Vol 40 No 56, Tuesday May 17, 2011

MANY SAY COLLEGE TOO PRICEY BUT GRADS SAY WORTH IT - PG. 2 NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

THE NATION’S ONLY BLACK DAILY 35 Cents

Final

CBC CELEBRATES 40TH ANNIVERSARY

Thirteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus were the original founders of the organization in l971. The CBC has now grown to 42 members as the CBC celebrates its 40th anniversary. The 13 founding members in the photo are (front row, from left) are Rep. Robert N.C. Nix, of Pennsylvania; founding CBC Chairman Rep. Charles C. Diggs, Jr., of Michigan, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, of New York, and Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins, of Califor-

nia. Standing are (from left to right) are Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, of Maryland, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, of New York, Rep. William L. Clay, of Missouri, Rep. Ronald v. Dellums, of California, Rep. George W. Collins, of Illinois, Rep. Louis Stokes, of Ohio, Rep. Ralph H. Metcalfe, of Illinois, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan, and Rep. Walter Fauntroy, Non-voting Delegate of the District of Columbia.

SEE PAGE 2.

BOY, 15, GRADUATES FROM BALTIMORE UNIVERSITY SEE PAGE 3

WWW.DAILYCHALLENGENEWS.COM

Ty Hobson-Powell, who turns 16 in a month, received his diploma Sunday and said he would attend law this fall and might go to medical school after earning a law degree.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

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NEWS BRIEFS Congressional Black Caucus celebrates 40th anniversary

By OFIELD DUKES GOVERNOR SEEKS OVERHAUL OF STATE PENSION SYSTEM Governor Andrew Cuomo is set to overhaul the state pension system that would save taxpayers billions of dollars, but place a greater burden on new state workers.

The proposal, called “Tier Six,” would affect future state workers hired after the law has passed.

Among the changes, the proposal would increase the retirement age to 65 and require workers to put in two more years before they qualify for a pension.

It would also end early retirement.

Public employees would have to pay twice as much into their pension plan and will not be allowed to use overtime and other pay to pad pensions.

Officials say Cuomo’s plan would save taxpayers $93 billion over 30 years.

OFFICIALS STRUGGLE OVER RIGHT TO KNOW WHICH 20 FIRE COMPANIES MAY CLOSE As Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano discussed the potential closing of 20 fire companies with the City Council, members of the New York City Fire Department protested the proposed cuts on the steps of City Hall.

City Council members who joined the protest said before they could vote on the mayor’s budget, they would need to know whether the closing would affect their districts.

They also said they need to know how it would affect response times for local fire companies.

Cassano said while the 20 fire companies have been slated for closure, he is not yet ready to make that list public.

Some elected officials threatened to use legal action to get the list of 20 closing firehouses sooner than 45 days from now.

CRACKDOWN CLOSES 15 CITY ILLEGAL HOTELS A new state law cracking down on illegal hotels is already getting results.

The city says it has taken action against 15 illegally converted hotels since the law took effect two weeks ago.

The mayor’s office released video of some of the residences located in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Investigators say the buildings were overcrowded, and many had no fire alarms or sprinkler systems.

One three-family home on Lafayette Avenue had 45 people living inside.

Vacate orders were issued at eight of the 15 locations.

Owners have been fined between $800 and $2,500 per violation.

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Special the NNPA Washington, D.C. — This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

The contributions of CBC members in ushering a new era of Black political empowerment are enormous.

Unfortunately, these history-making legislative accomplishments of Black members of the U.S. Congress are not as well known by their constituents and the new generation of young Black Americans as they should be.

So, in a classic contemporary alliance between Black politicians and Black publishers, Danny Bakewell, the chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), has invited present and former CBC members to submit commentaries that will appear in local NNPA newspapers about the challenges they faced across America, and especially in the U.S. Congress, in responding to legislative and societal issues relevant to African Americans.

I had the privileged of assisting in organizing and coordinating public relations for the first CBC dinner, held on June 18, 1971.

Rep. Charles Diggs, Jr. (D-MI) as the senior Black member of Congress, began a deliberate process of organizing the CBC. Having a prior friendship with Rep. Diggs, a Democrat who was a popular Detroit funeral home director, I was aware of his concern that President Richard Milhous Nixon might try to dismantle the historic civil rights legislation and Great Society programs passed under the courageous leadership of President Lyndon Baines Jonson. Diggs also took umbrage that President Nixon refused to meet with the 13 Blacks that were in the Congress at that time.

Ms. Carolyn P. DuBose, a former press secretary to Rep. Diggs, described in her well-researched book, “The Untold Story of Charles Diggs,” how Diggs began organizing the CBC by establishing a Democratic Select Committee in l969. She quoted Rep.

Diggs as saying: “They did not call me. I am the one who called them. I am the guy that called the meetings.”

Added Diggs, according to Ms. DuBose, “I deliberately did not come in there Pharaoh-style. I wanted things to come up through the group to set the pattern about what they wanted to do.”

In addition to a climate of white House hostility, in the civil rights movement, there emerged a militant Black power movement led by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rapp Brown.

They both advocated meeting white with Black violence, contrary to the non-violent approach of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was also fear and anxiety in the white community in linking such a radical effort by Black members in the U.S. Congress with the Black power movement.

I was in the second year of operating my public relations firm out of the National Press building when Rep. Diggs called me out of great concern for White and even Black perceptions associating the newly formed Congressional Black Caucus with the Black power movement.

Diggs and I discussed a strategy of my firm convening a press conference at the National Press Club to clarify the objectives of the CBC. At the press conference, CBC members Rep. Louis Stokes and Rep. Williams Clay eloquently explained the political objectives of the Black Caucus and the planned first dinner that June.

A white syndicated columnist had written that the CBC dinner in June could be raising funds in support of a CBC member planning to run for president. The suggested candidate was Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) although Rep. Shirley Chisholm (DNY) actually ran for president in l972.

In my initial news release on the CBC dinner, I wrote: “Funds from the $100 per plate banquet will be used by the Caucus to finance a permanent, independent staff to conduct in-depth analysis of issues and polices relevant to Black and poor America.”

The news release continued, “In a formal statement, the Caucus said,

‘Rumors, news reports, editorials and other media statements are appearing frequently, implying sponsorship of the dinner is related to secret plans in support of a black member of Congress for the presidency in the l972 elections. The Congressional Black Caucus categorically denies that any money raised by us at this affair will go to support one black or white, Democrat, Republican, 3rd party or 4th party who is a candidate for the presidency.”

In my firm’s handling the public relations for the first dinner, there was concern about people coming to the nation’s capital paying as much as $100 to attend a dinner. That was quite a sum of money at that time.

But at the dinner, there was an overwhelming crowd. The hotel ballroom had a capacity of 2, 400, 10 persons at 24 tables. However, there were 2,800 excited people squeezed into the ballroom, a standing room only crowd.

We had an anxious moment at the hotel when the fire marshal threatened to do something about the unsafely of such an overflow crowd.

That could have led to a riot and a public relations disaster.

The dinner, itself, was a huge success, with entertainment by singers Nancy Wilson and Billy Eckstein, humor by Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby, and an electrifying speech by actor/orator Ossie Davis.

Davis told the audience that “It’s not the man; it’s the plan; it’s not the rap; It’s the map.”

Davis went on to say, “At the time when Dr. King died in l958, he was in the process of organizing his forces and calling upon his people to come one more time to Washington, D.C. And, I have a feeling that had he come that time he would not have said, ‘I have a dream.’ He would have said, ‘I have a plan.” And, I feel that that plan that he might have made a difference.”

Ossie Davis’ profound remarks that inspired the founding 13 members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the thousands who attuned that first dinner 40 years ago are as relevant today. And, so is the work of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Many say college too pricey but grads say worth it

By LAUREN KEIPER BOSTON — A majority of Americans say college is unaffordable and not worth its skyrocketing price tag, but graduates say the investment pays off, according to a report published on Sunday.

College graduates say they are happier and more satisfied with their jobs, with 86 percent saying college was a good investment, according to data analyzed by Pew Research Center.

A college degree translates into $20,000 more in earnings per year and remains the goal nearly all parents set for their children, the report said.

“The public has a pretty keen awareness that there is a real world dollar and cents dividend that comes with getting a college degree,” said Paul Taylor, an executive vice president at Pew and an author of the

report.

Yet despite the potential monetary gains, 75 percent of Americans feel college is unaffordable for most people and 57 percent say it’s not a good value.

The Pew report on the cost, value, quality, mission and payoff of a college education was based on surveys of the American public and of college presidents.

College graduates today leave school with roughly $23,000 in student debt, on average, after paying tuition that has roughly tripled since the 1980s, according to Pew. Yet according to the surveys, a college education lags behind character traits as the key to success.

Young adults need a good work ethic and the ability to get along with people more than a college degree to succeed, the survey of American adults showed.

While the public remains focused largely on the cost of education, university presidents said the quality of education could be in trouble.

A majority of college presidents say high school students are less prepared than they were a decade ago and 52 percent say students are studying less.

The survey of presidents showed just 19 percent believe U.S. higher education is the best in the world, and less than 10 percent believe it will be the front-runner in a decade.

Among presidents of highly selective colleges, 40 percent say U.S. higher education is the best in the world.

Results came from a telephone survey of 2,142 adults and an online survey conducted with the Chronicle of Higher Education among the presidents of 1,055 two- and four-year private, public and for-profit colleges and universities.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

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Boy, 15, graduates from Baltimore University BALTIMORE — The 15-year-old boy who Sunday became the youngest graduate of the University of Baltimore says he’s headed to law school this fall and he might study medicine.

Ty Hobson-Powell, who turns 16 in a month, received his diploma Sunday and in a Baltimore Sun report said he would attend law this fall and might go to medical school after earning a law degree.

Hobson-Powell dropped his basketball plans when he started col-

lege three years ago. He completed 27 credits in a single semester between college classes and the Internet. But despite his educational prowess and work ethic, family and friends said he is a typical teenager — and not a straight A student.

“He’s twittering too much and playing basketball too much to get a perfect 4.0” grade point average, said his father, Edwin Powell, a doctor and medical school professor.

Hobson-Powell said he still hangs

out with his high-school age friends when he’s in Washington, but he said being the youngest person in college has taught him to be comfortable with people of all ages.

Being around older students and adults is “nothing out of the ordinary,” Hobson-Powell said.

“The social interaction is fine — I can interact with 15-year olds as much as I can interact with 21-yearolds or 30-year-olds or older. I’ve been taught to be comfortable in any social setting that I’m in.”

Obama faces pivotal week on Mideast policy

By MATT SPETALNICK — President WASHINGTON Barack Obama’s bid this week to reconnect with the Arab world after the killing of Osama bin Laden poses a daunting challenge complicated by an uneven U.S. response to the region’s uprisings and his failure to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Obama on Thursday will give his much-anticipated “Arab spring” speech, the centerpiece of a pivotal week of Middle East diplomacy that also will include talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By laying out his own vision for a “reset” with the region, Obama aims to counter criticism that he has been slow and inconsistent in dealing with an unprecedented wave of popular revolts that have upended decades of U.S. Mideast policy.

But even as he reaches out to a wider Arab audience, he is likely to disappoint many with what will be left out — fresh U.S. proposals for breaking the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians and getting them back to negotiations.

Clashes on Sunday on Israel’s borders, where Israeli troops killed at least 13 Palestinian protesters, underscored the depth of Arab frustration over the decades-old conflict, which remains a central preoccupation in the region.

Unlike Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech that sought to win the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide after years of estrangement under his predecessor, George W. Bush, the White House insists the address Thursday at the State Department will focus on new flashpoints in the Middle East

and North Africa.

Less than three weeks after U.S. Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistan, Obama will try to tie together events in the Arab world and put the al Qaeda leader’s demise in the context of the region’s political transformation, aides say.

However, it is unlikely — according to Obama aides — that he will use the chance to articulate an overarching strategy to supplant the case-bycase approach to turmoil engulfing U.S. allies like Egypt and Yemen and foes like Libya and Syria.

“The ‘Arab spring’ has huge uncertainties,” said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, citing an Islamist rise to power as Washington’s biggest fear. “So they want to avoid a one-size-fits-all doctrine.”

Even before the bin Laden raid, aides were crafting a narrative on Middle East upheaval for Obama to roll out. Obama, enjoying a boost in his foreign policy standing following the risky assault, will make the case for Arabs to reject al Qaeda’s Islamist militancy and embrace democratic change.

Aides suggest Obama’s speech could carry a veiled warning to Iran, which he has said cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, that he is a leader who matches words with actions.

But Obama’s push for democratic reform will remain tempered by a desire to preserve longtime partnerships with autocratic Arab governments like Saudi Arabia considered crucial to fighting al Qaeda, containing Iran and securing oil supplies.

Obama’s critics probably will not be satisfied.

“I don’t think you can get away

with a Mideast policy that just cherrypicks the easy ones,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Bush’s former deputy national security adviser.

Obama’s domestic opponents have accused him of acting too timidly in Libya to break the stalemate between Muammar Gaddafi and rebels trying to oust him, and of not being tough enough with autocratic allies in Yemen and Bahrain.

The administration also is under pressure to take stronger action against Syrian President Bashar alAssad over his government’s violent crackdown on a pro-democracy protests.

“It’s obviously a very fluid situation and every country is different,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Obama’s advisers had weighed using Thursday’s speech to present a new formula for restarting longstalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

That was put on hold after a reconciliation deal between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas Islamist movement, an accord Netanyahu denounced yesterday as a barrier to peace. The resignation last week of Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, further underscored faltering diplomatic prospects.

Obama raised Arab expectations for a more active and even-handed U.S. role when he took office but the mood soured when he backed down from confronting Israel over settlement building in the occupied West Bank. His unmet pledge to shut the prison at Guantanamo also has drawn Muslim criticism.

While Obama is expected to recommit broadly to seeking Israeli-Palestinian peace in his speech and during

Most don’t know much about Memorial Day WASHINGTON — Most U.S. adults admit they don’t know Memorial Day is to honor those who died fighting the nation’s wars, a survey indicates.

A survey, commissioned by The National WWII Museum in Washington, indicates 46 percent say they knew something about the holiday, 31 percent say they knew a little about it and 3 percent say they knew nothing.

Only 20 percent say they are very familiar with the day’s purpose.

In response, the museum has created the Web site www.mymemorial-

day.org featuring 10 ways to honor those who have fallen in service of their country.

“The site offers ideas for all,” Gordon H. Mueller, president and chief executive officer of the museum, said in a statement.

“A family can visit a military site, or an individual can read a book about WWII history.”

Monday, May 30, the museum will commemorate Memorial Day with a series of events featuring veterans from World War II to Afghanistan,

and at 3 p.m., the museum will participate in the National Moment of Remembrance.

While there is disagreement on the exact details on how Memorial Day originated, decorating graves — the day was originally called Decoration Day — was widespread in the North and the South after the Civil War. Eventually, Memorial Day — May 30 — became a day honoring all of the nation’s fallen, and in 1971 the date was moved from from May 30 to the last Monday in May.

talks with Netanyahu on Friday, there are no plans to seek major Israeli concessions for now. Nor has the right-wing Israeli leader given any sign concessions would be forthcoming.

Pushing Netanyahu would risk alienating Israel’s support base among the U.S. public and in Congress as Obama seeks re-election in 2012. Relations between Obama and Netanyahu already have been strained and both want to smooth over ties.

Obama will address the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday to stress the “unshakeable bond” between Israel and the United States, the White House said. That gives Obama a chance to pre-empt Netanyahu’s speech to Congress two days later.

Jordan’s monarch, expected to voice Arab frustrations over U.S. peace efforts when he meets Obama today, said in Washington the peace process was the region’s “core issue.”

With Arabs increasingly resigned to the limits of what they can expect from Obama, analysts in the Middle East question whether many will even be paying close attention on Thursday.

The White House already has cautioned against the notion that the speech — which some U.S. media have dubbed “Cairo II” — will be on par with his enthusiastically received address in the Egyptian capital nearly two years ago.

“People in the region who put a lot of hope in Obama and his rhetoric have been disillusioned by his actual policies,” said Mouin Rabbani, an independent Middle East analyst based in Amman. “They may not be interested in tuning in for more.”

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

FORUM

Obama: Uneasy lies the head

By DR. FRED MONDERSON THOMAS H. WATKINS

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If America is ready to elect another mediocre president there are many contenders lining up to challenge Barack Obama, but to no avail because at this time in its history, this nation is lucky to have an intelligent, thoughtful, deliberative and level headed chief executive since Obama is aided by the best team of advisors a leader could have. Such a view is reflected in the strides he has made to repair the multifaceted problems he inherited in just over two years of his administration amidst equally pressing worldwide challenges.

From the time of his emergence on the national stage, President Barack Obama has been the subject of criticism from right, left and center and this proves a leader can be criticized by people all the time.

From the inception of his assuming the mantle of leadership of this great nation, Barack Obama has been the victim of personality attacks, policy attacks and even attacks on principles; that is, from the perspective of those leading the attacks.

Everyone is familiar with the pre-election attacks on his patriotism, experience, religious affiliation, “elitism,” even the

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credibility of the Office of the Presidency and that of Hawaii State officials who certified Mr. Obama was born in that state.

Put all the weight on the good mule meant Mr. Obama was also criticized for the housing crisis that resulted in massive home foreclosures, greatly reduced new housing starts and a tremendous decline in home value as well as the fall of lending giants including FANNY MAE. Through all that turmoil, ignoring the misdirected rhetoric, President Obama went about his duty of improving America’s image abroad, laying the foundation for America’s resurgence as the world’s technological leader and sponsoring a new generation of clean air and clean energy resources to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. But even more, Mr. Obama emphasized education as a cornerstone of the future competitiveness of the nation. Very early in his tenure, Mr. Obama passed the Fair Pay Act; helped in reducing crack from cocaine sentencing, and compensated Black farmers. He also unveiled plans for upgrading the nation’s transportation system, emphasizing the need for high speed transportation to be competitive with other nations who have active high speed systems. Completing this Continued on page 5

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perennial and nauseating attacks on his birth status designed to disqualify his right to hold the Presidency. Whatever happened to “Joe the Plumber” who coined the notion Obama was a sociality? He was last seen in a New York Post political cartoon being “flushed down the bowl” by Obama.

Remember the claim Obama won’t know what to do as president when the “3:00 AM phone call comes.” That is not altogether correct, as is evidenced from his gutsy decision to take out bin Laden! And since the World Clown Federation had their eyes on a “Trump Endorsement” we have to wonder whether the GOP may have a screw missing!

If we examine the attacks on his tenure and personality we see President Obama was criticized on the economy as the job market greatly hemorrhaged losing more than half a million jobs per month and because he had not instantly rectified the situation in less than two years that had taken more than a decade to create. The president was criticized for aiding Wall Street, the automobile industry, banks, and his use of TARP and stimulus funds. He was severely criticized for the stubborn state of unemployment. Meanwhile the “Birthers Movement” continued their “fools’ errand” challenging Mr. Obama’s citizenship while undermining the

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

The new Black awakening

By WILLIAM REED “You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get it.”

— Malcolm X So, where were all Malcolm’s fans on Thursday, May 19, 2011, when the faithful celebrated the 86th anniversary of his birth? Each year the people dedicated to the principles Malcolm X preached gather at his Cemetery gravesite, Ferncliff although many acclaim themselves in Malcolm’s image, the number of actual practitioners is few.

It’s sad so few Black Americans define “freedom” as did Malcolm.

Victims of the pall that institutional racism casts across America, African Americans acquiesce to it. In America and every country that grew wealthy off the backs of slaves, descendants of slaves continue to allow themselves to be held at bay regarding reparations.

Ask yourself: “If Malcolm were living today, would he be “for” or

“against” reparations? Or, if you are “Mainstreamer” ask yourself if “the freedom” Malcolm spoke of was the freedom we’ve employed “to associate and assimilate with whites?” There needs to be an awakening among Blacks with mainstream mindsets about the importance of reasoning and rallying for just reparations compensation. To now, Blacks have allowed themselves to have been bamboozled by an illusion of inclusion in American society. Mainstream forces keep most Blacks’ minds off the daily doses of racism they experience and cause us to focus such energy on keeping Obama in the White House.

Instead of striving toward the freedoms Malcolm sought, mainstream Blacks are happy to entrust traditional institutions to look out for our interests. Given the frightening state of affairs in the white world, mainstream oriented Blacks have to admit that nothing is improving for Blacks.

Just when Black mainstreamers thought it was safe to sneak out of the struggle, a movement called Exodus Two is advocating for a “New Awakening” among Blacks, and us “to rise up and act in our own

Uneasy lies the head Continued from page 4 and utilizing “stimulus funds” the president began disbursing such dollars to repair roads, bridges, tunnels and ports.

Through all this, Mr. Obama demonstrated outstanding leadership that turned the tide despite the criticisms, threats, unduly caricature and Republican obstructionism. In addition, as Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama has had to prosecute two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while checking militants in Pakistan through drone attacks and the seemingly ubiquitous Al Qaeda movement. Further, he has had to be concerned about domestic terrorism, Mexican border violence, and sundries issues such as earthquakes, Somali pirates, tsunamis, radiation contamination, NASA’s space program and a whole lot more.

Some commentators have argued street protest to address social grievances pioneered by Blacks in this country, were taken over by the “Tea Party” movement and this tactic was instrumental in their successes in the 2010 mid-term elections. Now “in power” people begin to see the challenges posed to leadership and now their heads lie uneasily because of “Tea Party” proposed draconian methods that are not dissimilar to their initial attitude towards the now President Obama, in their coming together where he was characterized and caricatured in the most disrespectful and uncivil manner. So much so, the public’s watch word to the “Tea Party” is now “wait till the

next election,” when, like the proverbial “tea” you will be “thrown overboard.”

When President Obama made his early address in Cairo he stressed the need for reforms by the Middle Eastern governments that should focus on the needs and aspirations of their people such as jobs, education, and freedom of speech, right to peacefully assemble and to protest grievances. He was quick to point out these are among the pressing issues that lead to pessimism and attractive to terrorism. Seemingly none of the leaders paid attention and some two years later Tunisia and Egypt erupted in peaceful revolution forcing their leaders from power.

Perhaps his critics who view President Obama from the ankle down seemingly only see some 10% of the man. Mr. Obama came to national public attention at his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech.

There, applauded for a brilliant speech, he came with the highest American educational background that such intellectual brilliance resulted in his being elected President and the realization he had amassed millions of dollars and millions of followers through his Internet savvy database. Even from the time he ran for President, whenever faced with insufficient knowledge of any issue, Mr. Obama would “go to school” by consulting some of the most knowledgeable advisors on the particular issue. Hence he gained a reputation for studying every issue before making his considered judg-

behalf”?

Our current level of “empowerment” is not working for us, so instead of continuing to allow White peoples’ interest to set our agenda, Blacks need to take a “time out” from the mainstream and make time to make a difference in and among our own race. If we keep just blending in, our race of people will literally rot in the ghettoes of America. Whether you live on Malcolm X Boulevard, or a gated community, it’s time to represent descendants of the heinous Slave Trade and against the injustices that destroyed Blacks and their forbearers’’ lives, legacies. Given the frightening state of affairs of the U.S. and Western world and the circumstances of the economic downturn, isn’t it time to admit that “nothing is improving” for Blacks under this system?

It’s time we each demonstrated for the interests of descendants of slaves and against the U.S. government for its involvement in the Slave Trade and the impoverishment, misery, distress, and bigotry that ensue to this day? Isn’t it time to make the American and European governments ment and decision. It is arguable such an approach enabled the turnaround of national conditions. We see his imprint in reforms in the financial system through new federal regulations; albeit Wall Street and the banks are stronger; strengthened, they’re making and disbursing money; unemployment has decreased through job creation by public and private hiring as the unemployment rate has begun to drop; new housing starts are up, foreclosures are down, and houses are regaining some of their lost value; the domestic automobile industry, particularly General Motors, Chrysler and especially Ford Motors are more competitive and holding their own in market share, particularly because of loans made to the former two giants.

Questions as to how far the Republicans and their “Tea Party” allies will go are tied to their repeat success at the next, general or Presidential Elections. In a hopeful boast Newt Gingrich has predicted the Health Care Reform will be repeated in 2013, the first year of the next Federal Administration, which he hopes to lead.

While opinions varied on the President’s response to unfolding events in Egypt the customary criticisms were forthcoming as expected, despite his proper handling, as some have said, of this issue. Two of the most vocal critics were Senators Lieberman and McCain, particularly from their “vantage point on a trip to Jerusalem.” Still, John McCain did give President Obama some credit for handling the situation in Egypt.

However, and conversely, as events in Libya unfolded, Senator McCain appeared on Candy Crowley’s Sunday morning program State of the Union

5

accountable for stealing human beings out of Africa and making slaves of them for 400 years? The debt from that period is simple: Plaintiffs - over 100 million Black lives lost Defendants - White-run nations that became wealthy and powerful, generation after generation; as slaves and their descendants regressed into lives of wretched chattel squalor. Sadly, most Blacks seem quite satisfied with this status quo.

Blacks of the “New Awakening” will be a force during the next months - scheduling local lectures and study groups on reparations.

The Exodus Two Movement’s goal is passage of a Bill for Reparations.

Toward that end, Exodus Two is mounting two public rallies: 1) June 15, 2011 - 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. New York City - Dag Hammarskjold Plaza – front The United Nations 48th Street and 1st Avenue; 2); and June 20, 2011 - 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

- Washington, D.C. - the Capitol Building Steps - 1 Constitution Avenue, Northwest. In the name of Malcolm, isn’t it time to call and get on the list? Yehudah ben Yaacov MilzAhead@aol.com; Tziona Yisrael Afraqueen@aol.com.

— William Reed is available for speaking/seminar projects via BaileyGroup.org.

and she asked him a pointedly political question, “Did the President wait too long on Libya?” as this was certainly political. To which McCain said “Yes.” However, she did not ask the same question of other guests who would have given a more favorable response regarding Mr. Obama’s response to Libya.

Next Santorum, Romney, Pawlenty, Palin, etc. potential Republican presidential candidates expressed vocal criticisms about Mr. Obama’s actions in this matter. Jockeying for favorable status to challenge Mr. Obama, their criticism were expected.

Next, John Conyers and Dennis Cucinich, Democrats, joined the chorus. All this goes to show, criticism can be the order of the day.

As events in Libya unfolded, Mr. Obama was again criticized as not acting fast enough. Take the horrible situation created by the earthquake in Japan. Even though Mr. Obama would have liked to rush assistance to Japan, he had to wait until the Japanese government asked for such aid. With Libya he had to move cautiously and by the time of the Arab League’s appeal, he was then able to move swiftly in an action that was not readily apparent, yet the criticisms poured in. However, unknown to many Mr. Obama had dispatched military elements that had been in contact with the “Rebels” in Libya, indicating in fact he “did not wait too long on Libya.” All this goes to show, Mr. Obama did not have to ask permission of Republicans who would have rightly exploited the fact he needs their insights to act decisively.

However, Mr. Obama is still an excellent example of American Presidential leadership and seems unbeatable for the election in 2012.

6

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

Michelle Obama speaks at Spelman College ATLANTA — First lady Michelle Obama reminded graduating seniors at Spelman College in Atlanta Saturday of their obligation to pay forward the inheritance they received.

In a commencement speech interwoven with key threads of history of the traditionally Black women’s college, founded in 1881, and its illustrious alumni, Obama told the graduates their degrees are “not an entitlement that you can take for granted.”

“It’s not a gift with which you can do whatever you please,” she said. “It is a commitment that comes with a certain set of obligations, obligations that don’t end when you march through that arch today.”

She warned them “there will always be folks out there who make assumptions

First lady Michelle Obama thanks the graduates after she delivered the commencement address during the Spelman College graduation at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Ga. about others” and “who try to raise themselves up by cutting other people down.’

“That happens to everyone, including me, throughout their lives,” she said. “But when that happens to you all,

here’s what I want you to do.

I want you to just stop a minute. Take a deep breath, because it’s going to need to be deep, and I want you to think about all those women who came before you ... [and]

think about how they didn’t sit around bemoaning their lack of resources and opportunities and affirmation.

“They didn’t go around pointing fingers and making excuses for why they couldn’t win a case or soar above the horizon. And instead of focusing on what they didn’t have, they focused on what they did have: their intellect, their courage, their determination, their passion.

“You have an obligation to see each setback as a challenge and as an opportunity to learn and grow. You have an obligation to face whatever life throws your way with confidence and with hope.”

The graduates’ “mission,” she said, is to “find those folks who have so much potential, but so little opportunity, and do for them what Spelman has done for you.”

“Maybe it’s a group of kids

in your community,” Obama said. “Maybe it’s a struggling family at your church. And I’m not just talking about here at home. Maybe it’s folks in a village or an inner-city halfway around the world.

“Wherever you go, I guarantee you that you will find folks who have been discounted or dismissed, but who have every bit as much promise as you have. It is your obligation to bring Spelman to those folks — to bring that same presumption of value and worth, to make that same kind of sacrifice, to be as ambitious for them as Spelman has been for you.”

She said that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t strive to do well financially and climb to career heights. “But as you climb those career ladders, just remember to reach down and pull others up behind you,” she said.

Endeavour soars off on second-to-last shuttle flight

By IRENE KLOTZ CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — U.S. space shuttle Endeavour blasted off yesterday on the next-to-last flight in NASA’s shuttle program, carrying a potentially revolutionary physics experiment to the International Space Station.

The flight is the 25th and final one for the spacecraft Endeavour, which was expected to reach the orbital outpost tomorrow. NASA plans one more mission to the station, using the sister shuttle Atlantis, in July, before ending the shuttle program.

Endeavour’s last mission is being commanded by Mark Kelly, a four-time shuttle veteran who is married to convalescent U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

The Arizona Democrat is recovering from a January 8 assassination attempt that killed six people and injured 12 others. She was at Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch.

With Kelly and five other veteran astronauts strapped inside, Endeavour roared off its seaside launch pad at 8:56 a.m. (1256 GMT) when Earth rotated into position to optimally align the shuttle with the space station 220 miles above.

“It looks like a great day to launch Endeavour for the final time so on behalf of the thousands of proud Ameri-

cans who have been part of her journey, good luck,” launch director Mike Leinbach radioed to the crew minutes before liftoff.

Some 500,000 people, many of whom parked their cars on the side of the road, crowded around the area surrounding the Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch, authorities said.

Endeavour carries the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector, which is designed to analyze cosmic rays for fingerprints of dark matter, antimatter and other phenomena undetectable by traditional telescopes.

The instrument, built by a consortium of 60 research agencies in 16 countries, is expected to sift through 25,000 cosmic ray hits a second and operate for at least the next 10 years while attached to the outside of the space station.

The shuttle also carries a pallet of spare parts to tide

over the station after the shuttle program ends this summer.

NASA had hoped Endeavour would be back from its final space mission by now but the first launch attempt on April 29 was scuttled after a heater in one of the ship’s hydraulic power generators failed.

The flight is the 134th in shuttle history.

“She’s got a lot of life left in her but that’s not meant to be,” Leinbach said of Endeavour.

The shuttles are being retired due to high operating costs and to free up funds to develop spaceships that can travel beyond the station’s orbit. The shuttle Discovery completed its final mission in March.

Russian and European freighters will keep the space station stocked with food, water and supplies in the immediate future. NASA also has hired two commercial companies, Space Explo-

ration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp., to fly cargo to the station. The firms are expected to begin deliveries to the orbiting outpost next year.

Crew transportation will be handled solely by Russia until U.S. companies develop the capabilities. Then NASA wants to buy flight services, rather than develop and operate its own fleet to ferry astronauts to the station.

Endeavour, which first flew in 1992 and is the youngest of NASA’s shuttles, was commissioned as a replacement for Challenger, the shuttle destroyed in a 1986 launch accident that killed seven astronauts.

The shuttle is due to return to the Kennedy Space Center on June 1. In retirement, Endeavour will go on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Views vary on bin Laden death, terrorism WASHINGTON — Americans have mixed opinions about whether the death of Osama bin Laden will increase terrorism worldwide or have no impact, a new Politico poll indicates.

Thirty-three percent of people surveyed for the Politico-George Washington

University Battleground Poll said they believe bin Laden’s death will lead to an increase in terrorism while 40 percent said the al-Qaida leader’s death won’t affect the number of terrorist acts, results released yesterday indicated.

Forty-one percent of

respondents said President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush share equal credit for bin Laden’s death, results showed. Thirty-nine percent said Obama gets more credit and 12 percent said Bush should get the most credit.

Results are based on a

nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted May 8-12. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points. The poll was conducted jointly by Democratic firm Lake Research Partners and Republican polling firm Tarrance Group.

DAILY D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

INTERNATIONAL

7

Burundi frees journalist charged with treason BUJUMBURA - A Burundi court freed yesterday a local journalist detained for 10 months on treason charges for questioning the central African country’s ability to respond to an attack by Islamist militants.

Jean Claude Kavumbagu, who runs the online news agency Net Press, was arrested

last July for saying Burundi would not be able to cope if attacked by Somalia’s al Shabaab rebels.

The court did, however, find Kavumbagu guilty of publishing stories that could affect national security and the economy and sentenced him to eight months in jail as well as an $80 fine. He was

freed on consideration of time already served.

“I am so happy to regain my freedom and look forward to resuming my work and being reunited with my family,” Kavumbagu told journalists outside the gate of the capital Bujumbura’s main prison.

Burundi is a declared target for al

Shabaab militants because it has troops in an African Union peacekeeping force that is helping prop up Somalia’s Westernbacked government in the face of a four-year insurgency.

A prosecutor last month requested life imprisonment for Kavumbagu.

The Eastern Africa

Journalists Association (EAJA) welcomed Kavumbagu’s release but challenged the grounds of his arrest.

“The process was inordinately long and this ruling establishes a dangerous precedent for journalists,” EAJA Secretary General Omar Faruk Osman said in a statement.

Jean Claude Kavumbagu

Vatican tell bishops to root out sexual abuse

By PHILIP PULLELLA VATICAN CITY The Vatican told bishops around the world yesterday that they must make it a global priority to root out sexual abuse of children by priests.

The headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church told bishops in a letter that they should cooperate with civil authorities to end the abuse that has tarnished its image around the world.

“This is telling the world that we mean business. We want to be an example of prevention and care,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The letter is intended to help every diocese draw up its own tough guidelines, based on a global approach but in

line with local criminal law. These must be sent to the Vatican for review within a year.

“The responsibility for dealing with delicts (crimes) of sexual abuse of minors by clerics belongs in the first place to the diocesan bishop,” the letter says.

It incorporates sweeping revisions made last year to the Church’s laws on sexual abuse, which doubled a statute of limitations for disciplinary action against priests and extended the use of fast-track procedures to defrock them.

The Vatican has for years been struggling to control the damage that sexual abuse scandals in the United States and several European countries, including Pope Benedict’s native Germany, have done to the Church’s image.

PARAMOUNT PRINCIPLE “This goes beyond what was done before,” the Vatican official said. “It is setting up a standard of best principles, best policy to be followed globally. It makes protection of minors a paramount principle and takes a long-term view because it talks about the formation of future priests.”

The scandal has led to the resignation of bishops in several countries.

Last year, Benedict begged forgiveness from God and from abuse victims, and said the Church would do everything in its power to ensure that it never happened again.

The Vatican official said that if local criminal legislation requires that bishops report sex offenders directly to civil authorities, they are obliged to do so and

the guidelines will include this.

Victims groups said they were not satisfied.

“There’s no “zero tolerance” or “mandatory reporting” requirement. There’s no insistence that bishops warn their flock about child molesting clerics.

There’s nothing that will make a child safer today or tomorrow or next month or next year,” said SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters Television, the Vatican’s “Justice Promoter,” Monsignor Charles Scicluna, responded to the accusation.

“This is a long-term planning procedure. It has taken some time for the Church to recognize that there have to be clear guidelines. It is a

borders.”

“We urge maximum restraint on all sides,” Carney told reporters on Air Force One as President Barack Obama flew to Tennessee.

Israeli troops opened fire at three separate border locations to prevent crowds of demonstrators from crossing, killing at least 13 people.

Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinians infiltrated the Israelioccupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a front line that has been largely tranquil for

decades.

The White House put the onus on the government of Syrian President Bashar alAssad for the violence that broke out on the Israeli-Syrian border.

Carney said the administration was “strongly opposed to the Syrian government’s involvement in inciting yesterday’s protests in the Golan Heights.”

“Such behavior is unacceptable and does not serve as a distraction from the Syrian government’s ongoing repression of demonstrators in its own country,” he said.

“It seems apparent to us that this is an effort to distract attention from the legitimate expressions of protest by the Syrian people, and from the harsh crackdown that the Syrian government has perpetrated against its own people,” he added.

The Obama administration has tightened sanctions on senior Syrian officials to try to pressure Damascus to halt its crackdown on pro-democracy protests, but international human rights groups have criticized Washington for not taking stronger action.

good day for people who expect that the Church gives the good example, even when it comes to the protection of minors,” Scicluna said.

The letter tells bishops they must be prepared to listen to the victims and their families and be committed to their spiritual and psychological assistance.

Bishops must be more careful in choosing candidates for the priesthood in order to weed out early those who are

or could become sex abusers.

It says that while those accused of being sexual abusers have to be treated fairly and with due process, those who are known to be abusers must be excluded from the public ministry.

In many of the cases of sexual abuse around the world, local bishops allowed known abusers to be moved from parish to parish instead of being defrocked.

Pakistan questions U.S. accuses Syria of inciting Israel border clashes teenager wanted in U.S.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - The White House accused the Syrian government yesterday of inciting deadly border clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators, saying Damascus was trying to distract attention from its own violent crackdown on protests.

White House spokesman Jay Carney expressed regret for the loss of life in confrontations on Israel’s frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday but said the Jewish state “has the right to prevent unauthorized crossing at its

By JUNAID KHAN MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistani authorities interrogated a teenager yesterday wanted in the United States on charges of financing and supporting the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban, local intelligence officials said.

Alam Zeb, 19, was charged in Florida along with his mother and a family friend.

He is the grandson of the imam of a Florida mosque who was arrested in the United States along with his two sons on Saturday on the same charges of creating a network that moved funds from the United States to Taliban supporters in Pakistan.

“He (Zeb) is being interrogated by the security officials at one of their facilities,” an intelligence official told Reuters.

Zeb, his mother and a family friend all live in Swat Valley in the northwest, where the army launched a major operation in 2009 to clear the area of al Qaeda-linked insurgents.

AFRICAN SCENE

88

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

Top warcrimes prosecutor seeks Kadhafi warrant

By IMED LAMLOUM The TRIPOLI International Criminal Court’s prosecution yesterday applied for a warrant for Moamer Kadhafi’s arrest for crimes against humanity, a day after the Libyan strongman’s regime offered truce in return for a halt to NATO-led air strikes.

NATO-led aircraft meanwhile launched fresh raids on an outlying suburb of the capital Tripoli, destroying a radar base, the state news agency JANA and residents said.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said warrants were also sought for one of Kadhafi’s sons, Seif alIslam, and intelligence head Abdullah Senussi for crimes against humanity.

“Today, the office of the prosecutor requested the International

Criminal Court arrest Morenowarrants,” Ocampo told a news conference in The Hague, where the court is based.

The Argentine prosecutor said there was evidence “that Moamer Kadhafi personally ordered attacks on innocent Libyan civilians”.

A panel of ICC judges will now decide whether to accept or reject the prosecutor’s application.

Protests against Kadhafi’s four-decade rule began on February 15 and Moreno-Ocampo said thousands of people had now been killed in the violence and around 750,000 people forced to flee.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague called on the international community to “fully support” the ICC. “I welcome this announcement.

The

South Africa’s Mandela votes early in local polls

human rights situation in western Libya and the behaviour of the Kadhafi regime remains of grave concern,” Hague said.

“The request for these warrants is a reminder to all in Kadhafi?s regime that crimes will not go unpunished and the reach of international justice will be long.

Those responsible for attacks on civilians must be held to account.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the days of Kadhafi’s regime were “numbered” and that some Libyan officials were looking for a way for their leader to go into exile.

“Messages have been arriving from the regime’s restricted circle,” Frattini said in a Channel 5 television interview.

“Certain (members) have spoken under cover and are beginning to say that Kadhafi is looking for an honourable way out,” he added.

Since the Libyan conflict began, thousands

of refugees and migrants from North Africa have fled in rickety fishing boats to Italy’s southern shores, sparking consternation over a possible mass exodus to Europe.

On Sunday, Kadhafi’s prime minister Baghdadi Mahmudi offered a truce to UN special envoy, AbdulIlah al-Khatib, in return for an immediate NATO ceasefire.

Mahmudi said after meeting Khatib that Libya wants “an immediate ceasefire to coincide with a stop to the NATO bombardment and the acceptance of i n t e r n a t i o n a l observers,” JANA reported.

He accused the Western alliance, which is leading the enforcement of a UN-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, of “abuses and violations” including “political assassinations, the unjust maritime siege, bombing of civilian sites and destruction of infrastructure.”

Britain’s chief of the defence staff, General David Richards, told the Sunday Telegraph

newspaper that more military action was needed against the Libyan strongman.

“The vice is closing on Kadhafi, but we need to increase the pressure further through more intense military action,” he said.

The general said he wanted NATO member states to support the targeting of Kadhafi’s regime, not just targets which pose an immediate threat to civilians, such as tanks and artillery.

“The military campaign to date has been a significant success for NATO and our Arab allies.

“But we need to do more. If we do not up the ante now, there is a risk that the conflict could result in Kadhafi clinging to power,” Richards said.

Yesterday, NATO carried out strikes at a radar station in an outlying suburb of Tripoli, while state news agency JANA quoted a military source as saying that “civilian and military sites” had been targeted in Tajura east of the capital causing

“human and material losses.”

In Cairo, the 22member Arab League asked the satellite operator Arabsat — which it owns — to stop all Libyan transmitting state-owned television channels.

The rebellion against Kadhafi has claimed thousands of lives while seeing much of eastern Libya fall into the hands of insurgents who have vowed to march on Tripoli and topple him.

In the main eastern city Benghazi, rebel spokesman Jalal alGallal touted the uprising’s achievements.

“These three months have been very long,” Gallal told AFP. “But we managed to secure the eastern areas, free Misrata and the mountainous regions in the west.”

He added: “Kadhafi’s isolation is irreversible.

And most importantly, we achieved freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of movement.

Kadhafi’s biggest mistake was failing to understand

Blast in Somalia kills 5 pro-gov’t troops

By ABDI GULED

In this hand out photo released Monday May 16, 2011 by the Mandela family, Former South African President Nelson Mandela is flanked by his daughter Princess Zenani Dlamini, left, and granddaughter Ndileka Mandela at his residence in Johannesburg, South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG - A South African election official says former President Nelson Mandela has cast an early ballot in upcoming local elections and is looking “healthy and handsome.”

Independent Elections Commission Chairman Brigalia Bam says the 92-year-old statesman and Nobel peace laureate voted privately yesterday at his Johannesburg home under observation of officials. Mandela has retired from public life.

Bam says Mandela appeared in good health as he cast his vote. Mandela has not been seen in public since he was hospitalized in January with respiratory complications.

Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president in 1994 after serving 27 years in prison for his fight against racist rule.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A new military offensive in Somalia has gained ground against alShabab insurgents despite a bomb explosion yesterday that killed five pro-government troops at a base militants fled last week, officials said.

Maj. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for African Union troops in Somalia, said his forces began an operation last Thursday that has gained 500 yards (meters) of territory from insurgents.

“The territory that we continue to cover is giving us hope that, yes, we are making progress,” he said.

Some of the territory gained included a former Sufi shrine that al-

Somali government soldiers patrol on foot.

Shabab used as a military base. An explosion ripped through the shrine yesterday, killing five troops with a pro-government militia, said Abdi Muhummad, a commander.

Muhummad said he believes al-Shabab, the country’s most dangerous insurgent group, buried the explosive before fleeing.

Three AU troops have died so far in the operation, in addition to

yesterday’s five deaths.

Al-Shabab displayed one of the AU bodies in Mogadishu last week.

Ankunda said the AU’s ultimate target is Mogadishu’s main market, Bakara, which alShabab currently controls. He said the operation also aims to get more roads open for public use.

He said the AU has seen al-Shabab forcing local business men to pay higher taxes, a possible indication that the

militants’ finances are under pressure. He also called on Somalia’s government to solve their political problems so they don’t derail the military gains.

Somalia’s president and parliament are arguing over elections scheduled for this summer.

Ankunda said that the AU force would kill an American fighting with al-Shabab if it could.

Omar Hammami, known as Abu Mansur al-Amriki, or “the American,” held a news conference in the open last week, where he said that militants would seek revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden. Hammami, who sipped coconut milk from a straw as he spoke, gave the openair news conference about 40 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Mogadishu.

D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011 DAILY

AFRICAN SCENE

Group: 800 killed in Nigeria post-election riots

By YINKA IBUKUN LAGOS, Nigeria At least 800 people were killed in postelection violence that swept across northern Nigeria as it became clear that a northern candidate would not succeed in unseating the southern president, an international human rights group said yesterday.

Human Rights Watch gave its estimate in a report that included testimonies from interviews with witnesses and with others who survived the riots.

Nigerian authorities have not given an official death toll for fear of provoking retaliatory violence.

But a government agency has said that

more than 40,000 people in Africa’s most populous nation were displaced by the riots.

Some local organizations have said that at least 500 people were killed.

While international observers applauded legislative Nigeria’s and presidential elections held in April, the violence that erupted in the aftermath threatened the stability of the oil-producing West African nation.

“The April elections were heralded as among the fairest in Nigeria’s history, but they were also the bloodiest,” said Human Rights Watch West Africa researcher Corinne Dufka.

The New York-based organization said it had conducted more than 55 interviews with witnesses in several states including Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, and Zamfara.

Interview were conducted with witnesses and victims of the violence, members of the clergy, traditional leaders, police officials and journalists.

Muslim rioters burned homes, churches and police stations after results showed that Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the south, had beaten his closest opponent Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north. Reprisal attacks by Christians began almost immediately.

The nation of 150 million people is divided between the Christian-dominated south and the Muslim north. The worst of the violence is believed to have been in the northcentral state of Kaduna, where a large Christian community borders a Muslim one.

More than 300 people died in rioting in

Zonkwa, a town in rural Kaduna state. A market in the town of Kafanchan was razed to the ground.

The Human Rights Watch report says that in those parts of the state, most of the victims were Muslims caught in retaliatory attacks.

Many northerners believed someone from their region should be the next leader after the Muslim president died in office.

Former President Umar Musa Yar’Adua had been expected to rule for another term, but his death catapulted Jonathan, his vice president, to power and left the presidency in the hands of a southerner before that region’s turn. An unwritten agreement in the ruling party calls for its presidential candidates to rotate between the country’s Christian south and Muslim north.

Senegal’s Bineta Diop pushes Moroccan forces disperse African women into spotlight opposition protest

By FRAN BLANDY DAKAR - A group of 12 women from Ivory Coast, Guinea and Uganda reduced members of an African Union panel to tears as they told their personal stories of rape and police brutality.

“I can tell you those ambassadors in Addis (Ababa in Ethiopia) were crying,” said Bineta Diop, who organised the meeting about a month ago with the AU peace and security council to highlight the plight of women on the continent.

The 61-year-old, who travels between conflict-torn countries in a gruelling schedule which leaves little time for her grandchildren,

has dedicated her life to getting Africa’s men, dictators and rebel leaders to listen to women.

It is this work which saw her named amongst Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2011.

In her Dakar office, the walls are lined with faded photographs of leaders such as Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel who Diop has worked with over the years and who themselves have appeared on the list.

“I think it really took me by surprise. It is always me putting out the red carpet for the celebrities and heads of state,” Diop told AFP in an interview at Femmes Africa Solidarite (FAS) which she founded 15 years ago.

By SOUHAIL KARAM

RABAT Moroccan forces used truncheons to disperse a prodemocracy protest on the southern outskirts of the kingdom’s capital Rabat on Sunday, wounding several people, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

Dozens of protesters belonging to the February 20 anti-government movement were attempting to hold a protest picnic in front of what they allege is a secret government detention center in the Temara area where Islamists are held.

The government

denies it runs secret detention centers. It later granted permission for the general prosecutor and national human rights council to inspect the headquarters of the domestic intelligence service, the state MAP news agency said.

Anti-riot police chased the protesters before the rally could begin, beating some with long rubber truncheons. Police said no arrests were made.

At a later rally on Rabat’s outskirts, security forces beat into a coma one of the founders of the February 20 movement, Oussama ElKhlifi, a doctor and activists said. No independent verification of the report was immediately available.

9

Ouattara invites Burkinabes back to Ivory Coast

By BRAHIMA OUEDRAOGO OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara yesterday told citizens of Burkina Faso that they are welcome to return to his country, and vowed to put an end to the xenophobia and racial targeting that characterized his predecessor’s regime.

“Every single Burkinabe should consider himself at home in Ivory Coast,” said Ouattara at a press conference in the West African nation which borders Ivory Coast.

Ouattara won Ivory Coast’s November election, but was only able to assume office this month because strongman Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power and had to be removed militarily. Ouattara’s visit to neighboring Burkina Faso is his second official visit to a country in the region since taking office.

Gbagbo painted himself as a real Ivorian, and accused Ouattara of being a foreigner because his father’s side of the family comes from Burkina, a fact that twice prevented Ouattara from run-

ning in past elections.

In the final months of the political showdown, Gbagbo’s regime incited the population to attack foreigners, especially second- and third-generation immigrants from Burkina who had voted in large numbers for Ouattara.

People with names that identified them as being Burkinabe were hunted down by mobs, doused in gasoline and set on fire.

The violence touched off a massive exodus with an estimated 1 million people fleeing Ivory Coast.

“We consider that this election has put an end to these difficulties,” Ouattara said. “(It) needs to be the end of a certain number of misunderstandings and bad behavior that we are not proud of.

Ivory Coast is a hospitable country and we need to make sure that Ivorians - as well as all the other people that live in Ivory Coast - live in peace,” he said.

Ouattara is expected to be inaugurated Saturday in a lavish ceremony that will be attended by an estimated 20 heads of state, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Strong earthquake strikes off Papua New Guinea SYDNEY - A strong earthquake struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea yesterday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The magnitude-6.5 quake struck 76 miles (122 kilometers) west of Arawa, the capital of Bougainville province, at a depth of 27 miles (43 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a destructive, widespread tsunami and that sealevel gauges in the region showed no unusual wave activity.

But the agency did say earthquakes of this size can sometimes generate tsunamis along coasts within 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the epicenter.

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CARIBBEAN NEWS DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

Jamaican minister condemns blocking of cement shipment

by Dominican Republic

Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Karl Samuda, displays the certificate issued by the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ), confirming the integrity of the 250,000 tonnes of cement shipped by Caribbean Cement Company Limited to the Dominican Republic, at a press conference on Friday. which qualified it to enter

By ALPHEA other countries in the SAUNDERS region, and without.

“Therefore, there is no KINGSTON, Jamaica — question as to the qualificaJamaica’s Minister of tion of Carib Cement prodIndustry, Investment and uct, to enter the Dominican Commerce, Karl Samuda, market,” he stated. wants the Dominican He also described as “disRepublic to take immediate couraging and disappointaction to allow a shipment of ing”, the developments over 250,000 tonnes of cement the past two weeks. He said from the Caribbean Cement his Ministry has observed Company Limited (CCCL) to and hoped for positive be unloaded. results from the negotiations “We expect the Dominican between the importer and the authorities to use their good Dominican Producers offices to have this product Association of Portland cleared, no later than the Cement. next 24 to 48 hours, so that He said the Ministry was they (CCCL and the particularly disappointed, as Dominican importer) can get the Dominican Republic was on with the business of trad- one of Jamaica’s CARIFOing,” Samuda told an emer- RUM partners under the gency press briefing on Economic Partnership Friday.

Agreement (EPA), and some He explained that since 126,000 tonnes of cement the US$250,000 worth of was imported from Jamaica cement was shipped, over last year. two weeks ago, the delay in He stated that, despite unloading the shipment in Jamaica having what he felt the Dominican Republic has was excellent working relaresulted in some US$50,000 tions with the Dominican in losses for the CCCL, inclu- Republic, they have sought, sive of demurrage charges. through their producers “On top of that, they have association, to prevent the lost a lot of time where they local product from being could have had other prod- cleared and unloaded. ucts shipped...so the loss is He said since no issue of significant and, at a time quality had been cited by the when we badly need this type Dominican authorities, he is of economic activity,” he concerned that the barriers said. being imposed were out of Samuda emphasised that fear of competition. the shipment met all the nec- However, he assured CCCL, essary requirements of the that it has the full backing of Dominican standards body, his Ministry, and that everyas well as those set out by the thing will be done to ensure a Bureau of Standards level playing field.

Jamaica (BSJ).

Samuda also applauded He said that the BSJ CCCL for taking the bold issued a certificate of con- move to compete in the formity, confirming the Dominican marketplace. integrity of the product,

Haiti swears in new president

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — Michel Martelly was sworn in on Saturday as president of Haiti in a ceremony in the capital, Port-auPrince.

Martelly, who in March won the second, run-off round in the presidential election, succeeds René Préval as president.

In welcoming Haiti’s first ever transfer of power from one democratically elected president to another, the United Nations has urged the country’s new leader, his government and the people to harness the political goodwill to “rebuild together a new Haiti.”

In a press statement issued late Saturday, the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) congrat-

President Michel Martelly of Haiti.

Photo/Logan Abassi ulated Martelly on his inauguration and the people of Haiti for a “lesson in civic

during the maturity” lengthy election process.

“The day of 14 May 2011 is historic and carries with it all the hopes of change for the people of Haiti: hopes for reconstruction, progress, stability, social peace, rule of law [and] development,” the statement noted.

The mission called on Martelly, his government, Haiti’s politicians, civil society groups and wider citizenry to “make this historic moment their rallying point for sealing a new political, economic and social pact to rebuild together a new Haiti.”

The new Haiti, the statement added, would be a country that “fully respects democratic values and human rights [and] which is proud of its entire human and cultural richness.”

Caribbean Tourism Organization urged to drive investments

By GLENIS ROSE MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica — Delegates representing over 23 member countries of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) have been called upon to unite in examining ways in which indigenous resources can be utilized to drive tourism investment possibilities in the region.

The call was made by Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, as he delivered the keynote address at the official opening ceremony of the 15th Annual Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference in Montego Bay last week.

“The Caribbean has to look within itself to see how we can, through our own efforts, utilize indigenous resources to drive investment possibilities,” Bartlett said.

He suggested that some companies may need to look at merging each other, because they may not be able to meet the supply and demand needs of tourism services within the region, on their own.

“They could provide that efficiency required, they could enable us to have more Caribbean products being utilised within the industry and, by so doing, retain more of the critical dollars within the Caribbean”, Bartlett noted.

Drug and migrant smuggling keeps Puerto Rico Border Patrol busy SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — US Customs and Border Protection marine interdiction agents stopped a vessel off the coast of Puerto Rico last week transporting 188 pounds of cocaine. Upon conducting a search of the vessel, five bales of contra- 188 pounds of cocaine seized by US Customs and Border band were discovered. Protection.

The content of the bales 10 knots without navigation- mately four nautical miles tested positive for al lights. northwest of Rincon, Puerto The Caribbean Air and Rico. cocaine and the two indiMarine Branch launched a Customs and Border viduals were arrested.

A CBP Dash-8 surveillance aircraft during a routine patrol on Thursday night detected a suspicious vessel 26 nautical miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.

The vessel, a yola-type homemade wooden boat, with two persons onboard and a single engine, was traveling heading east-southeast at about

marine interceptor vessel, the Midnight Express, to intercept the suspect boat while the aircraft remained overhead. The suspect vessel did not stop upon being intercepted and after deploying warning shots, CBP agents used disabling fire to stop the engine. The suspect vessel finally was stopped approxi-

Protection’s DHC-8 aircraft is a marine surveillance aircraft. Two of these aircraft are stationed at the CBP Caribbean Air and Marine Branch in Aguadilla and are used to patrol the coastal waters of Puerto Rico to detect the transit of illicit drugs and aliens toward the island and the U.S.

D CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011 DAILY

CARIBBEAN NEWS

11

St Vincent and the Grenadines concludes UN human rights review G E N E V A , Switzerland — Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) made concluding remarks before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, becoming the 172nd country to have its record on human rights reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review process that began in 2008.

SVG’s progress in education, housing, health and development was praised by members of the Human Rights Council.

However, some countries also asked SVG to consider abolishing the death penalty, and to remove any legal provisions against the crime of buggery. Countries also asked the government to strengthen its protections of the disabled, juveniles, and victims of domestic violence.

The Universal Periodic Review involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 members of the United Nations. It provides an opportunity for all countries to declare what actions

they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to overcome challenges to enjoyment of the human rights. The countries are evaluated based on a national report provided by their government, as well as information from the reports of independent human rights experts and groups, human rights treaty bodies, and non-governmental organisations.

The two-person Vincentian delegation to Geneva, Switzerland was led by Ambassador Camillo Gonsalves of the Permanent Mission of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to the United Nations. He was joined by Doris Charles, Minister Counselor of SVG’s High Commission to the United Kingdom.

SVG presented its national report to the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, 10 May, 2011. In introducing the national report, Gonsalves told the Council that SVG was proud of its “rapidly developing and improving post-independence

human rights record.”

The ambassador reminded the Council that SVG’s history was scarred by both slavery “that most inhumane of human rights violations” - and the genocide of the Garifuna.

However, he pointed out that “In modern times, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has largely solved, and spectacularly so, many of the ethnic and racial tensions that bedevil other States.”

“The descendants of the slaveholder, the enslaved and the indigenous live in peace and relative harmony with each other, and with the more recent immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe,” said Gonsalves.

He also pointed out Ambassador Betty King, who was in the Council chamber to hear SVG’s presentation.

King, the Vincentianborn Ambassador of the United States in Geneva, was called an “illustrious member of our Diaspora” by Gonsalves.

The Vincentian ambassador told the Council about the

growth of democracy in SVG since independence. He recounted the free and fair elections and peaceful transfers of power that have been typical of the country’s development. He also told the Council about the diversity of successive Vincentian governments, which have featured women, the youth, and prime ministers of different ethnic backgrounds.

Gonsalves also described the fundamental rights and freedoms protected by the V i n c e n t i a n Constitution, as well as the additional human rights protections that were included in the proposed new Constitution, which was defeated in the 2009 referendum.

“Unfortunately, the required referendum on the Constitution became a political football as the scheduled 2010 General Elections approached,” said Gonsalves. “The opposition, which formerly supported the Constitutional reform effort, withdrew from the bipartisan process, and the discussion of the document took on a

sharply partisan political tone that made sober and informed debate unexpectedly difficult.”

“On reflection, the State too, could and should have done more to ensure that the constitutional debate did not become hostage to more short-term political calculations,” said the ambassador.

In a rigorous twohour question-andanswer session between Gonsalves and the members of the Council, 33 countries asked questions and made recommendations to SVG. Responding to questions on the death penalty, Gonsalves explained that recent judicial decisions made it extremely difficult for executions to take place in SVG, where the death penalty has not been applied in over 15 years.

He later asserted out that a majority of the world’s peoples still live in countries that impose capital punishment.

A number of countries called on SVG to repeal all laws that criminalise sexual activities between consenting adults. However, Gonsalves pointed out

that Vincentian laws prohibited incest, prostitution, buggery and other sex acts that could involve consenting adults, and that there was no public or legislative appetite to revise any of those provisions.

Many Council members congratulated SVG for its poverty reduction strategies and focus on health and education.

They also praised the government for the construction of the new Belle Isle Correctional Facility and economic development.

The Human Rights Council made 92 recommendations to SVG for national action and consideration.

In wrapping-up the week-long Universal Periodic Review process on Friday, May 13, Gonsalves thanked the Council for “the warm expressions of support, solidarity and recognition of the strides and efforts being made by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the field of human rights; and the progress we have achieved in national development and the ennoblement of the Vincentian people.”

Man gets 19 years for killing US girl in Tobago Venezuela’s Chavez says no knee surgery needed P O R T- O F SPAIN, Trinidad A judge has sentenced a man to 19 years at hard labor for killing a U.S. teen on the Caribbean island of Tobago.

Sean Antoine was convicted in April of

killing 14-year-old Kitty Pepe of Keene, New York. The 28year-old had dated the girl but they had broken up. He stabbed her to death in 2005.

Antoine faced up to life in prison if convicted of murder. But jurors convicted him of manslaughter after he testified the girl had

taunted him.

Justice Geoffrey Henderson said yesterday that Antoine did not deserve the lesser charge.

Antoine’s lawyer said he did not plan to appeal. He’ll be eligible for release after 14 years.

CARACAS, Venezuela Ve n e z u e l a n President Hugo Chavez says his doctors have ruled out surgery on his injured knee and that he has been recovering.

Chavez says swelling and pain have contin-

ued to diminish in his left knee since he hurt it a week ago.

Chavez had said a few days ago that his doctors were considering arthroscopic surgery.

But he told state television by telephone on Sunday that they have decided against it for now. He says he

expects to be using crutches for a week or two.

Chavez canceled a trip to Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba as a result last week, and has not appeared in public.

Chavez says the injury occurred when he was jogging and hit his knee.

Martelly wants business leader as prime minister Barbados economy on the rebound, says PM

By TRENTON DANIEL P O R T- A U PRINCE, Haiti Haiti’s new president wants a business leader to serve as his prime minister, a government official said Sunday.

The official announcement that President Michel Martelly wants Daniel-Gerard

Rouzier to be the country’s No. 2 official comes one day after Martelly, a charismatic pop star known as “Sweet Micky”, was sworn in as Haiti’s next leader in back-to-back ceremonies at a makeshift Parliament and on the lawn of the National Palace, which collapsed in last year’s crippling earthquake.

Parliament must still ratify Rouzier to the post.

Also Sunday, an

adviser to current Prime Minister JeanMax Bellerive said Bellerive had submitted his resignation to make room for his successor. Bellerive, who also co-chairs Haiti’s reconstruction commission with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, will stay in the job until the new head of government is ratified, his special adviser, Alice Blanchet, told The Associated Press.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Figures for 2010 show the Barbados economy has stopped contracting and there was evidence of modest advancement, reinforced by a 2.8 percent growth in the first three months of this fiscal year.

Now is the time for all citizens and businesses to be recommitted to the sustainable development of Barbados, “as a just and thriving society”,

emphasised Prime Minister Freundel Stuart on Wednesday, as he delivered the feature address at the 51st Annual General Meeting and Luncheon of the Barbados E m p l o y e r s ’ Confederation (BEC).

Stuart said if this country was to function as “a well-oiled, appropriately and highly competitive economy”, employers had to find ways of creating wealth and distributing it fair-

ly “in order to satisfy the needs of our people.”

Stuart added that other indices, such as the provision of enough foreign exchange to cover 20 weeks of imports, the slender reduction in unemployment to 10.5 percent, and the slight improvement in the fiscal deficit by $90 million, offered “a glimmer of hope for the country’s continued performance.”

- Cathy Lashley

New American

The

12

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

One Thought - One Humanity

Idris Elba happy that Thor casting was ‘color blind’

For the conclusions of these stories check out the May 5th - May 11th, 2011 issue of The New American, which hits newsstands every Thursday Toni Braxton’s life may be in danger. Toni was scheduled to perform a Mother’s Day concert in Trinidad but was asked to pull out by one of the concert promoters who had threats made against his life. According to freddyo.com, who is close with Toni’s sister Tamar, Toni not only fears for her life, but she doesn’t want to be mixed up in the cross fire between the promoters. Toni is so worried that she has pulled out of the show and forfeited her check.

Chris Brown’s single “Look At Me Now” has logged its sixth week atop the Billboard R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart. Featuring veteran rapper Busta Rhymes, “Look At Me Now” is lifted from Brown’s latest offering, F.A.M.E., currently in stores. “Look At Me Now” is looking to follow in the footsteps of Brown’s 2010 hit “Deuces,” which spent over thirteen weeks at No. 1.

In New York City, Keyshia Cole attended the 14th Annual EIF Revlon Run/Walk For Women. We guess Keyshia didn’t participate in the actual run” becasue she had stilletto heels on...but the fans were happy to see her.

Frank Ocean is not happy with the LAPD. The hot newcomer recently tweeted is dislike for the boys in blue after he was arrested and detained for an unknown incident.

“Just got out of jail,” Ocean tweets to his Twitter followers.

“Would like to go on record saying..f**k the police. F**k LAPD to be specific. F**k a cop, non-stop. frank will never speak to a cop again in his natural life. i have no respect for police.” Frank continues, “I swear if i

weren’t sane in mind I’d throw a f**kin Molotov in a cop car right now,” adding “Cuh had napoleon complex. and seemed really sad that he was on that lame a** bike patrol.” No word from authorities regarding the incident.

Monica has officially been announced as an advisor on NBC’s new talent hit show “The Voice.” Monica will pair up with the show’s coaches Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton to help contestants hit the high notes. The coaches will eventually put two of the artists on each teams against each other in a series of dueling duets.

Enrique Iglesias and Shakira were the toast of the 2011 Billboard Latin Music Awards as they each landed a haul of trophies. Iglesias scooped nine honors, including Latin Artist of the Year, while his Euphoria disc was named Latin Album of the Year and Latin Pop Album of the Year.

Colombian superstar Shakira picked up six prizes included Latin Pop Airplay Solo Artist of the Year and Hot Latin Songs Female Artist. Her track Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) was voted the Latin Digital Download of the Year. Other big winners were newcomer Prince Royce, who took home four awards, Aventura, Daddy Yankee and Juan Luis Guerra, who all received three honors apiece.

It was ladies’ night at FFAWN’s 2nd Annual Mary J. Blige Honors Concert in New York City. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul presided over the evening’s festivities at Hammerstein Ballroom. Her fellow divas including Jennifer Hudson, Christina

Aguilera, LeToya Luckett, and Jill Scott were on hand to perform and help award scholarships to tomorrow’s young female leaders.

MJB started the organization to ensure that educational opportunities are made available to women so that they can get the training needed to be successful.

Waka Flocka Flame can rest a little easier today -- because a grand jury just CLEARED the rapper of all drug related charges stemming from a police raid on his Georgia home last year. A grand jury in Henry County, GA ruled ... there was not enough evidence against Waka to warrant a trial for the drug charges filed against him -- possession of a controlled substance and possession of weed measuring less than an ounce. Three other charges stemming from the raid were dropped before the case went in front of the grand jury.

In the spirit of First Lady Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, music maven, Beyonce crashed PS/MS 161 in Harlem to surprise students. The middle schoolers were shocked beyond words as the superstar led a workout routine with them.

Beyonce has been doing her part to help Michelle Obama's fight against childhood obesity by remixing her hit 'Get Me Bodied' to be a workout song now titled 'Move Your Body' for the keep-fit initiative. While there, Beyonce was spotted working out and dancing with the students - all in stilettos by the way.

Afterwards, the fans were allowed to take pictures with Bey. It is amazing to see so many celebrities have taken an interest in what the First Lady is doing.

Idris Elba, the BBC “Luther” star or Luther – that seems to be a comexplains how his role in the Marvel mon denominator in the characters I comic movie sparked anger from a play.” white supremacist groups.

We’re glad Idris is playing the Idris recently spoke about how role of the Norse god Heimdall, it much he respected director Kenneth gives diversity and another perspecBranagh for being “color blind” in tive to the film. his approach to the blockbuster.

So far, the signs are looking pretElba explains: ty good for Thor, Marvel’s trickiest “When Kenneth asked me to be Avenger to slot into our universe. So part of it, I did find myself question- as you’d expect, director Kenneth ing race.

Branagh was in a good mood when “But Kenneth hadn’t even given we spoke to him. He did address the that a thought. He just needed an biggest controversy that has actor who has presence and com- attached itself to his film so far: the mand, and felt that I fit the bill. casting of Idris Elba as Norse god “It was so refreshing – and a tes- Heimdall. tament to him as an actor and direc“Idris Elba is a fantastic actor - we tor that his casting was genuinely were lucky to get him. He provides color blind. I feel very proud of being all the characteristics we need from part of that movie.”

Asgard’s gatekeeper, the man who Elba also added how Thor fits into says, “Thou shalt not pass”. When his catalog of work: Idris says that, you know you’re “It’s different from anything else gonna have a problem. He’s smart, I’ve done; but at the same time, it’s intelligent, handsome and an been pointed out to me that here I absolute joy to work with. If you am playing a central, solid figure have a chance to have a great actor again – the one that people should in the part, everything else is irreletrust. vant.

“Take [The Wire’s Stringer Bell] “If you’re going to say the color of - Full Story In This Week’s New American Newspaper -

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13

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

14

Climate change bringing infection, hunger, illness

By GENEVRA PITTMAN Climate change threatens far more than our environment. It’s already led to the spread of infectious diseases and respiratory ailments across the globe and contributed to thousands of deaths through heat waves and other extreme weather events. It’s even fueled recent revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s according to Dan Ferber and Dr. Paul Epstein, the authors of a new book, “Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It” (University of California Press, April 2011).

The health of all humans is directly tied to how we, as communities, nations, and a global population, respond to the growing climate threat, says Ferber, a science journalist and Epstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

Ferber and Epstein spoke with Reuters Health Thurs-

day about how malaria, Lyme disease, and cholera, as well as food shortages and malnutrition, are all becoming increased risks with steadily rising temperatures. (See the live blog from the discussion here: http://bit.ly/lJnshE) While getting out of the corner humanity has backed itself into will take a worldwide effort, they say that effort may be led by a surprising player: industry.

“Changing finance is a critical part of ... rewriting the rules” on climate management, Epstein said.

For the financial industry, there’s a lot at stake, Epstein continued.

“With the uptake in extreme events — particularly as it’s affecting food security globally and food prices — we’re going to see a renewed interest on the part of the investors and insurers in the stability of society,” he said. Already, “the financial industry has at times in the last several decades been acutely aware of the dangers and risks of climate change.”

Climate change is hitting human health — and political and social stability — from all sides, Epstein and Ferber

said. On a daily basis many of those impacts are hidden from view — until you take a step back.

Even slight increases in temperature — a couple of degrees — can broaden the habitat of pests that cause infectious diseases, from malaria in Kenya to Lyme disease in Maine, they said.

And the claim that regions saturated with infectious disease will just shift, rather than expand, isn’t helpful because it misses other key points, Epstein said.

For example, in parts of Honduras it’s gotten too hot for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to thrive. “But it’s been so dry and hot that the people have moved as well, and they’ve moved into the northern area, into the forest, where there’s plenty of malaria,” he explained.

Pests also target wildlife, wiping out forests and increasing the risk of fires, such as in the Rockies and Cascades, where it used to be too cool for those pests to venture to high altitudes.

Another result of a changing climate: heat and carbon dioxide magnify the effects of asthma and allergies, partic-

ularly in cities where more and more children are developing respiratory problems.

And a combination of heat waves — such as the one that killed thousands of Russians last summer — and droughts not only causes immediate local health crises but also threatens global public health by destroying crops and driving up food prices, the authors said.

Food availability may be the most pressing issue of all.

“Our food, our air, our water, these are the issues that really underlie our public health,” Epstein said.

“These are the life support systems. These are the ones that ultimately are most critical and most sensitive to climate instability.”

An unstable climate, Epstein explained, is directly linked to social and political unrest. “I think we’re looking at increasing damages and social disruption from the climate instability and extremes,” he said. “The earth itself can go to a new equilibrium, but we need to back off. We’re pushing it hard.”

But it’s not all bad news, and Ferber pointed out there

School systems struggle with lunchroom costs

By DENNIS THOMPSON Every day, Carol Chong oversees the serving of about 300,000 meals to hungry students in the fourth-largest school district in the United States.

Chong, a registered dietitian and director of food and menu management for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, has a food budget of about $60 million to meet that goal.

The move by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make school meals healthier will be a challenge, Chong said, with cost the main problem.

“It doesn’t seem like it, but you have a very small amount of money to work with,” she said. “Healthier foods tend to be more expensive. They are more perishable, with a shorter shelf life.

They can’t be processed as much.”

However, Miami-Dade County is fairly far along in terms of meeting proposed USDA guidelines for healthy school meals, Chong said, because the district has been improving its menu for

years.

“A lot of the changes that have been proposed, we are ahead of the curve,” she said.

“I think many school districts are like that. A lot of us have been proactive.”

For example, several years ago the district went from whole milk to 2 percent milk and then to 1 percent milk and skim milk. “Even our flavored chocolate milk is at a half-percent fat content,” she said.

Standard lunchroom offerings have been improved as well. The district serves up a

reduced-fat, all-beef hot dog now and has gotten rid of processed chicken nuggets in favor of whole-muscle chicken tenders, Chong said.

They even serve a healthier pizza these days. The crust contains up to 51 percent whole grains, and the cheese is reduced-fat. “We’ve been doing that for five years,” she said.

Trans fats have been eliminated. “We haven’t had trans fat in our food in three years,” Chong said. “We had all manufacturers take them out. We had people like Frito-

Lay having to change their products because we wouldn’t sell them.” Because of the size of the school district, she said, the companies complied.

All the meal changes occurred under the noses of the kids, who apparently were none the wiser.

“No, I don’t tell them. Why would I? And they don’t notice,” Chong said, laughing. “We haven’t advertised it — because if they knew it was better for them, they wouldn’t eat it.”

And that’s a problem for the future, she said. Kids

is reason to be hopeful that we might be at a turning point in terms of accepting and addressing climate change — a shift that could be driven by economics.

Some companies, he explained, have already figured out ways to profit and grow by switching to climate-friendly policies.

For example, Ferber said, the re-insurance company Swiss Re realized that it could insure wind farms at a lower premium than oil rigs, because entire wind farms aren’t likely to be felled in a disaster.

“That benefited the company, and it also benefited the wind farm developers,” Ferber said. “This kind of creative thinking in the financial world can lead to winwin solutions.”

He gave Stonyfield Farm as an example of another company that has figured out how to turn environmental protection into a business strategy, such as by using microbes to ferment some of its dairy waste — erasing the costs of shipping it away to be treated elsewhere. Stonyfield’s yogurt revenue now tops Kraft’s, the authors said. aren’t learning how to eat healthy at home so schools are feeling pressure to step up and teach them about nutrition — if only the funding were there.

“It’s part of the educational process to teach these kids about healthy eating, which is the weakest link because we don’t have the funding or the staff for nutrition education,” Chong said. “The concern about obesity is not within a majority of the parents.

It’s a concern with community leaders and health experts.

If it were a parental concern, you’d see parents practicing better nutrition within their own households.”

Study: Agent Orange linked to kidney cancer There appears to be a link between Agent Orange and kidney cancer in U.S. veterans exposed to the herbicide in Vietnam, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Shreveport, La. examined the records of 297 patients diagnosed with kidney cancer between 1987 and 2009.

Thirteen of the patients, aged 39 to 63 when they were diagnosed, said they had been exposed to Agent

Orange.

Documented exposure to the herbicide and pathology reports were available for 10 of the patients.

The researchers reviewed these patients’ age at diagnosis, tumor size, side of lesion, pathology and survival.

Nine of the 10 patients had clear-cell cancers, which typically have worse outcomes than papillary tumors, which appeared in one patient. One patient had both clear-cell and papillary

cancers.

During the average follow-up of 54 months, four patients developed metastatic cancer and one patient died from his cancer.

The findings were presented Saturday during a special news conference at the American Urological Association (AUA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary because it has not been subjected to the peer

review that typically accompanies publication in a medical journal.

“We know that the chemicals in Agent Orange were extremely toxic, and are known to cause cancer,” press conference moderator Dr. Anthony Y. Smith said in an AUA news release. “These data indicate that we may need to better determine whether exposure to these chemicals should be considered a risk factor for kidney cancer.”

NEW JERSEY

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

15

Plainfield seeks answers as gang violence rises

By RYAN HUTCHINS PLAINFIELD Sometimes it doesn’t take much to end up dead in Plainfield.

Scenario 1: Wrong time. Isidro Leonardo, 44, was found near dawn slumped in the seat of his taxi cab, shot in the head shortly after starting his shift. It was an attempted robbery gone wrong, allegedly carried out by two gang members, and left two boys without a father.

Scenario 2: Wrong place.

Spencer Cadogan, 17, lived in one of the city’s nicest sections. He was shot dead in one of its most dangerous. The church choir member wasn’t in a gang, family said, despite his presence in a gang-controlled neighborhood.

Scenario 3: Wrong crowd. Tyrell Brighton, 18, was fatally shot a week after his older brother, Marcus Brighton, was targeted by a gunman. A week later, the elder Brighton, 21, was charged with attempted murder in another shooting. Police said it all appeared to be gangrelated.

These are cases from the police files of a city beset by a maelstrom of

violence in the past year. It has taken local officials and police by surprise - not to mention the residents of a place rapidly becoming one of New Jersey’s most deadly.

Police say gangs have a stranglehold over part of the Queen City, an area sandwiched by a blue-collar town on the west and white-collar suburbs on the east. If unabated, the pace with which people are being killed puts the city of fewer than 50,000 on track to finish the year with about 20 slayings and a homicide rate near 40 per 100,000 people.

Last year, Newark had a homicide rate of 31.

Camden, one of the deadliest cities in America, had a rate of 46.

It’s been a swift climb, from eight killings last year and just two in 2009. The city’s record of 15 was recorded in 2005.

Shootings, both fatal and nonfatal, follow a similar pattern:15 in 2008, 21 in 2009 and 43 last year. Authorities say 2011 is no different.

It’s a crisis prompting many questions.

Why Plainfield? Why now? And, more importantly, how will it be stopped?

“Why Plainfield? I

During the evening roll call Sgt. Larry Brown talks about some of the more than 20 gangs in the city. can’t answer that,” said Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow, who calls it “a very difficult situation.”

Plainfield has some 800 gang members known to law enforcement and they have no shortage of high-caliber weapons, thanks to a persistent flow of guns into the city.

“They have connections in Newark, they have connections in Trenton, they have connections in New York.

With those connections, we’re seeing guns coming in from all over the United States,” said Sgt. Larry Brown, a veteran Plainfield police officer assigned to study the gangs.

Those doing the shooting have also become quite good at it.

Some gang members have mimicked military forces, surviving gun battles by working as a team, and even laying down cover fire for each other, police said.

Instead of driving past an intended target and shooting from a moving vehicle, assassins approach on foot, Brown said. A car with young women may stop to distract the target, then a shooter will approach from behind, he said. In Plainfield, police say, gangbangers believe drivebys are for punks. “We do walk-ups,” the street mandate goes.

Police officials said they aren’t aware of any specific disputes that may have prompted the violence in Plainfield, where gang skirmishes have been common over

the years - particularly so between two powerful sets of the Bloods that are behind most of the violence in the last year. Those two groups - G-Shine and Sex, Money, Murder - were spawned from rivalries dating back decades, to the days of local posses, Brown said.

“It could have been a push in a bar, somebody said something to a girl, something like that, and next thing you know we’re picking up shell casings on the street,” Brown said.

Murder doesn’t have a grip on all of Plainfield. In the eastern end, host to large historic homes, manicured lawns and some well-to-do residents, gangs don’t have a presence. But in the poorer West End, where one neighborhood is known as “Murderville,” and a portion of the east, some houses are peppered with bullet holes and businesses are covered in gang graffiti.

Most people who live there are minorities, either black or, increasingly so, Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Carmen Salavarrieta, co-founder of Latino advocacy group Angels in Action, said some people are afraid to

walk a few blocks for fear of being shot or attacked. Gang members, she said, feel above the law.

“They believe they have taken over Plainfield,” she said.

Some victims have nothing to do with gangs, like Leonardo, the cab driver fatally shot in an alleged robbery in September, just minutes after leaving home for work.

Authorities charged two alleged members of Sex, Money, Murder in Leonardo’s death.

His widow, Maria Santana, 41, said her husband was a graduate of a theological school in the Dominican Republic who dreamed of sending his children to college. Her children still ask why their father was the one who had to be shot. “‘Money is worth nothing,’” one of her children told her, she recounted. “‘Because my dad was worth more than anything else in the world.’”

Law enforcement has been attacking crime in Plainfield for years and had made significant progress. By 2009, there were just two homicides, down from a record 15 in 2005 when a bar fight in Dunellen led to chaos across Plainfield’s West End.

Cops: Pair had 180 fake credit Crack in city’s sidewalk project cards, $13,000 in cash

By MATT FAIR

By DAVID KARAS CINNAMINSON — Two California residents were apprehended by township police Saturday after a traffic stop and pursuant warrant searched yielded 180 counterfeit credit cards and more than $13,000 in cash, officials said.

Angel Angulo, 21, and Crystal L. Baneulos, 23, were

charged with possession of more than 50 counterfeit credit cards, two counts of credit card fraud and one count of attempted credit card fraud. The duo was remanded to the Burlington County Jail, and their bail was set at $135,000 cash each, police said.

Township police first noticed the pair after an officer spotted Baneulos sitting inside a white sedan near a bank, and Angulo walking in the area of the same bank, police said. Angulo reportedly looked away as soon as

he noticed the nearby patrol car.

After the officer radioed his observations to dispatch, he proceeded to check the bank and ensure the employees were safe. At the same time, the vehicle with both occupants fled on Route 130.

Moments later, another officer found the vehicle in a nearby gas station parking lot and stopped it.

According to police, both occupants provided conflicting statements, and a search warrant was obtained for the vehicle.

TRENTON — As new sidewalks are poured at city intersections to make life easier for pedestrians, some South Ward residents feel that they’re the ones who are getting walked all over.

Construction of new handicapped ramps on some corners in both the South and East wards ground to a halt last month as agencies involved in their engineering ironed out design differences.

Meanwhile, city council president George Muschal, who represents the South Ward, says he’s heard an earful from neigh-

borhood residents complaining that the newly poured sidewalks were poorly constructed and that many were vandalized after workers with Diamond Construction left the sites unmonitored.

The project, provided with $488,000 in funding through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, seeks to make certain corners in the city compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The work requires having the sidewalks slope at appropriate angles and installing nonslip pads where the concrete meets the street.

About 180 corners are being replaced as

part of the project.

But when Bob Mammano, a lifelong mason who lives at the corner of Adeline and Elm streets, watched last month as workers tore up a section of his sidewalk, set molds and poured new concrete, he thought the quality of the work was shameful, he said.

“I came out here and they’re setting up the forms and I say, “What’re you guys doing setting up the forms? I don’t see a level, I don’t see a laser,’ and they say, “Well, I’m doing it all by eye,’” he said. Mammano said the workers spent 10 minutes on a job that should have taken an hour.

16

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

Faith Evans calls son CJ Wallace an ‘accidental movie star’

By ALVIN BLANCO R&B star Faith Evans spoke about Christopher Jordan “CJ” Wallace, her son with late husband and rap legend the Notorious B.I.G. The “I Love You” singer checked in via Skype from Los Angeles, where she was recording new music, and discussed CJ’s role in the new Will Ferrell film “Everything Must Go,” which opened in limited release Friday (May 13).

“Everybody that gets a chance to check that out, yeah, CJ is doing his thing in there,” Evans said. CJ has a prominent role in the film playing Kenny Loftus, a neighbor of Nick Halsey (Ferrell) in the

comedy/drama.

CJ’s first role on the big screen was playing a younger version of his father in the biopic “Notorious.”

The budding actor was only 3 and a half months old when his father died, and Faith said the film helped CJ realize just how important his father was to the hip-hop community.

“I think that once he did [‘Notorious’] and us being in Brooklyn every day... that kind of took it over the top, that whole experience,” Faith said. “Him being able to be part of the movie and then also seeing it on a whole worldwide level with it, it’s actually in the movie. He has to understand how important [his father] was to everyone else on a bigger

scale as well. That was a great experience for him.”

The proud mother then admitted that her son’s newfound success as an actor

was purely happenstance.

“It’s funny, ‘cause he wasn’t the seasoned little actor,” Faith said. “He never had lessons or anything like

that. He just auditioned, and they liked him, so he’s kind of become the little accidental movie star in our household.”

Alicia Keys opens up about Tamera Mowry marries Fox News home wrecker claims correspondent Adam Housley

Multi-Grammy winner Alicia Keys has been very closed-lipped regarding her personal life and relationship with husband Swizz Beatz, real name Kasseem Dean, but in the new issue of Essence magazine, the R&B diva finally opened up about why she is not a home wrecker.

“We didn’t start seeing each other until months after they had separated,” Keys tells the Essence. “I was aware of all the false things that were being said about me it definitely hurt.”

Keys and Dean tied the knot last July (2010), only months after Dean finalized his divorce from R&B singer Mashonda, whom he has a son with.

Mashonda, who is now in a good place with Keys and

her son’s father, exploded at first, writing a letter, insisting that “Keys was destroying her family.”

Avoiding any media attention, Keys never replied back to Mashonda, stating “I was sure that if I engaged it would become back-andforth like some sick entertainment, which goes against everything I believe and would have made things worse.”

Now with the smoke cleared, Keys and Mashonda are cordial and Mashonda has accepted Alicia as a “partner” in caring for her son.

“Things are really good now,” said Alicia, who adds “Kasseem is very present in his children’s lives. I wouldn’t be able to love him otherwise.”

Tamera Mowry, the twin sister of Tia Mowry, got married to her longtime boyfriend Adam Housley during an intimate ceremony Sunday (May 15) at a vineyard in Napa Valley, reports People Magazine.

The 32-year-old actress wore a wedding gown by Carolina Herrera as she exchanged traditional vows with her husband.

Speaking after the ceremony, the actress was overcome with emotion, saying, “I’ve always wanted an outdoor wedding with lots of flowers. I feel so lucky to have this beautiful day marrying my best friend.”

The event, which welcomed 300 guests, was organized by the highly regarded events planner Mindy Weiss.

Among Mowry’s eight bridesmaids were maid of honor Andrea Regalado and her twin sister Tia Mowry.

Housley and his eight groomsmen, including his brother Arik, donned tuxedos with Converse sneakers.

During the ceremony, the newlyweds presented their respective parents with long stemmed roses and Mowry noted, “We wanted to honor them, because without their love and support we wouldn’t be the people we are today.”

Tamera changed into a Dolce & Gabbana gown for the reception, and the couple danced to Journey’s “Faithfully” before surprising their guests with an impromptu routine to LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali.”

Common producing his first film Common is getting behind the scenes a bit with a new indie film, “L.U.V.” as the producer.

He’ll also be starring in the flick as well.

In the film, Common, born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, plays

Vincent, an ex convict who strikes up an unlikely friendship with his introverted 13-year-old nephew Woody while attempting to turn his life around.

“Vincent is a uniquely conflicted character,” Com-

mon said of the role. “I found an appeal in his desire to move past his failures and onto the right track, and the challenges that presents.”

The film also features a lot of first timers and a group of other producers.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

17

NBC overhauls TV schedule with 12 new scripted shows

By PAUL THOMASCH NBC will attempt to revive its TV schedule by stuffing it with a dozen new shows next season, building a new block of comedy and rolling out a high-profile musical drama from producer Steven Spielberg.

While NBC ordered up a clutch of new scripted series for 2011-12, its schedule will still be anchored by several competition shows returning from this past season, including musical hit “The Voice” and the long-running “Celebrity Apprentice” — with or without Donald Trump.

NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt, in announcing the new schedule on Sunday, made clear he was impatient to make major changes to a prime-time schedule that has long suffered from poor ratings and

failed experiments. Greenblatt took over the job earlier this year.

“I got there right in the nick of time before we had to start picking up drama pilots,” Greenblatt said on a conference call. “I’ll take ownership of the projects.”

Those dramas include “Smash,” a midseason musical set on Broadway that will be produced by Spielberg and star Katharine McPhee from “American Idol”; and “The Firm,” an update of novelist John Grisham’s legal thriller.

NBC’s lineup will also feature “Prime Suspect,” based on the popular British series, with film actress Maria Bello landing the role as lead detective, and “The Playboy Club,” set in a Chicago nightclub in the early 1960s.

“I’d love to make any of these dramas work,” Greenblatt said.

After NBC, News Corp’s Fox, Walt Disney Co’s ABC

and CBS, owned by CBS Corp, will introduce their 2011-12 schedules to critics, affiliates and advertisers. Ad sales will then get underway.

NBC may have the most to prove. This is the first schedule built under the new majority owner, Comcast Corp, and an overhauled management headed by Chief Executive Steve Burke and Greenblatt, a former Showtime executive.

In the weeks after the 2011-12 schedules are announced, a period known as the upfront market, the four major networks will book up to 75 percent of their ad time for the coming season.

This year’s negotiations come during a heady stretch for the U.S. networks, with money streaming back into national television campaigns. Ad rates could be up 10 percent from a year ago, and the big four networks could collectively book $8.5

billion to $9 billion in commitments.

Some of those price increases will depend on whether the networks can come up with hits for the 2011-12 TV season. That is particularly true when it comes to NBC, whose primetime schedule has floundered for years.

“If we could do one or two good things really successfully I would be thrilled,” said Greenblatt, who will introduce the prime-time lineup to advertisers and affiliates during a presentation in New York on Monday.

Along with the new dramas, Greenblatt said he would try to build a new comedy block on Wednesday nights, launching “Up All Night,” produced by Emmy Award winner Lorne Michaels and starring Christina Applegate as a woman trying to juggle her career and family. The other

Wednesday night addition during the fall will be “Free Agents,” a workplace comedy based on a similar British series.

Sunday nights in the fall will be anchored by NFL football, depending on whether a lockout by team owners scraps the season. Greenblatt said contingency plans had been made, probably in the form of reality shows, but added that he believed the season would be played.

“We’re feeling pretty good about where we will be with the NFL.” After the NFL season, NBC will bring back “The Celebrity Apprentice” on Sunday nights, even if host Donald Trump decides to step away from the show to pursue politics.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a certainty but we’re hoping he’s back with us,” said Greenblatt, adding that if necessary “the show will go on in his absence.”

Kelly Rowland happy with her music Kelly Rowland has somewhat struggled to get where she wants to be in her solo career, but with her latest single, “Motivation” featuring Lil Wayne, she thinks she may have found what she’s been looking for all along.

“I was talking to my product manager,” Rowland told Billboard. “I said I wanted people to know that this is the record, the sound I’ve been

working toward… that here I am.” And she said, “that’s the title. It just connected with my heart and the music as well. It stands for everything I’ve gone through and thought about for this record as a woman. It’s very strong.”

“Motivation,” her single from forthcoming album, “Her I Am,” sits at No. 4 this week on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip Hop Song charts.

And as she celebrates her career movement, she also congratulated Beyonce for being honored this year with the Billboard Millennium Award.

“I’m so excited for my sister. Nobody deserves it more than she does,” says Rowland.

“Ever since we were kids, we’ve worked hard, and she’s carried that into her solo career.”

Why Fox shook up its fall schedule

By KIM MASTERS LOS ANGELES — Hollywood talent reps have applauded Fox’s decision to drop a number of struggling cult favorites from its lineup.

Their view: The elimination of middling performers including “Lie to Me,” “The Chicago Code,” “Human Target,” “Breaking In” and “Traffic Light” came from a position of strength.

“They had a bunch of notgreat shows, and instead of putting lipstick on ‘em, they got rid of them,” one agent says.

Although the network still hasn’t nailed live-action comedy, Fox is poised to round out another season No. 1 among adults aged 18 to 49, an elusive demograph-

ic coveted by advertisers. It has “American Idol” dominating in the spring and will likely launch Simon Cowell’s “The X Factor” in the “Idol” time slot in the fall.

“That is going to chew up a ton of real estate,” one talent rep says. “Their needs are not what they were two years ago. Sunday night they have animation, ‘X Factor’ is going to take up two nights a week, and they only program from 8-10 p.m.”

Additionally, Fox is laying a huge wager on the scifi epic “Terra Nova” and has already ordered the animated comedies “Allen Gregory “and “Napoleon Dynamite” to series. A source tells The Hollywood Reporter that the former will likely launch in the fall and the latter in the winter.

One agent reported rumblings that the network will attempt to solve another perennial problem — Saturday late-night — with animation, a strong suit at Fox (see “The Simpsons” and recently renewed “Family Guy”).

“This would be their run at ‘Saturday Night Live,’” another source adds.

As for the pilots that were picked up late Tuesday, buzz is strong on Zooey Deschanel’s “The New Girl” and Jaime Pressly’s “I Hate My Teenage Daughter,” comedies with more of a female-centric feel. But “Alcatraz”? “Picked up for the relationship” with prolific producer J.J. Abrams, one source says. (In late March, the network renewed Abrams’ low-rated fan favorite “Fringe.”)

Marsalis hands out jazz band award The first place trophy in the 16th Annual Essentially Ellington Jazz Band Competition and Festival in New York City went to a Florida school, officials said.

Musician Wynton Marsalis announced Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s Dillard Center for the Arts as the winner of the competition at the Lincoln Center in New York City Saturday, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. The school came in second in last year’s festival, which is held every May. “It just lets everyone

know that the program is one of the better programs in the country,” said band director Christopher Dorsey. “It’s an accomplishment in my life.”

Dillard won $5,000 and a trophy for its first-place finish. Fifteen bands from across the nation competed in the event.

“I felt like we were unbeatable,” said Dillard bass player Russell Hall. “It was magic.”

“This is like the ultimate senior gift,” Dillard saxophone player Brandon Lubin said.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

18

NY manufacturing growth slowest in 5 months in May

By LEAH SCHNURR Manufacturing in New York State grew at its slowest pace in five months in May, while U.S. homebuilders remained deeply pessimistic as buyers stayed away from the market, data released on Monday showed.

But even as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that general business conditions of its “Empire State” index fell to the lowest level since last December, there were signs of underlying strength. A gauge of employment rose to the highest level in seven years, and economists said the data likely suggested more of a soft patch in the recovery than a slowdown.

The general business conditions index fell to 11.88 from 21.70 in April, well below economists’ expectations of 19.85.

The survey of manufacturing plants in New York state is one of the earliest monthly guideposts to U.S. factory conditions. Manufacturing has been among the strongest sectors as the U.S. economy claws its way back to health, making its progress closely watched as a gauge of the recovery.

The pace of new orders slowed to 17.19 from 22.34.

The prices paid index jumped to 69.89 from 57.69, the highest level since July

An employee changes gas prices on a sign at a Sunoco station in Alexandria, Virginia.

2008. Roughly 70 percent of respondents reported price increases and none reported declines, the report said.

“Fewer New York-area manufacturers reported overall improvement in May than in April, but the details underlying this decline, coupled with the relatively strong performance in the component indices, point to more of a pause in the pace of expansion than a slowdown,” Nicholas Tenev, an economist at Barclays Capital, wrote in a note.

Even so, technology and consumer discretionary stocks on Wall Street tumbled on Monday as investors fretted about signs of weakness in the economy.

Separate data from an industry group showed U.S. homebuilder sentiment was

unchanged at low levels in May as on-going foreclosures and tight credit kept buyers reluctant to get into the market.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market index held at 16, the group said in a statement. Economists polled by Reuters had expected the index to rise to 17.

Readings below 50 mean more builders view market conditions as poor than favorable; the index has not been above 50 since April 2006. High gasoline prices further exacerbated consumers’ anxiety, the NAHB said.

Housing remains one of the biggest thorns in the side of the economic recovery as widespread foreclo-

sures have pushed down home prices. A slow start to the spring selling season hit home improvement chain Lowe’s Cos.’ quarterly results and the company cut its forecast for the year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who on Saturday warned of a new recession if Washington was not able to borrow more, told Congress he would start tapping into federal pension funds on Monday to free up borrowing capacity as the nation hits its $14.294 trillion borrowing cap.

The U.S. Treasury will issue $72 billion in bonds and notes on Monday, pushing the nation right up against its borrowing cap at some point during the day, according to a Treasury official.

A U.S. Treasury report showed foreigners cut purchases of long-term U.S. securities in March, and analysts said concern about America’s public finances may have spurred a shift to shorter-dated assets.

The uneven nature of the economic recovery was seen in the mixed picture from the New York Fed’s Empire State index, with some strength in employment gauges. The index for the number of employees rose to 24.73 from 23.08 the month before. It was the highest level since May 2004. The average employee workweek index jumped to 23.66 from

10.26.

Companies were also more optimistic about the coming months, although they expected input prices to continue to rise. The business conditions index for the next six months rose to 52.69 from 47.44, while the prices paid index climbed to 68.82 from 56.41.

“I don’t think it’s too surprising to see some moderation in the manufacturing sector given the weakness that we’re seeing in the consumer end,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.

“The higher gasoline prices are reducing real wages, so we expect to see consumer spending slowing down.”

The recent surge in the price of oil and other commodities has prompted worries that it could hamper consumer spending, though most economists believe the impact will prove to be temporary.

But while home improvement retailer Lowe’s reported disappointing results on Monday as caution over the economy tempered spending by consumers, results from retailer J.C. Penney eased fears that high gasoline prices will cause its shoppers to be more frugal. Its quarterly earnings beat estimates and the company raised its full-year profit forecast.

Technology, consumer discretionary stocks tumble

By EDWARD KRUDY Technology and consumer discretionary stocks tumbled on Monday as investors fretted about signs of weakness in the economy that are likely to put a halt to the stock market’s run this summer.

A gauge of manufacturing in New York State slid much more than expected in May to its lowest level in five months, the New York Federal Reserve said, in the latest report to

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point to the potential for a slowing economy.

The Nasdaq suffered the worst hit while other indexes drew support from strength in materials and financial stocks, which rebounded from Friday’s sharp fall. Some rotation into defensive names in the healthcare and utilities sectors also cushioned the Dow and the S&P 500 from steeper losses.

“We have had some data that has been softening so I guess we are going to experience a bit of a slowdown,” said Frank Lesh, an analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading in Chicago.

“We’re getting past the positive influence of earnings and starting to look at what else is out there, and it doesn’t seem to be a positive as the earnings were.”

Big retail names such as Amazon.com and eBay weighed on the Nasdaq, with

each falling about 3 percent.

The S&P retail index lost 1.5 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average shed 18.54 points, or 0.15 percent, to 12,577.21.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 4.35 points, or 0.33 percent, to 1,333.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 34.13 points, or 1.21 percent, to 2,794.34.

An inverse correlation between the dollar and stocks has started to re-emerge as volatility in markets increases before the Federal Reserve is expected to end its stimulus program next month, helping commodity-linked stocks.

The S&P’s materials sector gained 0.1 percent and was the best-performing sector, helped by gains in Cliffs Natural Resources, up 3 percent to $86.93 after Citigroup lifted it price target on the stock to $122.

Cliffs produces iron ore pel-

lets and metallurgical coal.

Some defensive names helped the Dow industrials.

Pharmaceutical stocks Pfizer and Merck gained, with Pfizer up 0.4 percent at $21 and Merck up 0.3 percent at $37.20.

In deal news, shares of NYSE Euronext fell 10.7 percent to $36.50 after Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and IntercontinentalExchange withdrew their bid for the rival exchange.

Meeting on Monday, eurozone finance ministers are likely to back a bailout package for Portugal, with new conditions set by Finland.

During the meeting, eurozone officials were expected to pressure Greece to announce more austerity steps to secure further emergency funding.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn entered a New York court for

arraignment after a weekend arrest on charges of attempted rape of a hotel maid. The case sent shock waves through French political circles and left the IMF in turmoil.

In earnings news, shares of J.C. Penney Co Inc. fell 3.2 percent to $37.20 after the department store operator reported a higher quarterly profit as the shares retraced some of their recent gains.

But Lowe’s Cos. reported weaker-than-expected quarterly results and cut its forecast for the year, sending shares down 3 percent to $24.98.

UBS increased its earnings view for S&P 500 companies for this year and next after stronger-than-expected earnings in the first quarter, but said it was maintaining its 1,425 target level for the S&P 500 as indicators signal a soft patch for stocks.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

19

Google debuts in high-grade bond market with $3 billion deal

By ANDREA JOHNSON and DANIELLE ROBINSON BRADENTON/NEW YORK — Google Inc. hit the U.S. bond market yesterday with its high grade market debut, announcing a $3 billion sale of 3-year, 5-year and 10-year notes that will take advantage of low borrowing rates.

Proceeds of the SEC-registered deal will be used to repay commercial paper and for general corporate purposes, the company said in a statement. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are joint lead managers on the deal, which garnered an Aa2 rating from Moody’s Investors Service, the thirdhighest rating in the agency’s scale.

Google is one of the few large-cap technology companies to actually have debt on its balance sheet — albeit at about $2 billion of commercial paper, a tiny sum compared to its $169 billion market cap.

The company is the latest in a spate of new or rare technology company borrowers

coming to the corporate bond market this year, as they look to take advantage of low interest rates and realize that having some debt makes sense.

“We are seeing some of the large cap tech companies deciding that having debt on the balance sheets is an appropriate way of having a capital structure and running a company, which is relatively new to them,” said one banker.

“Generally most of these large cap tech companies have only used the debt markets to finance their acquisitions. They typically don’t use the debt markets for anything else.”

Now, with rates so low and their own industries having reached a level of maturity, many are using the debt markets as a way of returning value to shareholders, at a time when they have large levels of cash trapped overseas.

Microsoft, for instance, raised funds in the bond market in February in part to buy back shares, while Google is improving its debt profile by extending the maturity of its debt. Both have large levels of cash overseas.

Cisco Systems in March

sold $4 billion of three-year fixed and floating rate notes and six-year bonds; eBay in October last year sold $1.5 billion of three, five and 10 year notes.

Google is planning to sell $1 billion of 3-year notes, that launched at 33 basis points over comparable Treasuries.

The company will sell $1 billion of 5-year notes at 43 basis points over Treasuries and $1 billion of 10-year notes at 58 basis points over Treasuries.

That compares with market “whispers” that put the 3year in the mid 30s, the 5year in the high 40s and the 10-year in the mid 60s. Pricing is expected later on Monday.

At the guidance stage, sources heard book size on the deal was already up to $8$9 billion, with sources originally hearing there was little chance of an increase.

Google may grab the lowest coupon levels seen so far this year.

The 2011 coupon to beat in 3-years is 1.25 percent, with both IBM and Colgate-Palmolive pricing deals with a 1.25 percent coupon.

The 2011 coupon to beat in 5-years is 2.50 percent set by Microsoft on Feb 3.

The 2011 coupon to beat in 10-years is 3.85 percent, set

by Berkshire Hathaway’s Pacificorp last week.

While at the lowest levels seen since December 2010, benchmark Treasury rates are still not in a spot which would allow any all-time low coupon records to be hit, with the all-time low coupon record in 3-years at 0.75 percent, in 5 years at 1.375 percent and in 10-years at 2.95 percent.

Google’s strong debt protections measures are backed up by its almost $11 billion of operating profit and $7 billion of free cash flow for fiscal 2011, ended March, according to Moody’s Senior Vice President Richard Lane.

The company also has

nearly $37 billion in cash balances, he said.

“These strengths, combined with solid business execution, will drive strong profitability, significant free cash flow generation, and ample financial flexibility,” Lane said.

However, the company is facing challenges from wellfunded rivals, including Microsoft, rated Aaa, and Apple, which is not rated, along with private companies such as Facebook, he said.

“An additional rating constraint considers the still developing nature of Internet technologies, usage, and behavioral patterns, all of which pose challenges to constantly invest and innovate,” he said.

Nasdaq, ICE withdraw NYSE bid, cite regulators

By PHIL WAHBA and PARITOSH BANSAL Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and IntercontinentalExchange withdrew their hostile $11.3 billion bid for rival NYSE Euronext yesterday, citing opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators.

The withdrawal of the offer removes a major hurdle to NYSE Euronext’s plans to sell itself to Deutsche Boerse AG for $9.9 billion.

The deal with Deutsche Boerse must still win regulatory and shareholder approval in Europe and the United States, but investors said the odds of the merger going through now had improved substantially.

“To me, it’s a clear signal that Deutsche Boerse’s offer will go ahead,” said fund manager Juergen Meyer of SEB Asset Management, which owns Deutsche Boerse shares. “That’s what I’m expecting, actually.”

In a statement, the U.S. Justice Department said that if the Nasdaq-ICE bid had not

been abandoned, it would have filed a lawsuit to stop it.

NYSE shares fell 10.4 percent while Deutsche Boerse rose 4.1 percent after news of the Nasdaq-ICE decision.

NYSE shares were trading at $36.65, closer to the implied $37.79 per share price in the Deutsche Boerse deal.

Nasdaq was up 1 percent and ICE was up 5.8 percent.

The withdrawal of the Nasdaq-ICE bid leaves Nasdaq searching for its next move. It could look at deals with other exchanges such as Singapore Exchange or London Stock Exchange Group.

“They need to continue to run a strong operation. They also need to keep their eyes on the horizon for any strategic opportunities.” said Keith Wirtz, chief investment officer at Fifth Third Asset Management, which has $18 billion in assets and owns more than 60,000 Nasdaq shares.

Nasdaq needs to pursue deals that would provide growth, including in Asian markets and derivatives products, Wirtz said.

“They need to make sure they have their capital war chest prepared,” he added.

In a statement, Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld said his company was “surprised and disappointed” with the decision by U.S. Justice Department antitrust regulators.

Greifeld said it became clear that regulators would not give the go-ahead for a deal despite Nasdaq and ICE offering a variety of remedies to address antitrust concerns.

Combining Nasdaq and the NYSE would have brought together the top two U.S. stock exchanges, creating a virtual monopoly on listings and dominance in trading U.S. cash equities and options.

The Justice Department, in its statement, said, “The acquisition would have substantially eliminated competition for corporate stock listing services, opening and closing stock auction services, off-exchange stock trade reporting services, and real-time proprietary equity data products.”

Other deals struck in the

recent global exchanges consolidation frenzy have also run into trouble over national-interest or regulatory concerns.

Singapore Exchange last month had to abandon its deal with Australia’s main exchange after it was rejected on national-interest grounds.

More recently, LSE’s bid to buy TMX Group hit rough waters after a group of Canadian banks and pension funds came up with a counter proposal for the Ontario-based exchange operator, touting the benefits of such a deal to Canada.

“Much like national airlines and other things that are sovereign by nature, there is a lot of politics involved in these exchanges,” Wirtz said.

Nasdaq and ICE first offered to buy the New York Stock Exchange’s parent on April 1, seeking to thwart NYSE Euronext’s friendly deal with Deutsche Boerse, announced in February.

NYSE Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer refused to talk to Nasdaq and ICE

about their offer, but some NYSE shareholders thought he should.

Investors are now likely to back the NYSE board’s decision.

“I doubt that we will see the shareholders demand an elevation. I think they will rely on the advice of the board at this stage,” said Wirtz, whose firm also owns more than 160,000 NYSE shares.

The Nasdaq-ICE offer would have split NYSE Euronext in two: Nasdaq would have acquired NYSE’s equities and equities options business, and ICE would have bought its Londonbased futures unit, Liffe.

NYSE’s board twice rejected the unsolicited offer, and Nasdaq said earlier this month that it and ICE would go directly to NYSE shareholders with a hostile bid.

NYSE acknowledged the withdrawal of the NasdaqICE proposal on Monday.

Deutsche Boerse also acknowledged Nasdaq’s decision and said it would “continue with the NYSE Euronext deal process.”

20

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

DAILY CHALLENGE

21

SPORTS

Let’s talk about it: NFL, players resume mediation

By DAVE CAMPBELL MINNEAPOLIS NFL owners and their locked-out players are talking again.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, executive vice president Jeff Pash and four team owners - Mike Brown, John Mara, Jerry Richardson and Art Rooney - arrived at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis yesterday morning along with legal counsel.

The head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith, and three other lawyers for the players were present for their side for the closed-door session before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan on the division and future of the ever-popular $9 billion business.

Linebacker Ben

Leber, one of the players listed as a plaintiff in the still-pending federal antitrust lawsuit against the league, also attended. Hall of Famer Carl Eller and attorneys were on hand for retired players.

Boylan presided over four days of mediation last month with no signs of progress. The two sides also met for 16 days earlier this year before talks fell apart March 11 and the lockout began.

Since then, U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson ordered the lockout lifted because it’s irreparably harming the players and their careers. Days later, on an appeal from the league, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put Nelson’s ruling on hold and has yet to decide whether to issue a more permanent stay.

The appeals court in

St. Louis has a hearing in the case set for June 3.

Also pending is an order from U.S. District Judge David Doty on the fate of some $4 billion in broadcast revenue he previously ruled was unfairly secured by the NFL in the last round of contract extensions with the networks to use as leverage in the form of financial padding for the work stoppage. Even if a lockout prevents games from being televised, the league would still get paid.

The players have asked Doty to set that money aside in escrow and for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, too.

The hearing in Doty’s courtroom in Minneapolis last week was mostly lawyers arguing back and forth, but each side accused the other of “sandbag-

ging” and neither sounded as if it’s ready to concede any ground.

With all these potential momentum swings still unsettled in the court system, significant progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement and a full 2011 season seems unlikely.

“We’d like to make progress, but it’ll be hard to do. We have to wait to see what happens June 3,” Rooney said before yesterday’s session began.

Bob Berliner, a Chicago attorney who runs the Berliner Group mediation service, called the uncertainty the “currency” at the mediator’s disposal.

“It should make people more likely to want to come to an agreement, but my guess is it’s made them less,” he said.

The NFL avoided a

Holyfield beats Nielsen

By JAN M. OLSEN COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield stopped Denmark’s Brian Nielsen on a technical knockout in the 10th round Saturday night.

In the 10th round, the 48-year-old Holyfield pressed Nielson in the corner and the bout was halted

after Holyfield landed several jabs in the corner and the Dane spat out some blood. Nielsen said after the bout he was hit by Holyfield’s headbutts.

“My goal still is to be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world,” Holyfield said.

“This fight showed other champions what I am able to do, but it also taught me I got to be better. The most important is that I didn’t quit.

I am not quitter.”

Despite Nielsen being pressed and a swollen eye, Nielsen kept on clowning to provoke Holyfield throughout the bout, prompting his trainer, Paul Duvill, to beg him to stop fooling around and focus on Holyfield.

But the Dane made a comeback in the eighth round, pushing a tiredlooking Holyfield into the ropes with a series of combinations, before

Holyfield turned it around in the 10th.

“It was a tough fight.

He kept coming back.

Hee kept coming back,” Holyfield said. “He fought a very courageous fight.”

George’s selection was announced yesterday on ESPN’s “College Football Live.”

The rest of the class of 14 former players and two former coaches will

be announced Tuesday at a news conferences at the NASDAQ MarketSite. Three other members of the newest Hall of Fame class will ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ. George won the Heisman in 1995 as a senior and finished his career at Ohio State with 3,768 yards, 44 rushing touchdowns and a school-record five 200yard games.

Eddie George

been and concentrates on the commonalities of the issues and shortcomings of the present system,” said Michael Hausfeld, an attorney who represents the retired players.

Goodell has continually spread the league’s message of desiring these face-to-face negotiations to reach a new deal as opposed to letting the process play out in court, where the players have fared better.

“We come into this mediation session with every hope and intent to make them productive,” Goodell said last week.

“If there aren’t two parties there willing to negotiate - they are not willing to address the issues in a negotiation and they are sitting and waiting for their litigation strategy - it’s not likely that they’re going to be productive.”

Bronco Perrish Cox pleads not guilty to sex counts

BY P. SOLOMON BANDA

Heisman winner George selected for College Hall NEW YORK Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George has been selected for induction into College Football Hall of Fame.

chaotic free agency freefor-all when the 8th Circuit slapped the stay on Nelson’s ruling and prevented the league year - meaning sanctioned offseason workouts, signings and trades - from beginning.

Still, the players may have been emboldened by the earlier court victories and are even less willing to budge.

Eller helped organize a meeting of 10 retired players on Sunday, with Brent Boyd, Irv Cross, Tony Davis, Nolan Harrison, Jim McFarland, Jeff Nixon, Dave Pear, Bob Stein and Shawn Stuckey also present. Another meeting is scheduled for next week in Chicago with former Bears coach Mike Ditka.

“This galvanizes all the different groups, puts aside whatever differences there may have

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. - Denver Broncos cornerback Perrish Cox has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Attorney Harvey A. Steinberg entered Cox’s plea yesterday during a hearing in Castle Rock, in suburban Douglas County south of Denver, and District Court Judge Paul King set a trial date of Oct. 18, six weeks into the NFL season if the labor dispute and lockout is resolved.

Prosecutor Robert Chappell and Steinberg estimate Cox’s trial would last six days.

Cox is charged with one count of sexual assault while the victim was physically helpless and one count of sexual assault while

the victim was incapable of determining the nature of the conduct. Court documents say the alleged assault happened on Sept. 6.

He was arrested Dec. 9 and is free on $50,000 bail.

Cox did not speak in court. After the hearing, two Broncos fans recognized him walking through the hallway, smiled, called his name and shook his hand.

“It’s tough. It’s something that stays over your head,” he said as he walked out of the courthouse. “You stay positive and just control what you can control.”

Cox, a Waco, Texas, native, said he’s back in Colorado, where he’s working out every other day in hopes that the NFL and players association can reach an agreement and end the lockout and start the season as scheduled on Sept. 8.

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DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

SPORTS BRIEFS

Grizzlies see playoff run as preview of future

The Memphis Grizzlies see their amazing playoff run as a painful building block. They have good cause for optimism too.

Memphis went further than any other No. 8 seed in the Western Conference ever had - and the Grizzlies did it without Rudy Gay, their secondleading scorer.

Zach Randolph says expectations will be higher now the Grizzlies laid a foundation with seven playoff wins. Memphis knocked off the No. 1 seeded San Antonio Spurs and pushed Oklahoma City to seven games before falling short Sunday with a 105-90 loss in the semifinals.

The Grizzlies aren’t making excuses for not reaching the West finals. But guard Tony Allen says Memphis will be a bigger threat with a healthy Gay. - TERESA M. WALKER

In East finals, Luol vs LeBron a key matchup DEERFIELD, Ill. - The Chicago Bulls are up 10 in their best-of-seven showdown with the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.

Derrick Rose was up to his usual MVP tricks, scoring 28 points in Sunday night’s 103-82 victory. But it was Luol Deng with the big assist, clamping down on LeBron James. The King finished with just 15 points on 5-for-15 shooting and was quick to point out the Bulls “did a great job” on defense.

Deng also added 21 points, seven rebounds and four steals while neutralizing James.

Rose says Hill to help support new charter school DETROIT - Former Michigan basketball star Jalen Rose says Grant Hill has agreed to help support the new charter school in Detroit bearing Rose’s name.

The Jalen Rose Leadership Academy is expected to open in September. Rose says Hill has promised to lend his support and that things are fine between them after Hill criticized Rose in March for comments he made in an ESPN documentary about Michigan’s famous Fab Five.

Hill, a former Duke standout, criticized Rose in the New York Times for saying the Blue Devils “only recruited Black players that were ‘Uncle Toms.’” Rose says he was only describing how he felt back when he was a teenager - as opposed to now.

“Any time, for example, you have a critically acclaimed piece like the Fab Five documentary has been, you’re going to have 99 percent of the people that love it, but when you have the brutal honesty, you’re going to have that 1 percent on the other side of the coin, so to speak,” Rose said Saturday. “I definitely talked to Grant and reached out to Coach K, and again clarified that that was how I felt as a high school recruit.”

A Detroit native, Rose threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Detroit Tigers’ game Saturday against Kansas City. Afterward, he was eager to promote the new school, and he said Hill - a former Detroit Piston - has agreed to support the venture. Rose said Detroit Lions defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh has also reached out to him.

DAILY CHALLENGE

SPORTS

Yankees irked by Derek Jeter

By BUSTER OLNEY Derek Jeter’s negotiations with the New York Yankees last winter seemed to have been Round 1 in the tense transitional relationship between the club’s accomplished Old Guard and management.

Jorge Posada’s episode over the weekend was Round 2.

And now there may be a Round 3 in the hours and days ahead after Jeter, in his statements to reporters, essentially exonerated Posada from any wrongdoing for taking himself out of Saturday’s lineup against Boston. According to sources, Yankees management was surprised and frustrated by what Jeter said — particularly in his standing as captain — even after Posada acknowledged that he was wrong in his actions Saturday and apologized to manager Joe Girardi.

The catcher-turned-fulltime DH, who is struggling at the plate — he’s hitting .165 and remains hitless against lefthanded pitching — was dropped to the ninth spot in the batting order for Saturday’s game and asked out of the lineup because he felt disrespected.

Jeter, who is close friends with Posada and described him

on Sunday as someone he regards as a brother, repeatedly deflected questions about Posada’s actions, and said there was no reason for Posada to apologize to teammates for declining to play. The team’s front office was so angry with what Posada did that they con-

sidered releasing the veteran immediately.

Jeter had a very different take.

“If I thought he did something wrong, I’d be the first to tell him,” Jeter said in the midst of a long session with reporters.

Ex-NBA star sues Las Vegas resort over ‘beat down’ LAS VEGAS - Charles Oakley, one of the NBA’s all-time tough guys and now a Charlotte Bobcats assistant, has sued a Las Vegas resort over what he calls a May 2010 “gangstyle beat down” by security guards who injured him.

Oakley filed the lawsuit Thursday in Clark County District Court against the Aria hotel-casino at MGM Resorts International’s CityCenter com-

plex, the Las Vegas Sun reported. Five security officers also were named in the lawsuit.

Oakley was an invited guest at Aria’s VIP pool area May 28 when he left the area, the complaint says, but security officers and staff prevented him from reentering.

After a “verbal altercation” with officers, Oakley attempted to return to his room when he was “assaulted” by them in a secluded area of the resort, the lawsuit alleges.

The complaint contends the officers wrestled Oakley to the

ground and punched and handcuffed him, and that he was taken to the hospital with injuries to his neck, back, head and wrist, “all or some of which may be permanent and disabling.”

The complaint alleges negligence, assault, assault with excessive force, battery, false imprisonment and defamation.

It seeks unspecified general, special and punitive damages.

An MGM Resorts International spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Hawks encouraged despite another 2nd-round stumble

By PAUL NEWBERRY offs.

ATLANTA - The Atlanta Hawks ended this season the same way they have the last two: losing in the second round of the play-

But coach Larry Drew and his players are encouraged about taking top-seeded Chicago to six games. The Hawks were certainly much more competitive against the Bulls than they were in sweeps

by Cleveland in 2009 and Orlando a year ago.

Drew says his team is “very close” to taking its next big step, which would mean getting past the second round for the first time since moving to Atlanta.

DAILY CHALLENGE TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

DAILY CHALLENGE

23

SPORTS

Celtics coach Rivers accepts five-year deal BOSTON - Doc Rivers has agreed to a fresh five-year deal to remain head coach of the Boston Celtics and take the franchise into a new era, the NBA team said on Friday.

Rivers’s existing contract was set to expire at the end of this season and he had initially planned to take a break from coaching to watch his son play college basketball.

However, the 49year-old changed his mind after Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge approached him before the start of the playoffs

about a possible return.

“I think Doc is the best coach in the league, so it’s great for us to have him around,” Ainge told reporters at the team’s practice facility. “Doc has always known that we’ve wanted him and that offer was on the table. As the playoffs first started, we started that conversation again.”

Ainge did not disclose further details of Rivers’ new deal but local media estimate the contract extension to be worth $35 million.

“Doc wants to be here,” Ainge said. “It’s not all because he thinks that over the next five years we’re going to have the best team in the NBA.

“He’s part of this franchise ... and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to help us be successful.”

After the Celtics were eliminated from the Eastern Conference semi-finals in five games by the Miami Heat on Wednesday, Rivers had said he was “leaning heavily” toward coming back.

“I haven’t made that decision, but I can tell you I probably will,” he told reporters. “I’ve kind of come to that over the last couple of weeks.

“I’m a Celtic ... and I love our guys. I want to win again here, and I’m competitive as hell. I have a competitive group, so we’ll see.”

An NBA All-Star as a player with the Atlanta Hawks in 1988, Rivers led the Celtics to the 2008 NBA championship and also to the 2010 Finals where Boston were beaten by the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games.

By committing to a new five-year deal, he will be able to rebuild the team as the era of dominance by the ‘Big Three’ of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen draws to a close.

“To help Kevin, Ray and Paul, we just have to add talent,” Rivers said. “We relied on those three to carry the load for years, but we can’t do that as much anymore.”

Bernard Hopkins: a man in love with his own voice

By TIM DAHLBERG No one doubts the street cred of Bernard Hopkins, who made his living mugging people in the streets before he got paid to do it in the ring. Growing up in the projects in Philadelphia certainly toughened him, as did a five-year stint in prison for his crimes.

No doubt it helped make him the fighter he is, and probably a big reason why he keeps fighting at the advanced age of 46. No one gave him anything, and no one could have predict-

ed when he lost his first fight in Atlantic City in 1988 that he would enjoy a career as remarkable for his achievements as it is for his longevity.

I’ve always liked Hopkins, even admired the way he turned his life around after leaving prison. One night at a boxing dinner we were discussing how fighters tend to blow their money and he pulled out his wallet to show me his Costco card as a sign of how frugal he is with his own sizable income.

But Hopkins is in love with the sound of his own voice. And

sometimes he just doesn’t know when to shut up.

He didn’t the other day in Philadelphia, where Hopkins went off on Donovan McNabb for what he perceives as his many failings as quarterback of the Eagles.

Nothing new there, since Hopkins has repeatedly criticized McNabb over the years for not leading his team to a Super Bowl title.

This time, though, Hopkins went too far.

He implied that McNabb somehow wasn’t black enough to succeed because he grew up in a Chicago suburb instead of the ghetto and didn’t

have to overcome some of the hardships faced by many other black athletes.

McNabb, Hopkins said, “got a suntan, that’s all.”

It was, at best, an ignorant statement born of stereotypes. While many black athletes rise out of the ghetto to become stars, many others like McNabb come from more fortunate surroundings and still succeed in athletics.

“There’s nothing about poverty that produces a better athlete,” said Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for Social Inclusion in

New York City. “The disturbing part of what he said is that blackness equals being poor and aggressive. It’s hard to imagine anyone tougher than Donovan McNabb, who has to face the pressures a black quarterback carries in his situation.”

The tendency might be to give Hopkins a break because he’s trying to sell his fight next weekend against Jean Pascal in Montreal.

Taken in context, it’s certainly not the worst thing ever said in the world of boxing, where questioning an opponent’s race, sexual preference and drug habits

are sometimes all just part of the pre-fight hype.

It’s also not the worst thing Hopkins has ever said. He recently said he was so angry at some of the things Pascal had said about him that people shouldn’t be “surprised if he dies in the ring on May 21.”

McNabb certainly has nothing to apologize about for his success.

He’s a black quarterback in a league where everything black quarterbacks do is scrutinized closely and he played for years in front of Philly fans known for being demanding of their athletes.

D e M a r c u s Wa r e g e t s p a i d d u r i n g l o c k o u t

By CALVIN WATKINS The NFL lockout hasn’t kept all players from getting paid by their teams.

Outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware is the only player to receive a paycheck from the Dallas Cowboys during the lockout.

Ware received $6.8 million from the Cowboys on March 15, three days after the owners locked out the players, as part of deferred payments owed to him.

More on the Cowboys Calvin Watkins, Tim MacMahon and Todd Archer have the Dallas Cowboys blanketed for

ESPNDallas.com. Blog More: ESPN Dallas Cowboys Draft Center When Ware renegotiated his contract in October 2009, he received a $20 million signing bonus, but $1 million of that was deferred to the spring of 2011. Ware’s 2010 base salary was $7.8 million, but $5.8 mil-

lion of it also was deferred to the following year.

NFL teams defer some salaries and signing bonuses for cash flow purposes.

Last month, Ware said he would pass on his share of the NFL Players Association’s lockout fund so it could be spread among players who are in more

need. Ware is one of Dallas’ player representatives.

Players who were on the active roster for every week of the 2009 and 2010 seasons are eligible to receive $60,000 over a sixweek period during the lockout.

Ware isn’t the only Cowboys player scheduled to get deferred

payments this year.

Wide receiver Miles Austin, who signed a new contract last season, had $7.078 million of his $17 million 2010 base salary deferred to this year.

However, Austin hasn’t receive any of the deferred money because it’s due to be paid during the 2011 season.

DAILY CHALLENGE

S SP PO OR RT TS S TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011

YA N K E E S IRKED BY JETER’S COMMENTS SEE PAGE 22 HEISMAN WINNER GEORGE SELECTED FOR COLLEGE HALL OF FAME SE E PAG E 21

DEMARCUS WARE GETS PAID DURING LOCKOUT S EE PA GE 23