January 29, 2016

On Top Of The News Email:news@arubatoday.com website: www.arubatoday.com Tel:+297 582-7800 Friday, January 29, 2016

Outfoxed

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016.

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Skipping Debate, Trump Touts Millions Raised For Veterans DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump once again broke all the rules of campaigning, holding his own protest event Thursday to coincide with the final GOP debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses.

Angry over an escalating feud with debate host Fox

News, Trump held what his team called a “Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations” at a 775seat auditorium at nearby Drake University instead.

Trump said he’d prefer to be at the debate, but had no choice but not to attend.Trump announced earlier this week that he would boycott Thursday’s

debate following a mocking statement from host Fox News.Trump told the crowd gathered at his rally that “when you’re treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights,” adding that “we have to stick up for our country if we’re being mistreated.” In an interview with reporters on his plane before the rally at

Drake University, Trump said his foundation already has raised $5 million. He said he’s putting up $1 million of his own money that many of his wealthy friends are giving large-dollar contributions as well.

He also reiterated that he had no intention of joining the debate. Earlier Thursday, Trump launched a

new website for collecting donations: donaldtrumpforvets.com. Contributions to the site will go to The Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump’s nonprofit charitable organization. The page says: “100 percent of your donations will go directly to Veterans needs.”

Continued on Page 3

A2 UP

Friday 29 January 2016

FRONT

Pick to lead Afghanistan forces: situation worsening RICHARD LARDNER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday the security situation in the war-

security forces.

Nicholson would succeed Gen. John F. Campbell, who is expected to retire.

There are about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

At Campbell’s urging, Obama decided last Octo-

number of American troops fell to a hypothetical 1,000 suggested by Graham.

Nicholson said he supported the decision to retain the 9,800 American troops and he agreed with Campbell’s approach. But the

Army Lt. Gen. John Nicholson Jr. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, before the the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to become the next top American commander in Afghanistan.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

torn country is deteriorating and assured senators he will do a thorough review of American troop levels needed to stabilize the nation.

Army Lt. Gen. John W. “Mick” Nicholson, Jr., told the Senate Armed Services Committee he will have a better sense of conditions in Afghanistan within a few months if he is confirmed by the Senate.

As wartime commanders must often do, Nicholson walked a fine line during his confirmation hearing. He supported the Obama administration’s exit strategy, which critics have derided as politically driven, while also promising the senators his decisions will be grounded in sound military strategy.

He peppered his answers with phrases like “rightsized” and “right-sourced” to make sure Afghanistan didn’t devolve into the same terrorist harbor it was before the 9/11 attacks.

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan is to conduct counterterrorism missions and to train and assist the Afghan

ber to abandon his plan to reduce troop levels to near zero by the end of 2016. Instead, he said they would shrink to 5,500 by the end of the year. His advisers could press Obama to maintain the current level of 9,800 troops until he leaves office in January 2017.

Asked at a Pentagon news conference whether the Taliban is making a comeback, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said: “That’s happened this past fighting season. We expected that.” And while the Afghans fought well last year, he said, they are still “a force-in-the-making” that can be expected to perform better this year as they gain more experience and capability.

Carter said Campbell has not recommended to him any increase in U.S. troop levels.

During an During an exchange with Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, Nicholson said he would be concerned that the military would not be able to perform counterterrorism operations if the

general also said at numerous points during the hearing that he would conduct his own assessment.

Although American forces are no longer engaged in direct action missions against the Taliban, Nicholson said he could not envision U.S. troops remaining on the sidelines if the strategic city of Kandahar were at risk. Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban.

“We need to prevent Kandahar from falling into the hands of the Taliban,” Nicholson said.

The committee chairman, Republican Sen. John McCain, opened Nicholson’s confirmation hearing with a blistering assessment of Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan and the president’s adherence to a “calendar-based withdrawal.”

“By now, we should have learned from the precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and the disaster that ensued that wars do not end because politicians say so,” McCain said. q

UN health chief says the Zika virus is ‘spreading explosively’ MARIA CHENG JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press GENEVA (AP) — Declaring that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively,” the World Health Organization announced it will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts Monday to decide if the outbreak should be declared an international health emergency.

At a special meeting Thursday in Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said the virus — which has been linked to birth defects and neurological problems — was becoming much more of a threat. One WHO scientist said the Americas could see up to 4 million cases of Zika in the next year.

Chan said although there was no definitive proof that the Zika virus was responsible for a spike in the number of babies being born with abnormally small heads in Brazil, “the level of alarm is extremely high.” She also noted a possible relationship between Zika infections and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause temporary paralysis.

“The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions. The increased incidence of microcephaly is particularly alarming, as it places a heart-breaking burden on families and communities,” Chan said.

The Zika virus was first detected in 1947 and for decades only caused mild disease, but Chan noted that “the situation today is dramatically different.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Zika virus is now in more than 20 countries, mostly in Central and South America. It is spread by the same mosquito that spreads dengue and yellow fever.

Earlier this month, the CDC said pregnant wom-

en should consider postponing trips to more than a dozen countries with Zika and advised women trying to get pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant to speak to their doctor before traveling and to take extra precautions to avoid mosquito bites.

Sylvain Aldighieri, head of WHO’s epidemic response team in the Americas, estimated there could be 3 to 4 million Zika infections in the region over the next year. He said the agency expects “huge numbers” of infections because of the widespread presence of the Aedes mosquitoes that spread Zika and because people in the region have no natural immunity.

WHO also warned China and all other countries that have dengue fever to be on the lookout for Zika infections. The agency said it could be many years before a vaccine is available and it might take six to nine months before there’s any data showing a causal relationship between Zika and the babies born with malformed heads.

Chan cited four main reasons why WHO was “deeply concerned” about Zika: The possible link to birth defects and brain syndromes, the prospect of further spread, a lack of immunity among people living in the newly affected areas and the absence of vaccines, treatments or quick diagnostic tests for the virus.

The U.N. health agency called the special session in part to convey its concern about an illness that has sown fear among many would-be mothers, who have responded by covering themselves head-to-toe in clothing in largely tropical Brazil or putting on many coats of insect repellent.

Declaring a global emergency is akin to an international SOS signal and usually brings more money and action to address an outbreak.q

U.S. NEWS A3

Friday 29 January 2016

Orange County jail teacher arrested for helping 3 escape

Orange County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Lt. Jeff Hallock, left, comments on a $200,000 reward offered for information leading to the arrest of three fugitives in Santa Ana, Calif.

(AP Photo/Nick Ut)

AMY TAXIN ROBERT JABLON Associated Press SANTA ANA, California (AP) — A woman who taught English classes at a California jail was arrested Thursday on suspicion of helping three inmates — including an alleged killer — escape the lockup, and the men are believed to be riding around in a stolen van.

Nooshafarinn Ravaghi, 44, was arrested nearly a week after the men — one an

alleged killer — cut their way last Friday through steel bars, climbed through plumbing tunnels, made their way to the roof, cut razor wire and, using rope made of braided bedsheets, rappelled four stories to freedom from the roof of the Orange County Central Men’s Jail. The escape wasn’t noticed for 16 hours.

It was the first escape from the maximum-security lockup in more than 20 years.

Skipping Debate, Trump Touts Millions Raised For Veterans Continued from front

Trump representatives were reaching out to various groups, in some cases inquiring about their programs and finances.

Among those contacted were the Green Beret Foundation, which provides care to veterans, and Fisher House, which provides free or low cost housing to veterans and military families receiving treatment at military medical centers.

K9s for Warriors, which trains rescue dogs to be service animals for veterans, received a call from a Trump campaign represen-

tative asking if the group was interested in accepting funds from the event, according to executive director Rory Diamond.

Diamond said the group is non-partisan but would be happy to accept any contributions.

Trump was joined at the event by two of his rivals, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Huckabee stressed the appearance should not be seen as an endorsement, but said earlier on CNN that he’s “delighted to join with Donald Trump in an effort to salute veterans” and “didn’t have anything going on at 8:00 tonight.”q

Ravaghi was taken into custody about an hour before the arrest was announced Thursday afternoon and remained jailed.

It was unclear whether she had an attorney.

Ravaghi worked for the Rancho Santiago Community College District and taught English as a second language to inmates at the jail for about six months, sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

One of her students was Hossein Nayeri, who was awaiting trial on charges that he kidnapped and tortured a marijuana dispensary owner — finally cutting off his penis — in a bid to learn where he might have cached money.

“There was some type of relationship that developed

between the two” that was close, Hallock said, but he didn’t know whether it was a romance.

Ravaghi denied she supplied any tools to the inmates, but investigators suspect she provided Google maps that potentially could have helped the inmates plan their route after fleeing the jail, Hallock said.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has said that Nayeri, 37, is believed to be the mastermind of the escape.

Hallock said investigators believe he and the others — alleged killer Bac Duong, 43, and Jonathan Tieu, 20 — are living in a white GMC Savana van that was stolen on Sunday in southern Los Angeles.

Duong apparently stole the vehicle from someone after responding to a sales ad and taking it for a test drive, Hallock said. “They may be driving around and potentially living in the back” of the van, he said.

Hallock said the ongoing manhunt has led to about 10 arrests so far in connection with the escape, with several other arrests made in connection with unrelated arrest warrants or probation violations. None of those arrests were of jail employees.

The investigation has centered on a Vietnamese gang in the nearby cities of Westminster and Garden Grove with ties to two of the inmates.q

A4 U.S.

Friday 29 January 2016

NEWS

Deported ‘affluenza’ teen booked into Texas detention center EMILY SCHMALL MARK STEVENSON Associated Press FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The teenager who used an “affluenza” defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck was booked into a Texas juvenile detention center following his deportation from Mexico on Thursday, more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

Ethan Couch, 18, arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport late Thursday morning and could be seen walking through the airport escorted by law enforcement. Couch and his mother were apprehended in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Dec. 28, after a call for pizza delivery tipped off authorities to their whereabouts.

Couch initially fought deportation, but he dropped the fight this week. His

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson speaks with media after Ethan Couch was taken into the Scott D. Moore Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas.

(AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)

mother was deported last month.

“We’ve reached a great milestone,” Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said outside the juvenile facility in Fort Worth. “This is a day we’ve looked forward to, when we have them both here and back under the jurisdiction here. We’re hoping that the day comes

for justice for the families and the four victims that were killed.”

Couch is scheduled for a court hearing Friday where a judge could decide to move him to an adult jail, which Anderson said he would support given the severity of Couch’s offenses.

Couch also faces a hearing on Feb. 19 to determine

whether his case will be transferred to the adult system, where he could face more time behind bars.

“He’s certainly capable of understanding now what’s going on, and I’d feel better if he was there (in an adult jail),” Anderson said.

Authorities believe Couch and his mother fled Texas in her pickup truck in early December, after an online video appeared to show Couch at a party where people were drinking.

Couch was sentenced in juvenile court to 10 years of probation for the 2013 wreck that killed four people and injured several others. The terms prohibit him from drinking or leaving Tarrant County, Texas.

Couch’s attorneys Scott Brown and Reagan Wynn said in a statement Thursday they are “optimistic” their client will complete his probation term without any further issues. They also predicted the judge would keep Couch in juvenile

custody at least until the hearing next month.

During the trial in the juvenile case, a defense witness argued the then16-year-old Couch had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents. The expert deemed the condition “affluenza,” which isn’t recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association and drew widespread derision.

Couch’s mother, Tonya Couch, is charged in Texas with hindering the apprehension of a felon. She was released on bond this month after being fitted with an electronic ankle GPS monitor. According to an arrest warrant, she told her estranged husband, Fred Couch, that he would never see her or their son again before fleeing.

Mexican immigration agents put Ethan Couch on a Texas-bound commercial flight in Mexico City early Thursday. q

Oregon standoff dwindles to 4 holdouts demanding no arrests NICH K. GERANIOS TERRENCE PETTY Associated Press BURNS, Oregon (AP) — The armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge dwindled Thursday to just four holdouts demanding assurances they will not be arrested by the FBI if they surrender.

The FBI had no immediate comment on the negotiations or the holdouts’ demands, saying only that it was trying to “empty the refuge of the armed occupiers in the safest way pos-

sible.”

“We’re still stuck here, four of us. They’re telling us it’s safe to leave, but it’s not safe,” a spokesman believed to be occupier David Fry said in a video posted on YouTube nearly four weeks into the standoff in the frozen high desert.

The occupation by ranchers and others began on Jan. 2, and at one point there were a couple of dozen people holed up, demanding that the federal government turn public lands over to local con-

trol. But the compound has been emptying out since the arrest of their leader, Ammon Bundy, and 10 others over the past few days.

With the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrounded by the FBI, the occupiers have been posting videos on YouTube showing them around a campfire, along with pickup trucks, an American flag, guns, an old car and assorted clutter.

“We want to live. We want to go home peacefully,” one of the men, who was not identified, said in a

video posted on Thursday.

He was also shown dancing outdoors to a countrywestern tune with a woman identified as his wife.

Oregon Public Broadcasting spoke with the holdouts and identified them as Fry, who is from Ohio, husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson of Idaho, and Jeff Banta of Nevada. Fry told the station that Sean Anderson faces a federal arrest warrant.

In one of the videos posted Thursday, the speaker — believed to be Fry — said:

“We’re asking, just drop the charges and we’re willing to go. But if they’re not willing to do that, we’re all just willing to stay here and see what happens.”

Bundy and seven other main figures in the takeover were arrested earlier in the week, most of them in a traffic stop Tuesday night that erupted in gunfire and left one follower dead. On Wednesday, three more followers surrendered after Bundy pleaded in a statement from jail: “Please stand down.q

U.S. NEWS A5

Friday 29 January 2016

Spate of random slashings across New York City sows fear

Tony-Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang is shown at The Public Theater in New York. Wang was a victim of a random attach while carrying groceries to his home in Brooklyn, N.Y: having been slashed so deeply that it severed an artery leading to the brain that required emergency surgery.

(AP Photo/Jim Cooper)

COLLEEN LONG VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Tonyaward winning playwright David Henry Hwang was carrying groceries down a Brooklyn street when he felt like he got hit in the back of the head. He suddenly couldn’t walk straight.

“I kept veering into a wall, then a parked car. And that’s when I realized I was bleeding,” Hwang, the author of “M. Butterfly,” said this week.

Hwang had been slashed with a blade by someone

who came out of nowhere.

The wound was so deep it severed an artery leading to his brain.

He isn’t the only victim of such an unusual crime.

Since December, about a dozen such random, unprovoked slashings have been reported across the city, including three this week on subway trains. All were committed by strangers, police said. They used knives, razors and, in one instance, possibly a machete.

Police say the spate of attacks is largely a coinci-

Computer expert gets no jail in extensive spamming case JOE MANDAK Associated Press PITTSBURGH (AP) — A computer expert was sentenced Thursday to two years’ probation for helping send millions of spam messages that allowed computer marketers to illegally harvest email addresses and phone numbers.

Naveed Ahmed, 27, faced at least two years in prison under advisory sentencing guidelines, but Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr. imposed probation.

Defense attorney Melvin Vatz called Ahmed “a man of considerable intel-

ligence who has unfortunately succumbed to directing those talents in the wrong way.”

Ahmed cooperated with investigators “the moment he got the knock on the door” from federal agents, Vatz said.

Ahmed was a systems administrator and master’s degree student at the University of South Florida. He lost his job but gained a wife since pleading guilty in August.

Cohill’s sentence will allow Ahmed to work with computers that will be monitored by federal probation officers.q

dence. Investigators believe they were committed by different, unconnected people. But the sheer randomness of the crimes has reinforced old fears about safety in a city of strangers.

“I like to think that, as a New Yorker, I’m fairly aware — conscious of people around me,” Hwang said. “But this happened on a dark corner of my block.

This was a random attack, and the number of recent random attacks surprises me. Is this a new phenomenon?”

The idea of a “thrill crime,” where the perpetrator seeks to feel powerful through an attack on a stranger, is not new: A good example, criminologists say, is the knockout assault that surfaces occasionally, where teenagers

try to knock someone out with a single punch. The attacks seem random, but there’s often a connection, even if it’s just in motive.

“They want to create anxiety, to feel powerful, to laugh at the results,” said criminologist Jack Levin of Northeastern University, who studies the crime.

There has been an uptick in knife attacks citywide the past few months, but police statistics don’t distinguish between random and targeted attacks. And overall crime is near modern-era lows.

Commissioner William Bratton said this week that crime is inescapable.

“The reality is we still have crime in New York City.

We’ll always have crime in New York City,” he said.

“But the reality is also that

there is less crime in this city than there has been at any time in the last 25 to 50 years.”

Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the spate was “a little unusual for us,” but he disregarded the idea of a copycat crime. He said officials were working quickly to arrest the perpetrators. At least three people have been arrested already. One man was accused of slashing a 71-yearold woman on the cheek as she rode the subway to work. Another man with a history of assault arrests was charged with an unprovoked slashing attack on a man from New Jersey who was in the city to have dinner with friends. The victim in that assault needed 150 stitches to close the wound in his face.q

A6 U.S.

Friday 29 January 2016

NEWS

Nevada governor seeks change in sage grouse mining rule SCOTT SONNER Associated Press RENO, Nev. (AP) — The governor of gold-rich Nevada is pressing the Obama administration to alter its sage grouse protection plan to free up thousands of mining claims by shrinking the restricted area in exchange for making other unprotected areas off limits, restoring burned out rangeland and reining in wild horse herds.

Gov. Brian Sandoval maintains his alternative would exclude only about 6 percent of the federal land the government has temporarily withdrawn from future mineral development in Nevada. Previously unverified mining claims in the state are effectively frozen across 4,200 square miles — a swath nearly as large as Connecticut.

The moderate Republican wants to swap about onefifth of the withdrawn area, some 555,000 acres, for 394,000 alternative acres

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval sits in his office at the Capitol in Carson City, Nev. Sandoval is pressing the Obama administration to alter its sage grouse protection plan to free up thousands of mining claims by shrinking the restricted area in exchange for making other unprotected areas off limits.

(AP Photo/Cathleen Allison)

he says contain higher quality habitat more critical to the survival of the imperiled bird, according to interviews with his aides and documents obtained

by The Associated Press.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell decided in September the greater sage grouse didn’t warrant Endangered Species Act protection across 11 western states, where its numbers once totaling an estimated 16 million have dwindled to as few as 200,000.

But almost simultaneously, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management

adopted new regulations restricting development around grouse habitat that some critics say are just as onerous as endangered species protection for ranchers, miners and others. Jewell also initiated a 2-year ban on new mining exploration in grouse habitat while the government studies whether tens of thousands of square miles

across the West should be withdrawn from potential “mineral entry” for another 10 years.

In a Jan. 15 letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, Sandoval argued a more effective way to protect the chicken-sized bird is to step up wildfire restoration and reduce “out-of-control” mustang populations. He says there’s no scientific basis for the mining withdrawal, but asks that if necessary, it be limited to a maximum of five years. He also urged federal officials to clarify their “confusing” definition of “valid existing claims,” which Jewell insists are exempt.

In detailed comments attached to the letter, Sandoval’s office outlined the plan he says would protect 49 additional leks — the bird’s traditional breeding grounds — while dropping protection of five others in the government blueprint.

Slightly shifting protection boundaries based on new maps would release all but 1 percent of the 3,726 mining claims currently in limbo in the biggest U.S. gold-producing state, he said. q

Kansas ponders greenhouse gas limits for coal plant JOHN HANNA Associated Press TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court considered Thursday whether the state can avoid limiting greenhouse gas emissions from a proposed $2.8 billion coalfired power plant despite the federal government’s efforts to combat climate change.

The court heard arguments Thursday from attorneys in a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club in 2014 to prevent Sunflower Electric Power Corp. from building the 895-megawatt facility next to an existing coal-fired plant outside Holcomb, in southwest Kansas. The state Department of Health and Environment has twice given a go-ahead for the project without setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

The department first issued a pollution-control permit

to Sunflower in 2010, just before the federal government began regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Environmentalists challenged it on other grounds, and the Supreme Court in 2013 directed the agency to set tougher standards for pollution such as mercury, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

The department in 2014 issued what it calls an “addendum” to the 2010 permit and argues that limits on greenhouse gas emissions are still not required for the new plant.

The Sierra Club said the agency must impose such restrictions because of President Barack Obama’s efforts to target coal-fired power plants as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Supreme Court could rule later this year, and such a decision would come as Kansas officials

are working on a plan for complying with a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule issued last year to require states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Kansas must drop its emissions levels by 43 percent by 2030.

“They’d like to pretend this isn’t happening, but it is,” Amanda Goodin, an attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the Sierra Club, said after the court’s hearing.

“They need to wake up and get emission limits in this permit.”

Sunflower has sought to build the plant for nearly a decade. It didn’t obtain a permit from KDHE until Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson brokered a deal with the company and the Republican-dominated Legislature that included approval of some green energy initiatives.q

U.S. NEWS A7

Friday 29 January 2016

US Financial Front:

Global slump, high dollar drag US durable goods in December

2015 Grand Cherokees appear on display at a Fiat Chrysler dealership in Doral, Fla. On Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, the Commerce Department released its December report on durable goods.

(AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Orders to U.S. factories for long-lasting manufactured goods tumbled in December, with a key category that tracks business investment plans falling for a sec-

ond straight month.

Durable goods orders dropped 5.1 percent in December following a 0.5 percent decline in November, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

The weakness was fueled in part by a 29.4 percent

plunge in demand for commercial aircraft, a category that swings sharply from month to month.

Durable goods orders have fallen in four of the past five months, reflecting the pressures facing American manufacturers from a

California wrestles with self-driving car policy JUSTIN PRITCHARD Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Companies that are developing self-driving cars of the future want government regulators to clear the road for public access to the technology, once it emerges from prototype testing.

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is wrestling with how to keep the public safe as the imperfect technology matures — but not regulate so heavily that the agency stifles development of vehicles with potentially huge safety benefits.

On Thursday, DMV officials in Sacramento began hearing from advocates and skeptics with strong opinions about precedentsetting draft regulations the agency released last month. Those regulations will govern the cars’ eventual rollout to residents.

So far, the agency has taken a cautious approach — one that Google in particular says will stymie the technology.

Google has concluded that human error is the biggest risk in driving, and the company wants to remove the steering wheel and pedals from cars, giving

people minimal ability to take over.

The DMV said cars must have a steering wheel in case onboard computers or sensors — including radar, lasers and cameras — fail. A licensed driver would need to sit in the driver’s seat, ready to seize control in an emergency.

Neither Google Inc. nor traditional automakers have said they think the cars are ready yet, but at least a dozen companies are developing the technology.

Google has suggested a model could be ready for limited use sooner than the public realizes..q

strong dollar and spreading global economic weakness. Both factors have hurt export sales of durables, which are items intended to last at least three years such as refrigerators, cars and computers.

The category that serves as a proxy for business investment plans dropped 4.3 percent in December after a 1.1 percent decline in November. American industry has struggled in recent months, and economists do not expect a quick turnaround.

They worry that export sales will continue to struggle as the dollar keeps rising. There is also concern about economic weakness in such key export markets as China, the world’s second-largest economy, and other emerging markets.

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, noted that the big drop in De-

cember orders was influenced by some one-time factors, including a swing in the mix of orders to Boeing in December to lower-valued 737s. He attributed the plunge in the investment category to the decline in oil prices to around $30 per barrel, down from around $50 per barrel in the late summer and early fall. That triggered further cutbacks in investment in the oil and gas industry, he said.

“No one should be surprised that manufacturing is fundamentally weak, given the oil hit and the strong dollar,” he said.

Overall orders were down $12 billion in December to a seasonally adjusted total of $225.4 billion.

Demand was also down in a number of areas. Excluding the transportation sector, orders still fell 1.2 percent following a 0.5 percent decline excluding transportation in November.q

A8

Friday 29 January 2016

WORLD NEWS

World urged to invest in Jordan to create jobs for Syrians

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The head of the International Labor Organization and Jordan’s labor minister on Thursday called for large-scale international investment in the kingdom to help put Syrian refugees living there to work.

ILO chief Guy Ryder and Nidal Katamine, the minister,

spoke to reporters ahead of next week’s annual Syria aid conference, to be held in London. An appeal coordinated by U.N. agencies seeks close to $9 billion for 2016, to help war victims in Syria, as well as some 4.3 million Syrian refugees and regional host countries, where most of the dis-

placed still live.

One of the goals of the conference is to find ways to improve lives of refugees in the overburdened host countries, including Jordan, by creating job opportunities. The shift in emphasis from previous donor conferences came after the influx of hundreds

of thousands of Syrian refugees to Europe over the past year, driven in large part by increasingly tough conditions in the regional host countries. Ryder and Katamine did not give specifics, including how much investment would be needed or how many jobs could be created, both for Syrians

and for Jordanians.

Katamine suggested billions of dollars would be required, adding that putting Jordanians to work would be the priority.

The labor minister said Europe is experiencing now what Jordan has dealt with for the past five years — a mass influx of refugees.q

Car-making deals, protests greet Iranian president in Paris ELAINE GANLEY Associated Press PARIS (AP) — France’s government welcomed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday with promises of a new beginning in an old relationship, starting with investments to boost Iran’s flagging economy that has been crippled by decades of sanctions.

“It’s a new chapter of our relationship,” French president Francois Hollande said in a joint news conference following a two-hour meeting with Rouhani at the Elysee palace. “I want that relationship to be useful, useful to both countries, useful to the (Middle East) region affected by wars, crises and tragedies.”

Hollande added that he raised the issue of human rights and freedom during the meeting.

France sees the visit also

France’s President Francois Hollande, right, welcomes Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, prior to a meeting, at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country is “favorable terrain” for resumed trade between East and West as he and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls pledged to turn the page on past tensions.

(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

as an opportunity to draw Iran into a role of crisis-solving, notably in Syria’s civil war where Iran actively

supports the government of President Bashar Assad, which Paris firmly opposes.

“We must fight terrorism”

in Syria and Iraq, Rouhani said during the joint conference. “We must help the Syrian people so that the Syrian people can build a sustainable future for the country,” he said.

Rouhani decried the sanctions his country was previously under, saying history has shown that they “never worked.” He said the nuclear deal that led to the lifting of sanctions this month can serve as a model for solutions in other crises, notably in the Middle East.

A total of 20 agreements were signed after Rouhani’s meeting with Hollande.

Iran Air signed a deal to buy 118 aircraft from Airbus, valued at 22.8 billion euros ($25 billion). PSA Peugeot Citroen also announced a joint venture with Iran Khodro to produce latest-generation vehicles in Tehran

by the end of 2017.

French and Iranian companies also signed agreements in the sectors of air and maritime transport, airports, health and agriculture. Oil and gas company Total inked a deal with the National Iranian Oil Company to purchase crude oil.

The French presidency said the total amount of the deals signed during Rouhani’s visit, including Airbus, could reach up to 30 billion euros ($32.8 billion).

The historic outreach trip did face some strains, however, in a reminder of the complexities confronting all sides despite the French welcome mat.

France has asked its European Union partners to consider new sanctions on Iran for its recent ballistic missile tests, officials told The Associated Press. q

Man with 2 handguns, partner arrested at Disneyland Paris ANGELA CHARLTON MILOS KRIVOKAPIC Associated Press PARIS (AP) — A man who tried to bring two handguns into a hotel at Disneyland Paris was detained Thursday along with his female partner, authorities said, amid lingering jitters around the French capital following attacks last year.

No one was hurt in the incident, and the park — Europe’s most-visited tourist attraction — remained open after the arrests.

The man, 28, was detained at the New York Hotel, part of the Disneyland complex, according to a police official who wasn’t authorized to be publicly named. He was also found to have a Quran. The man’s motives

for trying to enter the hotel with arms were unclear.

“During a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels, weapons were discovered in a guest’s luggage through our X-ray machine.

The police were immediately notified,” Disneyland Paris communications chief Francois Banon said. “We continue to work closely

with the authorities, and the safety and security of our guests and cast members is our utmost priority.”

The man’s partner was detained later at the park, the police official said. The woman didn’t appear to be armed, and no other suspects are currently being pursued, the official said.

About a dozen police sur-

rounded the hotel Thursday evening, and a car was towed away from the parking lot, though it’s unclear whether the car was linked to the arrests.

Employees at the New York Hotel and several others around Disneyland Paris said they continued functioning as usual after the arrest. q

WORLD NEWS 9

Friday 29 January 2016

Germany reaches migrant deal, with limits on relatives GEIR MOULSON Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s governing coalition reached a deal Thursday to end prolonged squabbling over measures to streamline its handling of the migrant influx, a result that means some Syrians may face a longer wait to bring relatives to Germany.

The agreement foresees that refugees who didn’t face “immediate personal persecution” won’t be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavaria’s governor, Horst Seehofer.

The coalition also plans to declare Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia safe countries of origin, Gabriel said, making it easier to send migrants back to those countries. Germany did the same last year for several Balkan nations whose citizens are barely ever granted asylum.

The package of measures, which was first tentatively agreed in early November, also foresees using special centers to quickly progress migrants who have little realistic chance of winning asylum. It has been held up since then as Merkel’s and Seehofer’s conservative parties squabbled with Gabriel’s center-left Social Democrats over who should initially be blocked from bringing relatives to Germany. The Social Democrats had taken the November agreement to mean that only a few people who receive “subsidiary protection” — a status that falls short of formal asylum — would face a two-year wait to be able to have relatives join them.

Mass expulsions ahead for EU as migrant crisis grows KARL RITTER Associated Press STOCKHOLM (AP) — Dazzled by an unprecedented wave of migration, Sweden on Thursday put into words an uncomfortable reality for Europe: If the con-

even entire families, onto chartered airplanes bound for the Balkans, the Middle East or Africa evokes images that clash with Europe’s humanitarian ideals.

But the sharp rise of people seeking asylum in Europe

open door,” she said.

EU statistics show most of those rejected come from the Balkans including Albania and Kosovo, some of Europe’s poorest countries. Many applicants running away from poverty in

Sweden’s Interior Minister Anders Ygeman discusses the EU migrant crisis in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ygeman says Sweden could deport between 60,000 and 80,000 asylum-seekers in coming years.

(Henrik Montgomery/TT via AP)

tinent isn’t going to welcome more than 1 million people a year, it will have to deport large numbers of them to countries plagued by social unrest and abject poverty.

Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said Sweden could send back 60,00080,000 asylum seekers in the coming years. Even in a country with a long history of immigration, that would be a scale of expulsions unseen before.

“The first step is to ensure voluntary returns,” Ygeman told Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri. “But if we don’t succeed, we need to have returns by coercion.”

The coercive part is where it gets uncomfortable.

Packing unwilling migrants,

last year almost certainly will also lead to much higher numbers of rejections and deportations.

European Union officials have urged member countries to quickly send back those who don’t qualify for asylum so that Europe’s welcome can be focused on those who do, such as people fleeing the war in Syria.

“People who do not have a right to stay in the European Union need to be returned home,” said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the EU’s executive Commission.

“This is a matter of credibility that we do return these people, because you don’t want to give the impression of course that Europe is an

West Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh also are turned away. Even people from unstable countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia can’t count on getting asylum unless they can prove they, personally, face grave risks at home.

Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s vice president, told Dutch TV station NOS this week that the majority of people seeking asylum in Europe are not refugees.

“More than half, 60 percent, should have to return much more quickly.

If we start with doing that, it would already make a huge difference,” he said.

Sending them back is easier said than done. In 2014, EU nations returned

less than 40 percent of the people who were ordered to be deported.

Sometimes those seeking asylum go into hiding after receiving a negative decision. Sometimes their native country doesn’t want them back. EU countries, including Sweden and Germany, have had some success sending people back to the Balkans on chartered flights. Of the 37,000 who returned from Germany on their own accord last year, all but about 5,000 were from the Balkans.

“It’s been more difficult with Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Mikael Ribbenvik, director of operations at the Swedish Migration Agency.

“The returns have worked during some periods, and not so well during others.”

One of the biggest obstacles to sending people back is to obtain travel documents from their home countries. People routinely lose or even destroy their travel papers coming to Europe, creating confusion about where they are from.

“Most countries in the world don’t accept someone if cannot be proved that it’s one of their citizens,” Ribbenvik said. Sweden has urged the EU and its Frontex border agency to help establish return agreements with the countries of origin.

Frontex’s budget for deporting people was significantly increased this year, allowing it to coordinate more flights and help countries prepare their own.

Under U.N. rules, countries are supposed to offer protection to refugees fleeing war and persecution. But some European countries also offer protection to people deemed at risk of torture or the death penalty or who are suffering from an exceptionally serious disease.q

A10 WORLD

Friday 29 January 2016

NEWS

Top US general warns Mosul Dam could collapse

Iraqi soldiers participate in a training exercise with American and Spanish trainers at Basmaya base, 40 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. The top U.S. general in Iraq warned Thursday of the potential collapse of Mosul Dam in the country’s north, saying such an event could prove “catastrophic.”

(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

SUSANNAH GEORGE BALINT SZLANKO Associated Press BAGHDAD (AP) — The top U.S. general in Iraq warned Thursday of the potential collapse of Mosul Dam in the country’s north, saying such an event could prove “catastrophic.”

The U.S.-led coalition is still

determining the likelihood the hydroelectric dam could collapse but has developed a contingency plan alongside the Iraqi government, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland.

Built in the early 1980s, the dam is made largely of earth and situated on soft mineral foundations, which

are easily dissolved by water. A report in 2006 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called it “the most dangerous dam in the world” because of its propensity to erode.

Since the Islamic State group extended its territory across Iraq in summer 2014, maintenance teams

have at times struggled to gain access to the site. IS seized the dam in July of that year, but Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters, with coalition air support, took it back within weeks.

Situated on the Tigris River, the dam is the largest in Iraq and the fourth-largest in the Middle East. It once supplied electricity and water to much of the country, but now only operates at partial capacity.

The coalition and Iraqi forces have drafted plans to move civilians to safety should the dam collapse, MacFarland said, warning that “when it goes, it’s going to go fast, and that’s bad.”

Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Riyadh Izeddin, the director general of the dam, said he had not been informed by the U.S. about any such contingency plan.

“The Americans didn’t tell us anything,” he said, countering the coalition’s assessment that the structure is in serious danger.

“There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing seriously wrong with the dam,” Izeddin said.q

Fighting in Egypt’s restive north Sinai kills 4 children ASHRAF SWEILAM Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — Fighting between army troops and extremist militants in the restive northeastern part of the Sinai Peninsula killed four children and wounded eight other minors on Thursday, Egyptian medical officials said.

The Rafah hospital said in a statement that the children were killed and wounded during clashes using heavy weapons, with some bur-

ied under rubble when buildings were hit and collapsed. The fighting took place close to the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Egypt has been hit with a wave of suicide bombings and militant attacks that intensified after the military’s ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

The local Islamic State affiliate has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.

Earlier Thursday, IS claimed

responsibility for the roadside bombing of an army convoy in northern Sinai on Wednesday that killed at least four soldiers.

In a statement distributed

by IS sympathizers on social media, the militant group said that it had killed and wounded more than 20 soldiers, including senior officers, during the attack.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim, but its design and logo resembled previ-

ous IS claims.

Egyptian security and health officials had said the attack, just south of the coastal city of el-Arish, killed an army colonel and three soldiers and wounded another 12 soldiers, several of whom were in a critical condition.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. q

Yemen suicide bomber is said to be Dutch IS AHMED AL-HAJ Associated Press SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The Islamic State affiliate in Yemen has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Thursday that killed seven people and targeted the presidential palace in Aden, where the internationally-recognized president and his cabinet are based.

In an online statement posted on Twitter by the group’s supporters, IS identified the attacker as Abu Hanifa al-Hollandi, an Arabic nom de guerre that suggests he was Dutch.

The last name in militants’ pseudonyms usually indicates their nationality or place of origin. His real name was not immediately known.

It was not possible to verify the claim. The group posted pictures that appeared to show the car bomb speeding toward cement barricades manned by presidential guards.

Earlier on Thursday, three Al-Jazeera journalists who were kidnapped in the war-ravaged Yemeni city of Taiz were released, the news network said in a statement. Journalists have been frequently targeted during Yemen’s conflict, which pits southern Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, against government forces backed by a Saudi-led military campaign.

The Houthis seized control of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and in November that year the president fled to Aden.

The bombing took place around one kilometer away from his palace, which is heavily guarded

by Emirati and Saudi special forces, officials said. q

WORLD NEWS A11

Friday 29 January 2016

In face of Zika virus, women ponder abortion, childlessness

A woman covers her mouth as she stands outside her home while city workers fumigate to combat the Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus, at the San Judas Community in San Salvador, El Salvador. Worries about the rapid spread of Zika through the hemisphere has prompted officials in El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil to suggest women stop getting pregnant until the crisis has passed.

(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

CHRIS SHERMAN MARCOS ALEMAN Associated Press SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Maria Erlinda Guzman desperately wants a baby, and has been undergoing fertility treatments at El Salvador’s largest women’s hospital. But now, she fears her dream of motherhood may be dashed by Zika.

After her country took the extraordinary step of advising women to avoid pregnancies for two years due to concerns about the rapidly spreading virus, the 34-year-old now plans to start using contraception.

She worries that she may be too old to conceive by the time it is considered safe to do so.

“I’m going to be left childless,” Guzman said.

While Zika’s exact link to the rare birth defect known as microcephaly is still unclear, warnings from El Salvador, at least six other countries and health officials across the Americas are raising anxiety for millions of would-be and could-be mothers in affected areas.

For some it’s a dilemma pit-

ting religious beliefs about abortion against the risk that their babies could be born with abnormally small heads and a short life expectancy.

World Health Organization officials said Thursday the virus is “spreading explosively” and the Americas could see up to 4 million cases of Zika in the next year. And as it expands to countries where abortion is strictly limited or outlawed altogether, doctors and health advocates fear that many women could resort to back-alley procedures that imperil their health.

“What happens in a country where abortion is completely illegal?” said Angelica Rivas of Acdatee, a Salvadoran nonprofit that advocates for decriminalization of the procedure.

“What can be expected is an increase in the rates of illegal abortions, unsafe abortions and a mental health issue for women.”

At least 4.4 million pregnancies were aborted in 2008 in Latin America, about 95 percent of them clandestinely and in unsafe conditions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a

U.S.-based nonprofit that promotes reproductive health rights.

“When women are desperate ... they will seek out their own solutions,” said Carmen Barroso, Western Hemisphere director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation. In El Salvador, she said, half of all pregnancies are unplanned.

So far, only Brazil has seen a sharp rise in microcephaly cases suspected of a link to Zika.

Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape, danger to the mother’s life or anencephaly, another birth defect involving the brain. Authorities have said they don’t plan to add a microcephaly exception, though the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper argued in an

editorial that Zika raises a need to discuss decriminalization of abortion.

Microcephaly usually occurs because of abnormal brain development that numerous conditions can trigger: genetic abnormalities, disorders such as Down syndrome, drug or alcohol use, other infections such as cytomegalovirus or even serious nutritional problems.

WHO officials say it may be six to nine months before a link between Zika and microcephaly is established or dismissed.

Complicating the mystery is how to detect which pregnancies really may be at risk. Microcephaly typically has not been diagnosed in early pregnancy. One study published in 2000 found it was diagnosed on average at 28 weeks,

although Dr. Jeffrey Ecker, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said it sometimes may be detected in the second trimester.

“We don’t know as much as we would like,” Ecker said. “That’s the caveat that hangs over all of this.”

In the United States, if there’s concern that a pregnant woman may have been infected by Zika while traveling abroad, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is recommending ultrasound exams every three to four weeks to evaluate the fetus.

Moreover, about 80 percent of those infected with Zika present no symptoms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.q

A12 WORLD

Friday 29 January 2016

NEWS

Puerto Rico power company reaches new deal with creditors SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s power company said Thursday that it reached a new deal with bondholders as it seeks to restructure roughly $9 billion in debt.

The agreement calls for legislators to approve a measure by Feb. 16 needed to launch the restructuring of the largest U.S. public power utility.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bondholder group said it and other creditors would provide $111 million through the purchase of new bonds. It said half the notes would be issued once the bill is passed and the other half once the securitization structure is submitted to an energy commission.

The power company said

the deal requires bondholders and monoline insurers to buy 50 percent of the bonds once the bill is approved.

The announcement comes just days after the original deal collapsed when legislators missed a Friday deadline to approve the bill. The agreement still involves only those holding 70 percent of the power

company’s debt.

“We have a long way to go, and there remain many uncertainties, but if implemented PREPA’s transformation will have a positive, lasting impact on its finances, operations and culture,” said Chief Restructuring Officer Lisa Donahue.

Officials have warned that without debt restructuring, the company will run out of

cash by summer, possibly leading to power cuts.

Puerto Rico is struggling with $72 billion in public debt that the governor has said is unpayable and needs restructuring. The power company’s deal has been considered a potential model for other debt restructuring negotiations involving Puerto Rico’s public agencies.q

OAS to send special mission to Haiti amid political crisis DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The threat of instability in Haiti prompted the Organization of American States late Wednesday to authorize a special mission to help the troubled nation find a way out of a simmering political crisis and set a new date for a runoff election. In Washington, the OAS permanent council reached consensus on sending the mission to Haiti to assist with resolving a stalemate now that elections have been postponed indefinitely and the country’s president is due to leave office in 10 days.

The regional body, which Haiti belongs to, took up the measure after receiving an urgent request from outgoing President Michel Martelly. The OAS council had only been scheduled to receive a report on Haiti from electoral observers.

Antigua Ambassador Ronald Sanders, who holds the rotating chair of the council, raised the specter of “utter bloodshed” in Haiti unless a political agreement was reached. He

Demonstrators burn tires under campaign poster of presidential candidate Jovenel Moise of the PHTK political party during a street protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

(AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

said their intention was to “not to interfere, but to be helpful.”

Haiti’s ambassador to the OAS, Bocchit Edmond, said the request was not an invitation to “meddle” in Haitian affairs but was intended to help the country avoid “falling into an institutional vacuum and chaos.”

For days, Haiti’s political

leaders and others with influence have been working to find a way out of the impasse. Business, religious and civil society leaders have offered possible solutions along with various political factions.

But Martelly is scheduled to depart Feb. 7 and political compromise is rare in Haiti.

Presidential and legisla-

tive runoff elections set for last weekend were called off less than 48 hours before the vote amid a surge of violent protests and deep suspicions of electoral fraud. Many Haitians have been growing anxious since elections were aborted in the perennially volatile country.

“I’m concerned that there

may be killings if the authorities don’t get a solution worked out,” said Reginald Poteau, who has been unemployed since losing his job as a warehouse laborer last year.

But hardware store manager Rony Mathieux, whose car windows were smashed during recent violent protests in Port-auPrince, said he did not like the idea of having foreigners help resolve Haiti’s political problems.

Sandra Honore, the top United Nations envoy to Haiti, told The Associated Press this week that it’s important for the suspended electoral cycle to be resolved as quickly as possible “given the tense moments that the country is living right now.”

For 12 years, the world body has kept a mission in Haiti designed to focus on security and stability.

“I would hope that reason will prevail and that the best possible solution will be arrived at to prevent the country from regressing,” she told AP in an interview at the headquarters of the U.N. mission.q

Colombia’s human rights boss resigns amid harassment scandal JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s top human rights official resigned Thursday amid a sexual harassment scandal that included nude selfies sent to his secretary.

The leaking of the photos and text messages sent

by Ombudsman Jorge Armando Otalara caused an uproar among Colombians

unaccustomed to seeing mostly male bosses punished for unwanted sexual advances at work.

Otalara has acknowledged sending his secretary Astrid Cristancho, a former beauty queen, a picture of himself reclining nude in a hammock. He defended himself by saying the private photos and flirty text messages were part of a romantic relationship that

lasted more than a year, involving travel and even discussion of having a family.

“If I’m guilty of anything it’s having fallen in love with a woman with whom I shared important moments of my life,” Otalara told journalists on Monday.

He was defiant while resigning Thursday, attributing what he called a mediahyped scandal to political enemies wanting to dam-

age the institution he represents.

Cristancho, who resigned last year in protest over Otalara’s actions, has denied ever having a relationship with her former boss, whom she has called “sick” and in need of help.

On Thursday, she filed a complaint with the chief prosecutor’s office alleging harassment and urged women in similar situations

not to wait as long as she did before taking action.

“I call on all women and men who have been victims of any type of harassment to speak up,” Cristancho told journalists while filing the complaint. She was dressed in a T-shirt emblazoned with an anti-harassment slogan that has been trending on Colombian social media: “No Means No.”q

LOCAL A13

Friday 29 January 2016

Caribbean Calling for Challenge Family!

ORANJESTAD - Challenge Family announced this week its newest addition to the global series of long distance triathlons on the spectacular Caribbean island of Aruba.

Set over the half distance, CHALLENGEARUBA will take place on 23 October on the ‘Happy Island’ of Aruba with its crystal clear blue waters, pearly white beaches and balmy Caribbean climate – the perfect combination for a race in paradise!

The CHALLENGEARUBA course stands out not just for its beauty but for its speed, variety and quality.

The 1.9km swim is a single lap course in the clear warm Caribbean sea in front of the famous Palm Beach. The undulating 90km bike course is over four laps along the coastline, passing through some of the island’s most popular beaches before heading to the famous lighthouse of

Aruba.

The run-course is entirely along the white beaches of Aruba. Three laps which alternate between the boulevard (The Strip) and the path on the beach in front of the exclusive hotels of Aruba that join the Palm Beach Area. The finish line will be situated on the boulevard at The Hyatt Regency Resort.

A sprint distance race will also be available for athletes who would rather keep it short and sweet.

The sprint consists of a 750m swim, followed by a 22,5km cycle and finally a 7km run.

Otmar E Oduber, Minister of Tourism said he was looking forward to welcoming athletes to the island.

“As the Minister of Tourism, and on behalf of our One Happy Island, I would like to welcome you to Aruba for the inaugural race of Challenge Aruba. Our commitment is to provide you with safety, beautiful

scenery, and warm support in a unique and breathtaking atmosphere. I look forward to cheer you on as you make your way to becoming one of the first ever finishers of what promises to be a beautiful race!”

Marcus Altmann, global operations for CHALLENGEFAMILY, said CHALLENGEARUBA was a great addition to the series, especially for North American athletes.

“Racing in paradise is always a hard opportunity to turn down,” he said. “The convenience of getting to Aruba from the North American mainland makes this a perfect race to escape the autumn weather and get some sun before winter hits. A great way to close out the season.”

Operating under the motto “Your Challenge is Our Challenge” the CHALLENGEARUBA team aimsto provide participants and their families with a complete holiday that goes beyond hosting the best triathlon event. As well as the half and sprintdistance races, there is an extensive and varied program of additional activities to ensure that triathletes and their

companions get the most out of their stay.

Festivities will kick-off in the best way Aruba knows, an exotic beach party!Enjoy an extensive buffet with a variety of dishes while listening to a local-band adding a Caribbean flair on the moonlit beach.

Sticking with the beachtheme, post-race will be a lavish beach and pool award party at the prestigious Hyatt Resort.

And in the build-up to CHALLENGEARUBA athletes can benefit from a number of clinics and seminars from triathlon icons Marc Herremans and Tim DeBoom as ambassadors of the race.

There’s plenty to do pre and post-race as well, making CHALLENGEARUBA the perfect ‘race-cation’ destination. For total relaxation, alabaster beaches and gentle seas are good for the soul. Or rock your world with wet ‘n wild adventures, deep sea diving, windsurfing, kitesurfing, even parasailing and sky diving! Tee off on a championship golf course, saddle up on horseback, take a tour, or hike through

Arikok National Park and discover the island’s fascinating natural wonders, from rock formations to natural bridges.Shop ‘til you drop, enjoy glittering nightlife and fabulous restaurants. Broaden your cultural horizons with visits to museums and art galleries, and don’t miss the weekly Bon Bini and Caribbean festivals.

The inaugural CHALLENGEARUBA will take place on 23 October 2016.

For entries and further information, visit www.challenge-aruba.com.q

A14 LOCAL

Friday 29 January 2016

In Port on Aruba:

Grand Opening of Public Affairs Convention On Board the Freewinds

PALM BEACH - A grand opening of an international public affairs convention took place on board the Freewinds in Aruba recently. Participants from over

Aruba wishing them a successful week of training and seminars, and to enjoy the beautiful island of Aruba.

The Freewinds has been

20 different countries are on board for this week long convention including representatives from the police of Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela.

Awards were presented to the Freewinds from these police agencies to show their appreciation for the assistance the Freewinds has provided their countries with the Way to Happiness program and Truth About Drugs program.

The Quality Brass Band kicked off the start of the convention followed by a welcoming speech from the Corporate Communications Specialist from the Aruba Tourism Authority, Jonnie Tilma, who welcomed the attendees to

assisting Aruba for over 27 years raising funds for institutions, clubs and charitable organizations. Aruba is one of the favorite ports of her passengers and crew.q

LOCAL A15

Friday 29 January 2016

Burke Family Honored at Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort!

EAGLE BEACH - Recently Mr. Kevin and Mrs. Margaret Burke were honored as Distinguished Visitors for the island of Aruba after visiting for more than 10 years consecutive. The symbolic honorary title is presented in the name of the Minister

of Tourism as a token of appreciation to guests who visit Aruba for between 10and-20 years consecutive.

Mr. Ricardo Croes representing Aruba Tourism Authority conducted the ceremony at the Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort.

Kevin commented that he will never change his vacation island for any other island! The top reasons for returning provided by the honorees are they consider Aruba to be the “Happy Island�, the great weather, the friendly Aruban hos-

pitality, the white sand beaches and the terrific local food.

Featured are Mr. Ricardo Croes from ATA together

with Mr. Kevin and Mrs. Margaret Burke, and also Deborah from the Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort Village Resort.q

A16 LOCAL

Friday 29 January 2016

At Paseo Herencia Mall Tonight!

Red Carpet Event for Premier of Local Film “Siñami Stimabo”

PALM BEACH - Paseo Herencia Shopping and Entertainment Center is always promoting local projects, and they are proud to announce they are hosting the Red Carpet Premier of the new local film production “Siñami Stimabo.”

This film is based on the true story of the life of its writer and director Marlyn L.S.

tion and features local music and talent.

The Red Carpet Event for the film will be held tonight, Friday, January 29, 2015 at the Plaza Padu at the Paseo Herencia Mall. The Red Carpet Event begins at 7:30pm, and the film premier begins at 8:30pm.

“Siñami Stimabo” will then begin its official run at the

Richardson, and it explores the realities of how many people live on the island of Aruba.

This film is a local produc-

Cinemas at the Paseo Herencia Mall and the Cinemas at the Renaissance starting on Saturday, January 30th. q

SPORTS A17 Djokovic, Williams Win Australian Open Semifinals Page 20 Friday 29 January 2016

Singapore Swing

Spieth Takes Early Share of Lead at Singapore Open Jordan Spieth of the United States tees off on the 15th hole during the first round of the SMBC Singapore Open golf tournament at the Sentosa Golf Club’s Serapong Course on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Singapore.

(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

SINGAPORE (AP) — A good night’s sleep and a helping hand from his manager was all Jordan Spieth needed to get back in the swing of things on the latest leg of his globe-trotting tour.

The world’s top-ranked player had arrived at the Singapore Open exhausted and complaining of fatigue after playing in the Middle East last week, but Spieth looked revitalized as he grabbed a share of third place in Thursday’s opening round.

With his agent filling in as his caddie, Spieth began with a birdie at Sentosa Golf Club and birdied three

of his last 10 holes to complete a bogey-free round of 4-under 67 at the cosanctioned Asian and Japan Tour event.

That left him just one stroke behind the clubhouse leader, South Africa’s Keith Horne, and Berry Henson of the United States, who still had one hole to finish when play was suspended for the day because of a thunderstorm.

An Byeong-hun of South Korea, the next highestranked player in the field at 26 in the world, matched Spieth’s 67.

They were joined at 4-under by Japan’s Shintaro

Kobayashi and Thailand’s Namchok Tantipokhakul, who were among 57 players still on the course when play was suspended.

Spieth, who has played his past five tournaments in five different countries, turned to his manager and agent, Jay Danzi, to carry his bag after his long-time regular caddie, Michael Greller, injured an ankle in Abu Dhabi last week and canceled his trip to Southeast Asia.

“I thought Jay stepped in extremely well,” Spieth said.

“It’s a tough place to caddie when you are not used to carrying the bag, with

the weather, but he took it like a champ.”

By his own standards, Spieth was not at his best, missing four fairways off the tee and misjudging most of his approach shots to the green.

“I felt like the entire day today was very stress-free driving the ball, which is the most important part out there, but from there I just couldn’t get it on the right tier,” the 22-year-old American said. “Ï just couldn’t quite get the right distance. My distance control was just off, trying to judge the wind, the humidity and the heat.”

Spieth escaped the worst of Singapore’s stifling humidity when he teed off just after sunrise and made a perfect start when he made a 20-foot birdie putt on his first hole.

He struggled to get his yardage right on the unfamiliar Serapong course but birdied each of the three par-5s and did not threeputt a single hole.

“It’s just the first round,” Spieth said. “Coming here, to a different country, a different time zone, it’s still an adjustment and I think each day should get a bit better.”q

A18 SPORTS

Friday 29 January 2016

Michelle Wie stung by bee in LPGA Tour opener in Bahamas

Michelle Wie of the United States tees off in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Wie was stung by a bee Thursday in the season-opening Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic.

(AP Photo/Joshua Paul)

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas (AP) — Michelle Wie was stung by a bee Thursday in the season-opening Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic, and second-ranked Inbee Park withdrew because of back pain after the second-worst round of her LPGA Tour career.

Wie was stung on the palm of her right hand on the 16th hole, her seventh of the day at the windy Ocean Club. She finished with a 3-over 76 to fall eight strokes behind first-round leaders Paula Creamer, Charley Hull, Alison Lee, Ashlan Ramsey, Catriona Matthew, Mika Miyazato

and Haru Nomura.

“I was waiting to hit my tee shot and I felt something sting and it hurt really, really bad and I knew it was a bee,” Wie said. “I brushed it away and the stinger was still in there. We were trying to find a tweezer and out of all the people, our security guy had tweezers on him, so I got it out.”

She bogeyed three of the first five holes on her back nine.

“It just kind of felt so swollen it was kind of hard to grip the club. I was hitting the ball so well on the front nine and just definitely had a couple loose ones com-

ing in making the turn. You can kind of feel the venom kind of spread. But the last couple holes, it’s feeling better.”

She struggled with her putting.

“I only missed two greens,” Wie said. “I just putted horribly.”

Park shot an 80, playing her final four holes in 5 over with a double bogey on the par-5 15th and three bogeys. She will sit out the Coates Golf Championship next week in Florida, and hopes to return late next month in the Honda LPGA Thailand.

“I’ve always had a little lower back problem and some weeks it just gets bit worse and today happened to be one of those days,” Park said. “Hopefully, in Thailand I’ll be in really good shape.”

Creamer played a late three-hole stretch in 4 under, making an eagle on the par-4 eighth.

“I’ll definitely take it,” Creamer said. “This golf course, it’s a great track.

It really does play well. The wind makes it very difficult, but these greens, they’re challenging. The biggest thing is get it as close as you can from the fairways and see what you can do.”

Lee finished with a bogey on the par-4 ninth after playing the previous three holes in 4 under with an eagle on the par-5 seventh. She is still a student at UCLA. “I’m taking four classes right now,” Lee said. “Each week, I think, I counted to about 13 hours of class, so it’s not too bad. I have friends in each class that can give me notes.”

The 46-year-old Matthew also eagled No. 7. q

Farmers Insurance Open: Brown handles South to share the early lead at Torrey Pines DOUG FERGUSON AP Golf Writer SAN DIEGO (AP) — Scott Brown and Phil Mickelson both had reason to believe it could be a long day on the South Course at Torrey Pines. It turned out just fine Thursday in the Farmers Insurance Open, especially for Brown.

Brown hit into a hazard and made bogey on the first par 5 he faced and was 2 over through six holes. He finished with eight birdies over his last 11 holes for a 6-under 66, giving him a share of the lead with Andrew Loupe.

Only it felt much better for Brown because it was on the South, which played 2½ shots harder than the North Course where Loupe shot his 66.

“Extremely hard,” Brown said of the South, which already hosted one U.S. Open and has another coming in five years. “But it’s fair. It’s just tough. If you’re out of position, you just have to play for par or bogey and you can’t make any big numbers out there because as soon as you get behind the 8-ball, you can’t press and try to make birdies.”

He did, anyway, including a 30 on the front nine.

Brown and Loupe had a one-shot lead over five players, including Billy Horschel, who all played the North Course.

Defending champion Jason Day, who missed the proam because of the flu, made his tee time but not a lot of birdies. He shot 72 on the North Course. That was one shot better than Rickie Fowler, who won Sunday in Abu Dhabi and couldn’t buy a putt on the North Course in his round of 73.

“Couldn’t get anything going,” Fowler said. “Couldn’t make a putt. So looking forward to getting on the South greens, that’s for sure.”

Mickelson, whose last win at Torrey Pines was 15 years ago, didn’t have the ideal start, either. On the secondeasiest par 4 on the South Course, he hit into a fairway bunker, caught the lip trying to get out, hit his third shot just over the green and failed to get up-and-down, making double bogey.

“I thought anything in the 60s would have been a good score,” Mickelson said. “It’s a very difficult golf course.

But after doubling the second, I was able to kind of just keep things calm until I made a few birdies, and it was a good back nine.”

As significant as his birdies was a par on No. 11, where his tee shot found a bunker and he escaped with a 20foot par putt. Mickelson hit enough good drives to set up three straight birdies. He reached the 614-yard 13th hole in two, hit wedge to 5 feet for birdie on the 14th and an 8-iron to 4 feet on the next hole.

He ended with a 30-foot birdie putt on the 18th.

Of the 33 players who shots in the 60s, only 12 of the scores came on the South Course. K.J. Choi and Chesson Hadley each had a 68.

Paul Dunne of Ireland made his PGA Tour debut with a 69 on the South, while 17-year-old Ryan Ruffels of Australia opened with a 70 on the North Course in his first professional event in America. Ruffels, the son of tennis parents Ray Ruffels and Anna-Maria Fernandez, won a Junior World Championship at Torrey Pines, and he beat Mickelson in a practice round last December.

Mickelson figured the South Course would be a good test for his driver, and he had mixed results.

“It was not what I expected, but better than I’m used to,” he said. Jimmy Walker was expecting much better.

He was excited about the way he was driving the ball until a piece of epoxy on his driver came loose during the pro-am. q

SPORTS A19 What if a missed extra point decided the Super Bowl?

Friday 29 January 2016

HOWARD FENDRICH AP Pro Football Writer All of a sudden, an extra point can provide some extra drama.

The kick that comes after a touchdown — turning six points into seven — is not quite as much of a sure thing now, because the distance was pushed back from 20 yards to 33 this season.

Imagine a Super Bowl decided by a flubbed kick following a TD. Seem farfetched? Certainly used to be: No one has missed a PAT in the Super Bowl in a quarter-century.

Things have changed. After all, the Denver Broncos got to their Super Sunday matchup against the Carolina Panthers on Feb. 7 in Santa Clara, California, thanks in part to a botched extra point by New England Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski in last weekend’s AFC championship game.

“Do you want a game to end on a missed extra point rather than going to overtime? I think that would be very anticlimactic. I don’t think most fans would want to see a game end that way,” said Jay Feely, a kicker for a halfdozen NFL teams over 14 seasons from 2001-14.

“I would never want to see a game end that way, especially one of this magnitude.

I hope it doesn’t,” he said, before adding with a chuckle: “But it certainly could.”

NFL kickers had never made worse than 99.3 percent of their extra-point attempts across any season from 2010-14, but the league-wide rate dropped to 94.2 percent this season — the lowest mark in 35 years, according to STATS. Here’s another way to look at it: There were a total of eight misses in all of 2014; that total was exceeded

by Week 2 of 2015.

“I wouldn’t say I view it as an extra point anymore,” Panthers kicker Graham Gano said. “Extra points

are gone. Now it’s just another field goal.”

Gano practices more from the new spot, the right hash mark at the 23-yard line.

“I wasn’t a fan of when they changed it. Nobody wants their job to be harder,” Gano said.

“But I think the better you are at being a placekicker, the more valuable you are going to be. I feel like I did a good job of hitting them this year, and in the years to come, it will make me a valuable asset to the team.”

He is 65 of 68 on PATs this season, including the playoffs.

The other Super Bowl kicker, Denver’s Brandon McManus, is 37 of 38.

McManus notes that the greater length of the kick means players need to warm up, which they didn’t need to do before.

And that can be an issue right after a defensive TD, because unlike when his offense has the ball and is driving toward the end zone, a score happens unexpectedly.

“You have to run 50 yards this way to get your helmet, then you’ve got to run 80 yards back the other way,” McManus explained. “The biggest issue is just refocusing, knowing you didn’t get to warm up at all. You might have been on the sideline for 30 minutes.”

Gostkowski sent an extrapoint attempt wide right early in New England’s 20-18 loss to Denver, forcing the Patriots to try to go for a 2-point conversion in a failed attempt to send the game to overtime in the closing seconds. It was his first missed PAT in nine years, ending a leaguerecord run of making 523 in a row.

For any NFL kicker’s leg, a 33-yard field goal is no big deal. But the mental pressure of a 33-yard extra point changes everything.

“Everyone in the stands and at home thinks you have to make it or else you’re not worth anything,”

In this Jan. 24, 2016 photo, New England Patriots punter Ryan Allen (6) watches as Stephen Gostkowski reacts after missing an extra point during the first half the NFL football AFC championship game against the Denver Broncos in Denver. Gostkowski’s missed kick in the game contributed to the loss against the Broncos which, in the end, sent the Broncos to the Super Bowl.

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

McManus said. “That’s kind of how it is.”

Here’s the way Feely described it: “Because of the expecta-

tion of perfection, there’s an added layer of pressure ... and it has tangible impacts.”

He was against the dis-

tance switch when it was approved in a vote of club owners in May. Now he’s OK with it.

“It was a good change,” Feely said. “It did take a play that was a given and was a boring play, and it created more interest throughout this season.”

Count Panthers coach Ron Rivera among the converts, too.

“I will be honest with you about it: I was against it.

I didn’t like it. I thought it was going to change the game. I wasn’t sure it was necessary,” Rivera said.

“Now that I see how effective it has been, how it has made the game entertaining, how it did impact the playoffs this year — it is exactly what the league wanted.”q

20 SPORTS

Friday 29 January 2016

Djokovic, Williams win Australian Open semifinals

Serena Williams of the United States plays a forehand return to Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland during their semifinal match at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016.

(AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

DENNIS PASSA AP Sports Writer MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Novak Djokovic called it the best he has ever played against old foe Roger Federer. Serena Williams was just being her dominant self.

The defending champions both made their way back to the Australian Open final, with Djokovic beating Federer 6-1, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 and Williams defeating Agnieszka Radwanska 6-0, 6-4 on Thursday.

“I’ve had matches where I’ve played similar tennis,” said Djokovic, the topranked player in the world.

“But I think against Roger, these first two sets have been probably the best two sets I’ve played against him overall throughout my career.”

Hours earlier at Rod Laver Arena, Williams advanced to within one win of another Grand Slam milestone.

If the six-time Australian Open champion wins Saturday’s final against seventh-seeded Angelique Kerber, she will equal Steffi Graf’s 22 major singles titles, a record in the Open era and the second-most in history behind Margaret Court’s 24.

“I was able to do everything that I needed to do,” Williams said of Thursday’s match. “I was really hitting just all the right shots, making little to no errors, which is kind of hard to play like that.”

Djokovic, a five-time champion at the Australian Open, advanced to his sixth final at Melbourne Park. He’ll find out who his final opponent will be after Andy Murray takes on Milos Raonic on Friday.

For Federer, the signs were ominous from the beginning. Djokovic held his first service game at love and broke the 17-time Grand Slam champion in the second. After seven minutes, Federer was trailing 3-0.

The first set was over in 22 minutes. Most spectators — including a woman with a sign reading: “Just Married But Willing to Exchange for Federer” — were behind him, applauding Djokovic’s

service faults and giving Federer a standing ovation when he broke to go ahead 4-2 in the third set.

The end came quickly in the fourth. Djokovic broke Federer in the eighth game to go up 5-3 — not even a stunning down-the-line shot after he earlier chased down a lob on the same point could save the Swiss great.

Djokovic held three match points in the next game and he clinched it when Federer netted a backhand.

Djokovic, who won three Grand Slam titles last year, took a 23-22 edge in his 45 meetings with Federer.

“Definitely I’ve played unbelievable the first two sets but that’s what is necessary against Roger,” Djokovic said.

Asked about the crowd support for Federer, Djokovic displayed Swiss-like diplomacy.

“When I play Roger it’s something that is expected, in a way, considering his career and his greatness on and off the court,” Djokovic said. “He’s loved.

He’s appreciated. He’s respected around the world.

For me it’s normal in a way.”

Federer said he wasn’t surprised by Djokovic’s early blitz.

“I’ve seen Novak play this well before,” he said. “It’s tough when it’s from the start because obviously you got to try to stop the bleeding at some point.

He can get one or two sets all of a sudden ... and it’s tough to get back into it.”

In the first semifinal match, Kerber ended Sydneyborn British player Johanna Konta’s surprising run with a 7-5, 6-2 win to reach her first Grand Slam final. Konta was the first British woman since 1983 to reach the semifinals at a major tournament.

Williams is the overwhelming favorite in the final, and not just based on recent form. She continued her perfect streak in seven Australian Open semifinals.

“I definitely block it out,” Williams said in reply to a question about equaling Graf’s mark. “I was one off last year, too. q

SPORTS A21

Friday 29 January 2016

English Preview:

Van Gaal defiant as criticism mounts ahead of FA Cup match

STEVE DOUGLAS AP Sports Writer MANCHESTER, England (AP) — If Manchester United went on the attack in games as much as its manager does in news conferences, England’s biggest team may not be in such a rut.

On Thursday, a defiant Louis van Gaal criticized sections of the British media who reported this week he had offered to resign in the wake of United’s latest poor result — a 1-0 home loss to Southampton in the Premier League on Saturday.

“I think it’s awful and horrible,” said Van Gaal, who walked out of a news conference last month. “It’s the third time I’ve been sacked and I’m still sitting here.”

Lose to second-tier Derby in the FA Cup on Friday, and even Van Gaal acknowledges the scrutiny could be too much to take.

“Now I cannot lose anymore because I am condemned for the fourth time that I have been sacked,” Van Gaal said. “And maybe then you have written the truth, because sometimes it happens.”

Van Gaal was heckled by fans after the loss to Southampton, with United having won just three of its last

13 games and in fifth place in the Premier League. United’s style of football under Van Gaal is dull and riskaverse, and the supporters appear to have had enough.

The Dutchman said Thursday that he hadn’t offered to quit and the support of Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, was “fantastic.”

“It gives you a lot of pressure because when the board has such confidence in you, the pressure is much higher than when they say it’s your last game,” Van Gaal said. “Then the confidence is not so high.”

United may be playing Derby just at the right time.

It has won only one of its last six games — in the FA Cup third round — and has dropped off the top of the League Championship.

Derby is managed by Paul Clement, the former assistant manager at Real Madrid where he worked under Carlo Ancelotti. Clement said he might speak to Ancelotti before Friday’s game at Pride Park.

“I am not sure it will quite be a giant-killing if we get a good result,” Clement said.

“It is a challenge we are really looking forward to, up against a team that is not in great form.”

Here are some other things to watch out for in the fourth round:

because of a knee injury, and was expected to be out for three months. He has been back in full train-

ny Welbeck “isn’t far off” a comeback after being out since April with a knee injury.

Manchester United’s manager Louis van Gaal takes to the touchline before his team’s English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Southampton at Old Trafford Stadium, Manchester, England, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. If Manchester United went on the attack in games as much as van Gaal does in news conferences, England’s biggest team may not be in such a rut.

(AP Photo/Jon Super)

COQUELIN BACK Arsenal’s injury crisis is finally relenting, with the return of holding midfielder Francis Coquelin the latest good news for manager Arsene Wenger.

Coquelin has been missing since the end of November

ing for two weeks, however, and is available for the home match against second-tier Burnley on Saturday.

Winger Alexis Sanchez has also recently returned from injury, while Wenger said Thursday that forward Dan-

RELIEF FOR CARLISLE Some good news for fourthtier club Carlisle.

Floods that caused widespread damage to the north of England and Scotland in December took its toll on Carlisle’s Brunton Park pitch.q

Spanish Roundup:

Sevilla and Valencia advance to Copa del Rey semifinals

TALES AZZONI AP Sports Writer MADRID (AP) — Brazilianborn striker Rodrigo scored a first-half goal to lead Valencia to a 1-0 win over Las Palmas and send Gary Neville’s team into the semifinals of the Copa del Rey on Thursday.

Rodrigo found the net from inside the area in the 20th minute to help Valencia advance 2-1 on aggregate following a 1-1 draw in the first leg in Valencia last week.

Sevilla also advanced on Thursday thanks to a comfortable 3-0 win over second division club Mirandes,

reaching the semis 5-0 on aggregate.

Rodrigo scored Valencia’s winner after a nice play by Portuguese midfielder Andre Gomes, redirecting his cross with a left-footed shot from close range. Las Palmas players complained of offside, but replays showed that the striker appeared to be in legal position.

The victory kept alive Neville’s hopes of winning a title this season despite Valencia’s struggles in the Spanish league, where it hasn’t won in 10 matches.

“Our fans deserved to enjoy a moment like this,” Neville said. “They have

been patient with me and with the team in these past six weeks.”

The former Manchester United and England player is yet to win a league game since he officially took over the squad seven rounds ago.

“It has not been easy for us,” Rodrigo said. “It was important to advance to the next round, it gives us more confidence. We played well in the first leg but didn’t get a good result. Today (Thursday) we didn’t play brilliantly but we advanced, and that’s what was important.”

Las Palmas pressured un-

til the end to try to get the equalizer but couldn’t get past the Valencia defense.

“We did all we could, we deserved at least a draw,” Las Palmas defender David Garcia said. “But we have to keep our heads high. It would have been nice to advance, for us and for the city, but we fought until the end.” Sevilla arrived in the northern city of Miranda de Ebro holding a two-goal lead and its early score all but ended the home side’s chances of a comeback.

Vicente Iborra opened the scoring after converting a ninth-minute penalty kick, then Juan Munoz added

to the lead with a strike in the 70th and Coke Andujar sealed the easy victory with an injury-time header.

“Everything was harder after they scored with the early penalty kick,” Mirandes goalkeeper Raul Fernandez said. “We did really well in this tournament, eliminating some top teams. Now we have to move on and focus on getting to the first division.”

Barcelona and Celta Vigo advanced to the semifinals on Wednesday, eliminating Athletic Bilbao and Atletico Madrid, respectively. The draw for the semifinals will take place on Friday.q

SPORTS EXTRA Celebrities are going to be huge in Super Bowl ads A22

Friday 29 January 2016

MAE ANDERSON Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The Big Game is more than a week away, but Super Bowl advertisers are already out in force online, playing up celebrity cameos to drive buzz for their brands.

First-time advertiser Amazon on Wednesday teased its ad with Alec Baldwin.

On Thursday, Hyundai revealed that Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds will be in ads showcasing Genesis and Elantra sedans. Skittles will have Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler promote the candy. Bud Light is creating its own fake political party with actors Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen. BMW’s Mini is cramming six celebrities into its ad (if not into its car). Even 1980s actor Scott Baio will make an appearance to promote avocados from Mexico.

Pre-game buzz is crucial; ads will cost as much as an estimated $5 million for a 30-second spot, up from $4.4 million last year. The cost, and risk, is worth it to the advertisers battling it out for the more than 114 million pairs of eyeballs the Big Game is expected to draw on Feb. 7. The Carolina Panthers will face off

This image provided by Anheuser-Busch shows actors Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen in the company’s Bud Light ad for Super Bowl 50.

(Anheuser-Busch via AP)

against the Denver Broncos in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Pre-game teasers, which debut online one or two weeks before the game, can help advertisers stretch

that investment over weeks instead of seeing it gone in 60 seconds. (Or even 30.)

“If an advertiser can get people thinking about the brand before the game, the risk goes down and

returns go up,” says Tim Calkins, a Northwestern University marketing professor. “A celebrity is a great hook.”

Companies also appreciate celebrities’ reach on social media, which can help boost online buzz.

“Celebrities like Kevin Hart are adding thousands of followers a day,” said Dean Evans, Hyundai’s chief marketing officer. “We never know how much organic shares or unearned media (media mentions that aren’t paid for) we’re going to get from that kind of celebrity and social reach that that celebrity might have.”

There are, of course, downsides. A star can sometimes eclipse the brand, or worse, drag it down if people react negatively to a particular celebrity. Last year, T-Mobile’s Kim Kardashian ad was a dud on social media, said Devra Prywes, vice president of marketing for research firm Unruly, which monitors Super Bowl ads’ online buzz. The famous-for-being-famous celebrity just provoked too much Internet hate to be effective.

“No matter how carefully you choose a celebrity,

they’re polarizing,” said Peter Daboll, chief executive of Ace Metrix, a firm that rates the effectiveness of ads. “Not everybody loves Justin Bieber.”

When there’s a good fit between celebrity and a brand, though, the payoff can be huge. Daboll pointed to popular ads by Snickers, which in the past have featured Betty White tossing around a football and character actor Danny Trejo playing a hungry Marcia Brady, an ad that landed in Ace Metrix’ list of top 25 Super Bowl ads of the past five years. Snickers has teased a spot this year featuring Willem Dafoe playing Marilyn Monroe.

Bud Light is hoping something similar happens with its ad showcasing actor/ comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen. They focused on regular-Joe Bud Light fans in last year’s Super Bowl ad, but this year, they went with celebrities to introduce Bud Light’s new packaging and logo.

“They’re current and relevant, so they were the perfect spokespeople to bring us back to the brand’s humor,” said Bud Light vice president Alexander Lambrecht. q

A coffee named ‘Death Wish’ wins a Super Bowl commercial

JOYCE M. ROSENBERG AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A coffee with an edgy name and made by a small business is getting a commercial in Super Bowl 50.

Death Wish Coffee Co. won a competition held by software maker Intuit for a 30-second spot during the third quarter of the big game on Feb. 7. The Round Lake, New York, company beat more than 15,000 other small businesses in voting by the public and Intuit employees.

Death Wish was founded in 2012 by Mike Brown, who owns a coffee house in Saratoga Springs, New York, and wanted to find a strong, highly-caffeinated brew. Packaged in a black bag with a skull and bones label, the coffee, a blend

Michael Brown, owner of Death Wish Coffee Company, poses for a picture during Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Big Game finalists tour, in Round Lake, N.Y. Death Wish Coffee Co. won a competition held by software maker Intuit for a 30-second spot during the third quarter of the Super Bowl on Feb. 7, 2016. The Round Lake, N.Y., company beat more than 15,000 companies in voting by the public and Intuit employees.

(Hans Pennink/QuickBooks via AP)

that Brown created, is sold in a handful of stores and online. Death Wish currently sells about 1,000 pounds a

day, a number expected to increase considerably after the Super Bowl spot runs.

Brown recently hired two

employees to prepare for a jump in business, giving him a staff of 12.

“If even half a percent of the people who watch the commercial decide to buy a bag and give it a try, and 90 percent of them recommend it to others, we could have some amazing growth in the future,” he said.

The commercial shows a Viking galley ship in stormy waters with the crew exhorted to keep rowing; the ship and the sea end up in a cup of Death Wish coffee downed by a man in his 21st-century kitchen.

Super Bowl commercials are usually bought by highprofile brands like Chevrolet, Doritos and Budweiser.

Some spots have been used to showcase younger but fast-growing compa-

nies, most notably Apple, whose 1984 commercial creating buzz about its Macintosh computer is seen as the gold standard of Super Bowl ads.

But with a spot costing $5 million for air time alone, the game is far beyond the advertising budget of most small businesses.

Death Wish is the second company that Intuit has bought an ad for. In 2014, it paid for a spot for GoldieBlox, a toy for girls, after holding a similar competition.

The Super Bowl is the mostwatched event in the U.S. Last year’s game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks had an audience of over 114 million people. The ads get almost as much attention as the game itself. q

TECHNOLOGY A23

Friday 29 January 2016

Study: automatic braking cuts rear end crashing risk DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Auto Writer DETROIT (AP) — Vehicles equipped with automatic braking or front-collision warning are less likely to cause a rear-end crash, according to a study released Thursday by the insurance indu33stry.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says automatic braking — which can bring the car to a stop if it senses an imminent collision — can reduce rearend crashes by 40 percent.

Front collision warning — which warns the driver but doesn’t brake — cuts the risk of a rear-end crash by 23 percent.

The institute measured the systems’ effectiveness by looking at police records for 7,490 rear-end crashes in 27 states. All of the crashes happened between 2010 and 2014. They only considered crashes caused by Acura, Honda, Subaru, Mercedes and Volvo vehicles that offered optional automatic braking or forward-collision warning. Then they compared the performance of the vehicles that were equipped with the optional systems and those that weren’t.

The institute said that if all vehicles were equipped with systems that worked as well as the ones studied, there would have been 700,000 fewer rear-end crashes in 2013 alone.

“As this technology becomes more widespread, we can expect to see noticeably fewer rear-end crashes,” said David Zuby, the institute’s chief research officer.

Forty percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. currently offer automatic braking, while 61 percent offer forward-collision warning, the institute says. They can be expensive options, however. Subaru offers it on the Impreza sedan, for example, but it’s part of a $2,895 safety package.

But the technology will soon be more widely available.q

Cable-industry disruptor back with new Internet service TALI ARBEL AP Technology Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Cable’s pricey Internet packages may get some competition from the founder of Aereo, whose first attempt to shake up the cable industry was quashed by the Supreme Court.

Starry will be a wireless service that, unlike cellphones, promises to be speedier than cable and designed for single locations such as homes and small businesses. The service is expected to launch in Boston this summer, with plans to expand to other U.S. cities and even internationally, though no time frame was given.

In announcing the project in New York this week, its founder, Chet Kanojia, decried the lack of competition in U.S. broadband.

The U.S. government has been calling for more competition in Internet service.

At the speed level it defines as “broadband,” only about one-third of homes have a choice of Internet providers. The majority of American homes get their Internet from a cable company. But it’s not yet clear whether people will actually save money with Starry.

Although Kanojia wouldn’t say how much the service will cost, he suggested that his company is targeting a price of less than $80 a month for speeds faster than similarly priced cable offerings. Starry says its network is capable of speeds of up to 1 gigabit for downloads and uploads, which is comparable to newer deployments such as Google Fiber, and much faster than

Chet Kanojia, founder and CEO of Aereo, Inc., listens during a tour of the company’s technology floor in New York. Cable’s pricey Internet packages may get some competition from Kanojia, whose first attempt to shake up the cable industry was quashed by the Supreme Court.

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

most cable customers get.

Comcast, the cable company in Boston, currently offers Internet service there for as low as $35 a month, but that rises to about $70 in two years. And as speeds go up, prices rise. In addition, many people spend far more than that, because the cable company pushes you to add TV and phone service, too.

Comcast declined com-

ment.

Starry will be a kind of fixed wireless, an Internet service that works well in some rural, flat areas. Kanojia says this technology is cheaper, per home, to build out than wired Internet. The company is adapting it to city life by using different kinds of spectrum, or airwaves, that it says haven’t been used like this commercially before. Cellphone companies

are paying billions of dollars for spectrum, but Starry says the airwaves it’s using, called millimeter waves, is cheaper and available to lease and won’t have problems with congestion the way cellphone networks do.

But will it work?

“It’s a good theory. I’m sure it works in the lab, but when you get out in the real world, all sorts of crazy things that nobody thinks of happen when you get out there,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president of consumer advocate group Public Knowledge.

For example, Starry is putting antennas on top of buildings to beam the signal. Feld said wind gusts on top of buildings could knock antennas out of alignment.

Kanojia says customers can install Starry themselves. It requires a small window unit and a router inside the home. The company’s router, called Starry Station, will be available in March and retail for $350.

It’ll be included with the Starry Internet service, but you could technically use another router. As a fancy router, Starry Station can be used with any Internet service.

Aereo, Kanojia’s previous startup, sought to offer over-the-air television channels through the Internet for a lower monthly fee than cable. Broadcasters successfully sued on copyright grounds, as Aereo wasn’t paying broadcasters as cable companies typically do. Kanojia said that he does not expect legal problems with Starry.q

Facebook to expand beyond ‘like’ button ‘pretty soon’

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It won’t be long before Facebook’s 1.6 billion users have more ways to quickly express their feelings on the world’s largest social network.

After four months of testing outside the U.S., Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that “pretty soon” six new emotions will be added to the social network throughout the world.

Zuckerberg didn’t give a

more concrete timetable while discussing the new feature with analysts in a conference call Wednesday following Facebook’s latest quarterly earnings report.

The additional options will expand Facebook beyond the renowned thumbs-up symbol that people click on to show they like a comment, photo or video posted on the social network.

The new reactions will in-

clude symbols for “angry,” ‘’sad,” ‘’wow,” ‘’haha,” ‘’yay” and “love.”

“We want people to be able to share all of the things that are meaningful to them, not just the things that are happy and that people are going to like when they see it,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday.

Facebook is hoping the additional choices will encourage people to share their thoughts more fre-

quently and hang out on the social network for even longer periods than they already do.

Facebook has been testing the different reactions in Chile, the Philippines, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Japan and Colombia.

Zuckerberg said Facebook’s engineers still need to make a few more “tweaks” before the new options are offered in other parts of the world.q

A24 BUSINESS

Friday 29 January 2016

Alibaba 3Q net income jumps on strong holiday season MAE ANDERSON Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Alibaba is hoping its better-than-expected third-quarter results help reassure investors worried about the state of the Chinese economy.

The Chinese e-commerce powerhouse third-quarter net income jumped ahead of analyst expectations as mobile shopping continued to grow and Chinese customers snapped up

items during the holidays.

The results were a reassuring sign as worries about a slowdown in the Chinese economy continue. Executives sought to put a positive spin on the China economy.

“The Chinese economy is going through a structural shift from high-growth to more moderate more sustainable growth,” said Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman. “China is still one of

the fastest-growing economies in the world. We have no reason to think anything different in the foreseeable future.”

For those wondering how Alibaba’s results are being affected by the Chinese economy: “I think the strong (revenue) numbers we released today speak for themselves,” he added.

Alibaba is benefiting from a shift to mobile spending and a growth in users. Mo-

bile spending accounted for 65 percent of total China retail revenue, up from 30 percent last year.

Annual active buyers rose 22 percent to 407 million.

But investors were still spooked by any possible signs of weakness.

Growth in gross merchandise volume, or the total value of items bought on Alibaba’s Chinese retail sites, rose 23 percent, but that was slower growth

than the 28 percent rise in the prior quarter.

R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said slowing gross merchandise volume could be a “potential yellow flag,” but concerns about the economy are “largely overblown.”

“Overall, we view these results as largely reinforcing a positive view of Alibaba, even in the face of a transitioning China economy,” Sebastian said.q

US stocks rise as oil prices jump again; tech climbs

Trader Glenn Kessler, left, and specialist Michael McDonnell work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stocks rose Thursday as the price of oil climbed for the third day in a row while key oil-producing nations discussed cuts in production.

(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

MARLEY JAY AP Markets Writer NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose Thursday as the price of oil climbed for the third day in a row while key oil-producing nations discussed cuts in production.

Tech and consumer stocks traded higher, led by Amazon and PayPal, while

drugmakers fell.

Facebook made its biggest leap in two and a half years after it said its profit more than doubled in the fourth quarter. The social network finished 2015 with almost 1.6 billion users. Sports apparel maker Under Armour also surged. Energy prices and companies rose as

Russia, Saudi Arabia and OPEC discussed production cuts.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 125.18 points, or 0.8 percent, to 16,069.64. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index picked up 10.41 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,893.36. The Nasdaq composite index rose 38.51

points, or 0.9 percent, to 4,506.68. Stocks switched between small gains and losses throughout the morning. In the afternoon they gradually traded higher, but never went as high as they did at the very beginning of the day.

U.S. crude rose 92 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $33.22 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, gained 79 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $33.89. The price of U.S. oil has climbed 9.5 percent over the last three days as investors hope production will be reduced, which would strengthen the fuel’s price. Oil prices have been on a long, steep slide since 2014 as world stockpiles hit extremely high levels and investors feared demand would get weaker. Last Wednesday U.S. oil closed at a 12-year low of $26.55 a barrel.

Oil and natural gas producer Devon Energy rose $2.30, or 9.4 percent, to $26.79. Oil company Hess, which rose almost 6 percent Wednes-

day after it said it will cut more spending, picked up another $3.49, or 9.5 percent, to $40.34.

Facebook surged after reporting that its profit more than doubled in the fourth quarter. The social networking site gained another 46 million users, giving it 1.59 billion around the world.

The stock rose $14.66, or 15.6 percent, to $109.11, its best day since July 2013.

Facebook’s results lifted the four big-name “FANG” stocks: Facebook, e-commerce giant Amazon, streaming video company Netflix and search engine operator Google. Amazon advanced almost 9, while Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Netflix both rose about 4 percent.

“Since Facebook killed it yesterday, the others are enjoying a rally,” said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. “Facebook use is completely independent of Amazon use, but investors blindly bid up all of them when one does well.” q

Ford’s 2015 pretax profit jumps up on stronger sales DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Auto Writer DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Higher sales in most of the world helped Ford Motor Co. achieve a record pretax profit in 2015, but investors remain skittish that the good news won’t keep coming.

Ford’s pretax profit jumped 48 percent to $10.8 billion, the highest in its 112-year history. The company’s U.S. sales hit their highest level in

a decade, and the F-Series pickup remained the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. for the 34th straight year. Ford reported a profit in Europe for the first time in four years, and profits in Asia jumped 29 percent. A change in the way Ford accounts for its pension costs also boosted pretax results.

Bob Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, said 2015 was the “breakthrough year” Ford promised after

it spent heavily in 2014 to build new plants in Asia and bring a new, aluminum-sided F-150 pickup to market in the U.S. The company expects this year’s pretax profit to be equal or higher.

Shanks said he agrees that the U.S. market — which saw record new-vehicle sales of 17.5 million last year — is plateauing, but it could stay at that high level for several years. Low oil prices, low interest rates and

a growing housing market all bode well for continuing strong sales.

Shanks said Ford’s growing business outside the U.S. should also comfort investors. He said more than half of the $1.3 billion increase in Ford’s operating profit in the fourth quarter came from regions outside North America.

“We have a very strong, robust structure, so if and when there will be a down-

turn — and at some point there will — we’re very well prepared to manage that and continue to be profitable and continue to pay our regular dividend and continue to invest in the business,” Shanks said.

Shanks said one metric — cash flow — will fall this year because of increased engineering costs and the expense of bringing a new aluminum-sided Super Duty truck to market. q

BUSINESS A25

Friday 29 January 2016

Of Mutual Interest:

As the rest of the world dumps Chinese stocks, some wade in STAN CHOE AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — While the rest of the world scrambles to get out of the crumbling Chinese stock market, a trickle of investors is heading straight into the wreckage.

Managers of Chinese stock mutual funds have seen huge drops many times before, and they even find things to like about them.

Instead of taking cover, and preserving cash in their portfolios, this time these managers say they are buying stocks of companies set to take advantage of how the Chinese government is reshaping the economy.

This most-recent plummet has been even swifter and sharper than past ones, but managers of Chinese stock funds say it’s also brought down share prices enough that they’ve been buying companies that they thought were too expensive just a few months ago.

“With a volatile market like China, buy it when the world hates it and sell when no one’s worried,” says Jim Oberweis, who runs the Oberweis China Opportunities fund. “That’s worked pretty well over the last 20 years in China, and now sure seems to me like a period where everyone hates it.”

Only time will tell if he and other Chinese stock fund managers are right. They could have made the same argument after each of the Chinese market’s many sell-offs the last five

Investors monitor stock prices on an electronic display in a brokerage house in Beijing. While the rest of the world scrambles to get out of the crumbling Chinese stock market, a trickle of investors is heading straight into the wreckage.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

years, and it wouldn’t have netted them much, if anything.

The MSCI China index has had seven declines of at least 10 percent over the last five years, including the 19 percent tumble since late October, which itself followed a 34 percent plunge from April into September by just weeks. After all those ups and downs, the MSCI China index has lost 12 percent over the last five years and is close to its lowest level since the summer of 2009.

That’s why fund managers say an investment in Chinese stocks will require lots of patience, maybe even a decade. Oberweis’ fund, for example, has lost 15.9 percent over the last year, even though it’s been one of the top performers in its category. But over the past 10 years, it’s returned an annualized 8.9 percent, better than the S&P 500’s 6.1 percent annual return.

China’s economy grew last year at its slowest pace in a quarter century, and economists expect it to slow even more this year. Part of that is by design. The Chinese government is steering the economy toward consumer spending and away from exports and investments in infrastructure.

It hopes that will yield a more sustainable, though slower, rate of growth.

The government is also pushing anti-corruption measures and efforts to make the country’s huge state-owned banks and telecom communications companies more efficient.

The goal is to try to slow growth without stopping it.

The worry is that the government will lose control of the slowdown, and the economy will fall hard.

“It’s painful at the moment, and there could be some more pain to come,” says Jasmine Huang, manager of the Columbia Greater

Facebook posts strong 4Q earnings report MICHAEL LIEDTKE Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook is growing at an exceptional pace as it enters adolescence, propelling it into a better position to challenge Google as the Internet’s most powerful company.

Facebook’s fourth-quarter report Wednesday provided the latest gauge of the company’s impressive strides. It marked the first time that Facebook’s quar-

terly revenue has surpassed $5 billion — more than fading Internet star Yahoo now generates in an entire year. Facebook’s earnings also more than doubled to $1.56 billion, even as the Menlo Park, California, company invests heavily in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, Internet access in remote parts of the world and a mobile ad network for services other than its own.

The performance lifted

Facebook’s stock by $11.37, or 12 percent, to $105.82 in extended trading after the report came out.

Although Google remains three times larger by revenue, Facebook has been closing the gap as it sells more mobile advertising on its addictive social-networking app. And it’s just beginning to mine revenue from its trendy Instagram service and a rapidly expanding video library.q

China fund. “Eventually it will be good for the economy.”

Huang is avoiding companies from what’s known as “Old China” and owns no raw-material producers and few companies in the industrial and energy sectors. But instead of hiding out in cash, she has been investing in “New China.”

She has been focusing on e-commerce companies, where she expects revenue to grow even if the overall economy stumbles because more Chinese shoppers are going online.

She also sees big growth for health care companies.

They make up only about 2 percent of the MSCI China index, and she says they could grow to become the 10 or 20 percent of the market that health care represents in developed markets.

Andrew Mattock, lead manager at the Matthews China fund, understands if investors are feeling

gun-shy about Chinese stocks. “For five years now, if you’ve made money, it’s been hard to get, and you’ve lost it quickly in these sell-offs,” he says.

But the most recent drops for Chinese stocks have brought them close to their cheapest level since the financial crisis, relative to their earnings. The MSCI China index was recently trading at about 8.5 times its expected earnings per share over the next 12 months. That’s down from a price-earnings ratio of nearly 10 at the start of the year and approaching the 6.8 ratio of 2008.

Mattock, like Huang, has steered his fund toward stocks that he sees profiting from China’s shift toward consumer spending. His top holdings at the start of the year included Tencent, which operates the popular WeChat social media service, and JD.com, one of China’s largest e-commerce sites.q

A26 COMICS

Friday 29 January 2016

Mutts

Conceptis Sudoku

6 Chix

Blondie

Mother Goose & Grimm

Baby Blues

Zits

Yesterday’s puzzle answer

Sudoku is a number-placing puzzle based on a 9x9 grid with several given numbers. The object is to place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once. The difficulty level of the Conceptis Sudoku increases from Monday to Sunday.

CLASSIFIED A27

Friday 29 January 2016

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A28 SCIENCE

Friday 29 January 2016

Study hints at biology of schizophrenia, may aid treatment

MALCOLM RITTER AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists pursuing the biological roots of schizophrenia have zeroed in on a potential factor — a normal brain process that gets kicked into overdrive. The finding could someday lead to ways to treat the disease or even prevent it.

The result — accomplished by analysis of genetics, autopsy brain tissue and laboratory mice — is “going to be a game-changer” in terms of understanding schizophrenia and offering

This image provided by Heather de Rivera and made with a fluorescent microscope shows C4 proteins, green, located at the synapses in a culture of human neurons. In research released on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, scientists pursuing the biological roots of schizophrenia have zeroed in on a potential factor _ a normal brain process that gets kicked into overdrive.

(Heather de Rivera/McCarroll Lab/Harvard via AP)

routes for treatment and potential for prevention, said Bruce Cuthbert, acting deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research.

An expert unconnected to the research said the study’s conclusion was not yet proven, but plausible.

Almost 1 percent of the general population will have schizophrenia at some point in their lives.

They may hear voices or hallucinate, talk about strange ideas, and believe others are reading their

Beyond chess:

Computer beats human in ancient Chinese game

MALCOLM RITTER AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A computer program has beaten a human champion at the ancient Chinese board game Go, marking a significant advance for development of artificial intelligence.

The program had taught itself how to win, and its developers say its learning

strategy may someday let computers help solve realworld problems like making medical diagnoses and pursuing scientific research.

The program and its victory are described in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Computers previously have surpassed humans for other games, including chess, checkers and backgam-

mon. But among classic games, Go has long been viewed as the most challenging for artificial intelligence to master.

Go, which originated in China more than 2,500 years ago, involves two players who take turns putting markers on a checkerboard-like grid. The object is to surround more area on the board with the markers

than one’s opponent, as well as capturing the opponent’s pieces by surrounding them.

While the rules are simple, playing it well is not. It’s “probably the most complex game ever devised by humans,” Dennis Hassabis of Google DeepMind in London, one of the study authors, told reporters Tuesday.q

minds or plotting against them. Nobody knows what causes the disorder, so the new result offers a possible peek into a black box. The work is reported in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature.

The finding might pertain to “a very substantial fraction of cases, maybe most cases, even,” said senior author Steven McCarroll, of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The result links schizophrenia risk to a problem with a normal process that happens in adolescence and early adulthood, when disease symptoms often appear. That age range is when the brain trims back the number of specialized places on brain cells where the cells signal each other, called synapses. The new work suggests a connection to schizophrenia when this process gets out of hand, deleting too many synapses.

“It’s like you have a gardener who was supposed to prune the bushes and just got overactive,” Cuthbert observed. q

PEOPLE & ARTS A29

Friday 29 January 2016

Women, youngsters dominate in rock field at Grammy Awards MESFIN FEKADU AP Music Writer NEW YORK (AP) — For years, men — and legacy acts — have dominated in the rock category at the Grammy Awards, leaving little room for female stars who rock as loud and hard as the guys and young bands hoping to breakthrough on the music scene.

But at this year’s Grammys,

category at the Grammys, for me and my heart, it’s like, ‘(Expletive) yes, that is so rad!’ That made me extremely happy.”

Alabama Shakes’ nominations include album of the year and best alternative music album for “Sound & Color” as well as rock performance and rock song for “Don’t Wanna Fight.”

Florence + the Machine are also up for the latter

rock song with “Ain’t It Fun,” the anthemic groove that gave the band its first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. A year before that, Imagine Dragons took home best rock performance for their breakthrough track, “Radioactive”; Halestorm, with frontwoman Lzzy Hale, won best hard rock/metal performance in 2013.

Also in recent years, sea-

Brittany Howard, lead singer of Alabama Shakes, performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. Howard is nominated for several Grammy Awards including album of the year, best rock performance, best rock song and best alternative music album.

(Wade Payne/Invision/AP)

there is a shift with women and budding acts dominating in the rock field, thanks to the Brittany Howard-led Alabama Shakes and Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine — with four nominations each — to promising performers such as James Bay and Highly Suspect, both up for best rock album and rock song.

Elle King, the 26-year-old carefree, raspy-voiced newcomer, earned nominations for best rock song and rock performance for the platinum single “Ex’s and Oh’s,” which topped the Billboard rock and alternative charts last year.

“There’s been space for people to make different music that’s not so popdriven ... that’s why we went with alternative because I didn’t think I was another Katy Perry of this world,” King said in an interview. “But to be in the rock

two rock honors with the single “What Kind of Man,” along with best pop vocal album for “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful” and pop duo/group performance for “Ship to Wreck.”

The Grammys, which are being held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Feb. 15, could bring the often-praised Howard, 27, and Welch, 29, their first gramophones after earning multiple nominations in the past.

“I feel like women have always written incredible songs, but I feel like right now what’s so rad is we’re all taking back the conversation and supporting each other and holding each other up,” said Hayley Williams, the 27-yearold frontwoman of Paramore. “We’re taking notice of each other earlier on in each other’s careers.”

Paramore won its first Grammy last year for best

soned acts like Foo Fighters, Black Keys, Jack White and Beck have won rock Grammys, though the awards have usually been reserved for veterans in the vein of U2, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. And in the past women have had an even tougher road than the young acts: Before Paramore’s win, Alanis Morissette was the last woman to win best rock song in 1999. It was the same year Sheryl Crow won best rock album; a woman hasn’t won the honor since.

“I think it’s time that they’re back in the mix as far as the Grammys goes, in a larger way because it’s undeniable that women rock,” said Bill Freimuth, the Recording Academy’s senior vice president of awards.

This year, nominees for best rock performance include four women, or female-led acts, with King,

Alabama Shakes, Florence + the Machine and Wolf Alice, whose lead vocalist is 23-year-old Ellie Rowsell.

The fifth nominee is the Foo Fighters.

The best rock song nominees are made up exclusively of women and new acts with King, Alabama Shakes, Florence + the Machine, Bay — the acclaimed 25-year-old British singer-guitarist — and Highly Suspect, the trio made

up of 30-year-old twins Ryan and Rich Meyer and Johnny Stevens, 29.

It’s a sea change from 2014, when nominees for best rock album included David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Queens of the Stone Age, Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Kings of Leon and winners Led Zeppelin. Best rock song nominees that year included The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Paul McCartney.q

A30 PEOPLE

Friday 29 January 2016

& ARTS

SAG honoree Burnett’s achievements loom larger than TV MIKE LENNOX AP Entertainment Writer BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Carol Burnett is so glad she’s had some six decades together with television viewers.

After all, it was on the small screen where Burnett arguably reached her artistic and popularity peaks, most notably with the variety series, “The Carol Burnett Show” (1967-78).

So, little wonder that Burnett was a bit surprised when, out of the gate, the conversation turned to another aspect of her screen career, to which the Screen Actors Guild will pay tribute with its top honor, for Life Achievement, at the SAG Awards on Saturday.

In addition to all that TV, Burnett also made an impressive number of feature films with some of the industry’s most highly regarded directors: Martin Ritt, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman and John

Carol Burnett poses for a portrait in Burbank, Calif. Burnett says her upcoming Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016, is special because it comes not only from fellow TV performers, but also from movie stars. The awards show will be simulcast live on Saturday on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT from Los Angeles.

(Photo by Rich Fury/Invision/AP)

Huston among them.

By the early ‘60s, Burnett was already a star of stage (a Tony nomination for the 1959 musical “Once Upon a Mattress”) and TV (a 1962 Emmy for her work on the

variety series “The Gary Moore Show”).

So film offers were inevitable. “I was very nervous (about) making movies,” Burnett said in a recent interview. “I always felt that I

was small screen and movie stars were big screen.

And, also, I missed an audience and having that feedback.”

She marked her featurefilm debut in the 1963 Dean Martin-Elizabeth Montgomery farce “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?” ‘’A terrible movie,” recalled Burnett, adding it was still a fun shoot and that she loved both Martin and Montgomery. Burnett’s starring debut wouldn’t come for another decade. With the “Burnett Show” flying high, she spent her summer vacation working with director Ritt (“Hud,” ‘’Norma Rae”) portraying one of the two leads in “Pete ‘n’ Tillie” (1972), about a 40-ish virgin who gets fixed up with a confirmed bachelor, portrayed by Walter Matthau.

Burnett remembered that she was so “tight” the first few days of filming, because she was so overwhelmed by movie star

Matthau.

He soon invited her to lunch, and shortly after they sat down, Matthau asked, “Why do you do all of this television crap?’”

That got her goat. So, she asked how long it took him to make a movie, how many movies he made per year, and if any of them were “crap.”

He replied about 10 weeks a film, about two a year, and, yes, some were awful.

“And I said, ‘Well, it takes you, Walter, 10 weeks to make crap,’” Burnett remembered. ‘”It takes me five days.’” Matthau howled with laughter, and both a solid professional and lifelong personal relationship were born. “He did that to get a rise out of me,” Burnett recalled.

“And it worked.”

Sadly, that small-screen insecurity would return to Burnett’s big-screen work.

But at least it made for a funny story.q

PEOPLE AND ARTS A31

Friday 29 January 2016

DiCaprio greets pope in Italian, discusses environment NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Actor Leonardo DiCaprio brushed up his Italian to greet Pope Francis at the Vatican Thursday, discussed their shared concern over the environment and gave the pontiff a check for his charitable works.

“Your Holiness, thank you for granting me this private audience with you,” DiCaprio said in Italian as he arrived in the Apostolic Palace and kissed the pope’s ring.

Later, in English, DiCaprio offered Francis a book of works by the 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, and showed him the reproduction of Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” that had hung over his crib as a child. The triptych, which DiCaprio has referred to in the past, depicts Adam and Eve in the first panel, a teeming landscape in the center panel, and finally a vision of hell.

“As a child I didn’t quite understand what it all meant, but through my child’s eyes

it represented a planet, the utopia we had been given, the overpopulation, excesses, and the third panel we see a blackened sky that represents so much to me of what’s going in in the environment,” DiCaprio told the pope.

DiCaprio said he thought the painting also represented Francis’ environmental concerns.

Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si (Praise Be) has been embraced by environmentalists for its denunciation of the world’s fossil fuel-based

economy and its demand for greener energy sources.

An assistant then handed Francis an envelope and explained it was a check for the pope to use for charity works “close to your heart.”

Di Caprio, nominated for an Oscar for his role in “The Revenant,” is a longtime environmental campaigner who in 1998 launched his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to support initiatives aimed at sustainability.

He recently addressed the World Economic Forum

in Davos, Switzerland, announcing the foundation was donating another $15 million to environmental projects and pleading with business leaders to battle global warming.

Francis gave DiCaprio a leather-bound copy of Laudato Si and his earlier document, The Joy of the Gospel.

DiCaprio was accompanied by his father, George DiCaprio, and Milutin Gatsby, global fundraising chair for the foundation.q

Bruce Springsteen’s tour showcases new way of serving fans DAVID BAUDER AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen’s tour showcasing his 1980 album “The River” is more than an exercise in nostalgia. It’s a telling example of how veteran artists are adjusting to the new realities of the music business by superserving their longtime fans.

The 66-year-old superstar is performing an album he made when he was 30 from start to finish, a twohour exercise during the tour’s third stop in New York on Wednesday. A musician with a long-time aversion to regularly documenting his epic concerts now makes recordings of them available to all his fans, whether they were there or not.

After opening with an outtake from “The River,” Springsteen explained to fans that he wrote the songs at a time when he

Bruce Springsteen, center, Stevie Van Zandt, left, and Patti Scialfa perform with the E Street Band at Madison Square Garden, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, in New York.

(Photo by Robert Altman /Invision/AP)

was looking for more adult connections, and wanted to make an album with the grandeur of his live shows.

“I wanted the record to contain fun, dancing, laughter, jokes, politics, sex, good comradeship, love, faith, family, lonely nights

and, of course, tears,” he said. “I wanted to imagine and write about those things, and I figured if I wrote about them, I’d get one step closer to getting it in my own life.”

With that, he dropped the needle on 20 songs

performed in the album’s original sequence. Springsteen being Springsteen, he added 10 of his classics at the end before finishing with the bar band favorite, “Shout.”

Performing albums in their entirety is a trend gain-

ing steam with artists such as Steely Dan, Lucinda Williams, Van Morrison — even Springsteen himself in recent years. It’s a way to give fans a fresh experience without new songs, said Chris Phillips, editor of Backstreets, a website devoted to Springsteen’s music.

As Springsteen explained in a recent interview with Phillips, he’d spend years formatting an album’s song order to tell a story, then never perform it that way.

Before this tour, he’d only fully played “The River” live once before, in 2009.

“The accumulation of those 20 songs together is greater than the individual playing of each particular song on a given night,” Springsteen said. “You get a sense of time, you get a sense of where your head was, the issues you were thinking about, who you were at that moment.” q

Carrie Underwood to honor military families during tour KRISTIN M. HALL Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Country star Carrie Underwood is working with Carnival Cruise Line and Operation Homefront to honor military families throughout her upcoming “Storyteller” tour.

Underwood will meet with selected military families in 10 cities, and she’ll perform a free concert for hundreds of military families onboard

the Carnival Vista in New York on Nov. 4.

Her tour begins Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Grammy-winning singer said in a phone interview that meeting military families is a special experience.

“As an entertainer I get to be onstage and everybody has to listen to me, well, hopefully they want to listen to me,” Underwood said. “But it’s really nice to get to talk to people and

get to hear their stories.”

Fans can purchase commemorative dog tags throughout the tour, with all proceeds going to Operation Homefront, a nonprofit organization that provides emergency and financial assistance to families of service members and wounded warriors. “I feel country music has always been very close and very supportive of military members and their families,” Under-

wood said. “I feel like this is just another really cool opportunity to say thank you.”

During the tour, Underwood will be performing in the round for the first time, with the crowds surrounding the stage. “One amazing thing about having it in the round is I just get to see so many more faces,” she said. “It’s nice to have moments ... and look into people’s faces and see them having fun and see them

singing along.”

She’ll have a special guest along for most of the tour — her 11-month-old son Isaiah. “This will be the first that we’ve been out for any length of time with him,” Underwood said. “It’s interesting with a baby. I am going to have to figure out this sleep thing. Being on the road, hotels rooms and stuff like that. It’s not his space, but he’ll get used to that.” q

A32 FEATURE

Friday 29 January 2016

US marks 30th anniversary of shuttle Challenger disaster MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Dozens of educators who competed alongside Christa McAuliffe to become the first teacher in space gathered Thursday to remember the seven astronauts who perished aboard Challenger 30 years ago.

They still believe strongly in what McAuliffe hoped to accomplish aboard Challenger before disaster struck during liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.

Names of the Challenger dead were read during the memorial service.

The former astronaut reciting the names of all 24 astronauts killed in the line of duty over the years, Jon McBride, had to fight back tears.

Close to 40 of the 113 remaining semifinalists for teacher-in-space traveled to Cape Canaveral for the anniversary, the biggest

This photo shows the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission 51L. All seven members of the crew were killed when the shuttle exploded during launch on Jan. 28, 1986. Front row from left are Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, and Ronald E. McNair. Front row from left are Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik.

(NASA via AP)

gathering ever for a NASA memorial like this.

Another first: McAuliffe’s

son, Scott, 39, took part in the ceremony. He said having his own two sons

there with him, ages 6 and 8, made it easier.

The crowd numbered close

to 400 and included family members of astronauts killed in all three of NASA’s spacecraft tragedies: Challenger; Columbia’s catastrophic descent on Feb. 1, 2003; and the Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967.

Steven McAuliffe still declines interviews about his late wife Christa, but he noted in a statement that although 30 years have passed, “Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently.

Our thoughts and memories of Christa will always be fresh and comforting.”

A leak in the right booster doomed the ship; unusually cold weather that morning left Challenger’s booster rockets with stiff O-ring seals.

Besides Christa McAuliffe, the Challenger dead include pilot Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee , Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Gregory Jarvis.q

30 years since Challenger: New voice at astronauts’ memorial MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — As families of the Challenger astronauts who died 30 years ago gather with NASA to mark the space shuttle accident’s 30th anniversary, there’s a new voice to address the crowd.

June Scobee Rodgers — the widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee and a longtime spokeswoman for the group — is passing the torch to her daughter, Kathie Scobee Fulgham.

Fulgham will be on the stage for Thursday morning’s ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. And making a rare appearance in the audience will be schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe’s son, Scott, with his own family.

“It’s going to be wonderful to watch the pages turn,” Rodgers said earlier this week. The second generation “can now speak for our family and speak for the nation.”

For the seven astronauts’

June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Dick Scobee, commander of space shuttle Challenger, looks upward during the playing of the National Anthem at a remembrance ceremony for the Challenger explosion in Cape Canaveral, Fla. On the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger accident, June Scobee Rodgers, longtime spokeswoman for the families of the lost astronauts, is passing the torch to daughter Kathie.

(AP Photo/John Raoux)

loved ones, Jan. 28, 1986, remains fresh in their minds.

Steven McAuliffe, a federal judge in Concord, New Hampshire, still declines interviews about his late wife Christa, who was poised to become the first schoolteacher in space. But he noted in a statement that although 30 years have passed, “Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently. Our thoughts and memories of Christa will always be fresh and comforting.”

McAuliffe said he’s pleased “Christa’s goals have been largely accomplished in that she has inspired generations of classroom teachers and students.” She would be proud, he noted, of the Challenger Learning Centers.

McAuliffe is presiding over a trial this week in Concord, and so son Scott will represent the family, part of the next-generation shift.

Scott and his sister are now in their 30s. The McAuliffes normally do not take part in these NASA memorials, so Scott’s presence is espe-

cially noteworthy.

Along with the other Challenger families, Rodgers established the Challenger Center for Space Science Education just three months after the shuttle disintegrated in the Florida sky. Unusually cold weather that morning left Challenger’s booster rockets with stiff O-ring seals; a leak in the right booster doomed the ship.

Today, there are more than 40 Challenger Learning Centers focusing on science, technology, engineering and math, mostly in the U.S. More are being built.

“They’re not just a field trip for kids. They’re actually lessons learned,” said Rodgers, an educator who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “That’s why they’ve lasted.”

McAuliffe’s backup, Barbara Morgan, a schoolteacher from Idaho, rocketed into orbit in 2007 aboard Endeavour as a fully trained astronaut. Morgan was invited to speak Thursday at Rodgers’ request. q