December 1, 2016

Thursday

December 1, 2016 T: 582-7800 | F: 582-7044 www.arubatoday.com

Tiger in fine form during Pro-Am Page 17

Southern Discomfort

3 More Bodies Found in Tennessee Wildfire Ruins; Toll at 7 A home and vehicle are damaged from the wildfires around Gatlinburg, Tenn., on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. Three more bodies were found in the ruins of the wildfires, raising the death toll to seven, a Tennessee mayor said Wednesday.

(Michael Patrick/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)

ADAM BEAM JONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) — Three more bodies were

found in the ruins of wildfires that torched hundreds of homes and businesses in the Great Smoky Mountains area, raising

the death toll to seven, a Tennessee mayor said Wednesday. Search-andrescue missions continued, and Sevier County Mayor

Larry Waters said they had found three people who had been trapped since the fires started spreading wildly in high winds on Mon-

day night. The mayor said the three were OK. “That is some good, positive news for a change,” he said.

Continued on page 4

Record Charitable Donations Reported for Giving Tuesday

DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Giving Tuesday, a 5-yearold phenomenon aimed at encouraging online charitable giving, produced record-shattering donations this week, according to two organizations which tracked the flow of gifts.

The 92nd Street Y in New York City, credited for launching the event in 2012, said Wednesday that contributions reported by organizations in the U.S. and abroad for a 24-hour period total $168 million — up from about $117 million in 2015. It said there were roughly 1.6 million donations, coming from people in nearly 100 countries.

Blackbaud, a software company that serves

many nonprofits, reported that it processed $47.7 million in online donations Tuesday for more than 6,700 organizations — a 20 percent increase in giving over last year. It said 22 percent of the donations were made via a mobile device.

In its first year in 2012, under the aegis of the 92nd Street Y, Giving Tuesday generated about $10 million in donations after being pitched as a way to promote charity on the heels of Thanksgiving weekend’s big shopping days.

In subsequent years, it has mushroomed into a decentralized global movement, with nonprofits of all types soliciting donations, promoting volunteerism and encouraging acts of

kindness.

“When I look around today, I see how far we’ve come — and how far we have left to go now that Donald Trump has been elected,” said an appeal from Barbara Miller, who serves on the board of the National Organization for Women.

On the right flank, the conservative Media Research Center appealed for donations to help it counter “the liberal media.”

Henry Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y and co-founder of Giving Tuesday, said the event’s success was due to “the work of ordinary people all over the country.”

“For all those things that may divide us, we all share a proud tradition of giving,” he said.q

A2 UP

Thursday 1 December 2016

FRONT

UN further tightens North Korea sanctions for recent nuclear test MICHAEL ASTOR Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday to further tighten sanctions on North Korea following months of diplomatic wrangling over how best to respond to North Korea’s latest nuclear test in September and their repeated defiance of international sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

The council unanimously approved the sanctions resolution with diplomats hailing it as a major step forward in its efforts to get the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

“In March, this council passed what were then the toughest sanctions to date on the DPRK. But the DPRK remained as determined as ever to continue advancing its nuclear technology. The DPRK found ways to continue diverting revenue from exports to fund its research, it tried to cover up its business dealings abroad, and it looked for openings to smuggle illicit materials by land, sea, and air. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said following the vote. “Today’s resolution systematically goes after each of these illicit schemes.”

The new sanctions target North Korea’s hard currency revenues by placing a cap on coal exports, cutting them by at least 62 percent or by an estimated $800 million.

The new sanctions further clarify that the “livelihood” exemption, which allowed the Chinese imports, is meant only to protect the livelihoods of those currently living inside North Korea, not Chinese people or companies doing business with the country.

The sanctions also slap a ban on North Korea’s exports of non-ferrous metals and sanction 11 government officials as well as 10 entities linked to the country’s nuclear weapons program.

The sanctions include a host of other measures cracking down on the country’s access to the international banking system and on North Korea’s export of statues, which have earned the country hard currency mostly through sales to African nations.

The resolution also threatens, for the first time, to suspend some or all of North Korea’s U.N. privileges if it does not comply.

North Korea’s main ally and largest trade partner, China hailed the sanctions as striking a balance between punishing the rogue nation and protecting its people.

“The resolution adopted by the council today demonstrates the uniform stand of the international community against the development by DPRK of its nuclear missile programs and forward the maintenance of the international non-proliferation regime,” China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi said, adding that the measures “are not intended to produce negative consequences on DPRK’s humanitarian situation.”

But Jieyi also criticized the planned U.S. deployment of a missile shield in South Korea as potentially destabilizing for the region.

Japan’s Ambassador Koro Bessho said he hoped the increased pressure would bring North Korea back to the negotiating table.

“We are introducing the sanctions, not for the sake of introducing sanctions but in order to change the course of DPRK policy. If the DPRK shows commitment to denuclearization, serious commitment and concrete actions, we are certainly ready to come into dialogue with them and try to solve the situation,” Bessho said.

North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.q

Cuba:

Fidel Castro’s ashes begin historic journey

M. WEISSENSTEIN PETER ORSI Associated Press HAVANA (AP) — Surrounded by white roses and drawn by a green military jeep, Fidel Castro’s ashes began a more than 500-

Sunday, ending a nine-day period of mourning that saw the country fall silent as thousands paid tribute to photographs of Fidel Castro and sign oaths of loyalty to his socialist, single-party system across the country

“Now I don’t know how things are going to be.”

Some slept on sidewalks overnight to bid goodbye to Castro after attending a massive Revolution Plaza rally Tuesday night. The presidents of Cuba, Mexi-

Backdropped by the Hotel Nacional, people hold Cuban flags as they wait for the motorcade transporting the remains of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. Castro’s ashes have begun a four-day journey across Cuba from Havana to their final resting place in the eastern city of Santiago.

mile (800-kilometer) journey on Wednesday across the country he ruled for nearly 50 years.

Just after 7 a.m, an honor guard placed a small, flagdraped cedar coffin under a glass dome on a trailer behind the Russian jeep.

Thousands of soldiers and state security agents saluted the 90-year-old leader’s remains as they rolled slowly out of Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution and the cortege made its way to the Malecon seaside boulevard and east into the countryside.

Tens of thousands of Cubans lined the path of the funeral procession, which retraced the path of Castro’s triumphant march into Havana nearly six decades ago. Many waved flags and shouted “Long may he live!” Others filmed the procession with cell phones, a luxury prohibited in Cuba until an ailing Castro left power in 2006 and his younger brother Raul began a series of slow reforms.

The ashes will be interred

on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday’s procession was the first moment in which ordinary Cubans saw the remains of the man who led a band of bearded young fighters out of the Sierra Maestra mountains, overthrew strongman Fulgencio Batista, faced off against the United States for decades and imposed Soviet-style communism on the largest island in the Caribbean.

For many Cubans, seeing the coffin of a man who dominated life here for a half-century made the idea of a Cuba without Fidel Castro real for the first time since his death Friday night.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, 26, the owner of a private restaurant that serves traditional Cuban food in the central city of Santa Clara, said there was a greater sense of uncertainty without Fidel and he couldn’t say whether that was positive or negative.

“The one who ruled the country was Fidel, in my opinion,” Gonzalez said.

co, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and South Africa, along with leaders of a host of smaller nations, offered speeches paying tribute.

Castro’s younger brother and successor, Raul, closed with a speech thanking world leaders for praising his brother, whom he called the leader of a revolution “for the humble, and by the humble.”

The crowds at the rally and along Wednesday’s route were a mix of people attending on their own and sent by the government in groups from their state workplaces.

“We love the comandante and I think it’s our obligation to be here and see him out,” said Mercedes Antunez, 59, who was bused in by the state athletics organization from her home in east Havana along with fellow employees.

Carpenter Rene Mena, 58, said his mother had taken him out of their home on the seafront boulevard as a baby to see Castro arrive that year. q

U.S. NEWS A3

Thursday 1 December 2016

Trump says he’s leaving businesses to avoid conflicts

President-elect Donald Trump, center, eats dinner with Mitt Romney, right, and Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at Jean-Georges restaurant in New York.

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

CATHERINE LUCEY Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump declared Wednesday he will leave his business empire behind to focus on his presidency. But the pros-

pect that he could simply shift more control to three of his adult children looked too cozy to some businessethics specialists who suggest the arrangement could bring unprecedented conflicts of interest into

Report: House OKs bill bolstering medical research, drug approvals ALAN FRAM Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The House easily approved a sweeping biomedical bill Wednesday that would help drug and medical device companies win swifter government approval of their products, boost disease research and drug-abuse spending and revamp federal mental health programs.

The compromise, which envisions spending $6.3 billion over the next decade, was condemned by consumer groups and some Democrats as a present to drugmakers that promised only paltry spending increases for underfunded federal programs.

But their objections were overwhelmed by an alliance among Republicans, many Democrats and the White House for a 996page measure that bore wins for both parties. The Senate’s expected final

approval next week would mark an uncommon episode of cooperation between the GOP-run 114th Congress — which plans to adjourn next week — and President Barack Obama in their dwindling days in office.

The vote was 392-26.

“We are on the cusp of something special, a oncein-a-generation opportunity to transform how we treat disease,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and an author of the legislation.

Not everyone agreed.

Rep. Rose DeLauro, DConn., said that while the bill contained “noble goals that I share,” its relaxation of some standards for federal drug approvals was dangerous and “neglects the very people clinical trials are meant to help, that is the patients.”q

the Oval Office.

Trump announced in a series of early morning tweets that he would leave his “great business,” adding: “While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

Trump provided no details, though he said legal documents were being prepared. He previously had said he’d leave his business operations to his three eldest children — Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka.

Asked if the tweets indicated plans to move the businesses to the children, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Wednesday, “it appears

that way.”

“The three adult children who do already work in the corporation are expected to continue in those roles and in fact increase their responsibilities in those roles,” Conway said.

Ethics experts have pushed for Trump to fully exit the ownership of his businesses using a blind trust or equivalent arrangement.

“Otherwise he will have a personal financial interest in his businesses that will sometimes conflict with the public interest and constantly raise questions,” Norman Eisen, President Barack Obama’s chief ethics lawyer, and Richard Painter, who held the same post for President George W. Bush, said in a joint statement.q

A4 U.S.

Thursday 1 December 2016

NEWS

3 more bodies found in Tennessee wildfire ruins, toll at 7

A forestry crew from South Dakota walking along the spur between cutting up trees fallen after wildfires burned multiple business and homes in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Three more bodies were found in the ruins of the wildfires, raising the death toll to seven, a Tennessee mayor said Wednesday.

(Michael Patrick/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)

Continued From Front The mayor said authorities

are still working to identify the dead and did not release any details about

how they were killed. State law enforcement set up a hotline for people to report

missing friends and family.

Officials have not said how many people they believe are missing.

Three brothers being treated at a Nashville hospital said they had not heard from their parents since they were separated while fleeing the fiery scene during their vacation.

Gatlinburg Police Chief Randall Brackins said they have searched about 30 percent or less of the city so far.

More than 14,000 people were evacuated from Gatlinburg on Monday night, and many of them are still nervously awaiting word of when they can get back in the city to see if they still have homes.

Buddy McLean said he watched Monday from a deserted Gatlinburg street as flames surrounded his 26-acre hotel nestled in the mountains.

His grandfather bought the land in 1945, and he developed a subdivision on part of it and built The Lodge at Buckberry Creek about 14 years ago on the mountainside to take advantage of the views of Mount LeConte.

McLean said four rooms were booked and another 15 people were having a private dinner when the hotel’s chef and event coordinator told everyone to evacuate.

“I have 35 employees,” McLean said. “All of them lost their jobs overnight.”

Storms moved through the area Wednesday as part of a system ravaging the Southeast, spawning suspected tornadoes in parts of Alabama and Tennessee, killing five people and injuring more than a dozen.

Officials in the Gatlinburg welcomed the rain but were worried about mudslides, rock slides and high winds knocking trees onto power lines, perhaps creating new fires similar to the deadly ones that sparked Monday night.

Most of those fires had been contained by Wednesday afternoon, but uncertainty remained for a region that serves as the gateway into the Great Smoky Mountains, the country’s most

visited national park.

The Rocky Top Sports World complex on the outskirts of town was serving as a shelter. Wolf McLellan stumbled into the facility after a day of wandering the streets. He said he was forced to evacuate a motel where he was staying.

He grabbed his guitar, two computers and his social security card and tried to flee with his dog, Kylie.

“She was too scared to move with the smoke and sirens and she just stood there. I didn’t want to drag her. I couldn’t drag her,” he said. “I figured the humane thing to do would be to just cut her loose.”

Officials in nearby Pigeon Forge lifted the evacuation order there, but the order still stood in Gatlinburg.

Gatlinburg Mayor Mike Werner said officials were discussing re-opening the city on Friday so business owners can assess damage and hopefully begin paying their employees again.

“You really can’t let everybody in yet because there are still areas that haven’t been searched, there are still areas where electric lines are down, power poles are down,” he said.

The mayor lost the home that he built himself, two dogs plus all seven of the condominium buildings he owned. In a city built on tourism, Werner has said the biggest thing people can do to help is come back. But for him, there is nothing to come back to.

“I really can’t dwell on it that much. I think of others that have lost theirs, and it keeps my mind off of our problems,” he said while fighting back tears. “It’s really hard, it’s really tough.”

Werner is staying at a friend’s house while managing the crisis with other state and local leaders. He has raised at least $150,000 from local businesses to help with the relief efforts, money he plans to spend helping people who don’t have insurance.

Almost nothing remained of the Castle, perhaps the largest and most iconic home overlooking Gatlinburg. q

U.S. NEWS A5

Thursday 1 December 2016

FBI: Islamic State group might have inspired OSU attacker MIKE HOUSEHOLDER ANDREW HUGGINS Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A Somali-born student who carried out a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University might have been inspired by the Islamic State group and a former alQaida leader, investigators said Wednesday.

Law enforcement officials said that it’s too soon to say the rampage that hurt 11 people on Monday was terrorism. They said they aren’t aware of any direct contact between the Islamic State group and the attacker, Ohio State student Abdul Razak Ali Artan.

“We only believe he may have been inspired” by the group, said Angela Byers, the top FBI agent overseeing federal investigations in the southern half of Ohio.

Artan also might have been influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who took a leadership role in al-Qaida before being killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen, Byers said.

Al-Awlaki has been cited as inspiration by numerous terror suspects over the years, including the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and, more recently, the man charged in bombings in New York and New Jersey.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said investigators are still going through Artan’s electronic devices, but it seems clears he was radicalized online.

He also said there doesn’t seem to be much time between the onset of Artan’s apparent radicalization and the attack, a period known in law enforcement and intelligence circles as “flash to bang.” That trend has disquieted law enforcement officials, who fear disaffected individuals are being inspired to violence after being only briefly exposed to radical ideology.

“This may be one of those cases which was just unpreventable,” he said,

Students mill about The Ohio State University student union as a message board covered in community reactions stands in the main hall following an attack at on campus the previous day, in Columbus, Ohio. Investigators are looking into whether a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University that injured several people was an act of terror by a student who had once criticized the media for its portrayal of Muslims.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

adding that there was no evidence yet to suggest Artan had been publicly communicating radical intentions over a long period of time.

He said the fact that Artan may have been inspired by a cleric killed five years ago shows the “limits of taking people off the battlefield.”

“As long as you have disaffected or alienated young people who are searching for something to belong to, the lure of this radical propaganda will continue to be very dangerous,” Schiff said.

The FBI said it was looking to verify whether Artan posted rantings on Facebook hours before the Ohio State attack criticizing U.S. interference in Muslim lands and warning of more Muslims in sleeper cells.

He did buy a knife the morning of the attack, but police don’t know if that was the weapon he used, investigators said.

The 18-year-old was fatally shot by a police officer shortly after driving into pedestrians and then slashing others with a knife. A preliminary autopsy released Wednesday showed Artan died from gunshots to the head and chest.

The officer was nearby because he had responded

to reports of a gas leak in a building. Those reports appear legitimate and unrelated to the attack, said Mike Woods, a deputy chief with Columbus police.

On Tuesday, a self-described Islamic State group news agency called Artan “a soldier of the Islamic State” who “carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of international coalition countries.” The Islamic State group has described other attackers around the world as its “soldiers” without specifically claiming to have organized the acts of violence.

“They have been known to take credit for incidents like this when the assailant is deceased and can’t refute that,” Byers said.q

A6 U.S.

Thursday 1 December 2016

Lawyers:

NEWS

Executing Georgia inmate would be unconstitutional KATE BRUMBACK Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — The act of executing a Georgia death row inmate scheduled to die next week would violate his constitutional rights, his lawyers argued in a court filing Wednesday.

William Sallie, 50, is scheduled for execution Tuesday. He was convicted in the March 1990 slaying of his father-in-law.

While his lawyers assert that the imposition of a death sentence by a jury is, itself, unconstitutional, that’s not the issue they’re raising in the petition filed the Superior Court of Butts County, which is the county where Georgia’s death row is located. Instead they argue that the act of carrying out the execution next week in Georgia would be unconstitutional.

The state attorney general’s office did not immediately have a comment Wednesday, spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary said in an email.

Executing Sallie would be arbitrary, and thus would amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, and would also violate his rights to due process, the petition says.

“The dramatic difference between prisoners under sentence of death in Georgia and those in almost every other jurisdiction that has the death penalty is that the vast majority of death sentences elsewhere will never be carried

This Georgia DOC photo shows William Sallie. Lawyers for the Georgia death row inmate scheduled to die next week say the act of executing their client would be unconstitutional. Sallie is to be executed Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. He was convicted in the March 1990 slaying of his father-in-law.

(Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)

out,” his lawyers argue.

While a Georgia death row inmate is generally set for execution soon after his post-conviction appeals are exhausted, those in other states often linger in prison long beyond the completion of those appeals, in effect a life prison sentence, Sallie’s lawyers argue. They note that there are at least 18 California death row inmates who have completed their appeals but who remain on death row with no execu-

tion date set, while Sallie is the only one in Georgia and his execution date was set within days of his appeals ending.

They also cite studies that have found that the death penalty is disproportionately imposed based on the race of the defendant and the victim, as well as where in the state the crime happened. When the victim is white and the crime happened in a rural area, both of which are true in Sallie’s case, there is a much

higher chance of getting death.

“Thus by ordering the infliction of (Sallie’s) execution on December 6, 2016, Georgia has selected Mr. Sallie to be executed from a pool of individuals assembled by a flawed scheme,” his lawyers argue.

That Georgia obtains an execution order from a judge simply by requesting one and then sets and carries out an execution in a very short timeframe denies a death row inmate due process, the petition says. Under state law, a Georgia execution order sets a seven-day period for the execution to be carried out that “shall commence not less than ten nor more than 20 days from the date of the order.”

By contrast, Texas law says an execution date may not be earlier than the 91st day after a judge enters the order. Even Texas, which has executed far more inmates than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, gives inmates a longer window of time to file challenges in the courts, Sallie’s lawyers argue.

After cutting his in-laws’ phone lines and breaking into their house about 12:45 a.m. March 29, 1990, Sallie went to the master bedroom and shot John and Linda Moore, according to a Georgia Supreme Court summary of the case. John Moore died from his injuries, and his wife was injured.

Lawsuits challenge abortion restrictions in 3 states DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Taking the offensive after Election Day setbacks, Planned Parenthood and its allies filed lawsuits Wednesday in North Carolina, Missouri and Alaska challenging laws that they view as unconstitutional restrictions on abortion.

“We are going to fight back state by state and law by law until every person has the right to pursue the life they want, including the right to decide to end a

pregnancy,” said Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer, Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley.

McDonald-Mosley was joined at a teleconference by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which are partners in the litigation. The attorneys said the lawsuits are a follow-up to a major U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that struck down tough abortion laws in Texas.

The restrictions being chal-

lenged in Missouri are similar to those that the high court struck down in Texas.

They require abortion clinics to meet physical standards for surgical centers and mandate that their doctors have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals.

Partly as a result of those laws, only one licensed abortion clinic remains in operation in Missouri.

To reach that clinic in St. Louis, some women must drive more than 300 miles, Planned Parenthood officials said.

“A woman must be able to make health decisions at different points in her pregnancy that are best for her circumstances, including whether to end a pregnancy, without interference from politicians,” said Irena Como, staff attorney for the ACLU of North Carolina.

The lawsuits were announced as supporters of abortion rights brace for renewed anti-abortion efforts at the state and federal level in the aftermath of the sweeping Republican victories on Election Day.

Judge adds $5M to McQueary’s $7M Penn State verdict MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A former Penn State assistant football coach’s treatment by the school after Jerry Sandusky was arrested entitles him to more than $12 million, a judge said Wednesday in a ruling that substantially increased last month’s jury award.

Judge Thomas Gavin ruled in favor of Mike McQueary’s whistleblower claim , adding more than $5 million to the $7.3 million jury verdict for defamation and misrepresentation.

“Only when the ‘Sandusky Matter’ became public was Mr. McQueary subjected to disparate treatment and adverse employment consequences,” Gavin wrote. He said the decision to order McQueary to keep out of athletic facilities after placing him on administrative leave with pay in November 2011 “was the equivalent of banishment.”

The judge said McQueary was humiliated in several respects, including “being told to clean out his office in the presence of Penn State personnel, an action that suggests he had done something wrong and was not to be trusted.”

McQueary has testified that in February 2001 he reported to then-head coach Joe Paterno and to two high-ranking administrators that he had just seen Sandusky, at the time retired as the school’s defensive football coach, sexually abusing a boy in a team shower. Those officials did not contact police, but when investigators began looking into new complaints about Sandusky nearly a decade later, someone suggested they interview McQueary.

McQueary has testified he heard sexually suggestive sounds when he went into the locker room late on a Friday night, then saw Sandusky abusing the boy in the shower. He did not physically intervene but said the two separated and he left the athletics facility, highly disturbed by what he had witnessed.

U.S. NEWS A7

Thursday 1 December 2016

US Financial Front:

The tax man cometh: California ponders legal pot, paying up

MICHAEL R. BLOOD Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s legal marijuana industry is expected to involve everything from backyard growers to sprawling fields in the farm belt, storefront sellers along rural roads to chain-store like outlets in Los Angeles.

State tax collectors are taking initial steps to get a hand into that vast, emerging economy, with billions of dollars at stake in the future for the state treasury.

State analysts have estimated that state and local governments could eventually collect over $1 billion annually from the production and sale of legal pot.

Just how big a job that will be, no one knows.

The state has no reliable way to predict how many new retailers will enter the marketplace when marijuana becomes legal in 2018. It’s estimated there could be 25,000 cultivators who will have to register and begin paying taxes.

But it’s only a guess how many operations making money off the fragrant, sticky buds will try to remain hidden in the black market.

“It’s just going to be the wild, wild West out there,” predicted Jerome Horton, who sits on the state’s taxcollecting Board of Equalization. The panel on Tuesday started framing its job, approving on a divided vote a proposal to request funds to begin gradually adding staff in anticipation of collecting taxes from the legal sale and cultivation of marijuana.

The board’s action came three weeks after voters approved Proposition 64, which legalized the recreational use of marijuana in

the nation’s most populous state. A draft report made an early estimate of new jobs that would be needed to police the market and make sure everyone is pay-

said.

California was the first state to embrace legal, medicinal marijuana two decades ago, and the board estimates there are 1,700 dis-

pot and grow six marijuana plants at home. It also allows cities and counties to impose their own regulations and taxes on recreational marijuana.

Rolie Gonzalez III displays a branch of marijuana buds taken for a plant on the farm of grower Laura Costa, near Garberville, Calif. California’s legal marijuana industry is expected to involve everything from backyard growers to sprawling fields in the farm belt, storefront sellers along rural roads to chain-store like outlets in Los Angeles. State tax collectors are taking initial steps to get a hand into that vast, emerging economy.

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

ing up: by 2021, 114 positions and nearly $20 million in funding. But with so many unknowns, several board members acknowledged those figures would likely need to be updated within months.

Horton, at the meeting in Culver City, California, called the projections “grossly understated.”

Board member Diane Harkey alluded to the challenges of taking what has been largely an illegal marketplace and moving it under state government.

“Nobody knows how this is really going to work,” she

pensaries operating in the state. The California vote on Nov. 8 represented the national legalization movement’s biggest victory to date and sets the stage for a sweeping transformation. The new law attempts, at least in theory, to tame a market that now ranges from legal, medicinal production and sales to vast illegal grows operated by drug cartels.

In general, the state will treat cannabis like it does alcohol. Taking effect in 2018, the law allows people 21 and older to legally possess up to an ounce of

Proposition 64’s approval comes with two new state taxes on legal weed: Consumers will pay a 15 percent excise tax on the retail selling price, which applies to recreational and medical marijuana. Separately, a cultivation tax will be imposed on all harvested marijuana that enters the commercial market. Local governments can also take a bite, and dozens of communities are ready to impose new levies and regulations. With pot-growing long a growth industry for criminal gangs and cartels, there are fears about pos-

sible violence against tax inspectors or investigators who go looking for hidden grows. Meanwhile, with pot remaining illegal on the federal level, it’s unclear what stance the incoming Donald Trump administration will take with the new marketplace.

California and other weed-friendly states might be in for trouble: Trump’s pick for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, has called marijuana a danger that should not be legalized.

Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C., allow marijuana for medical or recreational purposes.

The prediction by state analysts of $1 billion annually in tax revenue from pot could be an elusive target.

It could be years before kinks are worked out of the system, and it is not known how much of the robust illegal market will come under the legal umbrella.

New positions could range from inspectors who would visit growing sites and pot shops, investigators who would probe possible felony crimes and auditors to check the books.

New systems need to be designed. Because marijuana is illegal on the federal level, the staff report said tax payments from marijuana-related businesses must be made in cash.

The agency is researching how that could be done on such a large scale.

Inevitably, some won’t pay up. “Since the marijuana excise tax and the cultivation tax represent new tax liabilities for taxpayers, prior experience shows having new taxes due results in new delinquencies from taxpayers,” the report said.q

A8

Thursday 1 December 2016

WORLD NEWS

Death toll rises to 8 in cave-in at Polish copper mine M. SCISLOWSKA Associated Press WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The director of a Polish copper mine said Wednesday rescue teams have recovered the bodies of the last three workers missing inside the mine after it caved in.

The discovery brought the death toll from the cavein triggered by an earthquake on Tuesday night to eight.

Director Pawel Markowski called the miners’ deaths the greatest tragedy for

the copper mining company KGHM in 55 years.

Five other miners have been hospitalized but their lives are not in danger and a few others escaped unscathed. Markowski said the victims ranged in age from 23 to 50. Rescuers used bare hands and light equipment in difficult conditions to reach the victims, he said The tremor occurred shortly after 9 p.m.

Tuesday some 1,100 meters (3,610 feet) underground in the Rudna mine in the

southwestern Polish town of Polkowice. The German Research Center for Geosciences reported a magnitude-4.5 shallow earthquake in the region at the time of the cave-in.

Mining authorities and prosecutors have opened investigations into the cavein.

Rudna is Europe’s largest copper ore mine, and one of the biggest in the world, with output capacity of 12 million tons of ore a year.

Spokeswoman Jolanta Pi-

atek said work continued Wednesday in other areas of the mine, which is operated by the KGHM Polska Miedz, or Polish Copper Company.

Piatek said Tuesday’s accident brings to 15 the number of fatalities at KGHM facilities this year, 13 of them in copper mines and two in copper mills.

In 2013, 19 miners were trapped in the Rudna mine following a local tremor and a cave-in but they were rescued with no ma-

jor injuries.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, a miner’s daughter, visited the mine Wednesday, offering support for the victims’ families. Health Minister Konstanty Radziwill visited the hospitalized miners.

Poland’s lawmakers observed a minute of silence and prayed for the victims.

President Andrzej Duda, on a state visit to Sweden, extended his condolences to the miners’ families and pledged state support for them. q

Lithuania ministers say Trump right on EU defense costs

Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevicius speaks to The Associated Press in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vilnius, Lithuania, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. Lithuanian foreign and defense ministers said they believed that some of Donald Trump’s language during the campaign shouldn’t be taken too seriously and that they are confident that he will continue a decades-long American tradition of standing by allies in Europe and the world.

(AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

VANESSA GERA DAVID KEYTON Associated Press VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Two senior Lithuanian officials have told The Associated Press that Presi-

dent-elect Donald Trump is actually right that Europeans must increase military spending.

Trump stunned Washington’s allies during the U.S. election campaign by sug-

gesting that American military guarantees to NATO members could depend on whether they are paying enough on defense.

In separate interviews with The Associated Press this

week, Lithuania’s foreign and defense ministers said that they believed that some of Trump’s language during the campaign shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

They also said that they are confident that he would continue a decades-long American tradition of standing by allies in Europe and the world.

“I hope and believe — and I can’t imagine otherwise — that the U.S. will remain a key player in the world and also a leader of NATO,” Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said Tuesday.

Defense Minister Juozas Olekas shared similar optimism, and said Trump is right that the U.S. shouldn’t have to bear most of the cost of defending the Western alliance.

“President Donald Trump said that Europe in general should put more attention on defense and we fully agree,” Olekas said Monday. “The peace and inde-

pendence of our country is very important and we should put attention on that and not only waiting and relying for everything on the United States.”

Lithuania and the other Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia, are nervous about Russia’s new assertiveness in the region, something that prompted Lithuania to ramp up its spending on its army already before Trump made his comments on NATO to The New York Times in July.

Lithuania, an Eastern European nation of 3 million people, vowed in 2014 to reach the NATO target of spending 2 percent of GDP by 2020. But Olekas said it would reach that target two years earlier, in 2018.

This year the country is on target to spend 1.8 percent on defense.

Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin has also raised concerns across a region where Putin is feared. q

Greece: 70 migrants found in a snowy northern forest COSTAS KANTOURIS Associated Press THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek authorities picked up about 70 migrants, including children, in a snowy forest near the northern city of Thessaloniki on Wednesday, as smugglers turned to previously popular routes into the European Union rather than the sea crossing from Turkey.

Members of the group, who said they were from Syria,

told Greek police they had crossed the Evros River on the Greek-Turkish border in dinghies and were then brought to Thessaloniki hidden in a truck.

The truck driver left them in the forest late Tuesday, and they spent the night there in the snow, authorities said.

Police are searching for the driver.

Temperatures have plunged below freezing in

the past two days across many parts of the country, with nighttime snowfall in the mountains and northern areas.

“We stayed all night in the forest. It was very cold and it was snowing,” 22-yearold Syrian Omar Abdi Aziz told The Associated Press by telephone.

“We are very tired,” he said, adding they had been walking for more than three days as part of their jour-

ney out of Turkey. Aziz was trying to get to Sweden, where other members of his family are living.

Under a European UnionTurkey deal reached in March, migrants and refugees arriving on Greek islands from Turkey face deportation back to Turkey.

However, the deal doesn’t extend to those crossing the two countries’ land border.

The Evros region has seen a

significant increase in people crossing illegally in recent months. Police figures show 11 smugglers and 291 migrants were detained in the area in September, while 22 smugglers and 655 migrants were caught in October.

More than 62,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece, many living in overcrowded refugee camps set up across the country.q

WORLD NEWS A9

Thursday 1 December 2016

German spy agency BfV finds it hired an Islamic extremist mole DAVID RISING Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — On one side of the internet chat was an Islamic extremist who had just got himself a job with Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. On the other side was an agent of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency pretending to be an Islamic extremist.

When the 51-year-old mole, a German who had converted to Islam, offered to use his new job to provide information to “help the brothers” plan an attack against his employer, German law enforcement swooped in.

It appears little harm was done to the intelligence agency, known by its German acronym BfV, Duesseldorf prosecutors said Wednesday.

“So far, there have been no reliable indications that the accused had already given security-relevant information to people from the violent Salafist scene,” prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck, whose office is leading the investigation, told The Associated Press in a written response to questions.

The suspect, whose identity has not been released, is now in custody and has partially confessed to investigators, Herrenbrueck said. He told questioners that his goal was to infiltrate the BfV to warn his “brothers in faith” of operations against them.

The suspect is under investigation on suspicion of preparing an act of violence against the state and of an attempted violation of state secrets regulations, among other charges.

The man, described by German media as a former bank employee who was married with children, started with the BfV in April and was tasked with the surveillance of Salafists, adherents of an ultra-conservative form of Islam that can also turn violent, Herrenbrueck said. There are an estimated 9,200 Salafists in Germany.

The BfV said it had uncovered no red flags in the hiring or the interviewing process.

“The worker, who started not long ago, had been inconspicuous during the application process, training and at work,” the agency told the AP. The agency said once it had uncovered the man, who had used a pseudonym online, it turned the case over to Duesseldorf prosecutors.

“So far there is no indication that there is a concrete danger for the security of the BfV or its employees,” the agency said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate, whose ministry oversees the agency, said he couldn’t recall any comparable cases in the recent past and said that there were “no indications that there are fundamental structural problems” at the BfV. Plate said authorities will have to see whether there are lessons to be learned from the case about recruitment procedures but said “it’s too early to derive any concrete recommendations.”q

Syrians fleeing battles in Aleppo shelled

Civil Defense workers carry a victim on a stretcher after artillery fire struck the Jub al-Quba district in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. Syrian activists say at least 26 people have been killed in an artillery barrage on a housing area for those displaced in rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

(Syrian CDWH via AP)

PHILIP ISSA SARAH EL DEEB Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — A series of artillery rounds lobbed Wednesday on Syria’s eastern Aleppo district killed 26 civilians, including seven children, as they fled a government ground offensive in the besieged enclave.

It was the second time the Jub al-Quba neighborhood, in the historic district of the rebel-held eastern side of the city, was struck in as many days.

An airstrike Tuesday blamed by activists on the government killed 25 civilians in the same area. They were also believed to be newly displaced from the government onslaught on the northern parts of eastern Aleppo.

Meanwhile, eight civilians, including two children, were killed in shelling on the government-held western side of the city, according to state media. The government blamed rebels for the attack.

The embattled opposition

fighters clashed heavily on the southern edge of the enclave with governmentallied troops, who made new gains in the government offensive that has cleaved the rebel-held part of the city.

The Syrian government pushed its way into the 45-square kilometer (17 square miles) rebel-held enclave over the weekend, making its first territorial gain in the area seized by the opposition fighters since 2012.

Government officials say they want to “liberate” the area, calling the opposition fighters “terrorists”, and accusing them of holding civilians there hostage.

Despite opening a number of passageways to allow civilians to leave before the offensive, none of the residents took advantage of it, citing fears of being arrested or forcibly conscripted. The passageways were not U.N. supervised.

In New York on Wednesday, Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari ac-

cused the rebels of opening fire on the civilians as they tried to flee eastern Aleppo.

The bodies of the victims of the Jub al-Quba attack Wednesday lined the streets, as their bags and few belongings lied close by their sides, photos showed.

Jawad al-Rifai, who took the pictures for the Aleppo Media Center, said they were civilians — mostly women and children — fleeing shelling and air strikes on other parts of the city. “They were fleeing on foot. They were coming to our side,” said Ibrahim AlHaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense teams, explaining that the displaced were heading to what they thought was safer ground.

“There were children, baby bottles and bags all over.”

The neighborhood and others around it in Aleppo’s centrally-located old city have absorbed thousands of residents displaced by the advance of government troops in the east.

Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a teacher living in the Zabadieh neighborhood in eastern Aleppo, said refugees were filling up his building, most of its flats abandoned because of the war. They had close to nothing, he said, and have asked for the simplest things, including salt.

“They knock on my door all the time. They ask for a plate, or some sheets,” Alhamdo said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria through a network of local contacts, said tens more were wounded in Jub al-Quba. q

A10 WORLD

Thursday 1 December 2016

Two Hong Kong lawmakers lose appeals on oath KELVIN CHAN Associated Press HONG KONG (AP) — Two separatist Hong Kong lawmakers lost their appeal Wednesday against a ruling disqualifying them from office because they altered their oaths with an anti-China insult.

The Court of Appeal sided with a judgment earlier this month barring Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching of the Youngspiration Party from taking their seats in the city’s Legislative Council.

It agreed with the High Court’s decision two weeks ago that the two effectively declined to take the oath, violating a section of the semiautonomous Chinese city’s Basic Law constitution covering oaths taken by officials.

The three-judge panel said its ruling was backed up by Beijing’s own controversial interpretation of the Basic Law. In an act of defiance at the swearing-in ceremony last month, Leung and Yau modified the oath, which requires pledging allegiance to Hong Kong as a part of China, by referring to the “Hong Kong nation” and using a derogatory term for China. They also displayed a flag that said “Hong Kong is not China.”

Yau, 25, cursed and Leung, 30, crossed his fingers.

The actions infuriated China’s central government in Beijing, which responded with a constitutional interpretation that Hong Kong courts are required to enforce. But in an unprecedented move, the interpretation was released before the lower court came to a decision, sparking fears that Beijing was eroding Hong Kong’s considerable autonomy and independent judiciary.

Leung and Yau said they are considering appealing to Hong Kong’s top court, the Court of Final Appeal, but had to take into account mounting legal costs and whether the move would trigger another interpretation by Beijing.q

NEWS

South Korea:

Opposition struggles for clear Park impeachment plan

Protesters with pictures of South Korean President Park Geun-hye march toward the presidential house during a rally calling for Park to step down in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016.

The letters read “Park Geun-hye to step down”.

(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon).

HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s conditional resignation offer appears to be causing cracks in what previously had been a strong push for her impeachment, with opponents now struggling to set a date for a vote to strip her of power.

Park offered Tuesday to leave office if parliament arranges a safe transfer of power, triggering an immediate backlash from opposition parties, which called the overture a stalling tactic to help the president navigate through a huge political scandal involving her shadowy confidante.

Leaders of the country’s three main opposition parties met Wednesday and

agreed to stick with their plan to try to vote on an impeachment motion as early as Friday. But they also said they’d meet again if that plan does not work, meaning they’re bracing for the possibility that a Friday vote might not take place.

Much of their hesitation to pick a clear date is due to the fact that there are not enough opposition lawmakers to pass an impeachment through parliament, and they would need help from dissenters in Park’s ruling Saenuri Party.

The three opposition parties and anti-Park independent lawmakers have a total of 172 seats in the 300-seat National Assembly. A passage of an impeachment motion requires at least 200 votes in favor. About 40 rul-

ing party lawmakers have expressed their willingness to vote to oust Park.

But after Park’s resignation offer Tuesday, made in an address to the nation, antiPark lawmakers gathered and agreed it would be best for Park to resign in April, after the installation of a neutral Cabinet that can help ensure a stable power transfer until a new president is elected, according to the office of Hwang Young-cheul, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.

They said they would still take part in a possible impeachment vote on Dec. 9 if details for an April resignation aren’t worked out through negotiations, Hwang’s office said.

Opposition parties have previously said a vote

on Park’s impeachment would take place either on Friday or Dec. 9, because parliamentary plenary sessions are already scheduled on those days.

“It’s true that some cracks have taken place at antiPark forces in the Saenuri Party after her speech,” said an official at the main opposition Democratic Party, formerly known by its Korean-language name, Minjoo.

The official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said opposition parties are using unofficial, backroom channels to see if they can still secure enough Saenuri lawmakers who would align with their impeachment drive.

If impeached, Park’s presidential powers would be suspended until the Constitutional Court makes a ruling on her fate. The court would have 180 days to deliberate.

Park, in her Tuesday speech, continued to deny accusations by prosecutors that she colluded in the criminal activities of her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil, who, despite having no official role in government, allegedly had a say in policy decisions and exploited her presidential ties to bully companies into giving large sums of money to businesses and foundations that Choi controlled.

Prosecutors have indicted Choi, two ex-presidential officials and a music video director known as a Choi associate for extortion, leaking confidential documents and other charges.q

Vietnam grants amnesty to over 4,000 prisoners HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has granted amnesty to more than 4,000 prisoners, including one sentenced to five years in jail for a national securityrelated crime.

Giang Son, deputy chairman of the President’s Office, told reporters at a joint press conference Wednesday that 4,384 inmates were granted am-

nesty under two directives signed by President Tran Dai Quang.

“The amnesty once again reflects the policy of leniency of our party and State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the humane tradition of our nation,” Son said. They will be released from their prisons starting Thursday. One of the prisoners is Bui Xuan Kim who was

jailed for national securityrelated crime, according to Senior Lt. Police General Nguyen Van Thanh.

Kim has served three years of his sentence for organizing people to flee to neighboring Cambodia.

International human rights groups, the U.S. government and some other Western governments have urged Vietnamese govern-

ment to release all prisoners of conscience jailed for peacefully expressing their views, but Hanoi says only those who broke the law are locked up.

Fourteen foreigners will also be released, according to Vice Foreign Minister Ha Kim Ngoc. They include nine from China, three from Laos and one each from South Korea and Australia.q

WORLD NEWS A11

Thursday 1 December 2016

Pilot told Colombia controllers ‘no fuel’ before crash FERNANDO VERGARA JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press MEDELLIN, Colombia (AP) — The pilot of the chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team told air traffic controllers he had run out of fuel and desperately pleaded for permission to land before crashing into the Andes, according to a leaked recording of the final minutes of the doomed flight. In the sometimes chaotic exchange with the air traffic tower, the pilot of the British-built jet could be heard repeatedly requesting authorization to land.

“Complete electrical failure, without fuel,” he said in the tense final seconds before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night.

A female controller could be heard giving instructions as the aircraft lost speed and altitude about eight miles from Medellin’s international airport.

Just before going silent the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea for a landing code: “Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors.”

The recording, obtained Wednesday by Colombian media, appeared to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the frantic exchange. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, point to a rare case of fuel running out as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, which was flying at its maximum range.

For now, authorities are avoiding singling out any one cause of the crash, which killed all but six of the 77 people on board,

A black ribbon is wrapped around the Pathfinder monument in Chapeco, Brazil, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in mourning for members of the Brazilian Chapecoense soccer team, who perished in an airplane crash near Medellin, Monday evening. Colombian authorities on Wednesday were working to finish identifying the bodies of the victims before repatriating them to Brazil.

(AP Photo/Andre Penner)

including members of Brazil’s Chapecoense soccer team traveling to Medellin for the Copa Sudamericana finals — the culmination a fairy tale season that had electrified soccercrazed Brazil.

A full investigation is expected to take months and will review everything from the 17-year-old aircraft’s flight and mainte-

nance history to the voice and instruments data in the black boxes recovered Tuesday at the crash site on a muddy hillside. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was taking part in the investigation because the plane’s engines were made by an American manufacturer.

As the probe continued, mourning soccer fans in

Medellin and the southern Brazilian town of Chapeco, where the team is from, were converging on the two cities’ soccer stadiums for simultaneous candlelight vigils. The six survivors were recovering in hospitals, with three in critical but stable condition, while forensic specialists worked to identify the victims so they could be transferred to a

waiting cargo plane sent by the Brazilian air force to repatriate the bodies.

Alfredo Bocanegra, head of Colombia’s aviation agency, said that while evidence initially pointed to an electrical problem, the possibility the crash was caused by lack of fuel has not been ruled out. Planes need to have enough extra fuel on board to fly at least 30 to 45 minutes to another airport in the case of an emergency, and rarely fly in a straight line because of turbulence or other reasons.

Before being taken offline, the website of LaMia, the Bolivian-based charter company, said the BAE 146 Avro RJ85 jetliner’s maximum range was 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles) — just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the flight originated carrying close to its full passenger capacity.

“If this is confirmed by the investigators it would be a very painful because it stems from negligence,” Bocanegra told Caracol Radio on Wednesday when asked whether the plane should not have attempted such a long haul. q

Nicaragua:

Foes of canal say police trying to disrupt protest

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Opponents of a Chinese company’s planned interoceanic canal across Nicaragua charged that police have set up roadblocks and are harassing demonstrators heading to a Wednesday protest in the nation’s capital.

The National Council in Defense of the Land, Lake and

Sovereignty said Tuesday that police had threatened drivers, seized vehicles and roughed up opponents.

Canal spokesman Telemaco Talavera denied that.

“There is no police harassment of farmers,” he told local media. “If they are marching, it is because they believe there will be a canal. They have the right

to dissent.” Sceptics have doubted whether the canal concession, granted in 2014 to a Chinese company, will ever be built. It has barely broken ground.

Critics say the canal proposal threatens to displace rural communities and damage the environment.

The 171-mile (276-kilometer) waterway between the

Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean is to pass through Lake Nicaragua. About 7,000 families living along the route face displacement. The government says the $50 billion canal will create 50,000 jobs.

The march Wednesday would be the fifth large demonstration against the canal.q

A12 WORLD

Thursday 1 December 2016

NEWS

President-elect Moise says he’s ready for tests facing Haiti

Jovenel Moise is helped by a team member before an interview in his office in Petion-Ville, Haiti, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. Moise, a political newcomer backed by Haiti’s previous elected leader, easily won the presidential election redo, according to preliminary results that were quickly questioned Tuesday by several losing factions.

(AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The political newcomer chosen to lead deeply divided Haiti for the next five years says he’s eager to improve the lives of desperately poor families in the long-neglected countryside and bring steady economic advances to one of the least developed nations in the world.

Jovenel Moise, an upbeat entrepreneur, said reviving the economically blighted countryside where almost 80 percent of households farm is one of his major

goals. He described the rural poor as the backbone of his homeland’s fragile economy.

“It’s really important to change the lifestyle of these people,” Moise told The Associated Press in his first interview with an international news agency since officials issued preliminary results showing he won the Nov. 20 election in a landslide.

If the preliminary results withstand challenges by three of his closest rivals in coming weeks, Moise will have earned the presidency with 55 percent of the

votes in a field of 27 candidates.

The result is supposed to be certified on Dec. 29 after an electoral tribunal resolves the challenges.

In the interview at a Petionville campaign office, Moise said his priorities focus on agriculture, education, energy reform and foreign investment.

He said he’s looking forward to the challenge of building consensus and helping fix a political culture perpetually at war with itself.

“I am working hard to be close with the Parliament

because there’s no way a president can work without deputies, without senators,” he said.

Robert Fatton, a Haitianborn politics professor at the University of Virginia, said that Moise will find governing difficult “if he is unwilling or unable to draw some key adversaries into his regime.”

“The next few weeks and months will be bumpy and will test Jovenel Moise’s statecraft and capacity to move the country in a new and hopeful trajectory,” he said.

The still-preliminary November victory came more than a year after Moise topped an initial presidential vote that was eventually thrown out for alleged fraud, leading to a lengthy period of political limbo.

A businessman from northern Haiti, Moise had never run for office until he was hand-picked to be the Tet Kale party candidate by outgoing President Michel Martelly.

Some critics continue to view Moise’s ascent with suspicion, suggesting Martelly is using the candidate as a proxy. Moise laughed off the criticism, saying it is mostly about the snobbery of political elites in the capital.

“In Haiti, when you come from the countryside, the people here in Port-auPrince, they think they know everything. But it’s

Puerto Rico reports 500 new Zika cases amid epidemic SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s health secretary says nearly 500 new cases of Zika have been reported in the U.S. territory in the past week.

Ana Rius said this week that 34,562 cases of the

mosquito-borne virus have now been registered, including nearly 2,700 that involve pregnant women.

Nearly 290 people have been hospitalized.

Authorities earlier this year declared a Zika epidemic

on the island, and health officials have warned that a growing number of babies will be born with severe birth defects known as microcephaly, characterized by abnormally small heads in newborns.

Five people infected with Zika have died in recent months in Puerto Rico, including two who developed complications from a paralysis condition known as Guillain-Barre. q

not true and I’m the example. In the countryside you have good people also — with knowledge, with vision, with capacity,” Moise said.

The slender 48-year-old father of three said Martelly would be an adviser when he becomes president, and he wants to study his predecessor’s successes and mistakes. Other previous presidents also will serve as advisers, he said.

During his campaign, Moise touted his business background in agriculture.

In 2014, he launched the Agritrans banana exporting joint venture with the government on about 2,470 acres (1,000 hectares) in northeast Haiti with a $6 million loan approved

by Martelly’s administration. He proudly refers to himself by his campaign moniker, “Neg Bannan Nan” — “Banana Man” in Haitian Creole.

His first business venture was an auto parts company in Port-de-Paix, and he also distributed drinking water and created a project to bring renewable energy to several towns.

Haiti’s revamped Provisional Electoral Council has been trying to show that the Nov. 20 election, organized with mostly Haitian resources, was clean in a country where accusations of vote-rigging and election fraud have long been common and are sometimes accurate.

But three of the council’s nine members declined to sign the preliminary tally sheet, one of them telling local radio that he was “uncomfortable” with the results.

A monitoring team from the Organization of American States said that its observations were in line with Haiti’s preliminary tally.q

LOCAL A13

Thursday 1 December 2016

Loyal Guests Honored at the Costa Linda Beach Resort like being at their ‘homeaway-from-home,’ and the wonderful staff of the resort is like family to them.

The certificates were presented by Mr. Ricardo

PALM BEACH - Recently the Aruba Tourism Authority had the great pleasure of honoring a very nice group of island guests whom are loyal and friendly visitors of Aruba as Goodwill Ambassadors at the Costa Linda Beach Resort.

The symbolic honorary title is presented in the name of the Minister of Tourism as a token of appreciation to guests who visit Aruba for 20-to-34 consecutive years.

The honorees were Mr. Glenn Esbenshade and Ms. LeeAnn Bergey, Mr. Roos and Mrs. Angelica Trovato, Mr. Pietro and Mrs. Rina di Pietro, and Mr. Joel and Mrs. Robin Bassuk.

These special guests love Aruba very much because of the friendly people, the weather, the beaches, the restaurants, and just about everything else!

They say being on Aruba and staying at the Costa Linda Beach Resort is

Croes representing the Aruba Tourism Authority together with family and friends and associates from the Costa Linda Beach Resort.q

A14 LOCAL

Thursday 1 December 2016

Loyal Guests Honored at the Marriott Ocean Club

PALM BEACH - Recently the Aruba Tourism Authority had the great pleasure of honoring a very nice group of island guests whom are loyal and friendly visitors of Aruba as Distinguished Visitors at the Marriott Ocean Club. The symbolic honorary title is presented in the name of the Minister of Tourism as a token of appreciation to guests who visit Aruba for 10-to-19 consecutive years. The honorees were Mr. Billy and Mrs. Rosemarie Wennlund and Mr. Scott and Mrs. Kathy Latham.

These special guests love Aruba very much because of the friendly people, the weather, the beaches, the restaurants, and just about everything else!

They say being on Aruba and staying at the Marriott Ocean Club is like being at their ‘home-away-fromhome,’ and the wonderful staff of the resort is like family to them. The certificates were presented by Mr. Ricardo Croes representing the Aruba Tourism Authority together with family and friends and Ms. Lisette from the Marriott Ocean Club.q

LOCAL A15

Thursday 1 December 2016

Brian from New York Only Has Eyes for MooMba’s Anna MOOMBA BEACH - Brian from New York just wandered down the beach from the Holiday Inn Resort, where he was staying, when his feet took him to next-door MooMba Beach. He went to the bar and knew right away that he had found what he was looking for: Anna!

“Anna represents the true Aruban experience,” he says.

Brian is a first-time visitor to the island and we expect he will be back soon to experience more of Aruba!q

A16 LOCAL

Thursday 1 December 2016

To Take on the Challenges of Globalization:

President of Peru Calls for Building More Egalitarian Societies

-During a keynote speech given at ECLAC’s headquarters, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski urged countries in the region to defend multilateralism.

SANTIAGO, CHILE - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski called on Latin American countries to build more egalitarian societies that will allow them to face the challenges of globalization, during a speech today at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile.

The Peruvian leader said that social reform must be implemented with education and the elimination of racism as central elements and to confront the deep inequality levels affecting the region.

During his speech, the Peruvian president urged coun-

The President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was welcomed to ECLAC by Antonio Prado, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations regional body.

(ECLAC Photo/Carlos Vera)

tries in the region to defend multilateralism rather than the economic and human protectionism that has been promoted by some industrialized countries.

He emphasized that, in the face of the challenges posed by globalization and other phenomena such

as climate change, “the only solution is multilateralism, because if we cannot agree with each other on this, we will not progress.”

President Kuczynski called on the region to send a message to the world and “show that multilateralism is strong and does work.”

In this regard, he stressed that integration in Latin America is fundamental and that mechanisms like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Pacific Alliance are crucial contributions in that sense.

The leader acknowledged that the new global context will entail changes that Latin America must be prepared for, but stated that he was optimistic regarding the region’s potential.

“Latin America has been through so many difficult journeys and disappointments that its people are courageous, and there is a young population in most countries. These conditions help adaptation,” he remarked. The President of Peru was welcomed to ECLAC by Antonio Prado, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations regional body, who deliv-

ered a greeting on behalf of the Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena.

In his speech, Antonio Prado recalled that in the recently released annual report entitled Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy, ECLAC affirms that we are facing a crisis of hyper-globalization, that is, globalization that lacks the necessary governance to mitigate its disruptive effects in social and economic realms.

“To overcome the deficiencies of current globalization, we must all work together to build agreements and institutions that promote effective macroeconomic coordination, a change in the patterns of production and consumption in order to achieve sustainability, and fair rules for trade and investment,” the senior ECLAC official stated. q

SPORTS A17

Thursday 1 December 2016

Sports In this Nov. 16, 2016, file photo, Memphis Grizzlies guard Vince Carter (15) drives past Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin (32) for a basket during the second half of an NBA basketball game, in Los Angeles.

Associated Press

EAGLE EYE

These old men: Carter, near 40, leads NBA’s elder statesmen BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer Vince Carter is no longer the NBA’s highest flyer, though he’s certainly not ready to be grounded.

Once one of basketball’s most ferocious dunkers who put opponents on posters long before there were internet Vines, he can no longer rely just on his athleticism. Nearing 40 years old, the guy who famously put his arm through the rim while winning a dunk contest now often plays below it.

Like everyone who wants to keep playing toward middle age, it’s about the mind now as much as the legs.

“That’s how I was able to stay around this long, is just, I learned the game,” Carter said. “Not being able to play. Everybody can play basketball, but learning the ins and outs of the game is what has kept me around.”

Continued on page 18

Woods excites in pro-am with two eagles on front nine

Tiger Woods hits from the sixth fairway during the Pro-Am at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in Nassau, Bahamas.

Associated Press Page 20

A18 SPORTS

Thursday 1 December 2016

Elder statesmen Continued from page 17

Same with Manu Ginobili in San Antonio, Jason Terry in Milwaukee, Paul Pierce in Los Angeles and Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas, who follow Carter as the oldest players in the NBA this season.

“Basketball is a game a lot of people don’t understand,” Terry said. “When you are not as athletically gifted, you still have your brain. I learned from none other than Jason Kidd.”

Terry plays for Kidd now, but they were teammates in Dallas when the Mavericks won the 2011 NBA title. Kidd by then was well past his dynamic days as a nightly triple-double threat, a guy who burst into the league with everything but a reliable jumper and left it at 40 ranked third in career 3-pointers.

“As I got older, the speed limit started coming into effect. Instead of going 55, I could only go 45,” Kidd said. “But, you know, when things started to go a little bit slower, you got to see things a lot better. For me, things were a lot clearer.

As you get older, that’s the best time to get better at the game. You can always learn, you can always do something different. For

In this Nov. 2, 2016, file photo, Memphis Grizzlies guard Vince Carter (15) reacts in the first half of an NBA basketball game

me it was shooting the ball.

If I wanted to play for a while I needed to make an outside shot.”

Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant made similar transitions, outworking and outsmarting opponents when they could no longer just outplay them. Now Carter, who will turn 40 on Jan. 26 and ranks in the top 25 in career points and games played, does the same in Memphis — where he surpassed Jordan this season as the oldest player to score 20 points off the bench.

Like Jordan, he played at North Carolina for “the mastermind, Dean Smith,” as Carter called him, where even as a teenager he was being prepared for how he would need to play 20

years later.

“So he taught us how to learn the game, how to take your abilities and dominate to the best of your ability,” Carter said.

“And with that being said, as I’ve gotten older, just the little things that we tend to not want to do as a young guy stuck with me, as far as just the little things that we say a lot of guys make mistakes on.”

Carter acknowledges tiring of the endless “play the right way” mantra preached at Chapel Hill, but now he lives it. He can’t just jump over players like he did to Frederic Weis in the 2000 Olympics , though he quickly earned the trust of first-time coach David Fizdale, who had Carter

on the floor defending 21-year-old Andrew Wiggins to spark the Grizzlies’ comeback victory over Minnesota in their season opener.

“Again, I’ve said this before, I don’t put limitations on anyone because of age, whether it’s youth or because they’re one of the elder statesman,” Fizdale said.

“Vince Carter, he’s a veteran, he’s a professional, he stays in shape. I always remind people he was the best athlete in the NBA, so his falloff athletically isn’t the same as an average athlete’s falloff.”

Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said the key for players who are effective into their mid-to-late 30s is their work ethic, and he marvels at what the 38-yearold Nowitzki puts himself through to keep playing on legs that support his 7-foot frame, particularly in this season when he’s battled an injured Achilles tendon.

Medical enhancements have helped, with teams providing such improvements for their players that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes young players entering the league now should be able to play into their 40s if they have the talent.

“When I first got to the NBA,

taking care of your health meant not eating Twinkies before a game,” Cuban said. “Guys would smoke cigarettes, they’d drink, there would be beer — people sometimes would have a beer at halftime.

There literally were bars in locker rooms. Things have changed.

“The things that we let players do 15 years ago that created inflammation and created orthopedic issues in their bodies, we know not to do as much anymore.”

Carter has prolonged his career by becoming a reserve for the last five seasons, and by resisting the urge to create the spectacular highlights that made him the leading vote-getter to the All-Star Game four times. The Grizzlies say he’s questionable to play Wednesday in Toronto, his first NBA home, after hurting his hip Monday.

He still gets the internet buzzing — and occasionally surprises himself — with some vintage Vinsanity, but mostly skips the unnecessary risks to preserve his body to get through the long NBA season.

And how many more after this?

“I don’t know yet,” he said.

“I’m still flying. It’s not time yet.”q

Serena Williams: Women ‘must continue to dream big’ The Associated Press Serena Williams has penned an open letter calling out what she sees as double standards faced by women in sports.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion writes that women “are constantly reminded” they aren’t men. She says people call her one of the “world’s greatest female athletes,” but notes that male athletes such as LeBron James, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods aren’t described by their gender.

Williams says the equal pay issue frustrates her because women “have done the same work and made the same sacrifices as our male counterparts.”

She says women “must continue to dream big” to “empower the next generation of women to be just as bold in their pursuits.”

The letter was published in Porter Magazine and republished by British newspaper The Guardian .q

In this Sept. 23, 2016, file photo, U.S. tennis star Serena Williams poses for photographers prior to the start of the Giorgio Armani women’s Spring-Summer 2017 fashion show, that was presented in Milan, Italy.

Associated Press

SPORTS A19

Thursday 1 December 2016

Bucks rally behind Giannis Antetokounmpo to stun Cavs MILWAUKEE (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo tied a career high with 34 points and the Milwaukee Bucks stunned the Cleveland Cavaliers 118-101 on Tuesday night.

Antetokounmpo added 12 rebounds and five assists while Milwaukee ended Cleveland’s four-game winning streak.

Jabari Parker had 18 points and Michael Beasley had 17 off the bench for the Bucks.

LeBron James had 22 points for the Cavaliers, who fell to 13-3. Kyrie Irving added 20 points.

Milwaukee led by 22 points in the fourth quarter and cruised past the defending champions, who benched their starters midway through the final period.

The Bucks outscored Cleveland by 14 points in the third quarter.

Cleveland rode hot early shooting to a 14-point first quarter lead, but Milwaukee closed on a 10-0 run and trailed by only two at the end of the period.

The hot hands of Antetokounmpo and Beasley sparked Milwaukee in the second quarter as the Bucks built an advantage of eight points before leading 58-54 at the half.

NETS 127, CLIPPERS 122, 2OT NEW YORK (AP) — Sean Kilpatrick scored 31 of his career-high 38 points after the third quarter and Brooklyn stopped a seven-game losing streak with a doubleovertime victory over Los Angeles.

The Clippers started the game without Blake Griffin, ended it without the ejected coach Doc Rivers and dropped their third straight game by blowing an 18-point lead.

Chris Paul had 26 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds for the Clippers, but the

best guard on the floor in crunch time was Kilpatrick, who also had a careerbest 14 rebounds.

Brook Lopez added 27 points for the Nets.

DeAndre Jordan had 21 points and 23 rebounds for the Clippers, who rested Griffin, their leading scorer.

MAGIC 95, SPURS 83 SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Serge Ibaka had 18 points and Orlando took advantage of a sloppy night by San Antonio to snap the Spurs’ nine-game winning streak.

San Antonio committed a season-high 19 turnovers in its worst scoring performance of the season. The Spurs have four home losses in the first two months of this season after falling just once at AT&T Center in 2015-16. Evan Fournier scored 13 points and Nikola Vucevic had 12 to help the Magic snap a four-game skid.Orlando entered having lost eight of 11, but they were looser and more fluid than San Antonio from the start.

The Spurs’ turnovers resulted in 19 points for the Magic.

Kawhi Leonard had 21 points for San Antonio and LaMarcus Aldridge added 16.

PELICANS 105, LAKERS 88 NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Anthony Davis had 41 points and 16 rebounds, helping New Orleans dominate short-handed Los Angeles.

Jrue Holiday scored 22 points in his first start this season and Omer Asik had 10 points and 11 assists while New Orleans snapped a two-game skid.

The Lakers expected to be healthier with forward Julius Randle returning to the lineup following a threegame absence because of a hip injury, but about

Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo dunks during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in Milwaukee.

Associated Press

two minutes into the game, starting shooting guard Nick Young was carried off with a strained right Achilles tendon.

Lou Williams scored 16 points for the Lakers and Randle finished with 12, but Los Angeles was in a 20-point hole by the second quarter.

JAZZ 120, ROCKETS 101 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Gordon Hayward scored a season-high 31 points, helping Utah beat Houston for its season-best fourth straight win.

Utah started strong en route to a season high for scoring. Rodney Hood had 10 points during a 20-5 first-

quarter run after trailing 169, and Houston never led again. Hood finished with 19 points.

Rudy Gobert recorded his 11th double-double of the season with 16 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks.

Hayward had seven assists and five rebounds.

James Harden scored 26 points but was an inefficient 8 for 23 from the field.

He also had seven assists and five rebounds, while Eric Gordon scored 24 points off the bench.

PISTONS 112, HORNETS 89 CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Tobias Harris scored 24 points, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Marcus Morris each

had 18 points and Detroit beat Charlotte for its third straight win.

Ish Smith added 13 points whhile Detroit shot 49 percent from the field.

Kemba Walker had 23 points for the Hornets, who were playing their fourth game in five nights.

The Pistons hadn’t played since Saturday and looked much fresher throughout the game in snapping Charlotte’s two-game winning streak.

Detroit took a 10-point lead into the fourth quarter after Caldwell-Pope knocked down a pair of 3-pointers late in the third. q

A20 SPORTS

Thursday 1 December 2016

Tiger Woods returns amid varied expectations, high interest DOUG FERGUSON AP Golf Writer NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Everyone is watching, everyone is curious, and Jordan Spieth had the perfect view of Tiger Woods for his return to golf.

Spieth was on the 17th green and looked across a narrow pond to the ninth tee at Albany Golf Club where Woods stood over his tee shot during the Wednesday pro-am. He saw the swing, but he lost sight of the ball in the glare of the tropical sun.

“Where did it go?” Spieth said as he tried to gauge where the ball might land.

“Not in the fairway.”

He looked again.

“Whoa! There it is — WAY down there,” he said.

“Damn.”

The shots and the score don’t count until Thursday at the Hero World Challenge with an 18-man field, small but strong. Woods is playing for the first time in 465 days. The expectations have rarely been this varied. The interest is as high as ever.

“He’s the only person ... in the last 30 years in golf that any expectation you set, he’ll somehow prove to you that he can do better,” Spieth said. “But I think with this, I just hope that everyone gives him time.

I hope he has the time to fall into a rhythm and just get enough tournaments where he can kind of build up that seeing the shots under competition, under the gun.

“You can look back 10 years at shots you hit. It’s not the same as looking back the week before on a positive swing.”

Woods last played on Aug. 23, 2015, when he closed with a 70 at the Wyndham Championship to fall out of contention and tie for 10th. Two back surgeries followed, leaving him so debilitated at times that he wondered if he would ever play.

He tees off at high noon in the Bahamas with Patrick Reed, who idolized his golf so much as a teenager that he wears black pants

Tiger Woods watches his tee shot on the fourth hole during the Pro-Am at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in Nassau, Bahamas.

Associated Press

and a red shirt on Sunday.

Reed is but one example of the golf landscape to which Woods returns, one of seven players in the 18-man field who were not even on tour when Woods last won a major at the 2008 U.S. Open. Another is Russell Knox, who said recently, “My short career will never be over until I play with Tiger Woods.”

It was only three years ago that Woods won five times and was PGA Tour player of the year. That still wasn’t the dominance he once had over the game, for he finished in the top 10 only 53 percent of the time, his lowest rate in a dozen years.

Woods had five or more victories 11 times in a span of 13 seasons.

“The better he plays, the better it is for golf,” Rickie Fowler said. “Whether he gets back to the way he did in the early 2000s — from what I’ve heard, it was

arguably the best anyone has ever played — that might be tough because of injuries, and he’s at a different age.

It’s not like he’s been away that long. It just seems longer because of how dominant he was.”

Woods declared himself ready to play and said, “I’m going to try to win this thing.”

The pro-am is never a true measure, and the wind was whipping across the island on Wednesday. Even so, Woods showed no sign of fatigue or aches, and his swing certainly looked more efficient than when he was playing no more than 10 times each of the previous two years as he was trying to navigate a bad back.

On the par-5 third hole, he hit a drive and a 3-iron to about 10 feet for an eagle.

He also had a few bogeys along the way. Conditions

were not easy on any of the players. Woods said there were no surprises about how he played, and his only complaint was getting his speed right on the green.

“I was able to hit all the shots I needed to hit,” he said.

Spieth has seen Woods when he was No. 1 in the world. He’d love nothing more than to see the Woodsthat once made winning — majors included — look routine.

“We all hope for many reasons that he comes back fully healthy and his game is fully back,” Spieth said.

“To name one, you don’t ever want to see somebody go down because of injury. And two, I think it was a dream for all of us young guys to one day grow up and battle Tiger on a Sunday when he was playing his best, and see if you can Y.E. Yang it, see if you can

pull off a shot where you can take him down.”

Yang rallied from two behind to beat Woods in the 2009 PGA Championship, the only time Woods lost a major when leading going into the final round.

Woods has played with Fowler and Justin Rose, Jason Dufner and Justin Thomas, in recent months.

Simulating tournament conditions is a different matter, and that will be the ultimate measure this week and beyond.

“He’s been out of competitiveness for quite some time, so that might be a little while before you find your bearings again,” Henrik Stenson said. “But as you know, he’s done some remarkable things throughout his career.

And if there’s someone that can jump right back up and play some great golf again, that would be him.”q

SPORTS A21

Thursday 1 December 2016

Rangers’ strong third period catalyzes comeback win NEW YORK (AP) — Jimmy Vesey scored the tiebreaking power-play goal with 5:12 remaining to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night.

Rick Nash had a goal and an assist, Nick Holden also scored and Henrik Lundqvist stopped 19 shots to help the Rangers snap a four-game skid at home (03-1). Hurricanes defenseman Ron Hainsey received a double-minor for hooking and an unsportsmanlike misconduct with 6:47 to go and Vesey took advantage 95 seconds later for his eight goal of the season and first since Nov. 12.

Viktor Stalberg scored twice in the first period in his return to New York for the first time since leaving the Rangers to sign with Carolina in the offseason.

Cam Ward finished with 25 saves as the Hurricanes lost for the third time in four games.

SABRES 5, SENATORS 4 OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Jack Eichel had a goal and an assist in his season debut as Buffalo beat Ottawa.

Ryan O’Reilly scored twice for the Sabres, while Kyle Okposo and Sam Reinhart also scored. Robin Lehner started and gave up one goal on six shots before leaving late in the first period. Anders Nilsson replaced him and stopped 26 shots.

Mike Hoffman had three goals and an assist for the Senators, and Mark Stone also scored in his 200th NHL game. Craig Anderson, making his sixth straight start, made 23 saves.

Eichel had missed the first 21 games after spraining

Buffalo Sabres’ Ryan O’Reilly (90) celebrates his goal against the Ottawa Senators with teammates Sam Rienhart (23) Taylor Fedun (38) and Kyle Okposo (21) during the third period of an NHL hockey game in Ottawa, Ontario, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. Buffalo won, 5-4.

Associated Press

his left ankle ahead of the Sabres’ season opener BLACKHAWKS 2, PANTHERS 1, SO CHICAGO (AP) — Richard Panik and Artemi Panarin scored in a shootout, and Chicago beat Florida in the Panthers’ first game since Tom Rowe took over as interim coach.

Panik also scored in regulation and Corey Crawford made 38 saves in Chicago’s first home game in 16 days. The Blackhawks went 3-3-1 on their 12-day circus trip.

Panarin beat Roberto Luongo with a slick backhand in the second round of the shootout. After Aleksander Barkov was stopped by Crawford at the other end, Panik converted his chance with a well-placed wrist shot past Luongo on the glove side.

Florida returned to the ice

for the first time since coach Gerard Gallant was fired after a 3-2 loss at Carolina on Sunday night. Jaromir Jagr scored in the third period and Luongo made 32 saves, but the Panthers lost for the third time in four games.

FLYERS 3, BRUINS 2, SO PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Shayne Gostisbehere scored in the ninth round of a shootout to lift Philadelphia past Boston.

Steve Mason made 45 saves through overtime, and defenseman Michael Del Zotto and center Claude Giroux scored in regulation for the Flyers, who won their second straight.

David Krejci and Brad Marchand had the goals for the Bruins, who lost for the fourth time in five games. Tuukka Rask turned aside 19 shots and seven

of nine shooters in the tiebreaker.

Both goalies were outstanding in overtime. Mason snatched a shot by Krejci with about 30 seconds remaining, and Rask slid to his right to stop Giroux’s one-timer.

JETS 3, DEVILS 2 WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) — Mark Scheifele and Patrik Laine each scored his 13th goal of the season to help Winnipeg beat New Jersey.

Blake Wheeler had the other goal for the Jets, and Scheifele added an assist.

Connor Hellebuyck made 23 saves in his fifth straight start for Winnipeg.

Devils rookie Miles Wood, with his first NHL goal, and Nick Lappin scored for New Jersey. Cory Schneider stopped 26 shots for the Devils, who had earned at least a point in their previ-

ous three games (1-0-2).

Winnipeg has won five straight at home.

RED WINGS 3, STARS 1 DETROIT (AP) — Anthony Mantha scored the go-ahead goal midway through the second period and Detroit beat Dallas.

Petr Mrazek stopped 34 shots for the Red Wings, who are 3-0-1 in their last four games for their best stretch in more than a month.

Kari Lehtonen made 17 saves for the Stars. He was pulled for an extra skater with more than 2 minutes left, and the Red Wings took advantage when Steve Ott scored an empty-net goal to make it 3-1 with 1:03 remaining.

Dallas, playing the second of back-to-back games on the road, has dropped two straight and won just three of its last nine overall.

BLUE JACKETS 5, LIGHTNING 1 COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Josh Anderson had a goal and two assists, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 26 shots and Columbus cruised past Tampa Bay. Scott Hartnell had a goal and an assist, and William Karlsson, Alexander Wennberg and Sam Gagner also scored as the Blue Jackets beat the Lightning for the second time in five days.

Columbus is 8-1-1 in its last 10 home games.

Columbus played sharp defense, kept the puck in Tampa Bay’s end and created plenty of good looks and quality shots.

Andrei Vasilevskiy made 33 saves, and Valtteri Filppula scored for the Lightning with less than 3 minutes left to spoil the shutout.

PREDATORS 5, AVALANCHE 3

SPORTS Jeter says golf most frustrating sport he’s played A22

Thursday 1 December 2016

DOUG FERGUSON AP Golf Writer NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Derek Jeter needed something to fill his competitive void when he retired from baseball. The New York Yankees shortstop chose golf, and just like everyone else, it’s been a challenge to master.

“It’s frustrating,” Jeter said Wednesday after playing the pro-am with Rickie Fowler at the Hero World Challenge. “It’s probably the most frustrating thing I’ve done, because the ball’s not moving, man.

You should be able to hit it.

I can hit it.

It just doesn’t go where I want it to go.

“So yeah, I guess I’m addicted to improve. That’s the best way to put it.”

Jeter has had a busy week in the Bahamas, playing nine holes with Tiger Woods on Monday, going to a players dinner Tuesday night at the home of Justin Rose, and then the pro-am Wednesday.

In this Sept. 28, 2014, file photo, New York Yankees designated hitter Derek Jeter, center, acknowledges cheers from the crowd as he leaves the game after an RBI hit in the third inning for the last at-bat of his career, in a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston.

Associated Press

He never played golf during his 20 years with the Yankees, during which he compiled 3,465 hits.

He said he had a charity golf tournament, but would

only hit one tee shot with each group or hit a few putts.

Now that he’s retired, he can’t get enough. Jeter started playing only two

years ago and already is down to a 10 handicap.

“You’re always playing rounds of golf, and everybody always tells you how good you are? Yeah,”

Jeter said. “Come see these guys and really see how good players play.”

Woods said he could tell how much Jeter was into golf by the technical questions he was asking Monday when they were joined

by Rose and Tino Martinez.

Even though he’s been hooked on golf for the last two years, and has known Woods for nearly 20 years, Monday was the first time Jeter played with him.

“I could have played with him earlier, but why embarrass myself?” Jeter said.

“I’ve embarrassed myself a lot in my career, but never intentionally.”

The Yankees great wasn’t buying into any baseball comparisons. He was asked if the difference between hitting a big tee shot and hitting a home run.

“Nobody’s watching out here,” he said.

So it’s like hitting one out during batting practice?

“In between,” he said. “A spring training home run, maybe.”q

Eric Thames joins Milwaukee Brewers, who cut Chris Carter

Eric Thames puts on a Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap during an introductory press conference in Milwaukee, Wisc., Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016.

Associated Press

RICH ROVITO Associated Press MILWAUKEE (AP) — Free agent Eric Thames agreed Tuesday to a $16 million, three-year contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, who cut first baseman Chris Carter after a 41-homer season that tied for the National League lead.

A 30-year-old first baseman and outfielder who spent the last three seasons with the NC Dinos in South Korea, Thames gets $4 million next season, $5 million in 2018 and $6 million in 2019.

Milwaukee has a $7.5 million option for 2020 with a $1 million buyout.

He hit .348 with 124 home

runs, 379 RBIs and 64 steals in 388 games in South Korea — and he will play next season with a definite attitude.

“Obviously, during my career there have been coaches, organizations and GMs that have given me the cold shoulder,” Thames said. “That fuels me

but I also have to focus on what my goals are. I want to play every day, stay healthy and help this team win.”

The Brewers have 10 days to attempt to trade Carter, the 29-year-old slugger who agreed to a one-year, $2.5 million contract last year after he spent his first three seasons with Houston. Carter had 94 RBIs and earned $500,000 in performance bonuses based on plate appearances, but hit just .222 in 160 games last season with an NL-high 206 strikeouts.

“A trade is a distinct possibility,” general manager David Stearns said.

Thames spent two seasons in the major leagues, hitting. 250 with 21 homers with Toronto and Seattle in 2011-12. The Blue Jays drafted Thames in the seventh round of the 2008 amateur draft.

Thames could add a lefthanded contact hitter to the middle of Milwaukee’s

lineup, which is primarily right-handed. He was the MVP in South Korea after becoming the first person in league history with 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases.

Thames was “one of the top players in Korean baseball history,” Stearns said.

“He displayed a power and speed combination that was very unique to the environment.”

Thames said he became more disciplined at the plate during his stint in Korea.

“I was a very aggressive hitter my first time around here,” he said.

Manager Craig Counsell said Thames not only fills a hole in the lineup but can serve as an inspiration to the team.

“You always respect and admire someone who has gone through a journey like this,” Counsell said. “(Thames) still feels he has more to do and that his journey isn’t finished. q

TECHNOLOGY A23

Thursday 1 December 2016

DirecTV wants to be the next online substitute for cable TALI ARBEL AP Technology Writer NEW YORK (AP) — There are already a few online services that aim to replace cable, but they haven’t attracted many users yet.

AT&T’s DirecTV hopes to change that with a new service announced Monday.

While just about any person you meet on the street will tell you cable costs too much, the vast majority of Americans don’t think it’s bad enough to cancel.

Cheaper online live-TV services, like Dish Network’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, remain relatively unknown compared with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.

And while they’re easy to order and cancel online and fairly simple to use, they still have drawbacks.

“No one has really delivered the right combination of content, price and ease that will get people to make that call to their current provider and say sayonara,” said Forrester analyst Jim Nail.

It’s unclear if AT&T’s new service, creatively dubbed DirecTV Now, will break out with consumers, especially with another live-TV operation from Hulu coming early next year. And maybe one from Google. Or, who knows, maybe even Apple, too.

The service, which will be available on Wednesday, will initially offer more than 100 channels for a teaser price of $35 a month. But that’s a limited-time offer, and the price for that bundle will nearly double once the deal expires. (Existing customers will be grandfathered in.) AT&T didn’t say when that will happen.

WHO WANTS TO WATCH? If an online cable service could figure out how to

In this Monday, May 19, 2014, file photo, traders gather at the post that handles AT&T on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Associated Press

get customers to pay up, it could attract millions of people.

Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with how much they pay for what’s on TV. The number of customers paying cable and satellite operators for TV has dropped nearly 3 million, to roughly 97 million, in the past two years, according to industry experts MoffettNathanson Research.

And plenty of people never signed up for a $100 TV bundle to begin with.

Research firm SNL Kagan estimates that about 14.4 million households pay for internet but not TV. AT&T sees the potential market for DirecTV Now as 20 million homes.

But analysts estimate that Sling has racked up fewer than 1 million subscribers since it launched in February 2015. Vue’s numbers are harder to get a handle on, but it’s not on the list of top 10 most popular online video services compiled by

research firm Parks Associates. Neither service reports subscriber numbers.

Of course, it’s hard to attract attention when there are also dozens of other video apps. You can sign up for specific sports, or comedy, or anime, or a single channel, like HBO or CBS. Netflix, the country’s most popular paid video service, has 47.5 million customers in the U.S. THE PROBLEMS WITH INTERNET TV New services don’t have all the channels people want.

There’s been no perfect solution that lets you pick only your favorite channels for a reasonable price, a vision of TV nirvana known as “a la carte” that has failed to materialize because it undermines the business models of entertainment conglomerates. Only people in some markets can watch broadcast channels like NBC and Fox in real time.

That’s OK if you can wait to watch the next episode of

a TV series, but sports fans typically want to watch games live.

And even though so-called cord-cutters are on a quest for cheaper video, virtual cable may end costing just as much, depending on how many sports channels or other extras you want and how much your internet costs when it’s disconnected from its cablebundle discount. Bundles from Sling and Vue range from $20 to $65 a month.

You can pay to add more channels.

These services are easy to sign up for and cancel — but connecting them to a TV often requires an extra step or a new gadget, like an Apple TV. On the plus side, while they’ve experienced some technical issues during major events, service quality appears to have improved.

And they sometimes lack some of the best features of both traditional TV, like endless channel options

and DVR recording (which Vue offers now, while Sling is only launching next month) and subscription TV services like Amazon and Netflix (no blackouts, no restrictions based on location if you’re in your home country).

ENTER DIRECTV DirecTV Now, available Wednesday, will have some of those same problems. It is launching without CBS, which airs hits like “NCIS,” ‘’The Big Bang Theory” and NFL football games. CBS also has its own streaming service it wants you to pay for.

And ABC, NBC and Fox will only be available live in a handful of mostly large cities — those in which the national broadcasters own its local TV affiliate. So lots of sports will be unavailable for many subscribers.

The service won’t immediately offer an online DVR that lets you store programs online for later viewing, although AT&T says that will be coming next year.

You can only run it on two screens at a time, which may not work for large families. And it won’t initially work with Roku, one of the most popular streaming-TV gadgets, although it will next year.

Even so, the $35 bundle is cheaper than the typical cable bundle and provides more channels than online cable competitors offer at similar prices. But the $60 standard price that kicks in down the road is much less of a deal. AT&T will also offer a smaller package of about 60 channels for $35.

There will also be $50 and $70 bundles.

AT&T will promote the service by letting its smartphone customers stream without eating into their mobile data plan.q

A24 BUSINESS

Thursday 1 December 2016

Stocks end mixed despite gains in banks, oil MARLEY JAY KEN SWEET Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks moved mostly lower Wednesday as gains in blue-chip energy compa-

and the 10-year note’s yield rose to 2.38 percent from 2.29 percent on Tuesday, a major move for that market. That yield is now trading at its highest level since July 2015.

do with that,” said Tom di Galoma, head of Treasury trading at Seaport Global Holdings.

Di Galoma said he sees the 10-year note’s yield hitting 3 percent by year end,

Trader Christopher Morie works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks moved mostly lower Wednesday as gains in blue-chip energy companies and banks were not enough to make up for losses in the broader market.

(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

nies and banks were not enough to make up for losses in the broader market.

The bond market took heavy losses, with the 10year U.S. Treasury note rising to its highest level in a year and a half.

The higher yields sent bond substitutes like utilities, telecommunications and real estate stocks sharply lower.

Oil stocks climbed after OPEC nations, which collectively produce more than one-third of the world’s oil, agreed to trim production for the first time in eight years.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 5.85 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,198.81 and the Nasdaq composite dropped 56.24 points, or 1.1 points, to 5,323.68.

The 30-member Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.98 points, or 0.01 percent, to 19,123.58.

The gain was attributable to big increases in a handful of Dow components, mainly Goldman Sachs, Chevron and DuPont.

The bond and energy markets saw the most drama on Wednesday. Bond prices fell sharply yet again

The election of Donald Trump as the country’s next president has sent investors fleeing out of safe-play assets like bonds, gold and dividend-paying stocks this month and into riskier investments like small companies, which would benefit the most from a growing domestic economy.

The Russell 2000 index, which is made up of mostly small to mid-sized companies, soared 11 percent in November.

That’s the biggest onemonth gain for that index in five years.

Investors believe Trump’s promises to cut taxes, invest heavily in infrastructure, and cut back regulation will help grow the economy and might even cause inflation, which has been almost non-existent since the financial crisis. U.S. government bonds quickly become less appealing to investors in a healthy, growing economy and in an inflationary environment.

“We have elected a progrowth president who is going to move very quickly to make some drastic changes, and investors are trying to figure out what to

a level not seen in nearly three years.

In energy, OPEC members finalized a deal that will cut their oil output by 1.2 million barrels a day starting in January.

Preliminary terms of the deal were announced in September.

It’s the first time in eight years that the cartel has agreed to cut production.

Russia, another major oilproducing country that is not part of OPEC, also agreed to cut its output.

The price of U.S. crude surged $4.21, or 9.3 percent, to close at $49.44 a barrel in New York. That’s the biggest one-day gain since February.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, gained $4.09, or 8.8 percent, to $50.47 a barrel in London.

Crude dropped almost 4 percent Tuesday as investors felt a deal was becoming less likely.

Other energy commodities also jumped sharply. Heating oil rose 11 cents to $1.57 a gallon, wholesale gasoline rose 11 cents to $1.49 a gallon and natural gas rose 3 cents to $3.35 per 1,000 cubic feet.q

OPEC agrees to cut output in bid to push up oil prices GEORGE JAHN KIYOKO METZLER Associated Press VIENNA (AP) — Breaking with years of inaction, OPEC agreed Wednesday to cut its oil output for the first time since 2008. The move effectively scraps its strategy of squeezing U.S. competition through high supply that had backfired by lowering prices and draining the cartel’s own economies.

The reduction of 1.2 million barrels a day is significant, leaving OPEC’s daily output at 32.5 million barrels. And OPEC President Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada said nonOPEC nations are expected to pare an additional 600,000 barrels a day off their production.

The combined cut will result, at least in the short term, in somewhat more pricey oil — and, by extension, car fuel, heating and electricity. The international benchmark for crude jumped 8.3 percent, or $3.86, to $50.24 on Wednesday.

In the longer term, however, analysts say it’s highly unlikely that oil will return to the highs of around $100 a barrel last seen two years ago. That’s partly due to the fact that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to free up more oil drilling in the U.S., which would increase global supply. Demand is also not recovering as the world economy sags.

Playing tribute to “a historic moment,” Al-Sada said Wednesday’s move “will definitely balance the market and help (in) reducing the stock overhang.” Al-Sada said the OPEC cutback is to take effect Jan. 1, with consultations planned on the exact timing of the nonOPEC reductions. Russia alone is committed to taking 300,000 barrels a day off the market.

With the production cut, OPEC will not only benefit from gaining more dollars per barrel. It can also lay

claim once again to playing a part in influencing world prices.

And its tentative alliance with Russia and other nonOPEC nations may give it — and them — additional clout in future competition for market share with U.S. producers, which are sure to return in increasing numbers if crude prices move upward.

Wednesday’s decision was a departure from years of infighting among members refusing to give up their market share and a resulting series of inconclusive meetings.

In another reflection of new-found discipline within the cartel, Al-Sada said Indonesia’s membership had been suspended after it refused to accept its share of proposed output cuts, reducing the number of OPEC countries to 13. Part of the focus following Wednesday’s decision is how well it holds.

OPEC gave up assigning quotas in part because members have ignored them in their quest for petrodollars. But officials were displaying new confidence. In comments addressed to nay-sayers about his organization’s relevance, Al-Sada said its decision “means the weight of OPEC and the resiliency of OPEC is still there and it will continue to be there.”

“Today’s unity is a very explicit sign about the position of OPEC,” he added.

Meetings to turn the planned non-OPEC cuts into reality are planned next month in Doha. From Moscow, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak confirmed his country’s readiness to pare 300,000 barrels from its output, adding that it would happen gradually “within a short period of time based on technical capacity.”

Al-Sada said the OPEC cutbacks are in effect for six months with the option of renewal after a review by a five-nation committee set up to monitor compliance.q

BUSINESS A25

Thursday 1 December 2016

Fed reports modest growth around nation in new survey MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve reports that the U.S. economy grew at a modest rate this fall, with solid gains in consumer spending helping offset lingering weakness in exports.

The Fed’s survey of economic conditions around the country found that seven of its 12 districts described growth as modest to moderate. Another three districts — Philadelphia, Cleveland and Kansas City — saw a “slight” pace of growth. Richmond viewed activity as mixed, and New York said activity had been flat.

The survey, known as the “Beige Book,” will be used when Fed officials meet on Dec. 13-14. The central bank is expected to raise a key interest rate slightly in response to steady gains in employment and a modest pickup in inflation. The Fed has not raised rates in a year.

A majority of districts reported higher retail sales, especially for clothing and furniture. These gains helped to

A customer buys lunch at Smolak Farms, in North Andover, Mass. On Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, the Federal Reserve releases its latest “Beige Book” survey of economic conditions. The Beige Book is based on anecdotal reports from businesses and will be considered along with other data when Fed policymakers meet in December.

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

offset a slowdown in sales of new autos. Some districts noted a shift in purchases from new cars to used vehicles.

Manufacturing demand was described as mixed, with some weakness attributed to lingering effects from the rise of the dollar,

which makes U.S. products less competitive in overseas markets.

The dollar’s strength has been a drag on manufacturing for most of this year.

The report said that the strong dollar remained a concern for exporters in the Boston, Dallas and San

Francisco districts. But manufacturers of chemicals, autos, aerospace products and the electronics industry in various regions reported signs of a rebound in demand.

The strong dollar was dampening sales for some farm products. San Fran-

cisco noted that the strong dollar was continuing to hold back exports of agricultural products, particularly apples and pears.

Farmers around the country were generally satisfied with this year’s harvests, although the Richmond district reported the loss of 4 million to 5 million birds killed by Hurricane Matthew and related floods.

Seven districts — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas — reported that the demand for workers was increasing, giving a boost job seekers. Wage growth was still generally described as modest, although some districts said there were scattered reports of rising wage pressures for select in-demand occupations.

The Fed boosted its benchmark rate by a quarterpoint last December to a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. Until then, it held the rate a record low near zero for seven years in an effort to help the economy recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.

Figures show Cyber Monday still biggest US online sales day to $29.7 billion compared with the same period a year ago, comScore said.

Amazon.com was the busiest site, followed by sites for retailers Walmart, Kohl’s and Target.

“Overall, we are very en-

WHY WE CREATED LOCK N ROLL TIMESHARE STORAGE? Tashalee Rodriguez, of Boston, uses a smartphone app while shopping at Macy’s in downtown Boston. Shoppers flocked online Monday, Nov. 28, 2016, as “Cyber Monday” sales hit their peak.

(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Cyber Monday is still on top. Reports from two research firms show that the Monday after Thanksgiving was still the busiest U.S. online shopping day of the holiday season.

Research firm comScore

said Wednesday that desktop computer spending on Monday rose 17 percent to $2.67 billion. It didn’t give a figure for shopping done on tablets or smartphones, which is an increasing part of the market. Since Nov. 1, sales have risen 12 percent

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Gian Fulgoni said.

Adobe Digital Insights had said Tuesday that Americans spent $3.45 billion online on Cyber Monday.

A26 COMICS

Thursday 1 December 2016

Mutts

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Yesterday’s puzzle answer

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Thursday 1 December 2016

Korean Air traveler in beer brawl gets 2-year prison term HAGATNA, Guam (AP) — A Guam judge has ordered more than two years prison time for a Korean Air passenger who pleaded guilty to fighting with a flight attendant who refused to serve him beer, but gave lawyers until Wednesday to assess whether he could serve it in home confinement instead of behind bars.

Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood on Tuesday gave Kwon Woo Sung a three-year sentence but gave him credit for the seven months he already served under house arrest and federal detention, The Pacific Daily News reported. Kwon, a South Korean dentist, had pleaded guilty to interfering with flight crew members and attendants on an April flight from Seoul to Guam.

He is accused of smoking a cigarette in the plane’s restroom and then fighting with the flight attendant who refused to serve him another beer.

Five passengers helped subdue Kwon and tied him up until the plane landed about an hour later.

Kwon and his mother fell to their knees in court on Monday, crying and pleading with the judge for leniency.

His lawyers also gave the judge apology letters from Kwon to passengers, flight crew members and the chief executive officer of Korean Air.q

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A28 SCIENCE

Thursday 1 December 2016

Alaska biologists research mystery of declining caribou herd BECKY BOHRER Associated Press JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The size of a large caribou herd in Alaska’s Arctic region has dropped by more 50 percent over the last three years, and researchers who have tentatively ruled out hunting and predation as significant factors for the decline are trying to determine why.

The state’s Central Arctic herd, which roams an area of north-central Alaska about the size of Ohio, hit a peak of about 70,000 caribou in 2010.

It fell to 50,000 in 2013. That year, spring arrived late, meaning caribou had to trudge through snow later than usual at a time when their bodies are already stressed and not getting the grasses they need for nutrition.

Surveys by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game suggest the herd dwindled to about 22,000 caribou this year. There has been a higher than normal rate of death among adult female caribou tracked with radio collars but the reason for that is unclear, said state wildlife biologist Beth Lenart.

The department does not believe hunting is a factor in the decline, saying caribou killed by hunters account for a small portion of overall deaths. The department

This undated photo provided by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shows Caribou in the Western Arctic in Alaska.

Associated Press

doesn’t think predation by wolves and bears plays a large role in regulating Arctic caribou herds, and biologists so far have not detected diseases affecting the herd, Lenart said.

Pregnancy rates for female caribou are down slightly since 2013, but not alarmingly so, she said. Fewer adult males are tracked by tracking collars, making it more difficult to spot trends in their numbers. Researchers conclude that caribou have likely died when the sensors on their collars indicate the animals have not moved for at least 12 hours.

Lenart plans to review more closely weather data to see if there might have

been changes that biologists hadn’t picked up on, like impacts to vegetation that could affect caribou nutrition. “But other than that, it’s pretty challenging” pinpointing a cause, she said. The caribou’s diet includes mushrooms, lichen, willow leaves, small shrubs and grass-like plants called sedges.

Some of the Central Arctic herd caribou may have joined other herds, though the extent to which that may have happened is unclear, Lenart said. The herd’s territory covers 44,400 square miles from the Arctic coast to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields to the southern side of the Brooks Range of mountains.

It’s not unusual for there to be rises and falls in the numbers of caribou in herds, but Lenart described the change for the Central Arctic herd as “definitely a steep decline.”

While there’s no evidence that climate change is affecting the herd yet, the

Arctic is seeing the effects of a warming climate, with polar bears serving as a poster child of sorts for the change.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates the worldwide polar bear population at about 26,000 animals, but there are no comparable historical numbers.

Polar Bears International, an advocacy group, says the bears are traditionally difficult to count because it’s expensive to survey the remote locations where they live. The U.S. government has protected polar bears and some seals, citing long-term threats posed to them by declining sea ice. The U.S. Geological Survey is trying to understand how future environmental change might affect caribou habitat, food and reproduction.

Longer periods of abundant food could help animals put on more weight for the winter but if summers are very buggy, with insects

harassing caribou so much that they can’t eat or must travel long distances to get away, that could have an impact, said Layne Adams, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Work last summer evaluating caribou range quality compared to the 1970s found no clear changes, Adams said.

Some Alaska hunters are critical of current hunting rules that allow nonresidents to kill up to five caribou during the hunting season and allow the killing of females that might have calves depending on them.

“Obviously hunting contributes to decline. Whether it’s a significant factor, we don’t know,” said Mark Richards, executive director of the Resident Hunters of Alaska group. “But you can’t deny that hunting has an effect. Otherwise, they wouldn’t restrict hunting.”

The fish and game department said it plans to recommend an overall reduction in the number of caribou that can be killed from the Central Artic herd because it now has fewer than the 28,000 to 32,000 animals considered its optimal management size.

Adams said the Central Arctic and other herds in the region that have experienced recent declines all reached historic highs prior to their drops.

Two other northern Alaska herds, the Western Arctic and Teshekpuk, have seen declines in recent years, though the Teshekpuk appears to have stabilized, said Lincoln Parrett, a research coordinator with the state Department of Fish and Game.q

PEOPLE & ARTS A29

Thursday 1 December 2016

Pirelli launches covered-up 2017 calendar with top actresses THOMAS ADAMSON A s sociated Press PARIS (AP) — Pirelli on Tuesday unveiled the 2017 edition of its famed calendar, which sees photographer Peter Lindbergh mature beyond snaps of seminude models and set his lens on Hollywood.

The calendar, entitled “Emotional” and launched in Paris, stars 14 Oscar-winning actresses featured in black-and-white close up, in clothed poses with invisible make-up.

The photos, while beautiful, show wrinkles, lines and imperfections. It’s a dramatic move away from decades of risque shots that made the calendar, produced by the Italian tire manufacturer, one of the most recognizable in the world.

A roll call of A-listers includ-

ing Charlotte Rampling, Uma Thurman, Helen Mirren, Nicole Kidman, Lea Seydoux, Alicia Vikander, Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, Robin Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Rooney Mara, Zhang Ziyi and Jessica Chastain all agreed to go near-makeup-free for the grown-up shoots.

Speaking about his artistic choices, the German photographer said that he’s “not so fond of high heels and bikinis” and wanted to capture the nakedness in the soul of the calendars stars, not their bodies.

“In a time when women are represented in the media (as) perfection and truth, I thought it was important to remind people that there is a different beauty,” Lindbergh said.

Mirren, 71, noted that the

‘Just riding a wave’: ‘Queen Sugar’s Kofi Siriboe soars NEKESA MUMBI MOODY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Even though Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey were both involved in the creation of “Queen Sugar,” Kofi Siriboe didn’t really know how big the OWN Network show was going to be when he auditioned a year ago.

“I had high expectations, but at the same time I didn’t want to like, think too deeply into what it would be. I was just really open to letting it happen, so I’m just riding a wave,” says the 22-year-old.

The wave is showing no sign of cresting. Siriboe has drawn rave reviews for his portrayal of Ralph Angel, the formerly incarcerated young father struggling to do right on the family drama, produced by DuVernay and aired on OWN. “Queen Sugar” has also made Siriboe, with striking model-like looks, a fawned-over sex symbol, a status that makes the actor laugh.

“I love when the women are like, ‘God is so good, girl, God did its thing,’” he

In this Feb. 7, 2015 file photo, Kofi Siriboe attends the ASCAP Presents The 2015 Grammy Nominees Brunch in Beverly Hills, Calif. Siriboe, 22, stars in the TV series, “Queen Sugar,” on OWN. Associated Press

says, chuckling. “It could be one thing, it could be all that ego, and validation, or it could just be, ‘I love that you see God when you see me.’” Before “Queen Sugar,” which airs its season finale on Wednesday, Siriboe was best known for smaller parts, including a stint on the TV show “Awkward.” “Prior to this, I had 10,000 followers ... and now it’s nearly 100,000 people watching my every move,” he said. “They’re watching, they actually care, there’s a resonance there. That to me is what’s like, mind-blowing.q

calendar’s move toward less sexualized images of women — begun in last year’s edition by Annie Leibovitz — marks “undoubtedly a cultural shift, a real opening up and a big change.”

The 49-year-old Kidman added that the choice to forgo makeup and proudly look your age projects a good example of what natural beauty should be. “(It shows that) the courage to be yourself is the epitome of confidence and power,” she said, adding that “my husband (singer Keith Urban) totally prefers me without makeup on.”

Thurman, with short swept-

Actresses Nicole Kidman, Uma Thurman and Helen Mirren, from left to right, pose during a photocall to unveil the Pirelli 2017 calendar in Paris, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016.

Associated Press

back dark hair, said that Lindbergh’s vision was “beautiful ... wanting to free women from repressive and false standards.”

Kidman, Thurman, Mirren and Rampling joined oth-

er celebrities at the gala launch of the Pirelli 2017 calendar Tuesday evening at director Luc Besson’s Cite du Cinema in Saint Denis, one of Europe’s most important film studios.q

A30 PEOPLE

Thursday 1 December 2016

& ARTS

‘Moana’ a Disney hit but portrayal irks some in the Pacific NICK PERRY Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Disney’s animated movie “Moana” debuted to critical acclaim and box office success over the Thanksgiving weekend, but some people in the South Pacific dislike how it depicts their culture.

Of particular concern is the movie’s portrayal of the demigod Maui, who is shown as enormous and

egotistical, albeit with a good heart. That has been jarring for some in Polynesia, where obesity rates are among the highest in the world and where Maui is a revered hero in oral traditions.

Criticism from the Pacific has likely stung Disney, which went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the movie was culturally appropriate after being accused of racism in previous movies This image released by Disney shows tenacious teenager Moana, left, voiced by Aulii Cravalho, recruits a demigod named Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, to help her become a master wayfinder and sail out on a daring mission to save her people.

Associated Press

such as “Aladdin” (1992).

For “Moana,” the filmmakers traveled to the Pacific and met with anthropologists, historians, fisherman and linguists, part of what they came to call the Oceanic Story Trust.

The fictional movie takes place 3,000 years ago in the islands of Polynesia, an area that includes Hawaii, Tonga and Tahiti. The star is 16-year-old Moana, voiced

by Hawaiian actress Auli’i Cravalho, who goes on an ocean voyage with Maui, voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The movie made $82 million over the five-day weekend, placing it behind only “Frozen” (2013) for a Thanksgiving debut.

Disney suffered an early embarrassment when it decided to sell costumes of Maui, which featured brown shirts and long pants with full-body tattoos. Disney put the costumes in stores in time for Halloween, but quickly pulled them after critics compared them to blackface.

Producer Osnat Shurer, speaking by phone from Berlin where she was promoting the movie, said the moviemakers spent five years working closely with people in the Pacific to create what they believe is a beautiful representation.

“The costume fell short of that,” she said. “As different things grow around the movie, sometimes they don’t hit the same mark.”

Shurer said that when it came to figuring out the character of Maui, they

found that different islands, villages, and even households, had different impressions of him.

In all the stories, she said, Maui was clearly larger than life. At first, however, they envisioned him as a little smaller, and bald. But he just seemed to grow as the movie progressed. She said animators try to find the essence of a character and then exaggerate those features.

“We knew we wanted him to be big and wanted him to be strong,” she said. “But he also moves with an incredible lightness.”

She said she hopes Pacific Islanders see the movie with an open mind.

“I feel good about the movie we’ve created and that it can withstand scrutiny,” she said. “All I can say is we did it with love and respect.”

In New Zealand, the movie does not debut until after Christmas. But Teresia Teaiwa, a senior lecturer in Pacific studies at Victoria University of Wellington, said she was concerned about the portrayal of Maui.

“Before Disney, I’ve seen a lot of other representations, and Maui is a hero,” she said. “I think it’s clear from the trailers I’ve seen that he’s a buffoon in Disney. It’s a dramatic shift.

He was a trickster but not a buffoon.”

Teaiwa said if Disney really wanted to be culturally correct they would have paired Maui with a female deity, as he is in most legends, and not with a teen-

ager.

“They wanted to get it right commercially without getting it wrong culturally,” Teaiwa said. “But there are some things that they clearly didn’t mind getting wrong.”

She said there seemed to be a U.S. stereotype of Pacific Island men as huge, perhaps because the main exposure to them seemed to be through activities like NFL football.

Teaiwa said she was appalled by the Maui costume, particularly because some ethnologists from early last century had managed to collect the preserved, tattooed skin of Pacific people who had died.

“I thought it was macabre. I thought it was really creepy,” she said of the costume. “It gave me the shudders to see something like that produced so lightly and in such a trivial way.”

New Zealand politician Marama Fox, the co-leader of the indigenous Maori Party, said most Disney heroes tended to look far more muscular than Maui.

“I still don’t think that’s an accurate depiction of what Maui would look like or should look like,” she said. “And it’s a little bit of cultural misappropriation.”

But asked if she planned to see the movie, Fox, a mother of nine, said she had little choice.

“How am I going to keep my kids away from singing Maori people and Polynesians?” she said. “Of course they’re going to want to go and see it.”q

PEOPLE & ARTS

A31

Thursday 1 December 2016

NBC boss and hit-making producer Grant Tinker dies at age 90 FRAZIER MOORE AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Grant Tinker, who brought new polish to the TV world and beloved shows to the audience as both a producer and a network boss, has died. He was 90.

Tinker died Monday at his Los Angeles home, according to his son, producer Mark Tinker.

Though he had three tours of duty with NBC, the last as its chairman, Tinker was perhaps best-known as the nurturing hand at MTM Enterprises, the production company he founded in 1970 and ran for a decade.

Nothing less than a creative salon, MTM scored with some TV’s most respected and best-loved programs, including “Lou Grant,” ‘’Rhoda,” ‘’The Bob Newhart Show” and, of course, the series that starred his business partner and then-wife, Mary Tyler Moore.

“I just had the good luck to be around people who did the kind of work that the audience appreciates,” summed up Tinker with his typical self-effacement in a 1994 Associated Press interview. “The success just rubbed off on me.”

In 1981, Tinker flourished with that low-key approach in a last-ditch effort to save NBC, which was scraping bottom with its earnings, ratings, programs and morale. Five years later, when Tinker left to return to independent production, the network was flush thanks to hits such as “The Cosby Show” and “Hill Street Blues.”

Tinker, who had come to NBC as a management trainee in 1949 with legendary founder David Sarnoff still in charge, left the company for the last time at the end of an era, as NBC, along with its parent RCA, was about to be swallowed

by General Electric.

In 2005, he won a prestigious Peabody Award honoring his overall career. In receiving his medallion, he called himself “a guy of no distinct or specific skills

In this Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006, file photo, Grant Tinker, co-founder of MTM Enterprises and a former NBC chairman, speaks about producer and director James Burrows, who received an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame award in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Associated Press

(who) always needed a lot of help.” He also had received the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

“Grant Tinker was a great man who made an indelible mark on NBC and the history of television that continues to this day,” said Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, sole owner of the network since 2013.

“He loved creative people and protected them, while still expertly managing the business.

Very few people have been able to achieve such a balance.”

“His level of class set him apart from everyone else in our business,” said Bob Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, “and all of us at this company owe him a debt of gratitude. In fact, TV watchers everywhere do.”

He “set the bar high both as a television executive and as a father,” said Mark

Tinker. “I’m proud to be his son, and especially proud of the legacy he leaves behind in business and as a gentleman.”

Born in 1926, the son of a lumber supplier, Tinker had grown up in Stamford, Connecticut, and graduated from Dartmouth College before his first short stint at NBC. Then he moved into advertising. At a time when ad agencies were heavily responsible for crafting programs its clients would sponsor, Tinker was a vice president at the Benton & Bowles agency when he helped develop “The Dick Van Dyke Show” for Procter & Gamble. There he met, and fell for, the young actress the whole country was about to fall in love with: Mary Tyler Moore.

Soon after the new CBS sitcom had begun its fiveseason run in fall 1961, Tinker returned to NBC, this time as vice president of West Coast programming.

Meanwhile, he and Moore became TV’s golden couple and, in 1962, they wed.

(His first marriage had ended in divorce.)

Tinker stayed at NBC until 1967, after which he had brief stays at Universal and Twentieth Century Fox. Then, with an itch to run his own shop, Tinker founded MTM and began developing its first series: a comedy to revive the flagging career of his wife.

The pilot for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” rated poorly with test audiences. The heroine was dismissed for being over 30 and unmarried. Neighbor Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) was deemed too annoying, best friend Rhoda (Valerie Harper) “too New Yorky and brassy (read: Jewish),” as Tinker wrote in his 1994 memoir, “Tinker in Television.”

But the show, which premiered on CBS in fall 1970, was a critical and popular smash for seven seasons and became the flagship

series of a studio whose mewing kitten (parodying the MGM lion) came to signify some of TV’s best.

Along the way, MTM became an incubator for some of TV’s best writers and producers, many of whom — like Steven Bochco, James L. Brooks and Tom Fontana — continue to excel in TV and films.

By 1981, Tinker’s stewardship of MTM had ended (as had his marriage to Moore) when he returned to NBC, where, he recalled in his book, “the company had lost its credibility with every important constituency — affiliates, advertisers, the press, the general public and its own employees.”

Under Tinker’s regime, NBC enjoyed a remarkable recovery. “The Cosby Show” was an overnight hit, but thanks to Tinker, slow starters such as “Hill Street Blues” (which was from MTM), “Family Ties” and “Cheers” were allowed to find their audience and became hits, too.

“Our practice was to make a judgment about a show,” Tinker recalled, “and, if we deemed it worthwhile, to really stay with it until it succeeded.”

Tinker left NBC in 1986, shortly after the announcement of its purchase by G.E. He formed another independent studio, GTG Entertainment, in partnership with Gannett Newspaper Corporation, but its few series flopped and the company was dissolved.

Later, in somewhat of a reluctant retirement, Tinker spoke out against much of what he was seeing on television, particularly “reality” fare.

“These guys used to be corporate good citizens,” he told The AP in 2003, referring to TV programmers, “and I don’t see how they can close their eyes and turn their backs on things that air on their networks.”

Survivors include sons Mark Tinker (an executive producer of NBC’s “Chicago P.D.”) and writer-producer John Tinker.q

A32 FEATURE

Thursday 1 December 2016

A new way and improved way to eat peppermint bark ELIZABETH KARMEL Associated Press I have always loved peppermint and chocolate together and peppermint bark is my favorite way to eat it. Or it was — until I created this peppermint bark variation of my favorite childhood Christmas cookie. My mother made Spritz cookies every Christmas for as long as I can remember.

She always made the simple butter cookies in both chocolate and vanilla and we decorated them with colored sugar sprinkles.

My favorite shape was the poinsettia, because you could eat the cookie, one petal at a time.

The hardest thing about making this recipe is using the cookie press. There is no way around it — you need a cookie press. My mother used her mother’s cookie press until it stopped working and since then, we have both purchased many cookie presses trying to find one that was smooth and easy to work.

A cookie press looks like the culinary version of a caulking gun and deposits only enough dough to make one cookie. I tried quite a few presses, and the best one that I have found so far is the OXO cookie press.

I also love that it comes with all the traditional patterns like the Christmas tree, wreath and several flowers, but also has an elegant fleur de lis and a heart. You can also buy extra seasonal discs and make spritz year round. The extra Christmas discs also have a great bow design that would be perfect for baby and bridal shower parties.

Once you have a good press, all you need to make the cookie dough is a bowl and a blending fork, or your hands. I’ve taken the basic chocolate spritz cookie recipe and instead of decorating with sugar, I decorate with melted chocolate, sprinkling with crushed peppermint candies and drizzling with white chocolate to create my Pepper-

In this Oct. 11, 2016 photo at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, Peppermint Bark Spritz Cookies are shown, from a recipe by Elizabeth Karmel.

Associated Press

mint Bark Spritz Cookie.

PEPPERMINT BARK SPRITZ COOKIES Cookie presses like the OXO Good Grips with stainlesssteel discs work better than presses with plastic plates.

Start to finish: 30 minutes, not including cooling and decorating Servings: 30 (Makes about 5 dozen cookies) 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature 2 squares (2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate, melted 2/3 cup granulated white sugar 3 egg yolks 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 ½ cups sifted all-purpose flour Topping: 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted 2 ounces white chocolate, melted 1 cup crushed peppermint candies Preheat oven to 400 F Mix butter, unsweetened chocolate and sugar together until creamy. Add egg yolks one at a time to

combine. Add vanilla and mix thoroughly.

Using your hands or a blending fork, work in the flour, a little at a time, until smooth.

Divide dough into 2-3 piec-

for your design. Press the cookies out one at a time onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 7 to 10 minutes or until set but not brown. Remove from cookie sheet after 1

In this Oct. 11, 2016 photo at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, pastry bags with white and dark chocolate and crushed candy are used to frost Peppermint Bark Spritz Cookies, from a recipe by Elizabeth Karmel.

Associated Press

es and roll them into a tube shape and cover with wax paper. Chill dough for 30 minutes. When the dough is chilled, place the roll in the cookie press tube and choose cookie plate

minute, and gently place on a cooling rack. Let cookies cool completely.

Melt chocolate and place in a decorating bag or a re-closeable plastic bag.

When ready to decorate

cookies, snip a small corner at one end of the bag for the chocolate to flow through. When the cookies are cool, carefully drizzle melted semi-sweet chocolate on the top of the cookie. While the chocolate is still warm, sprinkle with crushed peppermint candies so the candy will stick to the chocolate, then drizzle with melted white chocolate.

Place in the refrigerator to set the chocolate for at least 1 hour before serving.

Store in an airtight container in a cool place.

Nutrition information per serving: 146 calories; 73 calories from fat; 8 g fat (5 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 35 mg cholesterol; 3 mg sodium; 17 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 7 g sugar; 2 g protein. ___ EDITOR’S NOTE: Elizabeth Karmel is a barbecue and Southern foods expert. She is the chef and pit master at online retailer CarolinaCueToGo.com and the author of three books, including “Taming the Flame.”q