THE MIAMI HERALD 13 DICIEMBRE 2010 by Miami Herald Ecuador

MiamiHerald.com HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will be delivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will be posted to your account if delivery is declined.

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

U.S. charges the Afghan drug lord it supported

BROTHER

VS. BROTHER

BY JAMES RISEN

New York Times Service

WASHINGTON — When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new U.S. narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. But what the government did not say was that Khan was also a longtime U.S. informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officers and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the U.S.-led invasion of the country, according to current and former U.S. officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States. At the height of his power, Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with CIA and DEA officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s government.

MIAMI HERALD WIRE PHOTOS

RAISING CAIN: Fabricio Correa, right, brother of Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, left, says he may run against his brother in 2012, whom he criticizes for surrounding himself with people Fabricio calls communists and guerrilla sympathizers.

ECUADOR’S PRESIDENT MAY FACE A RIVAL HE KNOWS WELL: HIS BROTHER BY JIM WYSS

jwyss@miamiherald.com

One of the hemisphere’s ﬁercest sibling rivalries might get played out on a national stage. Fabricio Correa — the brash older brother of Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa — says he’ll take on his hermanito at the ballot box in 2012, unless a more viable opposition candidate comes along. If he makes good on the threat, it’s likely to produce a nasty and memorable presidential race in a region known for its political theater. On the streets of Quito, grafﬁti artists call Fabricio “Cain” — the biblical brother who murdered his sibling. Fabricio rails against the president for surrounding himself with

Rats to help sniff out minefields BY CHRIS KRAUL

Los Angeles Times Service

BOGOTA — Rats may soon become heroic ﬁgures in Colombia's struggle to detect and dispose of land mines. Early in 2011, anti-narcotics police will begin deploying squads of rats to sniff out land mines in remote areas of Colombia where leftist rebels and drug trafﬁckers have planted hundreds of thousands of the deadly devices. It’s an unconventional initiative in a country that is second only to Afghanistan in the number of land mine victims. Using a project in Tanzania as a model, Colombian scientists have • TURN TO RATS, 2A

people he calls communists and guerrilla sympathizers. He refers to his brother’s cabinet as “the pink circle” because he claims it’s stacked with gay people. In Miami recently, Fabricio, 50, said a potential presidential bid is not about family oneupmanship but about the future of Ecuador — a nation of 15 million renowned for the GalÍpagos Islands and its ﬂower exports. President Correa, 47, a former university professor and U.S.-trained economist, won the presidency in 2007 as a political outsider with a populist touch. Once in ofﬁce, his ambitious social programs, his willingness to rewrite oil and trade deals in the nation’s favor, and a steady dose of anti-imperialist rhetoric, made him a darling of Latin America’s

left. The country joined the ALBA bloc of nations — led by Venezuela and Cuba — in 2009. He also has a penchant for drama. When he confronted protesting policeman earlier this year he clawed open his shirt and screamed “kill me if you want.” Correa’s policies have alienated some in the business community and scared foreign investors, but they seem to resonate in Ecuador. Correa has an approval rating in excess of 50 percent. If the elections were held today, he would win with 38 percent of the vote, according to the Cedatos polling ﬁrm. Fabricio would come in a distant ﬁfth with 2.8 percent of vote. Fabricio — a tall man with silver hair and green eyes, who

exudes the same charisma as his brother — is not intimidated by the polls. He says he has private polling data that put him within striking distance of the presidency, and he claims his vocal stance against government corruption and a swelling crime wave have touched a nerve. “It’s not that I consider myself a candidate, it’s just obvious that I am — that’s what the numbers show,” he said. “I have to assume this responsibility.” Fabricio said his priorities are to get tough on crime — he has been mugged three times — root out corruption and rebuild ties with the United States and Europe.

• TURN TO DRUG LORD, 6A HOLBROOKE CRITICAL AFTER SURGERY, 3A

• TURN TO ECUADOR, 2A

Storied U.S. jetliner languishes in S. Korea BY JOHN M. GLIONNA

Los Angeles Times Service

NAMYANGJU, South Korea — The big jet looks forlornly out of place perched in the near-deserted suburban lot, as if it just skidded off a nearby airport runway or crash-landed minutes ago. But this plane has long been grounded, a retired icon of a bygone golden age of air travel. The four-decade-old former Pan Am jet, the ﬁrst commercial Boeing 747 ever built, could well be ensconced in an aviation museum, maybe next to the celebrated planes piloted by the Wright brothers or Charles Lindbergh. Instead, it sits on a lot 25 miles northeast of Seoul, far from its U.S. birthplace, an ignominious end to a storied career. Purchased by South Korean investors from a Southern California airplane graveyard a decade ago, the airliner — dubbed

the “Juan T. Trippe” after the Pan Am founder — endured years as an aviation-themed restaurant. Then that venture failed. Now it languishes, all but forgotten, its insides musty with old menus and upended chairs scattered across the floor. Its owner winces each time she stands beneath the big fuselage, which reminds her of a business miscalculation of colossal proportions. “We have no regret in purchasing the plane, just sadness — a feeling of emptiness,” said the owner, a 50-ish woman looking smart in a brightly colored scarf who declines to give her name because of her embarrassment over the lost gamble. Boeing officials say the Trippe was the second 747 of the 1,000 the company produced. The first was used for test flights only, with the Trippe the first to ferry actual passengers.

MATT DOUMA/LOS ANGELES TIMES

CRUMBLING ICON: The first jumbo 747 jet to be flown in the United States sits rusting and dilapidated beneath towering apartments on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea. “This plane helped shrink the ing it possible for anyone anyworld,” said Michael Lombardi, where in the world to get on a Boeing’s corporate historian. “It brought people together, mak- • TURN TO PLANE, 2A

In Peruvian desert, marine fossils draw smugglers BY SIMON ROMERO AND ANDREA ZARATE

New York Times Service

CHRIS KRAUL/LOS ANGELES TIMES

AMAZED: ‘The more I work with rats, the more I am amazed at what they can do,’ veterinarian Luisa Fernanda Mendez says.

SARAH PALIN VISITS HAITI UNDER TIGHT GUARD, 4A

13PGA01.indd 1

OCUCAJE, Peru — Nestled between the Andes and the Paciﬁc, the sparse desert surrounding this outpost in southern Peru looks like one of the world’s most desolate areas. Barren mountains rise from windswept valleys. Dust devils dance from one dune to the next. But to the bone hunters who stalk the Ocucaje Desert each day, the punishing winds here have exposed a medley of life and evolution: a prehistoric graveyard where sea monsters came to

MADOFF’S SON HANGS HIMSELF ON FATHER’S ARREST ANNIVERSARY, 5A

rest 40 million years ago. These parched lands, once washed over by the sea, guard one of the most coveted troves of marine fossils known to paleontology. Discoveries here include gigantic fossilized teeth from the legendary 50-foot shark called the megalodon, the bones of a huge penguin with surprisingly colorful feathers and the fossils of the Leviathan Melvillei, a whale with teeth longer than those of the Tyrannosaurus rex, making it a contender for the largest predator ever to prowl the oceans. “This is perhaps the best area

SECRETIVE ELITE RULES TRADE IN DERIVATIVES, BUSINESS FRONT

in the world for marine mammals,” said Christian de Muizon, 58, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Paris who led an expedition here in November. He ranks the Ocucaje and adjacent sections of desert with top fossil areas like Liaoning province in China, where ashfall famously preserved plumed dinosaurs. But beyond the boon to science, the discoveries here have attracted the attentions of another class of fossil hunters as well: smugglers. Ofﬁcials in the capital, Lima, say seizures of illegally collected fossils are climbing.

Peru is astonishingly rich in archaeological and paleontological sites, so much so that the issue is part of a delicate political debate here. The loss of national treasures to collectors from abroad has set off concerns about sovereignty, perhaps best exempliﬁed by the feud between Peru and Yale University over Inca artifacts taken by Hiram Bingham, the U.S. explorer typically credited with revealing the lost city of Machu Picchu to the outside world a century ago. • TURN TO FOSSILS, 2A

AUBURN’S NEWTON WINS HEISMAN, SPORTS FRONT

INDEX NEWS EXTRA...............3A WORLD NEWS.............6A OPINION.......................7A COMICS & PUZZLES.. 6B

12/13/2010 5:05:11 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

FROM THE FRONT PAGE

Correa may face brother as rival in 2012 • ECUADOR, FROM 1A

The Correa brothers weren’t always at odds. Fabricio, an engineer, joined his brother’s presidential campaign when he was still a virtual unknown, helping him garner votes and raise money from the business community. Fabricio claims the relationship soured when it became apparent that his brother was going to appoint members of the “failed left” to key positions. But the brotherly tensions didn’t make headlines until June 2009, when a team of Ecuadorean reporters exposed some $120 million in public contracts they said went to companies linked to Fabricio. President Correa defended his brother for weeks until — amid mounting political pressure — he annulled the deals and barred Fabricio from competing for the state’s business. Fabricio claims the deals were won through fair and open bidding and that his engineering ﬁrms had been doing business with the government for decades. “I had my businesses for 26 years,” he said. “I couldn’t just close them because my brother’s president.” But when the administration’s attacks became personal, he started ﬁghting back, he said. “President Correa said I was richer than ever, that I was like Bill Gates, that he didn’t like my business and that my partners were traitors,” Fabricio recalled. “Nobody is going to damage my name like that. I don’t care if he is my brother or the president.” Fabricio launched a counter-attack accusing the president’s inner circle of

taking millions in bribes for government contracts. He imitated and mocked his brother on TV, and carried a bright red folder labeled “Victoria Secret” that he used as a prop to joke about the cabinet’s sexuality. As Fabricio’s notoriety has grown so have his political ambitions. Despite the brotherly sniping, Fabricio can be protective. When police protested for higher salaries in September, President Correa went to confront the forces and found himself trapped inside a hospital surrounded by surly guards. In a country that had toppled three presidents in a little over a decade — including Lucio Gutierrez in 2005 — there were fears that Correa might be next. The military stormed the hospital that night. Correa was freed but five died in the gunfight. During the crisis, Fabricio issued a statement pleading for his brother’s safety. “I may be the principal critic of his administration but President Rafael Correa is my little brother and I’ve always taken care of him,” it read. Fabricio said the police were clearly wrong to take the president hostage, but he blames his brother for provoking the crisis. “He almost killed my mother,” he said. “She was so scared.” The brothers haven’t spoken in months. Earlier this year, Fabricio said his mother asked for a birthday present: for her two sons to talk. Fabricio said Rafael responded with an olive branch of sorts. “He told her there will be plenty of time to talk,” he said, “when he’s not the president anymore.” The next president will take office in 2013.

MiamiHerald.com

THE MIAMI HERALD

REMEMBRANCE AND GRIEF

RAFIQ MAQBOOL/AP

Afghan Shiite Muslims beat their chests during Muharram procession in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday. The mourning of Muharram is observed around the world for the first 10 days of first month of the Islamic calendar. The mourning is in remembrance of martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammed.

U.S. jetliner languishes in obscurity • PLANE, FROM 1A

plane and go anywhere else in the world.” The Trippe went into service in October 1970. The plane’s current owner has a photo of then-ﬁrst lady Pat Nixon smashing a bottle of champagne to christen the aircraft, as well as the plane’s depiction on the Jan. 19, 1970, cover of Time magazine. The airliner was shown at the 1970 Paris air show before spending the next 21 years on transatlantic ﬂights for Pan Am, a record interrupted only by a two-year loan to an air company in Zaire. The niche website www.airliners.net contains numerous photos of the Trippe in service, including

a touchdown at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 1, 1991, that marked Pan Am’s discontinuation of transatlantic service to the airport. When the Trippe later took off for California, it received a water-cannon salute and performed a ceremonial ﬂyby. The “tired old bird” went on to be used in cargo service before ending its airborne career with Aeroposta, an Argentine charter airline, according to the website. Eventually retired to a Southern California aircraft lot, the Trippe soon began yet another life. A South Korean couple purchased the jet in 2000 on the wings of a trend here that used real airplanes

to house theme restaurants. The couple scouted planes in Australia and Russia before making a Washington connection, “the chief PR guy who ran George W. Bush’s election campaign,” the owner recalled. They paid more than $1 million for the Trippe, betting that the plane’s history would draw customers. Then they peeled off $100,000-plus to have the jet disassembled and shipped to South Korea in 62 40-foot containers. The couple had the airliner reassembled on a lot outside Seoul. They cut off the right wing, which would have overhung a nearby road, but the landing gear and original engines were all preserved.

“The proudest moment was when we finished reassembling the plane and put it up here,” the owner said. “Having the world’s number two 747 in our own backyard, that was cause for celebration.” The airliner-restaurant trend quickly crashed. Several other similar restaurants shut down, and the couple found it difficult to make ends meet — it took a barrel of fuel oil every two days to heat the big plane. The location was also unfortunate because it is difficult to reach from a nearby freeway. In 2005, the couple closed the restaurant and opened a noodle shop in a small building under the severed right wing.

Marine fossils draw smugglers in Peru On minefields, rats • FOSSILS, FROM 1A

For now, the Ocucaje remains open to just about anyone who wants to search for fossils here. Peruvian law, while vague, classiﬁes fossils as national patrimony and requires fossils found in the country to remain in Peru, unless special permission is granted. But enforcement and

13PGA02.indd 2

preservation here seems like a distant dream. The government controls the desert but leases parts to mining companies, which could damage or destroy fossils. Looters have ravaged archaeological burial sites on the desert’s fringes. The police rarely even enter the area. Almost the only fourwheeled vehicles one sees traversing the desert are

trucks carrying workers who spend weeks on the coast collecting seaweed. They sell to dealers, who then export it to Asia. “This desert is horrible,” said Yolanda Gutierrez, a seaweed harvester. “The only things a person sees are dirt and rocks and bones.” Rodolfo Salas, paleontology curator at Lima’s Natural History Museum,

said evidence that his institution obtained, including photos of fossils for sale by private dealers, showed that the Ocucaje was especially vulnerable. He said the trade was supported by huaqueros, or looters of archaeological sites, who turned to fossil hunting. Paleontologists working here fear the robbery of their discoveries.

are man’s best friend • RATS, FROM 1A

taught rats to detect mines buried as deep as three feet. The rats are conditioned to search and burrow down for explosives in exchange for the reward of sugar. The rebels, principally the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, planted the mines to defend encampments from soldiers and coca plantations from peasants hired to eradicate the crops. Coca is the base material of cocaine, which is a major source of revenue for the FARC. In 2009, 695 people were killed by mines in Colombia, 56 of them children. Rats have the advantage over bomb-sniffing dogs of being so light that they do not detonate explosives, as canines sometimes do. And researchers have found that the rodents are more adept than dogs at sensing explosives when the materials have been masked with coffee grounds, feces, fish, mercury and other substances. “The more I work with rats, the more I am amazed at what they can do,” said Luisa Fernanda Mendez, a civilian behavioral veterinarian in charge of the rattraining project. Like dogs, the rodents can be trained to obey commands such as “search,” “stop” and “let’s go.” But rats, being less social than other creatures, are not as likely to be distracted by other animals in the countryside. Using rats in place of dogs also makes sense from an economic standpoint, with seven rats costing about one-tenth of what the police spend to maintain one bomb-sniffing dog, Mendez said. After enthusing about rats’ abilities, Mendez was asked about downsides. She said the main one is the revulsion they inspire in most

people. So police have no plan to use them in airports, public buildings, checkpoints or meeting places, where the search for bombs involves human interaction. Dogs will keep those jobs. “We see rats working just in minefields for the time being,” Mendez said from her laboratory in north Bogota, where several kittens were running around. The cats were there so the rodents would lose their fear of them and become less prone to getting spooked when working in minefields. Even as the numbers of land mine victims have declined in Colombia from the 1,183 killed or wounded in 2006, the toll on manual eradicators has soared as the mines have become harder to detect and rebels have planted them in greater quantities in and around coca crops. The toll on eradicators, who for the most part are unemployed peasants or poor farmers, has risen so fast that the Colombian Campaign Against Mines, a civil society group based in Bogota, has called for the suspension of the teams. Director Alvaro Jimenez said their use is a violation of a 1977 treaty signed in Ottawa that requires governments to do everything possible to keep civilians away from the risks of minefields. The Colombian government hopes the rats will make the operations safer. Asked whether other creatures had been considered for the job, Mendez said rats were chosen over other “small mammals” because they can be bred easily and in large numbers in laboratories. Furthermore, rats have a highly developed intelligence that has enabled them to survive despite “being the most preyed-upon animal in history,” Mendez said.

12/13/2010 4:53:30 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

NEWS EXTRA

Nixon rails against Jews, blacks BY ADAM NAGOURNEY

New York Times Service

HENG SINITH/AP

FINALLY BACK: U.S. navy officer Michael ‘Vannak Khem’ Misiewicz embraces his aunt Samrith Sokha, 72, on his return to Cambodia 37 years after his adoption by a U.S. woman.

Cambodian refugee goes home as U.S. Navy commander

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Ofﬁce 16 months before he resigned. The remarks were contained in 265 hours of recordings, captured by the secret taping system Nixon had installed in the White House, and released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his

administration — including Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor — these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and U.S. Jews. In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles Colson, a senior advisor who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.” “The Jews have certain traits,” he said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get

mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.” Nixon continued: “The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but,” and his voice trailed off. A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.” At another point, in a long and wandering conversation with Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, Nixon offered sharp skepticism at the argument of William Rogers, his secretary of state, that black U.S. citizens would become more valued citizens. “He says well, ‘They are

coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on,” Nixon said. “My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he continued. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.” Nixon also strongly hinted that his reluctance to even consider amnesty for young U.S. citizens who went to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War was because, he told Colson, so many of them were Jewish.

BY MIKE ECKEL

Associated Press

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — The distant thuds of gunfire and bombs weren’t nearly as memorable for Michael Misiewicz as fishing barehanded with his older brother in Cambodia’s Mekong River. In 1973, as a 6-year-old then called Vannak Khem, he was more concerned with boys’ games than the deepening war — unaware, like most Cambodians, of the trauma that the Khmer Rouge would soon inflict on the country. He had no idea that after his adoption by an U.S. woman that same year, it would take him 37 years to go home. Misiewicz finally returned home Friday as commander of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Mustin — reuniting with the relatives who wondered whether they would ever see him alive, and the aunt who helped arrange his adoption. His ship was scheduled to depart Monday. “Chumreap suor, Om,” he greeted 72-year-old Samrith Sokha in the Khmer language, clutching her in a sobbing embrace on the Mustin’s sea-swept walkway. “Greetings, Auntie.” The ship’s arrival in the port of Sihanoukville ends an odyssey that took Misiewicz, now 43, from the poverty of Cambodian rice fields to the farmlands of the midwestern United States to the helm of a U.S. destroyer. LOOKING FOR CLOSURE The process of returning has been intensely emotional, he said: sadness for the more than 1.7 million who died or were killed by the communist Khmer Rouge when they held power from 1975 to 1979, combined with guilt at his escape from it and joy at seeing the relatives who helped him leave it behind. “This isn’t going to wash the guilt away but I am looking to provide some sense of closure, going back to my birth country, going back to where my family suffered, and where my dad was executed, seeing it firsthand,” he said in a phone interview before his ship arrived. Born south of the capital, Phnom Penh, Misiewicz and his family were uprooted in 1969 as Khmer Rouge fighters forced villagers to join the radical communist movement. His father didn’t sympathize with it, unlike many of his mother’s family, and many considered him a traitor for not joining up, Misiewicz said. They fled north, living on the streets as beggars for a time and scraping by until settling in Phnom Penh. They lived in a stilt house over mosquito-infested waters, subsisting mainly on his father’s work as an herbal medicine pharmacist. His father’s oldest sister, Sokha, worked for Maryna Lee Misiewicz, a U.S. Army administrative assistant with the defense attache’s office at the U.S. Embassy . Misiewicz remembers eating popcorn and watching cartoons while his aunt cooked and cleaned Maryna’s home. Eventually, he said, his father decided they should ask Maryna to adopt him and Maryna and the boy left for the United States in April 1973. “They were concerned about the Khmer Rouge. No one had any idea what would happen, but they hoped for a better life for Mike,” Maryna Misiewicz said in an interview from her home in Freeport, Ill.. “We had no idea how long it would be before they would ever see each other again.” FAMILY REUNION He grew up in Lanark, a town of 1,500 people just south of Freeport, most of whom had never seen an Asian before, and he said he cried frequently, thinking about his family. Gradually, the letters to his relatives went unanswered as Cambodia spiraled into chaos. He forgot what little Khmer he knew, graduated from local high school and enlisted in the Navy. Like most U.S. citizens, he only later realized how many had died and suffered because of the Khmer Rouge’s nightmarish efforts to create an agricultural utopia. Maryna Misiewicz said she initially tried to shield her adopted son from the few reports about the Khmer Rouge’s brutal actions. “You didn’t have any idea it would end up like that,” Maryna said. “I felt badly for Mike and his family and I wondered what was going on, what they were going through.” “As I got older it was less painful to not think about it,” Misiewicz said. It was in 1989 when he was at the U.S. Naval Academy when he was finally located by his family — and he learned of their own odyssey through refugee camps on the Thai border and in the Philippines and finally to Austin. His birth mother, two brothers and a sister had survived but two other sisters died, most likely of disease or malnutrition. All of his mother’s relatives, except for a brother, died or were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Misiewicz said his reunion with relatives in Cambodia would go a long way toward easing his qualms about the opportunity he had — and that his relatives did not.

13PGA03.indd 3

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL: U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke was still critical after undergoing surgery to repair a torn aorta. Holbrooke was meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday at the State Department when he collapsed.

Holbrooke health still worrisome BY H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who is a special envoy on the Afghanistan war, was in critical condition after more than 20 hours of surgery to fix a tear in the large artery that moves blood from the heart. President Barack Obama said in a statement that he and first lady Michelle Obama were praying for Holbrooke’s recovery. He called Holbrooke, “a towering figure in American foreign policy” who has been a critical player in developing the administration’s policy on Afghanistan. The 69-year-old Holbrooke was meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about midmorn-

ing Friday at the State Department when he collapsed. “Many people would have succumbed to that. Richard is ﬁghting through. Anyone who knows him, and I was with him Friday morning before this happened, knows how tough and resilient he is and we’re all praying that that quality sees him through now,” Obama advisor David Axelrod told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Doctors at George Washington University Hospital worked more than 20 hours through the day Friday and overnight to repair the tear in Holbrooke’s aorta. The surgery was completed Saturday morning, said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. Holbrooke’s family was said to be with him. Clin-

ton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been at the hospital as well, according to the White House. Clinton visited on Friday night and again on Saturday. “Richard Holbrooke is a towering ﬁgure in American foreign policy, a critical member of my Afghanistan and Pakistan team, and a tireless public servant who has won the admiration of the American people and people around the world,” Obama said in a statement. Hospital ofﬁcials referred all questions about Holbrooke’s condition to the State Department. A torn aorta is a condition in which a rip develops in the inner wall of the aorta allowing blood to enter the vessel wall and weaken it. If not cor-

rected the condition can lead to rapid death. As blood enters the wall it reduces blood ﬂow just as if there were a severely bleeding wound, leading to serious internal bleeding, a loss of blood ﬂow and possible complications in organs affected by the lack of blood, according to medical experts. Even if the surgery has stabilized Holbrooke’s condition, recovery is likely to be lengthy. Holbrooke’s illness comes just days before the Obama administration is expected to roll out the results of its review of the Afghanistan war next Thursday. His illness is unlikely to result in any changes in that review in which the diplomat has played an integral role.

As the ground shifts, Biden plays a bigger role BY HELENE COOPER

New York Times Service

WASHINGTON — It was the end of a long and testy gripe session with House Democrats on Wednesday, and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had had enough. For two hours, Biden had been going back and forth with furious members of his own party over U.S. President Barack Obama’s deal with

Republicans on tax cuts. In a basement room at the Capitol, Biden was trying to convince Democrats that the deal was the best on the table. Then Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York got up and said that Obama was acting like a “negotiator in chief” instead of a “leader” who got things done. Biden erupted. “There’s no goddamned way I’m going to

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

GAINING INFLUENCE: U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden is increasingly being used as a multipurpose emissary by U.S. President Barack Obama.

stand here and talk about the president like that,” the vice president said, according to two people in the room. In the annals of intraparty bickering among Democrats, the exchange between Biden and Weiner was mild. But it highlights the distance that Biden and Obama have traveled since the 2008 Democratic primaries. Now, at the halfway point of a first term in which Obama has mostly relied on the counsel of a tightly closed inner circle, Biden is taking a more prominent and influential role. With the departure of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and Obama’s need to negotiate with congressional Republicans if he is to advance his agenda, the president is increasingly using Biden as a multipurpose emissary while continuing to seek his counsel behind the scenes. Biden not only played an important role in negotiating the tax deal with Republicans and trying to sell it to Democrats, but also was one of the people in the West Wing who urged Obama to try to find a compromise on the is-

sue in the first place, aides said. The president is at a crucial point, with a restive party trying to figure out its relationship with the White House in the run up to 2012. Among Democrats on Capitol Hill, Biden’s role in the back-channel compromise with Republicans on tax cuts has engendered some resentment, along with questions about whether he will encourage further accommodation with Republicans or serve as a liberal counterweight to those in the White House who are advocating a move to the center. Republicans are still assessing how powerful a player he will be as the White House adapts to a divided government. But in both parties, he is seen if nothing else as someone well positioned to shuttle between Congress and the West Wing. Beyond his behind-thescenes role in negotiating the tax deal with Republicans Biden has also been trying to win Republican votes in the Senate for ratification of the START nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

12/13/2010 3:36:23 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE AMERICAS

MiamiHerald.com

THE MIAMI HERALD

Mexican police suggest they killed a cartel chief BY DAMIEN CAVE

New York Times Service

MEXICO CITY — He walked the streets with a book of his own spiritual quotes. They called him “the craziest one,” for his odd, cultic hybrid of Christianity and grisly violence, which included rolling severed heads into a nightclub four years ago. But Friday, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, one of two main leaders of La Familia cartel, appeared to have joined the growing list of top drug dealers captured or killed by the authorities. “Several pieces of information signal that he was shot Thursday,” said Alejandro Poire Romero, a spokesman for the Mexican government. He added that the police had information conﬁrming that Moreno, 40, was among several cartel gunmen killed and dragged off by their colleagues in two days of gun battles in the state of Michoacan. His death would be a signiﬁcant victory for the Mexican government in its battle against the drug cartels, though not one expected to cripple the cartel.

Moreno, who is also known as El Chayo has become an international sensation for his cruelty and messianic tendencies, but analysts describe La Familia’s other leader, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, known as El Chango, as the organization’s day-to-day chief of operations. La Familia has long been a focus of the government’s war on drugs, in part because of where it operates. Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, the main La Familia stronghold, is only a four-hour drive from Mexico City. It is also the hometown of Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, who has made pacifying his home state a priority. At least 5,500 members of the armed forces and the police have been sent to the state, and violence has ﬂared regularly, between Mexican troops and the cartels and between La Familia and competing syndicates. In 2008, La Familia made headlines when cartel members tortured and killed 12 federal police ofﬁcers. But since 2009 — when government forces experienced

some success in killing or capturing several influential deputies — questions about a possible decline in the cartel’s strength have surfaced. The cartel has promised to disband if the government would agree to a truce (which the authorities summarily rejected). One detained capo from the cartel also said recently that the cartel was weakening. That may not necessarily mean peace. Traditionally, experts say, the weakening of one cartel or the death of a major leader has led to more conflict and violence as competitors fight for open territory. This week at least, La Familia seemed determined to hold its ground. The shootouts in Michoacan between La Familia gunmen and the authorities began Wednesday night, and cartel gunmen blocked all five entrances to Morelia on Thursday with stolen vehicles that they burned. By Friday, schools in many areas had been closed. The authorities said at least five police officers had been killed, along with three civilians, including an 8-month-old baby.

Breakdown of law invites vigilante justice in Mexico BY NICK MIROFF AND WILLIAM BOOTH

Washington Post Service

ASCENSION, Mexico — In this dusty farm town, an hour south of the U.S. border, more than 40 people were abducted — one a week — in the first nine months of the year. Then, on Sept. 21, the kidnappings stopped. That was the day a gang of kidnappers with AK-47 assault rifles burst into Lolo’s seafood restaurant and tried to abduct the 17-year-old cashier. A mob of enraged residents chased down two of the teenage attackers and lynched them in a cotton field on the edge of town. “We’re not proud of what happened,” said Georgina “Coca” Gonzalez, who helped form an armed citizens’ group after the incident to fight crime and prevent kidnappings. “But we’re united now — the whole town. And we all want justice.” Across the country, and especially in northern Mexico, the breakdown of the legal system is giving way to a wave of vigilante violence. As Mexicans grow frustrated with the depredations of drug mafias and the corruption and incompetence of authorities, some are meting out punishment the oldfashioned way, taking an eye for eye, or in some cases, an eye for a tooth. SHADOWY FORCES Some of these retributive acts have happened spontaneously, such as the Ascencion “uprising,” as many here have celebrated it. But other killings in the past year appear to have been carried out by shadowy forces who have left bodies along highways or hanging from bridges with handwritten notes that advertise the dead as “extortionists” or “kidnappers.” Mexico has a long history of rough justice carried out by citizens, but it has traditionally occurred in isolated villages, in the mountains or jungles, often among Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Today, vigilante groups appear to be at work even in major cities. In late 2009, authorities discovered four bodies, including an alleged Monterrey gangster, Hector Saldana, and his two brothers, in a car in Mexico City. The deaths were announced by Mauricio Fernandez, the new mayor of the Monterrey suburb of San Pedro

13PGA04.indd 4

Garza Garcia, even before police identiﬁed the bodies. Fernandez said he had nothing to do with the killings, although he boasted of his plans to create “cleansing teams” to rid his city of criminals. “Sometimes coincidences happen in life. It’s better to see it that way,” Fernandez told a Monterrey newspaper. In Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of violence, murder suspects seem more likely to end up dead than appear before a judge. Several days after gunmen massacred 13 people at a party there in October, two heads were found in plastic bags on the hood of a car with a note warning, “This is what happens to those who kill women and children.” ‘DEATH SQUADS’ A group of Mexican senators has called for an investigation into extrajudicial killings in the country, alleging that “death squads” of current and former soldiers and police were to blame for some of the more than 30,000 killings since Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s drug cartels four years ago. According to Sen. Ricardo Monreal, wealthy business families have hired former police and soldiers to guard their interests and protect them from kidnapping and extortion. Some of the paramilitarystyle groups work as contract killers for the drug cartels, the senator said; others might work as freelancers for the families of victims, who are seeking revenge or

tired of paying extortion. Finally, some may be engaged in a kind of “social cleansing” aimed at low-level gang members, petty criminals and drug addicts. Gustavo de la Rosa, a top human rights official in Chihuahua, Mexico’s most violent state, said the flood of killings and other crimes in recent years has resulted in the “collapse” of the legal system, leaving frustrated citizens to view raw vengeance as their only recourse. “First, people wait for the government to deliver justice,” de la Rosa said. “Then they move on to the next phase, when they go looking for it themselves. I think we’re now at the beginning of the second stage.” More than 96 percent of crimes committed in Juarez over the past three years remain unsolved, according to a database maintained by the city’s El Diario newspaper. At the state prosecutor’s offices in Juarez, unsolved homicide cases were stacked up in manila folders, rising from investigators’ desks in mountains of paper. Members of the armed citizens’ group in Ascencion said they’re not trying to challenge the drug cartels or interfere with their smuggling operations, which would be suicidal. But they said they can no longer abide the kidnappings, rapes, shakedowns and other abuses that have terrorized residents. “We won’t take it anymore,” said Victor Hernandez, a block captain delegated to oversee security in Ascencion, which the group has divided into quadrants.

RAMON ESPINOSA/AP

IN TROUBLED TERRITORY: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, visits a cholera treatment center in Cabaret, Haiti. Palin’s visit comes as the impoverished nation is struggling to overcome post-election violence and a cholera epidemic.

Palin visits cholera clinics in Haiti, avoids capital BY JONATHAN M. KATZ Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stagemanaged visit to Haiti in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press. The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake. Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News. Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, refused to discuss Palin’s itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and U.S. reporters to leave its compounds, citing a “security lockdown.” “I’ve really enjoyed meet-

BY JUAN FORERO

Washington Post Service

BOGOTA — Russia delivered at least 1,800 shoulderfired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009, U.N. arms control data show, despite vigorous U.S. efforts to stop Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez from acquiring the weapons. The United States feared that the missiles could be funneled to Marxist guerrillas fighting Colombia’s pro-U.S. government or Mexican drug cartels, concerns expressed in U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and first reported in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. It had been unclear how many of the Russian SA24 missiles were delivered to Venezuela, though the transfer itself was not secret. Chavez showed off a few dozen at a military parade in April 2009, saying they could “deter whatever aerial aggression against our country.” A high-level Russian del-

egation told U.S. officials in Washington in July of that year that 100 of the missiles had been delivered in the first quarter of 2009. Then earlier this year, Russia reported to the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms, which records the transnational sale of weaponry, that the deal totaled 1,800 missiles. The U.N. registry did not reveal the model of the delivered weaponry. But the U.S. commander for military forces in Latin America, Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, publicly expressed concern this year that Venezuela was purchasing as many as 2,400 of the missiles, also called the IGLA-S. Matt Schroeder, a missile expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said the missiles are among the most sophisticated in the world and can down aircraft flying at 19,000 feet. “It’s the largest recorded transfer in the U.N. arms registry database in five years, at least. There’s no state in Latin

America of greater concern regarding leakage that has purchased so many missiles,” he said, referring to reports of Venezuelan arms flowing to Colombian guerrillas. The database also shows that from 2006 through 2008, Russia delivered to Venezuela 472 missiles and launching mechanisms, 44 attack helicopters and 24 combat aircraft, purchases funded by Venezuelan oil sales. Secret U.S. cables said that the United States was concerned about the Chavez government’s acquisition of Russian arms, which also included attack helicopters, Sukhoi fighter planes and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. A U.S. State Department cable on Aug. 10, 2009, to embassies in Europe and South America said Russian sales to Venezuela total “over $5 billion last year and growing.” There was also concern about Spain’s plans to sell aircraft and coastal patrol boats to Venezuela.

Zelaya a rebellious teen: US envoy Associated Press

NIKKI KAHN/WASHINGTON POST SERVICE

announcement of preliminary results from the Nov. 28 presidential election, which eliminated a popular carnival singer from a run-off in favor of the government-backed candidate. On Saturday, two of the three leading candidates rejected an offer to participate in a recount. Protests began again in parts of the capital in the evening. Though Port-au-Prince was calm for most of the day, Palin avoided the capital, heading north to visit a Samaritan’s Purse project in the small town of Bercy. No Haitians interviewed had heard of Palin, but when told she is a U.S. politican, they said her visit was welcome. “It would be good if she came, because we could tell her that we need medicine and jobs,” said Roseline Frederique, a 21-year-old resident of the capital’s Cite Soleil slum who is being treated for cholera symptoms.

Venezuela acquires 1,800 missiles from Russia

BY ALEXANDRA OLSON

EERIE: The streets of Ascension, Mexico, have been quiet since a mob of residents lynched two attackers who tried to abduct a 17-year-old girl.

ing this community. They are so full of joy,” Palin was quoted as saying Saturday on the organization’s website. “We are so fortunate in America, and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate.” Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her ﬁrst trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong in 2009. That speech was also closed to the media. Samaritan’s Purse posted pictures online of Palin touring a post-quake shelter, touching the hand of a Haitian child and laughing with Graham and Fox News host Greta van Susteren. Palin’s visit comes amid a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened more than 96,000 others. This week the country was rocked by riots following the

MEXICO CITY — A year before the coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya, an outgoing U.S. ambassador called the Honduras’ president a “rebellious teenager” who secretly wanted to leave office a martyr, according to a diplomatic memo released on the Wikileaks website. Ambassador Charles A. Ford sent the unflattering portrait of Zelaya — classified as “secret” — on May 15, 2008, to incoming U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens. More than a year later, on June 28, 2009, soldiers forced Zelaya into exile in a dispute over changing the Honduran Constitution. The coup provoked worldwide condemnation, but months of sanctions and U.S.led negotiations ultimately

failed to restore Zelaya to power. Ford also expressed concern that Zelaya had ties to organized crime, although he offered no evidence. His memo said Zelaya’s delay in naming a vice minister for security “lends credibility to those who suggest that narco traffickers have pressured him to name one of their own.” “I am unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement and counter-narcotics actions due [to] my concern that this would put the lives of U.S. officials in jeopardy,” Ford wrote. The interim government that ruled Honduras for seven months after the coup also accused Zelaya of supporting drug traffickers, but the United States did not publicly support those allegations.

Zelaya, whose gradual shift to the left and increasingly close ties with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez alarmed powerful Honduran business leaders and alienated his own political party, remains in exile in the Dominican Republic. “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in ofﬁce is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests,” Ford wrote in the memo released by Wikileaks on Friday. U.S. ofﬁcials said they would not comment on the leaked document. An aide to Zelaya did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

12/13/2010 4:55:55 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

U.S. NEWS

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

Madoff’s son hangs self on father’s arrest anniversary BY DIANA B. HENRIQUES AND AL BAKER

New York Times Service

NEW YORK — Mark Madoff, the older of Bernard L. Madoff’s two sons, hanged himself in his Manhattan, N.Y. apartment on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest for running a gigantic Ponzi scheme that shattered thousands of lives around the world. “Mark Madoff took his own life today,” Martin Flumenbaum, Mark Madoff’s lawyer, said in a statement Saturday. “This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy.” He called Mark Madoff “an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years

of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.” According to Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne, officers responded to a 911 call made just before 7:30 a.m. Saturday from Madoff’s apartment building at 158 Mercer St. Browne said officers found Madoff’s body hanging from a black dog leash attached to a metal beam on the living room ceiling. He said there was no evidence of foul play. Madoff’s “2-year-old son was asleep in an adjoining bedroom,” Browne said. Law enforcement officials said Madoff sent e-mails to his wife in Florida sometime after 4 a.m. Saturday. “It was

more than one,” said an ofﬁcial, “at least one of which indicated that someone should check on his 2-year-old son.” Browne said the body was discovered by Martin London, a prominent New York lawyer who is the stepfather of Mark’s wife, Stephanie. London apparently had gone to the apartment in response to the message to check on the child. London declined to comment. A person who spoke with Mark Madoff frequently in the last few weeks said he had been in “an increasingly fragile state of mind” and had expressed both continuing bitterness toward his father and concern about a series

of lawsuits that were filed against him and his family. Just last week Madoff, 46, along with other directors and executives of a Madoff affiliate in London, had been named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by the trustee seeking assets for victims of the scheme. It was the second lawsuit filed against him by the trustee, Irving H. Picard, who had initially sued him in 2009 seeking to recover approximately $200 million that the family received in salaries, bonuses, expenseaccount payments and gains in their own investment accounts at the Madoff firm. Madoff was particularly upset that the trustee had

named his young children as defendants in a lawsuit seeking the recovery of money Bernard Madoff had paid out to the family over the years, according to the person who recently spoke with him, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the family. Since Bernard Madoff’s arrest, all the members of his immediate family have been the targets of a battery of civil lawsuits ﬁled initially by victims of the Ponzi scheme and later by the bankruptcy court trustee. These lawsuits are pending, and will not necessarily be derailed by Mark Madoff’s death.

TRAGIC: Mark Madoff was found hanging in his apartment in Manhattan, N.Y.

‘I’m not a witch’ picked as top quote of year BY JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN Associated Press

JIM R. BOUNDS/AP

IN GRIEF: Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his children, Emma Claire, left, Jack and Cate, right, leave the funeral service for Elizabeth Edwards at Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday. Edwards died Tuesday of cancer at the age of 61.

Edwards gets a fond farewell BY MIKE BAKER

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — Hundreds of family and friends gathered to honor the life of Elizabeth Edwards, who has been praised for her strength amid a series of life tragedies that included the death of a son, a betrayal by her husband and a battle with cancer that eventually led to her death. The funeral Saturday was held at Edenton Street United Methodist, a Raleigh church that Edwards turned to after her 16-year-old son Wade died in a car crash in 1996. She was buried later in the day alongside her son during a private ceremony. Speakers recalled Edwards as a woman ﬁlled with

energy, intellect and humor. They joked they had trouble coming up with what to say without the woman who used to leave notes of advice for those close to her. “There aren’t words that are good enough,” said daughter Cate Edwards, whose eulogy contained a passage from a letter EDWARDS her mother spent years preparing to leave to her children after she was gone. “I’ve loved you in the best ways I’ve known how,” the letter said. “All I ever really needed was you, your love,

your presence, to make my life complete.” Former Democratic politician John Edwards, her estranged husband, did not speak. The couple had four children together, including 12year-old Emma Claire and 10-year-old Jack. Their oldest daughter, 28year-old Cate, also talked of how her mother comforted those around her as she lay dying — at one point barely able to speak as she held her daughter and John’s hands, looking back and forth to each, repeating, “I’m OK. I’m OK.” “She was way more worried about us than we were about her,” Cate Edwards said.

She talked of her mother’s strength and grace and also of her witty advice about everything from clothing to marriage. The memorial brought several political ﬁgures, including Sen. John Kerry, who led the Democratic presidential ticket in 2004 that included John Edwards, and North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue. Elizabeth Edwards was ﬁrst diagnosed with cancer in 2004, a day after the Kerry-Edwards ticket lost to George W. Bush in that year’s presidential election. Doctors declared her cancer-free after grueling treatments, but the disease returned in an incurable form in 2007. She died Tuesday.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Christine O’Donnell’s TV ad declaration “I’m not a witch” during her U.S. Senate campaign topped this year’s best quotes, according to a Yale University librarian. O’Donnell’s quote is cited by Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, who released his ﬁfth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year. In the ad, O’Donnell was responding to reports of her revelations that she had dabbled in witchcraft years ago. “It was such a remarkable unconventional quote to be a part of the political discourse,” Shapiro said. The quote by O’Donnell, a Tea Party favorite running in Delaware, tied for ﬁrst place with “I’d like my life back,” the lament made in May by BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “People resented the fact that he was wanting to get back to his yacht races and other aspects of his normal life when those little problems were dwarfed by the magnitude of what people on the Gulf Coast were dealing with,” Shapiro said. Shapiro noted that the top quotes stemmed from two of the biggest news stories of the year, the oil spill and the emergence of the Tea Party. The original Yale Book of Quotations was published in 2006. Since then, Shapiro has released an annual list of the top 10 quotes. He said they will be incorporated into the next edition of the book. Shapiro picks quotes that are famous, important or revealing of the spirit of the times. Here’s the list: 1. (TIE) “I’m not a witch.” Christine O’Donnell, television advertisement, Oct. 4.

1. (TIE) “I’d like my life back.” Tony Hayward, comment to reporters, May 30. 3. “If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested.” airline passenger John Tyner, remark to Transportation Security Administration worker at San Diego airport, Nov. 13, 2010 4. “Don’t retreat. Instead — reload!” Sarah Palin, Tweet, March 23. 5. “Chi! Chi! Chi! Le! Le! Le! Los mineros de Chile!” Chant at Chilean mine rescue, Oct. 13. 6. “I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies. They’re saying: My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?” Sharron Angle, radio interview in January. 7. “We have to pass the [healthcare] bill so you can ﬁnd out what is in it.” Nancy Pelosi, speech to National Association of Counties, March 9. 8. “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach.” LeBron James, television broadcast, July 8. 9. “You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?” Christine O’Donnell, Delaware senatorial debate, Oct. 19. (The Associated Press reported the quote: “So you’re telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase ‘separation of church and state,’ is in the First Amendment?”) 10. “They should never have put me with that woman . . . She was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.” Gordon Brown, comments about a voter he met while campaigning for British general election, Apr. 28.

Blizzard hammers Midwest Reid pushes for Internet poker bill with 20 inches of snow BY DAN EGGEN

Washington Post Service

BY PATRICK CONDON Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — A powerful snowstorm socked the upper Midwest with as much as 20 inches of snow, forcing authorities to close state roads across ﬁve states as heavy winds made for treacherous driving conditions. The storm started Friday in the Rocky Mountains and swept overnight into northern Nebraska and Iowa. By Saturday morning, the blizzard hit eastern South Dakota, northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota. Eastern Minnesota’s Oakdale area got 20 inches of snow as of Saturday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. The storm was moving eastward, where it dumped about a foot of snow in Chippewa County in northwestern Wisconsin and was expected to drop 20 to 24 inches by Sunday morning in the Eau Claire area. Lisa McGrath was shovel-

13PGA05.indd 5

ing her front walk in southeast Minneapolis, but knew she’d likely have to do it again in a few hours. “It’s good exercise — the only exercise I’m going to get today,” McGrath said. The State Patrol said there were 76 crashes reported statewide, but none with fatalities or serious injuries, and 319 reports of vehicles sliding off roads. “The areas that were hardest hit are virtually impassable,” said Minnesota State Patrol Lt. Eric Roeske. “So we don’t expect those numbers to go up a whole lot.” With the snow and winds combining to make visibility difﬁcult for drivers, Minnesota transportation ofﬁcials closed westbound Interstate 90 from Albert Lea to the South Dakota border, pulled plows off roads in the southern part of the state and told drivers to stay home. The Twin Cities east metro area received 15 to

20 inches of snow by Saturday afternoon and was expected to see another 1 to 3 inches before the storm tapered off there. Heavy snow was falling in northern Iowa, where up to 10 inches was expected, and eastern South Dakota, where 5 to 8 inches was forecast. Portions of Interstates 29 and 76 were closed in Iowa and South Dakota because of blowing snow and related crashes. Wisconsin authorities issued a statewide no-travel advisory, citing blizzard and winter storm warnings in nearly every county. The weather was an unexpected burden for one Minnesota man who had pledged to camp out on the roof of a coffee shop to help his daughter’s school raise money. Hospital executive Robert Stevens donned four layers of long underwear, heavy boots and a down coat before embarking on his quest Friday night.

WASHINGTON — As it scrambles to consider landmark legislation on taxes, immigration and gays in the military, the lame-duck Congress is suddenly engaged in a debate it didn’t anticipate: whether to legalize online poker. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is pushing a bill that would give ofﬁcial government approval to Texas hold-’em, ﬁve-card stud and other Internet poker games, which currently exist in a legal twilight zone dominated by companies operating from the Isle of Man and other exotic foreign locales. The idea is to lure some of that multibillion-dollar business into the United States — and give the federal government up to $3 billion in annual revenues in the process. The measure would be a boon for Las Vegas-based casinos, which supported Reid in his hard-fought reelection campaign and are eager to enter the lucrative world of online gaming.

Many states and localities have started thinking about legalizing Internet gaming on their own, giving federal lawmakers even more incentive to act. “Under the status quo, Internet poker is played by millions of Americans every day in an essentially unregulated environment,” Reid said this week. “The legislation I am working on would get our collective heads out of the sand and create a strict regulatory environment to protect U.S. consumers, prevent underage gambling and respect the decisions of states that don’t allow gambling.” The bill’s chances are uncertain at best, and Democratic staffers are struggling to ﬁnd a way forward that doesn’t bog down other legislation. But backers say the proposal offers the best odds yet for online-poker proponents, who until now have gained little traction despite millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions. Many conservative groups and GOP lawmakers, howev-

er, strongly oppose the measure, seeing it as an ofﬁcial sanction of immoral behavior. Legalizing poker or any other type of online gaming is far less likely with Republicans in control of the House in 2011, according to many legislative aides and lobbyists. Lawmakers in New Jersey and California are pushing ahead with plans to legalize online gaming in those states. The Senate poker legislation was written with help from major gambling and casino interests, who played a signiﬁcant role in funding Reid’s expensive reelection campaign, according to lobbyists and legislative aides. Reid has collected more than $1.6 million in contributions from gaming companies and their employees over the past two decades, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Reid and his supporters say the bill is a commonsense and limited solution to the problem of unregulated online poker, which is played by an estimated 10 million U.S. citizens.

12/13/2010 2:40:53 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

WORLD NEWS

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MiamiHerald.com

THE MIAMI HERALD

Ivory Coast election winner governs from hotel BY RUKMINI CALLIMACHI Associated Press

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — From a hotel room just big enough to hold a bed and a desk, the man considered the legitimate president of Ivory Coast is trying to govern a troubled nation whose sitting president refuses to leave. Alassane Ouattara does not have access to the presidential palace, so he holds Cabinet meetings in a tent on the hotel lawn. His administration has taken over the hotel manager’s ofﬁce, where the fax machine is used to communicate with embassies abroad. And the neighboring golf course’s sloping fairways may soon house soldiers defecting from the army still controlled by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo. In the upside-down world that has taken root in this corner of Africa, 68-yearold Ouattara was declared winner of November’s presidential election by his country’s election commission in an outcome certiﬁed by the United Nations. He was recognized as the legal presi-

dent by the United States, the European Union, former colonial ruler France and the African Union. Just about the only world leader who has not acknowledged his victory is the one occupying the presidential palace across town. Despite near-universal condemnation, Gbagbo has turned his back on the world since the country’s constitutional council led by one of his close advisors overturned the results and declared him the winner by throwing out the votes from provinces where Ouattara had won a majority. He imposed a curfew, sealed the country’s borders and imposed a media blackout by cutting off foreign TV and radio channels. He has ignored pleas to step down from close friends and political heavyweights alike, going so far as to refuse a telephone call last weekend from U.S. President Barack Obama, who was told that Gbagbo was ‘resting.’ After a decade of havoc, the election was supposed to set the country’s broken bones after a draining civil

SCHALK VAN ZUYDAM/AP

THREAT: The risk of a return to war is real in Ivory Coast, where a disputed presidential election has created tension between incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo and his opponent Alassane Ouattara. war. The risk of a return to war is real, and diplomats compare the standoff to a room whose ﬂoor is covered in gasoline where every-

one is walking around with lighters. The U.N. raised the security threat level, requiring the immediate evacuation

of several hundred civilian employees. Left behind are the more than 10,000 peacekeepers who have turned the Golf Hotel into a bunker,

encircling it with razor wire. Tanks guard the entrance and visitors face security checks. It is unclear what the international community can do if Gbagbo refuses to step down. Then, removing him may require military intervention, which most diplomats say is off the table. But from inside his room on the hotel’s ﬁrst ﬂoor, Ouattara has started chipping away at Gbagbo’s grip. His administration sent letters to foreign governments asking them not to recognize Gbagbo’s diplomats. And Ouattara has asked the regional central bank to freeze the administration’s access. If they accept, the state coffers will be empty by the end of the month and Gbagbo will not be able to pay civil servant salaries. The vote has turned into a test case for democracy because it’s the only time the U.N. has been asked to certify the results of a presidential election, one of the conditions of a 2005 peace deal signed by Ouattara and Gbagbo.

U.S. charges Afghan drug lord who was CIA, DEA informer • DRUG LORD, FROM 1A

In a series of videotaped meetings in Washington hotels, Khan offered tantalizing leads to the CIA and DEA, in return for what he hoped would be protected status as a U.S. asset, according to U.S. ofﬁcials. And then, before he left the United States, he took a side trip to New York to see the sights and do some shopping, according to two people briefed on the case. The relationship between the U.S. government and Khan is another illustration of how the war on drugs and the war on terrorism have sometimes collided, particularly in Afghanistan, where drug dealing, the insurgency and the government often overlap. To be sure, U.S. intelligence has worked closely with ﬁgures other than Khan suspected of drug trade ties, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother, and Hajji Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in 2005. Karzai has denied being involved in the drug trade. A SHIFTING POLICY Afghan drug lords have often been useful sources of information about the Taliban. But relying on them has

Bomb kills 6 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan BY C. J. CHIVERS

New York Times Service

ZHARI, Afghanistan — Six U.S. soldiers were killed and more than a dozen U.S. and Afghan soldiers were wounded on Sunday morning when a van packed with explosives detonated beside a small joint outpost in southern Afghanistan. The soldiers were at a new strong point in a small mud-walled building near the village of Sangsar, north of the Arghandab River, when the bomber drove up to one of the building’s walls and exploded his charge at about 9 a.m. The blast was easily aualso put the United States in the position of looking the other way as these informers ply their trade in a country that by many accounts has become a narco-state. The case of Khan also shows how counternarcotics policy has repeatedly shifted during the nine-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, getting caught between the conﬂicting priorities of counterterrorism and nation

dible roughly 8 miles away, and sent a dusty mushroom cloud towering over the farmland. The explosion blasted a large hole in the thick wall, causing the roof to collapse on soldiers inside. Other soldiers quickly arrived and clawed and pulled at the waist-deep rubble to free the buried troops. The building had been occupied by U.S. and Afghan troops for only a few days, a U.S. official said, and was beside a narrow road. It was not immediately clear how the vehicle managed to approach as closely as it did without being challenged or building, so much so that Khan was never sure which way to jump, according to officials who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. When asked about Khan’s relationship with the CIA, a spokesman for the spy agency said the “CIA does not, as a rule, comment on matters pending before U.S. courts.” A DEA spokesman also declined to comment on his

From the Miami Herald International’s London Bureau Chief comes

IQ: How Psychology Hijacked Intelligence

stopped. General AbdulHameed, a commander in the Afghan National Army, said by telephone that his soldiers had tried to stop the van but that its driver ignored them, drove toward the building and rammed the vehicle against its exterior wall. After the van exploded, the ﬁeld beside the ruined building became a busy landing zone, as four medical evacuation helicopters landed to shuttle the victims to two military hospitals in nearby Kandahar. The Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for the bombing. agency’s relationship with Khan. His New York lawyer, Steven Zissou, denied that Khan had ever supported the Taliban or worked for the CIA. “There have been many things said about Hajji Khan,” Zissou said, “and most of what has been said, including that he worked for the CIA, is false. What is true is that HJK has never been an enemy of the United

Out in Paperback, from Duckworth Press

‘Zestily polemical’ Guardian ‘Engaging and lively…a page-turner’ Independent ‘Well-informed…consistently interesting…powerful’ J o h n C a r e y , S u n d a y T iim mes Should you wish to order a copy at the promotional rate, please contact international@heraldimg.com www.stephenmurdoch.com

13PGA06.indd 6

NO ACTION TAKEN By 2004, Khan had gained control over routes from southern Afghanistan to Pakistan’s Makran Coast, where heroin is loaded onto freighters for the trip to the Middle East, as well as overland routes through western Afghanistan to Iran and Turkey. To keep his routes open and the drugs ﬂowing, he lavished bribes on all the warring factions, from the Taliban to the Pakistani intelligence service to the Karzai government, according to current and former U.S. ofﬁcials. The scale of his drug organization grew to stunning levels, according to the federal indictment against him. It was in both the wholesale and the retail drug

businesses, providing raw materials for other drug organizations while also processing finished drugs on its own. Bush administration officials first began to talk about him publicly in 2004, when Robert B. Charles, then the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told Time magazine that Khan was a drug lord “obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban.” Such high-level concern did not lead to any action against Khan. Khan’s reported efforts to take over from Noorzai came just as he went to Washington to meet with the CIA and the drug agency, former U.S. officials say. By then, Khan had been working as an informer for both agencies for several years, officials said. He had met repeatedly with CIA officers in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 or 2002, and had also developed a relationship with the drug agency’s attache in Kabul, former U.S. officials say. Now, plea negotiations are quietly under way. A plea bargain might keep many of the details of his relationship with the United States out of the public record.

Modest pledges at U.N. climate talks BY MARGOT ROOSEVELT

Los Angeles Times Service

States and has never supported the Taliban or any other group that threatens U.S. citizens.” A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Ofﬁce for the Southern District of New York, which is handling Khan’s prosecution, declined to comment. However, defending the relationship, one U.S. ofﬁcial said, “You’re not going to get intelligence in a war zone from Ward Cleaver or Florence Nightingale.”

CANCUN, Mexico — Delegates from 190 countries ended two weeks of diplomatic brinksmanship over climate change with a stalemate between rich and poor countries over cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, more than 9,000 delegates attending talks at Cancun on Saturday adopted a set of modest pledges to measure greenhouse gases and compensate the most vulnerable countries for the effects of rising sea levels, longer droughts and stronger hurricanes. The Cancun Agreements rescued the 20-year climate negotiations from what appeared to

be imminent collapse after last year’s Copenhagen talks ended in recriminations. China and other nations accused the United States of failing to seriously negotiate and then pushing a last-minute accord without broad input from other heads of state. Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon hailed the summit a “thoroughgoing success.” The Cancun Agreements, he said, lifted “the inertia of mistrust” that overwhelmed the effort when 120 heads of state failed to seal a deal last December. The Cancun talks did not make much progress in bridging the ideological gulf between rich and poor nations that has stymied action

on climate issues. Developing nations say it is up to rich countries, which have fouled the atmosphere for decades, to clean it up. The United States maintains that nations with rapidly growing economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa can afford to chip in — and if they don’t, the United States won’t sign any international treaty. In Cancun the breach widened, with Japan and Russia saying that without participation from China and the others, they would not sign on to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 agreement in which industrialized nations — the United States excepted — agreed to curb emissions by 2012.

Iraqi Swede suspected in Stockholm blasts BY CHRISTINA ANDERSON AND RAVI SOMAIYA

New York Times Service

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A day after two explosions struck the heart of Sweden’s capital, killing one man and wounding two people in what the authorities are calling an act of terrorism, investigators began to focus on ominous Islamic extremist recordings sent to Swedish media and the police just before the blasts. They were also studying the possibility that the person responsible was a disaffected Iraqi Swede who had been schooled in Britain.

The ﬁrst blast came from a car parked near the busy shopping street of Drottninggatan shortly before 5 p.m. local time. A second blast followed minutes later about 200 yards away. A man’s body, with blast injuries to his abdomen, was discovered after the second explosion. Swedish newspapers have said the dead man was a suicide bomber — the newspaper Aftonbladet said on its website that he had been carrying pipe bombs and a backpack full of nails. There was widespread speculation in the Scandina-

vian and British media Sunday that the bomber was a 28-year-old Swede of Iraqi origin, who had attended a British university. The reports could not conﬁrmed, and the police declined to comment. Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters Sunday that an investigation, led by the Swedish domestic intelligence agency Sapo, was working to establish links among the two explosions, the dead man and the e-mails sent to the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, and to authorities, just before the blasts.

12/13/2010 5:54:33 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

OPINION CHARLES D. SHERMAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Was $3B not incentive enough? BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN New York Times Service

he failed attempt by the United States to bribe Israel with a $3 billion security assistance package, diplomatic cover and advanced F-35 ﬁghter aircraft — if Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would simply agree to a 90-day settlements freeze to resume talks with the Palestinians — has been enormously clarifying. It demonstrates just how disconnected from reality both the Israeli and the Palestinian leaderships have become. Oil is to Saudi Arabia what unconditional U.S. aid and affection are to Israel — and what unconditional Arab and European aid and affection are to the Palestinians: a hallucinogenic drug that enables them each to think they can defy the laws of history, geography and demography. It is long past time that we stop being their crack dealers. At a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment in the United States, we have Israel and Palestine sitting with their arms folded, waiting for more U.S. assurances or money to persuade them to do what is in their own interest:

negotiate a twostate deal. Shame on them, and shame us. You can’t want peace more than the parties themselves, and that is exactly where the United States is today. The FRIEDMAN people running Israel and Palestine have other priorities. It is time we left them alone to pursue them — and to live with the consequences. They just don’t get it: we’re not the United States their grandfather knew anymore. We have bigger problems. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators should take a minute and put the following five words into Google: “budget cuts and fire departments.” Here’s what they’ll find: U.S. city after city — Phoenix, Cincinnati, Austin, Washington, Jacksonville, Sacramento, Philadelphia — all having to cut their fire departments. Then put in these four words: “schools and budget cuts.” One of the top stories listed is from The Christian Science Monitor: “As state and local governments slash spending and federal stimulus dries up, school budget cuts

for the next academic year could be the worst in a generation.” I guarantee you, if someone came to these cities and said, “We have $3 billion we’d like to give to your schools and ﬁre departments if you’ll just do what is manifestly in your own interest,” their only answer would be: “Where do we sign?” And so it should have been with Israel. Israel, when a country that has lavished billions on you and taken up your defense in countless international forums asks you to halt settlements for three months to get peace talks going, there is only one right answer, and it is not “How much?” It is: “Yes, whatever you want, because you’re our only true friend in the world.” Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas, what are you thinking? Ehud Olmert, the former Israel prime minister, offered you a great two-state deal, including East Jerusalem — and you let it fritter away. Now, instead of chasing after Obama and telling him you’ll show up for negotiations anywhere under any conditions that the president asks, you’re also setting your own terms. Here’s some free advice: When the United States

goes weak, if you think the Chinese will deliver Israel for you, you’re wrong. I know China well. It will sell you out for a boatload of Israeli software, drones and microchips so fast that your head will spin. I understand the problem: Israeli and Palestinian leaders cannot end the conﬂict without having a civil war within their respective communities. Netanyahu would have to take on the settlers, and Abbas would have to take on Hamas and the Fatah radicals. Both men have silent majorities that would back them if they did, but neither man feels so uncomfortable with his present situation to risk that civil war inside to make peace outside. There are no Abe Lincolns out there. What this means, argues Hebrew University philosopher Moshe Halbertal, is that the window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing. Israel will end up permanently occupying the West Bank with its 2.5 million Palestinians. We will have a one-state solution. Israel will have inside its belly 2.5 million Palestinians without the rights of citizenship, along with 1.5 million Israeli Arabs. “Then the only question will

be what will be the nature of this one state — it will either be apartheid or Lebanon,” said Halbertal. “We will be confronted by two horrors.” The most valuable thing that U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could do now is just get out of the picture — so both leaders and both peoples have an unimpeded view of their horrible future together in one state, if they can’t separate. We must not give them any more excuses, like: “Here comes the secretary of state again. Be patient. Something is happening. We’re working on a deal. We’re close. If only the Americans weren’t so naive, we were just about to compromise . . . Be patient.” It’s all a fraud. The United States must get out of the way so Israelis and Palestinians can see clearly, without any obstructions, what reckless choices their leaders are making. Make no mistake, I am for the most active U.S. mediation effort possible to promote peace, but the initiative has to come from them. The Middle East only puts a smile on your face when it starts with them.

Obama’s very good week BY DAVID BROOKS

New York Times Service

ver the past week we’ve seen the big differences between cluster liberals and network liberals. Cluster liberals (like cluster conservatives) view politics as a battle between implacable opponents. As a result, they believe victory is achieved through maximum unity. Psychologically, they tend to value loyalty and solidarity. They tend to angle toward situations in which philosophical lines are clearly drawn and partisan might can be bluntly applied. Network liberals share BROOKS the same goals and emerge from the same movement. But they tend to believe — the United States being as diverse as it is and the Constitution saying what it does — that politics is a complex jockeying of ideas and interests. They believe progress is achieved by leaders savvy enough to build coalitions. Psychologically, network liberals are comfortable with weak ties; they are comfortable building relationships with people they disagree with. This contrast is not between lefties and moderates. It’s a contrast between different theories of how politics is done. Sen. Ted Kennedy was a network liberal, willing to stray from his preferences in negotiation with former U.S. President George W. Bush or Sen. John McCain. Most House Democrats, by contrast, are cluster liberals. They come from safe seats, have a poor feel for the wider electorate and work in an institution where politics is a war of all against all. U.S. President Barack Obama ran for president as a network liberal, and entranced a Facebook nation. But in office, Obama, like Bush before him, narrowed his networks. To get things done quickly, he governed like a cluster liberal, relying on partisan leaders. The results were predictable: insularity, alienation and defeat. So now we are headed toward divided government. The climate shows signs of change. Dick Durbin and Tom Coburn boldly embraced the bipartisan fiscal commission process. Obama opened up a comprehensive set of negotiations with Republican leaders to handle the Bush tax cuts. The big story of the week is that Obama is returning to first principles, reestablishing himself as a network liberal. This isn’t a move to the center or triangulation. It’s not the Clinton model or the Truman model or any of the other stale categories people are trying to impose on him. It’s standing at one spot in the political universe and trying to build temporarily alliances with people at other spots in the political universe. You don’t have to abandon your

Obama gave GOP hostages BY PAUL KRUGMAN

New York Times Service

’ve spent the past couple of days trying to make my peace with the Obama-McConnell tax-cut deal. U.S. President Barack Obama did, after all, extract more concessions than most of us expected. Yet I remain deeply uneasy — not because I’m one of those “purists” Obama denounced on Tuesday but because this isn’t the end of the story. Specifically: Obama has bought the release of some hostages only by providing the GOP with new hostages. About the deal: Republicans got what they wanted — an extension of all the Bush tax cuts, including those for the wealthy. This part of the deal was bad all around. Yes, some of those tax cuts would be spent, boosting the economy to some extent. But a large part of the tax cuts, especially those for the wealthy, would not be spent, so the tax-cut extension increases the budget deficit a lot while doing little to reduce unemployment. And by stringing things along, the extension increases the chances that the Bush tax cuts will be made permanent, with devastating effects on the budget and the long-term prospects for Social Security and Medicare. In return for this bad stuff, Obama got a significant amount of short-term stimulus. Unemployment benefits were extended; there was a temporary cut in the payroll tax; and there were tax breaks for investment. Incidentally: How, exactly, did we get to the point where Democrats must plead with Republicans to accept lower corporate taxes? Unemployment benefits aside, all of this is very much second-best policy: Consumers would probably spend only part of the payroll tax break, and it’s unclear whether the

13PGA07.indd 7

business break would do much to spur investment given the excess capacity in the economy. Still, it would be a noticeable net positive for the economy in 2011. But here’s the thing: While the bad stuff in the deal lasts for two years, the not-so-bad stuff expires at the end of 2011. This means that we’re talking about a boost to growth in 2011 — but growth in 2012 that would actually be slower than in the absence of the deal. This has big political implications. Political scientists tell us that voting is much more strongly affected by the economy’s direction in the year KRUGMAN or less preceding an election than by how well the nation is doing in some absolute sense. When Ronald Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, the unemployment rate was almost exactly the same as it had been just before the 1980 election — but because the economic trend in 1980 was down while the trend in 1984 was up, an unemployment rate that spelled defeat for Jimmy Carter translated into landslide victory for Reagan. This political reality makes the tax deal a bad bargain for Democrats. Think of it this way: The deal essentially sets up 2011-12 to be a repeat of 2009-10. Once again, there would be initial beneﬁts from the stimulus, and decent growth a year before the election. But as the stimulus faded, growth would tend to stall — and this stall would, once again, come in the months leading up to the election, with seriously negative consequences for Obama and his party. You may say that economic policy shouldn’t be affected by

partisan considerations. But even if you believe that — how’s the weather on your planet? — you have to consider the situation likely to prevail a year from now, as the good parts of the ObamaMcConnell deal are about to expire. Wouldn’t there be pressure on Democrats to offer Republicans something, anything, to improve economic prospects for 2012? And wouldn’t that be a recipe for another bad deal? Surely the answer to both questions is yes. And that means that Obama is, as I said, paying for the release of some hostages — getting an extension of unemployment benefits and some more stimulus — by giving Republicans new hostages, which they may well use to make new, destructive demands a year from now. One big concern: Republicans may try using the prospect of a rise in the payroll tax to undermine Social Security finances. Which brings me back to Obama’s press conference, where — showing much more passion than he seems able to muster against Republicans — he denounced purists on the left, who supposedly refuse to accept compromises in the national interest. Well, concerns about the tax deal reflect realism, not purism: Obama is setting up another hostage situation a year down the road. And given that fact, the last thing we need is the kind of selfindulgent behavior he showed by lashing out at progressives whom he feels aren’t giving him enough credit. The point is that by seeming angrier at worried supporters than he is at the hostage-takers, Obama is already signaling weakness, giving Republicans every reason to believe that they can extract another ransom. And they can be counted on to act accordingly.

principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn’t get to stamp his foot and have his way. Cluster liberals in the House and the commentariat are angry. They have no strategy for how Obama could have better played his — weak — hand with a coming Republican majority, an expiring tax law and several Democratic senators from red states insisting on extending all the cuts. They just sense the waning of their moment and are howling in protest. They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration. They are also convinced that Democrats should never start a negotiation because they will always end up losing in the end. (Perhaps psychologists can explain the interesting combination: intellectual self-confidence alongside a political inferiority complex). The fact is, Obama and the Democrats have had an excellent week. The White House negotiators did an outstanding job for their side. With little leverage, they got not only the unemployment insurance, but also an Earned Income Tax Credit provision, a college scholarship provision and other Democratic goodies. With little leverage, they got a package that could win grudging praise from big-name liberal groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for American Progress. Moreover, Obama has put himself in a position to govern again. The package is popular. According to the most recent Gallup numbers, 67 percent of independents and 52 percent of Democrats support extending all the tax cuts. Higher numbers support extending the unemployment insurance. Obama is reminding independents why they liked him in the first place. He only needs to work on two things. He needs to explain his method better than he did in his press conference. It is entirely consistent to support a policy and be willing to move off of it in exchange for a greater good or a necessary accommodation. That’s real life. Then he’s got to bring this networking style to the larger issues. It’s easy to cut a deal that explodes deficits. It’s more difficult to cut one that reduces them. But there are more networks waiting to be built: to reform the tax code; to reduce consumption and expand productivity; to reform entitlements. Washington doesn’t know how to handle coalition-building anymore; you can see consternation and confusion all around. But did anybody think changing the tone was going to be easy?

12/12/2010 11:45:03 PM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

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

L A S AMANNA V ILLAS A N EW L EGEND

;

ake one look and you’ll see why the world’s jet-setting tastemakers have flocked to La Samanna for decades. Its singular pedigree as the Caribbean’s most idyllic hideaway is legendary. Now, a fortunate few can call it home. La Samanna Villas feature 7,000 square feet of grand, oceanfront living space with 4,600 under-air, plus all of the five star services and amenities of La Samanna Resort by Orient Express. A picture is worth a thousand words – see for yourself.

T O L E A R N M O R E A B O U T O W N E R S H I P O P P O RT U N I T I E S , P L E A S E C A L L L E S L E Y R E E D A T 011 590 590 51 02 85 . www.villaslasamanna.com St. Martin, French West Indies

13PGA08.indd 8

12/12/2010 10:04:25 PM

BUSINESS&SPORTS B MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Secretive banking elite rules derivatives trade BY LOUISE STORY

New York Times Service

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan, N.Y. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

Peels, pig innards help city forgo coal and oil BY ELISABETH ROSENTHAL New York Times Service

KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity. But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels. But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines. A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars. Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings. Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on renewable energy, from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, because fossil fuels are expensive on the Continent and their overuse is, effectively, taxed by the European Union’s emissions trading system. But for many agricultural regions, a crucial component of the renewable energy mix has become gas extracted from biomass like • TURN TO FUEL, 2B

Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk. In theory, this group exists to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the dominance of the big banks. The banks in this group, which is afﬁliated with a new derivatives

clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available. Banks’ inﬂuence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small. Derivatives shift risk from one party to another, and they offer many beneﬁts. Derivatives are also big business on Wall Street. Banks

collect many billions of dollars annually in undisclosed fees associated with these instruments — an amount that almost certainly would be lower if there were more competition and transparent prices. Just how much derivatives trading costs ordinary U.S. citizens is uncertain. The size and reach of this market has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Pension funds today use derivatives to hedge investments. States and cities use them to try hold down borrowing

MISSING

DIEU NALIO CHERY/AP

WOULD-BE HAITIAN CONTRACTORS UNABLE TO LAND AID TENDERS

Associated Press

In a Port-au-Prince warehouse loaded with tarps, plywood, corrugated rooﬁng, nails and other building supplies, company owner Patrick Brun says he had hoped to get contracts from the billions of dollars in international aid promised to Haiti. His 40-year-old company, Chabuma, sells cement blocks, doors, sand bags and other materials for international companies.

But what he wants is a more signiﬁcant role in his country’s recovery, which is why he says he keeps bidding — without success — for U.S. government contracts. “You can imagine that if we can’t win the contracts ourselves, we become totally dependent on foreign companies and nonprofits, and there is not much hope in that,” he said. “We may not have the extended capacity of a U.S. company, but we are respectable. We keep good books and records,

• TURN TO DERIVATES, 2B

CUT OUT: Haitian Patrick Brun, owner of a company that distributes construction supplies, has been struggling to win U.S. government contracts for a role in Haiti’s reconstruction.

OUT BY MARTHA MENDOZA

costs. Airlines use them to secure steady fuel prices. Food companies use them to lock in prices of commodities like wheat or beef. The marketplace as it functions now “adds up to higher costs to all Americans,” said Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates most derivatives. More oversight of the banks in this market is needed, he said.

we have foreign suppliers, we have good credit, we pay our taxes and our customs dues.” Out of every $100 of U.S. contracts now paid out to rebuild Haiti, Haitian ﬁrms have successfully won $1.60, The Associated Press has found in a review of contracts since the earthquake on Jan. 12. And the largest initial U.S. contractors hired fewer Haitians than planned. There are many reasons for the disparity. Among them, USAID is more familiar with some U.S. con-

tractors and gave out some nobid contracts out of urgency, and fears the corruption that is rife in Haiti. On the Haitian side, there is a limited understanding of U.S. government practices. But using foreign aid to give local companies contracts is one of the most important aspects of reconstruction, says Clare Lockhart, chief executive ofﬁcer of the Institute for State Effectiveness. • TURN TO HAITI, 2B

‘Angry Birds’ flocking to cellphones everywhere BY JENNA WORTHAM

New York Times Service

It sounds like a tough sell: a game that involves catapulting birds at elaborate fortresses constructed by evil pigs. But Angry Birds, a hit game by Rovio, a small Finnish company, is one of the unlikeliest pop-culture crazes of the year — and perhaps the ﬁrst to make the leap from cellphone screens to the mainstream. Angry Birds in which the birds seek revenge on the egg-stealing pigs, is meant to be easily played in the checkout line and during other short windows of downtime — but some players have trouble stopping. Rovio says people around the world rack up 200 million minutes of game play each day. The game has inspired parodies, homages and fervent testimonials. Homemade Angry Birds costumes were big hits on Halloween. Conan O’Brien demonstrated the game in a YouTube video promoting his new show, and a sketch from an Israeli

ROVIO/AP

SURPRISE HIT: Rovio’s Angry Birds smartphone app has grown into a pop cultural sensation, addicting cellphone users at a rate nearly as impressive as the body count that its animated slingshot birds are racking up against their swine enemy. TV show about a birds-and-pigs peace treaty was popular online. Celebrities have professed their love of Angry Birds on social networks. Games like Angry Birds are

reaching a wide audience who might never consider buying an Xbox or PlayStation, but are carrying sophisticated game machines in their pockets — smartphones. Soft-

ware developers, eager to become the next Rovio, are creating casual games, which are easy to learn and hard to stop playing, for this crowd. The trajectory of Angry Birds also suggests a shift in the entertainment business and in the kinds of brands that can win wide popularity. Unlike console video games cellphone games like Angry Birds are often made by small companies and catch on by word of mouth. Fans of the game took to the streets Saturday for Angry Birds Day, celebrating its ﬁrst anniversary. Rovio worked with the Web service Meetup.com to help organize the gatherings in New York, London, Jakarta, Budapest and dozens of other cities, but fans stepped up to lead the gatherings. Although Rovio has released two dozen other mobile games, none has come close to the success of Angry Birds. So far, 50 million copies have been downloaded, and Apple said last week that it was the best-selling iPhone app of 2010.

Ireland strives to rebuild global investors’ trust in its banks BY LIZ ALDERMAN

New York Times Service

AIDAN CRAWLEY/EFE

GETTING TOUGH: Ireland’s regulators have forced two big institutions, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, to raise more cash in the event losses worsen. The have also ordered the Anglo Irish Bank closed.

13PGB01.indd 1

DUBLIN — As the Irish government introduced the toughest budget in the nation’s history this week, Stephen Henry, a worker at a credit scoring service, paused to glower at the Anglo Irish Bank building facing St. Stephen’s Green in the heart of Dublin. “The budget is going to increase my taxes, reduce my income and cut my standards of living, and these guys are the culprits,” Henry said. “The sooner they’re gone, the better.” He will not have long to wait: Regulators have ordered the bank closed and the nameplate on Ireland’s most notorious ﬁnancial institution — the bank many blame for precipitating the country’s current crisis — to be taken down within weeks. The closure is part of a broader

effort by Ireland to persuade global investors, just two weeks after Dublin applied for an ¤85 billion ($112 billion) international bailout, that no more banking problems lurk in the shadows. If all goes well, investors will regain conﬁdence and foreign banks and private equity players like Wilbur L. Ross Jr. and J.C. Flowers could be tempted to pluck bargains from the wreckage. Regulators must be “more convincing than we have been” that the worst will soon be behind Ireland’s banks, said Patrick Honohan, governor of the country’s central bank. That could prove to be a stiff challenge. Time and again, as Ireland’s banking crisis deepened, estimates rose for the cleanup. The bill to taxpayers for the bailout has swelled to ¤84 billion, 56 percent of gross domestic product, the result of a government decision to backstop the banks’ losses.

The Fitch ratings agency dropped Ireland’s credit rating three notches Thursday, warning that the aggressive program of purging bad loans from banks, coming amid a new wave of austerity in the economy, could “stall a recovery.” Moreover, as the country tightens its belt to help pay the banking bill, the default rate on residential mortgages, now 5 percent to 10 percent, is expected to rise as homeowners struggle to meet monthly payments. So far, the sharpest losses have been on commercial real estate loans, which banks made lavishly during the real estate boom. Regulators have forced two big institutions, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, to raise more cash in the event losses worsen. But when Ireland received its recent bailout, the International • TURN TO IRELAND, 2B

12/13/2010 5:29:03 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

Secretive banking elite rules deriatives trade • DERIVATIVES, FROM 1B

But big banks influence the rules governing derivatives through a variety of industry groups. The banks’ latest point of influence are clearinghouses like ICE Trust, which holds the monthly meetings with the nine bankers in New York. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, many derivatives will be traded via such clearinghouses. Gensler wants to lessen banks’ control over these new institutions. On Thursday, the commission canceled a vote over a proposal to make prices more transparent, raising speculation that Gensler did not have enough support from his fellow commissioners. The Department of Justice is looking into derivatives, too. The department’s antitrust unit is actively investigating “the possibility of anticompetitive practices in the credit derivatives clearing, trading and information services industries,” according to a department spokeswoman. Representatives from the nine banks that dominate the market declined to comment on the Department of Justice investigation. ONLY INSIDERS KNOW How did big banks come to have such influence that they can decide who can compete with them? Ironically, this development grew in part out of

worries during the height of the ﬁnancial crisis in 2008. A major concern during the meltdown was that no one — not even government regulators — fully understood the size and interconnections of the derivatives market, especially the market in credit default swaps, which insure against defaults of companies or mortgages bonds. The panic led to the need to bail out the American International Group, for instance, which had CDS contracts with many large banks. In the midst of the turmoil, regulators ordered banks to speed up plans — long in the making — to set up a clearinghouse to handle derivatives trading. The intent was to reduce risk and increase stability in the market. Two established exchanges that trade commodities and futures, ICE Trust, part of the InterContinentalExchange, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, set up clearinghouses, and, soon afterwards, so did Nasdaq. Each of these new clearinghouses had to persuade big banks to join their efforts, and they doled out membership on their risk committees, which is where trading rules are written, as an incentive. None of the three clearinghouses would divulge the members of their risk committees when asked by a reporter. But two people with direct knowledge of ICE’s committee said the members are: Thomas J. Benison of JPMorgan Chase & Company;

James J. Hill of Morgan Stanley; Athanassios Diplas of Deutsche Bank; Paul Hamill of UBS; Paul Mitrokostas of Barclays; Andy Hubbard of Credit Suisse; Oliver Frankel of Goldman Sachs; Ali Balali of Bank of America; and Biswarup Chatterjee of Citigroup. Through representatives, these bankers declined to comment on the panel or the market. Some of the representatives noted that the bankers have expertise that helps the clearinghouse. ELECTRONIC EXCHANGE? Two years ago, Kenneth C. Griffin, owner of the giant hedge fund Citadel Group, which is based in Chigago, proposed open pricing for commonly traded derivatives, by quoting their prices electronically. Citadel, which is based in Chicago, oversees $11 billion in assets, so saving even a few percentage points in costs on each trade can add up to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But Griffin’s proposal for an electronic exchange quickly ran into opposition and what happened is a window into how banks have fiercely fought competition and open pricing. To get a transparent exchange going, Citadel offered the use of its technological prowess for a joint venture with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is best-known as a trading outpost for contracts on commodities like coffee

and cotton. The goal was to set up a clearinghouse as well as an electronic trading system that would display prices for credit-default swaps. Big banks that handle most derivatives trades, including Citadel’s, didn’t like Citadel’s idea. Electronic trading might connect customers directly with each other, cutting out the banks as middlemen. The banks responded in the fall of 2008 by pairing with ICE, one of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s rivals, which was setting up its own clearinghouse. The banks attached a number of conditions on that partnership, which came in the form of a merger between ICE’s clearinghouse and a nascent clearinghouse that the banks were establishing. These conditions gave the banks signiﬁcant power at ICE’s clearinghouse, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The banks refused to allow the deal with ICE to close until the clearinghouse’s rulebook was established, with provisions in the banks’ favor. The banks also required ICE to provide market data exclusively to Markit, a littleknown company that plays a pivotal role in derivatives. Backed by Goldman, JPMorgan and about a dozen other banks, Markit provides crucial information about derivatives, like prices. Kevin Gould, who is the president of Markit and was

involved in the clearinghouse merger, said the banks were simply being prudent and wanted rules that protected the market and themselves. Even though the banks were working with their competitor, Citadel and the CME continued to move forward with their own exchange. They, too, needed to work with Markit, because it owns the rights to certain derivatives indexes. But Markit put them in a tough spot by basically insisting that every trade involve at least one bank, since the banks are the main parties that have licenses with Markit. This demand from Markit effectively secured a permanent role for the big derivatives banks since Citadel and the CME could not move forward without Markit’s agreement. And so, essentially boxed in, they agreed to the terms, according to the two people with knowledge of the matter and Gould of Markit. (A CME spokesman said last week that the exchange did not cave to Markit’s terms.) Still, even after that deal was complete, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange soon had second thoughts about working with Citadel and about introducing electronic screens at all. The CME backed out of the deal in mid-2009, ending Grifﬁn’s dream of a new, electronic trading system. With Citadel out of the picture, the banks agreed to join the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s clearinghouse effort. The exchange set up

a risk committee that, like ICE’s committee, was mainly populated by bankers. OBFUSCATING MATTERS The result of the maneuvering of the past couple years is that big banks dominate the risk committees of not one, but two of the most prominent new clearinghouses in the United States. That puts them in a pivotal position to determine how derivatives are traded. Under the Dodd-Frank bill, the clearinghouses were given broad authority. The risk committees there will help decide what prices will be charged for clearing trades, on top of fees banks collect for matching buyers and sellers, and how much money customers must put up as collateral to cover potential losses. Perhaps more important, the risk committees will recommend which derivatives should be handled through clearinghouses, and which should be exempt. Regulators will have the ﬁnal say. But banks, which lobbied heavily to limit derivatives regulation in the Dodd-Frank bill, are likely to argue that few types of derivatives should have to go through clearinghouses. Critics contend that the bankers will try to keep many types of derivatives away from the clearinghouses, since clearinghouses represent a step towards broad electronic trading that could decimate proﬁts.

Haitian contractors unable to land USAID tenders • HAITI, FROM 1B

“You can’t just provide manual jobs. You need to contract with companies so that the middle tier managers and owners of companies have a stake in the legal system and rule of law, and ultimately a stake in the success of their political system and their economy,” she says. Of the 1,583 U.S. contracts given so far in Haiti totaling $267 million, only 20 — worth $4.3 million — are going to Haitian-owned companies. An audit this fall by USAID’s Inspector General found that more than 70 percent of the funds given to the two largest U.S. contractors for a cash for work project in Haiti was spent on equipment and materials. As a result, just 8,000 Haitians a day were being hired by June, instead of the planned 25,000 a day, according to the IG. The contractors, Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda, Md., and Chemonics International of Washington, D.C., which received more than $31 million each in no-bid contracts, responded to AP in an e-mail saying that together with several other contractors, they had employed 25,000 Hai-

tians a day. Now, they said, 10 months after the earthquake, “priorities have evolved beyond a focus on temporary employment,” a program that has paid Haitian workers $18 million in wages. USAID says it is committed to increasing the amount of contracts going to Haitians. “We already are engaging with Haitian communities to make them aware of how they can partner with us,” said Janice Laurente, a spokeperson for USAID. Economists say giving contracts to local businesses creates jobs, which help build the private sector. Also, most donors would rather see local businesses thrive than foreign companies profiting from a disaster. Harvard Business School economist Eric Werker, who researches foreign aid, says the spillover effects go beyond the aid itself. “Some are obvious, like salaries and profits that stay in the local economy, but there are also ways to increase capacity of local firms by giving them progressively larger contracts,” says Werker. But there are many hur-

‘You can imagine that if we can’t win the contracts ourselves, we become totally dependent on foreign companies and nonprofits, and there is not much hope in that.’ — PATRICK BRUN, Construction company owner

dles to signing a contract with Haitians. The ﬁrst is a no-bid process: 25 percent of the contracts went directly to U.S. contractors without even giving Haitians a chance to bid on them, sometimes because the needs were so urgent there wasn’t time to go through a formal bidding process. In addition, some government requests for local Haitian subcontractors and expertise are published only in English, limiting access for Haitians who speak Creole. Also, at times of catastrophe, it can be easier to use an established contractor with a strong record than a previously unknown local one. The Haitian economy was so decimated by the earthquake that it was hard at ﬁrst to even get local wood or tarps for shelters.

Now, even though there are Haitian companies providing many products and services, the pattern of using foreign ones continues. And finally, it’s more complicated to contract directly in countries like Haiti, where corruption is rife. There has been pricegouging among some wouldbe Haitian contractors. The unprecedented promise of $9 billion in aid, with the U.S. as a top giver, at first raised hope of rebuilding and even of a new and brighter future for the tragedyprone island. But fewer than 10 percent of those funds have made it past the “promise” stage. While Chemonics and DAI are the largest single recipients, the bulk of the funds have gone to beltway contractors as well: firms in Virginia received the most

funds of any state, $45.3 million, followed closely by Maryland, $44.6 million. Another $31.7 million went to companies based in the District of Columbia. The U.S. foreign aid contracts to Haiti since the earthquake have gone to an array of almost entirely U.S.-based goods and services, from bullet-proof vehicles ordered Nov. 18 by the Centers for Disease Control from a Miami-based firm to $24,000 in dental supplies for U.S. Navy medical providers in June from a Chesapeake, Va., firm. Yet bullet-proof vehicles and dental supplies are available from Haitian companies, according to the nonprofit Peace Dividend Trust. “Frankly, it’s a shame and a serious opportunity lost,” says Edward Rees of the Peace Dividend Trust. Rees’ organization put together a business portal, offering everything from security services to catering, and is training Haitians on how to bid for contracts and grants. “No one is systematically tracking how many contracts have gone to Haitian companies.”

The lack of local spending in Haiti is similar to that in most other countries receiving U.S. aid, although economist Werker said Haiti is likely at the low end of the spectrum. But Rees contrasts Haiti with Afghanistan, where — backed by Peace Dividend Trust — U.S. Army General David H. Petraeus ordered his commanders to “Hire Afghans ﬁrst, buy Afghan products, and build Afghan capacity.” The results in Afghanistan are encouraging: A recent study found that 37 percent of $2 billion in annual international aid is now being used to buy locally-produced Afghan goods and services, up from 31 percent a few years ago. The AP review focused on contracts from the U.S. government, which spent an immediate $1.1 billion in U.S. humanitarian assistance after the earthquake, and promised another $1.15 billion for reconstruction. In November, the ﬁrst $120 million of the pledged reconstruction funds were tranferred to the World Bankrun Haiti Reconstruction Fund, according to the State Department.

Ireland Peels, pig innards help city to forgo coal and oil strives to rebuild fiscal trust • FUEL, FROM 1B

• IRELAND, FROM 1B

Monetary Fund ordered another ¤10 billion pumped into banks immediately, in part to hedge against a possible rise in mortgage defaults. An additional ¤25 billion is on standby if banks’ losses are bigger than expected. The bailout is supposed to tide Ireland over for years as it recovers, and give it room to mend its ﬁnances until it can borrow in ﬁnancial markets again. Yet it is still unclear if the money will be enough. If Irish homeowners, who feel particularly duty-bound to make their payments, change their behavior, that could increase defaults and push banks to tap the reserve of ¤25 billion.

13PGB02.indd 2

farm and food waste. In Germany alone, about 5,000 biogas systems generate power, in many cases on individual farms. Kristianstad has gone further, harnessing biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by onequarter in the last decade. “It’s a much more secure energy supply — we didn’t want to buy oil anymore from the Middle East or Norway,” said Lennart Erfors, the engineer who is overseeing the transition in this colorful city of 18th-century row houses. “And it has created jobs in the energy sector.” In Kristianstad, old fossil fuel technologies coexist awkwardly alongside their biomass replacements. The type of tanker truck that used to deliver heating oil now delivers wood pellets, the major heating fuel in the city’s more remote ar-

eas. Across from a bustling Statoil gas station is a modest new commercial biogas pumping station owned by the renewables company Eon Energy. The startup costs, covered by the city and through Swedish government grants, have been considerable: the centralized biomass heating system cost $144 million, including constructing a new incineration plant, laying networks of pipes, replacing furnaces and installing generators. But ofﬁcials say the payback has already been signiﬁcant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million a year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year. The operations at the biogas and heating plants bring in cash, because farms and

factories pay fees to dispose of their waste and the plants sell the heat, electricity and car fuel they generate. Kristianstad’s energy makeover is rooted in oil price shocks of the 1980s, when the city could barely afford to heat its schools and hospitals. To save on fuel consumption, the city began laying heating pipes to form an underground heating grid — called district heating. Such systems use one or more central furnaces to heat water or produce steam that is fed into the network. It is far more efﬁcient to pump heat into a system that can warm an entire city than to heat buildings individually with boilers. District heating systems can generate heat from any fuel source, and like New York City’s, Kristianstad’s initially relied on fossil fuel. But after Sweden became the ﬁrst country to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, in 1991, Kristianstad started looking for substitutes.

By 1993, it was taking in and burning local wood wastes, and in 1999, it began relying on heat generated from the new biogas plant. Some buildings that are too remote to be connected to the district heating system have been ﬁtted with individual furnaces that use tiny pellets that are also made from wood waste. Burning wood in this form is more efﬁcient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does; such heating has given birth to a booming pellet industry in northern Europe. Government subsidies underwrite purchases of pellet furnaces by homeowners and businesses; pellet-fueled heat costs half as much as oil, said Erfors, the engineer. Having dispensed with fossil fuels for heating, Kristianstad is moving on to other challenges. City planners hope that by 2020 total local emissions will be 40 percent lower than they were in 1990, and that running the city will require no fossil

fuel and produce no emissions at all. Transportation now accounts for 60 percent of fossil fuel use, so city planners want drivers to use cars that run on local biogas, which municipal vehicles already do. That will require increasing production of the fuel. Kristianstad is looking into building satellite biogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more ﬁlling stations. At the moment, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem: even though biogas fuel costs about 20 percent less than gasoline, consumers are reluctant to spend $32,000 (about $4,000 more than for a conventional car) on a biogas or dual-fuel car until they are certain that the network will keep growing. “A tank is enough to get you around the region for the day, but do you have to plan ahead,” Martin Risberg, a county engineer, said as he ﬁlled a biogas Volvo.

12/13/2010 5:42:10 AM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

BUSINESS BRIEFS

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

China’s graduates struggle for jobs

• AVIATION

BY ANDREW JACOBS

New York Times Service

MCT

WORD OF CAUTION: U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, above, has recommended holding congressional hearings on aircraft registration.

BEIJING — Liu Yang, a coal miner’s daughter, arrived in the capital this past summer with a freshly printed diploma from Datong University, $140 in her wallet and an air of invincibility. Her ﬁrst taste of reality came later the same day, as she lugged her bags through a ramshackle neighborhood, not far from the Olympic Village, where tens of thousands of other young strivers cram four to a room. Unable to ﬁnd a bed and unimpressed by the rabbit warren of slapdash buildings, Liu scowled as the smell of trash wafted up around her. “Beijing isn’t like this in the movies,” she said.

Often the first from their families to finish even high school, ambitious graduates like Liu are part of an unprecedented wave of young people all around China who were supposed to move the country’s labor-dependent economy toward a white-collar future. In 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then the president, announced plans to bolster higher education, Chinese universities and colleges produced 830,000 graduates a year. In May 2009, that number was more than 6 million and rising. It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a government fixated on stability such figures are also a cause for concern.

The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults. “College essentially provided them with nothing,” said Zhang Ming, a political scientist and vocal critic of China’s education system. But the supply of those trained in accounting, finance and computer programming now seems limitless, and their value has plunged. Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, although their wages actually decreased if infla-

tion is taken into account. “China has really improved the quality of its workforce, but on the other hand competition has never been more serious,” said Peng Xizhe, dean of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai. Given the glut of underemployed graduates, Peng suggested that young people either shift to more practical vocations like nursing and teaching or recalibrated their expectations. “It’s OK if they want to try a few years seeking their fortune, but if they stay too long in places like Beijing or Shanghai, they will ﬁnd trouble for themselves and trouble for society,” he said.

Senator urges speedy action on plane registry From Miami Herald Wire Service

The chairman of the Senate subcommittee overseeing aviation said he would recommend holding congressional hearings on aircraft registration after The Associated Press reported the Federal Aviation Administration was missing data on one-third of U.S. planes. “We need to find out why, and how it can be brought back to have a registry that has credibility,” Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, said Friday. The FAA says as many as 119,000 of the 357,000 U.S.registered aircraft have “questionable registration” due to missing paperwork, invalid addresses and other paperwork problems. In reports in 2007 and 2008, the agency warned that the problem was causing loopholes that terrorists, drug traffickers and other criminals might exploit. • JOB CREATION OBAMA TO MEET WITH COMPANY CHIEFS The White House says U.S. President Barack Obama will discuss ideas for creating jobs and making the U.S. more competitive when he hosts about 20 chief executives on Wednesday. White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki says the session will give the president a chance to continue building his relationship with the business community. Obama has said that’s an area he needs to work on. Likely areas of discussion will include promoting exports and making sure the next generation is skilled enough to compete in a global marketplace. • ENERGY KUWAIT TO SPEND IN NUCLEAR REACTOR BUILDER The supervisory board of French nuclear reactor builder Areva approved the launch of a reserved capital increase of ¤900 million ($1.2 billion) — with ¤600 million from the Kuwait Investment Authority. The French state will buy the remaining ¤300 million, Areva said Saturday. The decision was made at a meeting of the supervisory board presided over by chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta. France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde had announced the plans Friday. The capital increase represents 7.2 percent of Areva’s share capital. • INTERNET PORN SITES TO GET SEPARATE WEB ADDRESS Pornography websites are closer to getting their own address on the Internet. The online red-light district would be in the form of a “.xxx” domain name suffix alongside long-standing ones such as “.com” and “.org.” Following a decade-long battle, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, voted Friday to move ahead with a contract with ICM Registry to sell domain names ending in “.xxx.” ICANN voted in June to start negotiating the contract. Use of “.xxx” would be voluntary, though. Conservative religious groups worry that a “.xxx” suffix would legitimatize Internet porn. • BANGLADESH TEXTILE WORKERS GO ON RAMPAGE Garment workers demanding the implementation of a new minimum wage clashed with police at an industrial zone in southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving up to three people dead and 100 hurt, police and news reports said. Police official Reza Al Hasan said authorities opened fire and used tear gas after thousands of workers attacked factories and smashed vehicles at the Chittagong Export Processing Zone. The zone houses about 70 foreign companies that mainly manufacture garments, shoes and bicycles, and employ about 150,000 workers. • ECONOMY STOCK SALES HELP U.S. OFFSET BAILOUT LOSSES Stock sales are helping the U.S. government offset projected losses from its $700 billion rescue of the financial system. The U.S. Treasury Department has brought in $35 billion in revenue over two years, boosted by ongoing sales of Citigroup stock, new data released Friday showed. But the Congressional Budget Office projects taxpayers will still lose $25 billion for bailing out the financial sector and U.S. automakers. CHINA’S INFLATION RISES TO 5.1 PERCENT China’s inflation surged to a 28-month high in November, officials said, despite government efforts to increase food supplies and end diesel shortages. The 5.1 percent inflation rate was driven by a 11.7 percent jump in food prices year on year. The news Saturday came as China’s leaders met for the top economic planning conference of the year and as financial markets watched for a widely anticipated interest rate hike to help bring rapid economic growth to a more sustainable level.

13PGB03.indd 3

BUILDING PARTNERSHIP: From left, India’s Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai agreed to go ahead with the 1,050-mile TAPI pipeline on Saturday in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Four nation gas pipeline gets approval BY ALEXANDER VERSHININ AND PETER LEONARD Associated Press

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — The leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan have agreed to move forward with a complicated and risky plan to build a natural gas pipeline across rugged territory plagued by war and terrorism. The pipeline, which would terminate in India, would bring huge amounts of gas to underdeveloped regions and could earn impoverished Afghanistan hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees. The route for the 1,050-mile TAPI pipeline from gas-rich Turkmenistan would cross Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, where the Taliban and international forces are locked in battle, as well as some of Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas. Concerns about security for the pipeline itself and for the workers who construct it have cast doubt on the project’s near-term feasibility, but pro ponents say it would calm the chaotic region. “Along with commercial and economic beneﬁts, this project will also yield a stabilizing inﬂuence on the region and beyond” Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdy-

mukhamedov said after the leaders signed a document Saturday supporting the project. “Afghanistan will live up to its obligations in ensuring the pipeline’s construction and safety,” said Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, whose undertrained army struggles against the resurgent Taliban. The project has also won vocal support from the United States, which is strongly opposed to India and Pakistan drawing supplies from Iran through another proposed gas pipeline. Contents of the document signed by Karzai, Berdymukhamedov, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and India’s petroleum minister Murli Deora were not immediately made public. But the apparent next step will be to secure ﬁnancial backing and ﬁrm bids from energy companies, which could prove an uphill struggle for a project so fraught with potential risks. “This will not be an easy project to complete — it is mandatory that we guarantee the security of the pipeline and the quality of construction work,” Asian Development Bank President Har-

uhiko Kuroda told reporters in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat. Kuroda said his bank would offer its backing to the pipeline, but gave no specific details on how it would do so. Turkmenistan, which is believed to hold the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves, is eager to find new markets for its potentially gargantuan energy exports amid flagging interest from Russia, its traditional client. Plans to build a pipeline transporting the former Soviet nation’s gas to Western Europe to date remain hazy ambitions. Berdymukhamedov said the pipeline would deliver up to 33 billion cubic meters of gas annually, welcome relief for energy-parched nations along the route. According to a preliminary breakdown, India and Pakistan would each get about 42 percent of the gas and Afghanistan the remainder. Attempts to build a pipeline through Afghanistan date back to the mid-1990s, when the U.S.-led consortium Unocal was locked in fierce competition with Argentina’s Bridas to win a deal to construct and run the route. But as the Taliban gained

control of Afghanistan, those ambitions were shelved and remained so during the next decade’s war. Turkmen officials estimate that construction of the pipeline could generate around 12,000 jobs in Afghanistan and earn it several hundred millions dollars annually in transit fees. Turkmenistan has sought to broaden its client base after Russia sharply cut back its imports from the Central Asian nation. A 1,080-mile pipeline to China began pumping natural gas in late 2009. The scale of those commitments have elicited doubt among some energy experts that Turkmenistan will be able to fill the TAPI pipeline. Berdymukhamedov insisted Saturday that recent surveys by Turkmen specialists at the vast South Yolotan field, from which much of the gas is expected to be drawn, appear to suggest reserves may be even larger than previously believed. An independent British auditing company reported in 2008 that the field may hold up to 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, but Berdymukhamedov said the figure may be closer to 22 trillion cubic meters.

Wall Street programmer guilty of code theft BY PETER LATTMAN

New York Times Service

The case that put a spotlight on the world of ultrafast, computer-driven trading of stocks has ended in a conviction. Sergey Aleynikov, a 40-year-old former Goldman Sachs programmer, was found guilty on Friday by a federal jury in Manhattan, N.Y. of stealing proprietary source code from the bank’s high-frequency trading platform. He was convicted on two counts — theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property — and faces up to 10 years in prison. Aleynikov’s arrest in 2009 drew attention to a business that had been little known outside Wall Street — high-frequency trading,

which uses complex computer algorithms to make lightning-fast trades to exploit tiny discrepancies in price. Such trading has become an increasingly important source of revenue for Wall Street firms and hedge funds, and those companies fiercely protect the code underpinning their trading strategies. During the two-week trial, Judge Denise L. Cote closed the courtroom to the public several times to protect Goldman’s proprietary source code. The verdict is a victory for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the case and has recently raised its profile with its aggressive pursuit of corporate crime. It is also a victory for the U.S. Justice Depart-

ment more broadly, which has made the prosecution of high-tech crime and intellectual property theft a priority. Until 18 months ago, Aleynikov was living the U.S. dream. He came to the United States from Russia in 1990 with expertise in computer programming. His services were in demand at Goldman, which paid him $400,000 a year to write code for its high-frequency trading business. He was recruited away from Goldman by Teza Technologies, a ﬂedgling ﬁrm founded by an executive from the Citadel Investment Group, a giant Chicago hedge fund. Teza offered to pay about triple his Goldman salary. There was no dispute that

Aleynikov had violated Goldman’s confidentiality agreements when he uploaded portions of the bank’s trading code to a server in Germany. The case, then, boiled down to this: Did Aleynikov intend to steal Goldman’s proprietary source code to benefit his new employer? Kevin Marino, Aleynikov’s lawyer, mounted a defense that tried to draw the distinction that while his client foolishly breached Goldman’s confidentiality agreements, he did not commit a crime. The government’s strategy was to play to the jury’s basic sense of right and wrong. “This is a case about theft and greed,” said Joseph Facciponti, the lead prosecutor, in his opening statement.

12/13/2010 3:57:30 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

Everything You Need In One Place... For The One Person Who Matters Most.

UHealth physicians and scientists offer leading-edge patient care in more than 100 medical specialties and sub-specialties, including: • Bariatric Surgery • Burns • Cancer • Cardiology • Cardiothoracic Surgery • Cellular Transplantation • Colon & Rectal Surgery • Dermatology • Emergency Medicine • Endocrinology/Diabetes/Metabolism • Family Medicine • Gastroenterology • General Internal Medicine • General Surgery • Genetics • Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine • Hematology/Oncology • Hepatology • Infectious Diseases • Internal Medicine • Kidney & Pancreas Transplantation • Laparoendoscopic Surgery • Liver & Gastrointestinal Transplantation • Nephrology & Hypertension • Neurology • Neurosurgery • Obstetrics and Gynecology • Ophthalmology • Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery • Orthopaedics • Otolaryngology • Pathology • Pediatrics • Pediatric Surgery • Physical Therapy • Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery • Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences • Pulmonary & Critical Care • Radiation Oncology • Radiology • Rehabilitation Medicine • Rheumatology & Immunology • Surgical Oncology • Transplants • Trauma & Surgical Critical Care Services • Urology • Vascular and Endovascular Surgery

When you or a family member needs medical care, you want the newest treatments with the best chance of success – even if you have to travel to get it. When you choose UHealth – University of Miami Health System, you have access to the latest therapies in more than 100 specialties and subspecialties. You and your loved ones can access our comprehensive scope of services through UHealth International. Your health care concierge will help arrange your visit with our renowned physicians and scientists who provide cutting-edge research and compassionate care with state-of-the-art technology. • • • • • • • •

Coordination of care with all specialties Financial clearance for self-pay and insured patients Air ambulance transportation Transportation to and from the UHealth campus Assistance with visa letters Hotel and rental car discounts Multilingual staff and Interpreters Support for family members traveling with patients

For more information call, or visit us online.

305-243-9100 • Toll free in the U.S.A.: 1-877-442-8676 www.uhealthinternational.com

University of Miami Hospital • Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center • Bascom Palmer Eye Institute

13PGB04.indd 4

12/12/2010 10:01:29 PM

THE MIAMI HERALD

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

ACCENT BY DAVID CARR

New York Times Service

NEW YORK — In a couple of weeks families across the land will open their local newspapers in the secular ritual of finding a Christmas Day movie that everyone can attend. This year there will be the cringe-inducing giggles of Little Fockers, the sci-fi splendors of the Narnia franchise, an animated picnic with Yogi Bear and True Grit, a western from those nice Coen boys, Joel and Ethan. Those would be the same brothers whose dark comedies and twisted genre spoofs turned them into a fetish object for a generation of critics. The ones who created a murderers’ row of cinematic sociopaths, including Anton Chigurh, who used a coin flip to decide the fate of his victims before dispatching them with a cattle gun in the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men from 2007. Both films are set in the West and feature vivid manhunts, but no one would ever mistake No Country, or any of the Coens’ other dozen or so films, for a Christmas movie. Loping in straight and true over the horizon comes True Grit, a classic western about a plucky 14-year-old who heads off into Indian country flanked by lawmen to hunt her father’s killer. How classic? The last time around, in 1969, True Grit won a bestactor Oscar for a guy named John Wayne. The Coens’ version brandishes wide-open adventures, grizzled hearts on the sleeve and a young heroine who is by far the biggest pistol in a film full of them. And judging by the late-in-the-year release date, the pedigree of the directors and its gilded cast — Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin — Paramount, the studio that is releasing the $35 million movie, is hoping that True Grit will be part of that other big gift-giving evening called the Oscars. Hollywood doesn’t revisit the western genre frequently, and does so at its peril. They made True Grit not as corrective to the movie featuring an eye-patched Duke wheeling around as

WITH ‘TRUE GRIT’, COEN BROTHERS SHOOT STRAIGHT TRUEGRITMOVIE.COM

VENGEFUL: True Grit is a classic western about a plucky 14-year-old who heads off into Indian country flanked by lawmen to hunt her father’s killer. Rooster Cogburn but because both brothers loved the book by Charles Portis that it was based on. The novel is narrated by Mattie Ross, a spinster who tells the story of her quest many years earlier to avenge her father’s murder by a no-account by the name of Tom Chaney. Her younger self stomps into the frame of the Coens’ film with a gift for language and figures, a vision of pigtailed precocity. In True Grit, the Coens never let go of the fact Mattie is a child, but they don’t make her movie-cuddly either. Mattie, played by a relative newcomer named Hailee Steinfeld, uses mostly bluster and bafflement to enlist Cogburn (Bridges) and a Texas ranger named LaBoeuf (Damon) in her quest, but with dollar signs in their eyes, they sneak off without her. She sets off after them but is temporarily thwarted when a ferryman refuses to carry her across a surging river as Cogburn and LaBoeuf watch in amusement from the other side. She heedlessly plunges

into the river on her little black horse, hanging on as it struggles to the other side. The music swells as she emerges, dripping but triumphant, now a made member of the ad hoc posse. Serious fans of the Coen brothers could not be blamed for waiting for another shoe to drop, an ironic twist or the pop of a balloon. It never comes (although Rooster expresses admiration for the horse, not the girl who rode it across). Fans who have become used to walking down lurid alleys full of portent and eccentrics who seem to come swinging out of nowhere may have some trouble orienting themselves among the open country and recognizable characters in True Grit. The Coens and their longtime cinematographer, Roger Deakins, work within visual parameters erected by John Ford, shooting a sprawling western with looming landscapes that etch the relative insigniﬁcance of the people riding across them. As in the book, the characters speak in

ornate, excessively civilized ways — they make the characters on Deadwood seem plain-spoken in retrospect — perhaps as a bulwark against the uncivilized matters at hand. In True Grit justice comes swiftly but fairly, and no one ends up dead who didn’t have it coming. It is, at bottom, an emotional, even ardent, film. “I don’t think they thought a lot about how the film might land,” said Brolin, who plays the dimwitted Chaney. “We all enjoyed ourselves. Except Joel. I don’t think that’s his specialty. But they have no pretense, no expectation, and they do what they like.” After sitting down with Damon, the first thing the Coens asked was whether he had read the book. “I hadn’t, but from the first moment I talked to Joel and Ethan, it was all about the book,” Damon said. “Once I read it, I understood, because the language is amazing. So much of the dialogue that is in this movie is right out of the book.” The brothers, who share

‘The Tourist’, a journey of cliches BY MANOHLA DARGIS

New York Times Service

It takes a big man to hold the screen level when Angelina Jolie is around — usually the whole thing just tilts in her direction as soon as she struts into the frame. Her partner in crazy-time fame, Brad Pitt, helped keep the balance in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, their only film together. And now Johnny Depp tries to do much the same in The Tourist. Going for muted, eyeliner- and nearly irony-free, he plays an ordinary U.S. citizen who bumbles into a Continental intrigue, which looks like a film you’ve seen before, because you have. You know that movie. It’s the one in which Cary Grant and Grace Kelly don’t just travel by train, they also trade knowing looks in the first-class dining car as the waiter fills their glasses, and a shady type secretly takes their photo. The people behind The Tourist would like you to flash back to 1955 — as Jolie’s wardrobe of long gloves suggests — a risky strategy, given that you actually might. The truth is that it takes an exceptional director to prevent an entertainment as flimsy as this from collapsing under its own weightlessness. Alfred Hitchcock pulled it off with Grant and Kelly in To Catch a Thief, a bauble that sparkles like a jewel because of the worldclass scenery, its stars included, and because of, well, the directing. Stargazing is the only reason bonbons like The Tourist are made, dreams of box office bonanzas aside. But stars need just the right setting and a director who knows how to make them shine, as Steven Soderbergh does with Pitt and George

dummy.13PGB05.indd 5

MCT

ON TRACK: In The Tourist, a train journey turns into a swashbuckling adventure when Ellise (Angelina Jolie), left, accidently meets Frank (Johnny Depp).

THE TOURIST • Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck • Written by von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes • Director of Photography by John Seale • Edited by Joe Hutshing and Patricia Rommel; • Music by James Newton Howard • Produced by Graham King, Tim Headington, Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jona

Clooney in the Ocean’s franchise. The director also needs to hold his own, which, from the generic look and feel of The Tourist, clearly wasn’t the case with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. He does put personality into the occasional scene, including a mysterious, hushed interlude in which Jolie stands with her back to the camera as Depp creeps up from behind — lover or stalker, you’re not

initially sure which — before pulling her close for a hungry kiss. It’s a nice idyll among a wash of cliches that include Russian muscle in service to a big meanie, Shaw (Steven Berkoff), whose quest for stolen loot leads him to Elise Ward (Jolie). A mystery woman of rare ability (she can pick a lock and wear offthe-shoulder gowns), she eludes Shaw while dodging assorted law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard, where Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton curl stiff upper lips. Elise pauses long enough to slide into a train seat opposite Frank Tupelo (Depp), who, after gulping at his good fortune, explains he’s a vacationing Wisconsin math teacher (as if!). Dinner leads to drinks leads to complications, including hailstorming bullets and a few sluggish boat chases in the Venice canals. The main job of von Donnersmarck seems to have been to ﬁnd new and ﬂattering ways to shoot Jolie as she catwalks from Paris to Venice in soaring heels. He tries to invest this adoration with some self-conscious

wit, mostly by having all the men in the movie gawp at Elise as if she were as much a supernova as the one playing her. But all this genuflection — she parts one crowd as Moses does the Red Sea — feels forced rather than mischievous. It must be tough for Jolie to find roles that fit. Off screen she remains a fascinating presence, but on screen she now tends to overwhelm her roles and even her movies. Like every memorable screen star, she still has a face you can get lost in, with its push-pull of hard, jutting angles and well-endowed lips. It’s a face built for extremes, though early on she could also make it work for somewhat smaller, human-scaled roles that were nonetheless tricky for her. Superheroes and superfreaks have long been her truer calling, one reason that The Tourist seemed vaguely promising. When she first appears in a come-hither outfit and a small private smile, she looks ready for liftoff. She never ignites, and neither does the movie. Depp doesn’t fare better with a role that forces him to play meek and disappointingly mild, despite a few screenwriter-supplied tics. A brilliant character actor and accidental movie star, Depp has rarely been persuasive playing average. There’s no place for him to hide with Frank, so he stands around trying to look hapless as Jolie grabs the lead. There’s definitely some amusement in watching her come to his rescue, a role reversal the movie only flirts with. But oh how much more fun it would have been if Depp had really played the girl, eyeliner and all.

directing credits on all of their ﬁlms, which include Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski and Fargo, said that they wanted an actual teenager to play Mattie and that despite having only minor credits on her resume, Steinfeld immediately demonstrated a mastery over the rococo dialogue. “It was apparent from the very beginning that Hailee was going to have no problem with the language,” Joel said. Bridges, who won a bestactor Oscar for his role last year in Crazy Heart and entered the pantheon of Coen antiheroes in 1998 as the Dude in The Big Lebowski, said he was charmed that the Coens had made a movie that families might line up for during the holiday season. “I guess I’m hoping that everybody sees it: western fans, Coen brothers fans, movie fans,” he said. “As an actor you want to be part of something that moves people, but is not just sentimental. I think people will be surprised to see Joel and Ethan doing a

movie like True Grit, but they believed enough in the book to just let the story speak to people.” There are some Coenesque touches amid the western classicism. Rooster and Mattie encounter a mountain man who has been roaming the hills for a long time, perhaps too long, and seems overly fond of the bear rug he wears as a coat and costume. And given that Rooster is in the habit of getting his man, usually with the assistance of a bullet, there’s a measure of retributive violence. But then again, no one is fed into a wood chipper as in Fargo. “The book is quite violent, but the level of violence was a consideration for us in a way that it has not been in the past,” Ethan said, in part because the PG-13 rating will open up the movie for audiences beyond their fan base. “Some level of violence had to be in there to demonstrate the implacability of what Hattie is up against at a very young age, but compared to what you see on HBO it’s quite tame.” Scott Rudin, who produced the film, said that its formal, reverent approach to the western, a place where quests are undertaken and adventures are had, is on the screen everywhere you look. “I don’t think that Ethan and Joel did this movie because they felt that they wanted to reinvent the western or remake another film,” he said. ” Joel Coen said it was apparent from the beginning that True Grit might land in a place where their other films had not. “When we first approached the studio, one of the things that they wanted to know was whether we could be finished in time for Christmas,” he said. “And after a while we thought to ourselves, if we do the movie the way that we were thinking about it, positioning it as a Christmas movie does actually make sense.” Or, as Ethan put it, “Yes, you can probably bring Grandma to this one on Christmas.”

A 1927 menage a trois takes an ugly turn BY STEPHEN HOLDEN

New York Times Service

The life and work of Ernest Hemingway have been notoriously difficult to translate comfortably onto the screen. For one thing, his signature spare sentences, when spoken by actors, often sound as affected as the most rococo effusions of Oscar Wilde. Beyond that, Hemingway’s chestbeating, rifle-bearing Papa Bear explorer persona seems overbearingly pompous if not creepily antediluvian in these post-feminist times. For all the cinematic crimes against him, there has been no book-to-screen translation of his work quite as atrocious as Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, directed by John Irvin from a screenplay by James Scott Linville. An adaptation of Hemingway’s problematic erotic novel, The Garden of Eden, posthumously published in 1986, it stars Mena Suvari as the meanest mean girl (pun intended) to spit venom in any film since I don’t know when. Her character, Catherine, a rich, bored heiress, is so unrelentingly cruel to her husband, David Bourne (Jack Huston), a shy young writer enjoying his first flush of success, that the now-frownedupon adjective “castrating” is the most appropriate printable word to describe her. The story, set in 1927 in the South of France and Spain, follows the rapidly disintegrating marriage of David and Catherine, who met in Paris. No sooner have they wed than she persuades him to experiment with sexual role reversal. During sex, she insists on being the aggressive top partner. Catherine cuts her hair to look more like a boy, and before long, both their heads

HEMINGWAY’S GARDEN OF EDEN • Directed by John Irvin • Written by James Scott Linville, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway • Director of photography, Ashley Rowe • Edited by Jeremy Gibbs produced by Timothy J. Lewiston and Bob Mahoney • Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. The ﬁlm is rated R. It has sexual situations and strong language. are bleached identical shades of platinum. She lures Marita (Caterina Murino), an Italian beauty, to live with them as a menage a trois in their beachside house in La Napoule, not far from Cannes. After sleeping with Marita, Catherine pressures David to do the same. Catherine is so jealous of her husband’s writing that she impulsively incinerates his hot-off-the-typewriter short story, along with the clippings of his good reviews. As the movie crisscrosses awkwardly between David’s memories of the trip and his honeymoon in hell, it metaphorically compares his losses of innocence in the jungle and in the bedroom. Suvari’s Catherine is so extravagantly monstrous that Huston’s David, who provides a desultory narration, comes across as an inert nonentity. Of the many howlers in a ﬁlm that has a sickly bleached palette and a soupy soundtrack, my favorite is Catherine’s haughty warning: “You must be careful about absinthe. It tastes exactly like remorse, and yet it takes it away.”

12/13/2010 5:23:08 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

DIVERSIONS GARFIELD

BY JIM DAVIS

NORTH ♠J876 ♥AQ965 ◆ 10 6 ♣ 10 4

DILBERT

BY SCOTT ADAMS

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

ACES ON BRIDGE

Opening lead — ♠ five

Today’s deal comes from the recent world championships in Beijing. In five diamonds, you ruff the opening spade lead. Looking only at WEST EAST the North and South cards, ♠ A K 9 4 3 2 how should you continue? ♠ Q 10 5 ♥K832 ♥ 10 7 4 Anyone could try to set up a club and ruff a club, but the ◆53 ◆4 defenders might foil you by ♣K853 ♣A96 getting two rounds of trump in. Matthew Granovetter SOUTH crossed instead to the heart ♠— ace and led a low club from ♥J the dummy, figuring that ◆ A K Q J 9 8 7 2 this would work if East had ♣QJ72 a singleton trump, no matter whether he had one club Vulnerable: Neither honor or both. Dealer: West West captured the club queen with his king and shiftThe bidding: ed to trumps, but Granovetter South West North East saw his plan through and won in hand to lead a second club. Pass Pass 1♠ When East had no second 5◆ All pass 12-13

trump to lead, declarer was home. In the other room declarer followed the mundane line of leading a club from hand at trick two, letting the defenders play trumps twice and forcing South to rely on the heart finesse eventually. If that was lucky for him and unlucky for Granovetter, consider the multiple world champion who won the spade lead and advanced the heart jack at trick two. When West ducked smoothly, declarer overtook in dummy and ruffed a heart, led a club to the 10 and ace, won the trump return in dummy, ruffed a heart, then led a second club. West took the trick and played a second trump, and declarer was dead. “What bad luck; the heart finesse worked!” his teammates consoled him. —BOBBY WOLFF

CHESS QUIZ ZITS

BY JIM BORGMAN AND JERRY SCOTT

PEANUTS CLASSICS

BY CHARLES SCHULZ

WHITE GETS 2 FOR 1 Hint: Divert a defender.

Solution: 1. Rd5! Nxd5 2. Rxd5 Qc7 3. Rxb5 [Topalov-Bacrot ’10].

DEAR ABBY

BALDO

BY HECTOR CANTU AND CARLOS CASTELLANOS

DOONESBURY

BY GARRY TRUDEAU

Dear Abby: About a month ago, my friend lost her keys in a major department store. Despite announcements in the store, the keys were never found. My friend wasn’t worried because she had her wallet and personal information in her purse. Two weeks later, her home was robbed. There was no sign of forced entry. What we learned from the police is that the little tags we carry on our key chains from major pharmacy and supermarket chains carry our names on the receipts. All the person who found the keys had to do was purchase something, swipe the card, and the receipt came up with my friend’s name printed on it! Unfortunately, her name is listed in the phone book, so the thief was able to find her house, use her house key, walk right in and take whatever he/she wanted. I no longer keep the tags on my key chain. I keep them in a separate place in my purse or in my pocket. I hope this keeps at least one person from being robbed. Karen in Methuen, Mass. So do I, and thank you for the warning. For those who prefer not to carry those little tags at all, many are linked with the shopper’s telephone number in the pharmacy’s or supermarket’s computer. If you mention it before the cashier starts ringing up your purchase, the sale can be rung up as part of the saver’s program. Inquire at the stores where you shop regularly.

BABY BLUES

BY RICK KIRKMAN AND JERRY SCOTT

was “cheap.” Although it cost more money and time to create each card, no one appreciated them. We won’t be making the cards this year, but how do I tell my niece why? I don’t want her feelings hurt, too. Blue at Christmas Tell your niece what you were told — and by whom — so she won’t waste any more effort on these rude and unappreciative individuals. Better she hear it from you than one of the recipients. As to the “friend” who sent the check, I hope you returned it and deleted her from your Christmas card list. What she did was uncalled for. Dear Abby: I am 13 and I have a problem. My mother gave me $20 so I could go Christmas shopping, but I forgot I was Christmas shopping and ended up buying everything for myself. Now what do I do, because she’s really mad. In Trouble in Michigan Apologize to your mother, admit what happened wasn’t a memory lapse as much as yielding to temptation, and start doing whatever you can to earn more money. Some suggestions: shoveling sidewalks and driveways and dog walking, if the neighbors will let you.

ANSWER TO SATURDAY’S PUZZLE:

Dear Abby: Five years ago, when my niece was 9, we came up with the idea of making Christmas cards and sending them out to special friends and family members. We both work hard to make sure each is attractive and in good taste, and we handwrite a personal note inside. We also print on the back that the card was “handmade with love.” This has become a tradition for the two of us, and the cards are quite beautiful. Last year, after we sent them out, I received a card from a friend with a small check inside. The card read, “I’m sending you this check so you can afford to buy ‘real cards’ next year.” I was, to say the least, hurt and offended. I wondered if others felt similarly, so I asked around and was shocked to learn they, too, thought I

HOROSCOPE IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: Your friendships or group activities could lead to dreams of bigger and better things as you compare what you have with what others own. You might be inspired to try something that isn’t quite right.

• AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Beware the green-eyed monster. Someone may be determined to take you down a peg or two if they have grown jealous of your successes.

• SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Romance is fragile at the moment. Don’t stir the pot in regard to relationships.

• PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Keep it low key. Making a spectacle of yourself or showing off might be good for you but could throw your colleagues off.

• CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There really is safety in numbers so be sure to stick with people you know well.

• ARIES (March 21-April 19): You may think you are ready to dive into a new project, but you should make sure that you are prepared.

JUMBLE

• TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Resist the trend toward change and innovation if the old routines are still working for you. • GEMINI (May 21-June 20): All good things must come to an end. It’s time to put the finishing touches on existing projects and move on. • CANCER (June 21-July 22): It’s time to do that voodoo that you do so well. Keep distractions to a minimum and roll effortlessly tasks. • LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The old routine may have you down in the dumps, but shirking your duties will bring even more woe. • VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Pay attention to detail. Make sure to dot every “i” and cross every “t” and generally be thorough in every aspect of your current project. • LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If a situation rouses you to take action, step back for a moment and reflect on whether your gut reaction is correct. • SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Just because something is new certainly doesn’t mean it is better. Sticking with what works is easiest.

13PGB06.indd 6

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Dis-tressed? 5 Life of Riley 9 Young swine 14 Hodgepodge 15 Cashews and filberts 16 Get really dry 17 High-payout wagers 19 City near Boys Town 20 Davy Jones’ locker 21 Sneeze inducer 22 Commercial pitches 23 Cry while holding an iron 24 Ranchero’s wrap (Var.) 28 Wire-thickness unit 29 Plumbing feature 33 Seed covers 34 A lot 35 Blood classification syst. 36 Oft-delivered meals 40 It’s its own square 41 He gave us a lift 42 Symbol of Wild West justice 43 Verbal venting 45 Emmy winner Arthur 46 Warehoused 47 Horizontal entrance to a mine 49 Nonetheless, for short 50 Ratty crowd 53 Private place? 58 Keep up with the times

59 60 61 62 63 64

Use a stage name of Congregational areas Where most people live Sacred Nile bird Manicurist’s abrasive Show signs of awakening 65 Suddenly run away

DOWN 1 Hits on the noggin 2 How a ship may be turned 3 Turkey bill 4 Tip politely, as a hat 5 Secure, as information 6 Motor Trend topics 7 Rigel or Deneb 8 The beginning or end of “Spartacus” 9 Trail left by a wild animal 10 “To be, or not to be” speaker 11 Kind of tradition 12 Workout aftermath, maybe 13 Contrast word 18 Tick down 21 Tentacled creature 23 Conclusion, in Cannes 24 It’s a matter of taste 25 Field of endeavor 26 Go from green

27 28 30 31 32 34 37 38

to red, often Lofty peak Nation-sweeping event Nick’s creator? Disparage Sat still for Church choral work Dick Grayson, at times Excluding nothing

39 Chaotic place 44 Meddle (with) 46 Ram’s horn used on Rosh Hashanah 48 Scatterbrained 49 Shinto temple entrance 50 Windsock alternative 51 Cheese type 52 Techno setting

53 Optimal 54 Where an innocent one is kept behind bars 55 Pulpit of yore 56 Vacationer’s accumulation 57 Attention-getting noise 59 Sound systems, for short

12/12/2010 9:38:22 PM

THE MIAMI HERALD

SPORTS

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

Minneapolis Metrodome roof collapses after snowstorm BY DAVE CAMPBELL Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — The inflatable roof of the Metrodome collapsed Sunday after a snowstorm that dumped 17 inches on Minneapolis. No one was hurt, but the roof failure sent the NFL scrambling to find a new venue for the Vikings’ game against the New York Giants. The teams had been scheduled to play at noon Sunday. The game was pushed back to Monday night when Saturday’s blizzard kept the Giants from getting to Minneapolis. But after the Teflon roof collapsed overnight, the commission that runs the Metrodome told the NFL the stadium wouldn’t be ready for a game Monday or Tuesday. The NFL said it was considering moving the game to the University of Minne-

AMERICAN CONFERENCE W 10 9 6 3

L 2 3 6 10

T 0 0 0 0

Pct .833 .750 .500 .231

8 7 5 5

5 6 7 8

0 0 0 0

.615 .538 .417 .385

10 8 5 2

3 4 8 11

0 0 0 0

.769 .667 .385 .154

8 6 6 3

4 6 7 9

0 0 0 0

.667 .500 .462 .250

NATIONAL CONFERENCE East N.Y. Giants Philadelphia Washington Dallas South Atlanta New Orleans Tampa Bay Carolina North Chicago Green Bay Minnesota Detroit West Seattle St. Louis San Francisco Arizona

said James McQuirter, a National Weather Service meteorologist. He said the storm was one of the five largest to hit the Twin Cities. Some surrounding communities got more than 21 inches of snow, he said. The Metrodome roof has failed three times before. It deflated in 1981, 1982 and 1983, each time due to tears caused by heavy snow. The April 14, 1983, collapse forced the postponement of the Twins’ game with California, which had been the only postponement. A slight tear also delayed a Twins game briefly in 1986. CRAIG LASSIG/EFE The Vikings will enter the CRASHING: The inflatable roof of the Metrodome collapsed Sunday after a final year of their lease at snowstorm that dumped 17 inches on Minneapolis. the Metrodome next season and have been lobbying for place, could no longer be The city got 17.1 inches of started Friday night and end- a new building for about a seen from the street. snow during the storm that ed around 10 p.m. Saturday, decade.

Buccaneers break 2-game skid, down Redskins

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE East New England N.Y. Jets Miami Buffalo South Jacksonville Indianapolis Houston Tennessee North Pittsburgh Baltimore Cleveland Cincinnati West Kansas City San Diego Oakland Denver

sota’s TCF Bank Stadium or to another NFL domed stadium, spokesman Greg Aiello said. TCF Bank holds about 50,000 people, compared to the Metrodome’s 64,000. TCF has the advantage of being close, but it would have to be cleared of snow, and alcohol sales aren’t permitted there. Bill Lester, executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, said a crew that had been working to clear snow off the roof was pulled off late Saturday night due to safety concerns. “There were no injuries, which we’re thankful for,” Lester said. On Sunday morning, six workers could be seen on the concrete rim of the stadium, shoveling off snow. The roof, a white bubble criss-crossed with cables holding it in

W 8 8 5 4

L 4 4 8 8

T 0 0 0 0

Pct .667 .667 .385 .333

11 9 8 1

2 3 5 12

0 0 0 0

.846 .750 .615 .077

9 8 5 3

3 5 7 10

0 0 0 0

.750 .615 .417 .231

6 6 4 3

6 6 8 9

0 0 0 0

.500 .500 .333 .250

• NFL, FROM 8B

Palmer for touchdowns as Cincinnati dropped a franchise record 10-th straight game. The Steelers (10-3) couldn’t get into the end zone on offense despite dominating time of possession — a 91/2-minute drive produced no points — but it didn’t matter as they closed in on a playoff spot by playing well enough to beat the Bengals (2-11). Palmer threw three interceptions, two to Polamalu, as Cincinnati matched the David Shula-coached 1993 Bengals by losing 10 consecutive games in the same season. The overall franchise record is 11 consecutive defeats from 1992-93. l Buccaneers 17, Redskins 16: A flubbed extra point attempt with 9 seconds to play kept Washington from tying the game. The Redskins pulled within a point on Santana Moss’ 6-yard touchdown catch, but Nick Sundberg’s slightly high snap on a wet field went through holder Hunter Smith’s hands. The Buccaneers improved to 8-5 and broke a two-game losing streak. It was also the fifth time this season Josh Freeman has won a game with a fourth-quarter comeback. He hit Kellen Winslow for a 41-yard scoring pass with 3:47 to play. Ryan Torain ran for 173

LARRY FRENCH/GETTY IMAGES

DROPPED: E.J. Biggers, left, of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers causes Graham Gano of the Washington Redskins to fumble after a missed snap on an extra point attempt. The Buccaneers won 17-16. yards for Washington, 158 in the ﬁrst half. The Redskins fell to 5-8 and have dropped four straight at home. l Bills 13, Browns 6: Ryan Fitzpatrick threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to David Nelson, Leodis McKelvin made a late interception for Buffalo. Rian Lindell hit two ﬁeld goals, both from 19 yards, to help the Bills improve to 3-11

and snap a three-game losing streak against Cleveland. The Browns (5-8) were eliminated from playoff contention. McKelvin intercepted Jake Delhomme’s pass with under 4 minutes left at the Bills 32, and Buffalo was able to run out the clock. Delhomme also lost a fumble on the previous possession, which led to Lindell’s second ﬁeld goal.

The Browns’ offense was so inept, it didn’t cross midﬁeld in ﬁve second-half possessions. l Falcons 31, Panthers 10: Michael Turner ran for 112 yards and three touchdowns, Matt Ryan threw for another and Atlanta held onto the best record in the NFC. The Falcons (11-2) built a 17-0 halftime lead, survived a brief hiccup to start the

third quarter, and cruised to their seventh straight win. John Abraham and Kroy Biermann each had two sacks as the Falcons became the latest team to shut down the NFL’s worst offense. Jonathan Stewart rushed for a season-best 133 yards, but lost a fumble on Carolina’s ﬁrst play from scrimmage to set up Atlanta’s ﬁrst TD.

NBA

NFL SCHEDULE Thursday’s Game Indianapolis 30, Tennessee 28 Sunday’s Games Tampa Bay 17, Washington 16 Buffalo 13, Cleveland 6 Detroit 7, Green Bay 3 Jacksonville 38, Oakland 31 Pittsburgh 23, Cincinnati 7 Atlanta 31, Carolina 10 N.Y. Giants at Minnesota, ppd. Seattle at San Francisco, 4:05 p.m. St. Louis at New Orleans, 4:05 p.m. Kansas City at San Diego, 4:15 p.m. Denver at Arizona, 4:15 p.m. New England at Chicago, 4:15 p.m. Miami at N.Y. Jets, 4:15 p.m. Philadelphia at Dallas, 8:20 p.m. N.Y. Giants vs. Minnesota at Detroit, 1 p.m.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Baltimore at Houston, 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16 San Francisco at San Diego, 8:20 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 19 Kansas City at St. Louis, 1 p.m. Washington at Dallas, 1 p.m. Houston at Tennessee, 1 p.m. Arizona at Carolina, 1 p.m. Philadelphia at N.Y. Giants, 1 p.m. Detroit at Tampa Bay, 1 p.m. Cleveland at Cincinnati, 1 p.m. Buffalo at Miami, 1 p.m. Jacksonville at Indianapolis, 1 p.m. New Orleans at Baltimore, 1 p.m. Atlanta at Seattle, 4:05 p.m. Denver at Oakland, 4:15 p.m. N.Y. Jets at Pittsburgh, 4:15 p.m. Green Bay at New England, 8:20 p.m.

Monday’s Games N.Y. Giants vs. Minnesota at Detroit, Monday, Dec. 20 Chicago at Minnesota, 8:30 p.m. 7:20 p.m.

DAVID DUPREY/AP

SAFE HANDS: Buffalo Bills’ David Nelson, left, catches a touchdown pass under pressure from Cleveland Browns’ Mike Adams, right, and T.J. Ward.

For Lee, Rangers may Naismith’s papers fetch $4.3M have more to offer BY RICHARD SANDOMIR

New York Times Service

• LEE, FROM 8B

Davis and Bob Simpson, another energy executive, have provided much of the ﬁnancing. With their combined fortunes earned in the natural gas industry, they helped Ryan’s group outbid a rival offer for the Rangers from Mark Cuban and Jim Crane. The Ryan group paid $593 million for the team. Simpson and Davis may be willing to reach deep into their pockets again to ensure that the Rangers at least match the Yankees’ offer for Lee, which could be worth about $160 million. If Lee signs a contract that

13PGB07.indd 7

pays him about $23 million a year, his salary alone would represent about one-quarter of the Rangers’ payroll, which last year was about $65 million, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. The Rangers are unlikely to see a similar jump in revenue, though their ticket and sponsorship sales are almost certain to grow. The Rangers also signed a new deal with Fox Sports Southwest worth up to $3 billion over 20 years. However, that deal starts in 2015. Having Davis and Simpson commit to spending some of their personal fortunes to make the team whole would be critical.

David Booth grew up in Lawrence, Kan., the college town where James Naismith began coaching basketball at the University of Kansas a few years after inventing the sport in Springﬁeld, Mass., in 1891. Booth and his family lived at 1931 Naismith Drive, a half-mile from where the basketball team plays. Booth’s connection to Naismith grew stronger Friday when he agreed to pay $4.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction for the two yellowed, typewritten pages on which he memorialized the 13 rules of basketball. “The story of basketball is Naismith inventing it and

Phog Allen popularizing it,” Booth said. Allen coached the Jayhawks for 39 seasons. “The two of them worked together at Kansas.” Booth and his wife, Suzanne, are paying the most ever for an article of sports memorabilia, exceeding the $3 million for the 70th home run ball hit by Mark McGwire in 1998. “You get to pay more than anyone else in the world would pay or more than anyone in his right mind would pay,” Booth said from Austin, Texas, where he runs a money management ﬁrm. He did not attend the auction — and has yet to see the document. Booth said he would

keep the papers in a vault and challenge the University of Kansas to raise funds for a facility in which the document would be the centerpiece. He said that a Kansas-born ﬁlmmaker, Josh Swade, lobbied him to buy the papers. “And I talked to Bill Self,” said Booth, referring to the current Kansas basketball coach, “and he said they’d be incredibly important to have, and he got me stoked up to buy them.” The auction began at $1.4 million, with Booth bidding against one other person. The proceeds will go to the Naismith International Basketball Foundation, which is run by Naismith’s grandson, Ian.

Atlantic Boston New York Toronto Philadelphia New Jersey

W 19 15 9 7 6

L 4 9 15 15 17

Pct GB .826 — .625 41/2 .375 101/2 .318 111/2 .261 13

Southeast Miami Orlando Atlanta Charlotte Washington

W 17 15 16 8 6

L 8 8 9 15 16

Pct GB .680 — .652 1 .640 1 .348 8 .273 91/2

Central Chicago Indiana Milwaukee Cleveland Detroit

W 14 11 9 7 7

L 8 11 13 16 18

Pct GB .636 — .500 3 .409 5 .304 71/2 .280 81/2

WESTERN CONFERENCE Southwest San Antonio Dallas New Orleans Memphis Houston

W 19 19 14 10 9

L 3 4 8 14 14

Pct GB .864 — .826 1/2 .636 5 .417 10 .391 101/2

Northwest Utah Oklahoma City Denver Portland Minnesota

W 17 16 14 12 6

L 8 8 8 11 18

Pct GB .680 — .667 1/2 .636 11/2 .522 4 .250 101/2

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

W 16 11 8 5 5

L 7 12 15 16 19

Pct GB .696 — .478 5 .348 8 .238 10 .208 111/2

SATURDAY’S GAMES Memphis 84, L.A. Clippers 83 Atlanta 97, Indiana 83 Boston 93, Charlotte 62 Toronto 120, Detroit 116 Chicago 113, Minnesota 82 Dallas 103, Utah 97 Houston 110, Cleveland 95 Miami 104, Sacramento 83

12/13/2010 5:53:13 AM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010

MiamiHerald.com

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

THE MIAMI HERALD

SPORTS FOR LATE GAME SCORES, GO TO MIAMIHERALD.COM/SPORTS

For Lee, Rangers may have more to offer BY MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT AND RICHARD SANDOMIR

New York Times Service

KEITH SRAKOCIC/AP

GOING ALL OUT: Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Mike Wallace, left, catches a pass in the end zone against Cincinnati Bengals safety Reggie Nelson and cornerback Leon Hall in the third quarter of their NFL game in Pittsburgh. Steelers won 23-7.

Lions knock out Rodgers, Packers DETROIT — (AP) — Drew Stanton threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Will Heller midway through the fourth quarter, and the Green Bay Packers couldn’t come back without an injured Aaron Rodgers in the Detroit Lions’ 7-3 win Sunday. Detroit (3-10) snapped a ﬁvegame losing streak and a 19-game skid against the NFC North, the NFL’s worst slump within a division since the merger four decades ago. Green Bay (8-5) lost Rodgers and a game it desperately needed to win for playoff positioning. The star quarterback was knocked out in the second quarter with his second concussion this season. Matt Flynn got Green Bay to the Detroit 31 before turning the ball over on downs with an incomplete pass into the end zone just past a diving Greg Jennings in the ﬁnal minute. l Jaguars 38, Raiders 31: David Garrard threw three touch-

St-Pierre dominates Koscheck at UFC 124 MONTREAL — (AP) — Welterweight champion Georges StPierre outpointed trash-talking Josh Koscheck on Saturday night at UFC 124, winning 50-45 on all three judges’ cards in front of 23,152 fans at Bell Centre — a North American record for a UFC crowd. The 29-year-old Montrealer (21-2) carved up Koscheck’s face with his jab and punished his legs with kicks in his fifth successful title defense. “I didn’t reach my goal tonight. My goal was to take him out, but he was very tough,” St-Pierre said. In the co-main event, 6-foot-11 Dutch heavyweight Stefan Struve stopped 6-foot-7 Sean McCorkle at 3:55 of the first round to improve to 10-1. Also, welterweight Thiago Alves won a unanimous decision over John Howard, Mac Danzig knocked out Joe Stevenson, and Jim Miller upset rising lightweight star Charles Oliveira. Canadian fighters dominated the opening fights. John Makdessi and Sean Pierson won in their debuts, Jesse Bongfeldt had a draw in his first fight, and Mark Boceck also won.

13PGB08.indd 8

down passes, Maurice Jones-Drew and Rashad Jennings each topped 100 yards rushing in a game filled with big plays. The Jaguars overcame a 10-point deficit to win for the fifth time in the last six games, setting up a critical AFC South game at Indianapolis next week. Jacksonville (8-5) stayed a game ahead of the Colts and can clinch the division title next week with a victory and a loss by Houston. The Raiders (6-7) lost for the third time in four weeks and faded from postseason contention. The Jaguars can thank Garrard, Jennings, Jones-Drew and a huge defensive stand late for getting in position to clinch. There were six scoring plays of at least 30 yards in the game, including three by Oakland’s Darren McFadden. l Steelers 23, Bengals 7: Troy Polamalu and LaMarr Woodley returned interceptions by Carson

STIFLED: Carolina Panthers’ Jonathan Stewart, center, is tackled by a host of Atlanta Falcons players during the first half of their NFL game in Charlotte, N.C., on Sunday. The Falcons won 31-10.

• TURN TO NFL, 7B

CHUCK BURTON/AP

For months, the widespread assumption in baseball has been that the New York Yankees would overwhelm Cliff Lee with millions of dollars more than the Texas Rangers could afford, making him the solution to their depleted starting rotation. When the Yankees increased their offer Thursday to seven years from six years, for more than $20 million a year, the consensus once again was that the Yankees had gone far higher than the Rangers could. But Friday, the executives for both teams were waiting to hear from Lee’s agent, raising the question as to whether the Yankees, who have easily signed many top free agents in recent years, might be on the verge of losing Lee to Texas, a team that is assumed to have far less money. The Yankees were said to be anxious that he might not choose them. They believe they have put in the highest offer but are less certain of the factors that might be motivating him. Lee went to the World Series with the Rangers last season, and his home is in Little Rock, Ark., which is much closer to the Rangers’ stadium in Arlington than it is to the Bronx. And Texas, unlike New York, does not have a state income tax. Although the Yankees will have millions to spend and would avoid another risky long-term contract with a player well into his 30s if Lee signs with Texas, there is no clear plan B for how to upgrade the team’s rotation. There are not any other top-flight pitchers on the market, so General Manager Brian Cashman would most likely have to add a pitcher through a trade. Not long after the Yankees made their offer Thursday, a contingent of Rangers executives flew to Little Rock to visit Lee for the third time. Significantly, among that group was a Texas energy executive, Ray Davis, according to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Although Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg, the team’s chief executive, have been the face of the Rangers since the team’s ownership changed hands earlier this year, • TURN TO LEE, 7B

Auburn’s Newton wins Heisman in landslide BY RALPH D. RUSSO Associated Press

NEW YORK — Cam Newton thanked his mother, then his father. And then he paused to compose himself. Cecil Newton was back in Georgia, though his son put him squarely in the room where the Auburn quarterback accepted college football’s biggest award Saturday night — the Heisman Trophy. “Thank you for all you did for me,” he told his parents, adding. “To my father, I love you so much.”

‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I love my father. He gave me words of encouragement before I came up here. I know he’s with me in spirit.’ — CAM NEWTON

There was no doubt Newton would win the Heisman. Whether he gets to keep it is still uncertain. Newton brushed off an investigation that determined his father violated NCAA rules and cap-

tured the Heisman in a landslide vote. That didn’t mean it all wasn’t tinged with sadness because his father was not there. “I’d be sitting up here lying to you if I didn’t say it hurt,” Newton

said during the ESPN telecast before the winner was announced. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I love my father. He gave me words of encouragement before I came up here. I know he’s with me in spirit.” The third player from Auburn to win the Heisman, Newton received 729 ﬁrst-place votes and outpointed runner-up Andrew Luck of Stanford by 1,184 points. Oregon running back LaMichael James was third, followed by Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore, the other ﬁnalist.

For Army-Navy game, cadets carry football 315,000 yards RIVALS CONQUERED: Navy celebrates its 31-17 victory over Army at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday.

BY COREY KILGANNON

New York Times Service

PHILADELPHIA — In the wee hours of the morning, with temperatures in the teens, a young man ran along a darkened Route 202 in New Jersey — shirtless and carrying a football. He was escorted by two state troopers with ﬂashing lights and a white van with the hand-scrawled declaration “WEST POINT BEAT NAVY.” He was one of 16 young men and four women who would take turns carrying the ball over 20 hours and 179 miles, from the United States Military Academy in New York’s Hudson Valley to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. He was joining a decades-old

MCT

tradition in which the academy’s marathon team runs from its home campus to the site of the annual Army-Navy game. According to tradition, the ball must never touch the ground, for if it did, Army would surely lose. It was this tradition that unnerved the shirtless wonder, Alex

Jefferies, a freshman, or “plebe” in West Point parlance. “They say no one’s ever dropped it,” Jefferies, 19, said Friday after running about eight miles in an hour. “But my hands were numb and I couldn’t even feel the ball.” Encouragement along the route came from car honks and sponta-

neous cheering sections of smokers huddled outside Hansil’s Bar and Grill in Oakland, N.J. Then, all the way through South Jersey, there was the sweet older man in a military windbreaker who would speed ahead, then stop and stand on the roadside, waving. The Army runs date to at least 1987, organized by some faculty members from the math department. Several years later, the marathon team took it over. Runners from the Naval Academy, meanwhile, have a similar tradition, carrying their own game ball up from Annapolis. The annual Army-Navy football game is one of the most storied rivalries in sports, dating to 1890. On Saturday, Navy won 31-17.

12/13/2010 5:37:38 AM