Daily Challenge 9-14-11

U.S. ATTACK THREAT REMAINS UNCORROBORATED - PG. 2 NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

THE NATION’S ONLY BLACK DAILY 35 Cents

Final

46 MI LLION PO OR I N 2010

The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose moribund economy. Photo: A man eats lunch at the Capuchin to a record 46 million last year, the government said, under- Soup Kitchen, where hundreds of people receive food and supscoring the challenges facing President Barack Obama and plies everyday, in Detroit, Michigan.

Congress as they try to tackle high unemployment and a SEE PAGE 3.

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DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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N E W S B RI E F S NYPD OFFICER DIES DURING ACADEMY RUN The New York City Police Department is mourning the death of an

officer who collapsed after a training run with his academy class Monday.

Officer Sherman Abrams, 28, had been a correction officer for four years before joining the NYPD in July.

Abrams had just finished running along the East River in Lower Manhattan when he collapsed.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly met with the officer’s family at the hospital and offered their condolences.

The medical examiner will determine the exact cause of death.

COLUMBIA RATED NUMBER ONE AMONG CITY’S COLLEGES Columbia University has come out on top in the city on U.S. News and World Report’s list of the best universities in the nation.

Columbia ranked fourth behind Harvard, Princeton and Yale on the 2012 list.

Two other city schools — NYU and Yeshiva — were ranked in the top 50 nationally.

The rankings are decided based on a school’s reputation, selectivity and freshmen rate of return.

Columbia, at $45,000 a year in tuition, accepts only 9.5 percent of applicants.

The full guide of schools hits newsstands September 20.

OFF-DUTY NYPD OFFICER KILLED BY ALLEGED DRUNK DRIVER An off-duty New York City Police Department officer was killed Sunday after investigators say a drunk driver crashed into his car on Long Island.

Kevin Jessup, 25, was driving on the Southern State Parkway around 5:30 a.m. when he was rear-ended.

The driver, Jonathan Lopez, 20, was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter and DWI. Bail for Lopez was set at $100,000 bond or $50,000 cash.

Jessup, who joined the force in 2008, was assigned to the 106th precinct in Queens.

U.S. attack threat remains uncorroborated

By MARK HOSENBALL WASHINGTON — Intelligence that militants were plotting an imminent attack on the United States remained uncorroborated on Monday after the tenth anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington passed without incident.

U.S. counter-terrorism and law enforcement officials said they had not completely dismissed or discredited intelligence received last week about a possible attack.

And because the intelligence reporting had said a strike could occur either on the 9/11 anniversary or within days of it, leads are still being chased and travel records are still being examined, they said.

However, three officials familiar with the threat reporting said that despite intense efforts by U.S. agencies to find concrete backup for the intelligence tip-off — from a source deemed “credible” and containing specific plot details — it remains unconfirmed.

One of the officials said that U.S. agencies had been unable so far to determine if two or three potential suspects mentioned in the tip-off really exist.

Had the tip not surfaced on the eve of the anniversary and alleged the possibility of an attack timed to coincide with it, it is unlikely the matter would have received as much attention as it did from the U.S. government and the media, the official said.

The information was “specific” in that it talked about how two or three

A police officer stands at a security check-point outside St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway in preparation for the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. militants traveling to the United States from the Afghan-Pakistani border area intended to launch anniversary attacks on New York and Washington, possibly, but not definitely, using car bombs, officials said.

The information was deemed credible at least in part because it fit with earlier information about al Qaeda intentions and methods.

The officials said the intelligence information included a suggestion that al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri might be associated with the plot.

U.S. officials said that in its origi-

nal form, the intelligence reporting contained no information — such as names — identifying suspects, although there was some indication that two of the suspects might be U.S. citizens.

Using this sketchy but raw information, U.S. agencies spent several days combing records of international travelers and other databases for suspects who might fit the pattern.

But officials noted that no suspects had been arrested, and said some of the extraordinary security and surveillance measures which had been instituted over the weekend would be scaled back.

Power reliability will cost Americans more

By SCOTT DISAVINO Major blackouts like the one that affected 5 million people in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico last week are rare, but occur more often in the United States than in some other developed nations because U.S. electric companies keep excess power capacity, and consumer costs, to a minimum.

U.S. utilities could shore up reliability, but experts are divided over whether customers would be willing to spend the billions needed to harden the grid to significantly reduce outage risks.

“The fact that the power went out for about 12 hours (in San Diego) does not justify doubling electric rates for the whole rest of the year,” said Jay Apt, Executive Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Electricity Industry Center.

Although most outages are relatively small, blackouts and brownouts, including those due to hurricanes and other storms, do cost Americans an estimated $150 billion a year in spoiled food, lost productivity and other costs, according to data from the Galvin Electricity Initiative.

“The U.S. does not have the excess generation some other nations have.

We don’t have two of everything and we shouldn’t - you would not want to pay for it,” Apt said, noting U.S. electric rates are about half of some European rates because the United States

runs an efficient power system.

And still the electric grid in the United States remains one of the most dependable in the world.

“We are 99.99 percent reliable. But you still have that (0.01) percent of the time something is going to happen. Nobody is perfect,” said Andrew Phillips, Director of Transmission and Substations at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

Preliminary estimates of the cost of last week’s blackout in the greater San Diego region were $97-$118 million, including spoiled food ($12-$18 million), government overtime ($10-$20 million) and lost productivity ($70 million), according to a report by the National University System Institute for Policy Research, which conducts research in the San Diego area. The study did not include costs from the blackout outside of the San Diego area.

The Sept 8-9 power outage affected Southern California, Arizona and Baja California in Mexico. Its cause was related to work in a substation in western Arizona that tripped a giant 500-kilovolt power line carrying electricity to the San Diego area.

That outage ultimately knocked out more than 4,000 megawatts of generation, including the San Onofre nuclear plant in California. One megawatt powers about 1,000 homes.

Pinnacle West Capital’s Arizona Public Service power company, which

owns the Arizona substation, said it was investigating the outage because “operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage” to the area around the substation in Arizona.

Roughly 500,000 Americans spend at least two hours each day without power. But that is only a small fraction of the 312 million U.S. power consumers and big blackouts like San Diego are extremely rare.

The majority of outages are failures at the local level where most investment needs to happen, said John Kelly, Executive Director at the Galvin Electricity Initiative. His group seeks regulatory and market reforms to encourage power companies to invest in the modernization of the grid.

To modernize the grid, Kelly said power companies would have to spend $500 billion to $1 trillion over the next 10 to 15 years on new cleaner generation, transmission and distribution systems, including smart meters, automation equipment and software at consumers’ homes and businesses.

That’s a lot of money, but Kelly estimated Americans could save two to three times that amount (up to $3 trillion) over the same 10 to 15 years if regulators require power companies to commit to reliability improvements to recover their investments, among other things.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010

By DAVID MORGAN WASHINGTON — The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose to a record 46 million last year, the government said on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges facing President Barack Obama and Congress as they try to tackle high unemployment and a moribund economy.

The Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage said the national poverty rate climbed for a third consecutive year to 15.1 percent in 2010 as the economy struggled to recover from the recession that began in

December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

That marked a 0.8 percent increase from 2009, when there were 43.6 million Americans living in poverty.

The number of poor Americans in 2010 was the largest in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been publishing poverty estimates, the report said, while the poverty rate was the highest since 1993.

The specter of economic deterioration also afflicted working Americans who saw their median income decline 2.3 percent to an annual $49,445.

About 1.5 million fewer Americans were covered by employer-sponsored health insurance plans, while the

number of people covered by government health insurance increased by nearly 2 million.

All told, the number of Americans with no health insurance hovered at 49.9 million, up slightly from 49 million in 2010.

The economic deterioration depicted by the figures is likely to have continued into 2011 as economic growth diminished, unemployment remained stuck above 9 percent and fears grew of a possible double-dip recession.

The report of rising poverty coincides with Obama’s push for a $450 billion job creation package, and deliberations by a congressional “super committee” tasked with cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the

budget deficit over 10 years.

Faced with deteriorating job approval ratings, the president is trying to convince Republicans in Congress to support his package.

Analysts said poverty-related issues have relatively little hold on politicians in Washington but hoped the new figures would encourage the bipartisan super committee to avoid deficit cuts that would hurt the poor.

The United States has long had one of the highest poverty rates in the developed world. Among 34 countries tracked by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Chile, Israel and Mexico have higher rates of poverty.

Obama increases number of female, minority judges

By JESSE J. HOLLAND WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation’s federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn’t selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.

More than 70 percent of Obama’s confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were “non-traditional,” or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon Goldman, author of the authoritative book “Picking Federal Judges.”

“It is an absolutely remarkable diversity achievement,” said Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is only counting judges once, even if they fit more than one category.

The White House recently has been touting its efforts to diversify the federal bench during Obama’s tenure, now approaching three years in office.

The president won Senate confirmation of the first Latina to the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And with the confirmation of Justice Elena Kagan, he increased the number of women on the high court to three for the first time. The Obama administration also nominated and won confirmation of the first openly gay man to a federal judgeship: former Clinton administration official J. Paul Oetken, to an opening in New York City.

“All of us can be proud of President Obama for taking this critical step to break down another barrier and increase diversity in the federal judiciary,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said upon Oetken’s confirmation.

The first openly homosexual federal judge was Deborah A. Batts in New York City, a lesbian nominated

by Clinton in 1994.

Of the 98 Obama nominees con-

firmed to date, the administration says 21 percent are African-American, 11 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are Asian-American and almost half — 47 percent — are women. By comparison, of the 322 judges confirmed during George W. Bush’s presidency, 18 percent were minorities and 22 percent were female. Of the 372 judges confirmed during Clinton’s terms, 25 percent were minorities and 29 percent were women. In these figures, some judges fit into more than one category.

Last week, the Senate confirmed the first African-American woman to sit on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Bernice Donald. Earlier, she was the first African-American woman elected as a judge in Tennessee, the first appointed as federal bankruptcy judge in the nation and first confirmed as a U.S. district judge in Tennessee.

Obama also has doubled the number of Asian-Americans sitting on the federal bench, including adding Denny Chin to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York as the only active Asian federal appeals court judge. There currently are 14 Asian-American federal judges on the 810-judge roster.

“It’s really amazing,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who wrote about the increasing diversity on the federal bench during Obama’s administration in an article in the Washington University Law Review.

“Obama has nominated as many as were sitting on the bench when he was inaugurated.”

For more than 140 years, there were no females or minorities among the nation’s federal judges.

The first female federal appellate judge was Florence Allen, who gained her seat on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1934. The first female U.S. District Court judge was Burnita Shelton Matthews, who took the bench in Washington, D.C., in 1950. William Henry Hastie Jr. was the first African-American U.S. District Court judge, sitting in the Virgin Islands in 1937 before being elevated to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1949.

Reynaldo G. Garza became the first Hispanic federal judge when he was appointed to the U.S. District Court in Texas in 1961, and Herbert Choy became the first Asian-American federal judge when he was appointed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1971.

Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court in 1967, and Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to be elevated to the nation’s highest court in 1981.

“I think it’s always good to have diverse perspectives, whether it’s gender, sexuality or ideology,” Tobias said.

Those who track diversity on the federal bench are pleased with Obama’s progress so far but want more voices from all of America’s communities in the federal courts. Obama has nominated three other openly gay judicial nominees, as well as what would be the only active Native American on the federal bench, if Arvo Mikkanen is confirmed to a federal judgeship in Oklahoma.

“The more diverse the courts, the more confidence people have in our judicial system,” said Nan Aron of the liberal Alliance for Justice. “Having a diverse judiciary also enriches the decision-making process.”

The makeup of the federal bench could be a major issue during the

Senate, House and presidential elections in 2012.

Obama basically has until the end of this year to get as many of his judicial nominees confirmed as possible, because it is unlikely that a highly partisan Senate will confirm many judges with a presidential election looming in November 2012.

According to the Federal Judicial Center, there are 94 vacancies in the federal courts, with 55 nominees awaiting Senate action.

Kwame Kilpatrick denies taking bribes Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick says he is innocent of taking bribes.

In an interview with The Detroit News, Kilpatrick apologized for what he called “the dumbest moment in my life” and a “cowardice moment.” That was his false testimony in a lawsuit that led to public revelations of his affair with his chief of staff and his guilty plea to perjury.

But he absolutely denied the corruption detailed in a federal indictment. He is scheduled to go on trial next year.

“I’ve never accepted a bribe. I’ve never fixed a contract,” he said. “I don’t even know how you would do that in the city of Detroit. And I

don’t think they (federal prosecutors) do, either. I’ve never taken a payoff.”

Kilpatrick spoke to the News by phone for about 90 minutes from his home in Texas several days ago.

Since the interview, Derrick Miller, a former Kilpatrick aide, has pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, saying the gave Kilpatrick money.

The former mayor was scheduled to appear Tuesday night at the Citadel of Praise Church in Detroit.

His book, “Surrendered! The Rise and Fall and Revelation of Kwame Kilpatrick,” was recently published, although a judge has ordered proceeds to be used to pay the restitution Kilpatrick still owes Detroit.

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DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

JOURNAL OF THE PEOPLE’S PASTOR ‘WRITING THE HISTORY I’VE LIVED, LIVING THE HISTORY I WRITE!’

A memorial for Deron Kittrell and community hearing on police behavior

THOMAS H. WATKINS

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By REV. DR. HERBERT DAUGHTRY Part Three The one hour and 45-minute Memorial Ceremony consisted of prayers; music by Ms. Marilyn Oliver accompanied by her sister, Mrs. Carolyn OliverFair; and, remarks and reflections made by community members. The most moving presentation was presented by Ms. Tamara Kittrell, Deron’s aunt. I thought it would be

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thing was drastically wrong.

As our family waited for hours to know of Deron’s condition, the police officers at the hospital were totally unsympathetic to our concerns. Four and a half hours later, we were informed that Deron did pass away due to fatal gunshot wounds.

Anyone familiar with Deron knows that he was a kindhearted, funny, generous, and family-oriented young man. At the tender age of 28, he was looking forward to enrolling into school and changing his lifestyle to benefit himself and his children.

The week before he passed, he bought a BMW, and for the moment, this was his DREAM CAR!!! He was sickening about this car. Every time I would go to my mother’s house, he would be there on the computer doing research about the vehicle, interfering with my Facebook time.

I fondly remember joking with him and saying BMW stands for “Black Man Walking,” and I told him he needed to do research on getting a New Jersey Transit Bus Pass Continued on page 5

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helpful to others, who are going through the same valley, to share her presentation.

My name is Tamara Kittrell, and Deron Kittrell is my nephew. The event of his death deeply disturbs me because I know he did not deserve to die like this. The reality of his death destroys my heart because right before he was tragically killed, we were out celebrating with family and friends. Deron’s mannerisms that night were of joy, happiness, and love. He danced, mingled, and joked throughout the night.

When the event was over, we met up outside. As usual, he was concerned about me getting home safely. After arriving home, I received a phone call that he was shot. I immediately panicked because I was just with him, and the entire situation seemed surreal.

After calling his phone several times and getting no answer, I notified several other family members of the emergency. Initially, we thought his injuries were not lifethreatening, but we rushed to the hospital anyway. Once we arrived, people started gathering outside, and I knew some-

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DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Cleveland, Ohio: The best location in the nation

By LINDA TARRANT-REID Special to the NNPA from The Westchester County Press We traveled to Cleveland, Ohio this past Labor Day to attend numerous events celebrating family and friends and my husband’s 45th high school reunion. When he was growing up in Cleveland, it was known as “The Best Location in the Nation.” Times have changed and although that slogan isn’t used much anymore, Cleveland is still alright. I’ve been to Cleveland about five times in the last 15 years and have witnessed the changing landscape of an urban city trying to be relevant in a 21st century world. But I never really knew its history.

On my first visit in 1996, the urban decay was overwhelming, especially on the eastside of Cleveland where the African American community resides.

Abandoned houses that were ghosts of their former arts & craft architectural glory were falling apart, sloping roofs, peeling paint and crumbling exteriors. Two-family wooden-framed houses with porches that graced the façade of the formerly elegant homes longed for a happier time. Trashstrewn vacant lots connected barren landscapes where empty buildings stood in defiance of their certain demise. Small businesses that serviced neighborhoods – the mom and pop grocery stores, drugstores, barbecue joints, liquor stores – had died a slow retail death. The Haltnorth Theatre, a neighborhood movie house at Woodland Avenue and East 55th, once a place where young Black kids from the Outhwaite Projects, across the street, wiled away countless hours watching grade B double features like The Blob was no longer there.

African Americans have been in Cleveland since the early 1800s. Settling mainly on the eastside, they worked as unskilled laborers and domestics, but several of these new arrivals became successful businessmen and political leaders, like Madi-

son Tilley. A former slave, Tilley was “an excavating contractor with 20 wagons, 40 horses and an integrated workforce [that] at times numbered 100,” according the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Tilley became one of the five African Americans owning property in 1840 and when he died his estate was valued between $25,000 and $30,000.

More Blacks passed through Cleveland from the 1830s to the 1860s on the Under Ground Railroad (UGRR) on their way to Canada. University Circle, now a thriving cultural and academic center, was at the heart of the Abolitionist activities in Cleveland.

John Bell, a Black barber, owned a barber shop that became known as the last stop on the UGRR for many fugitive slaves escaping by boat across Lake Erie to freedom in Canada.

There were some whites who were sympathetic to the plight of fugitive slaves and assisted Blacks traveling on the Under Ground Railroad. One prominent abolitionist at the time was Rev. Charles Storrs, president of Case Western Reserve. The college is located at University Circle among other Cleveland institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Botanical Garden, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Severance Hall, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Cleveland Institute of Music.

During my visit to Cleveland this time, I noticed that something was different. As we toured the eastside looking up old addresses of grandmothers and tracking down familiar haunts of days gone by, the trash-strewn lots were now empty green spaces. Gone were many of the boarded up structures. Although the areas we visited had not been redeveloped, they looked expectant, like something was going to happen. Traveling down Kinsman Road into Shaker Heights, I noticed that construction on a strip mall had been completed since the last time we were in town in 2006, leaving the original retail stores across the street empty.

Shaker Square, the historic gate-

Hearing on police behavior Continued from page 4 rather than purchasing another car. The look on his face was priceless.

I am sure we all have memorable stories about Deron, and those moments will be etched in our hearts forever. However, we need to preserve his legacy and adopt the qualities he exhibited during his short time here on earth. When I look at his mother, Robyn, I see where his loving and Christian qualities originated. When I look at his brother, Chad, I see the humorous, joking, and prankster qualities of Deron. When I look at my mother, I see Deron’s temperament and generous qualities. Basically, Deron is and always will be a part of us.

Speaking as the family representative, this is not the first tragedy we encountered. Approximately two years ago, my twenty-year-old cousin, Justin McNeil, was gunned down on Ocean and Bayview Avenues by unknown assailants and was fatally killed. This was my family’s first bout with violence, and we are still trying to heal. Justin and Deron were extremely close when they both were living, and I know they are even closer in the Kingdom of Heaven.

As a community, we need to make a change. Within the past month, five black men were murdered in Jersey City as a result of violence.

We simply cannot afford to lose any more. I am asking everyone in this church to take action. I would hate

way to the Shaker Heights Community with its quaint Colonial-Georgian brick buildings accented in white wooden facades arranged around an octagonal town center, has seen better days, but it is surviving. The Colony Theatre is still there, but its name has changed to Shaker Square Cinemas, and has expanded to six screens. Now CVS, keeping up with the times, has taken up residence in the retail hub.

The surrounding community of beautiful old apartment buildings on treeline streets is still well-kept. The difference is young African Americans can be seen strolling the streets and eating ice cream and snacks from the local boutique shops around the square.

Cleveland has a lot to be proud of because of the contributions that so many African Americans have made to science, technology, sports, politics, and the arts. Garrett A. Morgan, inventor of the gas mask and traffic signal, moved to Cleveland in his early 20s and worked as a sewing machine repairman. He received national attention in 1916 when his gas masks were used to rescue workers trapped in the tunnels under Lake Erie. Morgan also started the Cleveland Call in 1916, a Black newspaper that merged with the Cleveland Post in 1929 creating the Call and Post. Jesse Owens, another Clevelander, was an amazing track star who attended East Tech High School and won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Carl Stokes, the first African American Mayor of a major U.S. city, and his brother Louis Stokes, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, grew up in the Outhwaite Projects.

Their contributions to local and national politics were immeasurable and occurred when African Americans were seeking their equal rights as Americans. The Phillis Wheatley Association, named for the first published African American poet in America, opened in 1927 in Cleveland; it was originally an agency that provided safe housing for Black women relocating to the North during the Black for anyone of you to be standing here in my place, representing a lost loved one.

Finally, I ask that you keep the Kittrell and Henry families in your prayers during this difficult time.

Migration and is now a multi-service organization serving the Black community. Eliza Simmons Bryant spearheaded the founding of the Cleveland Home for Aged Colored in 1896 after discovering that many of the elderly Blacks who migrated to Cleveland needed a place to live.

Karamu House, a settlement house founded in 1915 by two Oberlin students, is still in effect today as an arts center focusing on the arts and culture and has historically been a “magnet for African American artists.”

Author Chester Himes, who wrote mysteries and crime novels, grew up in Cleveland and used his experiences as the basis of many of his books.

Himes’ two Harlem Detectives – Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones – made famous by Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge in the film, Cotton Comes to Harlem were characters from his novel. Directed by Ossie Davis, the film is a perennial favorite.

Actresses Ruby Dee and Halle Berry are from Cleveland and Langston Hughes lived on the eastside in 1917 while attending Central High School where his budding writing career was encouraged with the publication of his works in the school’s magazine.

Looking at Cleveland through a historic lens this time around has been extremely helpful for me as an observer of people, places and events. I have a greater understanding of the challenges that Black Clevelanders had to overcome in their pursuit of a better life, which on some level is a story that everyone can relate to. So, it is true, you can go home again, even if it is someone else’s home.

— Linda Tarrant-Reid is an author, historian and photographer.

Her book Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century will be published in 2012. Visit her blog at, www.discoverblackus.wordpress.co m. Send your comments to Linda Tarrant-Reid, c/o The Westchester County Press, P.O. Box 152, White Plains, NY 10602. on New York City’s WWRL-AM, dial 1600.

The End.

**Physical Fitness and Martial Arts Classes starts on September 12, 2011. Two classes: 10yr-25 yrs, and 26+ For more info, contact heather.md.harvey@gmail.com.

** Join Reverend Daughtry in Jersey City for the weekly Thursday Evening Educational, Cultural, and Empowerment Forum from 6pm8pm for an evening of information, inspiration, and challenge at 315 Forrest Street (Ground Floor), corner of MLK, Jr. Drive. For more info, contact The National Community Action Alliance at (201) 7161585.

** NEED QUALITY CHILD CARE? Call the Alonzo A. Daughtry Memorial Daycare Center located at: 460 Atlantic Avenue (corner of Atlantic and Nevins) 718 596 1993 333 Second Street (between 4th & 5th Avenues) in Park Slope (718) 499-2066 Immediate openings are available in a state-of-the-art center.

** Listen to Reverend Daughtry on the weekly radio program which airs Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m.

** Visit The House of the Lord Church’s website at holc.org. Or, contact us at 415@holc.org.

6

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

USTR Kirk hopes trade deals passed by November APEC meet

By DOUG PALMER WASHINGTON — Trade Representative Ron Kirk said on Monday he was hopeful the Congress would pass long-delayed trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia before the United States hosts an annual summit meeting for AsiaPacific leaders in November.

“Our goal has always been to get them done as soon as possible and that hasn’t changed,” Kirk told reporters after remarks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

He declined to give a more precise timetable, saying that depended on how quickly the White House and Congress reached agreement on legislation known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to help workers displaced by foreign competition.

But asked if it would be embarrassing for the United States if the deals weren’t approved by Nov 12-13 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting in President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii, Kirk replied: “Well, we’re going to be more optimistic than that.”

South Korea is a member of APEC along with the United States. All three of the pending trade deals were signed more than four years ago but still have not been approved.

Obama, in recent months, has repeatedly called on Congress to pass the agreements. However, Republicans complain that he first needs to send them to Congress.

“Unfortunately we’re still waiting for the president to submit these free trade agreements. If he does that, they’ll pass,” Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate

Trade Representative Ron Kirk makes opening remarks at a trade minister and small and medium size enterprise ministers meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in Big Sky, Montana.

Finance Committee, said at a hearing on Monday.

Obama mentioned the trade deals again last week in a speech to Congress on his proposals for creating jobs.

The following day, House Republican leaders urged him to “immediately” submit the agreements to Congress for votes.

However, the deals are still on Obama’s desk, awaiting further assurances that Congress will pass TAA, which provides retraining and other assistance for workers who have lost their jobs because of imports or their workplace moving abroad.

Senate Majority Harry Reid, a Democrat, has said he would not

Routine Colorado traffic stop turns up $10 million in cocaine

By KEITH COFFMAN DENVER — A routine Colorado traffic stop led to the discovery of 220 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $10 million in the rental car of a California couple, police said on Monday.

Mark Bailey and Lisa Calderon, both of Sylmar, California, were arrested on Sunday in the southern Colorado city of Pueblo on suspicion of cocaine possession, Pueblo Deputy Police Chief Andrew McLachlan said.

“This is definitely the largest cocaine seizure in our department’s history,” McLachlan told Reuters.

McLachlan said a patrol officer was tipped off by an off-duty detective to a car making an illegal lane change on Interstate 25, about 115 miles south of Denver.

The north-south highway has long been a drug-smuggling corridor, he said. When the officer pulled

over the rented Chevrolet Malibu, he discovered that Bailey’s California driver’s license had been revoked.

Bailey, 37, told the officer he owned an auto body shop in California, and was en route to Iowa to look at a 1955 Chevy, police said.

The officer became suspicious because when Calderon, 35, was questioned she appeared nervous.

She said the pair were going to visit her brother in Iowa but couldn’t say where, police said.

When the officer noticed that the back of the car appeared to be weighed down, he summoned a drug-sniffing dog and its handler to the scene. The dog, name Raleigh, “alerted on the rear of the Chevy,” McLachlan said.

A search of the trunk uncovered four black duffel bags stuffed with bricks of cocaine, and the pair was arrested, he said.

Bailey was also cited for driving with a suspended license, and no proof of insurance.

schedule votes on the agreements until the House — which is controlled by Republicans — passes TAA. The next step in the process appears to be for the Senate to take

up a developing country trade bill passed last week by the House and attach a bipartisan TAA compromise bill crafted by White House and key members of Congress.

A Senate Democratic aide said Reid would like the Senate to pass the TAA bill in September and send it to the House for approval. But the crowded legislative agenda could delay action on the measure until October, he said.

If Obama waits for the House to take up and pass the TAA bill before submitting the trade pacts, there could be just a few weeks for Congress to act before the APEC meeting.

Hatch, who opposes the TAA program, tried on Monday to persuade Obama to submit the agreements now.

“I have every reason to believe that TAA will pass the Senate and I believe it will pass the House as well,” he said.

Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said he was “quite confident” Congress would pass TAA and the three trade deals this year.

He said there was “trust” on both sides to get that done.

San Francisco hopes graffiti vandals will go virtual

By LAIRD HARRISON OAKLAND, Calif. — San Francisco arts officials are embracing what they say is a digital-age solution to the decades-old problem of graffiti: An iPhone application that allows “virtual” tagging instead of the real thing.

The app, Graff City, uses augmented reality — software in which digital information can be added to a photograph — to create the appearance that the user is finger-painting or spray-painting on any surface within view.

The user can then take a picture of his creation and upload it to Facebook or e-mail it to another user. Other users who visit a tagged location can see what previous users have done.

“The goal is to give young people who might be tempted to tag or vandalize property an alternative,” Tyra Fennell, arts education program manager for the San Francisco Arts Commission, told Reuters.

The app was created by the marketing firm McCann Worldgroup, which offers it free through the iTunes store.

“It encourages the actual art form rather than defacing public property,” McCann account supervisor Ben Stender said.

Fennell said Graff City is an extension of the city’s StreetSmARTS program, in which graffiti artists compete for $3,000 grants to paint

murals on walls made available by property owners.

But artists must fill out applications, submit portfolios and be selected by a panel of judges in order to participate in StreetSmARTS, and so far only 30 walls have been offered up.

By contrast, Graff City is available to anyone with an iPhone, and in the future the application may be adapted to iPads and other brands of smart phone, Stender said.

While no one has surveyed graffiti arts to see how many have iPhones, Fennell believes a significant number will be able to take advantage of the program.

“The presumption is that people who tag are lowlifes or thugs,” she said. “That’s not true. There are people in private school who tag. And I have a sense that most people have cell phones, and a large number have iPhones.”

But Bob Van Gelder, president of Graffiti Specialists graffiti removal company in San Francisco, was skeptical of the iPhone app’s ability to deter taggers.

Some are motivated to mark their territory in real as opposed to virtual space, while others want to cause malicious mischief, he said, adding that some might even use the app to plan their vandalism.

“My first thought is they could use it as a sketch which they would then transfer to a wall” with real paint, he said.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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7

AFRICAN SCENE

88

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

AFRICAN SCENE

S. Africa’s Zuma offers olive branch to Malema

By JOSHUA HOWAT BERGER f Police: Sect members kill 4 in Nigeria beer parlor MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - Authorities say members of a radical Muslim sect shot and killed four people at a beer parlor in Nigeria’s restive northeast.

Borno state police commissioner Simeone Midena told The Associated Press on Tuesday the shooting happened Monday night in Maiduguri, home to the sect known locally as Boko Haram. A witness said two gunmen carrying Kalashnikov rifles under their traditional robes attacked the bar.

Midena said no arrests have been made.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, wants the strict implementation of Shariah law in Nigeria. The sect claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 car bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria that killed at least 23 people and wounded 81.

South Africa’s Madikizela-Mandela hospitalized JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s African National Congress says that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has undergone a minor foot operation.

Madikizela-Mandela, among South Africa’s best known politicians and ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, went to a Johannesburg hospital Saturday complaining of ankle pain, the governing party said Tuesday, adding the surgery was successful and she was recuperating well Tuesday.

Madikizela-Mandela, 76, was elected to parliament as an ANC member in 2009. She is particularly popular among younger South Africans for her fiery style and calls for more to be done to lift the black majority out of poverty 17 years after white rule ended.

She and Nelson Mandela divorced in 1996. But in recent years she has joined him at family events alongside his current wife, Graca Machel.

Tuaregs: Niger should grant Libyans refugee status NIAMEY, Niger - A Niger rebel leader who became a member of Moammar Gadhafi’s inner circle says three of Gadhafi’s generals who arrived overnight in Niger’s capital are seeking refugee status for members of the toppled ruler’s regime.

If Niger grants the request, the West African nation would be defying the new Libyan government, which wants regime loyalists to be turned over.

Rebel leader Aghaly Alambo said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press that the three include Gen. Ali Kana, as well as the country’s air force chief and the commander of Murzuq. Alambo, who like Kana is an ethnic Tuareg, is part of the negotiations. The Tuaregs in Niger as well as in neighboring Mali are pushing the government to give them asylum.

South African President Jacob Zuma offered an olive branch Tuesday to his party’s embattled youth leader Julius Malema, who risks expulsion from the ruling ANC this week.

Malema, whose singing of an anti-apartheid anthem called “shoot the white farmer” was deemed hate speech by a civil court on Monday, has roiled the ruling party with his calls to nationalise mines and expropriate white-owned farms.

He and five other top officials of the African National Congress’ youth wing have been hauled before party disciplinary hearings, accused of sowing divisions in the party and bringing it into disrepute.

At issue are a series of comments by Malema and the Youth League, including their call for regime change in neighbouring Botswana and branding whites as thieves.

The hearings opened two weeks ago with an explosion of violence, as thousands of angry supporters threw rocks at journalists and police and burned pictures of Zuma.

But in his first comments since the disciplinary hearings began, Zuma struck a conciliatory tone, calling Malema a “very good” young man and a good communicator.

Zuma said the youth leader’s need to be in the spotlight puts him “on the border of saying things that are radical and problematic”, but denied the party was trying to silence him.

“No, I don’t think that should be the objective. I think the objective is how do you help Malema? Because Malema has a lot of elements that are good in him,” Zuma told The Star newspaper.

Pressed later Tuesday in parliament to condemn Malema’s comments, Zuma declined to be drawn out, telling the legislator: “The honorable member is aware of what the ruling party has said on this matter.”

Zuma’s comments came as disciplinary hearings resumed Tuesday for Malema’s five deputies.

The unrest last month prompted the ANC to move the hearings from party headquarters in downtown Johannesburg

The youth leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Julius Malema addresses a party rally in Johannesburg. South African President Jacob Zuma has offered an olive branch to Malema, who risks expulsion from the ruling ANC this week.

Supporters of African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader Julius Malema sing outside the court in Johannesburg on September 12. South African President Jacob Zuma has offered an olive branch to the embattled Malema. to a recreation centre on the southern outskirts of the city.

Police were tightly controlling access to the area, with journalists kept several hundred metres (yards) away. Officers were stopping and searching public transport vehicles that tried to enter the area.

Malema attended the proceedings, but his own hearing was set to resume only on Thursday.

ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said the process, which has captured national attention despite the tight lid the ruling party has kept on the proceedings, was expected to wrap up Saturday.

With his racially charged rhetoric and calls to redistribute wealth to impoverished blacks, Malema has shown a talent for grabbing the spotlight since becoming president of the Youth

League in 2008.

On Monday he was found guilty of hate speech for his public singing of an anti-apartheid struggle song whose Zulu chorus, “dubula ibhunu”, roughly translates as “shoot the white farmer.”

A civil court judge banned further singing of the song and ordered Malema to pay a portion of the costs for the case. Khoza said the ANC will likely appeal the ruling.

Malema’s radical rhetoric and high profile have also put him at odds with Zuma.

The president rose to power with Malema’s backing, but has since lost the support of the Youth League, which is frustrated over his failure to embrace Malema’s economic policy proposals.

D CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 DAILY

AFRICAN SCENE

9

Kenyan activist may sue FBI over year in prison By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED NAIROBI, Kenya - A Kenyan activist said Tuesday he may sue the FBI over their part in interrogating him while he was held without trial for a year in Uganda on terror charges.

Al-Amin Kimathi of the Kenya-based Muslim Human Rights Forum said he saw FBI agents “many times” in his cell and that Ugandan intelligence agents told him they had received written questions from the FBI and were sharing information with them.

“Since I strongly believe in their involvement and have prima facie evidence of that involvement, I will be consulting with my lawyers...to see if I can sue them,” he told The Associated Press in the Kenyan capital a day after his release.

Kimathi was arrested last year after traveling to Uganda to observe court hearings of Kenyan suspects in the July 2010 bombings in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, that killed 76 people.

Somalia’s militants

Residents of a shantee in Nairobi stand among debris following a firce fire on September 12, after the explosion of a fuel pipeline in a slum area of Nairobi. Rescue teams searched through the smoking ashes of the slum razed when a pipeline burst into flames, with 92 charred bodies already found and the death toll still rising. have claimed responsi- often he was only given suspects, many of bility for the attacks one meal a day. whom still do not have and said they did it to A Ugandan judge legal representation, avenge Somali civilians finally dropped charges must not be forgotten killed by Ugandan against Kimathi on as their case proceeds to peacekeepers in Monday.

The trial.”

Mogadishu. spokesman for the In a written stateUgandan authorities Ugandan judiciary, ment, Kimathi said he jailed Kimathi and Erias Kisawuzi, said was “greatly relieved to charged him with ter- Tuesday that the judge have been vindicated.” rorism, murder and was following instrucKimathi said the FBI attempted murder, but tions from Uganda’s didn’t personally interfailed to disclose the full director of public prose- rogate him because evidence against him cution. they “knew of the impliand another 18 defen“The Ugandan court cations” of doing that, dants. The detention has shown great sense but “they controlled drew fire from interna- in dropping terrorism things from next door tional rights groups charges against and set up gadgets for like Human Rights Kimathi,” said Rona listening in.”

Watch and Amnesty Peligal, deputy director Activists have previInternational, who of the Africa division at ously said that they called for Kimathi’s Human Rights Watch. believe Uganda is being release. Kimathi said “The rights of the other used as a base to inter-

Senegal, Congo deny Chirac-era kickbacks Senegal and Congo-Brazzaville on Tuesday denied allegations made by an influential French political adviser that they paid large sums of money in cash to the French presidency.

Robert Bourgi, a long-time unofficial point man between France’s Elysee palace and the regimes in former African colonies, has rocked French politics with a raft of allegations on illicit cash handouts.

Bourgi, insisting he was coming forward now because he wanted a “clean France”, said

he took part in kickback payments between 1995 and 2005 involving former president Jacques Chirac, potential presidential candidate Dominique de Villepin and even retired far-right icon Jean-Marie Le Pen. Among the African officials alleged to have paid cash to the French presidency is Karim Wade — the son of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade — who denied the accusations and vowed to sue Bourgi for defamation.

“I vehemently deny these astonishing claims, which are nothing but a figment of his imagination,” the president’s son said in a statement issued late

Monday.

Karim Wade added that he had asked his lawyers to immediately lodge a complaint with the competent courts for slander and defamation.

Bourgi said in an interview to the Senegalese daily L’Observateur published on Monday that Karim Wade had “handed over 500 million CFA francs (760,000 euros, one million dollars) to Villepin in front of me.”

Villepin was then president Jacques Chirac’s top aide.

Among the string of African leaders alleged

by Bourgi to have come to Villepin’s office with

cash-stuffed briefcases is Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

“We reject with the utmost energy the allegations made by Mr. Robert Bourgi,” Congolese government spokesman Bienvenu Okiemy told public radio Tuesday.

“Some like to think of Africa as an entity still under influence, which takes its orders from abroad and occasionally opens its coffers to feed cherrypicked politicians abroad,” he said.

Opposition figures in Congo-Brazzaville — which Sassou Nguesso has ruled for close to three decades — demanded a probe into Bourgi’s accusations.

rogate people of interest to the Kenyan security forces and the FBI. lawyer Rights Mbugua Mureithi, who had also been detained in Uganda along with Kimathi, but was then released, said that he was interrogated in the presence of an FBI agent and that three of the Kenyans he was representing told him that they were interrogated five times by foreigners who introduced themselves as FBI agents.

Days after the Kampala bombings, the FBI’s New York office and the New York Police Department said that a team of investigators, including forensic experts, from the city’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was en route to Uganda to assist authorities with the probe.

A U.S. government spokesman denied at the time charges that any FBI agents were

present when Mureithi was questioned. The U.S. embassy in Kenya did not have an immediate response when contacted for comment Monday.

Kimathi’s Kenyabased Muslim Human Rights Forum has documented and publicly challenged arbitrary detentions and illegal renditions - when suspects are taken to another country for interrogation without the proper extradition process - in East Africa.

In 2007, Kimathi uncovered the arrest of dozens of terror suspects in Kenya after the fall of an Islamist administration in Somalia. An investigation by The Associated Press found those suspects were flown to Ethiopia and some were questioned by American agents. Most have since been released without charge.

Tunisia’s Islamist frontrunner urges ‘clean’ election

By KAOUTHER LARBI Rached Ghannouchi, whose Islamist movement Ennahda is considered Tunisia’s most popular party, pleaded on Tuesday for the country’s first post-revolution elections in October to be transparent.

“The most important thing in our view is that the elections be clean. Some players still refuse to recognise our legitimacy,” Ghannouchi told AFP in an interview.

The north African country is set to elect a constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution in October 23 polls, the country’s first elections since the January toppling of longtime dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Some of Ghannouchi’s adversaries have raised questions over Ennahda’s financing, accusing the Islamist movement of receiving large amounts of money from Gulf countries.

Ghannouchi returned from 20 years of British exile in January, in the immediate aftermath of Ben Ali’s shock departure under pressure from the street, and his party was legalised on March 1.

Echoing fears expressed by many Tunisians since the collapse of the Ben Ali regime tipped the first domino of an “Arab Spring” still sweeping the region, Ghannouchi warned that the uprising’s achievements could yet be rolled back.

“Everything is possible in Tunisia. The losers and anti-revolutionary forces are capable of anything to thwart the will of the people,” he said.

“Our score is of little import,” Ghannouchi said, sitting in his office in the brand new headquarters of the Ennahda (Renaissance) party in Tunis’ modern Montplaisir neighbourhood.

1 10

CARIBBEAN NEWS

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

US officials drew stark contrasts between St Vincent PM and opposition leader

By KENTON X. CHANCE KINGSTOWN, St Vincent — Despite his public rants against the United States, St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves in 2009 struck a positive note with US diplomats in Barbados, a stark contrast to opposition leader Arnhim Eustace, who generally seems to care what Washington thinks about developments in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

In a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, US officials in Bridgetown compiled a leadership profile on Gonsalves in which they told Washington that the Unity Labour Party (ULP) head was “easily the most intelligent and charismatic of the Eastern Caribbean leaders”.

In other cables, the officials said that, while Eustace was “undeniable intelligent and acutely aware of the problems facing the country”, he was “a singularly uncharismatic and uninspiring figure, who is unable to translate his technocratic expertise into any kind of viable or sustained political activity”.

“Without a stronger leader, the NDP’s [New Democratic Party] influence will be muted,” the Americans said of party that governed from 1984 to 2001 and last December came one seat short of the left side of Parliament.

On the other hand, they felt that Gonsalves had “the charisma and political savvy needed to keep himself in power for years to come, though his popularity is gradually eroding”.

The profile noted that while Gonsalves was “politically rooted in 1970s leftist movement” he was “a pragmatic ideologue with a strong populist bent”.

The prime minister’s relationship with Caracas, Havana, and ALBA were “close and built on both pragmatic economic interest and a healthy measure of populist spirit and socialist ideology,” the cable said, adding that then blossoming relations with Iran appeared “to be more mercenary, but nevertheless bear scrutiny”.

US officials told their superiors that Gonsalves could be expected to work with Washington on common issues of concern

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves (L) and opposition leader Arnhim Eustace even as he took “while dictatorial control over at the same time taking all aspects of public “potshots” at the Vincentian politics and superpower “to high- economy”. light his leftist credenUS officials, however, tials and rile up his told Washington that domestic base”. some of these state“Despite his affection ments were “overblown for Chavez, fears that rhetoric born of frustrahe could be in danger of tion with the inability becoming a Chavez pup- of the opposition to pet are overblown,” the mount any real chalcable said. lenge to the ULP. The document The cable said, howargued that Gonsalves ever, that there were had “moved methodical- “kernels of truth”, ly to establish a vertical- adding that SVG was ly-oriented government “littered with relatives in which virtually all and former close decision making comes friends of Gonsalves’ to his desk and oppos- who have lost positions ing viewpoints are not in government or warmly embraced.” ‘kitchen cabinet’ jobs According to the for disagreeing with cable, opposition and him on economic policy civil society elements issues”. saw Gonsalves “more The profile said that darkly, as the head of a the prime minister had centralized political sys- “effectively secured a tem exercising near- firm grip on the press

by intimidating media outlets that challenge him in any way through litigation”.

Noting that Gonsalves had sued successfully at least one such outlet, the cable claimed, “[T]repidation amongst Vincentian media professionals has resulted in a measure of self-censorship”.

The profile also commented on the country’s constitutional reform efforts, saying that Gonsalves’ pursuing such far-reaching changes and putting his political capital on the line reflected one of dichotomies: “[A]t one level he is ambitious and self interested, while at another level, he is a disinterested academic and theorist willing to risk a short-term political loss for what he sees as fundamental political change in the region.”

The officials noted that the constitutions handed to Eastern Caribbean nations at Independence had served the region well but could benefit from change.

The cable said that of Eastern Caribbean leaders, Gonsalves was “the one most closely aligned philosophically with the leftist-populist

‘Chavista’ crowd” and claimed that he had egged his Dominican colleague Roosevelt Skerrit to join ALBA to gauge regional reaction before Kingstown signed on to the bloc.

Gonsalves and foreign relations The cable said that despite Gonsalves’ personal political leanings he was “eminently practical” regarding foreign relations.

“He knows his country needs money, and he knows his party needs money to support the public infrastructure programs that bring jobs and buy votes.”

The profile noted that Gonsalves was not shy about reaching out to “non-traditional” sources of funding such as Iran and Libya, adding that he had “expressed his own reservations about Venezuela and the PetroCaribe arrangement”.

US officials said Gonsalves had told them in August 2009 that he suspected that Venezuelan oil subsidies would not last forever, noting a PetroCaribe price hike, and “hinted that he would attempt to stockpile reserves in case the situation worsened”.

St Kitts-Nevis PM reiterates purpose of anti-crime unit BASSETERRE, St Kitts — St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr Denzil Douglas says the anti-crime unit created in the Office of the Prime Minister will see four members of the Cabinet directly involved in the management of this unit in the fight against crime.

“It will continue to involve the deputy prime minister, Sam Condor, who was

recently the minister of national security; the attorney general, Patrice Nisbett; it will also involve Dr Earl Asim Martin, the minister of public utilities and public works, who has been acting whether for Dwyer Astaphan or for myself when we were ministers of national security,” said Douglas during his weekly radio programme “Ask the Prime Minister.”

Douglas, in response to a caller, said the restructuring of what

was the ministry of national security “was to take the ministerial command from being under one minister to being under four ministers and to provide a team effort in this fight against crime.”

He said it was appropriate that for him to have responsibilities and the authority as the chairman of the Task Force on Crime, it was necessary to have the governor general pass to him the portfolios that will deal with the police and defence

force, which are the two main agencies of the government in law enforcement.

“All the other departments that were of the ministry of national security remain directly under the ministerial control work and guidance as the deputy prime minister, Hon. Sam Condor,” said Douglas.

“That is the way it is.

That is how my cabinet wishes it to be at this time as we fight crime.

We are taking it from the responsibility of

one minister to four ministers as a team approach and we have created in the Office of the Prime Minister, the necessary unit — the Anti-Crime Unit — and it is going to be managed jointly with four ministers of government with me as the chairman as the Task Force and to ensure that we can be effective in our fighting of crime,” Douglas reiterated.

“There are some people who do not like this new development and

St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister, Denzil Douglas are using what has happened to further cause mischief and distraction, as the caller said,” responded Douglas.

He said there has been adequate dialogue when this matter was discussed.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2011 DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14,14, 2011

INTERNATIONAL

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Kenyan activist may sue FBI over year in prison By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED NAIROBI, Kenya - A Kenyan activist said Tuesday he may sue the FBI over their part in interrogating him while he was held without trial for a year in Uganda on terror charges.

Al-Amin Kimathi of the Kenya-based Muslim Human Rights Forum said he saw FBI agents “many times” in his cell and that Ugandan intelligence agents told him they had received written questions from the FBI and were sharing information with them.

“Since I strongly believe in their involvement and have prima facie evidence of that involvement, I will be consulting with my lawyers...to see if I can sue them,” he told The Associated Press in the Kenyan capital a day after his release.

Kimathi was arrested last year after traveling to Uganda to

observe court hearings of Kenyan suspects in the July 2010 bombings in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, that killed 76 people.

Somalia’s militants have claimed responsibility for the attacks and said they did it to avenge Somali civilians killed by Ugandan peacekeepers in Mogadishu.

Ugandan authorities jailed Kimathi and charged him with terrorism, murder and attempted murder, but failed to disclose the full evidence against him and another 18 defendants. The detention drew fire from international rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who called for Kimathi’s release. Kimathi said often he was only given one meal a day.

A Ugandan judge finally dropped charges against Kimathi on Monday.

The spokesman for the Ugandan judiciary, Erias Kisawuzi, said Tuesday that the judge was following instructions from Uganda’s

director of public prosecution.

“The Ugandan court has shown great sense in dropping terrorism charges against Kimathi,” said Rona Peligal, deputy director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch.

“The rights of the other many of suspects, whom still do not have legal representation, must not be forgotten as their case proceeds to trial.”

In a written statement, Kimathi said he was “greatly relieved to have been vindicated.”

Kimathi said the FBI didn’t personally interrogate him because they “knew of the implications” of doing that, but “they controlled things from next door and set up gadgets for listening in.”

Activists have previously said that they believe Uganda is being used as a base to interrogate people of interest to the Kenyan security forces and the FBI. Rights lawyer Mbugua Mureithi, who had also been detained in Uganda along with Kimathi, but was then

released, said that he was interrogated in the presence of an FBI agent and that three of the Kenyans he was representing told him that they were interrogated five times by foreigners who introduced themselves as FBI agents. after the Days Kampala bombings, the FBI’s New York office and the New York Police Department said that a team of investigators, including forensic experts, from the city’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was en route to Uganda to assist authorities with the probe.

A U.S. government spokesman denied at the time charges that any FBI agents were present when Mureithi was questioned. The U.S. embassy in Kenya did not have an immediate response when contacted for comment Monday.

Kimathi’s Kenyabased Muslim Human Rights Forum has documented and publicly challenged arbitrary detentions and illegal renditions - when sus-

Kenya Muslim human rights director Al Amin Kimathi speaks to journalist in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday Sept. 13, 2011. Kenyan activist Al Amin Kimathi says he may sue the FBI over their part in interrogating him while he was held without trial for a year in Uganda on terror charges.

Photo/Khalil Senosi pects are taken to Somalia. An investigaanother country for tion by The Associated interrogation without Press found those susthe proper extradition pects were flown to process - in East Africa. Ethiopia and some were In 2007, Kimathi questioned by uncovered the arrest of American agents. Most dozens of terror sus- have since been pects in Kenya after the released without fall of an Islamist charge. administration in

Leila Lopes of Angola is crowned Miss Universe

By BRADLEY BROOKS SAO PAULO Newly crowned Miss Universe Leila Lopes wants to help her native Angola further escape a history of war and impoverishment and said she plans to focus on combating HIV around the globe.

Speaking in a timid voice early Tuesday shortly after taking the crown in South America’s largest city, the 25-year-old Lopes said that “as Miss Angola I’ve already done a lot to help my people.”

“I’ve worked with various social causes. I work with poor kids, I work in the fight

against HIV. I work to protect the elderly and I have to do everything that my country needs,” she said. “I think now as Miss Universe I will be able to do much more.”

Responding to questions, Lopes said that she has never had cosmetic surgery of any kind and that her three tips for beauty were to get a lot of sleep, use sunblock even when it’s not sunny and to drink lots of water. She said her smile was her best weapon in the competition.

Asked about racism in light of the fact that she’s one of the few blacks ever crowned Miss Universe, Lopes said that “any racist needs to seek help.”

“It’s not normal in the 21st century to think in that way.”

Miss Angola Leila Lopes reacts after being named Miss Universe 2011, before being crowned at the Miss Universe pageant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Monday Sept. 12, 2011.

Photo/Andre Penner

New American

The

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DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 DAILY CHALLENGE MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2011

One Thought - One Humanity

Tia and Tamera get real with new TV series

For the conclusions of these stories check out the August 4th - August 10th, 2011 issue of The New American, which hits newsstands every Thursday Congratulations may be in order for Janet Jackson who reportedly has let billionaire boyfriend Wissam Al-Mana put a 15carat ring on it!!!

According to reports: The singer’s boyfriend, bil lionaire Qatari businessman Wissam Al Mana, recently popped the question, and now the happy couple is planning an end-of-theyear marriage ceremony. “Janet is head over heels in love with Wissam,” said a close source. “He’s showered her with love, expensive presents and boosted her self-esteem by helping her lose weight and shape up.” Wissam, 36, first brought up a walk down the aisle last fall, when he reportedly presented the Jackson clan beauty with a magnificent 15-carat diamond ring.

But Janet, 45, wasn’t ready because she wanted to focus on preparations for her current concert tour, which runs into September. “Now Janet’s telling friends that an official engage ment announcement will come by summer’s end, and that she and Wissam will marry in late 2011 – and they’re shopping for an even bigger diamond ring to celebrate their official engagement.” The two are anxious to start a family as soon as possible. Janet would love to have a baby the natural way, but at 45, she’s also looking into adoption possibilities, according to the source.

The-Dream will make his dedicated fans very happy this month. The producersinger-songwriter will release a free 10-track LP, entitled ‘Terius Nash Est. 1977,’ prior to dropping his fourth studio album ‘The Love, IV: Diary of a Madman’ later this year. According to The-Dream, ‘Terius Nash Est. 1977’

will be released to the public free on August 31. “LP4 is Underway I THE-DREAM have decided to go forward with Diary Of A Madman LP it almost didn’t happen. So ill be in my Def Jam uniform for at least one More Season!” he tweeted. “Also a free 10 song Internet album will be released by Aug 31st. LP 4 because of the Contract negotiations does not have a date but it will be released 4th quarter but I will give a 10 song Internet LP while you guys wait!!!! LOVE YOU.” Chante Moore made an announcement that she and her hubby of nine years Kenny Lattimore are officially a wrap. The singer posted the following “private announcement” on her Facebook page. In the meantime Chante’ has her hands full as the host of an upcoming Sporty Girl Fitness 90 Day Transformation reality show. Michael Jai White, Vivica Fox and Tamyra Gray are also involved with the project.

“Can’t Be Friends” producer Mario Winans is finalizing his new album with plans to release the project by the end of the year. Winans’ third album, entitled ‘My Purpose,’ is a follow-up to his 2004 platinum effort ‘Hurt No More.’

During his hiatus from releasing solo material, Winans told YKIGS “I produced some stuff for the Diddy and Dirty Money [album] and with different artists like Rick Ross and all the Bad Boy artists.”

With urge to continue his solo career, he was inspired to record new material: “I had been living a little differently than what my purpose is, and that is really just to humbly serve others to pray for others and to really be a good person and live

the way I believe. From that, I was inspired to title my album that because those changes were going on in my life while I was working on the album.” In addition to his forthcoming album, Winans is grooming Hip Hop artist Superstar Piper, who is credited for producing Carl Thomas’ new single “It Ain’t Fair.”

Beyonce’s publicist told Today.com that Beyonce has no plans for a cookbook. “This is untrue,” she said.

Rumors started that Beyonce Knowles planned to publish a soul food cookbook, a “source” told the Daily Mirror. The singer was allegedly inspired by her mother, who prepares a spread of collard greens, cornbread, macaroni and cheese and fried chicken no matter where in the world they were. The only problem is that Beyonce has previously admitted that she isn’t such a great cook, and that she doesn’t really enjoy it. In fact, Beyonce says she’s a disaster in the kitchen.

Will.i.am has signed up to perform a special concert in China to encourage American students to study abroad and expand their cultural boundaries. The Black Eyed Peas star met with officials at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. and agreed to headline a gig for the 100,000 Strong Initiative, a motion made by President Barack Obama to match the rising number of Chinese students who travel to America to learn. The singer’s show will benefit Americans Promoting Study Abroad, a non-profit organization which provides financial support to low-income students partaking in exchange programs in the Asian country.

with the pressures of their personal relationships and responsibilities.

During the series, viewers get to see The twin sisters best known for Tia preparing for the birth of her their hit ‘90s sitcom Sister, Sister first child and Tamera planning the are back again. Tia Mowry Hardrict wedding of her dreams. and Tamera Mowry-Housley have In an interview, Tia and Tamera teamed up with the Style Network opened up about their new show, for a behind the scenes look into obstacles of parenting, balancing their major life transformations. their relationships and careers, and Their new docu-series Tia & Tamera, how they were able to break the teen premieres Monday, August 8 at star curse.

9:00pm ET/PT. What made you want to do this Last summer Tia and Tamera show? aired a successful preview to their Tia: This is the time... the timing series on The Style Network, and is right. Tamera and I have such this summer they are giving a more loyal fans that have stuck with us in-depth look into their lives as sis- throughout the years and we ters and friends. Throughout the thought it would be nice to open series they learn how to balance them to our world and let them their successful acting careers along know who we really are.

- Full Story In This Week’s New American Newspaper -

By CHRIS WITHERSPOON

Subscribe Today!

Make Checks and Money Orders Payable to:

New American Newspaper P.O.Box 1668 Brooklyn, NY 11247 YES! Please enter a one year subscription ($55) for: Name: Address: City: State: Zip: (Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery of your first issue)

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Report: Whitney Houston, Jordin Sparks in ‘Sparkle’ remake Rihanna to guest judge on ‘X Factor’

By JOSHUA L. WEINSTEIN

LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston is negotiating to return to the big screen in Sony’s remake of the 1976 film “Sparkle,” TheWrap has confirmed.

Jordin Sparks will make her feature film debut in the movie. Mike Epps also stars.

Houston hasn’t been in a movie since she traveled to Portland, Maine to make Penny Marshall’s 1996 “The Preacher’s Wife.” She starred opposite Denzel Washington in that film.

“Sparkle” focuses on three sisters who form a musical group and then have to contend with the ups and downs of stardom. Think the Supremes.

Mara Brock Akil wrote the script and her husband, Salim Akil is directing. The latter worked with Epps on Sony’s “Jumping the Broom.”

Debra Martin Chase is producing the Sony project. Production is scheduled to begin next month.

Tri-Star Pictures is distributing in association with Stage 6 Films.

Naomi Campbell to be honored for charity work

By ALICIA QUARLES Rihanna is reportedly set to serve as a guest judge on “The X Factor” sometime this season.

According to TMZ, the singer enjoyed her U.K. “X Factor” finale performance so much, that she — and series creator/star Simon Cowell — wants to hook up a second time. It helps that Rihanna is also signed to Island Def Jam, the Universal Music Group label that “X Factor” judge L.A. Reid ran from 2004 until March of this year.

Rihanna’s reps won’t confirm a booking, but in speaking with The Hollywood Reporter for an August cover story, Cowell emphasized that Reid is “expected to bring in stars.”

Reid is currently chairman and CEO of Sony-owned Epic Label Group, which counts Shakira and Sara Bareilles among its artists.

Says Cowell: “L.A. is the most powerful music executive in the world right now. He brings star power with him.”

It was reported last month that Carey was scheduled to shoot her guest segments but was grounded in New York due to Hurricane Irene. Says an “X Factor” source, “It was disappointing, but they’ll work something out.”

Fox has not commented on any guest judge rumors insisting that viewers will find out soon enough.

The show premieres on Sept. 21.

Naomi Campbell has made plenty of headlines for her bad behavior, but next month, the spotlight is set to shine on the model for something positive — her charitable work.

Campbell and her boyfriend, Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin, are going to be honored at the annual Angel Ball, which supports cancer research.

“She really is amazing woman and she does a lot for charity. She has her own charity. She raised a lot of money this summer for Haiti and for AIDS relief,” said Denise Rich, the songwriter who started the Angel Foundation after her daugh-

ter, Gabrielle, died of leukemia.

Rich spoke about Campbell during a party hosted at her home Saturday night. It was co-hosted by Jade Jagger. Tina and Solange Knowles were also in attendance, as was Rich’s best friend, singer Natalie Cole.

Cole said people should not be shocked that Campbell, who has pleaded guilty several times to assault, is being honored, and that the model is misunderstood: “She has been behaving herself. She is a good girl. I think there are just certain people who get on her nerves and I understand that.”

The Angel Ball will be held on October 17 and will feature performances by Patti LaBelle and Eve.

‘Men in Black 3’ to be released in IMAX 3D LOS ANGELES — In case “Men in Black 3” wasn’t big enough, Sony’s making it even bigger: The studio will release its big-budget 3D feature in IMAX, it announced Monday.

In a written statement, Sony Pictures president of worldwide distribution Rory Bruer said that releasing the movie in IMAX 3D “signals an event release.”

It’s the first “Men in Black” film to be released on IMAX. “Men in Black 3,” starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones will be released May 25, 2012.

Barry Sonnenfeld is directing the movie, which Etan Cohen wrote. “Men in Black 3” also stars Josh Brolin, Jer-

maine Clement and Emma Thompson.

Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are producing.

The movie has a budget estimated at more than $200 million and has been beset by delays and other issues.

The film was supposed to begin shooting last October, but that date was postponed by about a month. Soon after, producers announced they would film the movie in two segments — the first would begin in November and be finished before Christmas and the second would begin in mid-February. Instead, shooting began again on March 28.

— Joshua L. Weinstein

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14,14, 2011 DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2011

NEW JERSEY

State of school spurs apology from Trenton board chief

By JOSHUA ROSENAU TRENTON - The president of the city Board of Education apologized last night for the district’s failure to properly prepare Jefferson School for the arrival of nearly 450 students of Trenton Community Charter School, which closed last month.

“If I had shown up to a school that was in the condition that Jefferson was in on Thursday with my son, who has allergies ... I would have been very upset,” Toby Sanders said. “And I am going to say as board president that I apologize.”

Sanders said the district was at fault for the lax security and poor levels of staff and supervision at the school on Thursday and Friday, and he thanked parents for holding the board’s feet to the fire.

But he urged parents to allow their children to remain at Jefferson.

“Give us 30 days. Trust us for 30 days,” he said. “We will do better for your children than anywhere you can take them, because we have the people, the teachers who care.”

Sanders’ apology came after a barrage of questions and comments from irate parents deploring the state of the newly reopened Jefferson School on Stuyvesant Avenue, which they said was broken, dirty and moldy.

Quianna Jennings-Means said her first-grade daughter, who was rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton on her first day of class, was sickened by the school.

“The building looked like it needed to be condemned,” said April Ross who has two

Jersey City Heights man tells police 2 men stabbed him on street as he walked home from bar By MICHAELANGELO CONTE A Jersey City Heights man was stabbed early Friday morning after he was accosted for a cigarette, reports

Some say Mack’s unveiling Mayors’ Wall in Trenton comes at a bad time

By ALEX ZDAN

Rev. Toby Sanders, president of the Trenton Board of Education children attending the we have a facilities problem school. “I saw a lot of dust, a across this district,” board lot of mold, faucets not work- member Missy Balmer said, ing, water fountains not noting the state of disrepair working. I just want to know at Mott School and Trenton why they can’t just put our Central High.

Sanders explained that the children in a different buildair quality at Jefferson actuing?”

Explaining the district’s ally counted in the school’s process in opening the shut- favor because an environtered Jefferson School, mental study concluded that Superintendent Raymond spore counts in the facility Broach said he and the dis- were relatively low compared trict did the best they could with other schools in the disover a two-week period to trict.

“That report comes back comply with their responsibilities to the additional stu- cleaner than it does at the high school, than at Mott, dents and to the law.

Communications between than at many of our facilithe two schools concerning ties,” he said.

Skeptical of the short time the possible closure of the Trenton Community Charter period with which the disSchool began Aug. 1, but the trict was expected to absorb Trenton board did not receive the influx of students after word of the charter school’s the closure, former school official closing until the Aug. board member Joyce Kersey wondered what options 19, Sanders said.

“Is it ideal? No. But I think Trenton had in making room it’s important to realize that for so many new students.

said.

Officers at Christ Hospital spoke to the victim, who said he left a bar at Webster Avenue and Congress Street about 3 a.m. and was walking home when two men asked him for a cigarette at Bowers Street and Webster Avenue,

reports said.

He said he was getting a cigarette out when one of the men punched him in the face, reports said, adding that as he struggled with that man, the second man stabbed him in the stomach with what looked like a kitchen knife.

15 15

TRENTON - Five days before layoffs are slated to take away one-third of Trenton’s police force, Mayor Tony Mack unveiled a portrait wall featuring pictures of himself and his predecessors in City Hall yesterday afternoon.

The 46 mayors and one chief burgess who have served Trenton throughout the past 250 years are now immortalized in the City Hall atrium at a cost to taxpayers of $4,000, Mack said.

The president of the Police Benevolent Association union local objected to the expenditure, but Mack argued that the wood plaques and brass titles, displayed prominently on the building’s first floor, had not impacted this year’s budget.

“The cost for this display was allocated in last year’s appropriations,” Mack said, adding that allowances should be made for preserving history.

Mack’s office said he would “create history” by unveiling what they called the Mayors’ Wall, but PBA President George Dzurkoc argued the mayor is creating only more wasteful spending.

Dzurkoc said the wall reminds him of the 11 “Welcome to Trenton” signs Mack began unveiling in June, about a month after he announced plans for more than 100 police officer layoffs.

“For that part of it I don’t think money has to be spent on signs,” Dzurkoc said. “I just wonder how much has been spent on signs at this point.”

Councilwoman Marge Caldwell-Wilson, who attended the unveiling yesterday, said she first learned about the Mayors’ Wall when she saw maintenance employees fastening the plaques last week. She said she felt uneasy about the display.

“I have mixed emotions about the timing of it all,” she said.

Caldwell-Wilson said city council was never consulted about the expenditure, but noted the cost fell under the $17,500 threshold that requires public bidding.

“I haven’t even processed it yet,” she said. “I mean, I think under normal circumstances, that’s nice. But it just kind of took me by surprise, so that’s why I went over there to check this out.”

Though Mack said the money for the project was allocated last year, the company that made the plaques, Creative Arts Trophies in Trenton, did not come on board until this past July, owner Jim Gennello said.

Mayoral aide Paul Harris contacted him and “they kind of gave us the idea,” Gennello said yesterday.

Mack argued that more “professionally” done plaques could have cost $20,000, meaning the $4,000 he spent represents a $16,000 savings for the city.

Gennello’s company was given a disk containing pictures of the 42 leaders whose images were available, culled from the Trentoniana collection at the public library.

Creative Arts then made the city emblem that dominates the interior of the exhibits, mounted the images on the plaques and engraved the titles, Gennello said.

While the pictures of executives from 18th-century Chief Burgess Thomas Cadwalader to Mack predecessor Douglas H. Palmer are in black and white and surrounded by a large white oval, Mack’s photo is in full color and fills the square frame. His spokesperson says it is displayed that way because Mack is the current mayor.

Gennello said his company usually makes awards and trophies for city Little Leagues or other kids’ sports.

“Most of our things, I guess, are for the youth - trophies, awards - but nothing as big as this, I guess,” he said.

The company has already received a couple calls from people who attended the ceremony asking about the work they do, Gennello said.

Mack’s office said the wall will show residents that “Trenton has had a long line of accomplished chief executives, before and after they entered office,” including a U.S. senator, freeholders, lawyers, physicians, and two state Supreme Court justices.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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Hospital workers outspend others on medical care

By DEBRA SHERMAN CHICAGO — Hospital employees spend 10 percent more on healthcare, consume more medical services, and are generally sicker than the rest of the U.S. workforce, according to a study released on Monday.

The cost difference was even greater when dependents were taken into account, with healthcare costs 13 percent higher, including medical care and prescription drugs.

The study, conducted by Thomson Reuters Healthcare, analyzed the health risk and utilization of 1.1 million hospital workers and compared them with 17.8 million health plan members across all industries around the country.

Researchers did not look at the causes for the disparity.

Healthcare workers and their dependents were more likely to be diagnosed and hospitalized to treat asthma, diabetes, congestive heart

failure, HIV, hypertension and mental illness.

It found that the average cost of healthcare for hospital employees and their dependents was $4,662 per year — $538 higher than that of the general population.

Hospital employees and their dependents saw their doctors less often, but were 22 percent more likely to visit an emergency room and spent 18 percent more time hospitalized, the study found.

Kreg Sherbine, co-author of the study, speculated that easy access to expensive care may play a role.

“When they’re right down the hall from the emergency room, it might just be easier to go there than to make an appointment with a physician,” Sherbine said.

The stressful environment of a hospital and the irregular hours that many hospital employees work, which together make it difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle, may be another contributing factor, he said.

Narcissists make horrible bosses Narcissists’ too-high opinion of themselves means they don’t make good business or political leaders, according to a new study.

Traits such as high self-esteem, confidence and dominance often help narcissists rise to the top, but once they take over, their selfinvolvement and authoritarianism get in the way, the researchers explained.

The researchers’ study of 150 people who were asked to make decisions in groups of three showed that narcissists’ self-centeredness impeded the free and creative exchange of ideas, which is a crucial part of effective group decision-making and performance.

In the study, each group was asked to choose a job candidate.

Some information about the candidates was available to all three members of the group, while certain key pieces of information were only available to one of the participants.

Afterwards, group members were asked to check off all the pieces of information available to them about the candidates and rate the quality of the exchange and the group leader.

Although the groups led by the most narcissistic individuals rated their leaders as the most effective, they were incorrect. The groups with the most narcissistic “bosses” invariably chose the worst candidate.

“The narcissistic leaders had a very negative effect on their performance. They inhibited the communication because of self-centeredness and authoritarianism,” study author Barbora Nevicka, a Ph.D. candidate in organizational psychology, said in a journal news release.

The study appears in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychologi-

cal Science.

In the workplace, “communication — sharing of information, perspectives, and knowledge — is essential to making good decisions,” said Nevicka. “In brainstorming groups, project teams, government committees, each person brings something new. That’s the benefit of teams.

That’s what creates a good outcome.”

The findings also apply to politics, she added.

“Narcissists are very convincing,” she said. “They do tend to be picked as leaders. There’s the danger: that people can be so wrong based on how others project themselves. You have to ask: Are the competencies they project valid, or are they merely in the eyes of the beholder?”

Sherbine said he doubted the reason was more exposure to disease in the workplace since there was disparity in numerous noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and obesity.

“Awareness could be a factor. We know that chronic conditions are often undiagnosed. One might reasonably conclude that professionals are more aware of their symptoms and consequently more likely to seek treatment. However, that doesn’t explain the inordinate difference in utilization,” he said.

Researchers concluded that a hospital or health system with 16,000

employees would save an estimated $1.5 million annually in medical and pharmacy costs for each 1 percent reduction in health risk.

“There are industries with higher risks. The manufacturing sector, for example, is typically older and has an even less healthy population,” Sherbine noted.

But with increasing financial pressure on hospitals, hospital administrators need to pay attention to their bottom lines, he said.

“Salaries and benefits are their biggest costs. We think it’s really important for hospitals to address this,” he said.

Study: Misunderstanding of drug approval common

By GENEVRA PITTMAN Many people believe that drugs given the okay by the Food and Drug Administration are safer and more effective than they have to be to win approval, according to a new study.

Especially in the first few years after a drug becomes available, researchers note, there are still questions about how well it will work and whether it will have any serious side effects.

In one well-known example, the FDA-approved painkiller Vioxx was pulled off the market in 2004 after longer-term evidence showed that it may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

In the new web-based survey of close to 3,000 people across the U.S., one quarter said they believed the FDA only approves drugs without serious side effects, and another 39 percent believed that only “extremely effective” drugs get approval.

In reality, approval “just means that the benefits are judged to be greater than the harms. It doesn’t mean that they’re big and important,” said Dr. Steven Woloshin, one of the study’s authors from White River Junction VA Medical Center in Vermont.

After that, it’s up to doctors — and patients — to make drug decisions for specific cases.

The researchers also questioned survey participants on two specific scenarios to see if educating patients about drug options could change their views on which drugs are safest and most effective.

In one scenario, patients had to choose between a hypothetical cholesterol drug that had been shown to lower cholesterol and another that decreased the risk of a heart attack.

All other things being equal, picking the drug with a clear effect on a “bad outcome” — heart attacks — is the way to go, the authors said. However, only 59 percent of people made that choice.

In the other case, participants

could choose between a newer or older heartburn drug that worked equally well and had the same side effects.

Just 34 percent picked the older heartburn drug.

The authors then gave participants a short statement including the idea that newer isn’t always better, because researchers may not have had enough time to investigate safety issues.

“New often just means we know less about it... because it takes time for a drug to establish its track record,” Woloshin said.

After hearing that, the participants did better. Seventy-one percent took the cholesterol drug with clear clinical benefit, and 53 percent picked the older, thoroughly vetted heartburn drug, the researchers report in Archives of Internal Medicine.

“We were happy that these very simple statements had an effect,” Woloshin said.

But while that’s an improvement, the researchers say, a simple explanation may still not be enough for many patients to make informed choices.

Woloshin suggested a few things that could help educate patients.

First, he said that the FDA could create a one-page fact sheet clearly stating the harms and benefits of each drug, including the reminder that “new is not necessarily better.” Those reminders, in abbreviated form, could also go on all drug advertisements for the public and on drug labels, he added.

An FDA spokesperson said in an email that the organization had not reviewed the study and so could not comment on it, but added that the FDA has publicly available information on “new and emerging drug safety issues.”

Dr. Michael Steinman from the San Francisco VA Medical Center, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study, said that patients should be encouraged to talk with their doctors about treatment options, and to not be intimidated about bringing up their concerns.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

17

Report: Most cases of dementia are not diagnosed

By JULIE STEENHUYSEN CHICAGO — About 28 million of the nearly 36 million people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias have not been diagnosed, robbing them from the benefit of treatments and the chance to have a say in their future care, according to a report released Tuesday.

It found that many people are not diagnosed with dementia until the disease is well advanced.

“Failure to diagnose Alzheimer’s in a timely manner represents a tragic missed opportunity to improve the quality of life for millions of people,” said Dr. Daisy Acosta, chairman of Alzheimer’s Disease International, a patient advocacy group that sponsored the study.

The group last year estimated that Alzheimer’s and other dementias cost $604 billion globally to treat, a figure that will soar as the number of sufferers triples by 2050.

Its latest report, which makes the case for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, comes just days before a United Nations meeting on Alzheimer’s and is aimed at getting

A split-view image showing PET scans of a normal brain (L) and a brain with Alzheimer’s disease. the disease on the agenda of world leaders.

The group is pushing for all countries to develop a national dementia strategy that promotes early diagnosis and offers a range of care from primary care doctors, specialists, and community-based treatment centers.

Recent studies suggest the disease starts developing at least a decade before symptoms appear.

Many scientists and patient advocates believe earlier testing will play an important role in getting

New drug boosts ‘good’ cholesterol in study patients A treatment currently being studied may prevent progression of atherosclerosis, a condition caused by the build-up of plaque in artery walls that can lead to heart attack, according to new research.

In conducting the study, published in the Sept. 12 issue of The Lancet, researchers followed 130 patients with atherosclerosis who were randomly assigned to be treated with either the experimental heart drug dalcetrapib, or an inactive placebo over the course of two years. In the double-blind study, neither the researchers nor the patients knew who was taking the heart drug and who was taking the placebo.

While statin drugs are commonly used to lower LDL or “bad” cholesterol to reduce the risk of coronary artery disease, dalcetrapib raises HDL or “good” cholesterol in order to reduce the risk, the researchers explained.

To determine the efficacy of dalcetrapib, the researchers used noninvasive imaging technology.

Through MRI, the researchers found the patients on dalcetrapib had a 31 percent increase in “good” HDL cholesterol levels. Additional PET/CT scans showed that inflammation levels in the carotid artery of patients were significantly reduced only among those taking dalcetrapib. The

carotid arteries are responsible for supplying oxygenated blood to the head and neck.

In a different study, a drug in the same class designed to raise HDL levels was tied to an increase in death linked to vascular inflammation, but the researchers did not find an increase in such inflammation with dalcetrapib.

“This milestone study shows that MRI and PET/CT are highly useful in assessing the safety and efficacy of dalcetrapib, and that this novel therapy may address a significantly unmet need in cardiovascular disease,” said lead study author Zahi A. Fayad, a professor of radiology and medicine in the cardiology division at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the director of its Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute, in a Mt. Sinai news release.

“We are excited about the results obtained in this trial, which could have a great impact on the treatment of patients with cardiovascular disease,” said Fayad, who disclosed receiving financial compensation as a scientific advisory board member from the study’s sponsor, HoffmannLa Roche, whose holding company makes dalcetrapib.

Fayad noted imaging technology could be a vital tool for evaluating other treatments for heart disease.

people treated and in preparing families for the burden ahead.

“The report is really mainly about the estimated 28 million out of 36 million people worldwide with dementia who don’t have a diagnosis,” said Professor Martin Prince of King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry, who led the study.

Among the study’s main findings, he said it shows that while current Alzheimer’s treatments — Aricept from Eisai Co and Pfizer Inc, Reminyl from Shire, and Exelon from Novartis Exelon — are no cure for the disease, they can improve symptoms in some patients. That could allow some to delay a nursing home stay, for example.

Prince said early diagnosis could save high-income countries as much as $10,000 per patient. While

that might not mean much to individual families taking care of a loved one with a disease that can span several years, those savings could make a significant difference on a global scale.

And there are other reasons to diagnose patients.

“Earlier diagnosis can also transform the design and execution of clinical trials to test new treatments,” Marc Wortmann, executive director of ADI, said in a statement.

Researchers increasingly believe that many drugs being tested for Alzheimer’s have been tried on people who are already too far gone.

Earlier diagnosis will help countries develop infrastructure for treating people in the earliest stages of the disease, when drugs have the most chance of doing some good.

Dr. Sam Gandy of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York said existing drugs are only modestly effective, and they always wear off.

“Eighteen months after you start a drug, they are in the same place,” he said in a telephone interview.

But Robert Egge, vice president of public policy at the U.S.-based Alzheimer’s Association, said the burden of Alzheimer’s is so great that even modest benefits are worth pursuing.

“We certainly need to push for more effective disease-modifying treatments that can slow or stop the disease, and at the same time we see the treatment value that can follow from early diagnosis,” he said.

Groups: Government to ban six types of E coli from ground beef

By CHARLES ABBOTT WASHINGTON — The U.S. government will ban the sale of ground beef contaminated with six types of the E coli bacteria that can cause serious cases of food-borne illness, a food-safety watchdog group and a U.S. meat industry group said on Monday.

The Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention (CFI) had campaigned for the ban and said it would be “a huge preventative step” to keep pathogens out of the food supply.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was expected to announce the step on Tuesday. So far, one type of E. coli, 0157:H7, is banned as an adulterant, the result of an outbreak of illness in 1944 from undercooked hamburgers.

The other types of E. coli, 026, 011, 045, 0121, 0103 and 0145, known as the “big six” for their role in causing illness, would also be banned from ground beef under USDA’s plan.

The American Meat Institute, which represents beef packers, also said USDA would announce the move. It opposed the action and said few U.S. illnesses are attributed to the six bacteria.

USDA would be wiser to focus on technology to reduce occurrence of the bacteria, an effective tactic against 0157:H7, rather than to spend millions of dollars to test for it, AMI said in a statement.

“Imposing this new regulatory program on ground beef will cost tens of millions of federal and industry dollars — cost that will likely be borne by taxpayers and consumers,” AMI said.

The six bacteria have been cited in outbreaks of illness linked to produce. USDA has weighed an expansion of the banned bacteria since 2007.

“The impact this decision will have on public health is enormous and should result in fewer recalls, fewer illnesses and fewer deaths from foodborne illness,” said Barbara Kowalcyk of CFI.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

18

401(k) break at risk as policymakers mull retirement shift

By LINDA STERN WASHINGTON — U.S. retirement programs could look different if a grand deficit-cutting bargain is struck in upcoming negotiations.

Last Thursday, the powerful Senate Finance Committee will explore “Tax Reform Options: Promoting Retirement Security.” Despite the sleepy title, the hearing will be one of the first outward signs of something that’s been actively discussed privately all over this city in recent weeks and months: How to tweak retirement to make 401(k) plans more efficient, keep Social Security afloat and save some money for the federal Treasury.

Among the ideas being floated are a replacement of the 401(k) deduction with a tax credit that would offer bigger benefits to lower earners, changes in the withdrawal choices that workers face when they retire and a shift in the way Social Security benefits are calculated. That is on top of the increase in the retirement age that has been mentioned several times in recent months.

A variety of economic pressures and demographic trends have

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come together to put these new ideas on the table. There’s also some disillusionment within the Obama Administration and among people with close ties to the administration with the way the 401(k) system is operating. The Social Security program is projected by its own trustees to exhaust its trust fund in 2036. The so-called “retirement deficit” - the difference between what Americans have saved for retirement and what they should have saved has been put at $6.6 trillion by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research.

At the same time, Congress and the White House are under pressure to cut federal deficits. And prominent members of both political parties have talked up the idea of loophole-closing, rate-lowering tax reform.

Put all of that together, and it points to changes in the sprawling retirement system.

“The kinds of points at which you can get fundamental changes adopted is in the midst of a big deal,” says Dallas Salisbury, who has been watching retirement policy closely as head of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “And President Obama wants a grand bargain.”

Of course, it may be that no big deal gets struck and retirement plans remain unchanged between now and the 2012 election. In that case, expect some of these themes to continue

surfacing after the heavy campaigning is done.

“Any time they are looking at spending and revenue over the next 40 or 50 year, these issues will be on the table,” Salisbury predicts.

The tax break for defined contribution retirement plans will cost the Treasury $212.2 billion between 2010 and 2014, according to the Joint Tax Committee.

But the vast amount of that benefit - as much as 80 percent - goes to the top 20 percent of earners, according to estimates from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan, but liberal-leaning, think tank.

For example, a person in the 35 percent tax bracket saves $35 in taxes every time he puts $100 in his 401(k), for a net cost of $65. Someone in the 15 percent bracket pays $85, after tax, for the same $100 contribution. The Pension Rights Center, which has favored traditional defined benefit pensions and other programs aimed at lower-income retirees, advocates rolling back the current $16,500 annual 401(k) tax-deferred contribution limit to the $10,500 level it was at before the Bush tax cuts, its director, Karen Ferguson, has said.

One way to address both the cost and the disparity is to change the deduction into a credit.

William Gale, of the Brookings Institution, will present a plan like that to the Senate com-

RIM, Dolby set licensing deal; lawsuits dropped TORONTO — Dolby Laboratories said it has withdrawn its patent infringement lawsuit against Research In Motion after the BlackBerry maker inked a licensing deal to use of some of Dolby’s technologies.

In June, Dolby sued RIM for using its audio compression technologies in its smartphones and PlayBook tablets with-

out proper licenses.

The lawsuits, filed in the United States and Germany, sought financial damages for past use and injunctions to halt sales of BlackBerry phones and PlayBook tablets.

San Francisco-based Dolby said both lawsuits have now been dismissed following the agreement with RIM. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

mittee on Thursday. His plan would eliminate the deduction entirely and replace it with a federal match that would be deposited directly into workers retirement accounts. A match of 30 percent would be revenue neutral, he says.

If lawmakers instead opted to approve an 18 percent match, it would leave low-bracket workers unharmed, but would raise $450 billion in tax revenues over 10 years.

Gale’s proposal is significant because he has close ties to current and former Obama Administration officials. An earlier version of the Gale plan was coauthored by Peter Orzsag, who was President Obama’s first budget director and who continues to editorialize in favor of killing the deduction.

But those proposals would leave higherincome workers with less incentive than they currently have to stash money into a taxdeferred retirement account. “Quantitatively speaking, these proposals would appear to reduce prospective retirement well-being,” says EBRI’s Salisbury.

He’s raised the idea - that he says dates back to the mid-1990’s - of putting all tax-favored savings (for items like retirement and college) into a single account that gave savers more flexibility.

Mark Iwry, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for retirement and health policy, and another former Gale colleague, has voiced concern about the fact that workers may not be getting

enough information about how much lifetime income their 401(k) account balances can support. And it’s hard for individual retirees to understand how much they can afford to pull out of their tax-deferred accounts without running short in later years.

One approach to solve this would be a requirement that 401(k) sponsors put that kind of information in their statements. A bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, would require that 401(k) statements show how much of an annuity the current account balance would provide.

A step beyond that would be the offering of more annuity and automated-withdrawal plans as alternatives to retiring workers who may believe their only option is to take the lump sum.

That’s an approach that, unsurprisingly, is favored by the insurance industry. But it also has fans in the Labor Department, which is currently working on some sort of policy encouragement for employers who give their workers flexible retirement income choices.

Though most officials repeatedly say they don’t intend to “fix” Social Security by penalizing current retirees, several of the bipartisan, deficitcutting proposals raised over the last two years have included a swipe at the cost-of-living adjustment that currently pegs benefits to the Consumer

Price Index.

This “is one of the few ways to have current retirees contribute to restoring balance in the program,” writes Alicia Munnell and William Hisey of the Center for Retirement Research in a new study.

But the most common proposal, which would switch the COLA from the CPI to a different (and slower-growing) measure called the “chained CPI” would set back retirees trying to keep up with the cost of elderly living by as much as 0.57 percent a year, the coauthors estimated. That’s because the current CPI already understates the inflation rate that is actually experienced by retirees, and because the chained CPI would further understate that.

“Low-income elderly are not deciding whether to buy a watch or a bracelet,” the two said.

“They spend most of their income on essential amounts of necessities, like housing, food, health care and transportation.”

Munnell and Hisey proposed a one-time delay in the inflation adjustment. That could help save the program money but also set all current beneficiaries back, but not to the same extent as an annual adjustment that understates inflation every year Like all of the other retirement proposals floating around now, the COLA solution is a moving target. Workers and retirees should continue to watch that space.

DoCoMo, others to make smartphone chips with Samsung NTT DoCoMo Inc and other Japanese firms will partner South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co to develop key chips for next-generation smartphones to reduce the reliance on Qualcomm Inc, the Nikkei business daily reported.

The companies — including Fujitsu Ltd, NEC Corp and Panason-

ic Corp unit Panasonic Mobile Communications Co — are in talks to form a joint venture next year to develop chips that control wireless communications and signals, the paper said.

Qualcomm has about 80 percent of the market for such semiconductors, known as baseband chips, the Nikkei

said.

DoCoMo is to take a majority stake in the joint venture, to be capitalized at about 30 billion yen ($389.6 million) and headquartered in Japan, said the paper.

The venture expects to use the chips in the partners’ own smartphones and to sell to other handset manufacturers, Nikkei said.

DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

19

Nintendo faces end of era after 3DS flop

By ISABEL REYNOLDS TOKYO — Nintendo’s attempt to rescue its failed 3DS handheld games gadget failed to dispel market gloom, triggering a 5 percent share slide and stoking deep worries for an iconic brand desperate to win back users.

On Tuesday, PresiSatoru Iwata dent introduced what he said was an unprecedented range of games, aimed at attracting everyone from hardcore gamers to fashionconscious girls and fans of the long-running Mario series.

The Japanese company also announced on its website a new 1,500 yen ($19) slidepad accessory needed for certain games.

But analysts and investors dismissed the line-up as lackluster and largely irrelevant in the face of cheap or

free games played on the likes of Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Google-powered Android devices.

Nintendo has been criticized for sticking rigidly to its own hardware, meaning it has no access to the new generation of mobile devices.

“I don’t think the new games will make any difference,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment.

“Nintendo succeeded by pulling in people who weren’t gamers and their needs now are no longer being filled

by Nintendo, they are happy playing games on their mobile phones,” he said.

Nintendo’s shares ended 5 percent lower in a strong market. The Kyoto-based company’s shares have plunged nearly 50 percent so far this year, hit by the 3DS flop and doubts that it can replicate the

success of its Wii home console with the next generation WiiU, announced at the E3 games show in June.

Nintendo, which means “Leave luck to heaven,” was forced to announce price cuts of up to 40 percent in July to try to boost slumping demand for the glassesfree 3D version of the DS, but this only temporarily spurred sales.

In July, Nintendo slashed its outlook for the business year to end-March to its lowest in 27 years as it braced for losses from the 3D gadget and a stronger yen.

In a subdued Tokyo conference hall on Tuesday, an appearance by the company’s star game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, wielding a toy sword and shield raised a laugh, but a series of 3DS game images depicting Miyamoto and Iwata as a pair of young lovers was met

with silence.

“From the end of this year to the beginning of next, we are planning the kind of extensive line-up that has probably never been seen before in the history of video games,” Iwata told reporters and guests.

“We will make an allout effort to see that the 3DS sells enough to become the successor to the DS,” Iwata said.

That will be no easy task, given that earlier models of the DS had sold a cumulative total of about 148 million units by the end of June this year. The gadget, along with the motioncontrolled Wii home console, enabled Nintendo to dominate the industry for years.

In Japan, 3DS sales leaped to more than 200,000 units in the week of the price cut, but swiftly fell back to about 55,000 units, according to research firm Enterbrain.

That leaves only the secretive company’s famed content, never made available on other firms’ hardware, to revive sales.

“The only possible way for Nintendo to revive would be to stop concentrating on mobile games and switch to Wii-type games for the whole family,” said Makoto Kikuchi, CEO of Myojo Asset Management.

“However, at the moment, I can’t see this change coming.”

Iwata took a 50 percent pay cut, and other executives took 20-30 percent cuts to take responsibility for the poor performance.

Analysts have cut their full-year operating profit forecasts for Nintendo by an average of 45 percent in the

past 30 days and the stock is now trading at 45 times its estimated forward 12-month earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Shares in software provider Capcom slumped by 8.3 percent after the company said it would be developing the next generation of its hit Monster Hunter game for the 3DS. Nintendo slashed the price of the 3DS after sales shriveled to just 710,000 units in AprilJune from 3.6 million in the first month after its launch, and a tiny fraction of the 16 million unit target for the year.

Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson said he still expected the 3DS gadget to sell about 14.5 million units over the year.

HP offered an agreed 2,550 pence per Autonomy share on August 18, which it said valued the enterprise search software company’s fully diluted share capital at 7.09 billion pounds ($11.2 billion).

Panmure Gordon analyst George O’Connor said investors that had not yet accepted the offer would hang on to

the end for a competitive deal.

“You have got a very decent bird in the hand, but there might be another two in the bush.

My own view is that the bush is empty. HP is paying a very decent price. I do not see a competitive bid approaching.”

Analysts and bankers are skeptical that a rival offer will emerge to create competitive tension and boost the price.

“I do not think any-

like Google, Facebook and Amazon.com Inc. Such competition has raised questions about the sustainability of Groupon’s business model ahead of a planned initial public offering. Last week, Groupon put its IPO on hold for at least a few weeks.

Still, some rivals have stepped back in recent weeks. Facebook ended its daily deals business and Yelp chopped the number of offers it runs.

In contrast, Groupon gained market share in August. Revenue was $120.7 million in North America, up 13 percent from July, Yipit said on Monday.

LivingSocial revenue

in North America slipped 3 percent to $45.1 million in August, Yipit data show.

Groupon’s market share increased to 53 percent in August from 51 percent in July, while LivingSocial’s market share declined to 20 percent from 22 percent, according to Yipit.

Amazon Local generated more than $1 million in revenue in August, despite being active in only a handful of markets for the full month, Yipit said. Amazon owns part of LivingSocial and sources some of its deals from the second-largest daily deals company.

one else has the same urgency to buy Autonomy as HP,” Tom GidleyKitchin at Charles Stanley said.

“I guess that a lot of professional investors are holding onto their shares until late on, against some miniscule chance of some better offer.”

A top 50 Autonomy shareholder expressed satisfaction with the offer.

“To be honest we would be quite surprised if there was anything else out there. I wouldn’t put us down as being majorly unhappy,” the shareholder said.

Gidley-Kitchin said sentiment in the technology sector, hardware and even software, was a bit negative. Autonomy investors may be hanging on because there was nowhere better for them to put their money.

Autonomy shares were steady, up 0.32 percent at 2,525 pence at 0945 GMT. The offer is conditional on regulatory clearance. HP said on Tuesday that filings have been made in the United States, Austria, Germany and Ireland.

HP extends $11.2 billion Autonomy offer LONDON — HewlettPackard has extended the deadline for its $11.2 billion takeover of British software company Autonomy, with analysts predicting the U.S. firm is on course to succeed.

HP has extended the deadline for the offer to October 3 after gaining acceptances from shareholders representing

41.6 percent of shares.

The company requires a further 33.4 percent support from Autonomy investors to delist its target from the London Stock Exchange.

“I am very surprised that they have needed to extend it at all,” S&P equity research analyst James Crawshaw said on Tuesday. “I would have expected Autono-

my shareholders to be all pretty much happy with the takeout price.”

Although it is rare for takeover offers to gain more than a handful of acceptances at the first closing date, some analysts said they had expected more investors to take up the offer because HP is offering a hefty 79 percent premium.

Report: Google Offers struggling three months in

By ALISTAIR BARR SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc.’s effort to break into the daily deal industry and challenge industry leaders Groupon and LivingSocial is not going well, according to data released on Monday.

In its third month of operation, the performance of Google Offers declined in its major

markets of New York, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, data from industry tracker and deal aggregator Yipit show.

Total revenue generated by Google Offers dropped 23 percent in August from July despite a 22 percent increase in the number of daily deals run, according to Yipit.

Revenue per deal fell 37 percent, driven by a 46 percent slump in the

number of vouchers sold per deal.

The average price of Google Offers vouchers increased 18 percent, but it remains “far below” that of Groupon and LivingSocial, Yipit said.

The online daily deal industry has exploded into a multibillion-dollar business since Groupon was launched in late 2008. That growth has attracted hundreds of rivals, including giants

20

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DAILY DAILY CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 14, 20112011 CHALLENGE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER

DAILY CHALLENGE

SPORTS

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Cowboy Fan assaulted at Jet game

By JANE MCMANUS Charlemagne McKelvey isn’t sure how his father got an illegal Taser into MetLife Stadium on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 for the New York JetsDallas Cowboys game Sunday night, but he was also angry at the treatment Larry McKelvey, 59, was “Charlemagne the God”, host of “The shown before his Breakfast Club” morning show on Power 105 arrest on aggravat- and son of Cowboy’s fan Larry McKelvey ed assault and two the fight. One fan can coming to enjoy a weapons possession be heard on the video game, that’s fine. I’m charges. saying: “How did he get not calling for our guys “He was attacked by four or five Jets fans for having a Dallas jersey on,” said McKelvey, who is a host of “The Breakfast Club” morning show on Power 105 as Charlamagne Tha God. McKelvey, who put up $22,500 in bail for his father Monday, noted that in a cell phone video purported to be of the incident, his father is on the ground in a defenseless position. McKelvey also attended the game but was in a different part of the stadium.

The website Deadspin posted a cellphone video Monday of

in here with that thing?”

Earlier in the week, Jets coach Rex Ryan was asked about whether there would be a lot of Cowboys fans in the Jets home stadium.

“I don’t know why they’d be here,” Ryan said. “They’re coming into our stadium, it’s probably not recommended that you wear Cowboys stuff, I would think.”

Later in the week, Ryan backed down from those comments, and said that his intent had been misconstrued.

He hadn’t meant to threaten anyone.

“If it’s somebody else

to do anything,” Ryan said. “The safety of every fan is important to everybody in this organization, including me.”

McKelvey is not sure why his father had the Taser, or how he was able to bring it into the stadium given the heightened security.

His father came up from Moncks Corner, S.C. to attend the game, and McKelvey said that he and his father have been Cowboys fans all their lives.

While he was at the game, McKelvey said that his father, a cousin, and his father’s girlfriend were in the

stands wearing their Cowboys gear after tailgating for most of the afternoon.

When his father didn’t stand for part of the opening ceremony, McKelvey said Jets fans started heckling the group.

“Where was security in the stadium?”

McKelvey said.

MetLife Stadium CEO Mark Lamping said no one was seriously hurt in the incident.

There was an increased security presence at the game on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including bomb-sniffing dogs checking

Larry McKelvey every car that entered.

Fans were also patted down and had their bags checked, typical of game day security.

“Procedures for pat downs established by the NFL and used at every game were in effect at all entry gates,” Lamping said in a statement.

It’s possible there could be changes in the security methods, though.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league is “always refining and improving our security procedures.”

“These procedures have been successful in keeping items that can

cause serious injuries out of our stadiums,” Aiello said in a statement. “We will continue to be vigilant in protecting the safety of our fans.”

McKelvey said that his father didn’t know it was illegal to have a Taser. He was wrong to bring the weapon, McKelvey said, but he was attacked.

“My father was rooting for his team,” McKelvey said. “Jets fans got upset but that doesn’t give them the right to jump a 59-yearold man.”

Manny Ramirez out of jail after battery charge

By CURT ANDERSON FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida Former World Series MVP Manny Ramirez, a colorful slugger who abruptly retired this year amid allegations of banned substance use, is now facing criminal prosecution on charges that he slapped his wife during an argument.

Ramirez, 39, could get up to a year in jail if convicted of misde-

meanor domestic battery charges. He was released on $2,500 bail Tuesday after spending the night in the Broward County Jail, with little to say to a knot of waiting reporters.

“No thanks,” Ramirez said when asked for comment.

“Let me see, where’s my family?”

Ramirez hopped into a white Cadillac Escalade driven by his sister and was whisked away. A few minutes

earlier, the Broward Sheriff’s Office released a tape of the 911 call made by his wife, 32year-old Juliana Ramirez, from their sprawling home in the Ft. Lauderdale suburb of Weston.

“My husband just hit me,” Juliana Ramirez says calmly on the tape.

When the dispatcher asks where she was struck, Juliana replies, “My face and my head, in the bed. I have a bump on my head.”

The dispatcher then

asks if Juliana has a safe room to get away from her husband.

“He’s not doing anything anymore because he knows I’m calling the police,” she says.

Later, Juliana told sheriff’s deputies she called 911 because she was afraid the situation would escalate.

At a brief court appearance Tuesday, Ramirez was ordered to have no direct contact with his wife by County Judge John Hurley. An attorney who attended

the hearing on his behalf did not immediately respond Tuesday to an email requesting comment.

Manny Ramirez AP This booking photo made available by the...

View Full Caption After his release, Ramirez walked out of the jail alone and was confronted by reporters. He had told investigators only that he grabbed his wife by the shoulders during an argument and

“shrugged” her, causing her to hit her head on the headboard of their bed. But he wouldn’t discuss the incident Tuesday.

When a reporter said “You have to give us something,” Ramirez replied: “Not my problem.”

He spoke to another TV reporter in Spanish and put his arm around two of the female reporters. He was wearing a tight, muscleshowing T-shirt and dark, low-slung pants.

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DAILY CHALLENGE

SPORTS BRIEFS Bolt smashes Gay’s track record

Jamaican athletics superstar Usain Bolt ran a track record 9.85sec in the 100m at the athletics meeting here Tuesday, smashing longstanding American rival Tyson Gay’s mark of 9.92 set last year.

The 25-year-old Olympic titleholder - who lost his world crown last month after being disqualified for false starting - eased away to win from St Kitts and Nevis’s 35-year-old Kim Collins, 2003 world champion and bronze medalist last month, while Trinidad and Tobago’s Richard Thompson was third.

Collins timed 10.01sec while Thompson finished in 10.03sec.

Coach unsure if he’ll get 3 players back for Miami COLUMBUS, Ohio - Days before his 17thranked Buckeyes hit the road for the first time to play Miami, Ohio State coach Luke Fickell says he’s still unsure if three top suspended players will be available.

Starting tailback Jordan Hall and cornerback Travis Howard, along with backup safety Corey Brown, have been suspended two games so far for accepting $200 in cash to attend a charity event in suburban Cleveland in February.

Ohio State (2-0) will start Joe Bauserman at quarterback against the Hurricanes, but unlike last week’s narrow 27-22 victory over Toledo, backup Braxton Miller is expected to also see playing time.

The Buckeyes are also without four other players - three starters and a backup - suspended for the first five games for getting improper benefits from a local tattoo-parlor owner.

- RUSTY MILLER

Browns punter to go on IR CLEVELAND - Browns punter Richmond McGee injured his back during warmups before Sunday’s season opener, a possible explanation for his horrendous NFL debut.

Agent David Canter said McGee suffered a herniated disk before Cleveland hosted Cincinnati, and that the injury was so bad that McGee was kicking without feeling in his legs. McGee averaged just 36 yards on eight punts, shanking his first one 20 yards and later following it with punts of 28 and 30 yards.

Canter said the Browns plan to place McGee on injured reserve later today.

“He’s extremely disappointed, but grateful he got the opportunity,” Canter said of McGee, who was signed after Reggie Hodges went down with a season-ending injury.

There are reports the Browns have signed veteran Brad Maynard, a 14-year veteran who spent the past 10 years with the Chicago Bears. He punted for Houston during the preseason but was waived by the Texans on Sept. 3.

A Browns spokesman said the team has no roster moves to report at this time.

Maynard’s agent, Chad Wiestling, did not immediately return messages.

Canter said McGee “felt a twinge” while he was warming up on the field Sunday but decided to play.

SPORTS

Steven Jackson likely to sit Week 2 ST. LOUIS — Opening day was a beatdown for the St. Louis Rams. In more ways than one.

They’re likely to be minus four starters next Monday at the New York Giants, including running back Steven Jackson.

Cornerback Ron Bartell is likely out for the season with two breaks in his neck.

Quarterback Sam Bradford expects to play despite a bruised right index finger that knocked him out in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 31-13 loss to the Eagles. But one of his top targets, wide receiver Danny Amendola, is out with a dislocated left elbow.

Another cornerback, Bradley Fletcher, has a sprained toe that might limit him, and offensive tackle Jason Smith has a sprained left ankle. The team had feared Smith, the second overall pick of the 2009 draft, had a high ankle sprain which would have sidelined him for perhaps a month.

Coach Steve Spagnuolo said Monday it’s the worst injury report in his three seasons. It comes off a disappointing effort for a franchise that’s supposed to be on the rise, too.

“There’s a lot there, no question,” Spagnuolo said. “Nobody’s going to bury their head in the sand, and we’re not going to go away. We didn’t envision beginning like that and we certainly didn’t envision losing all these

guys.”

The defense gave up 16 plays for double-digit yardage, the offense was 2 for 12 on third downs — with about a halfdozen dropped passes — and the line couldn’t protect Bradford, who was sacked four times. The Rams were outscored 14-3 in the second half.

“A lot of their big plays were mental errors,” safety Quintin Mikell said. “You can’t have that against teams like that, but there’s some promise here and once we get the little things ironed out, we’ll be all right.”

Bartell, the Rams’ top cover cornerback, underwent a CT scan and an MRI exam at a hospital after the game. The team initially believed the injury was a stinger.

Teammate Justin King said Bartell was trying to tackle Eagles running back Ronnie Brown midway through the fourth quarter when a Philadelphia lineman dived to block Bartell and hit the cornerback on the top of the head.

King is likely to step up to take Bartell’s spot.

“It didn’t look right, the impact,” King said. “It’s very unfortunate, it’s one of the cruel realities of the game. One play and your season can be over.”

Amendola, who led the Rams with 85 catches last year, also was undergoing an MRI exam.

Team medical personnel did not

believe the injury would require surgery.

Amendola caught five passes for 45 yards against the Eagles.

Like many teams, the Rams opened with two quarterbacks instead of three and had considered Amendola their third quarterback.

Now, their third-stringer might be a running back in a wildcat formation.

Jackson was injured without contact on a 47-yard touchdown run on the Rams’ first play and left with a strained right quadriceps after one more 9-yard carry. Spagnuolo characterized Jackson as week-to-week and probably out for the Giants game.

Jackson rode a stationary bicycle for a few minutes before giving up on the game, although he stayed in uniform the rest of the way and the Rams didn’t change their assessment that Jackson’s return was questionable.

“Once we knew, there was no thought of trying to get him back in there,” Spagnuolo said.

The Rams added quality backups this year for the first time under Spagnuolo, and Cadillac Williams had 91 yards on 19 carries with 49 yards receiving.

Williams had limited snaps in practice, but Spagnuolo said “he was fully in tune, knew exactly what it was that he was supposed to do.

Jets’ well-traveled Trufant hopes he has NFL home

By DENNIS WASZAK Jr. F L O R H A M PARK, N.J. - Isaiah Trufant watched the football bounce in front of him and waited a split-second to judge where it was going.

Into his hands, the New York Jets defensive back hoped - while blocking out the 80,000 screaming fans at MetLife Stadium.

“Man, the whole time I was like, ‘Please! Good bounce, good bounce!’”

Trufant said. “And then, it bounced good and I just took it. It was wild, man, just crazy.”

The well-traveled Trufant, promoted from the practice squad 24

hours earlier, completed one of the biggest plays of the Jets’ 27-24 season-opening win over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night by returning Joe McKnight’s blocked punt 18 yards for a touchdown that tied it with 5 minutes left. It was a lucky bounce for a guy who has bounced around quite a bit while trying to pursue his NFL dream.

“He’s an amazing little guy,” coach Rex Ryan said, “and the more he plays - he just looks short to me - he doesn’t look small anymore. He did a great job.”

The diminutive Trufant - he’s generously listed at 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds - went undrafted out of

Eastern Washington in 2006 and has since played in the Arena Football League and the United Football League, and hopes he now can stick in the NFL. The younger brother of Seattle’s Marcus Trufant wasn’t even expecting to play in the opener until the day before the game.

“Man, it was a rollercoaster ride, really,” Trufant said. “You work hard everyday to hopefully get that opportunity to be active and when you do, you’ve got to try to take advantage of the opportunity you have. I was just able to make a play off a great block.”

The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur to Trufant, who was in camp with the

Philadelphia Eagles this summer, cut on Aug. 30 and signed by the Jets the next day after taking a crosscountry flight back home to the Seattle area.

“That was a little bit rough,” he said. “I got in around midnight and then the next morning around 10 a.m., I received a call from the Jets to hop on the red-eye that same night and fly back to the East Coast. It was all appreciated and all worth it.”

Trufant’s head kept spinning, though, because he was waived by the Jets three days later, signed to the practice squad the following day and then elevated to the active roster on Saturday.

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SPORTS

Report makes case for paying players WA S H I N G T O N — The average fair market value of toptier college football and men’s basketball players is over $100,000 each, and the athletes are entitled to at least a portion of that, a new report from an advocacy group argues.

Instead of getting what they’re worth, the players receive athletic scholarships that don’t cover the full cost of attending school, leaving many of them living below the poverty line, says the report, “The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport.”

A national college athletes’ advocacy group and a sports management professor calculate in the report that if college sports shared their revenues the way pro sports do, the average Football Bowl Subdivision player would be worth $121,000 per year, while the average basketball player at that level would be worth $265,000.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report ahead of its official release, scheduled for Tuesday.

Ramogi Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who heads the National College Players Association, wrote the report with Drexel

University professor Ellen J. Staurowsky.

The association is an advocacy group for college athletes which Huma says has more than 14,000 members — about half of whom are currently enrolled.

Huma and Staurowsky argue that the players should receive a portion of new revenues, like TV contracts, to be put in an “educational lockbox.”

Players could tap those funds to help cover educational costs if they exhaust their athletic eligibility before they graduate — or receive the money with no strings attached upon graduating. They also propose that athletes be free to seek commercial deals, such as endorsements, with some of the money from that going to the lockbox, and the rest available for the athlete’s immediate use.

They also say that schools should pay for costs beyond the tuition, student fees and room and board covered by athletic scholarships.

The report calculates the shortfall for the full cost of attending college — when things such as clothing and emergency trips home are added in — at $952 to $6,127, depending on the college. That leaves students on full athletic scholarships living below the poverty line at around 85 per-

cent of the schools, the report claims, by comparing the value of the scholarship’s room and board to the federal poverty guideline for a single individual.

Huma acknowledged that calculation does not take into account financial assistance students might get from home, or summer jobs, but he said most athletes are pressured to attend voluntary summer workouts, making it hard to get outside work.

The report calls for action from Congress to achieve some of these goals, arguing that federal intervention is necessary because college presidents aren’t in a position to take meaningful reform. The NCAA, which puts the athletes’ amateur status at the center of its mission, would oppose much of what the report proposes.

In a statement Monday, the NCAA said it had not yet reviewed the report, but that President Mark Emmert and university presidents made it clear at last month’s retreat — a meeting called in the wake of a run of scandals in college football — that they were committed to evaluating an increase to grants in aid that would cover the full cost of attending college. The NCAA added that the Committee on

Academic Performance is meeting this week to discuss the issue, and will make recommendations to the Division I Board of Directors next month.

“Dr. Emmert has been similarly clear that paying studentathletes a salary is in no way on the table,” the NCAA said.

The report argues that playing big-time football and basketball is a full-time job, and an NCAA study released this year backs that up.

It found that players in the Football Bowl Subdivision — the highest level — reported spending 43.3 hours per week during the season in athletic time commitment, while Division I men’s basketball players reported 39 hours a week in season.

The report said that players at the most powerful programs are worth far in excess of even the average athlete. The report estimates that Duke’s basketball players are worth the most, at around $1 million each, while Texas’ football players top that sport at $513,000 each.

Officials at Texas and Duke did not return email and phone messages Monday.

The report argues that the main beneficiaries of preserving the current system for athletes are coaches, athletic directors, confer-

ence commissioners and bowl directors, citing, for example, the multimillion-dollar salaries of several highprofile coaches.

“The NCAA’s definition of amateurism has proven to be priceless to obscenely paid coaches, athletics administrators, and colleges but has inflicted poverty on college athletes,” the report charges. It found that some football coaches’ bonuses alone were worth more than the entire scholarship shortfall for their teams.

Huma and Staurowsky argue that compensating players would go a long way to eliminating the black market, in which athletes have violated rules for accepting things of value.

“Rules that prohibit valuable players from accepting benefits above and beyond their scholarships set athletic programs and their players up for failure,” they say, citing the case of former USC receiver R. Jay Soward, who told Sports Illustrated last year that he took money from NFL agent Josh Luchs because his scholarship didn’t cover his food and rent costs.

“I would do it again,” Soward said. “I have four sons, and if somebody offered my son money in college and it meant he didn’t have to be hungry, I would tell

him to take it.”

The recent scandal at Ohio State involved players trading memorabilia for cash and tattoos from a man at the center of a federal investigation. And the University of Miami is being investigated by the NCAA for the relationship a rogue booster and Ponzi scheme artist had with players and coaches.

Huma, who graduated from UCLA in 1999, said that he struggled to get by on his full athletic scholarship. Even though the school was providing him with three meals a day, he said, he needed to eat five or six times a day because of the calories he was burning playing football. And he wasn’t able to get any support from home.

“I got by taking toilet paper and soap at hotels, and taking out the credit card,” he recalled, adding that he had $6,000 in credit card debt when he graduated. The school did provide him with teamissued clothing, but not all of it was appropriate for everyday use, he said.

“The bottom line is that players are misled into thinking that their labor will fully pay their way through school, and they are definitely earning much less than their fair market value,” he said.

Add receiver Hakeem Nicks to Giants’ injury list

By TOM CANAVAN EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - A day after saying his offense did almost nothing in a seasonopening loss to the Washington Redskins, New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin dropped a

little more bad news. passes for 122 yards in all that out.”

Leading receiver Hakeem Nicks suffered a knee injury in the game and was being evaluated on Monday.

Coughlin was not sure about either the extent of the injury or which knee was hurt, but he said the knee was swollen a day after postgame X-rays were negative.

Nicks caught seven

the 28-14 loss, including a 68-yard first-quarter reception that set up Eli Manning’s touchdown run.

Coughlin would not speculate on whether Nicks would be available for Monday night’s home opener against St. Louis.

“I don’t know the answer that,” Coughlin said. “They’re checking

The Giants could also use a thorough check of their offense after the unit was shut out in the second half against the Redskins, registering four first downs and a measly 102 yards in offense.

Not only didn’t the offense produce, but the Redskins went ahead for good early in the third quarter when Ryan

Kerrigan scored on a 9yard interception return. New York also was 1 of 10 on third downs, 0 for 1 on fourth down and twice failed on short yardage situations in Washington territory.

To make things worse, placekicker Lawrence Tynes had a 38-yard field goal attempt in the fourth quarter blocked because he didn’t get it high

enough.

“We definitely have some work to do to get where we want offensively,” Coughlin said. “I won’t take anything away from the Redskins, they played hard and they did the things they had to do to win the game but I am disappointed in our ability to not take full advantage of what we had.”

DAILY CHALLENGE

S SP PO OR RT TS S WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

REPOR T MAKES CASE FOR PAYING COLLEGE PLAYERS

De na r d R ob i n s o n

E . J. Manuel

SEE PAGE 23

STEVEN JACKSON LIKELY TO SIT WEEK 2 S EE PA GE 22

L a M i c h a el J a m es