also prevented many deaths. Until a few years ago, they said, tourniquets were often regarded as a measure of last resort, not always applied swiftly to those with severe

extremity wounds. Every soldier now carries at least one tourniquet, and fellow soldiers apply them immediately. One doctor, deployed in an area of ﬁghting along the Arghandab River, said medics on patrols have become more proﬁcient at other lifesaving techniques, too. These include opening airways via tracheotomies, using needles to decompress swollen chest cavities that can collapse a wounded soldiers’ lungs and applying pressure dressing and bandages with clotting agents to areas where tourniquets have little effect. And for patients who reach NATOrun trauma centers, the overall survival rates have approached levels unseen in past wars. The staff said this was in part due to the accumulated experience of surgical teams in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as shifts in how patients are treated.

JERUSALEM — (AP) — Bulldozers demolished a hotel in an Arab east Jerusalem neighborhood Sunday to make way for a new Israeli enclave, moving ahead with a plan that has angered the Palestinians and the United States. The Shepherd Hotel is to be replaced by 20 apartments for Israelis. Workmen and earth-moving equipment were knocking down the structure at the site in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday. Peace talks are currently stuck over Israeli construction of this kind. The Palestinians say they will not renew talks without an Israeli settlement freeze that includes east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as their future capital. Israel says it has the right to build anywhere in the city, including east Jerusalem, which it annexed in 1967 in a move that has not been internationally recognized. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the demolition of the hotel. “As long as this government continues with settlement and acts like the demolition of the Shepherd Hotel there will no negotiations,” he said. The Shepherd Hotel project is funded by Jewish American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, a longtime patron of Jewish settlers. Settler groups have been moving Israeli families into Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, attempting to ensure the city will not be divided in a future peace deal. Unrest in those neighborhoods recently has been on the rise.

1/10/2011 3:54:03 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

OPINION CHARLES D. SHERMAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Threats to Obama health plan BY DAVID BROOKS New York Times Service

he healthcare reform law was signed 10 months ago, and what’s striking now is how vulnerable it looks. Several threats have emerged — some of them scarcely discussed before passage — that together or alone could seriously endanger the new system. These include: The courts. So far, one judge has struck down the individual mandate, the plan’s centerpiece. Future decisions are likely to break down on partisan lines. Given the makeup of the Supreme Court, this should concern the law’s defenders. False projections. The new system is based on a series of expert projections on how people will behave. In the ﬁrst test case, these projections were absurdly off base. According to the Medicare actuary, 375,000 people should have already signed up for the new high-risk pools for the uninsured, but only 8,000 have. More seriously, cost projections are way off. For example,

New Hampshire’s plan has only about 80 members, but the state has already burned through nearly double the $650,000 that the federal government allotted to help run BROOKS the program. If other projections are off by this much, the results will be disastrous. Employee dumping. This is the most serious threat. Companies and unions across the United States are running the numbers and discovering they would be better off if, after 2014, they induced poorer and sicker employees to move to public insurance exchanges, where subsidies are much higher. The number of people in those exchanges could thus skyrocket, especially as start-up companies undermine their competitors with uninsured employees and lower costs. The Congressional Budget Ofﬁce projects that 19 million people will move to the exchanges at a cost of $450 billion between 2014 and 2019. But according to the economists Douglas Holtz-Eakin and James

C. Capretta, costs could soar to $1.4 trillion if those who would be better off in the exchanges actually moved to them. The price of the healthcare law could double. C. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, who has been among those raising the alarms about this, calls the law’s structure “unworkable and unfair.” Healthcare oligarchy. Since the law passed, there has been a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, as hospitals, clinics and doctor groups have joined together into bigger and bigger entities. The drafters encourage this, believing large outﬁts would be more efﬁcient. The downside to this economic concentration is there could be less competition and cost control. In many places, the political power of these quasi-monopolies would be huge, with unforeseeable results. The law bans doctors from starting up hospitals to increase competition. Public hostility. Right now about 53 percent of U.S. citizens oppose the healthcare law and 43 percent support it, according to an average of the recent polls. Com-

plaints are especially high among doctors. According to a survey by the Physicians Foundation, 60 percent of private practice doctors say the law will force them to close their practices or to restrict them to certain categories of patients. Given this level of unhappiness, people will blame the Obama law for everything they hate about the healthcare system. Political opposition was ﬁerce last November, and it could easily shape the 2012 election and lead to changes or repeal. Over all, there is a strong likelihood that the current healthcare law will face an existential threat over the next ﬁve years. Each party should be preparing contingency plans. When the crisis comes, Democrats will face an interesting choice — to patch the Obama system or try to replace it with something bigger. The administration may want a patch, but by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1, according to a CNN poll, Democratic voters would prefer a more ambitious law. Liberals could logically say that the mistake was trying to create a hybrid system, rather than moving straight to a single-payer one. Republicans are going to have

to move beyond their current “Repeal!” posture and cohere behind a positive alternative. One approach, which Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has written about, is to allow more state experimentation. Another approach, championed by Capretta, Yuval Levin of National Affairs and Thomas P. Miller of the American Enterprise Institute, revolves around the words “deﬁned contribution.” Under this approach, Republicans would say that the federal government has a role in subsidizing health insurance — a generous role, but not unlimited. The government would provide needy citizens with a predeﬁned amount of money to spend on insurance and allow them to shop in a transparent, regulated, but not micromanaged marketplace. After the trauma of the last two years, many people wish the issue would go away. But it’s not going away, especially since costs will continue to rise. Some Congresses achieve healthcare; members of this Congress or the next one will have healthcare thrust upon them.

The future Texas foretells the country just to keep up with a growing workforce. And when you look at unemhese are tough times for state ployment, Texas doesn’t seem governments. Huge deficits particularly special: its unemployloom almost everywhere, from ment rate is below the national California to New York, from New average, thanks in part to high oil Jersey to Texas. prices, but it’s about the same as Wait — Texas? Wasn’t Texas the unemployment rate in New supposed to be thriving even as York or Massachusetts. the rest of the United States sufWhat about the budget? The fered? Didn’t its governor declare, truth is that the Texas state govduring his reelection campaign, ernment has relied for years on that “we have billions in surplus?” smoke and mirrors to create the Yes, it was, and yes, he did. illusion of sound finances But reality has now intrudin the face of a serious ed, in the form of a deficit ‘structural’ budget deficit expected to run as high as — that is, a deficit that per$25 billion over the next sists even when the econtwo years. omy is doing well. When And that reality has the recession struck, hitimplications for the Unitting revenue in Texas just ed States as a whole. For as it did everywhere else, Texas is where the mod- KRUGMAN that illusion was bound to ern conservative theory collapse. of budgeting — the belief that you The only thing that let Gov. should never raise taxes under Rick Perry get away, temporarily, any circumstances, that you can with claims of a surplus was the always balance the budget by cut- fact that Texas enacts budgets only ting wasteful spending — has been once every two years, and the last implemented most completely. If budget was put in place before the the theory can’t make it there, it depth of the economic downturn can’t make it anywhere. was clear. Now the next budget How bad is the Texas deficit? must be passed — and Texas may Comparing budget crises among have a $25 billion hole to fill. Now states is tricky, for technical rea- what? sons. Still, data from the Center on Given the complete dominance Budget and Policy Priorities sug- of conservative ideology in Texas gest that the Texas budget gap is politics, tax increases are out of worse than New York’s, about as the question. So it has to be spendbad as California’s, but not quite ing cuts. up to New Jersey levels. Yet Perry wasn’t lying about The point, however, is that just those “tough conservative decithe other day Texas was being sions”: Texas has indeed taken a touted as a role model (and still hard, you might say brutal, line tois by commentators who haven’t ward its most vulnerable citizens. been keeping up with the news). Among the states, Texas ranks near It was the state the recession sup- the bottom in education spending posedly passed by, thanks to its per pupil, while leading the nalow taxes and business-friendly tion in the percentage of residents policies. Its governor boasted without health insurance. It’s hard that its budget was in good shape to imagine what will happen if the thanks to his “tough conservative state tries to eliminate its huge decisions.” deficit purely through further Oh, and at a time when there’s cuts. a full-court press on to demonize I don’t know how the mess in public-sector unions as the source Texas will end up being resolved. of all our woes, Texas is nearly But the signs don’t look good, demon-free: less than 20 percent either for the state or for the of public-sector workers there are nation. covered by union contracts, comRight now, triumphant conserpared with almost 75 percent in vatives in Washington are declarNew York. ing that they can cut taxes and So what happened to the “Texas still balance the budget by slashmiracle” many people were talking ing spending. Yet they haven’t about even a few months ago? been able to do that even in Texas, Part of the answer is that re- which is willing both to impose ports of a recession-proof state great pain (by its stinginess on were greatly exaggerated. It’s true healthcare) and to shortchange that Texas job losses haven’t been the future (by neglecting educaas severe as those in the nation as tion). How are they supposed to a whole since the recession be- pull it off nationally, especially gan in 2007. But Texas has a rap- when the incoming Republicans idly growing population — largely, have declared Medicare, Social suggests Harvard’s Edward Glaes- Security and defense off limits? er, because its liberal land-use and People used to say that the fuzoning policies have kept hous- ture happens first in California, ing cheap. There’s nothing wrong but these days what happens in with that; but given that rising Texas is probably a better omen. population, Texas needs to create And what we’re seeing right now jobs more rapidly than the rest of is a future that doesn’t work. BY PAUL KRUGMAN

New York Times Service

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Saving money, saving lives BY NEWT GINGRICH AND PAT NOLAN Washington Post Service

ith nearly all 50 states facing budget deﬁcits, it’s time to end business as usual in state capitols and for legislators to think and act with courage and creativity. We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered offlimits to reform: prisons. Several states have recently shown that they can save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations. We joined with other conservative leaders in December to announce the Right on Crime Campaign, a national movement urging states to make sensible and proven reforms to our criminal justice system — policies that will cut prison costs while keeping the public safe. Among the prominent signatories are Reagan administration attorney general Ed Meese, former drug czar Asa Hutchinson, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, John Dilulio of the University of Pennsylvania, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Richard Viguerie of ConservativeHQ.com. We all agree that we can keep the public safe while spending fewer tax dollars if we spend them more effectively. The Right on Crime Campaign represents a seismic shift in the legislative landscape. And it opens the way for a commonsense left-right agreement on an issue that has kept the parties apart for decades. There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections — 300 percent more than 25 years

ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every U.S. citizen. Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners. We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it. Several states have shown that it is possible to cut costs while keeping the public safe. Consider events in Texas, which is known to be tough on crime. Conservative Republicans joined with Democrats in adopting incentive-based funding to strengthen the state’s probation system in 2005. Then in 2007, they decided against building more prisons and instead opted to enhance proven community corrections approaches such as drug courts. The reforms are forecast to save $2 billion in prison costs over five years. The Lone Star State has already redirected much of the money saved into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts. Not only have these reforms reduced Texas’ prison population — helping to close the state budget gap — but for the first time there is no waiting list for drug treatment in the state. And crime has dropped 10 percent from 2004, the year before the reforms, through 2009, according to the latest figures available, reaching its lowest annual rate since 1973.

In 2010 we both endorsed corrections reforms in South Carolina that will reserve costly prison beds for dangerous criminals while punishing low-risk offenders through lower-cost community supervision. The legislation was a bipartisan effort with strong support from liberals, conservatives, law enforcement, the judges and reform advocates. The state is expected to save $175 million in prison construction this year and $60 million in operating costs over the next several years. Some people attribute the nation’s recent drop in crime to more people being locked up. But the facts show otherwise. While crime fell in nearly every state over the past seven years, some of those with the largest reductions in crime have also lowered their prison population. Compare Florida and New York. Over the past seven years, Florida’s incarceration rate has increased 16 percent, while New York’s decreased 16 percent. Yet the crime rate in New York has fallen twice as much as Florida’s. Put another way, although New York spent less on its prisons, it delivered better public safety. U.S. citizens need to know that we can reform our prison systems to cost less and keep the public safe. We hope conservative leaders across the country will join with us in getting it right on crime. Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999 and is the founder of American Solutions. Pat Nolan was Republican leader of the California State Assembly from 1984 to 1988 and is a vice president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry to prisoners, exprisoners and their families that also works on justice reform.

1/10/2011 2:53:40 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

F o r t h e F o r t u n at e F e w .

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1/9/2011 9:46:44 PM

BUSINESS&SPORTS B MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

Market predictions, with many grains of salt BY JEFF SOMMER New York Times Service

t was such a comforting forecast: By the end of the calendar year, a steady stream of corporate profits would extend the stock market’s long-term rally, raising the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index by more than 12 percent, plus dividends. That was the consensus of Wall Street strategists. When? It came at the very beginning of 2008. In January of that year, the future, as seen by the professional soothsayers, was about as rosy as could be. But it was completely wrong. As it turned out, 2008 was a catastrophe — engulfing investors in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But based on the numbers compiled in a Bloomberg survey at the beginning of that year, not a single analyst had even the slightest inkling of the dire events that were about to transpire. None predicted, for example, that by year-end, the market would fall. Yet its actual decline was breathtaking: roughly 38 percent. Investors who relied on the consensus outlook endured one of the worst debacles in modern history. Why bring up these unpleasant memories now? Well, welcome back to the financial forecast season. Updated predictions, laden with finely diced numbers and elegant charts, are rolling in once again. It would be nice to accept them at face value, because in the current Bloomberg survey, the consensus for 2011 is quite cheering. On average, Wall Street strategists say, the S&P 500 will rise to 1,371 by the end of 2011. That would represent an annual increase of about 9 percent, plus dividends. That would be a very good year. But how much credence should we place in forecasts like these? Byron Wien, a strategist who has been issuing market forecasts for decades and is vice chairman at Blackstone Advisory Services, says the quick answer is: Don’t take these forecasts too seriously, and don’t view them as the literal truth. “Few people get forecasts right very often,” he says. “I certainly don’t. I don’t even attempt to make a literal forecast. I try to come up with some ideas that are provocative, and worth thinking about.”

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Fed official says debt-buying will help In a forum here Saturday during the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, the Fed’s vice chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, used the study to offer a staunch defense of the program, which is supposed to last through June. “It will not be a panacea, but I believe it will be effective in fostering maximum employment and

BY SEWELL CHAN New York Times Service

DENVER — The Federal Reserve’s new effort to support the recovery by purchasing $600 billion of Treasury securities will create about 700,000 jobs in the private sector, according to a new study by researchers at the central bank. The study amounts to the first concrete estimate by the Fed of the economic effects of the debtbuying program it announced on Nov. 3. The program has been politically controversial, with conservatives accusing the Fed of printing money, financing the federal deficit and devaluing the dollar.

price stability,” Yellen said, referring to the two parts of the Fed’s legal mandate. The Fed is essentially using its power to create bank reserves to purchase $75 billion a month in Treasury securities. The program is intended to ease borrowing by businesses and households, lift the stock market and stimulate exports by making the dollar somewhat cheaper relative to foreign currencies. The study cited by Yellen was prepared by four Fed researchers — Hess Chung, Jean-Philippe Laforte, David Reifschneider and John C. Williams — and released by the Federal Reserve

BY RANDALL STROSS New York Times Service

Ma Bell spoiled us. AT&T’s dial tone set the all-time standard for reliability. It was engineered so that 99.999 percent of the time, you could successfully make a phone call. Five 9s. That works out to being available all but 5.26 minutes a year. Can we realistically expect that such availability will ever come to Internet services? Any given week, it seems, some wellknown service suffers a shutdown. Last week, it was Hotmail; the week before, Skype was out for more than a day. And Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and PayPal, among others, made the 2010 list of service interruptions compiled by Royal Pingdom, a company in Sweden that monitors the up time of Web services worldwide.

THE ELUSIVE

FIVE 9S WHY INTERNET SERVICES AREN’T LIKELY TO MATCH THE TELEPHONE’S RELIABILITY

Bank of San Francisco, where Yellen was the president until October, when she was sworn in as vice chairwoman of the Fed’s board of governors. The study assumes that the Fed will complete the $600 billion in purchases through June, hold onto the securities for about two years and then gradually sell them over the following ﬁve years. The study’s estimate of an increase of 700,000 nonfarm jobs is based on a complex model the Fed uses to simulate various scenarios for the U.S. economy. • TURN TO DEBT-BUYING, 2B

Internet computing, however, isn’t as unreliable as it may seem. After all, when was the last time you got to Google’s home page but couldn’t complete your search? As more and more Web services companies acquire years of experience, we’ll see more consistent reliability — it’s just a matter of time and learning. Attaining Four-9s availability will become routine. That means available all but 52.56 minutes a year. As for moving to 99.999, well, that may never come. “We don’t believe Five 9s is attainable in a commercial service, if measured correctly,” says Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president for operations at Google. The company’s goal for its major services is Four 9s. Google’s search service almost reaches Five 9s every year, Hoelzle says. By its very nature, it is relatively easy to provide uninterrupted availability for search. There are many redundant copies of Google’s indexes of the Web, and they are spread across many data centers. A Web search does not require constant updating of a user’s personal information in one place and then instantly creating identical copies at other data centers. Gmail has backup copies ofﬂine, but it normally uses two perfectly mirrored live copies — and that introduces the potential for trouble. In 2010, Gmail’s availability was 99.984 percent. (This is the percentage of requested actions, such as sending off a message, that were successful.) “Google doesn’t have the luxury of scheduled downtime for maintenance,” says Armando Fox, an adjunct associate professor in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. • TURN TO INTERNET, 2B

MCT

• TURN TO FORECAST, 2B

Obama’s caution disappoints advisor BY MICHAEL POWELL New York Times Service

and his unwillingness to duel with an emboldened Republican Party. Faced with a Republican majority in the House, Obama this week appointed Gene Sperling, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, as director of his National Economic Council, and William Daley, a centrist politician turned banking executive, as his chief of staff. Daley was a member of the Third Way, a

group that counsels deﬁcit reduction, more tax cuts and perhaps trimming Social Security. Reich is not pleased by the president’s message of late. “By freezing federal salaries, by talking about deﬁcits, by extending the Bush tax cuts, he’s legitimizing a Republican narrative,” Reich says.

BERKELEY, Calif. — So how would he grade U.S. President Barack Obama’s economic policies, and the new team put in place this week? Though Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, endorsed Obama and has traveled to the White House to provide economic • TURN TO REICH, 2B counsel, he offers a smile that looks unmistakably pained. “We have a remarkably anemic recovery; it’s paper-thin,” Reich says. “In the narrowest, tactical terms, in sheer dollars committed to programs, Obama’s done pretty well, and his favorability ratings are better than those of the Democratic Party.” Then he sweeps his hands far apart in his sun-ﬁlled warren of an ofﬁce at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you widen the lens, the public is being sold a big lie — that our problems owe to unions and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast concentration of wealth. Obama’s failure is that he won’t challenge this Republican narrative, and give people a story that helps them connect the dots and understand where we’re going.” TISH WELLS/MCT Reich, 64, is one of several prominent liberal economists DISAPPOINTED: Economist Robert Reich says U.S. President who despair of what they say is Barack Obama is not challenging the narrative that problems this president’s political caution, are due to the size of the government and not deregulation.

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Bank of America’s fund to cover bad loans: it’s a start BY GRETCHEN MORGENSON New York Times Service

come to light in courts across the country — robosigners, forged legal documents — are also likely to be substantial. But you’ll find precious little clarity on these liabilities in the financial statements of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The amounts that these banks, the nation’s four largest, have reserved for possible mortgage repurchases — about $10 billion as of the third quarter of 2010 — is microscopic when compared with the more than $5 trillion in mortgage securities issued from 2005 through 2007. For some investors, this is the accounting equivalent of whistling past the graveyard. And they are demanding that the audit committees of the banks’ boards step up their scrutiny of these institutions’ practices. On Thursday, officials overseeing 11 large public pension funds that own shares in the big four banks sent a letter to the directors who head each board’s audit committee. The investors are asking that the audit committees conduct in-depth and independent reviews of all the internal controls related to the banks’ mortgage operations.

Bank investors cheered the announcement last week that Bank of America would pay $2.6 billion to buy back mortgages it had improperly sold during the housing bubble to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the beleaguered mortgage ﬁnance giants. It seemed a sweet deal for the bank, whose Countrywide Home Loans unit had peddled tens of billions of dollars in risky loans to the taxpayer-owned companies. While it is unfortunate that the Bank of America deal won’t recoup much for taxpayers, the resolution could have one important beneﬁt. It might just open the door to a much-needed reckoning of the liabilities created by questionable mortgage practices at the United States’ largest banks. These institutions have not yet made a full and realistic accounting of their liabilities. It seems clear, after all, that Bank of America will not be the only institution forced to buy back billions of dollars’ worth of loans because it did not meet the lending standards promised to buyers. Costs associated with foreclosure improprieties that have • TURN TO FUND, 2B

1/10/2011 4:07:38 AM

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BofA’s fund to cover bad loans: it’s a start • FUND, FROM 1B

Once the review has been completed — by a different accounting firm from the one currently signing off on the banks’ books — the investors want the audit committees to report their findings to shareholders. John Liu, the New York City comptroller and overseer of five city pension funds, instigated the campaign to focus the banks’ audit committees on mortgage problems. “There is a fundamental problem in the banks’ procedures that endangers not just homeowners, but shareholders, and local economies,” he said Thursday. “Given the risks involved, only a swift and unbiased audit can reassure shareholders that the pension funds of 700,000 working and retired New Yorkers are in safe hands.” Joining him in signing the letters were the heads of the Connecticut Retirement Plans, the Illinois State Board of Investment and its State Universities Retirement System, the North Carolina Retirement System, the Or-

egon State Treasury and the New York State Common Retirement Fund. Together, the funds own $5.6 billion of stock in the top four banks and oversee $430 billion in assets. The New York City pension funds have also put forward a shareholder proposal asking for an independent audit of the top four banks’ mortgage operations. Liu hopes the proposal will be put to a stockholder vote at the banks’ annual meetings this year. Citigroup doesn’t want it considered and has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to exclude the proposal from matters to be voted on at its coming meeting. The other banks will probably follow suit. Ofﬁcials at Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo said they were reviewing the letter but they had conﬁdence in their internal controls and audit committees’ vigilance. The Bank of America spokesman added that it had hired external auditors to review its foreclosure processes, which led it to enhance its practices.

MARK RANDALL/SUN SENTINEL

PAYING THE PRICE: Bank of America and other banks will likely have to buy back billions of dollars of loans because they did not meet lending standards. Above, Bank of America agents prepare for a mortgage modification seminar in Florida. But Robert Christensen, an authority on ﬁnancial services accounting, says it is high time investors — and regulators, for that matter — scrutinize the banks’ auditing processes. “I believe there is an avalanche of liabilities

that has not been recorded in their reserves,” Christensen said. “They say it’s not estimable, but the question is, are they really accounting for it properly and are regulators pushing them hard enough to do it?”

He thinks they haven’t. Christensen, a certiﬁed public accountant who spent 24 years as an auditor at Arthur Andersen, is a senior advisor to Natoma Partners, a forensic accounting and litigation consulting ﬁrm. He

says the banks have understated the liabilities for possible loan repurchases that they were supposed to have recorded in recent years. Under accounting rules, when a bank sells a loan or a pool of them to investors, the gain on that sale is supposed to be reduced by an amount reﬂecting the possibility that some loans will have to be bought back later. These amounts are estimates. It wasn’t until 2009 that banks began to discuss in their ﬁlings the reserves they had set aside for these potential liabilities. Christensen said reserves should have been set aside much earlier, given that the banks selling these loans were in position to know that underwriting standards were slipping and that forced buybacks could rise. “Where were these banks’ internal controls?” Christensen asked. “Somebody inside knew that they were lowering their underwriting standards. They should have had processes that told them if these loans ever go bad, they will be put back because we are not meeting our representations and warranties.”

Take market forecasts with a pinch of salt Why Five 9s elude and the creation of music and films, to say nothing Benjamin Graham, the of the trading of financial late Columbia professor and derivatives. path-breaking value invesThis problem is magnitor, gave some thought to fied many times when it market forecasts. He didn’t comes to predicting the dismiss them entirely, but valuations of financial he didn’t place much store markets, which are linked in them, either. In his clasto the real economy but are sic, The Intelligent Investor, also dependent on even less first published in 1949, he tangible factors, like mass acknowledged: “A great psychology — the ephemdeal of brain power goes eral moods of fickle traders. into this field, and undoubtSecond, even if a foreedly some people can make cast is somehow right on money by being good stock the money, it’s not clear market analysts.” what an investor should Nonetheless, he thought do about information that it the height of foolishness is available to every other for the average person to interested person on the hang onto the words, or planet. If a prediction says the numbers, of the averstocks will go up, and everyage analyst. “It is absurd to one believes it, the crowd think that the general public is then likely to drive up can ever make money out of prices very rapidly — until market forecasts,” he said. it is convinced that prices The problem is two-fold. are too high and it begins to First, as the great analytical drive them back down. failure of 2008 reminds us, Following these vagaries market forecasts are someis no way to run a portfolio, times not only wrong, but says Aaron Gurwitz, the also dangerously misleading. chief investment officer at We don’t know the future Barclays Wealth. “I don’t and can’t know it until it’s think market forecasts prono longer the future. Yet vide very useful informawe all try, and some people tion,” he says. make a very good living at it. Instead, he focuses on It’s hard enough to foreasset allocation and on excast the future of complex pected returns, volatility and economies, which are based correlations of specific asset less and less on the proclasses over long periods. “I duction and sale of actual would really like my friends goods like automobiles. and neighbors to stop asking Instead, such economies are me whether I think the marincreasingly dominated by ket is going up or down,” he globally traded and barely says. “Investment strategy measurable services like the is the practice of decisionwriting of computer code making under uncertainty,” • FORECAST, FROM 1B

he says, and it’s not wise to act as though the future is anything but uncertain. Wien, who has been issuing lists of probable market “surprises” since 1986, says he doesn’t even pretend that he is forecasting the future. He says he is merely suggesting developments that he thinks have a better than 50 percent chance of happening, but that the average investor does not. In 2010, out of 10 such “surprises,” he got only one unequivocally right: new ﬁnancial services regulations turned out not to be as onerous as many people in the industry had initially feared. Yes, this was a “cynical” appraisal, he said cheerfully. But he was wrong about the markets, which he thought would end up where they started (they rose), and about the economy, which he said would be booming (it is not), and about unemployment, which he said would drop below 9 percent (it has not). This year, he is again suggesting a very strong economy and a sharp drop in unemployment, but also something new: robust improvement in the housing market. Such notions, he says, “are intended to make people think conceptually, and not incrementally, about the changes that may be ahead.” Forecasts are essential for thinking and planning, but they are often wrong, says Daniel Altman, the

author of a new book, Outrageous Fortunes: The 12 Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy. In an interview, he said that such forecasts “often focus on high-frequency data from a short time period and often miss the big picture. And they extrapolate trends rather than trying to understand the deep processes that drive the trends, so that they can logically discern where those processes are growing.” Laszlo Birinyi, the veteran market analyst who correctly predicted the onset of the current bull market in early 2009, also says he is wary of traditional forecasting, and favors an approach that is more provocative. Based on the U.S. bull market’s extraordinary performance so far, he says it has a very long way to run. And so, while he has no forecast for 2011 or 2012, he announced on Tuesday that the S&P 500 would reach 2,854 by Sept. 4, 2013. That would be an increase of more than 100 percent. Should investors take this forecast literally? “No,” Birinyi said. He added that he had no idea where the market would be on a particular day or month, but he believes he is right about its direction: “I’d say, people should look at the evidence and think about it, and look at it as an argument, which I think they should take seriously.”

Buying up debt will help, Fed official say • DEBT-BUYING, FROM 1B

The $600 billion assetpurchase program is an extension of a $1.7 trillion series of purchases of government securities and mortgage bonds that the Fed conducted from December 2008 through March 2010.

The strategy is known as quantitative easing, and the new purchases have been popularly known as QE2. Some economists have objected to QE2 by arguing that there has been an increase in structural unemployment that is not amenable to government intervention. Other critics

say the Fed is risking future inﬂation by vastly increasing the quantity of reserves that banks hold at the central bank. Still other critics say the Fed’s new strategy might generate future ﬁnancial imbalances like the housing bubble that peaked in 2006. A fourth line of criticism says that the Fed will

hamper growth in foreign economies by driving down the value of the dollar. Yellen addressed each of those objections in turn. She argued that they were unsupported by evidence or that the Fed had the tools to address any potential problems arising from the bondbuying strategy.

Internet services • INTERNET, FROM 1B

Nor can it take down the service, he says, to install upgrades. “It is not uncommon for a place like Google to push out a major release every week,” he said, adding that such frequency is “unprecedented” for the software industry. Computing services built for Internet scale have been pioneered by Amazon, too. It offers to other businesses Amazon Web Services, almost two dozen discrete categories of services, such as computing cycles or database software running on Amazon’s machines. These are the same behind-thescenes computing services that the company uses to run Amazon.com. One of those services, the Simple Storage Service, or S3, allows companies to store data on Amazon’s servers. “We talk of ‘durability’ of data — it’s designed for Eleven-9s durability,” says James Hamilton, a vice president for Amazon Web Services. That works out to a 0.000000001 percent chance of data being lost, at least theoretically. As soon as a problem surfaces with an Internet service — anywhere — it will receive wide coverage in the technology media. But when a branch office of a nontech company has problems with its own e-mail server used for Microsoft Outlook, no one outside of that office is the wiser. One thing that Google and other companies offering Web services have learned to do is to keep software problems at their end out of the user’s view. John Ciancutti, vice president for personalization technology at Netflix, wrote on the company’s blog in December about lessons learned in moving its systems from its own infrastructure to that of Amazon Web Ser-

vices. He said Netflix had adopted a “Rambo architecture”: each part of its system is designed to fight its way through on its own, tolerating failure from other systems upon which it normally depends. “If our recommendations system is down, we degrade the quality of our responses to our customers, but we still respond,” Ciancutti said. “We’ll show popular titles instead of personalized picks. If our search system is intolerably slow, streaming should still work perfectly fine.” Netflix intentionally stresses its systems with software it calls its “Chaos Monkey.” It creates mischief like shutting down Netflix’s own subsystems randomly and challenging the other subsystems to adapt on the fly. Ciancutti writes, “If we weren’t constantly testing our ability to succeed” when experiencing subsystems’ failures, “then it isn’t likely to work when it matters most — in the event of an unexpected outage.” Most of the time, Internet users enjoy responsive service online — or a convincing illusion that all is well. And if they don’t, the problem is more likely to originate at their Internet service provider than in the Web service it connects with. At my house, the Internet connection is flaky at times, so I really shouldn’t demand that my favorite websites have Five-9s availability. Perceived reliability is determined by the least reliable service in the chain. A home user’s Internet connection, with a laptop using Wi-Fi, would be available about 99.8 percent of the time, estimates Hoelzle at Google, which equates to about 18 hours of cumulative downtime a year. So, he says, “if Google provided Five 9s, you wouldn’t know.”

Obama’s politically cautious approach disappoints a backer and advisor • REICH, FROM 1B

“Why won’t he tell the alternative story? For three decades we’ve cut taxes on the wealthy while real wages stood still.” Obama’s liberal economic critics include Nobel Prize winners, Paul Krugman, the Princeton professor and columnist for The New York Times, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia professor who served as chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at MIT, once advised liberals to

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stop blaming Obama’s advisors for pushing policies too friendly to Wall Street — the president makes those decisions. Reich served as labor secretary for Clinton, and in his latest book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future he applauds Obama for deft work in preventing the economy from toppling into a Depression. But the president demanded too little of the bankers he saved, Reich says, and he conﬂated a rising stock market and soaring corporate proﬁts with an improving economy. The majority of U.S. citizens, who derive much

of their wealth from their homes rather than the stock market, are falling far behind the top 1 percent, who took in 23 percent of the nation’s income in 2007. That inequality, he says, is at the heart of the U.S. malaise. “Obama had a chance to reboot the bailout,” he says. “He could have said to the bankers, ‘If you want more, you’ve got to put a cap on salaries, you’ve got to agree to modify X number of mortgages.’ ” Reich sees a parallel with his former boss, Clinton, and draws no comfort from the comparison. Confronted with a muscular Republican

majority in the House in 1994, Clinton mastered triangulation, which is to say he sailed into a sea neither Republican nor Democratic. It was a strategic masterstroke, but he threw overboard some liberal founding stones. “I found myself truly impressed by how quickly Clinton moved to the putative center,” says Reich, a touch archly. Reich sees Obama taking a similar tack. This argument drives the president and his advisors to distraction. To survive in a Washington where Republicans and Democrats are on nearly permanent war footing with

one another, the president’s advisors say, requires an agility little understood by those on the outside. They point to healthcare and ﬁnancial reform, to extended unemployment beneﬁts and to the stimulus bills (which liberal economists criticized as too small) that let city and state governments avoid tens of thousands of layoffs. They will put their accounting up against that of their critics. (Congressional Republicans are split between those who have described Obama as a liberal, or a dangerous radical, or, more exotically, a Kenyan-style socialist). Reich says he knows careful compromise is the

daily bread of government. He emphasizes he is not a paleo-liberal. He favors incentives rather than the lash of requirement when it comes to job creation. He pushes an industrial policy to make workers more competitive. And his view that trade is a beneﬁcial balm leads him to a fairly benign view of China. He also remains willing to have his heart broken by politicians. He worked in the Gerald Ford administration — as a young lawyer he worked for Robert Bork, now a conservative luminary — and for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

1/10/2011 5:34:32 AM

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TIMOTHY FADEK/BLOOMBERG NEWS FILE, 2007

Verizon can announce iPhone 4 on its network From Miami Herald Wire Services

Verizon Wireless plans to announce Tuesday that it will soon begin selling Apple’s iPhone 4, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans. The long-expected arrival of the iPhone on Verizon will end years of exclusivity for AT&T and is likely to upend the smartphone market in the United States. On Friday afternoon, Verizon invited reporters to a news conference on Tuesday in Manhattan, N.Y. The company did not say what it planned to announce, but given the timing less than a week after top Verizon executives gave a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, speculation in tech circles was rampant that Verizon would announce that it would begin selling the iPhone. • BANKING REPORT ON RBS CHIEF’S BONUS IS ‘SPECULATION’ Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said a report in the Sunday Telegraph that Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester will receive a $3.9 million bonus is “pure speculation.” “No announcement has been made, no decision has been made,” Cameron told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. • SPAIN NATIONAL BROADCASTER BANS BULLFIGHTING Spain’s leading broadcaster said it will no longer show the country’s centuries-old tradition of bullfighting in order to protect children from viewing violence. Spain’s state network, RTVE, lists its new ban on transmitting bullfighting programs under a chapter called “Violence with animals” in its latest stylebook and says it “will not broadcast bullfighting.” One of the reasons given by RTVE is that bullfights “generally coincide with hours protected or specially protected for young viewers.”

China link probed in Renault spy case BY MATTHEW SALTMARSH AND DAVID JOLLY

POSSIBLE BIG MOVE: The arrival of the iPhone on Verizon will end years of exclusivity for AT&T and is likely to upend the smartphone market in the United States.

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

PARIS — The French government is investigating possible Chinese involvement in a suspected case of industrial espionage related to electric cars at Renault, a lawmaker from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party has said. Bernard Carayon, a member of parliament from the UMP party, told France Info radio on Friday that there were “several, usually reliable sources” within the French government who believe that a Chinese intermediary had sought to obtain secrets from the three Renault executives who were suspended this week by the automaker. A day after the government said it would seek to bolster industrial secrecy rules to protect French companies, some details of the incident have begun to leak out. Reuters reported that a French intelligence agency — the Direction Centrale

du Renseignement Interieur, which reports to the Interior Ministry — had opened an inquiry and that it would be following “a Chinese lead.” The newspaper Le Figaro cited unidentified people at Renault as saying that the carmaker and the French secret service suspected Chinese involvement. A Renault spokeswoman, Raluca Barb, declined to comment. The Chinese embassy in Paris did not respond to requests for comment. Though it is not clear what information is being sought, speculation has focused on detailed plans for batteries used in the electric cars. Also on Friday, a lawyer for one suspended employee said his client was “stupefied” to learn that the company was accusing him of spying. The lawyer, Thibault de Montbrial, said his client, Mathieu Tenenbaum, who had been deputy director of the electric vehicle program, was hustled out of his office

Monday with no explanation and has not received any communication regarding his supposed crime, either from the company or investigators. Tenenbaum, who helped to oversee electric vehicle development, denies having spied for anyone, Montbrial said. “It’s ridiculous to have to deny something that you read about in the media,” Montbrial said. Tenenbaum is the second of the three names to leak out. On Thursday, a person with knowledge of the situation conﬁrmed on condition of anonymity that Michel Balthazard, senior vice president for advanced engineering and a member of the management committee, was also involved. The French lawmaker, Carayon, is head of parliament’s economic intelligence working group and has worked on legislation aimed at improving the security of industrial information. He spoke after Renault said it planned to take legal

action over the matter, which it described as representing a serious breach by executives in “extremely strategic” positions. “It’s an affair that concerns the state, as the state is a shareholder,” Carayon said. The government holds about 15 percent of Renault shares. With its partner Nissan, Renault is investing $5.16 billion to develop electric cars and has ﬁled for numerous patents to protect related technology. The two companies’ investment is the largest by any major auto group, and puts them closest to volume production of what could be a range of breakthrough products. Rivals would logically be interested to know more about their battery and engine technology. Carayon told France Info that he was surprised Renault had previously not worked more closely with intelligence agencies to defend its industrial secrets.

Scope and pace of gulf cleanup criticized BY CAMPBELL ROBERTSON New York Times Service

BAY JIMMY, La. — Eight months since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began, the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico goes on, with over 5,000 people and more than 300 boats still at work. Tar balls are still washing up on beaches. Visible sheen is still showing up in certain places in the wake of motorboats. Oil is being washed out of some areas, where it was buried, only to show up someplace else. And so the debates among the responders go on as well, though perhaps not as publicly and ﬁercely as they once did. On Friday, state and local ofﬁcials ferried a group

of reporters to this stretch of marshland, one of the hardest-hit areas on the Gulf Coast, and criticized BP and federal agencies for not mounting a sufficiently aggressive response operation. It was the first such news conference in some time, though the parameters of the debate were not particularly new. Federal officials spoke of the need for testing, assessment and proper procedures to forestall unnecessary environmental damage in the cleanup, while state officials denounced what they saw as indifference and inaction in the face of the environmental damage that was already taking place. “It has never been accept-

able to leave oil this thick in the marsh,” said Todd Baker, a biologist program manager for the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, pointing to thick, glistening mats mixed with oil and vegetation slumping upward to the healthy marsh grasses. The longer this oil remains, Baker said, the more likely the healthy grasses will die and the underlying root system will suffocate, permanently damaging the marsh. Furthermore, he said, the exposed oil is a danger to birds — dozens of white pelicans were crowded onto a nearby island. But Scott Zengel, a shoreline cleanup and assessment team coordinator for

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that tests were still being done to devise cleanup methods that would not do more harm than good. “Things have been tried, but you have to keep in mind that in marshes there are no easy answers,” he said. Some scientists, he said, thought the best course of action was to sit back and allow for natural recovery, as any aggressive treatment would lead to more erosion. But others disagreed, Zengel said, adding that he expected they would start attacking the oil here one way or another before springtime.

• GERMANY ILLEGAL DIOXIN LEVELS IN POULTRY DETECTED German investigators have found excessive levels of cancer-causing dioxin in chicken — the first such confirmation of tainted meat since the discovery that German farm animals had eaten contaminated feed, possibly for months. Three chickens — out of 15 samples of chicken, turkey and pork sent to the EU Commission — showed a dioxin concentration twice as high as legally allowed, an Agriculture Ministry spokesman said Saturday. The spokesman said the chicken meat had not been sold but eating it would not have been harmful in the short term since the contamination levels were so low. He declined to be named in line with government policy. • CRUISE SHIP PASSENGERS COMPLAIN OF STOMACH ILLNESS Passengers aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise out of Tampa, Fla., returned to port this morning complaining of stomach illnesses. The Radiance of the Seas left port Jan. 3 bound for the Mexican cities of Cozumel and Puerto Maya. The company said about 150 passengers and three crew members came down with an illness, which officials suspect may be norovirus. Also known as stomach flu, the virus is highly contagious and often transmitted in communal spaces, including schools and cruise ships. There were more than 2,300 passengers aboard the Radiance of the Seas. • GULF OIL SPILL INVESTIGATORS PUSH BACK AGAINST CRITICISM Federal investigators are pushing back against criticism they aren’t doing enough to keep companies involved in the Gulf oil spill away from any hands-on role in the forensic analysis of a key piece of equipment that failed to keep crude from entering the sea. Rep. Edward J. Markey sent a letter Friday to the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement detailing what he said are new concerns about conflicts of interest in the blowout preventer testing. Markey’s letter said a Cameron International employee was allowed to operate components of the blowout preventer during the same week that an ocean energy bureau spokeswoman insisted company representatives are not involved in testing the 300-ton device. • ALASKA PIPELINE SHUT DOWN AFTER LEAK DISCOVERED The company that runs the Trans Alaska Pipeline has shut down oil production after a leak was discovered at a North Slope pump station. Alyeska Pipeline Service said the leak was discovered Saturday and appeared to be from a section of piping encased in concrete next to Pump Station 1 — the first pump station on the 800-mile pipeline. The company says it’s too early to tell how much oil has spilled, but it appears to have been contained.

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GERALD HERBERT/AP

UNHAPPY: Billy Nungesser, left, president of Plaquemines Parish, La., expresses frustration to Cmdr. Dan Lauer of the Coast Guard over the oil spill cleanup, during a tour of an oil impacted area in Bay Jimmy on Friday.

Court ruling on foreclosures a warning to banks BY GRETCHEN MORGENSON New York Times Service

The highest court in Massachusetts has ruled that US Bancorp and Wells Fargo erred when they seized two troubled borrowers’ properties in 2007, putting the U.S. banks on notice that foreclosures cannot be based on improper or incomplete paperwork. Concluding that neither institution had proved it had the right to evict the borrowers, the Supreme Judicial Court voided the foreclosures, returning ownership of the properties to the borrowers and opening the door to other foreclosure do-overs in the state. Legal experts said that while this ruling did not

set a precedent for other states, the outcome will be closely watched because it is the ﬁrst such ruling from a state’s highest court. Investors viewed the ruling as negative for banks; an index of ﬁnancial company shares fell almost 1 percent on the day. “The broad implication is you’ve got to dot your i’s and cross your t’s,” said Kathleen Cully, an expert in bankruptcy and lender regulatory law in New York. “You need a proper chain of title, and in both of these cases there was a gap in the chain.” The case dates to spring 2007, when Wells Fargo and US Bancorp began foreclosure proceedings against delinquent borrowers on two

separate properties. Neither borrower fought the proceedings — the courts in Massachusetts are not obligated to oversee foreclosures — and both banks quickly seized the properties. The banks’ problems began in the fall of 2008, when Wells Fargo and US Bancorp sought judgments from the Massachusetts Land Court that would have given them clear title to the properties. In 2009, the court rejected the banks’ arguments, ruling that the banks had not been assigned the mortgages before they foreclosed on the borrowers, as is required. Instead, the banks had acquired the mortgages after they had begun foreclosure proceedings.

The ruling Friday upheld that decision. Foreclosures are supposed to occur only when lenders can prove they own the note underlying the property. The banks involved in the matter had asked the Massachusetts court to make its ruling prospective, meaning that it would affect only new foreclosures. The court declined to do so, allowing foreclosure cases that have been completed to be reopened and brought under scrutiny. In a legal brief presented to the Massachusetts court, representatives of the real estate industry said there were thousands of foreclosure cases in the state with similar facts.

1/10/2011 2:30:27 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

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MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

HEALTH BY MIKE STOBBE Associated Press

ATLANTA — Fluoride in drinking water — credited with dramatically cutting cavities and tooth decay — may now be too much of a good thing. It’s causing spots on some kids’ teeth. A reported increase in the spotting problem in the United States is one reason the federal government announced Friday it plans to lower the recommended limit for fluoride in water supplies — the first such change in nearly 50 years. About two out of five adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of too much fluoride, a surprising government study found recently. In some extreme cases, teeth can even be pitted by the mineral — though many cases are so mild only dentists notice it. Health officials note that most U.S. communities have fluoride in their water supplies, and toothpaste has it too. Some kids are even given fluoride supplements. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is announcing a proposal to change the recommended fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will review whether the maximum cutoff of 4 milligrams per liter is too high. The standard since 1962 has been a range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the splotchy tooth condition, fluorosis, is unexpectedly common in kids ages 12 through 15. And it appears to have grown much more common since the 1980s. “One of the things that we’re most concerned about is exactly that,” said an administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly before the release of the report.

U.S. says too much fluoride

in water

AP FILE

WORRISOME: According to the Centers of Disease Control, nearly 23 percent of U.S. children ages 12-15 had fluorosis in a study done in 1986 and 1987. That rose to 41 percent in the more recent study, which covered the years 1999 through 2004. The official described the government’s plans in an interview with the Associated Press. The government also is expected to release two related EPA studies which look at the ways U.S. citizens are exposed to fluoride and the potential health effects. This shift away from government’s long-standing praise of the benefits of fluoride is sure to re-energize groups that still oppose it. Fluoride is a mineral that exists naturally in water and

soil. Scientists in the early 1940s discovered that people who lived where water supplies naturally had more fluoride also had fewer cavities. Some locales have naturally occurring fluoridation levels above 1.2. Today, most public drinking water supplies in the United States are fluoridated, especially in larger cities. Counting everyone, including those who live in rural areas, about 64 percent of U.S citizens drink fluoridated water.

Fluoridation has been fought for decades by people who worried about its effects, including conspiracy theorists who feared it was a plot to make people submissive to government power. Fluorosis is considered the main downside related to ﬂuoridation. According to the CDC, nearly 23 percent of children ages 12-15 had ﬂuorosis in a study done in 1986 and 1987. That rose to 41 percent in the more recent study, which covered the years 1999 through 2004.

“We’re not necessarily surprised to see this slow rise in mild fluorosis,” William Kohn, director of the CDC’s division of oral health, said in a recent interview. Health officials have hesitated to call it a problem, however. In most kids, it’s barely noticeable; even dentists have trouble seeing it, and sometimes don’t bother to tell their unknowing patients. Except in the most severe cases, health officials considered the discoloring

of fluorosis to be a welcome trade-off for the protection fluoride provides against cavities. “One of water fluoridation’s biggest advantages is that it benefits all residents of a community — at home, work, school, or play. And fluoridation’s effectiveness in preventing tooth decay is not limited to children, but extends throughout life, resulting in improved oral health,” said HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, in a statement.

Diet companies promote new ways to fight against flab BY ELIZABETH OLSON New York Times Service

Diet season is here, and three well-known bulgebusting companies — Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig — have made major changes in their programs for consumers looking to shed weight packed on during the holidays, or before. The diet purveyors are jockeying for a share of the rich industry, estimated at $60 billion or more yearly, by ramping up their marketing to showcase new weightloss approaches like an electronic activity tracker and food upgrades. And for those who detest counting calories, there may be a shortcut to a svelte figure. The sports apparel makers Fila USA and Reebok International are offering specially engineered body-toning wear that they say makes exercise — and even everyday movement — more efficient, and allows the wearer to look good while doing it. For the millions who do embark on diets, Weight Watchers International has a new PointsPlus program, its biggest change in the last dozen years in how calories are counted. Nutrisystem North America has spruced up its packaged meals program by offering fresh-frozen foods. And Jenny Craig introduced a program to allow dieters to monitor calorie intake and physical activity levels, which it says is the biggest innovation in its 27-year history. The weight loss giants often rely on celebrity dieters to promote their methods. This year, Weight Watchers is mixing it up by telling individual success stories online, but sticking with the celebrity spokeswoman Jennifer Hudson, who, in form-fitting dresses, sings the program’s praises, literally, with a redo of the song Feeling Good. The company started its

10PGB05.indd 5 20100409-Mh5b-MHI.indd 5

new campaign early — the day after Christmas, instead of in January — and broadcast commercials on New Year’s Eve countdown TV shows, said Cheryl Callan, its chief marketing officer. Nutrisystem is remaking itself with new offerings, developed with the advice of professional chefs, that add fresh-frozen foods like Asian-style beef to its choices. The company also lowered its monthly cost to $299, down $100 from 2010. Nutrisystem will still use the celebrities Marie Osmond and Dan Marino, but its new advertising campaign focuses on customer stories. “Customers want to hear from people who use the brand,” said Christopher Terrill, Nutrisystem’s chief marketing officer. The company, with its new agency, DonatWald & Haque, of Santa Monica, Calif., sent cameras to a range of customers, and their home videos are featured in the company’s ads, with the tag line, “Hooray you! New you revolution.” Its competitor Jenny Craig, which offers packaged meals, also has relied on weight-dropping celebrities like the actress Valerie Bertinelli to recruit customers. The company will soon announce the celebrity who will appear in ads for its new Metabolic Max program, which combines weight management counseling, menu planning and the BodyMedia FIT armband. Dieters no longer have to guess whether they are eating too many calories or exercising too little, the company said; they can upload their data and track everything in real time. Steve Bellach, vice president for North American marketing, said Jenny Craig would expand its reach by showing short videos about the new program in gyms, shopping malls and some doctors’ offices. Bellach said the company, a division of Nestle, would

increase ad spending about 20 percent this year. It spent nearly $34 million in 2010 on advertising, according to Kantar. For those seeking a shortcut, Fila offers toning apparel, which it is promoting with a saucy campaign. One ad lists the many names for glutes. John Mamus, head of Fila’s creative agency, Mamus, said the jiggle-reducing wear answers the perennial question about whether one’s pants flatter one’s backside. The Lycra gear, which the ads promise will “Achieve amazing in half the time,” is engineered to compress certain muscles to enhance blood circulation and oxygenation, and add resistance to exercise movements, Fila said. Fila’s rival Reebok introduced its EasyTone apparel in November with its creative agency, DDB, a unit of Omnicom Group, with its “Reewind” campaign. Its EasyTone footwear spot rewinds in the middle to show apparel in the second half. The spot shows how EasyTone shoes help make legs and derriere look great “and how the apparel similarly makes you work a bit harder in the glutes and in the upper body,” said John Lynch, who is in charge of U.S. marketing for Reebok. The company spent $23 million in 2009 for its advertising, according to Kantar, and more than doubled its spending in the first half of 2010. That was before the introduction of EasyTone apparel, which is different from its workout wear. All the programs and apparel could be for naught if an effective weight loss pill comes to market, warned John LaRosa, of Marketdata Enterprises, which is based in Tampa, Fla., and monitors the diet industry. “People typically flock to such a drug rather than a structured program,” he said. “They always want weight loss in a bottle.”

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1/10/2011 4:51:20 AM 09/04/2010 3:27:34

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

DIVERSIONS GARFIELD

BY JIM DAVIS

BY SCOTT ADAMS

Opening lead — ♣ four

heart. Declarer could not now avoid the further loss of It was Gordon Gecko who three hearts and a diamond — down one. famously opined that greed Had declarer seen the risk, was good. At the bridge table, he might well have asked just as in the stock market, WEST EAST you will sometimes find that himself whether taking the ♠J8 ♠ 10 6 5 4 3 bulls and bears make a living finesse against the club king was really worth it. If he was ♥KQ63 ♥ 10 9 8 7 but pigs get slaughtered. prepared to give up on overIn today’s deal it was not ◆95 ◆A8 tricks, he had a safe line for uncommon for West to lead ♣J9842 ♣K3 the contract. He simply rises a low club against three noSOUTH with the club ace at trick one trump. Despite the absence of a Stayman inquiry, leading and goes after diamonds. ♠AQ2 With the club queen and 10 from a moderate five-card ♥AJ5 minor is just as likely to work to act as stoppers, there is no ◆KJ762 lie of the club suit that will as leading from a chunky ♣Q6 give the defenders more than major. Vulnerable: East-West three tricks to go with their And so it proved at many diamond ace. Thus declarer tables, when South decided Dealer: South is sure to get to nine tricks to be a pig and ended up The bidding: before the defenders come to as bacon. When he played South West North East five winners. low from dummy at the first 1 NT Pass 3 NT All pass trick, East won his king and was not slow to shift to a 1-10 —BOBBY WOLFF NORTH ♠K97 ♥42 ◆ Q 10 4 3 ♣ A 10 7 5

DILBERT

For more comics & puzzles, go to www.MiamiHerald.com/comics.

ACES ON BRIDGE

CHESS QUIZ ZITS

BY JIM BORGMAN AND JERRY SCOTT

PEANUTS CLASSICS

BY CHARLES SCHULZ

BLACK TO PLAY Hint: Too easy for a hint.

Solution: 1. ... Qf3 wins a knight [Zvaginsev-Karjakin ’10.

DEAR ABBY

BALDO

BY HECTOR CANTU AND CARLOS CASTELLANOS

DOONESBURY

BABY BLUES

BY GARRY TRUDEAU

BY RICK KIRKMAN AND JERRY SCOTT

Dear Abby: My son, “Jarod,” was in a relationship with “Gayle,” who has a small son, “Danny.” My husband and I took Danny into our hearts as our grandson. Danny formed a bond with Jarod’s other two children and they consider him a brother. Although Jarod’s relationship with Gayle didn’t last, we continue to maintain close ties with Danny. Jarod’s new girlfriend, “Liz,” also has a small son. Liz has asked me to end my relationship with Danny because she considers it a “threat” to her and her son. I feel Liz is asking too much. How can I just stop loving Danny? Why is she asking me to do this? When I asked Liz if she were to break up with Jarod, would that mean I could never again speak to her son, she said, “Yes”! I don’t think relationships should be disposable, but I can see that refusing Liz’s request will cause a rift. She refuses to visit our home as long as we continue to treat Danny as our grandson. I need your advice because my heart is breaking. Emotionally Invested in California What Liz is saying is not a “request,” it’s blackmail. It appears your son is involved with an insecure and manipulative woman who does not grasp that there is room in your heart for Jarod’s children, Danny and her son, too. I sincerely hope you won’t give in, and that you will talk to your son and explain to him that you would like to accept Liz and her son, but if she persists in the stance she’s taking, you will miss her. You have described someone who has a lot of growing up to do, and I hope your son recognizes it before he makes a mistake he may regret.

their parents were just a couple of dollars over the limit. What a disgraceful way to treat the family of a soldier! I had money set aside for Christmas and decided to pay for those children’s lunches for the rest of the year. It wasn’t cheap — $2 per lunch for three kids — but it was worth it. Abby, please let your readers know that if anyone can afford even a few dollars, to inquire at their local school if there is a soldier’s child — or any child — who needs a free lunch. Our soldiers shouldn’t have to worry about their kids going hungry in school. P.S. My neighbors do not know about my donation. Lending a Hand in the Midwest You are an angel. One would think that children of active members of the military would get a better break, but if your letter is any indication, it appears that isn’t the case. Readers, if you have a few dollars to spare, consider contacting your local school(s) and asking if they have a program to accommodate children from families whose income may be “just over the line.” Privacy rules may prevent the identities of the children from being disclosed, but the money could be put into a fund for this purpose.

ANSWER TO SATURDAY’S PUZZLE:

Dear Abby: My neighbor’s children were walking home from school last month when I saw that they had dropped some papers. When I returned them to the kids, I noticed they were behind on their school lunch bill. The oldest child mentioned, “I hope Mom can pay or we’ll have to eat cheese sandwiches.” I was beyond angry! Their father is doing his second tour in Afghanistan, and their mother is doing her best to make ends meet. I took my fury to the school and discovered the kids didn’t qualify for free lunches because

HOROSCOPE IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: Having street smarts will pay off between now and March, as you are able to make a profit when a lucrative business or career opportunity is at hand. • CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Your love magnet is supercharged and pulling someone closer. • AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You may be filled with a spirit of adventure as you are turned on and inspired by new ideas.

JUMBLE

• PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Life is a series of constant changes, but growth is optional. Discuss plans for utilizing joint resources. • ARIES (March 21-April 19): The more you must chase, the happier you are when you finally capture the heart of your quarry. • TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You and a special someone are in complete attunement in at least one crucial subject, so this is a very good time to move your relationship to a higher level. • GEMINI (May 21-June 20): It takes as much energy to daydream and wish as it does to plan. • CANCER (June 21-July 22): Follow your heart where love or money is concerned and you can’t go wrong. It’s the perfect night to enjoy a sweet surrender to sensual snuggles. • LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Mannerly maneuvering can put you at the head of the class. “Please” and “thank you” smooth the way. • VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Love and affection do not constitute a game of Trivial Pursuit in your life. • LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Robinson Crusoe was more hopeful and optimistic after he located Friday. • SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your latest romantic attraction can be wrapped around your little finger with very little effort. • SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You are not defeated when you lose. You are defeated when you quit. Don’t give up on something just because you lose one hand.

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CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Memorable Borgnine role 6 Knife 10 Brewery supply 14 A second time 15 Shine’s companion 16 Colorful food fish 17 Most cheap 19 Backward-arrow command 20 Supplanter of the silent movie 21 Pied Piper follower 22 Football holders 23 ___ Hatter 25 Swamp gas, essentially 27 Did a cobbler’s job 32 Speak on the record? 33 Do as one is told 34 Kimono closers 36 Centerfold 40 Had on 41 A Barbary capital 43 English noble 44 Hosiery mishaps 46 Chutzpah 47 Italian greeting 48 Wisconsin’s Fond du ___ 50 Indoor buzzer 52 Toro’s opponent 56 Have a little drink 57 Sci-fi crafts

58 Solver’s cry 60 Black Sea region 65 Part of a waiter’s income 66 One way of following the conversation 68 Quaker State port 69 Word with “thin air” 70 Cheese chunk 71 Fractions of mins. 72 Litmus ___ 73 Hibernation locations DOWN 1 Undeniable truth 2 Turkish official (var.) 3 Airplane section 4 Dirty dishes collector 5 Good way to show up for work 6 ___ Lanka 7 Stadium feature 8 State of northeast India 9 Improving 10 Telephone part 11 Nighttime breathing disorder 12 Carrying cargo 13 “___ were the days!” 18 Gung-ho type 24 Fix a computer program 26 Water faucet 27 Gets the dinghy going

28 Lustrous black, poetically 29 Spouse of Zeus 30 They may be found near temples 31 Washington or Shore 35 Farm storage units 37 Babe in the woods 38 Eurasia’s ___

39 42 45 49 51 52 53 54

Mountains Tactical maneuver Water channel Dejected “Chill out!” Urban problem Trumpet mufflers Fully in flames It’s debatable

55 River from the Alps to the North Sea 59 Declines (with “out of”) 61 Mental germ 62 Skirt style 63 Certain Georgia Tech grad 64 Mellows, as wine 67 Disintegrate

1/9/2011 9:38:34 PM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

SPORTS

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

Dolphins extend coach Sparano’s contract by 2 years BY MIKE BERARDINO Sun Sentinel

NAM Y. HUH/AP

TRIUMPHANT CRY: New York Jets place kicker Nick Folk (2) reacts after kicking the game-winning 32-yard field goal during the fourth quarter against the Indianapolis Colts in Indianapolis on Saturday.

Jets escape Manning and the Colts • JETS, FROM 8B

For their efforts, the Jets earned a return trip to New England, where, on Dec. 6, they were humiliated by the Patriots. That game ended, 45-3, as the Patriots simultaneously embarrassed and knocked the Jets from their status as contenders, at least until this week. The Jets will return to Foxborough, Mass., next Sunday afternoon. Most players in the locker room Saturday said they preferred to celebrate their first-round victory before worrying about their most hated rival. But a few allowed that they had not easily forgotten what happened there last month. “We’ve been wanting the Patriots for a while now,” tight end Dustin Keller said. “Ever since that game.” Such speech fits nicely under the heading “be careful what you wish for,” but the Jets banked their rematch, Round III, with resolve in the final minute. Antonio Cromartie gave the offense field position with a kickoff return of 47 yards. The Jets ran three plays, which gave them the ball at the 32-yardline with 29 seconds left. What happened next was debated afterward. Everyone agreed that the offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer wanted to

run the football. Coach Rex Ryan said Sanchez lobbied for and called a pass to wide receiver Edwards down the right sideline. Edwards said he, not Sanchez, argued for that play. Regardless, Sanchez dropped back and lobbed a perfect spiral, which Edwards hauled in for an 18-yard gain. This proved the difference between a long ﬁeld goal for Folk and the chip shot he eventually made. Sanchez ﬁnished with 18 completions and 189 yards, but those numbers were ultimately misleading. He led the Jets back against Manning, against the Colts, prompting Edwards to say afterward, “He did grow up in that second half.” Afterward, the subdued mood throughout the locker room impressed the veteran Jason Taylor more than anything. The Jets did not celebrate, did not hoot, nor holler, despite extending their strange season another week. “It was matter of fact,” Taylor said. “Like we expected to win. We haven’t won anything yet. We don’t get a hat, or a T-shirt, or anything for this.” In six career games before Saturday against defenses coached by Ryan, Manning held a 5-1 record, the lone loss courtesy of the second

half he rested against the Jets in late 2009. Ryan, in typical Ryan fashion, called their lopsided rivalry “personal” earlier in the week. Manning, in typical Manning fashion, shrugged. After all, Manning decimated the Jets in the AFC championship game last season, passing at will, as if in practice, in the second half. But Manning did his decimating with receiver Austin Collie and tight end Dallas Clark, two playmakers who were on injured reserve when Manning took the ﬁeld Saturday. Ryan appeared to confuse Manning like never before in this one. The book on Manning says teams must pressure him to beat him. The Jets took the opposite approach. They rarely blitzed. They played more zone coverage than usual, loading zones with defenders, activating 10 defensive backs and only four defensive linemen. They wanted to force Manning to throw short passes, underneath, and for the most part, they were successful. Manning did throw for 225 yards, but 57 of those came on one play, a touchdown strike to Pierre Garcon that provided the only points in the ﬁrst half. At his news conference, Ryan could not contain his smile. It spread wider than

his ample midsection. “He feels like how I normally feel,” Ryan said, knowing it was his game plan that had finally toppled his nemesis Manning. The Jets returned to their ground-and-pound philosophy on offense, rushing for 169 yards against the Colts. The Colts’ run defense had shut down, in order, Maurice Jones-Drew, Darren McFadden and Chris Johnson over the three previous weeks, NFL running royalty. But not the Jets. Not Saturday. On the first drive of the third quarter, they ran eight times in 10 plays. On their next drive, at the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth, they took 17 plays and drained nearly 10 minutes off the clock. Both drives ended in 1-yard touchdown runs by LaDainian Tomlinson, the second of which produced a 14-10 lead, the Jets’ first. The Jets needed to resurrect their ground game. Sanchez completed only 9 of his 19 attempts in the first half, for 84 yards and plenty of consternation among those dressed in green and white. It appeared returning to the run game had settled Sanchez into a rhythm. He stopped throwing over the heads of his receivers, stopped the skittish movement in the pocket.

DAVIE, Fla. — A fragile peace has been brokered between Dolphins coach Tony Sparano and general manager Jeff Ireland. How long it will last — and how effective they will be as a tandem going forward — remains to be seen in the wake of the team’s failed pursuit of former Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh. For now, it should help that Sparano’s contract has been extended two years, through 2013, according to a Dolphins source. His $2.8 million salary is believed to remain in the same range, and he will also have an “expanded role” in player personnel decisions. Ireland, as before, will have the ﬁnal say in that area. “There’s no problem there,” the source said Friday night of the SparanoIreland dynamic. Earlier in the day, around the time Harbaugh was being introduced to the Bay Area media as the new 49ers coach, the Dolphins’ football leadership was threatening to collapse into complete chaos. A 4:45 p.m. “media roundtable” with unspeciﬁed members of the team’s power structure was “postponed” 10 minutes before it was to take place at the team’s training facility. Ninety minutes later, after Sparano’s extension was hammered out, the press opportunity was rescheduled for noon EST on Saturday. Dolphins owner Steve Ross is expected to attend along with Ireland and Sparano, who have gone 25-24 (including a playoff loss) in three seasons with the Dolphins. Friends and work associates for the past eight years, dating to their days with the Dallas Cowboys, Sparano and Ireland had “issues to resolve,” a source said, after the Ireland-assisted pursuit of Harbaugh fell through late Thursday in California. Tensions had mounted between the two proteges

Seahawks hungry for more after shocking the Saints • SEAHAWKS, FROM 8B

away and ﬁreworks shot off above the stadium. “We kind of expected to win,” Carroll said. “I know that sounds crazy, but we did expect to win. The fact that it happened, it’s just kind of like, we want to take it in stride and go to the next one.” The Seahawks were the ﬁrst team with a losing record to make the playoffs in a nonstrike year. But they also had a division title, something the wild-card Saints (11-5) did not. That meant the Seahawks got to play at home amid some of the NFL’s most vociferous fans and the Northwest’s chilly, damp weather. The Saints had mostly pressure on their side. They were the largest road favorite in postseason history (11 points) and a franchise that had never won a playoff road game. “I’ve been the heavy favorite,” Seattle receiver Brandon Stokley said two

MCT

WRESTLING AWAY: Seattle Seahawks’ Kelly Jennings, left, and Jordan Babineaux, right, tackle New Orleans Saints’ Julius Jones during the third quarter. days before the game. “All of a sudden, you get in a heavy game, and it’s ‘Uh-oh. It’s not supposed to be like this.’ You start feeling the pressure. If we can battle with them, get that thing into the fourth quarter,

then doubt starts creeping in their minds.” The Saints jumped to a quick 10-0 lead, and the game looked to be taking its expected, lopsided course. Hasselbeck threw an interception on his third pass. “Not exactly how you

want to start a game,” he said. Carroll approached him on the sideline. You cannot win or lose the game in the ﬁrst quarter, the coach said. The usually anemic Seahawks began moving the ball as if they had switched uniforms with the Saints’ dynamic offense. Hasselbeck soon led the Seahawks on a touchdown drive, capped by an 11-yard throw to Carlson that brought temporary equilibrium to the contest. Seattle outscored New Orleans 34-10 from midway through the ﬁrst quarter to the end of the third. Hasselbeck, who missed the last regular-season game and most of the one before it with a hip injury, completed 22 of 35 passes for 272 yards. On paper, the game should not have been close. The Saints brought the league’s sixth-best offense (372.5 yards a game) and fourthbest defense (306.2 yards). The Seahawks’ nine losses were all by at least 15 points.

None of their players made the Pro Bowl. All that was a preamble to a game as dizzying in its action as it was confounding in its outcome. With each move of the chains, Qwest Field rumbled with hope. With each touchdown, it quaked with belief. The Seahawks pulled ahead for the first time with 1:15 left in the second quarter. Hasselbeck lobbed a 45-yard touchdown pass to Stokley. Even the Saints’ spirited response — 11 plays, 77 yards and a short field goal on the half’s final play — could not dampen the sense that one of the NFL’s more memorable games was unfolding. Hasselbeck’s prettiest completion may have been the touchdown that capped the first drive of the second half — a 38-yard lob over the shoulder of Mike Williams that sent fans into delirium. The Seahawks had a 31-20 lead. And the Saints seemed far, far from home, and last year’s Super Bowl.

Ring of gamblers suspected of fixing soccer games in Europe • SOCCER, FROM 8B

Last week, however, the taint of scandal spread closer to the top tier when the German magazine Stern reported that a former striker at St. Pauli of Hamburg, Rene Schnitzler, had received more than ¤100,000 from gamblers. The suspected

10PGB07.indd 7

payments occurred when St. Pauli played in the second division of German soccer, but the club has since been promoted to the Bundesliga. St. Pauli said in a statement that it was aware that Schnitzler, during his time with the club, had suffered from “private, particularly ﬁnancial, problems.” Schnit-

zler, in an interview with Stern, had described himself as a betting addict. The club said it had not come across any signs of match ﬁxing, but said it was cooperating with the investigators. The steady drip of disclosures from the trial has kept soccer authorities on the defensive as they confront

corruption allegations and ethics questions on several fronts. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, said recently that he planned to set up an anticorruption committee in the organization, which has been hounded by questions over its decisions

to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. UEFA already has a betting-fraud-detection system, set up after a previous case involving Sapina, who in 2005 was convicted of conspiring to rig matches with the help of a German referee, Robert Hoyzer.

of former Dolphins football czar Bill Parcells, who brought both men to the Dolphins in 2008 but has since stepped away into a consulting role. Harbaugh, who signed a ﬁve-year, $25 million deal with the 49ers, spurned the Dolphins’ advances along with those of his alma mater, the University of Michigan. Initial reports late Thursday had Sparano returning for a fourth season in 2011, but complications arose over his contract and the working arrangement with Ireland. With his original fouryear deal set to expire after next season, Sparano would have had a hard time controlling the locker room or attracting top assistant coaches. With sweeping changes expected in the offensive staff, Sparano should have a better chance to ﬁll the role of departing SPARANO offensive coordinator Dan Henning. Quarterbacks coach David Lee and tight ends coach George DeLeone could be out as well, sources said. Potential replacements for Henning include current assistants Hue Jackson (Raiders), Pete Carmichael Jr. (Saints), John Garrett (Cowboys) and Rob Chudzinski (Chargers), sources said. Chudzinski formerly worked at the University of Miami. As for reports that talks with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher broke down over issues of control, two sources insisted things never got that far. Cowher was indeed contacted early this week but was unwilling to discuss the Dolphins job because Sparano still held it, sources said. To do otherwise, a source said, would have been “completely distasteful” to the current CBS football analyst.

NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE Atlantic Boston New York Philadelphia Toronto New Jersey

W L Pct GB 8 8 .778 — 21 14 .600 61/2 15 22 .405 131/2 12 24 .333 16 10 27 .270 181/2

Southeast Miami Orlando Atlanta Charlotte Washington

W 29 25 25 13 9

L 9 12 14 21 26

Pct .763 .676 .641 .382 .257

Central Chicago Indiana Milwaukee Detroit Cleveland

W 24 14 14 12 8

L 12 20 21 24 28

Pct GB .667 — .412 9 .400 91/2 .333 12 .222 16

GB — 31/2 41/2 14 181/2

WESTERN CONFERENCE Southwest San Antonio Dallas New Orleans Memphis Houston

W 30 26 21 17 16

L 6 10 16 20 21

Pct .833 .722 .568 .459 .432

GB — 4 91/2 131/2 141/2

Northwest Oklahoma City Utah Denver Portland Minnesota

W 25 25 20 20 9

L 13 13 15 17 28

Pct .658 .658 .571 .541 .243

GB — — 31/2 41/2 151/2

Pacific L.A. Lakers Golden State Phoenix L.A. Clippers Sacramento

W 26 15 14 11 8

L 11 21 20 24 25

Pct GB .703 — .417 101/2 .412 101/2 .314 14 .242 16

SATURDAY’S GAMES Atlanta 108, Indiana 93 Charlotte 104, Washington 89 Milwaukee 115, New Jersey 92 Detroit 112, Philadelphia 109, OT Chicago 90, Boston 79 Oklahoma City 109, Memphis 100 Orlando 117, Dallas 107 Utah 103, Houston 99, OT

1/10/2011 5:39:27 AM

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

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Flacco leads Ravens past young Chiefs BY DOUG TUCKER Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Coach Todd Haley warned his youthful Kansas City Chiefs that Baltimore’s defense would be the best they’d see all year. He was right. Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and the rest of the battle-tested Ravens rattled the Chiefs into five turnovers and held their offense to 25 yards in the second half in a 30-7 playoff victory Sunday. Joe Flacco threw two touchdown passes and Billy Cundiff kicked three field goals as the offense pounced on the scoring chances created by the Ravens’ smothering, veteran defense. Baltimore (13-4) broke open a close game with a touchdown and two field goals off turnovers in the second half. Kansas City (10-7), which set a club record with a six-game improvement to win the AFC West, now go into the NFL record book as the only team to lose seven postseason games in a row. The Ravens also shook off the family tragedy that Reed has dealt with since Friday morning, when the Pro Bowl safety’s brother apparently disappeared into the Mississippi River. After the game, Reed was presented with the game ball. Reed called his teammates his second family whose support is helping him get through this ordeal. “Just being there for strength, respect for what’s going on,” Reed said. “They just gave me the team ball for my family.” Reed said his family wanted him to play. “My family kept me focused. My older brother called me and told me, ‘Do what you do. You handle your business, we’ll take care of everything over here.’ ” Baltimore will hit the road again

to play AFC North rival Pittsburgh on Saturday in the third matchup against the Steelers this season. The bitter rivals split their seasons series, with each winning on the other’s home field. The Ravens led only 10-7 in the third quarter when Kansas City lost a fourth-and-inches gamble and then collapsed, quickly. Dawan Landry stopped the play, throwing Jamaal Charles for a 5-yard loss. On the next play, Tamba Hali drew a 15-yard penalty for a late hit on Flacco and the Ravens drove in for Cundiff’s 29-yard field goal, making it 13-7 with 6:36 left in the third. A moment later, Lewis put a jarring hit on Dexter McCluster, knocking the ball loose. Chris Carr recovered on the Kansas City 17, leading to another 29-yarder by Cundiff. Then, a harried Cassel was intercepted by Landry, who angled left to the 21. An illegal block call on Baltimore’s Cody Redding pushed the Ravens back 10 yards, but Flacco made sure to convert this opportunity into a touchdown. On second down, he connected with Willis McGahee for 20 yards, then followed with a 13-yard completion to tight end Todd Heap, who had 10 catches for 108 yards. On second-and-4, Flacco fired it over the middle to Anquan Boldin in the back of the end zone, beating cornerback Brandon Flowers and giving the Ravens a 23-7 lead. With a little more than four minutes left in the game, McGahee went over the middle on fourth-and-1 and broke into the secondary, dragging a tackler with him into the end zone at the end of a 25-yard run. Charles gave the Chiefs a 7-3 lead in the first quarter with a 41yard scoring run after Tamba Hali sacked and stripped the ball from Flacco, recovering it himself.

NFL PLAYOFF GLANCE All Times EST

WILD-CARD PLAYOFFS

DIVISIONAL PLAYOFFS

Saturday, Jan. 8 Seattle 41, New Orleans 36 N.Y. Jets 17, Indianapolis 16

Saturday, Jan. 15 Baltimore at Pittsburgh, 4:30 p.m. Green Bay or Seattle at Atlanta, 8 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 9 Baltimore 30, Kansas City 7 Green Bay at Philadelphia, 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 16 Philadelphia or Seattle at Chicago, 1 p.m. N.Y. Jets at New England, 4:30 p.m.

ED ZURGA/AP

SAFE HANDS: Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Anquan Boldin makes a four-yard touchdown catch against Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Brandon Flowers during their NFL AFC wild-card game.

Seahawks shock Saints; want more Jets rally to see off

Manning and Colts

BY JOHN BRANCH New York Times Service

SEATTLE — The Seattle Seahawks spent most of the week being derided as the worst team ever to enter the NFL playoffs. History will remember these postseason interlopers for perpetrating one of the game’s biggest upsets. The surprising Seahawks, 7-9 in the regular season, beat the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints, 41-36, on the strength of Matt Hasselbeck’s four touchdown passes, a spongy defense that stiffened at the right moments and the consistent cacophony of 66,336 spectators at Qwest Field. The Seahawks, suddenly recast as the best sub-.500 team in playoff history, will go on the road to play the Atlanta Falcons or the Chicago Bears next weekend. “We’re not satisﬁed,” said tight end John Carlson, who caught two touchdown passes. “We’re not even .500 yet.” Running back Marshawn Lynch rumbled 67 start-and-stop yards for the game’s clinching touchdown with 3:22 left to give Seattle a 41-30 lead. Breaking a halfdozen tackles as if he were made

BY GREG BISHOP New York Times Service

ELAINE THOMPSON/AP

ONE THAT GOT AWAY: The Seattle Seahawks’ Marshawn Lynch, center, breaks away from a tackle by New Orleans Saints defenders to score a touchdown in the NFC wild-card game. of soap, Lynch stamped out the growing gloom that accompanied the impending dusk as the Saints seemed positioned for a comeback. Seattle succumbed to another in a string of long scoring drives by quarterback Drew Brees and

the Saints before Carlson captured the onside kickoff with 1:30 remaining. Coach Pete Carroll, in his ﬁrst year with the Seahawks, raised his arms as the ﬁnal seconds ticked • TURN TO SEAHAWKS, 7B

INDIANAPOLIS — The Jets spent this season winning late games and close games and overtime games, each victory more stunning, more dramatic than the rest. Apparently, they were training for Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, in another game few expected them to win, in another game it appeared that they had lost. There came Peyton Manning, one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, pushing the Indianapolis offense into field-goal range late in the fourth quarter. Out went Adam Vinatieri, perhaps the best clutch kicker in league history, to boot a 50-yard field goal that gave the Colts the lead with 57 seconds left. Imagine if before this game, the late fourth-quarter choices were Manning and Vinatieri, or Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez and kicker Nick Folk? Yet it was Sanchez, not Manning, who mounted the final drive. And it was Folk, not Vinatieri, who kicked a 32-yard field goal as time expired to send the Jets to a 17-16 victory.

NAM Y. HUH/AP

GUTTED: Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was disappointed after being defeated by the New York Jets in Indianapolis on Saturday. “We always seem to come out on top,” receiver Braylon Edwards said. “It’s our resolve. Once again, we pulled one out.” • TURN TO JETS, 7B

Corruption in soccer is eroding level playing fields of Europe BY ERIC PFANNER New York Times Service

BOCHUM, Germany — When Ante Sapina awarded ﬁve stars to a soccer game, he thought he could rest easy. For the governing authorities of the sport, however, such games have come back to haunt them. To Sapina, a Berlin-based gambler, a ﬁve-star rating denoted a game in which he had bribed players or even the referee to rig the outcome. He told a court in this industrial city in the Ruhr Valley last week that he had sometimes staked

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hundreds of thousands of euros on games like these, in what officials call the biggest match-fixing scandal ever in European soccer. A loose confederation of corrupt gamblers, centered in Germany but with links across Europe and Asia, is suspected of manipulating hundreds of matches, including World Cup qualifiers, UEFA Europa League encounters and even youth league games. Since the arrest of Sapina and several suspected coconspirators in November 2009, the investigation has prompted additional arrests in Germany, Swit-

zerland, Turkey and other countries. Dozens of players have been implicated, and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, has barred two referees for life. Sapina, 34, described by prosecutors as a leader of the matchﬁxing ring, appeared relaxed as he answered questions before a judge about games he was suspected of rigging. In one case, he said he had met one of the disgraced referees, a Bosnian named Novo Panic, in a parking lot in Sarajevo before a September 2009 World Cup quali-

fying match between Liechtenstein and Finland. In return for ¤40,000 ($52,800), Sapina said, Panic agreed to deliver the outcome that Sapina wanted: two goals were to be scored in the second half. Liechtenstein scored one goal without obvious help from the referee before Panic awarded a dubious penalty kick to Finland, which the Finns converted into a second goal. “Everyone could see that it shouldn’t have been a penalty,” Sapina testiﬁed. “It was clear that

he wanted to contribute to the success of the bet.” Neither Finland nor Liechtenstein is a soccer power, and most of the suspected frauds uncovered by the German investigators involved relatively minor matches, upon which sometimes-sizable sums were wagered. None of Europe’s elite professional soccer leagues, like the English Premier League, Serie A in Italy, La Liga in Spain or the Bundesliga of Germany, have been implicated. • TURN TO SOCCER, 7B

1/10/2011 4:54:49 AM