Daily Challenge 5-31-11

BISHOP EDDIE LONG SETTLES WITH ACCUSERS - PG. 2 NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

THE NATION’S ONLY BLACK DAILY 35 Cents

Final

OBAMA MARKS MEMORIAL DAY

President Barack Obama participates in a Wreath Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in Laying Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Virginia.

SEE PAGE 3.

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

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N E W S B RI E F S EDUCATION OFFICIALS ORDER AN END TO RE-GRADING In response to a suspicious number of students barely passing Regents exams, state education officials ordered that schools stop re-grading tests where scores fell just below passing.

Education officials said that in recent years, an abnormally high number of students scored just well enough to pass their Regents exams.

They fear teachers were adding points to bring the exams to a passing grade after giving tests a second look.

For more than a decade, state rules had required teachers to rescore math and science exams within five points of passing.

The change is part of an overall effort to increase the accuracy of standardized test scores.

TEACHER EVALUATIONS DISPUTE COULD COST CITY MILLIONS A dispute over teacher evaluations could cost the city over $40 million.

The state has told the city and the teachers union they must resolve issues of how to evaluate teachers before moving ahead with a plan to bring in non-profits to help 22 struggling schools.

That money was awarded through a federal program giving troubled schools up to $2 million a year for three years.

The city says it is disappointed with the ruling and the teachers union, which it blames for a delay in reaching a deal.

Nine schools have reportedly already lost out on $18 million because of the evaluations dispute.

The sides still have six weeks to reach a deal.

MEMORIAL DAY RIBBONS HUNG BY MIDTOWN CHURCH Veterans and churchgoers hung ribbons on a fence by Marble Collegiate Church in Midtown Sunday as part of an annual tradition to remember those who died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Every yellow ribbon has the name of a soldier who gave their life in one of those conflicts, and we place them here in ongoing memory of those persons, that their commitment, their sacrifice will not be forgotten,” said Marble Collegiate Minister Michael Brown.

Participants also hung green ribbons that represent prayers for peace.

In total, about 4,000 ribbons lined the fence outside the church.

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Bishop Eddie Long settles with accusers

By JOHN BLAKE ATLANTA — Bishop Eddie Long, the Atlanta-based megachurch leader, has reached an out-of-court settlement with four young men who accused him of sexual coercion, representatives for both sides said.

B.J. Bernstein, the attorney representing the men, said in a statement that the lawsuits against Long and his church have “been resolved.”

Bernstein’s two-paragraph statement said that neither she nor the accusers would talk about the lawsuits “now or in the future.”

Art Franklin, a Long spokesman, said that the pastor settled because it “is the most reasonable road for everyone to travel.”

“This decision was made to bring closure to this matter and to allow us to move forward with the plans God has for this ministry,” Franklin said in a statement.

Long is an internationally known televangelist who crusaded against gay marriage, and the lawsuits against him drew national attention.

The settlement comes eight months after Long, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Church in Lithonia, Georgia, said from the pulpit of his 25,000 member megachurch that he vowed to fight the accusations against him, with the congregation cheering in response.

Long entered into mediation talks in February. According to news reports, the sessions between Long and his four accusers - Anthony Flagg, Maurice Robinson, Jamal Parris and Spencer LeGrande - were tense.

The suits accused Long of using his position to coerce the men into having sexual relationships with him while they were teenage members of his congregation.

The lawsuits say Long engaged in intimate sexual acts with the young men, such as massages, masturbation and oral sex.

Long took the young men on trips including to Kenya, according to the suits. He allegedly enticed the young men with gifts including cars,

clothes, jewelry and electronic items.

Long’s attorneys deny those allegations and maintain that the pastor was attempting to be a father figure to the youths by providing them with financial assistance and encouragement.

Though no trial will now take place, Long may face the judgment of his congregation and fans worldwide.

Shayne Lee, a sociology professor at Tulane University in Louisiana and an authority on televangelists, said Long’s out of court settlement may erode some of his support.

“When you settle outside of court, it implies that there’s some guilt involved,” said Lee, author of “Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace.”

“To the average congregation in the Black church, those are some very serious charges,” Lee said, referring to the men’s charges against Long. “You can’t settle outside of court. You have to fight and roll up your sleeves, be defiant and fight it.”

Since the scandal had erupted, attendance at Long’s church had fallen, and New Birth officials have announced plans to lay off staff and cut Long’s salary.

But Lee said it would be premature to think that Long will retreat from the pulpit.

“He can say ‘I still have my anointing and I still have my ministry,’ ’’ Lee said. “He can say that God is working out the weeds so that the tree has a stronger foundation.”

The four men’s accusations stunned many of Long’s followers. A married man, Long had often preached about the sanctity of marriage. He once led a march against gay marriage.

Long had also cultivated a public image that was built on his machismo. He wore tight muscle shirts in the pulpit. He wrote books that compared Christian men to spiritual gladiators. He told people he had a special calling to reach men.

One Atlanta pastor predicted Long will survive the scandal because his core audience will forgive him.

“Black folks have very short memories,” said the Rev. Tim McDonald, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. “We are the most forgiving people on the planet.”

McDonald, who said he has talked privately with Long since the scandal erupted, said Long “went into a shell” after the accusations against him went public.

Before the scandal erupted, Long would often publicly criticize other Black pastors, and once said they “major in storefront buildings,” suggesting that they lacked the business acumen to build a megachurch like he had.

But Long had shown a different public face lately, McDonald said. His entourage wasn’t as big; he was more visible in the community.

“I found him opening up,” McDonald said. “If he can pick that back up and humble himself and stop saying things like, ‘I ain’t just another chicken-eating preacher,’ he’ll survive.”

Lee, the Tulane sociologist, said Long will remain in the pulpit for another reason.

“This is what he knows,” Lee said.

“He’s not going to be able to sell insurance or cars. He’s cocky. He’s confident. He believes in redemption.”

Obama vows national response to Missouri tornado

By CAREN BOHAN JOPLIN, Missouri — President Barack Obama promised victims of the deadliest U.S. tornado in 65 years that the federal government would help them rebuild, saying on Sunday it was a national tragedy.

“The cameras may leave. The spotlight may shift,” he told a memorial service for the 139 known victims of the May 22 twister. But the federal government “will be with you every step of the way until Joplin is restored and this community is back on its feet,” Obama said to a standing ovation from survivors.

Before the service in an auditorium at Missouri Southern State University, Obama rolled up his sleeves and toured a disaster scene where

crushed cars, piles of wood, clothing and a broken dishwasher lay helterskelter amid the debris on lots where houses once stood.

The president, who returned on Saturday night from a six-day trip to Europe, vowed to cut through any federal red tape to help with rebuilding that he predicted would be “a tough, long slog.”

“This is just not your tragedy,” he said after meeting survivors. “This is a national tragedy and that means there’s going to be a national response.”

The tornado was the deadliest single twister in the United States since 1947. In addition to the at least 139 people killed and more than 900 injured, scores are still unaccounted for a week later.

The tornado churned through a stretch nearly a mile wide, damag-

ing about 8,000 buildings in Joplin, a city of 50,000 in southwestern Missouri.

Standing amid the rubble under a scorching sun, Obama told reporters that he had heard some “harrowing stories” as well as some miraculous ones.

He said he had spoken with an 85-year-old man, Hugh Hills, who had just taken a chicken pot pie out of the oven when the storm was approaching.

“He went into the closet and came out without a scratch,” Obama said.

Hills, before meeting the president, stood outside his mostly destroyed house holding a large American flag on a pole, his family around him.

“These are just things,” a woman nearby said, pointing to the debris and the house. “We’re just glad Grandpa made it.”

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

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Obama marks Memorial Day with country ARLINGTON, Virginia — President Barack Obama led the nation’s Memorial Day observances yesterday, laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknowns and declaring that Americans owe “a debt to our fallen heroes that we can never fully repay.”

“The blessings we enjoy as Americans came at a dear cost,” Obama told a crowd at the cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater. “To those of you who mourn the loss of a loved one today, my heart goes out to you. ... This day is about you. And the fallen heroes that you loved.”

Military servicemen and women killed while serving their country “gave of themselves until they had nothing more to give,” he said. “It is their courage, their unselfishness, their devotion to duty that has sustained this country through all its trials and will sustain us through all the trials to come.”

We need to hold “their memories close to our hearts and (heed) the example they set,” he said.

Obama visited Arlington’s Section 60 — a burial site primarily for sol-

diers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earlier in the day, the president and first lady Michelle Obama hosted a breakfast for Gold Star families at the White House.

Gold Star families are those who have lost relatives serving in the military.

The president was joined for the ceremony at Arlington by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. Both men are retiring later this year.

“It is up to us to be worthy of (the) sacrifice” of the fallen, Gates said.

“For the rest of my life, I will keep these brave patriots and their loved ones in my heart.”

“God bless our fallen, the missing, and their families,” Mullen said.

“And God bless America.”

President Barack Obama arrives with First Lady Michelle Obama to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in Arlington, Virginia.

School’s out as districts weigh lightening homework loads

By RONDA KAYSEN MONTCLAIR, New Jersey — School districts from coast to coast are weighing the elimination of homework on weekends and holidays, part of a move by educators to rein in student workloads.

Officials at public schools in Galloway Township, New Jersey, this week proposed no more homework on weekends and holidays for their 3,500 students, and the Pleasanton Unified School District in northern California suggested drastic changes to homework policy for the 14,500student district.

The moves come in response to complaints from parents that children spend too many after-school hours buried in work, and concerns from teachers that test preparation trumps learning.

Some, like Grant Elementary School in Glenrock, Wyoming have eliminated homework altogether for primary school children. But others are just trying to lighten the load.

“Kids need to be given balance in their lives,” said Jane Golden, Pleasanton’s district director of curriculum and special projects.

Students at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School use their laptops during a class in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Parents there said they were outraged that middle school students were spending four hours a night on homework in the high-performing Bay Area district.

Under the proposal, there would be no weekend or holiday homework for elementary students, while middle and high school students would

get a reprieve on holidays and vacations.

The new policy in Pleasanton would set time limits on how much homework children can be assigned and require teachers to coordinate tests and projects so students do not get too many assignments at one time.

Goldman Sachs sees $5 gas this summer Goldman Sachs predicts U.S. consumers could see $5 a gallon this summer.

Goldman estimates oil could reach $135 per barrel by mid-July, with accompanying gas prices hitting the $5-per-gallon mark.

But the evidence isn’t there yet. Oil has fallen to $100 a barrel this spring, and dampened demand has helped keep gas prices down as well.

“We should be seeing some big

declines at the gas pumps after Memorial Day,” energy analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover said.

“Wholesale prices have been dropping, and that could cause some serious revisions downward at the pumps,” he said.

The national average for gas over the holiday weekend was $3.80 a gallon.

However, consumer patterns are unlikely to change drastically, and

summer demand paired with global uncertainty make Goldman’s prediction of a return to high oil and gas prices not out of the question.

“Drivers try to do what they can, but they have to go almost all the places they go,” energy researcher David Greene of the Department of Energy Web site fueleconomy.gov stated. “There’s no magic gizmo that will drastically change someone’s gasoline use.”

In Galloway, in southern New Jersey, the suggested changes would limit the time children spend on homework by using a formula of 10 minutes a day multiplied by a child’s grade. Thus, a child in second grade would have no more than 20 minutes of homework a day, with nothing assigned on Fridays.

“This is about homework being meaningful and making it manageable,” said District Superintendent Annette Giaquinto.

The issue of stressed-out students overloaded with homework as well as tough academic commitments and extracurricular activities drew attention among parents’ groups with the release of a documentary film “Race to Nowhere” last year.

“Homework is messing up the balance of kids’ lives in terms of having downtime and playtime and family time,” said Cathy Vatterott, associate professor of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the author of “Rethinking Homework: Best Practices that Support Diverse Needs.”

Schools have found that cutting back on homework does not harm students’ performance and may even improve it, she said.

But not everyone thinks cutting back is a good idea.

Critics of the trend say that by scaling back homework, students will fall behind because they don’t have the time in the school day to cover all the material needed to prepare for standardized tests.

And school board officials in Galloway noted that some parents do not object to weekend homework because it’s time they can spend with their children helping them study.

The issue goes before the school boards in Galloway and in Pleasanton for further consideration this summer.

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

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By AKWASI EVANS THOMAS H. WATKINS

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Europeans conquered America in the 18th Century and the English led the way.

The colonists then established their “Article of Confederation,” which, among other things, prohibited slaves within the territory. They later improved that form of government when they created the U.S. constitution, which established a central government and allowed human slavery. Following the revolutionary war of 1775, the British still maintained an outpost in the Northwest Territory and the newly elected Congress knew that it needed to form an army and raise taxes. Their primary interest was the preservation of the nation and the security of all its White citizens.

Over time the sins of slavery led the nation into a Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves led to a change in the Constitution. In June of 1866, both houses passed the 14th Amendment allegedly abolishing human slavery and indenturing the rest of the nation to servitude to big business.

In an essay entitled, “The Hijacking of the Fourteenth Amendment” attorney Doug Hammerstrom states that of the 150 cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment heard by the Supreme Court, prior to the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, 15 involved Blacks and 135 involved big business. “The scope of the Fourteenth Amend-

ment to secure the political rights of former slaves was so restricted by the Supreme Court that Blacks won only one case,” Hammerstrom asserts. The reality is that corporations used the Fourteenth Amendment and continues to use the amendment as a shield against government regulation.

In one scene in the Academy Award winning movie “The King’s Speech” King George V tells his stuttering son, the Duke of York, that he must learn how to speak to the people over the radio and in public. It was 1934 and war with Germany was imminent. The King tells the Duke that he has an obligation to the family and the monarchy to which the future George VI replies, “We’re not a family, we’re a firm.” The English monarchy has run the British Empire like a business for centuries. A very big business.

America is modeled after the British form of government, although without a monarch.

Instead of a king, we have corporate tycoons, who can send their minions out to speak their lies.

America is not a nation. It is a corporation. It is actually a conglomeration of corporations that own and operate a nation.

America is a country of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation. Corporate interest is American interest. America will and does go to war and pollute the planet in the interest of big corporations.

America will lie, cheat, and

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steal for big corporations.

America will even kill its own citizens, if it is deemed in corporate interest.

Corporate leaders have only one interest and that is profit.

Profit by any means necessary.

To that interest they hired an actor to be president in 1980 and Ronald Wilson Reagan (666) played the role of the great reformer. Reagan eloquently espoused a philosophy of greed that has his followers today demanding that his face be placed upon the $20 bill.

In June of 1987, Reagan went to Berlin and said to Russian President, Michael Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” As America applauded, it overlooked the slight in hand trick taking place back home. Here is what actually happened under Reagan:

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

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It’s what you watch, not how much, that matters

By CHERYL PEARSON-MCNEIL “What you do in the dark will always come out in the light.”

Remember when your grandma used to tell you that? And you hoped like the dickens that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

But well, yeah, she kinda did. Sorry. And you know how the more sophisticated and intellectual we become the more we say we don’t do “so and so?” “We don’t eat greasy foods because we know it’s bad for us;” “we don’t mix all our trash together because we recycle now;” and “we don’t watch all that much TV anymore because we simply don’t have time?” Umm hmm.

Well, it’s light outside. And while I can’t vouch for the authenticity of your first two statements, I can tell you African Americans ARE spending almost 40 percent more time watching TV than any other American demographic group. I didn’t get this from grandma – because she’s probably sitting right there watching TV along with you– I got it from The Nielsen Company’s recently released comprehensive report, The New Digital American Family.

The thing is, unlike eating greasy foods or not recycling, watching TV doesn’t have to be a negative. If we

use our consumer power for good, as I’m always stressing in this column that we should make it a point to do, we can use our viewing habits to our advantage. If we, as Blacks, are over indexing on television viewing – which means watching way more than anyone else – that means we should be demanding that we see people who look like us in the programs and commercials we’re viewing. If we’re watching more television than any other group we should be watching the type of programs that depict us in positive ways. And since we’re watching more television we should have a stronger voice of dissatisfaction which we exercise fully if we don’t find these things happening.

So the question shouldn’t be, “how much television are you watching?”

The question should be rephrased: “as a connoisseur of television viewing, are you making your viewing preferences known by what you’re watching? And are you using your television viewing power for good?” Only you know the answer to that, but remember grandma’s words: what you do in the dark will always come out in the light.”

The Nielsen report also noted that TV ownership is down.

While African Americans now own four or more sets per household, the number of American homes with a television

America Inc. Continued from page 4 - Federal budget deficit up 215 percent - Farm income down 326 percent Four members of Reagan’s cabinet came under criminal investigation.

The administration had secret plans for an unconstitutional takeover of the federal government. His policies led to the Savings & Loan debacle, which cost taxpayers billions of dollars. He made major cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and school lunch programs.

And most importantly, he led the most devastating union busting movement in American history when he fired 13,000 air traffic controllers.

Reagan’s senility was one upped by “The Decider”, George W. Bush.

Bush campaigned on a pledge to emulate Reagan, not his father President George H.W. Bush. That may have been his only success. Bush was so much like Reagan that the American people are worse off than any time since the Great Depression.

We are currently experiencing a “Greater Depression” because corporations are dumbing our children down, lowering our wages, taking away our benefits, denying our rights to organize and bargain collectively or pay our ever mounting

bills.

These robber barons are robbing us blind and absolving themselves from accountability.

They hire lawyers who are almost as greedy as they are and those leaches lobby and “legally” bribe politicians, who have written laws that make their and their bosses actions legal.

Corporations are almost completely unaccountable. If you pay a business late, you are penalized. If they fail to provide you service, there is no compensation and their profit margin strengthens at your expense.

If I had a nickel for every business I can call and immediately talk to a person instead a computer, I might have a dime. If I had a dollar for every time I could walk into a business and quickly talk to someone in management, I wouldn’t have a quarter.

America is like a huge concentration camp where the incarcerated feel hopeless to resist so they sit in front of screens being entertained by their economic assassins. There is a reason why there are more commercials than shows on television and the Internet will follow suit. It is amazing how submissive Americans actually are and how resigned they are to their ever declining status.

Sam Smith wrote, “America has been deceived, defrauded and defeated by the worst and the dumbest.” In 2001 Smith spoke at a punk concert and offered about 30 examples of

set dropped to 96.7 percent from 98.9 percent. Why the decline? During a shaky economy, economics is always in the mix, especially with “luxury” items like televisions.

Part of the decrease in TV ownership can be attributed to economic belt-tightening, particularly in rural or lowincome households. You may also remember that back in the summer of 2009, the Federal Communications Commission mandated the switch from analog to digital broadcasting.

After that transition, consumers were only able to watch TV via a newer TV with a built-in digital tuner, a satellite dish – or with a special digital-to-analog converter box to connect to their old analog set. Many people simply could not afford that upgrade, even though the government tried to subsidize the converters.

But while Americans overall are watching less television for the first time in 20 years, now at 114.7 million, down from 115.9 million, Nielsen data shows that consumers are actually viewing more video content than ever before. Through the wizardry of technology, video can be viewed on multiple platforms, like laptops, tablets, iPods or smartphones.

Another recent Nielsen study shows that the number of Americans watching video on their mobile devices rose more than 40 per-

cent in the last two quarters of 2010.

That’s nearly 25 million people.

And, what does any of this mean?

It means Nielsen still has a responsibility to measure all of this content and report the total picture of video consumption regardless of delivery method. And that we as consumers have more opportunity than ever before to express our preferences to “the industry” – TV networks, mobile companies, marketers and advertisers — who rely on us for our business and who must re-think the way they reach us for your hard-earned dollar.

See? It all matters.

Cheryl Pearson-McNeil is the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Government Relations for The Nielsen Company. For more insights go to www.nielsenwire.com

civil liberties that had eroded during the life of anyone 25 or older. He stated that “the earnings of everyone under 25 – Black, White, Latino, male, and female – had declined during the past 20 years, about 5 percent for the most part – with the earnings of Black and White males under 25 down 17 to 21percent.

Folks, America has been raped by big corporations and it’s up to the people not the politicians to return it to its ideal. We can no longer afford to allow stereotypes to stigmatize our minds. We cannot continue to ponder to propaganda that promises us prosperity while poisoning us with genetically modified junk.

America is a corporation and very few of us own stock and hardly any

of us know anyone who sits on the boards. American corporations have destroyed the ideal and deceived people facing foreclosure into believing they live in “the greatest country in the world.” America is the greatest country in the world, but not for the benefit of the majority of the American people. America has been made great in the interest of an invisible monarchy. Americans are not subjects of the queen; they are subjects of the corporation elite.

About The Nielsen Company The Nielsen Company (NYSE: NLSN) is a leading global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related assets.

The company has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA. For more information on The Nielsen Company, visit www.nielsen.com.

— Akwasi Evans is the publisher of NOKOA The Observer Newspaper in Austin, Texas. His website is nokoanewspaper.com and he can be reached at akwasievans@gmail.com.

6

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

South Dakota races to finish levees before flooding

By DAVID BAILEY MINNEAPOLIS — South Dakota appealed for bulldozers and operators and called up 200 more National Guard troops on Sunday in a race to finish levees before heavy Missouri River flows reached the capital, officials said.

The U.S. government plans to step up releases from several dams along the Missouri River in early June to relieve pressure on reservoirs swollen by heavy rains and melting winter snowcaps from Montana through North and South Dakota.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard on Sunday said he would call up more troops and sought bulldozers and operators to support construction crews, but he urged residents of the capital Pierre and Fort Pierre to prepare for the worst.

“While we will work urgently around the clock to get these levees constructed, individuals must assume the worst, that the levees may not be completed in time and if completed they may not hold,” Daugaard said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers increased flows from the Oahe Dam upstream from Pierre on Saturday to relieve pressure and will hold that level until Friday, the day after additions to the levees are due to be finished.

“The contractor is working urgently to complete levees, but the these increased flow requirement means that the job has suddenly been enlarged within the same time frame, which was already a difficult time frame,” Daugaard said.

Daugaard suspended commercial truck driver licensing requirements and

appealed to farmers and ranchers with experience operating heavy machinery to fight flooding.

“I want to use their talents where we can,” he said.

The Corps expects to reach maximum flows from the dams by about mid-June and hopes to hold a two-foot buffer on the levees around the capital. Some residents are not protected by levees under construction.

Hundreds of residents in both Pierre and Fort Pierre are expected to be affected by the rise in the Missouri River as the flows increase, the mayors of the cities said on Sunday.

Rain overnight through to Sunday morning likely did not add to the Missouri River heights but created a nuisance factor for those building clay levees, officials said.

Drinking water has been protected and steps have

been taken to protect the sewage treatment plant, Pierre Mayor Laurie Gill said on Sunday.

Daugaard, meanwhile, has pressed for better maps of potential flooding downstream so residents of Yankton and other towns will have better information to plan evacuations.

On Saturday, Daugaard urged Yankton residents to plan for possible evacuations.

Yankton is a city of about 14,500 residents in southeast South Dakota along the Nebraska border. He urged the same for the 2,500 residents of Dakota Dunes.

“Property owners in Yankton and Dakota Dunes should plan for the worst,” he said Sunday. “Move property out, now.”

Officials in the states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota also are amassing emergency assis-

tance to fight flooding, including calling up National Guard troops.

Officials in North Dakota’s capital Bismarck said they needed volunteers to fill more than 4 million sandbags by Thursday to fight flooding. The Corps has also hired contractors to build more than 5 miles of temporary levees to reduce flooding in Bismarck.

Tributaries of the Columbia River have breached their banks in eastern and northern parts of Idaho, forcing the governor to declare a state of emergency.

High water in the Columbia and Missouri follows major flooding of the Mississippi in the Midwest and South this year. The Missouri flows into the Mississippi, compounding flooding fears in the downstream states of Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri.

Shuttle leaves space station to begin trip home

By IRENE KLOTZ CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Space shuttle Endeavour has departed the International Space Station, clearing the way for a final cargo run to the outpost before NASA retires its threeship fleet.

As the spacecraft sailed 215 miles above Bolivia, pilot Greg Johnson gently pulsed Endeavour’s steering jets at 11:55 p.m. EDT on Sunday (0355 GMT on Monday) to back away from the docking port that has anchored the shuttle since its arrival on May 18.

Endeavour delivered the station’s premier science experiment — the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector — and a pallet of spare parts intended to tide over the orbital outpost after the shuttle program ends.

“Endeavour departing,” radioed station flight engineer Ron Garan. “Fair winds and following seas, guys.”

“Thanks Ron,” replied Endeavour commander Mark Kelly. “Appreciate all the help.”

Afterward, Endeavour maneuvered to within about 950 feet of the station to test a new automated rendezvous system being developed for NASA’s next spaceship, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, intended to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually to Mars.

“We’re now separating — that’s the closest we’re going to get,” Kelly radioed to Garan.

Then Kelly fired the shuttle’s thrusters, and Endeavour pulled away from the space station for the last time.

NASA plans to decommission Endeavour, its youngest shuttle with 25 voyages, and send it to a museum in Los Angeles for display.

One final shuttle mission is planned before the United States ends the 30-year-old shuttle program. Atlantis is due to launch July 8 with a

year’s worth of supplies for the station, a contingency plan in case the commercial companies hired to take over supply runs to the station encounter delays with their new vehicles.

The shuttles are being retired to save the $4 billion annual operating expenses so NASA can develop new vehicles that can travel beyond the station’s 220-mile-high (355-km-high) orbit.

During its 12 days at the station, the Endeavour crew conducted four spacewalks to complete construction of the

U.S. side of the $100 billion outpost, a project of 16 nations that has been being assembled in orbit since 1998.

Endeavour is due back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT) on Wednesday.

Giuliani surprise leader in Republican poll

By ROS KRASNY BOSTON — Rudy Giuliani came out on top of a new survey of the 2012 Republican presidential primary field, even though the former New York Mayor has not so far jumped into the race.

Many Republican voters quizzed in the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released on Friday said they were not very satisfied with the current crop of candidates who will battle for the right to take on President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

Giuliani, with 16 percent support, narrowly edged former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, currently seen

as the party’s front-runner because of name recognition and a large campaign warchest, with 15 percent.

Also polling high were former Alaska governor Sarah Palin with 13 percent, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, with 12 percent, and pizza magnate Herman Cain at 10 percent. Palin also is not a declared candidate for 2012 so far.

All other announced and potential candidates scored less than 10 percent support in a poll of 473 likely Republican voters conducted May 24-26. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Early this month Giuliani said he had not yet decided on whether to go ahead with

a second White House bid.

But Giuliani has made a string of appearances recently, and will speak in the key early voting state of New Hampshire next week at a fundraiser for the state Republican party.

Giuliani projects himself as a tough-on-crime fiscal conservative, and is remembered as the “mayor of 9/11” for his response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York city.

He ran for president in 2008 and was a frontrunner for much of 2007, but withdraw early after poor showings in initial primary states.

Friday’s poll showed more Republican voters sensing weakness in their party’s

contenders than in a survey taken around the same time four years ago.

Some 39 percent said they were “not very satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with the current choices, against 26 percent making those responses in May 2007.

In the past few weeks former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and billionaire businessman Donald Trump have all said they would not run for the White House.

Among possible candidates voters would like to see jump into the race, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie garnered the most enthusiasm.

DAILY D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

7

A celebration of life for Billy Bank

Hoshi Walker with Lewis Rayes’ wife Bobbi Humphrey Daughter of Billy Blank, Hoshi Walker, of one of his works school music teacher. “It

By BABZ was dropped in my lap.”

BONHOMME In 1967 he served in Vietnam, and yearned “A celebration of to play with John life for Billy Bank Coltrane. Sadly, during was held on April his tour of duty his 20th at Mt. Olivet mother informed him Baptist Church in Coltrane had died.

Harlem. Bank, a Bang battled PTSD, an war injury. jazz virtuoso, died emotional Using his violin as a from lung cancer at means of expression, he age 63. evolved into a mesmerizBorn William Vincent ing performer with a Walker, he was nick- gutsy, commanding named after a cartoon sound. character in his youth A prolific writer and (Billy Bang—Bang). composer, he moved Later Billy Bang would effortlessly from foot become his legal name. stomping swings to He encountered the breath taking ballards. violin when it was handHighly regarded in ed to him by his grade avant-garde (free jazz)

Billy Bang daughters circles, he was an intelli- formance by his daughgent and fun-loving ter , Hoshi Walker, of man who taught, one of his works. A inspired and charmed musical selection was many. performed by Andrew Highlights of his cel- Bemkey.

A rousing ebration included a recessional was pertouching violin per- formed by jass luminar-

Bassist Alex Blake, cellist Akua Dixon and percussionist Abdus Sabor iel Roy Campbell, cans gave a grand send Ahmed Abdullah, Ted off to a man with a Daniels, Bob Stewart, remarkable gift.

Dick Griffith James (Quotation from WkCr Zollar, Craig Harris , 12/87) Hammiett Bluiett and - Photos by Lem James Spaulding. A Peterkin brotherhood of musi-

Jacqueline Smith Honored at Law Enforcement Appreciation Awards

By MCCARTON ACKERMAN She may not be in the firing line, but Police Athletic League Brooklyn Borough Director Jacqueline Smith has created enough good in the community to be recognized by law enforcement officials.

Smith was one of seven officers honored for her work at the 21st Annual Law E n f o r c e m e n t Appreciation Awards, held at Brooklyn Law School yesterday.

Born and raised in Bed-Stuy and now

residing in Clinton Hill, Smith works directly with teenage gang members and other atrisk youth throughout Bed-Stuy, Brownsville and East New York.

“I’m shocked to have been honored like this,” said Smith.

“The responsibilities that I have requires a strong team to be in place, so to be honored individually is overwhelming to me.”

PAL trains local residents in youth development practices and offers children participation in a variety of afterschool and weekend programs.

Growing up, Smith attended P.S. 20, where her 6th grade teacher, Mr. Kahn, played a pro-

found role in her development.

“He used to take us outside of the school and get us to explore,” said Smith. “He always told me that I was here for a reason and that I was going to do something big with myself.

So that definitely impacted me.”

Smith has always been an active member of the Brooklyn community. In addition to her work with PAL, she organizes block parties, Safe Halloweens and Thanksgiving dinners, among other events, designed for children to get them off the dangerous streets and involved in developmental activities.

Smith also organizes

community barbecues in the summer to reduce street violence, as well as Brooklyn Family ay in Highland Park, which brings together children from different neighborhoods with the goal of reducing youth-onyouth violence.

“I’ve had gang members come through these program who stop me on the street three or four years later to tell me they’re graduating,” said Smith.

“Having that happen is like a rush for me and makes me want to go that extra mile.”

Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes opened the event, while Fox 5 Reporter Lisa

Jacqueline Smith Evers was on hand to programs beyond Bedemcee.

Stuy and the surround“Our honorees have ing neighborhoods. played a significant “I want to be able to role in keeping increase my spectrum,” Brooklyn safe, some- said Smith. “I love this times risking their own borough, so it would be lives in the process,” great if these programs said Hynes. could be accessible to all Smith said her goal of Brooklyn.” now is to expand her

AFRICAN SCENE

88

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

AFRICAN SCENE

Fleeing residents flood Sudan town; food scarce

By MAGGIE FICK

f Congo officials: Rwanda genocide suspect arrested KINSHASA, Congo - A Congolese official says the suspected leader of an extremist Hutu militia has been arrested in eastern Congo after years on the run.

Bernard Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and other crimes.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Friday that Munyagishari was arrested and taken to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The prosecutor of the Tanzania-based United Nations court for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide says he will be brought for trial.

Munyagishari is alleged to have led the Interahamwe militia that committed mass rapes and killings of Tutsis in western Rwanda.

Justice Hassan Bubacar Jallow says Munyagishari’s arrest leaves nine fugitives still at large.

At least 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during Rwanda’s genocide.

Russia joins Western chorus for Gaddafi to go TRIPOLI - Russia believes Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi should quit and could help broker his departure, a senior Russian official said on Friday in an important boost to NATO powers bent on ending his 41-year rule.

It was a striking change in tone from Kremlin criticism of Western air strikes in Libya officially intended to protect civilians in a civil war but effectively taking the side of rebels seeking Gaddafi’s removal and democratic change.

NATO said it was preparing to deploy attack helicopters over the Arab North African state for the first time to add to the pressure on Gaddafi’s forces on the ground.

But his security forces demonstrated once again that they are far from a spent force, launching rocket attacks overnight on the rebel-held town of Zintan and fighting insurgents on the outskirts of the city of Misrata.

The Russian mediation offer was announced on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France, where Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was among the heads of state in attendance.

“Colonel Gaddafi has deprived himself of legitimacy with his actions. We should help him leave,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in Deauville.

He said Russia would use its dialogue with the Libyan authorities to “help Mr Gaddafi take the right decision.”

Earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama said he had agreed with French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy that the only acceptable outcome was for Gaddafi to go. “We are joined in resolve to finish the job,” he said.

ATTACK HELICOPTERS A NATO-led coalition led by France and Britain has been bombing Libya since March, under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians caught up in a battle with rebel forces intent on ending Gaddafi’s 41-year rule.

- Joseph Logan

TURALEI, Sudan - A top U.S. official warned of a humanitarian crisis Friday over the north’s invasion of a disputed territory as southern towns taking in tens of thousands of fleeing villagers were running short of food, fuel and shelter.

County Commissioner Dominic Deng said Friday that up to 40,000 people have arrived in Turalei, a town to the south of the disputed region of Abyei. He said at least 80,000 people have fled Abyei, a zone about the size of Connecticut which northern Sudan invaded last weekend.

On a visit to Turalei on Friday, the top U.S. official in Southern Sudan, Barrie Walkley, said “we have a perfect storm” creating a humanitarian crisis. Sudan’s north is blockading border crossing points, preventing food and fuel from getting to the south. Militias are attacking southern forces, and the northern army displaced tens of thousands of people by invading Abyei, he said.

Lise Grande, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official in Southern Sudan, said there are

not enough stocks in the area to supply all the fleeing families with food and shelter. The fuel shortage is greatly hampering relief efforts, she said.

“It’s double the number of people we were planning for,” she said. “We have to face the fact that if they are here for a while then what we have is not enough.”

Martha Abiem Deng fled to Turalei with a dozen children, four her own and the rest nieces and nephews. She sat under a tree on a mat and gestured to one small jerry can. Her whole family must share the water within it.

“We don’t have any money and there is no food in the market anyway,” the 49-year-old said.

Market stalls in town were completely empty of food. The only items for sale were cigarettes and phone chargers.

Both northern and Southern Sudan stake a claim to Abyei, a fertile grassland near several oil fields. Fighting between north and south broke out last week, and northern troops moved in with force.

Southern Sudan’s president says the south will not respond militarily and risk a resumption of the country’s civil war. More than 2 million people were killed

during war, which ended with a peace deal in 2005.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said Thursday that the north’s movement into Abyei appears to have been premeditated.

Rice said government forces seem to have used an attack by southern forces on a convoy of government soldiers from the north last week as a “pretext” to move into Abyei, the border town between Sudan’s Arabdominated north and mainly ethnic African south.

North and south Sudan ended more than two decades of civil war in 2005 with a peace deal that promised both Abyei and the south a self-determination vote. The south voted overwhelmingly in January to secede and becomes an independent nation July 9. Abyei’s vote never happened, so its future was being negotiated by the north and south.

Human Rights Watch says the Sudanese government urgently needs to halt looting and destruction of civilian property by its forces in the town of Abyei and hold those responsible to account. It also demanded that the government allow United Nations peacekeepers access to the entire Abyei area.

After massacres, anger in Nigeria’s north

By M.J. SMITH K A D U N A , Nigeria - The veiled woman at a camp housing thousands of displaced on the dusty outskirts of this northern Nigerian city tries to explain how her husband was killed, but becomes faint and backs away.

“He said whatever happened we should not go out, that we should just be patient,” 67-year-old Talle Musa said as she described taking refuge in a neighbour’s house when riots broke out last month in her town of Zonkwa.

“We didn’t know it was like his farewell to

us.”

It has been more than a month since deadly riots spread across the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria following the country’s presidential election, leaving some 800 people hacked, burnt or shot to death over the course of three days.

Piles of unidentified bodies have been cleared off the floor of a morgue in Kaduna and buried in mass graves, the displaced have been steadily leaving camps, and President Goodluck Jonathan is due to be sworn in on Sunday.

But deep anger and hurt remain in the north, poorer and less educated than the oilproducing south, and

Jonathan, a southern Christian, faces a daunting task in healing divisions in Africa’s most populous nation.

While local and international observers called the presidential vote the fairest since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 despite major flaws, there is lingering suspicion in the north among those who allege rigging.

They call the observers liars and say Jonathan, whose main opponent was an exmilitary ruler from the north, must now act to end what they say has been a long period of neglect of their region of the continent’s largest oil producer.

The ostentatious wealth gained from bla-

tant corruption while most of the country lives on $2 dollars a day must also be curbed, they say.

Frustration must be dealt with, northern politicians and analysts warn. If not, they say, it will build and explode into something no one can predict.

“People will come to destroy my house,” said Tanko Yakasai, a veteran northern politician who helped push for power to be returned to the region, but who nevertheless agrees that Jonathan won outright.

He argues that poverty and unemployment will lead to a “boiling point” if not addressed — and that it would not be limited to the north.

D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011 DAILY

AFRICAN SCENE

9

Egyptians demand deeper and faster reforms

By YASMINE SALEH & SAMI ABOUDI CAIRO Thousands of Egyptians packed Cairo’s Tahrir Square Friday in what organizers called a “second revolution” to push for faster reforms and a speedy trial for ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his former aides.

Activists complain of delays in putting Mubarak, his family and members of his ousted regime on trial and that the army has not restored order quickly enough to the country of 80 million.

Egyptians are also demanding an end to endemic graft, one of the main grievances that drove thousands of protesters onto the streets in the uprising that began on January 25.

“After some 1,000 martyrs ... people do not see any change,” said Mustafa Ali Menshawi, a

38-year-old accountant, who was helping marshal crowds flooding into the square.

“The only change we see is that the Mubarak metro station has been changed to the Martyrs station,” he said.

In a move seen as aimed at appeasing proauthorities testers, Tuesday ordered Mubarak to stand trial on charges of graft and “pre-meditated killing” of protesters during the uprising that ousted him on February 11.

If convicted, Mubarak could face the death penalty. He has been detained at a hospital in the tourist Red Sea resort of Sharm elSheikh since April when he was reported to have suffered heart problems during an initial questioning.

Hundreds staged a protest in front of the hospital calling for his departure. They said his presence was driving tourists away, according to state TV. FLAGS, PLACARDS AND NO SOLDIERS The ruling military

council withdrew the army from near the protests in Cairo and has ordered security forces to stay away.

Tahrir Square was decked with Egyptian flags and placards demanding that officials who worked under Mubarak and squandered state funds be investigated.

“We want to dissolve all local councils that are famous for being the most and worst corrupt institutions during Mubarak’s regime,” said Mohammed Adel, of the April 6 Youth group.

“We also ask that all political powers get involved in the drafting of important political laws,” Adel added.

Thousands of Egyptians also took to the streets in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and in the Suez Canal’s cities of Suez and Ismailia.

Smaller protests also took place in northern Sinai and in the city of Port Said on the Suez Canal.

However, some Egyptians expressed

Protesters conduct Friday Prayers in Tahrir square in Cairo. opposition to the including Egypt’s pow- is the Brotherhood?” protests, saying military erful Muslim The Supreme Council rulers needed time to Brotherhood, said no of the Armed Forces, in a sort things out. A few protests were needed Facebook message posthundred gathered in and warned they could ed Thursday, called on Cairo’s al-Hussein area lead to confrontations protesters to exercise to express support for between the army and caution Friday, saying Egypt’s military rulers, demonstrators. there were “suspicious chanting: “For the sake The absence of the elements trying to take of our country, we want Brotherhood angered actions that would sow to be ruled by the army.” some protesters, some of strife between Egypt’s Some political parties, whom chanted: “Where people and the military.”

South Sudan says 80,000 flee after north takes Abyei

By JEREMY CLARKE TURALEI, Sudan Alel Bol fled with four of her six children when armed northerners on motorbikes roared into her home in Sudan’s contested Abyei border region and, she said, bombs started falling from the sky.

On Friday, she was still waiting for news of the other two children as she and tens of thousands of her compatriots took refuge in villages inside south Sudan, many sleeping on the bare earth under trees, plastic sheets and torn tent fabric.

About 80,000 people have fled since the north Sudanese armed forces seized oil-producing Abyei almost a week ago, a southern official said, doubling previous estimates of the displaced.

“I saw the attackers ... I saw their guns.

They were even bombing from the sky,” Bol said beneath the baking sun in Turalei, about 130 km (80 miles) away from Abyei town. “I made it here with four of my children, but two are missing.”

Both Sudan’s mostly Muslim north, and the south, where most follow Christian and traditional beliefs, claim Abyei — a battleground in a north-south civil war that ended in 2005.

The north’s move last week sparked an international outcry and raised fears a land-grab could return Sudan to full-blown conflict, which could have a devastating impact on the region by sending refugees back across borders and creating a failed state in the south.

The attack came at a highly sensitive time for Sudan, just seven

Men smile as they transport sacks of food looted from a compound belonging to the World Food Programme in Abyei. weeks before south Sudan is due to secede as an independent country, taking its oil reserves with it.

Southerners voted for independence in a January referendum agreed under the 2005 peace deal that ended the last civil war.

Deng Niwol, a 14year-old boy, said he ran away from his village south of Abyei as soon as he heard the

gunshots. “No one is left in the village. My family was eleven people. Some are here, some are not yet,” he said.

DISPLACED Thousands of men, women and children, many of them without possessions, crowded into Turalei in the south’s Twic county.

Many sought shade from the sun beneath trees while United

Nations staff handed out sorghum and water.

Local officials appealed to visitors for more help.

“The situation is going from worse to even worse,” Dominic Deng, commissioner of Twic county, told reporters in Turalei.

“They need food and water ... some people are dying.”

He said some 80,000 people had fled Abyei since the fighting started. The United Nations had previously put the number of refugees at up to 40,000.

Tensions mounted in the region last week after an attack on a convoy of northern soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers that was blamed on southern Sudanese forces.

Khartoum moved tanks into Abyei’s main town and has since defied calls from the United States, United

Nations and south Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to withdraw, saying the land belongs to the north.

Kiir said on Thursday there would be no war over the incursion into Abyei and it would not derail independence. But the region remains one of the most contentious issues in the countdown to the split.

Entire villages have been emptied after widespread looting and shooting broke out following the advance of northern armed forces into Abyei, international organizations say.

A Washington-based monitoring organization, Satellite Sentinal Project, said images and analysis indicated that the northern army and irregular forces earlier this week loaded vehicles with items apparently taken from homes.

1 10

CARIBBEAN NEWS DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

CARIBBEAN BRIEFS ONE FAMILY.

Whether West Indian, African or African American.

One God, One Aim, One Destiny.

Caribbean Airlines, Air Jamaica deal finally signed PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — The shareholder agreement between Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) and Air Jamaica was signed on Thursday. The agreement gives legal access to CAL to all routes operated by Air Jamaica.

The agreement was signed by the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Finance Winston Dookeran and Jamaican Finance Minister Audley Shaw in Port of Spain.

Present for the ceremony were Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Minister of Works and Transport Jack Warner.

Persad-Bissessar said, “I know that Caribbean Airlines does have the vision for one Caribbean airline, and this is a step in that right direction.”

Dookeran said the merger will make way for the expansion of CAL, which will have a positive impact on revenue. Shaw said there was a capital base of some $500 million in the merger.

On the question of job losses as a result of the merger, Shaw said there was no cause for alarm on the Air Jamaica side as they would have already taken place in the first few months of turning over to CAL. He added the new management was committed to ensuring there were adequate resources.

Offloading of Jamaican cement gets underway in Dominican Republic K I N G S T O N ,

Jamaica — The Jamaican government said it welcomes the news that the offloading of the most recent shipment of Jamaican cement exported by Cement Caribbean Company Ltd to the Dominican Republic has begun.

The consignment of cement, valued at some US$250,000, had been prevented by interests in the Dominican Republic from being offloaded since midApril.

In response to the commencement offloading, Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Karl Samuda, described it as a positive development that can only serve to enhance and improve trading relations between Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

Samuda added that he looks forward to future cooperation between both countries with respect to the export of cement and other products to the Dominican Republic.

Cholera cases increasing in Haiti province PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — Health partners in Haiti are responding promptly to increasing cases of cholera in the Ouest department to ensure that the new infections do not spread to the capital, Port-auPrince, a spokesperson for the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

“Given the early detection of alerts, a prompt response is under way,” Fadela Chaib, the WHO spokesperson, told reporters in Geneva.

She said the current surge in the number of cases in Ouest department is a reminder of the need for vigilance.

Ministers must do better, says CARICOM chairman

ST GEORGE’S, Grenada Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Grenada’s prime minister, Tillman Thomas, on Friday expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of several ministers with responsibility for ICT at the 36th special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development, (COTED) that was hosted by Grenada.

The meeting, which was convened to discuss and approve both the draft regional digital development strategy (RDDS) and its attendant implementation plan, as well as other ICT related issues, was not able to field a quorum of eight member states, with only four ministers attending, despite confirmations received by the CARICOM Secretariat.

Thomas, who has lead responsibility for science and technology, including ICT in the quasi Cabinet of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, stressed his displeasure that the meeting was taking place without the benefit of the full participation of all member states.

“Our people cannot afford leadership that is tentative and unstable. We have been talking long enough. It’s now time to act,” he warned.

He noted that the formulation of the strategy was a mandate from the Conference and in moving the process forward to implementation of the Strategy, he said, he had anticipated that after six years since the last meeting on ICT, that this would be a “special meeting,” and that

Grenada Prime Minister Tillman Thomas. the relevant ministers would that “we stand to lose our best have regarded it as a “stepping minds to the developed world stone in the region’s thrust to unless we embrace ICT with utilise information communica- commitment and urgency.” tion technology as a driving “Our countries have yet to force in our development.” engage ICT as a development The CARICOM chairman tool that should be integrated lamented that while develop- into our culture and psyche,” he ments in ICT were galloping in noted and, as such, he expressed some countries the Caribbean the belief that the region’s peoregion was still pursuing the ple were finding evidence of adoption of a digital develop- technological success in counmental strategy. tries like Singapore, India, Malta He added that the region’s and Japan. dependence on traditional busiNoting that significant work ness models and focus on the was done to formulate what was tried and tested continued to be regarded as a robust strategy on challenged by a generation who ICT, Thomas told the 36th had embraced the opportunities Special COTED that it was of ICT and technological imperative that the process conadvancement. tinued and that there was com“And while we wait on a quo- mitment to bring it to “full term rum for the adoption and adap- and safe delivery.” tion of this strategy some of our He therefore called on all nationals are finding interna- member states to recommit to tional success in their homes via driving the regional digital their computers,” the Grenada development strategy forward, prime minister noted. noting that “the future of our He sounded a word of caution people hinges on it.”

Trinidad PM did not breach Integrity Act, says attorney general PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — Four ‘eminent’ senior counsel have found that Prime Minister Kamla PersadBissessar’s stay at the Gopaul’s residence following the 2010 General Election in Trinidad and Tobago does not constitute as a gift under the Integrity in Public Life Act. This was disclosed by Attorney General Anand Ramlogan at the post Cabinet press conference on Thursday.

Ramlogan sought the advice of former Law Association president Martin Daly, former

attorney general Russell Martineau, British QC Allan Newman and Fenton Ramsahoye, after public condemnation of the prime minister when it was revealed that a company belonging to the Gopauls won the bid for a $40 million contract at state-owned National Petroleum (NP). The matter was also referred to the Integrity Commission.

Quoting from the advice of the attorneys, Ramlogan said Daly noted: “There has been no suggestion that the use of the Gopaul property was in the nature of

a fee. I am also satisfied that it was not a gift.”

Daly also noted, that because NP did not fall under the portfolio of the prime minister and the Gopauls did not have a legal interest in NP, there was no reason why the friendship between the two, should prevent the Gopauls from tendering for work in the public sector. He further said the friendship did not constitute a conflict of interest that should be disclosed in the bid process.

Newman’s opinion was also similar. He said: “There is not a

shred of evidence that in return for staying at her friend’s house, the prime minister altered the performance of her duties.

Specifically, there is no evidence to contradict the prime minister’s assertion that she did not know about the contract bid of Gopaul and Co Ltd. The fact that it took place nearly a year after she became prime minister and the fact that NPMC’s (National Petroleum Marketing Co) choice of contractor can be objectively justified assists in this regard.’

D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011 DAILY

INTERNATIONAL

11

Zuma on Libya peace shuttle, officers defect

By PETER GRAFF TRIPOLI (Reuters) South African President Jacob Zuma arrived in Tripoli on Monday to try to broker a peace deal with Muammar Gaddafi, just hours after NATO’s secretary-general said the Libyan leader’s “reign of terror” was coming to an end.

Rome, eight In Libyan army officers including five generals appeared at an Italian government-arranged news conference, saying they were part of a group of up to 120 military officials and soldiers who defected from Gaddafi in recent days.

The defections come two months after that of Libyan foreign minister and former espionage chief Moussa Koussa and the resignation of senior diplomat Ali Abdussalm Treki.

In Rome, one of the defecting officers, who identified himself as General Oun Ali Oun, told reporters: “What is happening to our people has frightened us.”

“There is a lot of

killing, genocide ... violence against women.

No wise, rational person with the minimum of dignity can do what we saw with our eyes and what he asked us to do.”

Libyan U.N. ambassador Abdurrahman Shalgam, who has also defected from Gaddafi, said all 120 of the military personnel were outside Libya now but he did not say where they were.

On arrival in Tripoli, Zuma was met by a host of dignitaries, not including Gaddafi himself, who has not been seen since May 11 when he was shown by Libyan state television meeting what it said were tribal leaders.

Zuma’s walk down the red carpet at Tripoli airport was accompanied by a band and children chanting “We want Gaddafi!” in English while waving Libyan flags and pictures of the leader.

Zuma’s visit is his second since the conflict began in February.

His previous trip made little progress because

Gaddafi has refused to end his 41-year-old rule, while rebel leaders say that is a precondition for any truce. warplanes NATO have been raising the pace of their air strikes on Tripoli, with Gaddafi’s Bab alAziziyah compound in the center of the city being hit repeatedly.

Journalists escorted into Bab Al-Aziziyah after Zuma’s arrival found a group of around 160 African visitors to Libya chanting pro-Gaddafi slogans and waving flags of nations including Chad, Niger and Ghana, in an apparent show of pan-African unity.

Britain said on Sunday it was to add “bunker-busting” bombs to the arsenal its warplanes are using over Libya, a weapon it said would send a message to Gaddafi that it was time to quit.

“Our operation in Libya is achieving its objectives ... We have seriously degraded Gaddafi’s ability to kill his own people,” NATO

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a NATO forum in Varna, Bulgaria.

“Gaddafi’s reign of terror is coming to an end,” he said.

Gaddafi denies attacking civilians, saying his forces were obliged to act to contain armed criminal gangs and al Qaeda militants.

He says the NATO intervention is an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya’s plentiful oil reserves.

DEADLOCK Britain and other NATO powers are ratcheting up the military pressure to break a deadlock that has seen Gaddafi hold on to power despite a rebellion and weeks of air strikes.

U.S. Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the Joint Operations Command at Naples, declined to comment on whether NATO would put forces on the ground but suggested a small force may be needed to help the rebels once Gaddafi’s

Berlusconi suffers heavy local poll defeats

By JAMES MACKENZIE & DEEPA BABINGTON ROME - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a shattering loss in his northern stronghold of Milan on Monday in local elections that threaten to unbalance his fractious center-right coalition government.

Already enmeshed in three corruption trials and a scandal over underage prostitution, the 74 year-old premier lost control of Italy’s financial capital, the base of his vast business and media empire, as well as a string of other towns and cities.

With most votes counted, leftist Giuliano Pisapia was set to take Milan’s city hall with some 55 percent of the vote against around 46 percent for centerright mayor Letizia Moratti.

“It’s clear we have lost. The only thing to do is to hold our nerve and carry on,” Berlusconi told reporters accompanying him on a trip to Romania.

Among a series of other losses, the southern port of Naples,

Italy’s third largest city, went to the opposition Italy of Values party by a landslide and the results raised the prospect of national elections before the scheduled 2013 date.

The center-left easily held on to power in Turin and Bologna in the first round of voting and the latest blow threatened to expose divisions in the ruling alliance between Berlusconi’s PDL party and the pro-devolution, anti-immigrant Northern League.

The League, whose support is vital to Berlusconi’s thin majority in parliament, also suffered heavily, losing control of onceimpregnable cities such as Novara or Pavia to deepen alarm in the party over their links to the struggling prime minister.

“This is a very heavy defeat and the big loser is the premier,” said Leonardo Boriani, editor of the Northern League party newspaper La Padania, which has sniped repeatedly at the PDL in recent weeks.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, one of the most senior Northern League ministers, said the result did not threaten the

survival of the coalition but it was still a “slap in the face” and a sign that the government needed to do better.

“This is the first defeat for Berlusconi’s center-right coalition since they came back to power, and it sends a clear signal of voters’ disillusionment,” said Maurizio Pessato of pollsters SWG. “These results make early elections more likely, possibly next year, and I don’t see any chance of meaningful economic reforms being implemented by a lame duck government.”

SLUGGISH ECONOMY As the government prepares to bring forward plans to slash the budget deficit by 40 billion euros ($57 billion) after ratings agency Standard and Poor’s cut its outlook for Italy’s A+ rating to “negative” from “stable,” the stakes are high.

Italy has one of the most sluggish economies in Europe, more than a quarter of its young people are unemployed and government policy is constrained by the need to contain a debt mountain equivalent to some 120 percent of gross domestic product.

rule collapses.

Britain said the Enhanced Paveway III bombs, each weighing nearly a tonne and capable of penetrating the roof or wall of a reinforced building, had arrived at the Italian air base from where British war-

planes fly missions over Libya.

The military alliance says it is acting under a mandate from the United Nations to protect civilians from attack by security forces trying to put down the rebellion against Gaddafi.

Russia n ex-tycoon Khodor kovsky files for par ole MOSCOW - A jailed former Russian oil tycoon kept up his fight against the Kremlin on Monday, filing for parole following last week’s court decision to keep him in jail for 13 years.

Once Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 after falling out with then-President Vladimir Putin in a case his supporters say is politically motivated.

Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were sentenced to stay in jail until 2017 in a second trial last December, but last week a Moscow court reduced that by one year to a total of 13 years.

The two will now remain in prison well into 2016. Khodorkovsky has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Last week’s ruling gave Khodorkovsky, who has served half of the sentence, the right to be pardoned without pleading guilty.

“I ask the court to consider the issue of my parole,” he wrote on his official website www.khodorkovsky.ru.

“I do not acknowledge my guilt, because I am challenging the court’s (previous) decision in the European Court of Human Rights and Russia’s Supreme court.”

Their previous attempts for parole have been dismissed by the authorities. The European Court of Human Rights is to consider the case on Tuesday.

Lebedev has also filed a parole plea, the website said.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin as president, adopted a softer tone in remarks made earlier this month, spurring hopes for Khodorkovsky’s early release.

Now prime minister but is still seen as Russia’s most powerful politician, Putin has maintained a tougher stance, saying in December the tycoon was a thief who should be in jail.

Government critics describe the prosecution of Khodorkovsky as part of a Kremlin campaign to tighten state control over oil revenues and punish the tycoon for perceived challenges to Putin, president from 2000-2008.

In the second trial, Khodorkovsky is charged with stealing billions of dollars of oil from his Yukos company’s subsidiaries through price mechanisms and laundering some of the money.

The case has become as symbol of injustice, highlighting that Medvedev’s pledges to ensure the rule of law have fallen short. Western governments have condemned the December verdict, saying it raised questions about Russia’s commitment to justice.

- Alexei Anishchuk

New American

The

12

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

One Thought - One Humanity

Nas, Lauryn Hill and more headline 2011 Rock the Bells Festival

For the conclusions of these stories check out the May 19th - May 25th, 2011 issue of The New American, which hits newsstands every Thursday Brandy, Tatyana Ali, Bledsoe, Tempestt Danielle Fishel and more are going naked for the Style network’s Skin Cancer PSA titled “Naked.” In the 30-second spot, each woman poses nude on a rooftop proclaiming that they participated in everyday activities such as driving, shopping and walking the dog... naked. Though each girl appears in her birthday suit, they are actually likening nudity to a lack of sunscreen, not clothes.

“Don’t be one of 20 people who will die today from skin cancer,” the ad proclaims. “If you leave the house without sunscreen, you might as well be naked.”

M-Bone -- one the of the members of the rap group Cali Swag District -- died last night ...

TMZ has confirmed.

Earlier this morning, the group’s leader, Smoove -- posted a Tweet saying, “Ma life changed drastically in the. Blink of an eye rip mbone.” So far, it’s unclear how M-Bone died. Cali Swag District shot to stardom with their hit, “Teach Me How to Dougie.”

Da Brat and Jermaine Dupri ready a mixtape to release later this month, after Brat’s tumultuous few years in prison. After a few years in lockdown, Da Brat is back in the studio working with her mentor and longtime partner in music, Jermaine Dupri. The So So Def camp released a video blog this week, one that features the two working together.

In it, there is an announcement of a Brat mixtape that will be released later this month. The vlog features Dupri working on a beat for a few minutes, a silent, blackand-white look at the beatsmith in the studio.

There is also footage of Da Brat writing on a

notepad, scribbling her thoughts down. The video captures a brief conversation between the two where Dupri asks Brat to announce her mixtape’s release date. “Memorial Day weekend,” she says, before repping for the label. “So So Def in the building.” Dupri also let fans know of his work with Brat by sending a message out to the world via Twitter.

Is Laila Ali going to be a singer? We don’t know where this came from, but we’re hearing that Muhammad Ali’s daughter and super boxer is about to embark on a career as a singer. We wonder what sort of singer she will be should this be true? We think she should try for the soul market or something.

Kanye West debuted his new girlfriend at the Cannes Film Festival in France by publicly kissing the teenager on a hotel balcony. The Stronger hitmaker last year ended his high-profile relationship with model Amber Rose, who has since moved on with rising hip-hop star Wiz Khalifa. West was rumoured to be dating 18-year-old underwear model Kate Upton after they were spotted leaving a party together in Los Angeles last month. Now the rapper, 33, has seemingly made his new relationship public after pulling Upton in close for a passionate kiss on his hotel balcony in full view of passers-by and photographers.

Jennifer Lopez was heartbroken when her beloved fashion line failed, insisting it remains one of her biggest career disappointments. The pop star-turned “American Idol” judge was forced to retire her Sweetface brand in 2009 after

neglecting to connect with bargain hunting shoppers, and she now admits the failed business venture was devastating. She tells the New York Times, “That was sad for me. I just felt like I never got a fair chance to do it right. And on top of it, I felt like I was trapped in a situation I couldn’t get out of, and my name was stamped on things that I didn’t believe in... (I) didn’t understand the business well enough.” But the hitmaker is giving it another chance she’s teaming up with husband Marc Anthony to launch a lifestyle brand with Kohl’s department stores - and she’s determined to get it right this time.

Tommy Hilfiger, who worked with Lopez on the new partnership, says, “The difference this time around is Jennifer is fully engaged with a company that is professionally staffed to really develop anything she wants from towels to knee-high suede boots.”

Love is in the air and we have the “Jumping The Broom” film to credit. T.D. Jakes has tapped several R&B stars for the forthcoming second installment of his Sacred Love Songs series compilation album. Inspired by his newly produced film “Jumping The Broom,” Sacred Love Songs 2 will be instores May 31 and features romantic love songs that pair the best talent in gospel and R&B/Pop music-performing classic hits as well as new recordings.

‘Sacred Love Songs 2’ is lead by the Joe featured track “Closer.” The set also features songs from T.D. Jakes, Ledisi, Karen Clark Sheard and Kirk Whalum; El DeBarge, Bishop Paul Morton, Fred Hammond, Micah Stampley, Crystal Aikin and more.

By ROMAN WOLFE

now, the time is right. This will be my biggest production and it only makes sense to do it on the best rap tour which also happens to be a brand I’ve built and am a partner in.

Can’t wait to kill it with my comrades AZ, Premo & Pete Rock!”

Cypress Hill will hit the stage when they perform their 1993 album Black Sunday, while Mos Def and Talib Kweli as Blackstar will perform there self-titled debut album.

Raekwon and Ghostface have teamed up to perform Rae’s critically acclaimed album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.

This year’s Rock the Bells Festival will feature three main stages, including the Paid Dues stage which features a number of independent acts.

Rap stars Nas, Lauryn Hill Raekwon & Ghostface and Cypress Hill have been announced as the headliners of the Rock the Bells 2011 Festival Series.

The rappers along with R&B singer Erykah Badu, will perform their groundbreaking albums in full.

Lauryn Hill is slated to perform her multi-platinum album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, while Nas will perform his breakthrough album Illmatic, with guests AZ, Pete Rock and DJ Premier.

“For years people have been asking me to do Illmatic in so many ways, from stage plays to movies to books, but the time wasn’t right,” Nas said. Where music is going - Full Story In This Week’s New American Newspaper -

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

13

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

14

Stay away from energy drinks, doctors say

By FREDERIK JOELVING In a new report, a large group of American doctors urge kids and teens to avoid energy drinks and only consume sports drinks in limited amount.

The recommendations come in the wake of a national debate over energy drinks, which experts fear may have side effects.

“Children never need energy drinks,” said Dr. Holly Benjamin, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who worked on the new report.

“They contain caffeine and other stimulant substances that aren’t nutritional, so you don’t need them.”

And kids might be more vulnerable to the contents of energy drinks than grownups.

“If you drink them on a regular basis, it stresses the body,” Benjamin told Reuters Health. “You don’t really want to stress the body of a person that’s growing.”

For the new recommendations, published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers went through earlier studies and reports on both energy drinks and sports drinks, which don’t contain any stimulants.

They note that energy drinks contain a jumble of ingredients — including vitamins and herbal extracts — with possible side effects that aren’t always well understood.

While there aren’t many documented cases of harm directly linked to the beverages, stimulants can disturb the heart’s rhythm and may lead to seizures in very rare cases, Benjamin said.

Recently, she saw a 15year-old boy with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who came into the hospital with a seizure after having drunk two 24-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew, a soft drink that contains caffeine.

The boy was already taking stimulant ADHD medication, and the extra caffeine in principle might have pushed him over the edge, according to Benjamin.

“You just never know,” she said. “It’s definitely a concern.”

Earlier this year, Pediatrics published another review of the literature on energy drinks.

In it, Florida pediatricians described cases of seizures, delusions, heart problems and kidney or liver damage in people who had drunk one or more non-alcoholic energy drinks — including brands like Red Bull, Spike Shooter and Redline.

While they acknowledged that such cases are very rare, and can’t be conclusively linked to the drinks, they urged caution, especially in kids with medical conditions.

U.S. sales of non-alcoholic energy drinks are expected to hit $9 billion this year, with children and young adults accounting for half

the market.

Manufacturers claim their products will enhance both mental and physical performance, and were quick to downplay the February report.

“The effects of caffeine are well-known and as an 8.4 oz can of Red Bull contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee (80 mg), it should be treated accordingly,” Red Bull said in an emailed statement to Reuters Health.

Benjamin said that for most kids, water is the best thing to quench their thirst.

If they happen to be young athletes training hard, a sports drink might be helpful, too, because it contains sugar.

But for kids who lead lessactive lives, sports and energy drinks might just serve to pile on extra pounds, fueling the national obesity epidemic.

While she acknowledged that more research is needed, Benjamin said the safest thing to drink is water.

Vitamins won’t prevent pregnancy complication

By ALISON MCCOOK Despite hopes that high doses of vitamins C and E might lower a woman’s risk of developing a pregnancy complication marked by high blood pressure, a new analysis of the evidence to date finds no benefit.

After reviewing nine studies including nearly 20,000 women, researchers found that women taking 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 400 IU of vitamin E - much higher doses than in most prenatal multivitamins were no less likely to develop the potentially deadly pregnancy complication known as preeclampsia.

Instead, they saw that women given extra doses of C and E had a higher risk of certain other pregnancy complications.

Most doctors do not suggest women concerned about their risk of preeclampsia take these vitamins, and with good reason, study author Dr. Sonia S. Hassan of Wayne State University told Reuters Health. “We are not routinely recommending the use of vitamin C and E, due to the findings of this systematic analysis,” she said.

Indeed, this is not the first

study to cast doubt on vitamins’ ability to curb preeclampsia. Last year, a 41/2-year study of nearly 5,000 women found those taking very high doses of vitamins C and E were 10 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure during pregnancy than volunteers taking placebo pills.

Preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine and swelling, occurs in about 5 percent of American pregnancies every year. If left untreated, it can lead to severe - and sometimes fatal complications for the woman and baby.

Some past studies have found a connection between vitamin C deficiency and an elevated risk of preterm birth, including those caused by what’s known as premature rupture of membranes — where a woman’s “water breaks” before the pregnancy has reached full-term and labor has begun.

Vitamin C has been thought to play a role in maintaining the placenta and the membranes that surround the fetus during pregnancy, possibly by limiting so-called oxidative stress — vitamins C and E are both “antioxidants.”

So researchers have been

studying whether they might help lower the risk of not only preterm birth but also preeclampsia.

However, the current study - in which Hassan and her colleagues combined results from nine studies including 19,810 pregnant women - found that 9.6 percent of women overall developed preeclampsia, regardless of whether they received extra doses of C and E or a placebo drug.

It’s not clear why taking antioxidants doesn’t reduce women’s risk, said Hassan, who is also based at the Perinatology Research Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, along with her coauthors Dr. Agustín CondeAgudelo and Dr. Roberto Romero. “It is likely that although oxidative stress seems to play a major role in the disease of preeclampsia, it may not play a major role in the pathway that leads to preeclampsia.”

In addition, those taking higher doses of vitamins C and E were more likely to develop high blood pressure without the protein in urine and other hallmarks of preeclampsia, and to experience a premature rupture of membranes.

Don’t let food poisoning spoil your picnic It’s start of the summer season as Americans get ready for a slew of picnics and barbecues.

But, even though many people are savvy about keeping foods that spoil easily out of the sun, they may still be making mistakes that can serve up a hefty dose of food poisoning.

To help prevent these calamities, the American Dietetic Association and ConAgra Foods’ Home Food Safety program has some

tips about how to avoid food poisoning: 1. Wash your hands often — for at least 20 seconds in warm soapy water — before, during and after handling food outside. A bottle of hand sanitizer by the grill will help you if you can’t get to a sink.

2. Separate raw meats from ready-to-eat foods and keep them in separate containers to avoid cross-contamination.

3. Make sure you cook

your food to the recommended temperatures — use a food thermometer to make sure — and refrigerate food promptly.

4. Scrub the grill and the utensils you use to cook food with, and don’t forget to clean coolers and other containers. Use hot soapy water.

5. Don’t use the same dish towel over and over because it can spread germs. Use paper towels — don’t reuse them — and only use dish towels to dry dishes and

hands.

6. Don’t use the same brush to baste raw and cooked meats and boil leftover marinade before using it to season cooked meats.

7. Keep food cool with plenty of ice or ice packs and use a refrigerator thermometer to make sure your cooler is below 40 degrees F. 8. Don’t allow food to be outside too long: in hot weather, 90 degrees F or above, an hour is the limit without refrigeration.

NEW JERSEY

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

15

Fate of employees uncertain as New Jersey Network public television station to be run by PBS flagship

By PEGGY MCGLONE TRENTON - New Jersey officials are completing a deal to give New Jersey Network’s television operation to a new nonprofit corporation run by WNET Channel 13, the PBS flagship station based in New York City.

Treasury officials are expected to announce the agreement this week.

According to sources who are familiar with the negotiations, WNET will incorporate a new nonprofit company in New Jersey that will manage the operation.

It will work with several programmers, including Caucus Educational Corp., the nonprofit New Jersey production company run by Steve Adubato Jr., to provide local content.

The new company is still being formed and has not fully assembled its governing board, said sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the deal.

WNET will pay nothing to the state for the right to run the station, they said. The deal allows the PBS giant to broaden its reach, acquiring a New Jersey audience as well as

access to NJN’s donors and underwriters.

Though the state is giving away the station, it will save the roughly $11 million annual cost of running it.

WNET had no comment Saturday.

Treasury spokesman Bill Quinn said talks are ongoing.

“Talks concerning the future of New Jersey’s radio assets and broadcasting operation are continuing,” Quinn said. “No agreement has been finalized.”

Viewers can expect to see some of the same national PBS programming currently broadcast by NJN on its various stations as well as new local programming. The nightly newscast, a hallmark of NJN, and its other existing shows probably will not continue.

New Jersey will retain ownership of the licenses of the public broadcasting network, and the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority will have oversight. But the dayto-day operation will be handled by WNET’s new company.

The four public affairs series currently co-produced by WNET and Caucus Educational Corp. “Caucus: New Jersey,” “One-on-One with Steve

Adubato,” “New Jersey Capitol Report” and “On the Line” - will be part of the lineup, according to Adubato, who declined to comment on the details of the agreement because he is not directly involved.

“The CEC is looking forward to expanding our long-standing partnership with WNET,” Adubato said. “It is that history of partnering with WNET that makes us feel confident that we can create more and better quality New Jersey-centric programming.”

Other potential contributors are the state’s colleges and universities. “Actively engaging the higher ed community is a critical part of that effort,” he said.

As outlined in the law signed by Gov. Chris Christie last December, negotiations on the fate of the station must be completed by this week. The final deal then goes to the Legislature, which has 15 days to review and approve it. Officials hope to have the deal completed by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. The state is also expected to decide the fate of the network’s radio system by year’s end.

The decision on the successor to NJN is the last step in the 15month effort to spin off

the public broadcasting network from government control. Gov. Chris Christie first proposed the idea in March 2010, when he said the state could no longer afford to be in the TV business and keep NJN’s 130 employees on the state payroll. In 2009, the state spent more than $11 million to run the network of radio and television stations.

The fate of the network’s employees is unclear.

After a series of public hearings and months of closed-door dealings, Christie and the Legislature agreed on a bill that gave the state treasurer the right to negotiate the deal, which lawmakers have the right to refuse.

Working with Public Radio Capital, a public media consultant in Colorado, the state issued three requests for proposals in February seeking bidders to manage the television station and to either manage or buy the radio network. At an Assembly Budget Committee hearing in Trenton earlier this month, Treasurer Andrew SidamonEristoff said the state received 10 bids, but he would not disclose any names. He said the finalists are “entities that are incorporated or

Lawrence plans red light traffic cameras for busy Route 1 intersection

By JOSHUA ROSENAU LAWRENCE - The township is set to install the first red light surveillance system in Mercer County at the intersection of Route 1 and Bakers Basin and Franklin Corner Roads, giving police a powerful new tool to discourage redlight runners and hit thousands of commuters with fines.

The project is part of a pilot program that includes 48 intersections statewide, 30 of which already have systems installed,

according to the state Department of Transportation.

Lawrence is banking on predictions that its system will prevent accidents and improve safety while bringing in roughly $350,000 in revenue in the first year alone.

“Those red light systems across the state have produced thousands of dollars of fines from people running the red light. Not only is that a lot of money, but over time people get used to that, so safety is improved,” Councilwoman Pamela Mount said last week, after the council approved installation of the system.

The system will be part of the state’s Red Light Running Automated Enforcement pilot

program. Lawrence’s light is the only one planned for Mercer County so far.

Most of the systems are at 20 highly trafficked intersections in Newark, Camden, and Piscataway. In Newark, the program has been such a success the city is looking to add to the 10 installations already operating there, with three more under construction and 15 awaiting approval from DOT, said Jack Nata, manager of the city’s traffic and signals division.

The year before automated enforcement began, Newark police issued fewer than 10,000 citations for red light violations citywide, Nata said. After installation, the number soared nearly tenfold.

formed in New Jersey” and that the bidding process is on schedule.

The New Jersey Network Foundation and Montclair State University were two of the unsuccessful suitors. An MSU spokeswoman last week said the university had no comment because “to our knowledge the state has not made a final determination as to our proposal or any other.”

Calls to the NJN Foundation were not returned.

Three years ago, the NJN Foundation made

a similar proposal to move NJN from a statelicensed network to a community operation run by the nonprofit group. Faced with repeated cuts in government grants, foundation officials said a nonprofit structure would be more nimble and effective at raising private funds to support the network’s broadcasting.

The plan met fierce resistance from the union representing most of the network’s employees.

A skeptical Assembly

Near School 6, suspicious cargo examined by authorities

By TERRENCE T. McDONALD School 6 students had a bit of a scare yesterday, when a teacher’s assistant saw a “suspicious item” and notified authorities, who reportedly destroyed the item without incident, according to officials.

The assistant noticed a white van pull up to a blue SUV with New York license plates that was parked behind the school on Hopkins Avenue at about 11:45 a.m., according to Jersey City public schools spokeswoman Paula Christen.

A man exited the white van and opened the SUV, where the assistant saw a “computer with wires attached and cell phones attached,” Christen said. The man placed an item inside the SUV, re-entered the white van and left the scene, according to Christen.

Man slashed in street dispute

By DAVID KARAS TRENTON - A fight between two males resulted in one being sent to the emergency room with lacerations to the head, police said.

The assault took place just after 8 p.m. yesterday near the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Fountain Avenue.

Trenton Police Lt. David Cruz said that the injuries were not life threatening.

“We do know who the suspect is, so it’s (only) a matter of time before the suspect is taken into custody,” he said.”

A police officer put up crime scene tape at the scene as others stood by the victim, who was being treated inside an ambulance before being transported to the hospital.

The warm weather yesterday prompted many city residents to spend the day outside, and some gathered near the scene to try to catch a glimpse of what had happened.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

16

Halle Berry ‘X-Men’ prequel reenergizes a flagging franchise wins FiFi Award

By TODD MCCARTHY

By N. JAMIYLA CHISHOLM Halle Berry, famous for her stunning looks, pixie cut and bad bod, shows that at 44, she has it. To the delight of cameras and fans everywhere, Yahoo! reported Berry strutted her stuff in a black, oneshoulder Halston dress that showed more than it hid at the FiFi Awards in New York City.

The Academy Award-winning actress, who has three fragrances — “Reveal,” “Halle by Halle Berry” and “Pure Orchid” — took home the Fragrance Celebrity of the Year award for “Reveal.” The prestigious event, which is hosted by The Fragrance Foundation, took place under The Tent at Lincoln Center and honored a handful of celebrities who brought their creativity to the fragrance world. While Yahoo! quoted Berry as saying, “I truly believe that fragrance makes women feel beautiful and confident,” it was the missing midriff that stole stares and attention. Was anything less to be expected?

Also a big winner was Mary J. Blige who took home two awards.

LOS ANGELES — Much as “Casino Royale” rebooted the James Bond franchise in a fresh and dynamic way, “X-Men: First Class” injects new blood into a franchise that, for all its profitability, had become anemic.

In fact, roughly the first half of this massive and very well cast origins extravaganza is arguably the best hour of Marvel Comics-derived filmmaking that’s cascaded across screens in recent years. Audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy, the June 3 release is a surefire summer winner for a wide global audience.

The specter of Bond actually hovers over this British-flavored production in a number of ways, all of them beneficial: The 1962 setting shot through with Cold War tensions conjures up the political moment at which 007 was born cinematically, the hardware and style harken back to an earlier high-tech era that looks quaintly beguiling today and Michael Fassbender as Erik, the future Magneto, cuts a dashingly ruthless figure that can only have been patterned on Sean Connery.

Departing from the back story of the comics, the new yarn — devised

by Sheldon Turner and original “XMen” director Bryan Singer and written by “Thor” co-scenarists Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz along with Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn — pivots on an alluringly fanciful proposition, that the real events of the Cuban missile crisis had a shadow history involving manipulations by figures whose super powers put those of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to shame; it’s as if JFK, Khrushchev, Castro, the CIA and the combined armed forces of the East and West were mere puppets doing the bidding of unsuspected Olympian gods, the most spiteful of whom desire nothing less than human extermination.

Not inaptly, then, it all begins (as did Singer’s original 2000 “X-Men”) at Auschwitz, where young Erik, challenged to display his “magnetic” powers, sees his mother gunned down by the heinous camp doctor (Kevin Bacon), an event that dictates

Zoe Kravitz as Angel in “X-Men: First Class”. all his actions from then on. In the more benign setting of Westchester, New York, two kids, Charles and Raven, exhibit odd characteristics of their own that, nearly two decades later, will put them in the forefront of the mutant movement.

Like the most peripatetic of 1960s globe-hopping thrillers, the early stretch of “First Class” hardly stays put for more than a moment, jumping all over the world — Geneva, Oxford, Las Vegas, Argentina, Miami, Washington, D.C. — in the service of introducing an enormous number of characters and delineating their unique powers. Under the circumstances, Vaughn impressively maintains a strong focus dedicated to clarity and dramatic power; while Erik scours the world for stray Nazis (his confrontation with two of them in a tavern on the pampas is an early highlight), Charles (James McAvoy) achieves academic prominence and, with Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), is recruited by the CIA with the eventual aim of assembling a “Division of Mutant Powers.”

Even though a lot of the early material is set-up, it nevertheless develops surprising momentum and tension. The doctor Erik remembers from the concentration camp now resurfaces as Sebastian Shaw, who has developed an extraordinary capacity to absorb, harness and deploy energy, while his fabulously

sexy partner in crime, Emma Frost (January Jones), not only has extreme telepathic ability but possesses an optional indestructible diamond veneer. When Erik tracks them down on board their yacht and seems on the verge of fulfilling his vengeful 18-year quest, his quarry escape in a manner befitting the best of the Bonds.

Once the loner Erik decides to join forces with Charles under the auspices of an offbeat CIA honcho (Oliver Platt) and an adventurous agent (Rose Byrne), the film takes on more the air of a standard-issue Marvel effort as mutant youngsters are trained in hiding to master their unusual powers; they are Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Alex/Havoc (Lucas Till), Sean/Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Armondo/Darwin (Edi Gathegi) and, for a while, Angel (Zoe Kravitz). The problem here is not only familiarity but that, unlike the other characters, these kids seem resolutely 21st century, not early 1960s; one of them even says “whatever.” Another drawback, a likely victim of an overcrowded roster of characters, is that two swarthy henchmen of Shaw’s are not even given the benefit of an introduction, much less anything to play.

Still, once Emma Frost penetrates the inner sanctum of the Soviet miliContinued on page 17

Meagan Good joins ‘Californication’ cast LOS ANGELES — Actress Meagan Good has signed on for a role in the fifth season of U.S. dramedy series “Californication,” Showtime announced.

Good will be seen in eight episodes as Kali, a singer who “sparks a flame” in Hank, series star and executive producer David Duchovny. Kali also has a connection with her mentor, the hip-hop mogul played by recently announced guest star RZA, who hires Hank to

write the screenplay for his new film.

Production on the upcoming season of “Californication” began this month.

Good has had guest starring roles on TV series such as “My Wife & Kids,” “Kevin Hill,” “The Parent Hood,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Raising Dad.” Her film credits include “Stomp the Yard,” “The Unborn,” “Saw V” and “Roll Bounce.”

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

Tributes paid to Gil Scott-Heron Musicians and friends have been paying tribute to the poet and hip-hop pioneer Gil Scott-Heron, who has died at the age of 62.

Eminem, Talib Kweli and Snoop Dogg were among the rappers who acknowledged his influence after hearing the news.

Public Enemy member Chuck D said on Twitter: “We do what we do and how we do because of you.”

Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah wrote: “Salute Gil Scott-Heron for his wisdom and poetry! May he rest in paradise.”

Scott-Heron, often called the Godfather of Rap, died in a New York hospital.

His material spanned soul, jazz, blues and the spoken word. His 1970s work heavily influenced the US hiphop and rap scenes.

His work had a strong political element, and one of his most famous pieces was The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Eminem wrote on Twitter: “RIP Gil Scott-Heron. He influenced all of hiphop.”

Cee Lo Green paid tribute to “the god Gil Scott”, while Talib Kweli said he “completely influenced me as an artist”.

Politically outspoken rapper Michael Franti said Scott-Heron’s talent was his ability to “make us think about the world in a different way”.

He would make listeners “laugh hysterically about the ironies of American culture, anger at the hypocrisy of our political system, all to a beat that kept us on the dance floor, with a voice and flow that kept you waiting with anticipation for the next phrase”.

Richard Russell, who produced and released Scott-Heron’s final album I’m New Here in 2010, described him as “a master lyricist, singer, orator, and keyboard player”.

“Gil was not perfect in his own life,” Russell wrote. “But neither is anyone else. And he judged no-one.

“He had a fierce intelligence, and a way with words which was untouchable; an incredible sense of humour and a gentleness and humanity that was unique to him.

“Gil shunned all the trappings of fame and success. He could have had all those things. But he was greater than that.”

The musician’s publisher Jamie Byng remembered him as “a giant of a man, a truly inspirational figure whom I loved like a father and a brother”.

Scott-Heron infected people who encountered him with his “singularity of vision, his charismatic personality, his moral beauty and his willingness to take his fellow travellers through the full range of emotions”, Byng wrote.

“Throughout a magnificent musi-

‘X-Men’ prequel reenergizes franchise Continued on page 17

cal career, he helped people again and again, with his willingness and ability to articulate deep truths, through his eloquent attacks on injustices and by his enormous compassion for people’s pain.

“Hundreds of thousands of people saw Gil perform live over the decades, always with remarkable bands, and few came away untouched by his magnetism, humility, biting wit and warmth of spirit.”

Lemn Sissay, a friend of ScottHeron’s who produced a documentary on his work, told the BBC he was “a polymath” who “spoke crucially of the issues of his people”.

“In the late 60 and early 70s, Black poets were the news-givers, because their stories were not covered in truth in the mainstream media,” he said.

No let-up for perpetual music maker Quincy Jones

By ADAM TANNER RABAT — After a frenetic career as producer to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson and many other music legends, 78-year-old Quincy Jones refuses to slow down and has just signed up for a new project in the Arab world.

“I’m 78 and I’ve still got a lot of energy and I want to do what my dreams are, which is to see people come together across the barriers,” Jones told Reuters in the Moroccan capital Rabat where he appeared in the Mawazine music festival.

He scoffs at a question as to whether age and past medical woes, such as a serious cerebral aneurysm he suffered in 1974, might encourage him to ease up.

“Not at all. I’ll slow down when I die,” he said.

As a performer, Jones was already touring North Africa and other parts of the world in the 1950s with some of the biggest names of jazz including Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie.

He arranged Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” and produced Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” and the 1985 “We are the World” recording for African famine relief.

Watching the star-studded 1990 documentary “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” today, one is struck by

how many of the music legends linked to Jones have since died.

“Sinatra, Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald — all gone,” Jones said before adding the name of film director Sidney Lumet and others. “How do you think I feel? I’ve lost 188 friends, man, in less than 15 years.”

“It hurts,” the veteran producer, musician and arranger continued. “It just doesn’t stop.”

Doctors have long told Jones to reduce his workload. “I know, I don’t care. I like what I am doing,” he said.

Like a master jazz improviser able to draw on thousands of musical phrases, Jones, with the slightest association, is well prepared to roll out a remarkable array of genial anecdotes about a lifetime of adventures with music legends.

A mention of Italy prompts him to show off his much cherished ring from Frank Sinatra. India sparks him to tell of meeting sitarist Ravi Shankar in 1956, after which he recalls that Shankar is father to singer Norah Jones.

A reference to Serbia inspires him to show off a few words in Serbian, including one off-color one that causes him much amusement.

In one of his latest projects, Jones, who has won 27 Grammy Awards, has launched a joint venture to promote music in North Africa and the Middle East in which musicians from

17

different cultures will work together.

They are also recording a new song to raise funds for regional scholarships.

A musician from the besieged Libyan town of Misrata made a visit to Rabat this week for the project. On Sunday, Jones was also set to appear at a memorial concert in Marrakesh after an attack there killed 17 people a month ago.

“More and more when you get older you do exactly what you believe in with the people that you love and trust and admire,” he told Reuters.

“That’s where I am now, which allows me to do what I feel and give back what I feel, whatever I want to do.”

Jones says he feels an affinity for Arabs as they have often suffered from prejudice like American Blacks.

“People have preconceived concepts of you just on your appearance.

That’s sad,” he said. “My two least favorite words are ‘you people.” I hate that word.”

“All the things I did, they said you were the first. That means only,” he said. “Like first Black (vice) president of a record company or the first one to produce the Oscars.”

As a musician, Jones has frequently changed with the times, from bebop and big band jazz earlier in his career to pop and hip-hop later on. He is hoping evolving medical technology will enable him to stay involved for many more years.

Edi Gathegi as Darwin in “XMen: First Class”. tary and the enormity of Shaw’s scheme becomes clear, the film takes off again with a fantastical rendition of an American/Soviet naval confrontation off Cuba trumped by the manipulative antics of battling telepathic mutants on board an ultra-futuristic plane and a stealth submarine.

Vaughn orchestrates the mayhem with a laudable coherence, a task made easier by a charging, churning score by Henry Jackman that, much as that of his mentor Hans Zimmer did in “Inception,” helps smooth the connections among rapidly changing locations and events. A few of the effects in the climactic section don’t quite measure up, but the visual effects by veteran wizard John Dykstra are mostly terrific. Top-drawer contributions are also delivered by production designer Chris Seagers, costume designer Sammy Sheldon and cinematographer John Mathieson.

The cast is almost absurdly easy on the eyes and is most powerful at the top, thanks to the intense Fassbender, who will now need no audition if Daniel Craig decides to give up Bond after another picture or two. McAvoy is forced to spend a bit too much time with his hand to head summoning telepathic signals but nonetheless conveys the intelligence and sobriety required for the future Professor X. Bacon is formidable as the former Nazi who aspires to far greater power than Hitler could ever dream of, while Jones dazzlingly projects the arrogance of maximum beauty and invulnerability. As the naturally blue-skinned, red-haired and yellow-eyed Raven/Mystique, Lawrence is at her most appealing when conveying an ashamed insecurity about her natural looks, which she can conceal with a human facade. A vulgar cameo by a certain hirsute character provides a hearty laugh.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

18

Gasoline prices erode spending, incomes

By LUCIA MUTIKANI WASHINGTON — The economy remained sluggish early in the second quarter as high gasoline prices crimped consumer spending and bad weather helped push pending home sales to a seven-month low in April.

Consumer spending increased 0.4 percent for a 10th straight month of gains, the Commerce Department said on Friday, after rising 0.5 percent in March.

But prices rose 0.3 percent, leaving spending up just 0.1 percent and incomes stagnant when adjusted for inflation.

Tornadoes and floods, which lashed parts of the country last month, were blamed in part for an 11.6 percent plunge in contracts to buy previously owned homes last month.

“We see the soft patch of the first quarter bleeding, at least, into the first half of the second quarter,” said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh.

“We will see again a consumer that can keep pace with the economy, but cannot drive the economy forward.”

Recent data including retail sales and industrial output have been soft, prompting economists to lower their growth forecasts for the second quarter. Further cuts are likely next week should May auto sales come in very weak.

Second-quarter gross domestic product forecasts are currently ranging between a 2.5 percent and 3 percent rate.

The government reported on Thursday that consumer spending — which accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity — grew at a tepid 2.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter, slowing from a 4 percent clip in the final three months of 2010.

That contributed to holding back overall economic growth to a 1.8 percent pace during the quarter after a 3.1 percent rate in the OctoberDecember period.

With much of the slowdown attributed to what policymakers see as temporary factors, such as high com-

modity prices and supply chain disruptions because of the earthquake in Japan, the Federal Reserve is not expected to worry too much about the pace of recovery.

The central bank is expected to keep its ultra-easy monetary stance after it wraps up its $600 billion government bond-buying program in June before it start looking at ways to withdraw some of the stimulus it has lent the economy.

U.S. financial markets were little moved on the data.

Stocks rose, while government debt prices fell modestly. The dollar fell against a basket of currencies.

The high gasoline prices swallowed almost all the increase in incomes from U.S. tax cuts enacted in December.

Economists worry that stagnant incomes — which have failed to keep up with inflation — will continue to impede spending even though prices at the fuel pump are starting to fall.

So far, consumers have resorted to saving less and some are tapping into their savings to maintain spending. Incomes rose 0.4 percent

last month, but disposable incomes adjusted for inflation were flat for a second straight month.

Real incomes have not grown this year and the saving rate stayed at a 2-1/2 year low of 4.9 percent in April.

According to the Commerce Department’s chief economist, Mark Doms, Americans saved $82 less over the past four months.

“Consumers have dipped into savings in order to make it through this challenging environment,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

“Just as consumers used savings to smooth through the energy price spike on the upside, any move to rebuild saving in the wake of easing gas prices could soften the lift to what otherwise should be a very stimulative development.”

The retreating gasoline price helped to lift consumer spirits this month and dial down their inflation expectations.

The final version of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed senti-

ment among Americans rose this month to 74.3 from 72.4 in the preliminary May reading.

The survey’s one-year inflation outlook fell to 4.1 percent from 4.4 percent in April, while expectations for the next five years dipped to 2.9 percent from 3.0 percent.

The national price for regular unleaded gasoline prices slipped to $3.90 a gallon in the week through Monday, according to the Energy Information Administration, after peaking just above $4 a gallon early in the month.

This is giving some economists a reason to be optimistic.

“We are optimistic that the recent easing of gas prices — if it continues — will provide a tailwind to consumption in the coming months,” said Joseph LaVorgna, U.S. chief economist at Deutsche Bank in New York.

High gasoline prices pushed up the year-on-year inflation rate to 2.2 percent, the biggest rise in a year, after increasing 1.8 percent in March.

Excluding food and energy, prices increased 1 percent, the largest gain since September, after rising 0.9 percent in March. Fed officials would like this measure close to 2 percent.

ARM to ‘take seriously’ any Intel plan to make chips for rivals

By CLARE JIM and ARGIN CHANG TAIPEI — British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc, which licenses its chip technology to other makers, will take any plan by Intel Corp to make chips for rivals “very seriously,” a top executive said on Monday.

Intel said last week it would consider making chips for rivals, a move that might help it gain bigger access to the mobile device realm and pose a threat to ARM’s current dominance in the tablet and smartphones sector.

“It’s important that Intel makes a change in their business model. Intel has never done this before, so we have to take it very seriously,” ARM’s marketing executive vice president Ian Drew told Reuters in an interview ahead of the Computex computer show in Taipei.

Intel views its massive lead in manufacturing know-how as a key asset and opening its factories up to competitors would be a major shift for the industry.

Intel noted that it would

be happy to produce chip cores based on its own architecture for other companies but that allowing rival architectures to be manufactured in its plants would be “a tough decision.”

Drew said he believes ARM’s business model has less restrictions than Intel’s, and the company is confident in keeping its current market shares of 80 percent in tablets and 90 percent in smartphones.

ARM has been far ahead of Intel in the red-hot mobile

arena and its chips are the industry standard for Apple’s mobile gadgets and other devices running Google’s Android operating system.

ARM’s power-sipping architecture is used in processors produced by Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Samsung Electronics.

Underscoring ARM’s dominance, Microsoft, previously faithful to Intel’s x86 chip architecture, said in January it would configure

its Windows software for ARM chips, in recognition that tablets were eroding growth in its PC stronghold.

ARM’s President Tudor Brown told a media conference earlier on Monday that the company will still focus on mobile devices.

“Traditional PC chips only accounted for 6 percent of our whole PC chip shipments of 6 billion units last year,” Brown said.

“The contribution will still be less than 10 percent in the future.”

Brown also said the company aims to lift its market share in the tablet sector to 15 percent by the end of 2011 and over 50 percent in 2015 from 10 percent now.

ARM currently has over 200 licensing partners, including seven in China and 15 in Taiwan.

The British company has over 100 staff in Asia, including Japan but excluding India, and plans to add around 20 more within the next year, according to Drew.

BP spill fund winding down after $4 billion paid out LONDON — The fund BP set up to deal with compensation claims after 2010’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill is starting to wind down after paying out around $4 billion of the $20 billion set aside by the oil firm, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The newspaper said Ken Feinberg, the lawyer in charge of the fund, had processed more than 80 percent of the claims submitted by those who suffered economically following the Deepwater Horizon accident, and so far used just over $4

billion.

“I don’t envision a flood of new claims,” the paper quotes Feinberg as saying.

Eight regional offices had been closed, it added.

The oil major established the fund last June for vic-

tims such as fishermen and property owners.

In an interview with Reuters in April, Feinberg said the fund was “working as intended,” though some local officials and advocacy groups alleged that the money was being distributed slowly and unfairly.

BP has estimated that the total cost of capping the well, cleaning up the damage from America’s largestever offshore oil spill and compensating those affected will be more than $41 billion, including fines.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

Nervous investors to seek bigger returns

By EDWARD KRUDY The world looks a lot more dangerous than it did only a few months ago and signs are that U.S. stock investors are starting to demand more for the added risk.

With important manufacturing and jobs data due this week, it could start to get even riskier.

That means nervous investors are likely to keep a lid on equity prices this year as they grapple with slowing global growth and a host of geopolitical risks from the Arab Spring to debt defaults in the euro zone.

The actions of some big Wall Street banks best show the shift in the risk-reward nexus. Over the last two weeks, UBS, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have effectively lowered their view of what investors will be willing to pay for a dollar of corporate earnings this year.

Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at UBS in New York, made the decision to keep his S&P 500 Index target on hold, even though he increased his expectations

of what S&P 500 companies would likely earn this year and next.

“Earnings are going to continue to surprise to the upside, but investors will continue to be reluctant to believe in the sustainability of earnings and, therefore, not give full credit to that,” Golub said.

Golub raised his average S&P 500 earnings estimate to $101 from $96 for this year, but left his year-end S&P 500 target at 1,425. By doing that, Golub has effectively lowered his price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio — the amount investors are willing to pay for a dollar of earnings — to 14.1 from 14.8.

That amounts to an increase in the expected equity yield — a measure of the return investors want — to 7.1 percent from 6.8 percent.

That is significant because the expected price-to-earnings ratio was already below what investors have historically been willing to pay for S&P 500 earnings. The average trailing P/E ratio is 15.6 over the last five years and 19.2 since 1988, according to Standard & Poor’s.

Golub argues that a batch

of weak economic data pointing to slowing manufacturing, a weak housing market and stubbornly high unemployment is weighing on investor sentiment. Weakness in commodity markets and rotation into defensive sectors of the stock market testify to that shift.

With this week’s ISM national manufacturing survey for May expected to show more weakness and payroll data tipped to show fewer than 200,000 jobs added during the month, risk aversion — driven by fear about the economy — could get worse before it gets better.

Goldman Sachs economist Zach Pandl said his firm is predicting 150,000 jobs were added in May, compared with a Reuters consensus of 185,000.

An ISM reading below 60 on Wednesday would show “the strongest period of growth has passed and investors may need to adjust their expectations going forward,” said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

Economists in a Reuters poll expect the ISM reading

to fall to 58 in May from 60.4 in April.

Goldman Sachs has also been tweaking its stocks outlook. It cut its year-end S&P 500 target, one of the highest on the Street, to 1,450 from 1,500, and lowered its 2012 earnings outlook to $104 to $106, citing lower global growth, higher commodity prices and slightly higher inflation.

Goldman analyst David Kostin, who is responsible for the S&P 500 target, was unavailable for an interview.

However Goldman’s analysts wrote: “As we transition into the late expansion phase of the cycle later this year, the risk-reward balance for the S&P 500 is likely to become slightly less attractive.”

Citigroup also slightly increased its earnings estimates for S&P 500 companies, lifting its 2011 forecast to $98 from $96.50.

Although that is admittedly only a small increase in the earnings estimate, Citigroup chose to leave its S&P 500 target at 1,400.

Tobias Levkovich, Citigroup’s chief U.S. equity strategist, could not be

19

reached for a comment.

The targets for all three banks are still at the upper end of analysts’ estimates and are 5 percent to 8 percent above current levels.

Even if the index does get up to those levels later this year, those gains are slight compared with the nearly 80 percent run the S&P 500 has experienced since hitting a bear market low in March 2009.

For people like Bill Strazzullo, partner and chief investment strategist at Bell Curve Trading in Boston, that means the risks are firmly on the downside.

“The good news is there’s some upside. The bad news is that you’ve probably made about 80 (percent) to 90 percent of this rally,” Strazzullo said. “From a ‘bigger picture’ standpoint, the risk-reward really doesn’t make sense.”

Strazzullo believes the S&P 500 will revert toward fair value, which he places at 1,100, based on where most of the money in the S&P 500 is invested. He is looking at some longer-term bearish options trades to capitalize on the end of the March 2009 rally.

“I’m not saying we’ll go all the way back there, but the point is, you could drop a lot further than most people anticipate.”

Lockheed’s cyber cops sift through hacker evidence

By ANDREA SHALAL-ESA WASHINGTON — Last week’s attack on Lockheed Martin Corp’s computer networks has galvanized dozens of cyber “detectives” at the company’s cavernous security intelligence center outside Washington.

The U.S. government and Lockheed, the world’s biggest military contractor and the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier, have said the unknown hackers did not seize any sensitive information in the May 21 attack, but government and industry experts are still working feverishly to isolate the origins of the attack.

Lockheed, which is also the U.S. government’s biggest information technology provider, opened the 25,000square-foot, $17 million center in 2008. It opened a sister site in Denver last year to help deal with the growing workload and take over if the main center is knocked off line.

Dozens of highly trained analysts work at the center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where green plants and a Feng Shui-styled decor beck-

on visitors to a public collaboration space that looks like a high-tech university campus.

The real work, though, goes on in a large, dimly lit internal security center only open to critical personnel.

Flickering wall-sized flat screens continuously update activity on Lockheed’s mammoth worldwide computer network while monitoring data transmissions by 126,000 employees and outsiders trying to get access to the system.

A Defense Department spokeswoman, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham, said on Saturday that the Pentagon was working with Lockheed to gauge the scope of the attack.

Some top defense officials were on site last week to assess the wider impact, a defense official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters on Thursday.

Just two weeks ago, Lockheed advertised for a “lead computer forensic examiner” for the center, saying it needed someone who could work in a fast paced environment, understood “attack signatures, tactics, techniques and procedures associated with

advanced threats,” and was able to “reverse engineer attacker encoding protocols.”

Lockheed builds advanced satellites, fighter jets and warships for the U.S. military, but also provides information technology services to the Justice Department, Federal Aviation Administration, Social Security Administration, and other federal agencies. It even ran the latest U.S. national census, which is only conducted once a decade, for the government.

Seeking to recruit the best cyber analysts on the market, Lockheed last year released a YouTube video, which portrays the cyber security problem as a complex chess match, or a sophisticated war game, between U.S. government and industry on one side, and a host of smart attackers from nation states and criminal groups on the other.

“It is a cat-and mouse game between the two sides,” Eric Hutchins, a Lockheed cyber intelligence analyst, told Reuters during a visit to the center in March 2010.

“They’re constantly trying to develop new ways of attacking us and we’re constantly

trying to develop new ways of defending us.”

Hitchens said Lockheed analysts processed 1 million “incidents” a day, sorting through the “white noise” to identify possible attacks and likely targets.

Another analyst featured in the Lockheed video compared his work to that of “CSIstyle” detectives in reference to crime scene investigators who focus on forensic evidence and have been popularized by the CSI group of TV shows. “We go right to the

scene of the crime and we look for evidence of the attack,” he said.

It says they use techniques far beyond anything available in the wider commercial world.

The video makes the center seem like it is out of a movie like “Minority Report”, describing hackers as “adversaries,” “the enemy” or “bad guys” whose onslaught needs to be repelled. It ends with a flourish as one forensic analyst declares: “This is the fight we fight.”

Honda decides to suspend share buybacks after quake TOKYO — Honda Motor said it has decided to suspend share buybacks temporarily to preserve funds after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The automaker has said it is aiming for an annual shareholder return of about 30 percent, and its planned dividend of 54 yen per share and share buybacks done

last year would bring the return to a little over 20 percent for the year ended in March.

The firm had been expected to carry out additional share repurchases to meet the target, but a company spokeswoman said it decided to put this on hold due to the need for cash to repair facilities damaged by the disaster.

20

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011 #

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

21

NFL sees no need to open books to players: Goodell

By GENE CHERRY RALEIGH, North Carolina — The NFL has no plans to open its financial books to the players despite frequent Commissioner requests, Roger Goodell said.

The players say the information is needed to evaluate comments by the league that its non-player costs have increased significantly.

But Goodell said that is not going to solve the labor dispute that is threatening the 2011 season for America’s most popular professional sport.

“We saw it frankly in the NBA where there were socalled ‘open books’ for the last two years and a filing earlier this week with the

NLRB said there was not enough financial disclosure,” he told Tennessee Titan fans in a telephone chat on Thursday night.

Goodell was referring to an unfair labor practice charge against the NBA that the NBA Players Association filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

The union accused the NBA of making harsh and regressive demands, a charge the NBA denied.

Goodell said the NFL does not need to open its books for the players to have full knowledge of the economic situation of the league.

“They understand that costs are rising faster than the revenues,” he said. “They have our revenue down to a penny.”

Owners originally asked for an extra billion dollars off the top of league revenue to help finance new stadiums and other needs. The figure was later reduced during bargaining sessions.

The league currently receives $1 billion before the $9 billion in annual revenue is divided with the players.

The players’ stake topped 50 percent under the previous collective bargaining agreement, but would decrease if owners’ take increases.

Goodell said a March proposal by the owners would slightly increase player compensation from 2010 to 2011 with a 14 percent increase coming over the next three years.

How to divide the money is a major roadblock in

resolving the labor dispute, which has resulted in the owners locking out the players for more than 70 days.

The lockout, which forbids contact between players and teams, began on March 12, a day after bargaining talks broke down and the players union, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), decertified.

Nine players then filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league, resulting in several court decisions and mediation sessions.

The feuding parties will be back in court on June 3 for a hearing on the legality of the lockout.

Among the groups siding with the players in the case is the NFL Coaches Association.

“Coaches are already experiencing hardship from the NFL’s lockout and are vulnerable to irreparable injury if league operations are suspended for a significant period of time,” the group said in a brief filed with the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But Goodell downplayed the filing.

“The Coaches Association is housed in the NFLPA building,” he said. “They are funded by the NFLPA.” Goodell said the league did not have a “drop-dead date” for canceling events but said earlier this week the time was fast approaching when decisions needed to be made.

He admitted the league had contingency plans but did not elaborate.

Jets’ defensive linemen plan drills, workouts The Jets’ defensive linemen have been lifting weights and running while the NFL’s labor dispute drags on. Well, now they’re ready to hit something.

Sione Pouha and Mike DeVito told The Associated Press on Saturday they plan to gather in New Jersey sometime next week with the team’s other defensive linemen, including Ropati

Pitoitua and possibly firstround pick Muhammad Wilkerson and third-rounder Kenrick Ellis.

“We were talking and it was like, ‘Dude, we’ve got to put something together,’” Pouha said. “All of us have been lifting and running and working out. That’s one thing. Doing actual drills, making blocking reads and punching sled bags, well,

that’s another thing.”

The players have made arrangements to bring in blocking sleds and add the physical element they’ve been missing in the absence of organized team activities because of the lockout. They also might review defensive plays from last season and reacquaint themselves with one another.

“It’s great to get together as

a unit,” DeVito said, “so that we can start working together, getting our rhythm and timing right and to work that unity that is so important to have if you want a great defensive line.”

Quarterback Mark Sanchez gathered several offensive players in Southern California earlier this month for his “Jets West” camp, and recently said the entire team expects

to work out together in June if the lockout continues.

Pouha said no specific plans had been made yet in terms of gathering the entire team.

“I’m sure Mark will let all of us know,” he said. “But in terms of the D-line, that’s our plan, to get together. Nothing like an OTA, but to work on drills and get that fusion as a unit.”

to stop organized animal fighting and had a Pro Bowl season for the Eagles after taking over as the starting quarterback last fall.

“I’ve come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street,” Vick said in April in a statement posted on the Humane Society’s website following the release of an application for Android phones that featured dog-

fighting.

“Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app.”

Eagles media representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Vick on the house sale.

Vick dogfighting compound bought NORFOLK, Va. — An animal rights group bought NFL star Michael Vick’s former dogfighting compound on Friday and plans to turn it into a rehabilitation center for chained and penned dogs.

Vick pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and served 18 months in prison for running Bad Newz Kennels from the property, which led him to financial ruin. He eventually sold the Surry County property to a developer who had difficulty unloading it following Vick’s conviction.

Dogs Deserve Better of Tipton, Pa., bought the five bedroom home for about $600,000.

“I think by us overtaking this property we are winning for the dogs. We are, in essence, giving this property back to the dogs that were

abused there by using it to help other dogs just like them,” said Tamira Thayne, the group’s founder.

The organization paid for the house with a 30 percent down payment secured through donations and a loan. An anonymous donor has agreed to make payments for the next 10 years, but Thayne said fundraising will continue.

Ultimately, the group wants to raise $3 million to fully pay for the site, install fencing and build a facility for the dogs. The house will serve as the group’s new headquarters and Thayne said she or another staff member will live there to monitor the dogs.

The home has four and a half bathrooms, two fireplaces, cathedral ceilings, walk-in closets and an attached, two-car garage.

Thayne said she has not had any contact with Vick but has been told a filmmaker wants to take Vick back to the property where the dogfighting has occurred.

Thayne said she isn’t sure what she would say to him if he visited.

“I would like to see that he’s really remorseful and I personally don’t feel that I’ve seen that because actions speak louder than words,” she said. “I haven’t seen him really put effort into making amends.”

The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in August 2009, less than a month after his release, prompting an outcry from animal rights groups and animal-loving football fans.

Vick has since started working with the Humane Society of the United States

22

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

Miami and Dallas promise a classic NBA final

By SIMON EVANS MIAMI — The most impressive player of the NBA playoffs comes up against the most scrutinized trio in professional basketball when Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks take on the Miami Heat in the NBA finals tonight.

The best-of-seven series is a repeat of the 2006 finals, which Miami won, coming back from 2-0 down and trailing by 12 points with five minutes left in game three, a bitter experience that Dallas found hard to stomach.

This is a tougher, more resilient and more experienced Mavericks team, who showed their class by sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the playoffs, while the Heat lineup is a very different one indeed from the team that triumphed five years ago.

Only Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem remain on the Heat roster from 2006 with two-time league MVP LeBron James and six-times All Star Chris Bosh making up the much-vaunted ‘Big Three’ with Wade.

While Wade struggled at times in the Eastern Confer-

Jason Kidd (L) and Dirk Nowitzki ence series with the Chicago Bulls, the bumps and bruises of a long season having taken their toll, he has made big plays went it has mattered down the stretch.

Bosh is the most underrated of the trio and initially found the whole adjustment to a new ‘shared’ way of playing to be a tough one, but he has shown his value in the post-season.

It was James’ decision to move to Miami when he became a free agent last year, that sparked such a huge debate about the appropriateness of one team assembling so much expensive talent on one roster.

James went on television to famously announce that he was leaving Cleveland

and, as he put it, “taking my talents to South Beach” and although he has since apologized for the way he handled his exit from Ohio, there are still some who have yet to get over his move.

James has shown his value on both sides of the ball and has matured into his new role in Miami which he describes as being a ‘facilitator’ as much as a finisher.

Nonetheless, despite his all-round contribution, James still made 25.9 points per game in the playoffs and is the number one threat facing the Mavericks. The former Cleveland favorite is arguably the reason why the Heat have been able to produce late shows such as

Dwyane Wade (L) and LeBron James their remarkable comeback against the Bulls in game five.

Dallas are burning with a desire to avenge that bitter loss in 2006 even though their record since against Miami has been one of total domination, winning all ten meetings of the two teams, including both games this regular season.

Towering German Nowitzki, who stands 7-foot, has been in great form during the playoffs, averaging 28.4 points a game and has been close to automatic from the free throw line.

Nowitzki has sunk baskets from all over the court and there is no obvious candidate on the Heat roster to reduce his effectiveness,

with coach Erik Spoelstra likely to look to doubleteaming the German.

While Nowitzki’s performances in the post-season have drawn the attention, not surprisingly given he twice made 40 points in the 4-1 series win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, of Jason Kidd, the Mavericks’ 38-year-old point guard, has defied his years with some excellent contributions.

Tyson Chandler showed in the regular season that he could keep the Heat away from easy baskets while Jason Terry’s contributions from the bench will again be vital.

Whatever happens, if the playoffs are any guide, it won’t be dull.

Cavs eye trade to add 2nd pick Lakers regret not talking

By CHRIS BROUSSARD Already owners of the No. 1 pick in the draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers are trying to sweeten their position by securing the second pick as well, according to league sources.

The Cavaliers are in discussions with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Detroit Pistons about a three-team trade that would give Cleveland the top two picks of next month’s NBA draft.

The Cavaliers would use the picks to select Duke point guard Kyrie Irving and Arizona forward Derrick Williams, the sources said.

In the trade being discussed, Cleveland would absorb Detroit’s Richard Hamilton into the $14.6 million trade exception it received in last summer’s LeBron James sign-and-trade with

Miami, while also receiving the Pistons’ No. 8 pick. The Cavaliers would then send that pick, along with their fourth pick, to Minnesota for the Timberwolves’ second pick.

Cleveland would then buy Hamilton out of the $25 million remaining in the last two years on his contract, leaving the veteran shooting guard free to sign with another club as a free agent. Chicago would be one of the likeliest destinations.

Sources say, however, that Detroit will not consummate the trade as proposed without receiving players in return.

The Pistons no longer view Hamilton’s contract as an albatross with a lockout potentially knocking off one of the remaining two years on his deal.

Cleveland nearly traded for Hamilton at the February trade deadline with the inten-

tion of buying him out. In that scenario, Hamilton would have signed with Chicago after the buyout. The motivation for Detroit, which has been looking to move Hamilton for years, is mainly financial.

Whether the trade comes to fruition or not, the Cavaliers are all but certain to use the No. 1 pick on Irving, a favorite of the team’s front office. The club’s owner, Dan Gilbert, is a huge fan of Williams and sees him and Irving as building blocks for the future.

While one of the Cavaliers’ greatest needs is at small forward, Williams, though viewed as a ‘tweener, is seen by most league executives as a power forward. If the Cavs draft Williams and determine that he can’t play small forward, they may deal power forward J.J. Hickson, who has good value on the trade market.

Brown hire with Kobe Jim Buss, Los Angeles Lakers executive and son of owner Dr. Jerry Buss, says he regrets not talking to Kobe Bryant about the decision to hire Mike Brown as Phil Jackson’s successor.

“Looking back on it, we should have contacted Kobe,” Jim Buss said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that ran Saturday night.

“Kobe said it was management’s job to pick a coach. He just said, ‘Defense first.’

That’s what we were doing, but we should have reached out to him.”

Bryant had previously endorsed longtime Jackson assistant Brian Shaw to be promoted to the head-coaching job. The Lakers struck an agreement with Brown on Wednesday, and sources told ESPNLosAngeles.com’s Dave

McMenamin that Bryant has great respect for Brown and is on board with the hiring, despite not being consulted about the choice.

During an interview on ESPN during halftime of Game 5 of the Western Conference finals on Wednesday, Brown said he already had exchanged text messages with Bryant. Brown also said he’s “looking forward to getting to know Kobe and being able to work with him to go and get us a championship.”

Buss was unconcerned about the possibility that Brown wouldn’t be able to corral Bryant’s talents for the good of the team.

The Lakers’ bid for a threepeat ended unceremoniously when the Dallas Mavericks swept them in the Western Conference semifinals.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

23

Bernard Hopkins’ first defense in works

By DAN RAFAEL New light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who made history by outpointing Jean Pascal in their rematch to become the oldest fighter in boxing history to win a world title at age 46, is wasting no time setting up his first defense.

Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, Hopkins’ promoter, and Gary Shaw, who promotes mandatory challenger and former titleholder Chad Dawson, began negotiating the fight last week, they both told ESPN.com.

“Richard called me and said he wanted to discuss making the fight and I was excited because we were on the same page,” Shaw said.

“We talked about places we could do the fight, but we want to do the fight wherever we can make the most money. He agreed.

“We said we would both get on the phone with HBO on Monday and try to lock in a date. We basically have our deal done. We agreed to a split (of the revenue) and we

agreed to a deal in concept.”

Dawson outpointed former titlist Adrian Diaconu on Saturday’s undercard to earn the title shot against whomever won the main event. That was Hopkins, who Dawson has been chasing for the past couple of years.

Dawson’s only defeat came last August in Montreal via an 11th-round technical decision to Pascal. Dawson had the contractual option for a rematch in the event he lost, but Pascal was allowed to first take an interim bout.

He took it against Hopkins in December and they fought to the draw.

In order to allow Pascal and Hopkins to fight again, Dawson (30-1, 17 KOs) and Shaw stepped aside. But under the terms of the deal, Dawson, 28, of New Haven, Conn., was guaranteed a fight with the winner as long as he won his undercard fight with Diaconu.

Those hurdles are clear now and the camps are working on the fight, which would take place in the fall at a site to be determined.

“The reason why the (Hopkins-Pascal) rematch happened is because Gary and Chad were supportive,” Schaefer said. “They could have made a stink about it but they didn’t. It was a very tricky negotiation in order to get Bernard the rematch with Pascal. Now Dawson deserves his shot.

“Gary and me had conversations before to work things out so Bernard could get the rematch with Pascal. All of those discussions should

make it easy to get things into motion and get the fight between Bernard and Dawson done. I am very positive it will happen. It’s the fight Bernard wants and the fight Chad wants. So Gary and me are talking about it.”

Schaefer said several sites are interested in hosting the bout.

“I got a call (Wednesday) from (a venue in) Las Vegas and they are interested.

(Thursday) I had lunch with the people from the Staples Center (in Los Angeles) and they are interested as well,” Schaefer said. “I have talked to (Pascal promoter) Yvon Michel about going back to Canada. Atlantic City is interested as well. There is a tremendous buzz about Bernard Hopkins after he did what he did. The big rating HBO did means millions of people saw Bernard in one of his best performances.

People want to see Bernard back.”

HBO reported this week that the live telecast of Hopkins-Pascal II drew 1.8 million viewers, making it the network’s most-watched

fight since the 2009 heavyweight title bout between Vitali Klitschko and Cristobal Arreola.

Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KOs), now in his second reign as light heavyweight champion, is enjoying a victory lap after going to Pascal’s hometown of Montreal and scoring the historical victory. He is visiting ESPN headquarters in Bristol on Friday to make various appearances, including as the studio guest for ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.”

On Wednesday in Hopkins’ hometown of Philadelphia, mayor Michael Nutter will honor him with a noon public ceremony at the famous “Rocky” statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Even though Hopkins has been busy making the media rounds since breaking George Foreman’s record as the oldest fighter to win a title, he also was thinking about the impending fight with Dawson.

“I have to honor my agreement with Chad first,” he said of potential fights. “It’s me and him next.”

FIFA hit by ‘bought’ World Cup claim

By MIKE COLLETT ZURICH — Accusations that Qatar bought the right to stage the 2022 World Cup deepened the corruption crisis at the heart of FIFA on Monday just as an apparently unscathed Sepp Blatter prepared to claim another term as president.

World soccer’s governing body has been beset by accusations of bribery involving members of its inner circle of executive committee members ever since the vote to decide the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups took place in Zurich last December.

On Monday, the allegation that Qatar paid members for their votes sprang from the top, as a leaked email from the organization’s general secretary Jerome Valcke making the claim was confirmed as genuine.

It came just two days before FIFA delegates are due to vote in the presidential election, with the 75-year-old Swiss Blatter now the only candidate and poised to extend his

13-year spell at the head of the world’s richest and most popular sport.

The email, shown to Reuters by FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, referred to Qatar’s Mohamed bin Hammam, who was at that time a candidate to stand against Blatter in the presidential election.

“For MBH, I never understood why he was running,” Warner quoted the email from Valcke as saying. “If really he thought he had a chance or just being an extreme way to express how much he does not like anymore JSB (Blatter).

“Or he thought you can buy FIFA as they bought the WC (World Cup).”

Qatar denied the allegation while Bin Hammam said he had no idea why Valcke had made such a claim, which followed a steady drip of accusations about senior FIFA executives.

In total, 10 of the 24 members of the executive committee have been subject to allegations of corruption in the last year and yet Blatter

appears to have been untouched by the controversy and calls for reform.

Blatter was cleared by a FIFA ethics committee on Sunday, while Bin Hammam, who had earlier pulled out of the election campaign, and Warner were provisionally suspended.

Blatter will now run unopposed in Wednesday’s vote and can expect to win a fourth term at the head of an organization he has run since 1998, during which time it has become wealthy on the back of TV rights and sponsorship.

Blatter, who will address a news conference at 1600 GMT, has recently sought to distance himself from his executive committee, whose members are elected by their respective confederations rather than from within FIFA itself.

“I have no influence and I cannot take any responsibility,” he said during the election campaign. “They have their own character and own conscience.”

Blatter has faced down challenges to his position

before, notably in 2002 when secretary general Michel ZenRuffinen claimed his 1998 election victory was based on bribery and corruption.

Blatter subsequently won re-election and Zen-Ruffinen was soon out of a job.

Five years later, he was elected unopposed for a third term. While the last six months have been the most turbulent of his reign, he is on course to get the fourth term he said during the campaign would be his last.

The recent problems stem from last year’s World Cup votes, when Russia saw off opposition from England and joint-bids from NetherlandsBelgium and Spain-Portugal for 2018 and Qatar got the 2022 nod over Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

On Monday, an Australian senator demanded a refund from FIFA on the $48.8 million the country spent on its bid for the 2022 World Cup. The fear now for Qatar would be any sustained calls for the vote to be re-run.

Bin Hammam, who will not

be allowed to attend the FIFA congress because of his suspension, dismissed the allegation that he had handed over money in exchange for votes.

“You would have to ask Jerome Valcke what he was thinking,” he told the BBC. “If I was paying money from Qatar you would also have to ask the 13 people who voted for Qatar.”

Valcke told reporters in Zurich on Monday he did send the email but that Warner had only published selected parts of it.

Earlier this month, Qatar’s World Cup bid team strongly denied allegations, made by a British member of parliament, that it had paid two executive committee members to vote for the Gulf nation.

Questioned by reporters on Sunday, Valcke agreed that FIFA was facing “a watershed moment,” drawing comparisons with the International Olympic Committee’s crisis when IOC delegates were found guilty of taking bribes for votes to award the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City.

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011

MIAMI, DALLAS PROMISE A CLASSIC NBA FINAL

The most impressive player of the NBA playoffs Dallas Mavericks take on the Miami Heat in the comes up against the most scrutinized trio in pro- NBA finals tonight. fessional basketball when Dirk Nowitzki and the SEE PAGE 22.

BERNARD HOPKINSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; FIRST DEFENSE IN WORKS New light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who made history by outpointing Jean Pascal in their rematch to become the oldest fighter in boxing history to win a world title at age 46, is wasting no time setting up his first defense.

SEE PAGE 23.