As a Tax Credit Wanes, Jobs Vanish in Wind Power Industry

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Gamesa, a major maker of components for wind turbines,  has all but shut down its factory in Fairless Hills, Pa., and furloughed 92 workers.

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. — Last month, Gamesa, a major maker of components for wind turbines, completed the first significant order of its latest invention: a camper-size box that can capture the energy of slow winds, potentially opening up new parts of the country to wind power.

But by the time the last of the devices , worth more than $1.25 million, was hitched to a rail car, Gamesa had all but shut down its factory here and furloughed 92 of the workers who made them.

"We are all really sad," said Miguel Orobiyi, 34, who worked as a mechanical assembler at the Gamesa plant for nearly five years. "I hope they call us back because they are really, really good jobs."

Similar cutbacks are happening throughout the American wind sector, which includes hundreds of manufacturers, from multinationals that make giant windmills to smaller local manufacturers that supply specialty steel or bolts. In recent months, companies have announced almost 1,700 layoffs.

At its peak in 2008 and 2009, the industry employed about 85,000 people, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry's principal trade group.

Many of those jobs have disappeared, as wind companies have been buffeted by weak demand for electricity, stiff competition from cheap natural gas and cheaper options from Asian competitors. Chinese manufacturers, who can often underprice goods because of generous state subsidies, have moved into the American market and have become an issue in the larger trade tensions between the two countries. In July, the United States Commerce Department imposed tariffs on steel turbine towers from China after finding that manufacturers had been selling them for less than the cost of production.

And now, on top of the business challenges, the industry is facing a big political problem in Washington: the Dec. 31 expiration of a federal tax credit that makes wind power more competitive with other sources of electricity.

The tax break, which costs about $1 billion a year, has been periodically renewed by Congress with support from both parties. This year, however, it has become a wedge issue in the presidential contest. President Obama has traveled to wind-heavy swing states like Iowa to tout his support for the subsidy. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has said he opposes the wind credit, and that has galvanized Republicans in Congress against it, perhaps dooming any extension or at least delaying it until after the election despite a last-ditch lobbying effort from proponents this week.

Without the production tax credit in place, said Ryan Wiser, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who studies the market potential of renewable electricity sources, the wind business "falls off a cliff."

The industry's precariousness was apparent a few weeks ago at the Gamesa factory, as a crew loaded the guts of the company's new component, a device known as a nacelle, into its fiberglass shell. Only 50 completed nacelles awaited pickup in a yard once filled with three times as many, most of the production line stood idle, and shelves rated to hold 7,270 pounds of parts and equipment lay bare.

"We've done a lot to get really efficient here," said Tom Bell, the manager of the plant, which was built on the grounds of a shuttered U.S. Steel factory that was once a bedrock of the local economy. "Now we just need a few more orders."

Industry executives and analysts say that the looming end of the production tax credit, which subsidizes wind power by 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour, has made project developers skittish about investing or going forward. That reluctance has rippled through the supply chain.

On Tuesday, Siemens, the German-based turbine-maker, announced it would lay off 945 workers in Kansas, Iowa and Florida, including part-timers. Last week Katana Summit, a tower manufacturer, said it would shut down operations in Nebraska and Washington if it could not find a buyer. Vestas, the world's largest turbine manufacturer, with operations in Colorado and Texas, recently laid off 1,400 workers globally on top of 2,300 layoffs announced earlier this year. Clipper Windpower, with manufacturing in Iowa, is reducing its staff by a third, to 376 from 550. DMI Industries, another tower producer, is planning to lay off 167 workers in Tulsa by November.

Wind industry jobs range in pay from about $30,000 a year for assemblers to almost $100,000 a year for engineers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By DIANE CARDWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/business/energy-environment/as-a-tax-credit-wanes-jobs-vanish-in-wind-power-industry.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Books of The Times: ‘This Is How You Lose Her,’ by Junot Díaz

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Junot Díaz's story collection "This Is How You Lose Her" follows the developing life of the Dominican-American character Yunior, particularly his relations with women.

By KEVIN SACK 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/books/this-is-how-you-lose-her-by-junot-diaz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Lens Blog: Steve Winter's Photographs of Tigers

Steve Winter loves being a wildlife photographer, but he dislikes the term.

"I'm telling a story like a photojournalist, I just happen to photograph the natural world," he said. "But we're put in a separate category."

As far as he's concerned, despite the fact that most of his pictures are of or about big cats, he's as much a photojournalist in the conventional sense as anyone else.

Mr. Winter, 56, has been photographing wild animals for more than 20 years, mainly for National Geographic. But unlike many wildlife photographers, who "don't do people," Mr. Winter said he tried to tell the full story of tigers and other large cats. That includes showing the constant tension between humans and their wild surroundings, and the often-gruesome situations that result on both sides.

The tiger population worldwide has declined by more than 90 percent in the last century, to about 3,500 tigers, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The reasons range from hunters killing tigers to sell their bones for medicinal purposes, to the destruction of natural habitat by human settlements.

Mr. Winter said another reason for the continued destruction of tigers and their habitat was that most people still think everything is fine. He said it was his job to pull back the veil of the idyllic natural world that is presented in nature shows and in travel advertisements.

But with so few tigers left in the world, Mr. Winter's focus on human-tiger conflict isn't only a moral choice, it's also a practical one.

"I'm going to Sumatra knowing that I'm never, ever going to see a Sumatran tiger," he said.

Instead, Mr. Winter does what any journalist would do with an elusive subject: he reports around it. In Mr. Winter's case, that can mean traveling for 12 hours by car to take one picture of a man who killed a tiger, or spending weeks gaining the trust of wildlife park guides before they let him photograph the area.

One of the only ways Mr. Winter gets to photograph tigers in the wild is by setting up cameras with infrared beams that snap a picture every time a tiger (or any other animal) walks by.

The camera trap images often end up being some of Mr. Winter's most well liked, but he said he wanted to make sure to get people beyond the pretty pictures.

"All these beautiful places that people think exist in the world are just managed parks," he said. "The most successful pictures I take are the ones that you don't want to look at."

Now, as the media director for Panthera, a big cat preservation nonprofit organization, Mr. Winter said he had become an activist as much as a photographer.

Mr. Winter takes his photos on lecture circuits and lets Panthera use his images to help spread the word about problems facing tigers and other big cats.

"I want the images to live on – after they run in the pages of National Geographic. " he said.

It's hard work that requires a delicate balance of drawing people in with beautiful photos, but then showing them something more, in hopes that they feel compelled to take action.

Mr. Winter said his job was further complicated by working in an age where his audience is continually bombarded with photos of cute animals on the Internet. A tiger carcass is no match for a cute cub, lounging around and seeming happy.

"Nobody wants all this negativity, so it's our job to find a different way to tell the story," he said. "I'm not saying I'm successful. I'm just trying to do it differently than anybody else has ever done it."

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Steve Winter is the media director for Panthera, a cat conservation group, which you can follow on Twitter, @PantheraCats. Mr. Winter frequently photographs for National Geographic, and in 2012 and 2011 he won the Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/people-are-nature-too-photographing-the-whole-wildlife-story/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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British Government Blocks Disclosure of Dissident’s Alleged Spy Links

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander V. Litvinenko, left a preliminary hearing in London on Thursday.

The slow-moving effort to hold an inquest into the poisoning death of a Russian whistle-blower, Alexander V. Litvinenko, inched forward on Thursday in London with a preliminary hearing at which lawyers said the British authorities were seeking to suppress evidence relating to possible contacts between him and the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

Mr. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer and critic of the Russian authorities who had won asylum and citizenship in Britain, died in November 2006 after ingesting a rare radioactive isotope, polonium 210, from a teapot at a meeting with Russian contacts at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square in London.

The killing, coinciding with other strains between London and Moscow, chilled relations between Britain and Russia, leading to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats reminiscent of the cold war. Russia's refusal to hand over Mr. Litvinenko's accused killer has since stymied efforts to restore normal ties.

British prosecutors are seeking the extradition of Andrei K. Lugovoi, another former K.G.B. officer who was present at the meeting at the Millennium Hotel, to face murder charges. Mr. Lugovoi, who is now a member of the Russian Parliament, has denied the accusations and has declined to leave Russia. Russian authorities say their Constitution forbids extradition of their own citizens.

Mr. Litvinenko's critics had long asserted that he maintained ties with British intelligence services, but those contacts — if they took place — remain murky.

At the hearing on Thursday, Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge appointed to oversee the oft-delayed inquest, said: "It has been almost six years since his death in November 2006. Such a delay is regrettable."

"There will be no further delay. It is manifestly in the interests of the interested persons, in particular his widow, Marina Litvinenko, and his son Anatoly Litvinenko, of the other interested persons and in the wider public interest that the inquest is brought to a conclusion with due expedition."

"It's my intention to commence the substantive hearings at the first practicable opportunity as early in 2013 as is consistent with the completion of the necessary preparatory steps" in November and December, he said, according to Britain's Press Association news agency.

One part of the evidence shown to relatives and other people involved in the case will be a report by Scotland Yard detectives on whether Mr. Litvinenko had contacts with MI6 before his death. He had become a British citizen only weeks before his poisoning.

Hugh Davies, a lawyer representing the inquiry, said the British government had requested that references to MI6 in the report be kept secret. While the contents of the police report are known to the coroner and members of the legal team conducting the inquiry, he said, they will not be disclosed to the other parties in the case.

"Claims have been made to the effect that Mr. Litvinenko had contact with the British intelligence service before his death. As part of its investigation, the Metropolitan Police Service made an inquiry into these claims," Mr. Davies said. But, while efforts were made to determine whether those details could be disclosed, details of any contacts had "been redacted from the report at the request of Her Majesty's Government."

"This redaction, of course, should not be taken as indicating one way or the other whether Mr. Litvinenko did indeed have any such contact," Mr. Davies said.

Ben Emmerson, a lawyer representing Mr. Litvinenko's widow, Marina, said she was "keen that the significance of all the evidence, including that which is redacted, is in one way or another fairly and independently evaluated and that as much as is possible should be made public, in the interests of ensuring not just a complete inquiry but a conclusion and deliberation which is internationally and nationally a credible one made on the circumstances of her husband's death and the reasons for it."

Mrs. Litvinenko wanted to know whether her husband's death was "a targeted assassination of a British citizen committed by agents of a foreign state in the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom," the lawyer said.

If this were proved to be the case, it would amount to "state-sponsored nuclear terrorism on the streets of London," he said.

Mrs. Litvinenko, whose husband accused Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian leader, of responsibility for his poisoning, told reporters that she believed "we will get justice in Britain. Any truth is very important for all of us, my friends, my family and the public."

"It was a British citizen killed here, a British soul," she said. "I'm not a politician, I'm a woman who lost her husband and I want to know what happened."

In Moscow, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, told reporters that Russia expected the inquest in London Russia "to give an exhaustive picture of what happened and that it will shed light on all the facts that are needed to reveal the truth," according to Agence France-Presse.

He said Britain's chief suspect had proven himself innocent by taking a lie-detector test, an apparent reference to a test Mr. Lugovoi reportedly took for a television documentary in April.

"I think there should be no question here: it is accepted everywhere and it has been shown that this person took this step to prove once again his innocence," Mr. Lukashevich said..

The Litvinenko case was not the only issue if relations with Britain, he said. "This picture is not painted in two colors — black and white. It is multicolored and we have to pick out bright colors from it as well," Mr. Lukashevich said.

By ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/world/europe/britain-wants-any-litvinenko-spy-links-kept-quiet.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Ginsburg Predicts Marriage Act Before High Court

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Wednesday that she believes the Defense of Marriage Act will likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court within the next year.

Ginsburg spoke at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She was asked a student-submitted question about the equal-protection clause and whether the nation's high court would consider it applying to sexual orientation.

Ginsburg said with a smile that she couldn't answer the question. She said she could not talk about matters that would come to the court, and that the Defense of Marriage Act would probably be up soon.

"I think it's most likely that we will have that issue before the court toward the end of the current term," she said.

The 1996 law has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in New York and is awaiting arguments before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Those oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 27.

The law was passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton after the Hawaii Supreme Court issued a ruling in 1993 making it appear Hawaii might legalize gay marriage.

Since then, many states have banned gay marriage, while eight states have approved it, led by Massachusetts in 2004 and continuing with Connecticut, New York, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Washington state. Maryland and Washington's laws aren't yet in effect and might be subject to referendums.

In February 2011, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Department of Justice to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act.

Ginsburg's remarks came at a conference sponsored by the University of Colorado law school. Ginsburg talked mostly about entering the legal profession when there were few female lawyers and even fewer judges.

The students roared with laughter when Ginsburg told of scrambling even to find a women's restroom in law school at Columbia University in the 1950s.

"We never complained, that's just the way it was," she said to laughter from the students.

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Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.

___

Follow Kristen Wyatt at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/09/19/us/ap-us-gay-marriage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Where Is Cuba Going?

Andrew Moore/Yancey Richardson Gallery

A landing for the ferry that runs between the mainland and the small island Cayo Granma, which is near the mouth of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. More Photos »

On the plane, something odd but also vaguely magical-seeming happened: namely, nobody knew what time it was. Right before we landed, the flight attendant made an announcement, in English and Spanish, that although daylight saving time recently went into effect in the States, the island didn't observe that custom. As a result, we had caught up — our time had passed into sync with Cuban time. You will not need to change your watches. Then, moments later, she came on again and apologized. She had been wrong, she said. The time in Cuba was different. She didn't specify how many hours ahead. At that point, people around us looked at one another. How could the airline not know what time it is where we're going? Another flight attendant, hurrying down the aisle, said loudly, "I just talked to some actual Cubans, in the back, and they say it'll be the same time." That settled it: we would be landing in ignorance. We knew our phones weren't going to work because they were tied to a U.S. company that didn't operate on the island.

The 6-year-old sat between us, looking back and forth at our faces. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No," my wife, Mariana, said, "just funny." But to me she did the eyebrows up and down.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," she said, "just — into the zone."

Mi esposa travels to Cuba every so many years, to do movie-related research (she's a film-studies professor) and to visit her mother's family, a dwindling number of which, as death and emigration have surpassed the birthrate, still live in the same small inland town, a dusty, colonial-looking agricultural town, not a place anyone's heard of. To them, even after half a century, it's the querencia, an untranslatable Spanish word that means something like "the place where you are your most authentic self." They won't go on about Cuba around you in a magic-realist way. Nor do they dream of trying to reclaim their land when the Castros die. Destiny settled their branch of the family not in Florida, where, if you're Cuban-American, your nostalgia and anger (and sense of community) are continually stoked, but in Carolina del Norte, where nobody cares. They tend to be fairly laid back about politics. But their memories stitch helplessly back to and through that town over generations, back to the ur-ancestors who came from a small village in the Canary Islands.

My wife's 91-year-old Cuban grandmother, who lives with us much of the time, once drew for me on top of a white cake box a map of their hometown. It started out like something you would make to give someone directions but ended up as detailed in places as a highway atlas. More so, really, because it was personally annotated. Here is the corner where my father have the bodega. Here is the alley where the old man used to walk his grandson, in a white suit, and we always say, 'Let's go to watch it,' because he have his pocket full of stones, and when the boy runs, the old man throw and hit him in the legs. She was remembering back through Castro and Batista, back through all of that, into the time of Machado, even back through him into her parents' time, the years of mustachioed Gómez in his black frock coat. The night I met her, 18 years ago, she cooked me Turkish-delight-level black beans with Spanish olives, and flan in a coffee can. She said: "Mira, Yon, at this time" — she meant the early '40s — "they make a census, all the teacher go to have a census in Cuba. We see places nobody know the name. I ride a small horse. One night there is a storm — we pass the storm under a palma. In one house is un enano. You know what is? A dwarf. He say, 'I count half!' " Her stories are like that. You actually want them to go longer. This is no small thing for me, as my life has evolved by unforeseen paths such that I see more of this abuelita than of any other human being. Neither of us ever leaves the house, and during the day it's the two of us. Those could be some paw-chewingly long hours in the kitchen, if she were talking to me about religion or something. Mostly she calls people in Miami and watches Univision at the same time, waiting for my wife and daughters to get home, after which she perks up.

Because my wife and her family have living relatives in Cuba, they can get a humanitarian exception that lets you fly direct from Miami. The legal loopholes combining to make that possible must fill hard drives. But you can in fact go that way, if you obtain one of these exceptions or are immediate family with someone who does. I first tagged along 12 years ago. It's hands down the strangest way to travel to Cuba, which you might not expect, because technically it's the simplest. But the airport bureaucracy in Miami was so heavy, at least back then, you had to show up the night before and stay in an airport hotel so you could wake up early and spend the day in a series of bewildering lines, getting things signed or stamped. That first time, the tedium was alleviated by a little cluster of Miami relatives who followed us to and through each line, standing slightly off to the side. I spoke hardly any Spanish then. My wife told me they were giving her all sorts of warnings about Havana and messages for various people in their town. Now and then one of them would rub my arm and smile warmly at me, gestures that I took to mean, "Words aren't necessary to express the mutual understanding of familial connection that we now possess," but that when I think about it now, would have been identical to those signaling, "You, simpleton."

One line was for having your luggage wrapped in plastic. A couple of muscly Latin guys in shorts were waiting there. They lifted each suitcase or bag onto a little spinning platform, turned it blazingly fast to seal it in industrial-strength shrink-wrap from a roll that looked like it held a landfill's worth and charged you for it. Their spinning was so energetic, it doubled as a feat of strength. Everyone watched. The reasons behind the plastic were not laid out. Later in the waiting area, a woman told us it was to discourage quick-fingered Cuban bag handlers on the other side. They took not gold and money, which few people were foolish enough to pack, but toothpaste and shampoo, necessities. This year, however, the plastic wrap was optional.

There were other post-Bush differences in the direct-to-Cuba zone. The lines had grown fewer and shorter. Most noticeable, the Cubans on our flight — a mixture of Cuban-Americans and returning Cuban nationals who had been in Florida or D.C. on visas of their own (some people do move back and forth) — weren't carrying as much stuff. The crowd cast a fairly normal profile. Last time, people had multiple pairs of shoes tied around their necks by the laces. Thick gorgets of reading glasses. Men wearing 10 hats, several pairs of pants, everybody's pockets bulging. Everybody wearing fanny packs. The rule was, if you could get it onto your body, you could bring it aboard. At least five people carried giant stuffed animals and other large toys. That's one of the things in the Cuban-American community, in which going back is generally frowned upon — but if it's to meet your nieto for the first time. . . .

By JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/where-is-cuba-going.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Euro Watch: Spanish Bond Sale Succeeds as Data Show Euro-Zone Slump Accelerating

PARIS — Spain sold debt Thursday in an auction that met with strong investor demand despite questions about the country's bailout plans, as a report suggested the contraction of the 17-nation euro zone economy is accelerating.

The Spanish Treasury sold 4.8 billion euros, or $6.2 billion, of three- and 10-year bonds, more than the 4.5 billion euros it had targeted for sale. The ten-year bonds were priced to yield 5.666 percent, well below the 6.647 percent it received at a similar auction on Aug. 2.

The lower yields suggests that investors are more comfortable holding Spanish debt. Euro zone fears have abated markedly since Sept. 6, when Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the E.C.B. was prepared to buy Spanish and Italian government bonds in "unlimited" quantities, if necessary, to end the pressure on the 17-nation currency bloc.

The complication for Spain is that the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wants to avoid the strings that E.C.B. help would inevitably entail. He said last week that the falling yields might make such help unnecessary.

Spain has also been promised up to 100 billion euros in aid for restructuring its banking sector. Mr. Rajoy has said those loans should be made directly to the banks, rather than through the Spanish government, so as to avoid an increase in metrics of sovereign debt. That aid will not be forthcoming until questions about a new banking supervisory system for the euro zone are answered.

After the auction Thursday, Spanish 10-year bonds were trading to yield 5.665 percent, while Italian 10-years were at 4.957 percent.

Spain's main problems — a stumbling economy and a brutally broken labor market — have been compounded by fears of a euro breakup and capital flight from its troubled banks. The country appears unlikely to get any short-term help from a pickup in the economy, a survey of purchasing managers in the euro zone showed Thursday.

Markit Economics, a research firm, said its composite output index for the euro zone fell to 45.9 in September, from from 46.3 in August, the 12th time in 13 months that activity has declined, "with the rate of decline accelerating slightly to reach the fastest since June 2009."

"The falls in production and new orders were widespread across the single currency area," Markit said, though it noted that Germany — the largest euro zone economy — had held up fairly well, even as France - the second largest — faltered.

The fall in the index is "another reminder that the E.C.B.'s new asset purchase program is not an answer to all of the region's problems," Ben May, an economist with Capital Economics in London, wrote in a note, adding that "the euro zone recession looks set to deepen in the latter part of the year."

Markit's broad gauge of German business activity rose in September to a five-month high of 49.7, up from a reading of 47.0 in August.

While a reading below 50.0 suggests economic activity is stagnating, the purchasing managers data showed "a modest expansion of service sector activity broadly offset a continued reduction in manufacturing production," Markit said.

Chris Williamson, an economist at Markit, said the data suggested that the euro zone's July-September quarter had been the worst in three years, with the data "consistent with G.D.P. contracting by 0.6 percent in the third quarter and sending the region back into a technical recession."

News of the E.C.B.'s newfound willingness to tackle surging sovereign borrowing costs had failed to raise business sentiment, he said, with the increasingly gloomy global outlook weighing on sentiment.

Earlier Thursday, a purchasing managers survey from HSBC suggested that China's manufacturing sector continued to slow in September for an eleventh-straight month, and Japan said its exports to Europe and Asia were faltering.

In midday trading the Euro Stoxx 50, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, was down 0.84 percent, and the FTSE 100-stock index in London was down 0.55 percent. Asian shares were broadly lower.

The euro was at $1.2940, down from $1.3070 late Wednesday in New York.

By DAVID JOLLY 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/business/global/daily-euro-zone-watch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Transplant Experts Blame Allocation System for Discarding Kidneys

T.C. Worley for The New York Times

A moment of silence for a donor at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, Minn.

ST. PAUL — Last year, 4,720 people died while waiting for kidney transplants in the United States. And yet, as in each of the last five years, more than 2,600 kidneys were recovered from deceased donors and then discarded without being transplanted, government data show.

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

"The hardest decision we make in deceased organ transplant is whether to accept a given organ for a given patient.  It's all odds, based on information that is incomplete at best," said Dr. Gabriel M. Danovitch, the medical director of the kidney transplant program at Ronald Reagn U.C.L.A. Medical Center.

Those organs typically wound up in a research laboratory or medical waste incinerator.

In many instances, organs that seemed promising for transplant based on the age and health of the donor were discovered to have problems that made them not viable.

But many experts agree that a significant number of discarded kidneys — perhaps even half, some believe — could be transplanted if the system for allocating them better matched the right organ to the right recipient in the right amount of time.

The current process is made inefficient, they say, by an outdated computer matching program, stifling government oversight, the overreliance by doctors on inconclusive tests and even federal laws against age discrimination. The result is a system of medical rationing that arguably gives all candidates a fair shot at a transplant but that may not save as many lives as it could.

"There is no doubt that organs that can help somebody and have a survival benefit are being discarded every day," said Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

For 25 years, the wait list for deceased donor kidneys — which stood at 93,413 on Wednesday — has remained stubbornly rooted in a federal policy that amounts largely to first come first served. As designed by the government's Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which is managed under federal contract by the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing, the system is considered simple and transparent. But many in the field argue that it wastes precious opportunities for transplants.

One recent computer simulation, by researchers with the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, projected that a redesigned system could add 10,000 years of life from just one year of transplants.

Currently, the country is divided into 58 donation districts. When a deceased donor kidney becomes available, the transplant network's rules dictate that it is first offered to the compatible candidate within the district who has waited the longest. Additional priority is given to children, to candidates whose blood chemistry makes them particularly difficult to match and to those who are particularly well matched to the donor. If no taker is found locally, the electronic search expands to the region and eventually goes national.

The kidney matching system does not, however, consider the projected life expectancy of the recipient or the urgency of the transplant. By contrast, the systems for allocating livers, hearts and lungs have been revised to weigh those factors.

As a result, kidneys that might function for decades can be routed to elderly patients with only a few years to live. And when older, lower-quality kidneys become available, candidates atop the list and their doctors can simply turn them down and wait for better organs. If that happens too often, doctors say, a kidney can develop a self-fulfilling reputation as an unwanted organ.

Complicating matters is a race against the clock that starts as soon as a kidney is recovered and placed on ice for evaluation. Because kidneys start to degrade during this "cold ischemic time," surgeons typically hope to transplant them within 24 to 36 hours.

But that short window can be devoured by testing, searches for a recipient and long drives or flights to transport the kidney. The organ procurement organization in each district is allowed to make offers to only a few hospitals at a time — usually three to five — and the hospitals have an hour to respond.

Missed Opportunities

It is not precisely clear how often kidneys are discarded that might be useful.

Last year 2,644 of the 14,784 kidneys recovered were discarded, or nearly 18 percent, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. About one-fifth of those discarded kidneys — nearly 500 — were not transplanted because a recipient could not be found.

But transplant statisticians say that record-keeping is imprecise. And some authorities, like Dr. Barry M. Straube, a nephrologist who served for six years as Medicare's chief medical officer, and Dr. Robert J. Stratta, the director of transplantation at Wake Forest School of Medicine, speculate that as many as half of discarded kidneys could be transplanted.

"I think you could argue about how many missed opportunities there are," said Dr. Alan B. Leichtman, a nephrologist at the University of Michigan. "But not that there are missed opportunities."

Last October, a ticking clock apparently forced doctors to discard one of the kidneys donated by Judith Kurash, 72, who died in a Twin Cities-area hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm.

Surgeons successfully transplanted her liver. Her heart went to research. But given Ms. Kurash's age and history of hypertension, finding recipients for her kidneys proved challenging.

They were turned down by five area hospitals, six Midwestern ones and then 37 others nationwide, before finally being accepted by a center on the East Coast, according to LifeSource, the organ procurement organization in St. Paul. Although testing showed the kidneys to be similar, one was transplanted, while the other was not.

By KEVIN SACK 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/health/transplant-experts-blame-allocation-system-for-discarding-kidneys.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Anniversary Passes With Little Note

Gregory Bull/Associated Press

In July, sailors marched in a gay pride parade in San Diego. The display would have violated military rules a year earlier.

WASHINGTON — Every Tuesday and Friday morning in a dining area tucked behind Dunkin' Donuts in the Pentagon's main food court, a gay coffee group meets to talk, do a little business and tell a few jokes.

Started quietly by a handful of Air Force officers in 2005, the gathering has grown to as many as 40 people since the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy last September. The crowd is a testament to the openness in the military now that gay, lesbian and bisexual service members no longer have to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge — and also to how such gatherings are still needed.

"Honestly, it's a support group," said Sean M. Hackbarth, the Air Force lieutenant colonel, now retired, who started the gatherings of uniformed military and civilian defense workers and who still drops by for coffee when he's at the Pentagon. "It's a way of making people less afraid. Even with repeal, there's still that trepidation of being out in the military."

It has been exactly a year since "don't ask, don't tell" was repealed, and by most measures the change has been a success. Gay service members say they feel relief they no longer have to live secret lives. Pentagon officials say that recruiting, retention and overall morale have not been affected. None of the dire predictions of opponents, including warnings of a mass exodus of active duty troops, have occurred.

"My view is that the military has kind of moved beyond it," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in May, eight months after the repeal. Even the Marine Corps, the service most opposed to the change, has fallen in line. "I get in front of the Marines as often as I can, as long as I can get away from Washington, and I'll be honest with you, I don't even get a question," the Marine commandant, James F. Amos, said at the National Press Club last month. "I'm very pleased with how this turned out."

But both gay and straight service members say that ending the legal barriers has hardly erased all the cultural ones, and that while the repeal has gone better than many expected, harassment and discrimination against gays in the military have not disappeared. "We were not fooling ourselves into believing there would be no incidents," Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel, said in an interview.

Mr. Johnson, who with Gen. Carter F. Ham wrote a 2010 Pentagon report that concluded that gay men and women could serve openly with little risk to military effectiveness, said that he had handled fewer than 10 cases where harassment or discrimination against gay service members was alleged in the last year.

One of the incidents, cited in some news reports this spring, occurred in April at a ball at a New York military installation, where a female officer was dancing with her girlfriend, another officer, and a squadron commander told the two women to stop. The situation escalated to the point that the commander's top enlisted adviser, a sergeant major, shoved one of the female officers across the floor.

Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and the executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said in an interview that after the female officers contacted his organization, the Pentagon investigated and the squadron commander and the sergeant major were relieved of their jobs and forced to retire. "Unfortunately, I could see this as being a teaching moment for commanders on what not to do," Mr. Sarvis said.

In other cases service members have said they were denied promotions or assignments because of their sexual orientation, but Mr. Sarvis said his group had investigated and found no basis for the complaints.

A far more serious incident occurred over Labor Day weekend outside a gay bar in Long Beach, Calif., where four Marines were arrested and accused of beating a young film student so severely that he ended up in the hospital. The Marines reportedly shouted antigay slurs before the attack. Commanders are investigating.

By KEVIN SACK 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/dont-ask-dont-tell-anniversary-passes-with-little-note.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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U.S. Is Taking Over Spirit Lake Sioux’s Social Services

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Dozens of cases of abuse, including rape, were not properly investigated on the reservation of the Spirit Lake Sioux in North Dakota, officials said.

By KEVIN SACK 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/us-steps-in-as-child-sex-abuse-pervades-sioux-tribe.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Government Helicopter Crashes Near Damascus

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a military helicopter had crashed near the capital, Damascus, close to a suburb where insurgents and government forces have battled for dominance.

Zain Karam/Reuters

Civilians and rebel fighters tried to pull a body from rubble in Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday.

While the state-run television offered no details of the incident, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based activist group, cited its contacts in Syria as saying the helicopter was brought down by rebel fire, but those accounts could not be confirmed. There were no immediate reports of the number of casualties.

Military helicopters and other warplanes have come to play an increasingly important role in the authorities' efforts to curb the 18-month-old revolt against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. While rebels seeking his overthrow have claimed to have brought down planes in the past, the authorities routinely blame such crashes on mechanical failures.

News of the incident came a day after opposition fighters were forced to withdraw from several neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs, ceding territory to the army after two weeks of fighting that had forced most residents to flee. Activists said the fighters, shelled for days and out of ammunition, withdrew from the neighborhoods of al-Hajjar al-Aswad and Qadam.

Further afield, though, news reports spoke of a rebel victory as Syria's civil war spilled for the second time in a week across border areas. Rebel forces were reported to have driven government troops from a northern frontier crossing along the border with Turkey in an apparent effort to expand supply and infiltration routes.

Turkish schools in the region were closed for the day after intense overnight clashes in which the rebels attacked the Syrian frontier post at Tal Abyad, south of the Turkish town of Sanliurfa, according to the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency. Television images appeared to show members of the insurgent Free Syrian Army standing on the roof of the border post and hauling down the Syrian flag at Tal Abyad, which is less than a mile from Turkey's Akcakale crossing.

A private Turkish television channel said Syrian tanks were headed for the border post. The attack came two days after Lebanese officials said that Syrian warplanes and helicopters, pursuing opposition fighters, had fired on a Lebanese town near the two countries' shared border.

Around Damascus on Wednesday, activists circulated images of what they said was evidence of summary executions by the government in the Jobar neighborhood. In what has become a familiar scene, the video showed at least eight men, all apparently shot in the head, lying in a basement. Another video showed five other dead men with similar head wounds lying in an apartment. The authenticity of the videos could not be independently confirmed.

Human rights groups have asserted that civilians are being increasingly caught in combat. Amnesty International said Wednesday that Syrian government forces had carried out indiscriminate air attacks and artillery strikes, apparently intended to punish civilians perceived as sympathetic to the rebels.

A report by the organization, based on visits to areas of central Syria from Aug. 31 to Sept. 11, said that while much international attention was focused on the fighting for Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, Syria's largest city and commercial center, "indiscriminate air bombardments and artillery strikes by the Syrian Army are killing, maiming and terrorizing the residents of Jabal al-Zawiya and other parts of the Idlib and north Hama regions."

"Every day, civilians are killed or injured in their homes, in the street, while running for cover or trying to shelter from the bombings," the group said. "Hundreds have been killed or injured in recent weeks, many of them children, in indiscriminate attacks."

Ali Akbar Salehi, the foreign minister of Iran, one of Mr. Assad's few friends in the region, met with him in Damascus on Wednesday and briefed him on a regional initiative by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran to halt the fighting, according to Syria's state news agency. The initiative does not call for Mr. Assad to step down, a basic demand of the rebel side.

In Turkey, the military authorities said they had completed an inquiry into Syria's downing of a Turkish warplane in June, concluding that it happened in international airspace over the Mediterranean. Syria has asserted that the plane was shot down because it violated Syrian airspace. The episode, which killed the two-man crew, escalated tensions between the neighbors.

Kareem Fahim reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Alan Cowell from Berlin. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut.

By KAREEM FAHIM and ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/world/middleeast/syria.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Struggling Young Adults Pose Challenge for Campaigns

Brian Blanco for The New York Times

Yasmin Kenny, 28, who works in Tampa, Fla., after leaving college for money reasons, has no regular place to stay.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Millions of struggling working-class young adults, many in battleground states like Florida, Colorado and Wisconsin, are up for grabs in this election, making up what experts call one of the most potentially powerful but often overlooked voting blocs.

Voter turnout efforts tend to focus on university campuses and young professionals who have time and money to spend on campaigns. But in several tossup states this year, legions of eligible voters are young, jobless or underemployed, and lacking in formal education beyond high school. Undecided between the presidential candidates, and often discouraged, they are offering openings for both parties to make gains, experts say.

"What we know about non-college young voters is that they are tied to neither party, and they are far more independent than anything," said Jefrey Pollock, president of the Global Strategy Group, a polling firm for Priorities USA Action, the "super PAC" that supports President Obama.

Across the country, roughly 18 million young adults — more than 40 percent of eligible voters 18 to 29 — do not have, and are not now pursuing, college degrees. And their unemployment rate is more than twice that of their college-educated peers.

The Obama and Romney campaigns are working to tailor messages to this group, one of the most challenging to get to the polls. The largest segment is white, and polls suggest it favors the conservative fiscal stances of Republicans. But among young adults in general, who tend to be socially liberal, Democrats could have the upper hand.

Matt Ely, 25, who works two restaurant jobs as a server and a cook in Green Bay, Wis., laments that even after a 53-hour workweek, he still lives "paycheck to paycheck." Mr. Ely had enrolled in technical college, but toward the end of his program it did not seem likely that he would find a job, so he dropped out to save tuition money.

He is opposed to the Republican plan for tax cuts for upper income earners, but does not think Democrats have good ideas, either. "They're all a bunch of rich people that I really don't feel like care about me anyway," he said.

Mr. Ely's comments highlight one of the central complaints expressed by young adults who are poor: that their concerns are neglected.

A video that surfaced this week of Mitt Romney speaking critically at a private fund-raiser of people who depend on government programs or who pay no federal income tax seemed to reinforce that narrative. "My job is not to worry about those people," Mr. Romney said of his campaign strategy.

How was that message received by Mr. Ely, for instance? "It was a really stupid thing to say," he said. "Definitely doesn't make him look any better in my eyes."

Still, the Romney campaign is relying heavily on the Internet and social media to make its pitch to financially distressed young adults, some of whom depend on government food stamps and unemployment checks.

"The Obama economy has created a lost generation," said Joshua Baca, the Romney campaign's national coalitions director. "Hope is on the way. That's what we're saying. You're going to have a better opportunity to get a job and a college education and a better opportunity to succeed if we elect Mitt Romney president."

The Obama campaign is investing in social media, too, and counting on its extensive ground operation to carry a message: "President Obama is laying the foundation for long-term growth of this generation," said Clo Ewing, a campaign spokeswoman, "by expanding access to quality, affordable health care for young people, investing in college and job training that ensures they're ready to succeed in the work force, and investing in a manufacturing and clean energy sector that's creating the jobs of today and tomorrow."

Experts say that the segment of young working-class people who are struggling may appear disengaged, but that they are also highly persuadable. "Extensive research shows that if you ask young people to volunteer or vote, they respond at high rates," said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

In a report released in August, researchers from the center found that the most important factor in explaining low levels of civic participation may not be apathy but merely "an absence of opportunity and recruitment." The report suggested that being "personally and explicitly asked" is perhaps the most important catalyst that motivates young people without college degrees to take political action.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta, Dan Frosch from Denver and Steven Yaccino from Chicago.

By KAREEM FAHIM and ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/politics/struggling-young-adults-pose-challenge-for-campaigns.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Starbucks to Introduce Single-Serve Coffee Maker

Continuing its foray into new lines of business, Starbucks is introducing a single-cup coffee machine that will allow consumers to make their own lattes at home with real milk.

Called the Verismo, it uses a special "milk pod" that Starbucks also developed.

"Our research and development team cracked the code on being able to create a latte using real milk with a proprietary piece of technology," said Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks. "There's no other single-cup machine that makes a latte with fresh milk just like we make it in our stores."

The new machines, available as two models and in an array of colors, one selling for $199 and one for $399, will go on sale immediately at verismo.com, in Starbucks stores later this month and at Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma and Macy's in October.

But the debut of Verismo, to be announced Thursday, collided with consumer outcry over planned changes to a rewards program that Starbucks announced this week.

Customers posted cranky comments on the company's blog, Facebook page and other social media about its decision to end free syrups and soy additions, even though Starbucks made an effort to improve some terms of the program, like giving a free drink after 12 transactions instead of after 15.

"A lot of vegans and lactose intolerant people are upset by this," said Chris Hansen, founder of the independent record label No Sleep Records, who is vegan. "It feels like we're being penalized because of our beliefs or because of the way our bodies work."

Mr. Hansen started a petition on Tuesday to try to persuade Starbucks to restore free soy and syrup benefits of its rewards program on Change.org. and has so far accumulated more than 1,000 supporters.

A previous petition on Change.org earlier this year persuaded Starbucks to replace a food coloring it used in strawberry drinks that contained crushed insects with one that was vegetable-based.

Linda Mills, a spokeswoman for Starbucks, said it was aware of the latest controversy.

In announcing the Verismo, Starbucks is trying to capitalize on the popularity of single-cup coffee machines that use K-Cups, sealed plastic cups that contain ground coffee in a little filter. More than $8 billion of machines and cups were sold worldwide last year, and more than one in every three coffee machines sold is a single-cup machine, said Jeff Hansberry, president for channel development and emerging brands at Starbucks.

In the United States market, where the machines are newer, sales grew by 143 percent last year. "Customers want convenience and great quality in their homes," Mr. Hansberry said.

Starbucks has had a partnership with Green Mountain Coffee, which made Starbucks-branded K-Cups for the chain. But Starbucks will make its own coffee pods for Verismo, which will now compete with Green Mountain's Keurig single-cup machines.

By KAREEM FAHIM and ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/starbucks-to-introduce-single-serve-coffee-maker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Books of The Times: “Life After Death,” by Damien Echols

Eighteen and a half years after he was sentenced to death for participating in the murders of three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas, Damien Echols finds himself in Faireyland. Mr. Echols's new book, "Life After Death," has a Shepard Fairey-inspired cover design that's as coolly lionizing as Mr. Fairey's "Hope" poster for President Obama. The book has a champion in Johnny Depp, who has compared Mr. Echols's writing to Dostoyevsky's. And his story is the subject of a forthcoming documentary, "West of Memphis," even though that story has been exhaustively told in the three "Paradise Lost" films that paved the path to Mr. Echols's release from death row.

Peter Ash Lee

Damien Echols

LIFE AFTER DEATH

By Damien Echols

Illustrated. 399 pages. Blue Rider Press. $26.95.

These are mind-bending new circumstances for a guy who grew up as an impoverished loner, sardonically described himself as white trash, and spent his years of incarceration noticing the most grotesque, dehumanizing aspects of prison life. Yet "Life After Death" tries to reconcile all these extremes into a single narrative, and to a great extent it accomplishes this magic trick. By the way, Mr. Echols spells that word "magick," just as one of his favorite writers, the very spooky Aleister Crowley, did. It was Mr. Echols's teenage taste for the occult, heavy metal and black clothing — a look inspired by Mr. Depp in "Edward Scissorhands," he says — that initially made him a target for the vindictive and provincial police in West Memphis, Ark.

"Life After Death" does not discuss the details of that triple murder case and the long, botched investigation and trial that followed. For one thing, that story is not over. Last summer Mr. Echols, now 37, and his two cohorts in what became known as the West Memphis Three, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., were freed on an Alford plea, an unusual technicality whereby the defendants were released but not vindicated. The accumulated fan support, financial backing and legal muscle that have rallied around Mr. Echols suggest that his champions will continue to fight on his behalf.

But he is sick of that story anyway. So "Life After Death" is a dual memoir, partly about Mr. Echols's boyhood and partly about his prison life. He says that he wants this to be a beautiful book and not a freak show, but there is freakishness at every turn. Yes, one of Mr. Echols's childhood memories involves watching "Captain Kangaroo." But another, much more typical one describes how he was agonizingly attacked by fire ants while his grandfather sipped beer and chuckled. Something else he remembers: his stepfather's punching the family Chihuahua with a closed fist.

"Nothing lifts my spirits like a scarecrow in the front yard," he writes, with as much nostalgia as he can summon for his tough and tumultuous upbringing. He likes horror films and horror novels because they remind him of home. And he describes the horrific living conditions, in a shack without water or electricity but with crop dusters spraying overhead, that his family took for granted. Even so, these memories constitute Mr. Echols's idea of living in freedom.

And they make good stories, even if this book's emphasis is often on filth, hellishness and disgust. They are so well told that "Life After Death" sometimes sounds like the work of a ghostwriter. But the book reprints enough handwritten pages of Mr. Echols's prison writing to make it very clear that the literary talent is entirely his. He was still in the ninth grade at the age of 17, but he is an autodidact who read thousands of books while incarcerated. And, as the documentary footage of his arrest and trial make clear, he is someone with a strong, single-minded personal style.

The mere fact of his survival in prison becomes more miraculous as his death row stories unfold. Sometimes he was entirely isolated. Sometimes he was surrounded by people he regarded as demonstrably insane, and their bizarre behavior is well documented here. (Especially memorable: a man with crickets Scotch-taped all over his body.) Mr. Echols makes a fiercely persuasive case against the execution of prisoners not lucid enough to understand what is being done to them. He cites one man who expected to finish eating his piece of pie after his execution.

Even in moments of deepest despair Mr. Echols found ways to toughen himself. And they are not the usual methods found in prison memoirs. "I was much more flexible in mind and body as a youth," he writes, about the difficulty of absorbing each new horror. But he developed a strong spirituality. He fell in love and got married. (He has much to say about his wife, Lorri, who had no reason to think he would ever be free when their courtship began.) And he already had the advantage of an odd perspective, one that found happiness in dark winter nights and extreme physical conditions. "Today my feet bled through two pairs of socks," he writes. "It was bliss."

Mr. Echols's prison story is not consistent in tone. As he wrote in an earlier, self-published book, "Almost Home," which is partly incorporated here, he felt hopeless and ghostly for a long time. That's the mood early in "Life After Death," but he gradually begins seeing glints of light. He learns that Axl Rose has been spotted in a West Memphis Three T-shirt. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, prompted by "Paradise Lost," tries to get in touch with Mr. Echols's lawyer (who at first doesn't recognize Mr. Vedder's name). And Peter Jackson brings his "Lord of the Rings" clout to aiding the defense effort for Mr. Echols. Mr. Jackson, a producer of "West of Memphis," helped pay for the DNA testing that helped persuade the State of Arkansas to back off.

Now Mr. Echols, who may love heavy metal but cites a Medici as a role model, is a free man with his own celebrity aura. He has written a haunting book, and the story it tells is hardly over. He is living out a sequel that is no less strange and magickal than what he has already been through.

By MAÏA de la BAUME 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/books/life-after-death-by-damien-echols.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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In New York City, Curbside Signs to Look Both Ways

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A crosswalk with a new sign at East 42nd Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

The British have a history of being unlucky on American shores, and in the winter of 1931, Winston S. Churchill was no exception. Alighting from a cab on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, Churchill, accustomed to his home country's driving conventions, looked right on the then-two way avenue when he should have looked left.

He was hit, dragged and tossed into the street by a car rushing by.

Churchill spent two weeks in the hospital. But it was not all bad: Instead of continuing on the lecture tour, said his granddaughter, Celia Sandys, he received, to his delight, a prescription for medicinal alcohol. (It was during Prohibition.) He then took a recuperative trip to the Bahamas.

Had he been visiting New York today, Churchill might have missed out on the brush with death, the cocktails and the island getaway.

On Wednesday, Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the city's Department of Transportation, announced the city's new traffic safety awareness campaign, which will feature advertising that reminds pedestrians to look both ways along with the exhortation, "LOOK!" stenciled this month along curbsides at more than 100 of New York City's most dangerous intersections.

The campaign is aimed at distracted pedestrians and drivers across the city, but the idea came from Britain, where Ms. Sadik-Kahn said she saw similar curbside signs on a trip to London last spring. "We stole their idea," she said of the London pavement signs, "and we're upping their game."

What game is being upped, exactly, was not clear on Wednesday.

Perhaps it's one of punctuation. As befitting New York City, where most crosswalk conversing is conducted at the level of a bark, the white thermoplastic lettering includes an exclamation point. London's signs use no such brusque emphasis.

Perhaps it's one of brevity. In London, the signs command you to "Look Left" or "Look Right." In New York, the directional guide can be found in the form of Cookie Monster-like irises inside the vowels that indicate the direction of oncoming traffic.

Those askance eyeballs were the first thing that Brent Wilson, 40, a geologist from Oklahoma City, noticed on Wednesday as he stood at Second Avenue and East 42nd Street, on his first visit to New York. "That's good, because being from out of town, you get a little preoccupied."

He's not alone. Ms. Sadik-Khan said around 9,200 were hurt and 41 killed in distracted driving accidents in the city in 2010, the last year for which information was available.

Tourists, dazzled by the sights and sounds of New York, may be at risk, especially if they are from countries like Japan, where driving is done on the other side of the road. Safer streets, though, may put heartthrobs like Ryan Gosling out of sideline work. Last spring, the actor made headlines when he stopped a visiting British journalist from falling victim to a Churchillian fate on Sixth Avenue.

Robin Baum, a publicist for Mr. Gosling, said the actor was not available to comment on the city's new signage.

Ms. Sadik-Kahn said a corresponding safety campaign for drivers would include advertisements emblazoned on 300 city buses and bus shelters. One ad features horizontal pictures of three pairs of eyes, each looking to a different side as if watching a tennis match. The picture reads, "Mom was right. Look before you cross the street."

It is New Yorkers, with their noses in their smartphones, not directionally confused tourists, who are the most at risk, said Romeo Marishaw, 25, a ticket agent for New York Tours who is stationed in Times Square. "I've seen them fall into potholes. I've seen them knocked down as they cross the street," he said of the multitasking pedestrians

"What we really need is an app that stops you as you get to a major intersection," he added. "That would save a lot of lives."

As for Churchill, his story might have been different had there been a curbside cautionary note, but only slightly, his granddaughter said. "He would have found one way or another of having his medicinal brandy," she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the group at which the campaign was aimed. It is intended for distracted pedestrians and drivers, not "tourists from scores of countries where driving is done on the other side of the road, like Japan and Bhutan, as well as at distracted New Yorkers."

By MAÏA de la BAUME 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/nyregion/in-new-york-city-curbside-signs-to-look-both-ways.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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British Regulator Declares BSkyB ‘Fit and Proper’

British regulators concluded on Thursday that the country's biggest satellite pay-TV group, British Sky Broadcasting, or BSkyB, was "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast license, offering a victory for its biggest shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

The regulator, known as Ofcom, made the announcement in a statement after months of inquiries about the standing of BSkyB, in which News Corporation holds a stake of around 40 percent.

Mr. Murdoch had been seeking to buy full control of BSkyB when a scandal involving phone hacking by newspaper journalists broke over other parts of his British media outpost, particularly The News of the World tabloid, raising questions about BSkyB's status as a broadcaster.

"Ofcom considers that, on the evidence currently available and having taken into account all the relevant factors, Sky is fit and proper to hold its broadcast licenses," the regulator's statement said.

But it cautioned, "Ofcom's duty to be satisfied that a licensee is fit and proper is ongoing. Should further relevant evidence become available in the future, Ofcom would need to consider that evidence in order to fulfill its duty."

The statement said: "To date, there is no evidence that Sky was directly or indirectly involved in any of the wrongdoing either admitted or alleged to have taken place at News of the World or The Sun," another Murdoch tabloid in Britain. Rupert Murdoch closed The News of the World after the scandal engulfed it in July 2011.

But the regulator also found that James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son who was closely involved in the running of BSkyB from 2003 until his resignation as nonexecutive chairman in April, "repeatedly fell short of the conduct to be expected" of a senior manager in his handling of the hacking scandal. There was no evidence, however, that he deliberately engaged in "widespread wrongdoing" or a cover-up of the scandal.

Ofcom said that, on the evidence currently available to it, Rupert Murdoch did not act in a "way that was inappropriate" in the scandals engulfing his British papers. James Murdoch was the chairman of BSkyB when the regulatory inquiry got under way. He remains on the BSkyB board as a nonexecutive director.

In a statement after the Ofcom ruling, BSkyB said: "Ofcom is right to conclude that Sky is a fit and proper broadcaster. As a company, we are committed to high standards of governance and we take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously. As Ofcom acknowledges, our track record of compliance in broadcasting is good."

"We are proud of our contribution as a broadcaster, the investments we make to increase choice for U.K. audiences and the wider benefits we create for the economy. After a lengthy review process, we are pleased that Ofcom has now reached its conclusion and we look forward to continuing to develop our business for the benefit of customers and shareholders alike."

BSkyB offers a palette of entertainment, news and sports channels, including Sky News.

Last May, a parliamentary panel issued a damning but disputed report on the hacking scandal saying Rupert Murdoch was "not a fit person"' to run a huge international company, adding new momentum to the regulator's scrutiny of his controlling interest in BSkyB, which is one of the most lucrative Murdoch investments.

After the publication of the parliamentary report a month later, BSkyB, distanced itself from News Corporation when Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB's chief executive told reporters: "I would emphasize that it's important to remember that Sky and News Corporation are separate companies."

Police have arrested dozens of Murdoch journalists and managers in a criminal inquiry into phone hacking, computer hacking and bribery of public officials, particularly the police. A separate judicial inquiry is investigating the behavior and practices of the British press and has heard testimony from scores of witnesses, including Rupert and James Murdoch.

By ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/world/europe/british-regulator-declares-bskyb-fit-and-proper.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Marseille Journal: Marseille Hit by Violent Wave of Drug Crimes

France Keyser for The New York Times

Flowers around a light pole where Walid Marzouki, whom the police suspected of being a drug dealer, was killed.

MARSEILLE, France — Walid Marzouki and his girlfriend stopped their black Renault Twingo at a red light on the deserted Boulevard Casanova late one night in August. Another car pulled alongside. The driver opened his window, pulled out an automatic rifle and killed Mr. Marzouki, using more than 20 rounds.

Mr. Marzouki, 25, was a drug dealer from Marseille, the police said.

"I heard loud bursts of gunfire," said Nina Lamraoui, 31, who lives in a building near the murder scene. "I was so terrified for my children that I told them it was a car accident."

Mr. Marzouki was a victim of one of the most violent waves of gang crime ever to hit this city on France's southeast coast. In nine months, 20 people have been killed in Marseille and the surrounding area, according to the police.

The magnitude of violence, which the police say is committed mostly by drug dealers using combat weapons, has pushed the new Socialist government to lay out an ambitious plan to help this city of 800,000, described by Interior Minister Manuel Valls as "in great distress."

The government was also pushed to act after Samia Ghali, a Socialist who represents the impoverished and troubled 15th and 16th Arrondissements here, called for the army to intervene. Her request, which many viewed as exaggerated, has nevertheless drawn news media attention to the city's struggle with gang leaders.

The killing of Mr. Marzouki has not been solved, the police said. But they blamed the drug trade for the recent killings, specifically dealers from the "Quartiers Nord," the predominantly immigrant districts of northern Marseille. Top dealers can easily make 100,000 euros a month (about $131,000), the police said, relying on violence and murder to intimidate others or defend their territory. Unlike the United States, guns are tightly regulated in Europe, but the gangs have armed themselves with weapons obtained on the black market.

"We are confronted by inhuman situations," said Jean-Louis Martini, the local spokesman of Synergie Officiers, one of the major police unions in France. "It becomes terrifying, because it has no limits."

Marseille, one of France's poorest cities, has long been a haven for gangs, which first surfaced to control prostitution. It was home to a major heroin ring known as "The French Connection," the basis for the 1971 film. And like many port cities, it has been identified with smuggling and political corruption.

Today, experts and police officers say that the number of crimes, mostly related to marijuana trafficking, has not increased significantly. But the crimes have become much more violent in the past year. Police officers and residents are particularly worried about the increasing use of automatic and semiautomatic rifles, especially the Kalashnikov. Knockoff versions are made in many eastern European countries and China, and cost about $1,300.

They were introduced in France after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and became more available recently after the chaos that followed the uprising in Libya. The police said about 300 Kalashnikovs have been intercepted in Marseille this year.

The drug networks are also larger and less structured. "It is hard for us to dismantle those networks," said David-Olivier Reverdy, a former policeman. "Until now, we come after the crime and count the dead."

Last week, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault paid a two-day visit to Marseille to discuss the security situation and urge an end to what he called the city's "inertia" in the economic crisis. He announced a plan that would increase the number of police officers in the districts affected by crime and trafficking, and also include longer-term initiatives to alleviate poverty.

The program was welcomed by experts. "We must stop thinking that this delinquency happens by magic and that people were born with this illness in them," said Laurent Mucchielli, a sociologist, in the magazine Le Point. "We must confront school failure, unemployment and the desertification of certain districts."

According to Insee, the country's national statistics agency, up to 45 percent of male residents aged 15 to 29 were jobless in 2009 in several poor arrondissements of Marseille.

By ALAN COWELL 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/europe/marseille-hit-by-violent-wave-of-drug-crimes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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BSkyB a 'Fit and Proper' Broadcaster-Ofcom

LONDON (Reuters) - British pay-TV group BSkyB is 'fit and proper' to hold a broadcast licence, Ofcom said after an investigation sparked by allegations of criminality at News Corp, its largest shareholder.

Lifting a weight that had hung over the group, Ofcom said on Thursday it had cleared BSkyB of any wrongdoing after Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said journalists had hacked into phones on an industrial scale at its now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

News Corp had been trying to buy the rest of BSkyB it did not already own when the revelations broke in July 2011 and the scandal sparked regulators to examine whether Murdoch's group was an appropriate owner of BSkyB.

"To date, there is no evidence that Sky was directly or indirectly involved in any of the wrongdoing either admitted or alleged to have taken place at News of the World or The Sun," Ofcom said.

James Murdoch, Rupert's son, is a former chief executive and chairman of BSkyB who had to step down from the role in a bid to protect the company's reputation.

Ofcom said James Murdoch's conduct in relation to events at the News Corp newspapers had repeatedly fallen short, adding there was no evidence to suggest he had deliberately engaged in wrongdoing.

"Ofcom is right to conclude that Sky is a fit and proper broadcaster," BSkyB said. "As a company, we are committed to high standards of governance and we take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously. As Ofcom acknowledges, our track record of compliance in broadcasting is good."

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Dan Lalor)

(kate.holton@thomsonreuters.com; +44 207 542 8560)

By DECLAN WALSH and STEVEN GREENHOUSE 20 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/09/20/business/20reuters-bskyb-ofcom.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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