Vol 40 No 48, Thursday May 5th, 2011

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION URGED TO RAISE THREAT LEVEL - PG. 3 NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

THE NATION’S ONLY BLACK DAILY 35 Cents

RAGE TO RESIGNATION OVER $4 GAS

SEE PAGE 3

Final

WHITE HOUSE WON’T SHOW BIN LADEN PHOTO

The White House has decided not to release photos of dead al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, officials said.

SEE PAGE 2.

WWW.DAILYCHALLENGENEWS.COM

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

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NE W S B R I E F S ARREST MADE IN DEADLY BROOKLYN SHOOTING The suspect wanted in a deadly Brooklyn shooting that was caught on tape is expected to be arraigned today after being taken into custody upstate.

Djavan Perry, 20, faces murder and weapons charges.

Police were able to track him down at a relative’s apartment in Albany.

Investigators say Perry gunned down 18-year-old Andre Pitts, shooting him several times in a Brownsville apartment building.

Pitts died later at the hospital.

Perry has three prior arrests for resisting an officer and weapons possession.

STATE SENATE PASSES BILL TO MAKE TEXTING WHILE DRIVING A CRIME The State Senate overwhelmingly passed Tuesday a bill that makes texting while driving a crime.

Currently, police can only stop drivers for texting while in connection with another crime.

Under the Senate bill, police can pull you over if they see you holding a phone, iPod, or GPS device.

Drivers will face a $150 fine and two points on their license.

The bill comes after several recent fatal accidents across the state.

“This is something we’ve got to stop. The cost in human lives, destroyed families,” said Syosset Senator Carl Marcellino.

The State Assembly is set to vote on the legislation next.

FLUSHING MAN TIED UP, STABBED IN HIS OWN APARTMENT Police are investigating a deadly stabbing in Flushing, Queens that sources say was likely drug-related.

It happened on Ash Avenue in Flushing around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

According to sources, two men wearing black masks followed Thomas Shanis, 32, into his building, tied him up and stabbed him several times in the back.

Sources said the suspects tied up the victim’s mother, who also lives there. She was not injured.

Neighbors were telling investigators that Shanis may have sold cocaine and other drugs out of his apartment.

Residents said Shanis was wellknown in the neighborhood.

“He was like a really nice guy.

Everybody was cool with him. He was always by himself, always walking his dog,” said a neighbor. “That surprised me that somebody would try to do something to Tom because he was just a really cool guy with everybody, you know? I was with him last week, so it’s just, like, really crazy.”

There were no signs of forced entry.

Anyone with information on the case should contact the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS, or text CRIMES and then enter TIP577, or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.

White House won’t show bin Laden photo

By SUSAN CORNWELL and MARK HOSENBALL WASHINGTON — The White House has decided not to release photos of dead al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, officials said yesterday as a senator told reporters she had seen one of the pictures.

President Barack Obama “has decided against photo release,” a U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry told Reuters he had been told the photographs will not be released. “I believe it is absolutely the right decision,” Kerry said.

“Absent some major challenge to the fact of death, there is no clamor that I can discern requiring proof of death and I think it would in fact create a kind of ghoulish exploitation that is not appropriate ... could encourage repercussions in parts of the world...”

The Obama administration has been wrestling with whether to make public what it calls a gruesome

image of bin Laden’s corpse, even as Islamic militants are questioning whether U.S. forces really killed him.

U.S. forces who raided the compound where bin Laden was living in Pakistan on Monday shot bin Laden in the face, one U.S. official says.

This official said yesterday bits of brain are visible in photos of the corpse.

Senator Kelly Ayotte told reporters at the Capitol the photo she saw confirmed bin Laden’s identity.

She said it was a facial shot and that another senator showed it to her.

“I saw a photo of him deceased, the head area. Obviously he had been wounded ... I can’t give any better description than that,” she said.

Asked if the photo confirmed the identity of the dead man as bin Laden, Ayotte said, “My view, yes.”

“Obviously I’m not an expert in this area. But ... since he’s such a well known figure, when you see the picture, it clearly has his features,” said Ayotte, a Republican.

Ayotte spoke to reporters after CIA Director Leon Panetta gave a closed-door briefing on bin Laden’s death to senators on the Armed Ser-

vices and Intelligence committees.

But there was no indication that she had seen the photo during that forum.

Other senators who attended the briefing said they had not seen bin Laden photos, and one aide said none were shown.

U.S. lawmakers disagree over whether the photos of bin Laden should be released to the public.

Ayotte said they should — to help quash any doubts about whether bin Laden was dead.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen that in many instances around the world there can be conspiracy theories about these types of events. So I think it’s important in terms of closure, that while nobody wants to see disturbing photos, the closure aspect I think is very important.”

But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said releasing the photos “will only serve to inflame opinion in the Middle East.”

“Osama bin Laden is not a trophy - he is dead and let’s now focus on continuing the fight until al Qaeda has been eliminated,” he said in a statement.

Officials face big visa overstay record backlog

By JEREMY PELOFSKY WASHINGTON — U.S. authorities are facing a huge backlog of records involving people who have stayed in the United States after their visas expired, according to a report released on Tuesday, revealing that a security gap has not been fixed since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT system had a backlog of some 1.6 million records of potential visa overstays as of January 2011, said the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.

Five of the 19 men who hijacked the planes in the September 11 attacks had overstayed their visas and the report found that some 36 of the 400 people who have been convicted on terrorism-related charges since 2001 had also stayed after their visas expired.

“It is simply unacceptable that we are still unable to systematically iden-

tify people who overstay — some of whom may be terrorists waiting to attack innocent Americans,” Joe Lieberman, an Independent who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.

Some of the records may include duplicates because of computer system changes, may not have been reviewed yet, or include cases that are not necessarily considered to be a priority, the GAO report said.

Officials in charge of the US-VISIT program told the GAO that it had spent $3.7 million of the $5 million available to help deal with the backlog but that it needed more money, a tough task as the government is facing deep spending cuts.

As a matter of policy, records involving visa overstays of 90 days or less or those who are not deemed to pose a national security or public safety risk do not trigger an immediate lookout warning, according to the report.

U.S. officials prefer to focus on finding the more egregious violators who have stayed long beyond their visa expiration, the GAO said.

The report was released a day before Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is due to testify on border security before Lieberman’s committee.

A spokesman for Napolitano said the agency gives priority to removing illegal immigrants who are a national security risk, are convicted criminals or pose other threats to public safety.

“We pursue overstay cases based on these priorities — including by fully investigating 100 percent of overstay cases that have a nexus to national security and serious criminal acts,” DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said.

There are also other ways for U.S. officials to identify those who have entered the United States legally but have stayed longer than they were initially allowed and to remove them, according to the department.

Treasury suggests $2 trillion U.S. debt cap raise

By RICHARD COWAN and RACHELLE YOUNGLAI WASHINGTON — The Treasury has told lawmakers a roughly $2 trillion rise in the legal limit on federal debt would be needed to ensure the government can keep borrowing through the 2012 presidential election, sources with knowledge of the discussions said.

Obama administration officials have repeatedly said that it is up to Congress to decide by how much the $14.3 trillion debt limit should be raised.

But when lawmakers asked how

much of an increase would be needed to meet the government’s obligations into early 2013, Treasury officials floated the $2 trillion working figure, Senate and administration sources told Reuters.

Former Treasury officials have said it is routine for Congress to ask the Treasury Department for guidance.

Republican leaders have asked the White House to provide the size of any proposed increase before the two sides sit down today to discuss the debt limit face-to-face.

“We have not specified an amount or a time frame. We think that should be left up to Congress,” Mary Miller, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial markets, told reporters on

yesterday.

She also said it would be better to raise the debt ceiling enough so that the government does not bump up against it so frequently.

“Obviously, a longer period of time between these activities would be beneficial in terms of the work that goes into preparing for a debt limit increase. But again, you know that’s not the Treasury’s call,” she said.

A Reuters analysis of Treasury’s borrowing needs forecast Congress would have to raise the debt ceiling by more than $2 trillion to get through next year’s election without having to revisit the issue. According to the Treasury, the government borrows on average about $125 billion per month.

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

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Obama administration urged to raise threat level

By DAVID MORGAN WASHINGTON — The Obama administration came under fire yesterday for its decision to leave the national threat level unchanged after the killing of Osama bin Laden, despite warnings that al Qaeda was likely to retaliate.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate panel that the administration had not raised the alert because there was no credible information pointing to a specific threat.

Security has been increased at airports, seaports and border crossings while U.S. officials review intelligence reports on al Qaeda suspects and

other militants who could already be inside the United States, she said.

The U.S. government scrapped its much-ridiculed color-coded warnings last month, replacing it with a new system that provides specific information about potential threats rather than one that simply reflects the general threat status.

“We want to be careful here. We don’t want to say because we suspect, and reasonably so, that at some point there may be retaliation, that we go ahead and put the nation into an alert status without more information than we currently have,” Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

But her explanation did not rest

well with Republican lawmakers.

“From my perspective, it just still seems prudent to temporarily, at least, elevate the threat level,” said Senator Susan Collins, the committee’s senior Republican.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson said the purpose of an advisory was to “signal to the American public that something has changed.”

“The purpose of the advisory, in my view, is to communicate facts and information so people know what to do,” Napolitano shot back.

U.S. officials, including CIA director Leon Panetta, have warned that al Qaeda may try to retaliate for the U.S. raid that killed the militant network’s top leader on Monday at his com-

pound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

The death of the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has boosted public approval of President Barack Obama, just as the 2012 presidential campaign gets under way.

Napolitano said a panel of officials from several intelligence agencies was examining material from the bin Laden compound and advising her daily on the level of danger.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, an Independent who often sides with Democrats, defended the administration’s approach: “I think the system is working as we want it to.”

Americans go from rage to resignation over $4 gasoline

By JEFFREY KERR and JOSHUA SCHNEYER When gasoline prices shot to $4 a gallon in 2008, sticker shock cut fuel demand and helped send world oil prices tumbling by more than $100 a barrel in just five months.

Pump prices have returned to near those highs, averaging $3.95 a gallon after rising 36 percent in a year.

Oil has also soared, with Brent trading just over $122 a barrel and U.S. crude over $110.

But this time, there are ample reasons to suspect $4 gasoline won’t slash demand or trigger another oil price rout. Outrage over prices among American drivers, who consume an eighth of the world’s oil, is turning into resignation with summer driving season around the corner. Motorists may bristle, and alarm over fuel costs is growing in Washington, but experts say the tipping point at which prices would slash demand has likely risen sharply since 2008.

“In 2008, $4 gasoline prices seemed so high they were almost inconceivable. They won’t be viewed the same way this time,” said Lars Perner, a consumer behavior expert at the University of Southern California, who has written about fuel.

“Back then, the price at which demand fell off sharply was around $4. Today, the price may be $5.”

Beyond the deja vu factor, several other market shifts make a demand collapse less likely. Although new cars are becoming more fuel efficient, fewer Americans are buying them, and the average age of a U.S. passenger vehicle is 10 years.

Meanwhile, used U.S. car sales outpaced new car sales by more than 3to-1 last year, when 11.5 million new light vehicles were sold, down 31 percent from the annual average in the decade before the U.S. economic downturn.

Unlike in 2008, when the U.S. economy was entering a tailspin, employment has been rising, pushing more commuters onto roads and potentially making them less anxious about paying for fuel. Spending at the pump may also be less discretionary. In recent years recreational summertime driving has been making up less of U.S. fuel use.

U.S. gasoline consumption peaked in 2007 and has since fallen 13 percent, or 1.2 million barrels a day on average. But this year, high prices are having only limited demand impact.

Even as pump prices rose over the last four weeks, U.S. retail gasoline sales were off only 1.2 percent from year-ago levels, according to MasterCard.

Perhaps more telling, the clip of the decline appears to be leveling off.

MasterCard analyst John Gamel said the firm’s surveys have shown smaller declines occurring each week.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley, in research last week, said it has “not seen any material evidence to convince us any (gasoline) demand destruction is taking place in the U.S.” In another gauge of changing perceptions, U.S. media coverage of high oil and gasoline prices has been thin this year compared to 2008, when gasoline’s spike was a top story.

The Pew Center, which surveys what’s trending in the U.S. media, notes that news content about high fuel prices made up nearly 2 percent of mainstream press coverage in April of 2008, when U.S. retail gasoline prices averaged $3.46 a gallon.

In spite of higher prices last month - gasoline averaged $3.83 a gallon press coverage was closer to 1 percent of total content.

One caveat from Pew: 2011 has been a year of “mega-stories” in the news, from unrest in the Middle East to Japan’s earthquake and ensuing nuclear meltdown.

Joblessness is still keeping millions of commuters off the road.

Higher unemployment alone may be dragging down U.S. vehicle miles traveled by 2 percent compared to the end of 2007, according to James Coan

at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Houston, Texas.

The unemployment rate is actually higher now than it was in 2008. But back then joblessness was getting worse while now it has been improving. Unemployment has fallen to 8.8 percent from a peak of 10.1 percent during 2009.

Workers are not necessarily keeping cars in the garage and flocking onto trains, buses or subways for their commute.

A broad measure of U.S. public transportation usage showed total ridership fell by around 4.5 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to American Public Transportation Association (APTA) data.

Preliminary data for 2011 suggests ridership is rising again, but APTA also says 46 percent of Americans have no access to public transportation. According to the group’s estimate, $5 U.S. gasoline would likely lead to a 15 percent increase in public transportation usage.

At U.S. auto plants, 2010 modelyear new cars had average fuel efficiency ratings of 32.9 miles per gallon (mpg), up from 31.2 mpg for 2008 models.

General Motors Co. said Tuesday its U.S. new car sales in April jumped 26 percent from a year ago, with more buyers choosing fuel efficient vehicles with smaller engines.

But Americans are buying far fewer cars than they did before the economic downturn, and the average age of a U.S. passenger vehicles has risen since then to 10 years.

Car models from 2002 — the new vehicles of a decade ago — are on average 11 percent less fuel efficient than 2010 models, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Not surprisingly since the economy went south in 2008, people are holding onto their vehicles longer,” said Robert Sinclair of the American Automobile Association.

Evidence is mounting that as U.S. motorists pay more for fuel, they are cutting back in other areas of discretionary spending.

Safeway Inc., the No. 2 U.S. supermarket operator and a gasoline retailer, said last week that sales of higher-priced fuel boosted first-quarter revenue but cut into gross profit.

That dragged down margins for the chain, whose shares are down 4.6 percent since April 27.

The U.S. summer driving season — from late May to early September — is often a period of peak world oil demand.

But in recent years, seasonal driving has added less incremental demand. U.S. motorists are spreading fuel usage more evenly, a sign that that demand may be less elastic.

“I’ve already made as many cuts (in gasoline use) as I can since the last time prices rose,” said Allie Irwin, a Chatham, New Jersey resident who drives a Buick sports utility vehicle.

“With my kids’ activities and my own responsibilities, I’m just going to have to deal with the higher prices this time, and I’m not happy about it.”

Obama honors Freedom Riders WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama issued an official proclamation yesterday marking the 50th anniversary of the non-violent segregation effort Freedom Riders.

Organized in the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision that interstate passengers had a right to be served without discrimination.

The riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other offenses.

“Through their defiant journeys, the Freedom Riders sent a resounding message to the rest of our nation that desegregation was a moral imperative,” the president said.

Obama said the Freedom Riders showed the nation that young people have the power to generate a movement for equality and steer the course of a nation.

“Because of their efforts, and the work of those who marched and stood against injustice, we live in a country where all Americans have the right to dream and choose their own destiny,” the president said.

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DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

FORUM

Remembering acts of kindess

By LEE A. DANIELS THOMAS H. WATKINS

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Special to the NNPA from thedefendersonline.com Good Riddance.

A man driven to sponsor and inspire incalculable horror and sadness around the globe is dead. He chose a path of profound evil, cloaking his megalomania and blood-lust in religious piety, and it’s led him to a watery grave at the bottom of an ocean.

Of course his name will be remembered as long as human society exists. But like his blooddrenched historical predecessors – men for whom the description “mass murderer” is pitifully inadequate – he’ll be regarded, to put it bluntly, as a freak of human nature: a monster.

But, in the midst of our, for some, jubilation; for others, a quiet, even grim satisfaction, we would also do well to remember along with his other crimes not only the terrible acts of mass murder he sponsored that 10 years ago beclouded a bright, sunny day in New York City, in suburban Washington, and in rural Pennsylvania.

We would do well to recall what those crimes revealed to us Americans.

For one thing, they underscored that, while many in American society were contesting who is an American – that is, who is entitled to equal opportunity here – the practitioners of terror had no doubt who is an American. They knew and acted upon the fact that all Americans are all equally Americans – and thus, equally a target for their murderous rage.

Timothy McVeigh, born and raised in America , understood that. So, Americans of all ages of African, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic, Native American, and European descent who worked in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City died one awful day in April 1995 So, too, did those murderers who struck at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998: Americans (and Africans and Europeans) of all backgrounds died that day also.

And so did the practitioners of the 9-11 terror who brought so much agony, death, and destruction to America’s shores.

Like Timothy McVeigh, they deliberately struck not just at just at the “symbols” of the American nation. They attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon during the workday, when both places would be filled with the people of America: people of African, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic, Native American, and European descent. Those who died and were injured were members of our families, our friends, and our neighbors.

The terrorists showed, once again, that while they often condemned America for its history of discrimination against Americans of color, they wouldn’t hesitate to target Americans of color for murder, too.

They understood that we are all equally American, whether our ancestors arrived on the Mayflower or the slave ships; whether they fled pogroms in Europe or tyranny and poverty in Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East ; whether the gov-

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ernments of our ancestors’ country of origin were democratic or authoritarian; whether our families came three centuries ago or yesterday. (Of course, we know that these murderers don’t value the lives of any human beings.

Citizens of 40 countries worked at the World Trade Center, a crossroads of the world. They, too, were among the missing and the dead.) It would seem that some Americans are the only ones who don’t understand – or don’t want to accept – that we Americans are all equally American.

And we would do well to remember that the evil done on September 11, 2001 inspired at the sites of the catastrophes the opposite of evil. It inspired many acts of kindness and bravery.

Many of those deeds we’ll never know, of course: the doers and all who witnessed them died in those awful moments. But other stories survive.

One of the most exalted was told by a woman who worked in the World Trade Center offices of the financial giant. Morgan Stanley. After the first jetliner hit the Center’s Tower 1, officials ordered an immediate evacuation of Tower 2, where she had an office on the 64th floor. The problem: she walked with crutches.

At first, several co-workers tried to carry her down the hot, humid, and crowded stairwell.

“It was incredibly difficult,” the woman told the New York Times. “They had me over their shoulder for 5 or 10 flights and just couldn’t do it.”

Then, she said, a co-worker

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5

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

Ironies abound in Obama’s big victory

By FREDERICK COSBY When Alanis Morissette sings “Isn’t it ironic?” she could very well be crooning about President Barack Obama’s week last week.

Obama produced moments rich in irony during a five-day span - from Thursday morning to the wee hours of Monday – as he put his thumb in the eyes and plugs in the mouths of Donald Trump and other birthers by releasing his long-form birth certificate, poisoned any chance of a credible Trump Republican presidential run with his scathing jokes aimed at a sour-faced Trump at a Washington press dinner and ordered up a successful hit on long-sought-after 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Through it all, Obama was “Cool Hand Luke,” keeping a poker face and not letting on what he was up to until it was finally done. And in the process, he left a string of ironies that weren’t lost on his supporters or rivals.

Right before the birther-embracing Trump and his helicopter landed in New Hampshire for a campaign test or tease tour, Obama up and released his Hawaiian long-form birth certificate, essentially - at least among rational people - quashing Trump’s signature issue.

Obama sent Trump home steaming from the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday following a staccato attack of jokes about the real estate mogul and television reality show host’s presidential aspirations.

“No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald,” Obama said with a stone-faced Trump in the audience.

“And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter – like, did we fake the

moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

Obama cracked wise against his foes at the black tie dinner a day after he had secretly green-lit a Navy SEALs mission to fly into Pakistan uninvited, raid bin Laden’s hideaway, take down the terrorist, bring his body to a waiting ship for identity verification, then feed him to the sharks.

He authorized the raid on the week before the anniversary of former President George W. Bush’s May 1, 2003 premature victory lap, for which he donned a tight flight suit, dramatically landed in a jet onto an aircraft carrier and proclaimed hostilities with Iraq over while standing under a huge banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”

Obama was all smiles at the dinner even as “Saturday Night Live” head writer Seth Myers, the comedy act for the night, joked about bin Laden hiding in plain sight as the host of a show on C-SPAN, the lowrated government affairs network.

Even the night of the raid had irony. Photos released by the White House Monday showed Obama and his national security/diplomacy team huddled in the Situation Room grimly monitoring the mission.

Obama is seen leaning forward in his chair, eyes transfixed on a screen, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, seated across from the president, has a seemingly surprised look on her face and a hand covering her mouth as she watches the same screen.

“Okay, we know how the president reacts to a 3 a.m. phone call he does it very well,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told The Huffington Post Tuesday, recalling then-Democratic presidential candidate Clinton’s suggestion in 2008 that candi-

Acts of kindness Continued from page 4 she knew only as Louis came upon them. He lifted the woman on his shoulder and began to carry her by himself down the remaining 50 or so flights. The woman said that around the 15th or 20th floor, a security guard, saying the danger at that level has eased, urged Louis to leave her and continue on his own. Louis refused and carried her all the way out of the building, “all the way to the E.M.T. guys, and he stuck with me until we got one who said I could go in an ambulance.”

Louis then left, heading hopefully out of the danger zone. We know nothing more about him.

Before 9-11, many people might have expressed surprise at such acts, as if they were unusual.

But 9-11 taught us, at a horrible cost, that such acts of compassion and courage are not unusual. Indeed, the

rapid response of ordinary people to mobilize on their own substantial aid for their fellow human beings victimized by natural disasters has become commonplace in the last decade. 9-11 compelled many people in America and around the world to realize that such acts of kindness are what decent people do when mass tragedy befalls the innocent. Helping others becomes a balm to the deep wound in our individual and collective psyches. It enables us to immerse ourselves in grief over the fate of the innocent while simultaneously celebrating

date Obama didn’t have the intestinal fortitude (or some part in the lower region of the anatomy) to handle a 3 a.m. international crisis call.

By taking out bin Laden the way he did, Obama neutralized potential criticism from Republicans and Tea Party supporters who’ve accused him in the past of being soft on terrorism. In authorizing the SEALs raid, Obama selected the riskiest option presented to him. The other choices included a Stealth bomber or drone aircraft attack to level bin Laden’s compound or large-scale commando attack.

A bomber attack may have leveled bin Laden’s compound, but would have offered no guarantee of confirmation of his demise – a sure-fire potential talking point for congressional Republicans.

A large scale assault on the compound could have cost Pakistani civilian lives and further alienate the Pakistani government, which didn’t know about the SEALs raid until after it was successfully conducted.

Invading the compound and bringing bin Laden back alive would have likely created a GOP feeding frenzy about where the Obama administration would jail bin Laden, whether he would face a military tribunal or civilian trial and where would it be held. The White House went through that once in trying to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and didn’t want to go through it again.

By going the risky route – the raid, taking bin Laden’s body and running DNA testing on it before slipping it in the ocean in a weighted bag – left Obama’s detractors precious little to complain about.

Indeed, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, who normally can’t breathe without bashing Obama,

gave him credit for doing what former President George W. Bush couldn’t: Get bin Laden.

But some Republicans still couldn’t bring themselves to give the president full propers. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (RGa.), who embraced conservative thinker Dinesh D’Souza’s theory that Obama has a Kenyan world view and is driven by his late African father’s alleged anti-colonial bent, first credited Bush, “who led the campaign against our enemies for seven long years,” he said, and then Obama, “who intensified the campaign in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Some Tea Partiers had a hard time, too.

“Is this part of Obama’s re-election plan?” one Tea Party supporter grumbled on the Tea Party Nation Web site. “America’s problems still exist, Mr. President, and you have probably added some more ... We entered another country without their knowledge and carried out a military action. Does our Commander-in-Chief not think there will be serious repercussions from this action?”

Meanwhile, Obama continues to be “Cool Hand Luke,” not getting too high or low in public about recent events, perhaps mindful that former President George H. W. Bush was on top of the political world after he successfully waged the first Gulf War. But Bush found himself out of the White House after one term, the victim of a bad economy and Democrat Bill Clinton’s charm in 1992.

White House officials believe Obama won’t meet the same fate, and the president said at the press dinner Saturday that he has a surefire self-help tool to avoid arrogance, hubris and keep him humble.

“My poll numbers,” he joked.

their, and our, determination to persevere.

Ten years ago, in the days and weeks following September 11, we heard many such stories: Of shopkeepers along the routes of the flood of refugees from lower Manhattan passing out bottles of water, juices, and other refreshments. Of Americans from all parts of the country flocking to the devastated World Trade Center site to volunteer for the clean-up effort. Of the more than 2 million Americans who donated blood for the blood banks for the injured. bOf the millions across the globe who expressed their sorrow and sense of solidarity in innumerable ways.

All these were a declaration that, contrary to the credo of the Osama bin

Ladens of the world, kindness is the most powerful and lasting human sentiment.

Mary McAleese, then president of Ireland, said that week that the terrorist attacks were “a crime against the foundations of our common humanity. Our response must be to stand shoulder to shoulder.”

Amid the great sorrow of that day and the weeks and months to come, it was wonderful to realize that millions of people across the globe didn’t need a world leader to tell them that.

— Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.

6

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

Most U.S. voters say ‘no’ to Palin or Trump in 2012 Nearly 60 percent of Americans would never support a Republican presidential bid by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin or real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, according to a new poll yesterday.

But the Quinnipiac University poll of 1,408 voters found that about half would consider or be enthusiastic about backing former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney or former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the

November 2012 election.

“It is difficult to get a handle on the 2012 Republican race. Many contenders are not well known and many who are known are not liked,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are in the best shape. Sarah Palin and Donald Trump suffer from the reality that, as our mothers told us, ‘You never get a sec-

ond chance to make a first impression,’” he said.

Trump, who has been testing the waters for a possible 2012 run for the Republican nomination, presidential said he would announce something before June — after his reality TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” ends its season on May 22.

Palin was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and is keeping her supporters guessing on whether she will run.

Among the 613 Republican and independent Republican-leaning voters, the poll showed Romney as favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination with 18 percent, followed by Huckabee and Palin with 15 percent and Trump with 12 percent.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and former House of Speaker Representatives Newt Gingrich each have 5 percent, while former Minnesota Governor Tim Paw-

lenty and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann and both on 4 percent.

The margin of error for that subset was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The telephone poll, conducted between April 16 and May 1, was released on the eve of a debate in South Carolina among a handful of potential Republican candidates, none of them highprofile names.

The error margin for the larger group was 2.6 points.

Levee detonation lowers river, triggers new lawsuit

By MARY WISNIEWSKI CHARLESTON, Missouri — The effort to protect river towns in Illinois and Kentucky from rising floodwaters by blowing open a levee and inundating more than 100,000 acres of Missouri farmland appeared to be slowly working on Tuesday.

The controversy surrounding the extraordinary demolition continued, with farmers affected by it filing suit.

Dick Durbin, a Democratic Senator from Illinois, also cautioned that the endangered river towns, including Cairo at the southern-most tip of Illinois, were “not out of the woods yet.”

The National Weather Service said the river gauge at Cairo, Illinois, where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet, showed water levels had dropped more than a foot-anda-half since 10 p.m. Tuesday night, when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers blasted a hole in a protective embankment downriver from the historic town.

“The plan performed as expected,” Jim Pogue, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

By 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday, the gauge at Cairo had dropped to 60.08 feet and was expected to continue dropping through the weekend.

The Cairo gauge topped out at 61.72 feet, its highest level since 1937, on Monday night before the Corps detonated the levee to allow the Mississippi River to cope with the rising waters of the Ohio River.

Both rivers have been rising as a result of days of rain and the melt and runoff of heavy winter snowstorms.

Carlin Bennett, a commissioner in the rural Missouri

county that is bearing the brunt of the flooding, said it was a little early to make the call, but was afraid the operation would not drop the river the three to four feet the government wants.

“It’s looking like all of our worst fears here,” said Bennett, who has 80 acres himself that are being flooded. “Our land got flooded and they are not getting the flooding relief they expected.”

Missouri farmers who returned Tuesday to survey the land they work found it beneath 8 to 10 feet of brown water.

Many, like Kevin Nally, 40, who farms 250 acres here, seemed resigned to the necessity of the extraordinary move, which continues to generate lawsuits against the Corp.

“They didn’t have a choice,” he said. “It was coming over the levee anyway.”

Nally had already planted 80 acres of wheat, which was washed away when the waters poured in last night.

His losses will be covered

by insurance. But he said he was worried about the longterm damage that might result if too much sand is left behind.

Legal efforts by the state of Missouri to stop the Corps from blasting the levee at Birds Point-New Madrid failed.

But on Tuesday attorneys filed a new private classaction complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of farmers whose land was flooded.

“In the process of breaching the levee, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also destroyed or is in the process of destroying 90 households and more than 100,000 acres of the country’s richest farmland,” said J. Michael Ponder, the attorney from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who filed the suit.

“What these property owners and farmers are seeking is just compensation for the land and livelihood they have lost — possibly forever or for decades.”

The government blew a two

A truck drives through floodwaters in an area intentionally flooded by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in Charleston, Missouri. mile hole in a 56-mile levee that holds back the Mississippi to relieve pressure and expects to blow two smaller holes in the same levee downstream to allow the water to flow back into the river.

The effort was designed to save a number of towns along the Ohio River, first among them Cairo.

Located at the southern tip of Illinois between two states, Missouri and Kentucky, that still permitted slavery prior to

Rabid skunks on the rise in Arkansas

By SUZI PARKER LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — To some people, there’s only one thing worse than an ordinary skunk - a rabid one.

Arkansas is seeing an increase in the number of skunks with rabies, officials say. The state usually has about 32 skunks per year that test positive for rabies. So far this year, the state has already reported 35, according to Susan Weinstein, state public health veterinarian.

“We are having very much of an increase this spring,” Weinstein said. “It should calm down after spring weather when skunks are not

as active and it is no longer mating season.”

The average per county is one to three rabid skunks per county per month. But one western Arkansas county alone - Sebastian County - has reported 20 rabid skunks in the past month, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.

Weinstein said that the uptick is partially due to a public awareness campaign focusing on the threat of rabid skunks.

Health department officials only tests skunks that are collected or turned in to them.

Because of the heightened awareness, more people are turning in captured or dead

skunks instead of disposing of them.

Rabid skunks often display erratic behavior such as walking in circles and bumping into things. They also tend not to fear people or other animals.

Weinstein said that the main threat from rabid skunks is to dogs and cats that live outdoors in rural areas and may not be properly vaccinated.

She said that these animals are often vaccinated with over-the-counter drugs that may not be as protective against the disease as vaccinations from licensed veterinarians.

“It’s unfortunate that out-

abolition in the 19th century, Cairo was an important destination for runaway slaves during the Civil War. Its population of around 3,000 is more than 60 percent African-American and a third of its residents have incomes below the poverty level.

Durbin said that while the levee breach had lowered water levels, the Corps was continuing to monitor “dangerous sand boils and weakened levees.” side animals aren’t as valued as inside animals, yet they have a greater exposure to wildlife rabies,” Weinstein said. “You may not know if your dog was bitten by a skunk.”

Weinstein also fears that children may walk up to a rabid skunk, get bitten and not tell a parent.

In Greenwood, Ark., city officials have placed a quarantine on all domestic animals to prevent exposure to rabid skunks. Dogs and cats must be kept indoors, in a fenced area or on a leash.

Stray animals will be picked up, Weinstein said.

Rabid skunks have also been found in other states this spring, including Colorado and Texas, according to news reports.

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

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88

AFRICAN SCENE

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

AFRICAN SCENE

Uganda lawyers protest over political violence

By GODFREY OLUKYA

EU: sanctioned Zimbabwe journalists ‘incite hate’ HARARE, Zimbabwe - The European Union says six Zimbabwean state-media journalists are on a sanctions list because they incite hatred in their reporting.

EU Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia said yesterday the journalists’ work could be seen as an “incitement to hatred.”

The journalists who fiercely support President Robert Mugabe are among some 200 individuals linked to Mugabe’s party who face banking and travel bans from the EU, the US and Britain. The sanctions were imposed to protest years of rights violations in the southern African nation.

Mugabe called for elections this year to end a shaky coalition with the former opposition.

Independent media groups say there has since been a surge in inflammatory reporting in pro-Mugabe media outlets, which has in turn fueled political violence.

South Africa honeymoon suspect in court LONDON - A British businessman wanted in South Africa on charges of ordering his wife’s murder while on honeymoon in Cape Town began his extradition hearing in a London court on Tuesday.

Hugo Keith, a lawyer representing South African authorities, disclosed to Belmarsh Magistrate’s Court that Shrien Dewani, 31, had previously told a witness he “needed a way out” of his marriage to Anni, his 28-year-old wife.

“Dewani told (the unnamed witness) in April 2010 how he was engaged and had to get married,” Keith said.

“He said although she was a nice, lovely girl who he liked, he could not break out of the engagement because he would be disowned by his family.

“He went on to say to the witness he needed to find a way out of it,” added the lawyer.

Dewani was allowed to leave court early on medical grounds and returned to Fromeside Clinic, a secure mental health unit in Bristol, where he is being held on bail.

He was detained there last month after being kicked out of another hospital for disruptive and aggressive behaviour.

An expert on South Africa’s prison system warned that if extradited, Dewani would be targetted by prisoners due to rumours about his sexuality.

“He’s likely to be very vulnerable to sexual violence because of certain of his characteristics,” Sasha Gear, from Johannesburg’s Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said by video link.

“The connections that have been made with homosexuality put him at additional risk,” she added. “Inmates perceived to be gay are very vulnerable in prison and allegations of homosexuality ... put him at risk.”

Anni Dewani, whose family live in Sweden, was shot and killed in a reported carjacking on the outskirts of Cape Town last November.

KAMPALA, Uganda Some 300 lawyers gathered in Uganda’s capital yesterday to protest the arrest of the country’s top opposition leader and a crackdown on demonstrations, chanting: “We want a change in the regime.”

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for a quarter-century, has vowed repeatedly that his government will not be taken down by protests. U.N. officials have said demonstrations over the last three weeks in Uganda have left eight people dead and wounded more than 250 others.

The protests have been the first serious unrest in subSaharan Africa since a wave of anti-government protests swept longtime leaders in Tunisia and Egypt out of power.

Yesterday, lawyers gathered outside the high court in Uganda’s capital and demanded the resignation of security officials involved in opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s arrest last week.

“In the past three weeks there have been events showing that as a country we are not still under rule of law,” said group member Bruce Kyerere. “We are appalled by recent police highhandedness while arresting protesters, which has caused injury in civilians and loss of lives.”

Kyerere also said Ugandan journalists were being directed not to air protests live on air “so as to cover up atrocities made by police while arresting them.”

The inspector general of police, Kale Kayihura, said the lawyers were protesting in a civilized manner.

Ugandan lawyers protest at High Court, yesterday in the capital city of Kampala. Some 300 lawyers are protesting the Ugandan government's strong reaction to protests surrounding the arrest of an opposition leader. Lawyers gathered yesterday outside the high court and chanted: 'We want a change in the regime.' They called for the resignation of security officials involved in opposition leader Kizza Besigye's arrest last week.

U.N. officials say demonstrations over the last three weeks in Uganda have left eight people dead and wounded more than 250 others.

Photo / Stephen Wandera “They agreed with police on how to protest,” he said. “That is how a civilized society should live.”

Besigye challenged Museveni in February elections and came in second place. He said the poll was falsified, and that both he and Museveni got just under 50 percent of the vote.

During a demonstration last week, security forces sprayed multiple rounds of tear gas or pepper spray at the Besigye at close range while he sat in a vehicle. Besigye was temporarily blinded by the attack and flown to neighboring Kenya for specialized eye treatment.

Anne Mugisha, a top official in Besigye’s Forum For Democratic Change party, said yesterday that Besigye’s eyesight is improving but that he is still affected by light. She said

doctors and Besigye’s wife will examine whether he needs to be moved to the United Kingdom for further care.

“I think the issue that is bothering everyone is the toxicology part of it,” she said. “The doctors ... said they were not able to determine what kind of toxin was in the chemicals that were used.” Besigye also has burns on his neck, ears and back, she said.

The protests, which began last month, originally were meant to protest the rising cost of fuel and food in Uganda, but quickly turned into larger, antigovernment demonstrations.

Mugisha said the opposition leader was eager to return home.

“He will continue to press on with the protests,” Mugisha said.

Algerian journalists press for change ALGIERS - Algerian journalists gathered in the capital Algiers on World Press Freedom Day Tuesday, pressing for better salaries and training.

Lamenting what they deemed the “catastrophic situation” of journalists in the north African country, the group staged a sitdown protest outside Press House, which houses several newspapers.

“The profession is in total disorder,” said the Algerian National Initiative for the Dignity of Journalists, which organised the protest and put the number of demonstrators at 200.

It cited the absence of press cards, poor salaries and inadequate training.

On Monday, the cabinet approved a series of measures to

help journalists and to scrap a 2001 law that allows for their jailing.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced steps after the cabinet meeting to modernise the media and boost professionalism and ethics.

The protestors said these measures “are but a first step on the long road to rehabilitating the profession.”

D CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011 DAILY

AFRICAN SCENE

9

Johannesburg saves Mandela’s old law offices

By DONNA BRYSON JOHANNESBURG - The central Johannesburg building where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had a historic law office was on the verge of collapse. Now, city officials hope it will anchor a renaissance.

Amos Masondo, the mayor of South Africa’s largest city, yesterday showed off the results of 5 million rand (about $750,000) spent over the past year to turn Chancellor House into a museum and archive.

Mandela and Tambo, who each would go on to lead the African National Congress, opened the country’s first Black law partnership on the top floor in 1952 and closed it in 1960, when their political work made it impossible to keep practicing.

Masondo has another 2 million rand (about $300,000) budgeted for the finishing touches of the renovation and to install the planned museum tracing the building’s history and the digital archive of cases Mandela and Tambo handled. He said he hopes private busi-

Advocate George Bizos tours the building yesterday where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had a historic law office in Johannesburg. The building, Chancellor House, was on the verge of collapse and is being turned into a museum and archive. Mandela, photographed as a young lawyer, left, and Tambo who each would go on to lead the African National Congress, opened the first black-owned law firm in the building in 1952 and closed it in 1960, when their political work made it impossible to keep practising.

Photo/Denis Farrell nesspeople will now be porting the Freedom drawn to the area and Charter calling for a help drive broader nonracial democracy. renewal for a dilapidated Both leaders repreneighborhood. He said sented Blacks who had he wants to “leverage run afoul of apartheidheritage to ensure devel- era laws by committing opment.” acts such as riding on Mandela and Tambo white-only buses or held political meetings drinking from fountains at Chancellor House, and reserved for whites. it was a hub of legal In “Long Walk to preparations for those Freedom,” Mandela arrested during the writes that for Black 1952 Defiance South Africans, the Campaign, when Blacks Chancellor House offices were encouraged to were “a place where they break racial separation could come and find a laws, and during the sympathetic ear and a 1956 treason trial, when competent ally, a place Mandela and Tambo where they would not be were among 156 defen- either turned away or dants charged for sup- cheated, a place where

they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.” own Mandela’s lawyer, George Bizos, said yesterday that tradition must continue.

Bizos is working with other lawyers to raise funds to open a law library at Chancellor House and maintain offices there for lawyers cannot afford who offices in the area.

The goal is “to make it not a monument, but a living structure, a living place in honor of particularly Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo,” Bizos said.

Chancellor House is just across the street from the city’s stately main magistrate’s court.

But telltale signs - broken windows, rusted roofs - attest that other neighboring buildings have been abandoned. As apartheid ended, white business and homeowners in downtown Johannesburg fled, or simply stopped maintaining their property.

Renewal efforts have had some successes in recent years, but it sometimes seemed Chancellor House was to be forgotten, despite the efforts of historians and activists.

Squatters had moved in, and Mayor Masondo said the building’s owners had considered tearing it down and putting

Misrata migrants under fire as aid ship docks TRIPOLI - Aid workers scrambled to evacuate hundreds of terrified African and Asian migrants on a rescue ship that docked in the Libyan port of Misrata yesterday under lethal shell-fire from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

“The bombing has caused so many casualties among Libyans and people of other nationalities waiting for evacuation,” Gemal Salem, a rebel spokesman told Reuters. “So far we have five killed and ambulances are rushing to the scene.”

The ship, chartered by the International Organization for Migration, was boarded

by 800 migrant workers and people injured in the civil war who have been waiting for days to escape Misrata’s worsening humanitarian crisis.

“The operation is taking place despite the bombing that is apparently going on,” JeanPhilippe Chauzy, an IOM spokesman, said.

“We will try to finish and leave as soon as possible.”

The shelling was also hitting Misrata’s Qasr Ahmad district, a mixed residential and industrial area which houses the iron and steel works in a city that has become one of the bloodiest battlefields in the two-month

conflict.

The civil war over Gaddafi’s 41-year rule has split the oil-producing desert state into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by illdisciplined but dedicated rebel forces.

The insurgents had hoped for a swift overthrow of Gaddafi but his better-trained and better-equipped forces halted the westward rebel advance from their stronghold of Benghazi and forced a standoff in the fighting.

NATO officers met yesterday in Brussels to review their operations’ progress, reject-

ing assessments of stalemate on the battlefield despite their warplanes’ intervention, as nations prepared for a meeting in Rome on Thursday over rebel finances.

On NATO keeping up its pressure on Gaddafi, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “I don’t sense any fatigue.

On the contrary, we have just had a meeting ... and it has been a reaffirmation of the strong commitment to our operation.”

Gaddafi’s forces were much weaker now than when NATO began its operation against them, Rasmussen said.

- Lin Noueihed

up a parking garage. In 1999, efforts began to have it declared a national monument. The city negotiated to buy the building, but Masondo said the effort stalled and in the end the city took it over.

The takeover was completed, allowing renovations to begin in June 2010.

Nkosinathi Manzana, chief operating officer of the city’s development agency, said 30 tons of debris had to be removed just so experts could get in and determine whether the building could be saved.

Water damage and fires had seriously weakened the building. In the end, renovators had to erect a steel structure to support the building and replace its roof. From the outside, Chancellor House looks much as it did when it was built in the early 1940s.

Manzana said woodand-glass front doors date from Mandela’s day, but little else was salvageable after decades of neglect and vandalism. searched Architects antique shops to find parquet flooring for the ground floor and the top floor offices where Mandela and Tambo worked.

Mandela, 92, became South Africa’s first Black president after serving 27 years in prison for his fight against racist rule. He has retired from public life.

Bizos, Mandela’s lawyer, grew nostalgic as he toured Chancellor House yesterday. The door of what had been Mandela’s office was decorated with a photo of a young Mandela, books and files under his arm, standing at the window of Tambo’s adjoining office.

Fighting in Sudan border zone kills 12 people

By MAGGIE FICK JOHANNESBURG - Renewed fighting in Sudan’s most contested border region has left at least 12 people dead, and the top government official in the area said yesterday he feared more attacks in the weeks leading up to Southern Sudan’s independence in July.

Deng Arop Kuol, the chief administrator of Abyei, said that a northern Sudanese army convoy was stopped at a police checkpoint on Sunday while attempting to move south through the area without permission from his government.

Southern Sudan voted in January to secede from the north, and is set to become a new nation in only 10 weeks. The independence referendum was part of a peace deal to end more than two decades of war that left at least 2 million dead.

However, the issue of whether the Abyei region will be in the north or the south remains undecided, and aid groups and analysts fear the dispute could spark further unrest. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir recently threatened he would not recognize the new southern nation if it includes Abyei.

Attacks in the area already have left more than 100 dead, and the United Nations says about 20,000 people fled Abyei town in early March because of the violence. Southern officials have blamed the attacks on the northern military, which has denied any involvement.

In the latest unrest, Kuol said at least 12 people were killed. However, the U.N. said it found 14 dead bodies at the site of the clash, 11 of them in uniforms from the joint military force made up of members from both the north and south.

1 10

CARIBBEAN NEWS DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

CARIBBEAN BRIEFS Controversial appointee no longer with ONE FAMILY.

Whether West Indian, African or African American.

One God, One Aim, One Destiny.

Invalidation of trial against former president allows Honduras to return to OAS WASHINGTON — The decision by the Appellate Court of the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras to invalidate the two trials against the country’s former president, Manuel Zelaya will allow Honduras to return to the Organization of American States (OAS).

OAS secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, expressed satisfaction with the outcome and said this puts an end to the situation of uncertainty regarding the legal situation of the former leader that began after the coup d’état of June 28, 2009.

In view of the recommendations contained in the report by the high-level OAS commission, created in June 2010 by the foreign ministers of the hemisphere to evaluate the evolution of the political situation in Honduras since the coup d’état, the secretary general added that the principal condition for the return of Honduras to the organization has been met.

He also said he will immediately begin consultations with member states to examine their willingness to convene a general assembly to address this issue.

St. Vincent residents urged to be vigilant of persistent rainfall KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent — According to a weather update from the St. Vincent and the G r e n a d i n e s

Meteorological Office (SVGMET), persistent light to moderate rain and isolated pockets of moderate to heavy showers and thunderstorms have been affecting St Vincent and the Grenadines. These conditions are expected to continue, with the N o r t h e r n Grenadines and St Vincent experiencing persistent rainfall.

The National E m e r g e n c y M a n a g e m e n t Organization (NEMO) has urged residents living in flood and landslide prone areas to be vigilant and to take the necessary precautions, as already saturated soils may lead to further landslides and localized flooding.

NEMO has also advised the general public to: — Continue to monitor the weather condition — Exercise caution when driving on the roads Residents and motorists living and commuting near rivers from Mt. Young to Rabacca are asked to be extremely cautious, as already swollen rivers may result in localized flooding; residents and motorists living and travelling through Belmont, Marriaqua and Lowmans Windward are also asked to exercise caution as those areas are generally prone to landslides. Localized flooding has been reported in Bequia and NEMO is urging all residents of Bequia to be vigilant.

NEMO will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates from the Meteorological Office.

Trinidad security agency, says minister PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — R e s h m i Ramnarine, whose appointment as head of the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) aroused considerable controversy earlier this year, is no longer employed with the SSA or the SIA (Security Intelligence Agency).

Minister of National Security John Sandy said 31-year-old Ramnarine was recommended for the position of director of the SSA by a deputy director of the agency.

However, he stressed she no longer employed with the SSA or the SIA. The minister’s com-

ments were made in the Senate in response to a question from opposition senator Fitzgerald Hinds.

Sandy said Ramarine’s highest level of academic qualification at that time, was the Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) certification, which is a globally recognized professional qualification that is a prerequisite for most jobs in complex IT environments.

He explained that, as was previously stated, “Unlike what obtains with the Police Commissioner, for example, the precise requirements and process with respect to the selection of a candidate for the position of Director, Strategic Services Agency are not

set out in law.”

He said a recommendation would be made by the management of the relevant agency or the head, to the line minister or head of the Security National Council; the matter would be considered by the National Security Council and once approved by the NSC, the NSC would recommend that the matter be taken to Cabinet for approval.

He said Cabinet would either agree to the recommendation or disapprove.

Sandy said once “Cabinet approves, in keeping with the current process for presidential appointments, all documents pertaining to the recommended candidate would be submitted to the president for consideration.

In the case of the candi-

National Security Minister, Brigadier John Sandy date in question, this was also the procedure that was followed.

Members should note that it is the intention of this government, to ensure that legislation relating to the operations of intelligence agencies, include provisions for the recruitment of personnel at all levels”.

Bahamas government has not failed on crime, says minister

By CANDIA DAMES N A S S A U , Bahamas — In the lead-up to the 2007 general election in The Bahamas, concerns about the high level of violent crime were high on the Free National Movement (FNM) party’s list of talking points.

At a rally on April 27, just days before the vote, then FNM leader Hubert Ingraham pointed out that Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) leader Perry Christie had declared a week before the 2002 election that “any government which couldn’t get crime under control had no right to brag about anything else.”

“Now he’s going all over the country bragging about the little record they do have,” Ingraham told rallygoers that night.

“They didn’t bring crime under control and they did very little else.

The PLP, which offered

Minister of National Security Tommy Turnquest so much on the issue of crime, couldn’t even buy police new vehicles on time. Now they tell us they have a new major four-point crime plan.

Where was that plan in the last couple of years?”

Ingraham asked.

During the campaign, Ingraham and the FNM vowed strong action against crime.

The FNM won the election four years ago on Monday. The PLP’s record was not enough to win it re-election.

Today, crime and the fear of crime remain high.

But Minister of National Security

Tommy Turnquest said on Monday that the high level of violent crime in the country does not mean the FNM has failed in its anticrime efforts.

“We accept that crime is at an unacceptable level,” he said.

“We accept the fact that crime is a major issue in the country today, that as the government of The Bahamas it’s our responsibility to take the lead and to lead the way in the fight against crime.

“But our crime situation is multi-faceted.

There are a lot of social problems that we have to deal with and that we continue to deal with.

“It’s not just a matter of providing additional resources to the police, which we have done. It’s also dealing with those social issues which we are addressing.

“It’s also dealing with the challenges within the judicial system which we are also dealing with. So it’s not the fact that we have failed in regard to it; I don’t think we have failed at

all.

“I think we have to ensure that those hardened criminals who continue to beat our judicial system are put behind bars.”

In a statement slamming the FNM government on its fourth anniversary in office on Monday, the PLP pointed to the high murder rate, and added, “The FNM claims to have a plan for crime, but during the prime minister’s national address (last week) he promised to get back to the Bahamian people on his plan for crime.

“This is proof positive that the issues that are most important to the Bahamian people are not the priorities of the FNM government.

“Further, on their watch the fear of crime has increased so much so that people are afraid to leave their homes.

Whatever measures the FNM government has taken were ineffective in arresting this scourge that threatens our national security and continued economic viability.”

INTERNATIONAL

11

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

Palestinians say end division at Cairo ceremony

By MARWA AWAD CAIRO Palestinian leaders formally ended a four-year rift between secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas at a ceremony in Egypt yesterday, a reconciliation their people see as crucial for their drive to set up an independent state.

Israel, which in 1967 captured the territories — the West Bank and Gaza Strip — where the Palestinians seek statehood, decried the deal as a blow to prospects for peace.

“We announce to Palestinians that we turn forever the black page of division,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s leader, said in his opening address.

Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to London: “What happened today in Cairo is a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism.”

Hamas, whose founding charter calls for Israel’s destruction, seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces in a brief Palestinian civil war in 2007. It has opposed Abbas’s quest for a negotiated peace with the Jewish state.

In what appeared a sign of lingering friction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not share the podium with Abbas and the ceremony was delayed briefly over where he would sit. Against expectations, neither signed the unity document.

Hamas leaders will meet Abbas next week, possibly in Cairo, to start work on implementing the accord, deputy Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said after the ceremony.

In his speech to the Meshaal gathering, said Hamas sought a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza devoid of any Israeli settlers and without “giving up a single inch of land” or the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. It has kept up settlement activity in the much larger West Bank.

Hamas has stated in the past that it would accept as an interim solution in the form of a state in all of the territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, along with a longterm ceasefire.

The unity deal calls for forming an interim government to run the West Bank, where Abbas is based, and the Gaza Strip, and prepare for long-overdue parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.

In his speech, Abbas

repeated his call for a halt to Jewish settlement construction as a condition for resuming peace talks with Israel that began in September but fizzled within weeks after it refused to extend a limited building moratorium. state of “The Palestine must be born this year,” he said.

Abbas is widely expected, in the absence of peace talks, to ask the U.N. General Assembly in September to recognize a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and the United States oppose such a unilateral move.

DIPLOMATIC PROBLEMS Palestinians view reconciliation as an essential step toward presenting a common front at the United Nations and a reflection of a deep-seated public desire to end the internal schism amid popular revolts that have

swept the Arab world.

But the deal presents potential diplomatic problems for Abbas’s aid-dependent Palestinian Authority.

Much of the West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept interim IsraeliPalestinian peace deals.

The United States has reacted coolly to the reconciliation accord. A State Department Mark spokesman, Toner, said the United States would look at the formation of any new Palestinian government before taking steps on future aid.

The Cairo ceremony was greeted with celebrations in the Palestinian territories.

But the public displays were less enthusiastic in the West Bank, where Abbas’s Fatah movement holds sway, and some doubted the deal was genuine.

“We have decided to pay any price so that reconciliation is

achieved,” said Meshaal. “Our real fight is with the Israeli occupier, not Palestinian factions and sons of the one nation.”

Meshaal later went to meet Abbas where he was staying in Cairo to discuss the deal, Palestinian sources said.

A spokesman for Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said the deal was signed on behalf of Fatah by Azzam alAhmad and for Hamas

by Marzouk. It was not immediately clear why Meshaal and Abbas did not put their own signatures to the deal.

“What we heard was that Abbas said he was the president of the Palestinian people of Fatah and of Hamas and not a leader of one faction only,” said the Palestinian source on the signing.

Egypt has set up a committee to oversee implementation of the accord.

Syria charges hundreds with “maligning the state”

By KHALED YACOUB OWEIS AMMAN Hundreds of Syrians have been charged with “maligning the prestige of the state,” a Syrian rights group said, in President Bashar al-Assad’s drive to crush pro-democracy protests against his 11-year autocratic rule.

The charge, which carries a three-year prison sentence, was

lodged on Tuesday against hundreds of people detained this week before the Muslim day of prayer on Friday, when the largest demonstrations calling for Assad’s overthrow are typically seen.

“Mass arrests are continuing across Syria in another violation of human rights and international conventions,” said Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The campaign intensified after a tankbacked army unit, led

by Assad’s brother Maher, last week

shelled and machinegunned into submission the old quarter of Deraa, cradle of the sixweek-old uprising.

Assad said the army would end its mission in Deraa “very soon,” according to the semiofficial al-Watan newspaper, playing down the uprising there and the army’s response, which Washington has condemned as “barbaric.”

“Any country in the world could be subjected to events that Deraa has been subjected to,” Assad was quoted as saying by the newspaper yesterday during a meeting with officials

from Deir al-Zor and Albou Kamal near the Iraqi border.

Authorities blame armed groups and infiltrators for stoking unrest and firing on civilians and security forces. A military official on state news agency SANA said security forces arrested members of an armed terrorist group in Deraa and found weapons and ammunition hidden underground and in gardens.

Wissam Tarif, executive director of the Insan human rights group, said 2,843 detainees had been veri-

Guilty-by-association: growing up in hell of North Korean gulag nearly 30 years,

By JEREMY LAURENCE & JU-MIN PARK

punished along with the rest of her family simply because her grandfather fled to rival South Korea in the 1960s.

SEOUL - Kim Hae-sook was only 13 years old when she was dragged off For most of that time, to a North Korea she was put to work in prison camp for

one of the state’s notoriously dangerous mines, working 16-18 hours a day.

Thousands of people are believed to be held as “guilty-by-association” or sent to the North’s labor camps simply because one of their relatives has been detained, Amnesty International

said in a report this week.

By the time Kim was released from the “Bongchang-ri Camp No. 18” some 28 years later in 2002, having scavenged on grass to survive, three of her family had either starved to death or were killed in accidents.

fied by family members and the actual number could be as high as 8,000. More than 800 of them had been taken from Deraa.

Those detained across the country include activists, community leaders, people seen taking videos or pictures on mobile phones and people suspected of uploading videos on the Internet, Tarif said. But security forces were also randomly detaining people in Deraa and Douma, he said.

The demonstrations

began with demands for political freedom and an end to corruption, but after a heavy security crackdown, protesters now want Assad to leave.

Assad belongs to the minority Alawite Shi’ite sect whose family has ruled majority Sunni Muslim Syria for 41 years.

Security forces have killed at least 560 civilians in attacks on demonstrators since the protests erupted in Deraa on March 18, human rights groups say.

Gun, grenade attack on Turk police after PM rally ISTANBUL - Unidentified attackers threw an explosive device and opened fire on a bus carrying Turkish police, killing one officer, in northern Turkey near where Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held an election rally earlier yesterday, broadcasters said.

Erdogan had left by helicopter from the northern city of Kastamonu by the time the attack happened, NTV news channel reported. It said the police vehicle was accompanying a ruling AK Party bus. According to the NTV report a grenade was thrown at the police vehicle and gunmen opened fire as it burst into flames.

New American

The

12

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

HOT 97 announces Summer Jam 2011 lineup

One Thought - One Humanity

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.

HOT 97 (WQHT), New York’s #1 50-yard line VIP Patio and passes to Hip Hop and R&B station, the Platinum Lounge including announces that superstars, Lil admission to the ONLY full cash bar Wayne, Drake, Birdman, Young in the stadium plus a view of the Money, Chris Brown, Rick Ross, HOT 97 Summer Jam Live BroadFabolous, Dipset, Wiz Khalifa, cast and an unobstructed view of all Wacka Flocka, Lloyd Banks and of the live stage performances. more are set to hit the stage for “Boost Mobile is thrilled to launch Summer Jam 2011 presented by it is eighth consecutive year as the Boost Mobile! With this year’s epic HOT 97 Summer Jam 2011 presentline-up and over 50,000 fans expect- ing sponsor,” said Steve Gaffney, VP ed to turn out for the most antici- Lifestyle Marketing for Boost pated summer concert event of the Mobile. “Both Boost and HOT 97 time, The New Meadowlands Stadi- embrace the power of music and um will be declared “District 97” on have strong ties with the New York Sunday, June 5 for HOT 97’s Sum- market. Every year we look forward mer Jam 2011! to being a part of this iconic event Every year HOT 97’s Summer and we anticipate another impresJam sells out and brings an explo- sive lineup!” sion of premier acts and surprise Tickets for HOT 97’s Summer guests to land on the stage. Just Jam 2011 are on sale now at all $45 gets you in to the door to be a Ticketmaster outlets, or by logging part of the HOT 97 Summer Jam on to www.Ticketmaster.com. A movement with ticket price levels portion of the proceeds of Summer ranging from $45, $65, $99.50, and Jam 2011 benefit HOT 97’s “Hip-Hop $130 through $175 for floor seats. Has Heart Foundation” providing A limited amount of exclusive HOT financial assistance to charities that 97 Summer Jam Platinum Packages benefit New York Tri-State commuare available for $200, including nities. premium show seats, access to the - Full Story In This Week’s New American Newspaper -

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DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

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DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

14

Study: Eating less salt doesn’t cut heart risks

By GENEVRA PITTMAN People who ate lots of salt were not more likely to get high blood pressure, and were less likely to die of heart disease than those with a low salt intake, in a new European study.

The findings “certainly do not support the current recommendation to lower salt intake in the general population,” study author Dr. Jan Staessen, of the University of Leuven in Belgium, told Reuters Health.

Current salt guidelines, including those released by the U.S. government in January, are based on data from short-term studies of people who volunteered to be assigned to a low-salt or high-salt diet, Staessen said.

The U.S. guidelines recommend that Americans consume less than 2,300 milligrams of salt daily 1,500 mg in certain people who are more at risk for high blood pressure or heart disease.

While previous trials suggested a blood pressure ben-

efit with lower salt intake, research has yet to show whether that translates into better overall heart health in the wider population.

The researchers used data from two different studies, incorporating a total of about 3,700 Europeans who had their salt consumption measured through urine samples at the start of the studies. Staessen and his colleagues broke the participants up into three groups:

those with highest and lowest salt intakes, and those with average intake.

None of the participants had heart disease at the outset, and two thirds had normal blood pressure. They were followed for an average of 8 years, during which researchers determined how many of them were diagnosed with heart disease, and in a smaller group, how many got high blood pressure.

The findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The chance of getting heart and blood vessel diseases did not differ in the three groups. However, participants with the lowest salt intake had the highest rate of death from heart disease during the follow up (4 percent), and people who ate the most salt had the lowest (less than 1 percent).

Across all three saltintake groups, about one in four study participants who started out with normal blood pressure were diagnosed with high blood pressure during follow up.

The researchers did find that one measure of blood pressure, systolic blood pressure, increased as salt intake increased over time but the change was very small, so it may not be important to health outcomes, Staessen said.

Reducing salt may still be a good idea for people who already have high blood pressure or who have had heart problems in the past, he added, but the study

found no evidence that dietary salt causes those conditions to arise.

“It’s clear that one should be very careful in advocating generalized reduction in sodium intake in the population at large,” Staessen said. “There might be some benefits, but there might also be some adverse effects.”

Dr. Hillel Cohen, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, told Reuters Health that when restaurants or food companies put less salt in their products, they may put in other potentially harmful products to make up for the lost taste, or as preservatives.

Consumers shouldn’t change their salt-eating behavior based on the limited studies that have tried to determine the link between sodium and heart risks, added Cohen, who was not involved in the current research.

The authors caution that their analysis included only white Europeans, and so the results may not translate to people of other ethnicities.

CDC: U.S. asthma rates rising but reasons unclear

By JULIE STEENHUYSEN CHICAGO — About 25 million Americans, or 1 in 12 people, have asthma, a figure that is rising despite efforts to control key asthma triggers such as indoor smoking, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an additional 4.3 million people were diagnosed with asthma from 2001 to 2009. The life-long disease causes wheezing, tightness in the chest, coughing and shortness of breath.

“Despite the fact that outdoor air quality has improved, we’ve reduced two common asthma triggers secondhand smoke and smoking in general — asthma is increasing,” Paul Garbe, chief of the CDC’s Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch, said in a statement.

“While we don’t know the cause of the increase, our top priority is getting people to manage their symptoms better.”

Asthma diagnoses increased among all demographic groups between 2001 and 2009, but children were hit hardest, with asthma affecting 9.6 percent of children, compared with 7.7 percent of U.S. adults.

The biggest increase in asthma rates was among Black children, rising almost 50 percent from 2001 through 2009. Seventeen percent of non-Hispanic Black children had asthma in 2009, the highest rate among racial/ethnic groups.

“Asthma is a serious, life-

long disease that unfortunately kills thousands of people each year and adds billions to our nation’s healthcare costs,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a statement.

“We have to do a better job educating people about managing their symptoms and how to correctly use medicines to control asthma so they can live longer more productive lives while saving health care costs.”

People with asthma can control symptoms and prevent attacks by avoiding

triggers such as pollution and using prescribed medicine, like inhaled corticosteroids, as directed.

The cost of treating asthma rose about 6 percent to $56 billion in 2007, from $53 billion in 2002, according to the most recent figures. For patients, that’s about $3,300 a year.

According to the study, about 2 out of 5 uninsured people with asthma, and 1 out of 9 insured people with asthma could not afford their asthma medications.

CDC experts said in a con-

ference call that doctors needed to do a better job of educating people with asthma on how to avoid triggers that can cause an asthma attack.

Asthma triggers are usually environmental, such as tobacco smoke, mold, outdoor air pollution and infections linked to flu, cold-like symptoms, and other viruses.

The report was released to coincide with World Asthma Day, an annual event sponsored by the Global Initiative for Asthma.

Location of body fat may predict stiff arteries A new study finds that different patterns of fat distribution in Black and white women may predict increased arterial stiffness, which is associated with cardiovascular disease.

Stiff arteries force the heart to work harder to pump blood and are also associated with a buildup of plaque in the arteries (atherosclerosis) that can block blood flow and lead to a heart attack.

In this study, Dr. Danny Eapen of Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues used skin calipers to measure fat at several sites on the bodies of 102 Black and 228 white middle-aged women. Fat was measured on the upper chest, the armpit, triceps, below the shoulder blade, the abdomen, above the hip bone and the thigh.

The women were also assessed for arterial stiff-

ness.

Compared to white women, Black women had more arterial stiffness and more fat in the armpit, triceps, shoulder blade and hip bone areas, the investigators found.

After adjusting for other factors that could be related to arterial stiffness, the researchers concluded that fat in the armpit area predicts increased arterial stiffness in Black women, while

fat in the abdominal and triceps areas was a predictor in white women.

The study was to be presented Saturday at the American Heart Association’s Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology meeting in Chicago.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

NEW JERSEY

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

15

Piscataway girl, 15, decides to go to Harvard after being accepted to 13 colleges

By KELLY HEYBOER PISCATAWAY Saheela Ibraheem wasn’t sure any college would want to admit a 15-year-old. So the Piscataway teen hedged her bets and filled out to 14 applications schools from New Jersey to California.

“It’s the age thing. I wanted to make sure I had options,” said Saheela, a senior at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison.

In the end, 13 colleges accepted her including six of the seven Ivy League schools.

After weeks of debate, Saheela settled on Harvard. She will be among the youngest members of the school’s freshman class.

“I’ll be one of the youngest. But I won’t be the youngest,” the soon-to-be 16-year-old said.

Saheela is among the millions of high school seniors who had to finalize their college decisions by Monday, the deadline for incom-

Saheela Ibraheem, a 15 year-old senior at Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison, has been accepted by 13 colleges and chose to attend Harvard this fall.

Photo/Aaron Houston ing freshman to send old cousins also gradudeposits to the school of ated from Rutgers. their choice.

For Saheela, her Nationwide, this year’s unusual path to college college selection began when she was a process was among the sixth-grader at the most competitive in his- Conackamack Middle tory as most top col- School in Piscataway. leges received a record Eager to learn more number of applications. about her favorite subSaheela joins a grow- ject, math, the daughter ing number of New of Nigerian immigrants Jersey students going asked to move to a to college before they higher-level class. The are old enough to drive. school let her skip sixth Last year, Kyle Loh of grade entirely.

Mendham graduated By high school, from Rutgers at 16. In Saheela said, she was previous years, a 14- no longer feeling chalyear-old from Cranbury lenged by her public and two of his 15-year- school classes. So, she

Citizens seek redevelopment repeal

By ERIN DUFFY HAMILTON — Residents urged council members once again to repeal the township’s redevelopment zone, calling it a sword hanging over the heads of homeowners and businesses.

The “cyber district” redevelopment established in 2004 stretches across 1,000 acres and counts within its grasp 191 properties on 16 blocks.

While declaring an area “in need of redevelopment” can spur the rehabilitation of aging or blighted sections of town by developers both private and public, the powers of redevelopment can also allow

the seizure of property through eminent domain.

That’s the fear of residents in the Bromley section, parts of which are in the zone.

And it’s not only eminent domain. The characterization of “blighted” carries with it connotations of bad neighborhoods, of houses and businesses in disrepair, residents stated. And yet, the township’s redevelopment zone contains landmarks like Grounds for Sculpture and Rat’s Restaurant, considered to be among Hamilton’s most popular attractions.

“I’m again saying why don’t we just get this straightened out and get this done,” said resident Leann

Simmons. “Remove this blighted designation from this section of town.”

It’s a “scarlet letter,” William Potter, an attorney for the Bromley Civic Association has said, and residents last night worried that connotation would carry over to property values and have an effect on getting a bank loan or refinancing.

“Most don’t know their property has been designated by this town as blighted,” Potter told council. “One day they may find out and they may come knocking at your door. Residential properties not included still have the same issue. They find themselves economically imprisoned.”

moved to the WardlawHartridge School, a 420-student private school, where she skipped her freshman year and enrolled as a 10th-grader. Her three younger brothers, twins now in the ninth grade and a younger brother in second grade, all eventually joined her at the school.

School officials were impressed by Saheela, one of their top students, didn’t spend all her time studying.

“She’s learned and she’s very smart. But she keeps pushing herself,” said William Jenkins, the WardlawHartridge School’s director of development.

Saheela also excels outside the classroom.

She is a three-sport athlete, playing outfield for the school’s softball team, defender on the soccer team, and swimming relays and 50meter races for the swim team. She also sings alto in the school choir, plays trombone in the school band and serves as president of the school’s investment club, which teaches stu-

dents about the stock market by investing in virtual stocks.

Saheela began applying to colleges last fall.

Her applications included her grade point average (between a 96 and 97 on a 100-point scale) and her 2,340 SAT score (a perfect 800 on the math section, a 790 in writing and a 750 in reading).

She was delighted when she got her first acceptance in December from California Institute of Technology.

“I was so excited. I got into college!,” Saheela said.

More acceptances followed from Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Williams College, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University in St. Louis.

On March 30, she got her sole rejection letter from Yale. Saheela isn’t sure why the Ivy League school didn’t

want her.

“My parents were thinking it was the age thing,” she said.

Saheela was torn between going to MIT and Harvard. A visit to both campuses last month made the choice easy. “She went to Harvard and she fell in love with the place,” said Shakirat Ibraheem, her mother.

Saheela said she wants to major in either neurobiology or neuroscience and plans to become a research scientist who studies how the brain works. As for her own brain, Saheela insists she is nothing special.

She credits her parents with teaching her to love learning and work hard. Her father, Sarafa, an analyst and vice president at a New York financial firm, would often study with her at night and home school her in subjects not taught at school.

“I try my best in everything I do,” Saheela said. “Anyone who’s motivated can work wonders.”

Bedbug killers move in A Jersey City seniors building is about to become a test lab for scientists figuring out the most effective ways to get rid of bedbugs.

Changlu Wang and Richard Cooper, a professor and graduate student at Rutgers University, will be using part of a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish an Integrated Pest Management program at Berry Gardens, a seniorsonly affordable housing community managed by the Jersey City Housing Authority.

Bedbugs were successfully exterminated there last year, officials said.

Wang, the project’s principal investigator from the university’s Department of Entomology, and Cooper will have access to 370 apartments and the assistance of an exterminating staff, explained Jersey City Housing Authority Executive Director Maria Maio.

“This initiative will be like a training program on how to effectively deal with bedbugs,” said Maio. “We can learn about preventative measures that will cause the least amount of inconvenience to residents.”

The pest management program will work toward sustainable bedbug management by combining a

mixture of non-chemical and chemical control methods, and encourage community involvement and early detection, officials said.

“Rutgers will track the effectiveness of its IPM program, monitoring all apartments and documenting pesticide usage and changes in management practices periodically over a oneyear period,” said John Martin, EPA’s Press Officer.

Similar programs will be taking place in roughly 50 low-income communities across New Jersey, officials said. This grant is part of a total of $550,000 that the EPA is channeling toward bedbug management.

- RHEA MAHBUBANI

16

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

‘Thor’ thunders into superhero movie summer

By EDWIN CHAN BEVERLY HILLS — “Thor”, the first of several superheroes debuting on movie screens this summer, hits U.S. theaters on Friday with out-sized hopes resting on the Norse deity’s expansive shoulders.

Hollywood is praying that the God of Thunder and Marvel Comics staple will electrify a dismal 2011 box office, and squeeze more life out of a superhero genre that — with some of the most iconic characters already established franchises — is beginning to look tired.

“Thor” might seem an unlikely candidate to resuscitate the North American box office. The founding member of the original Avengers vanquishes his foes with a magical war hammer and the ability to call down thunder and lightning.

But with most of the marquee Marvel and DC Comics

pantheon already committed to film, Hollywood is reaching ever deeper into the barrel to fish out new action hero franchises.

The challenge for classically-trained British film director Kenneth Branagh — more usually associated with Shakespeare — was to make sure his first venture into the world of the 3D action genre stood above the fray.

“It flips the usual superhero story. It isn’t the ordinary man who’s bitten by a spider and acquires supernatural powers,” Branagh told Reuters in an interview.

“Here we have a superhero with those powers — a God indeed — who has to lose everything and engage with our audience,” he said.

From the looks of things, “Thor” commands an edge in avoiding me-too status. It boasts Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins, and fellow Oscar winner and fanboy favorite Natalie Portman.

It’s also among the first out the gate, beating “Green

Lantern”, an X-Men prequel and “Captain America” to the punch, and is one of the few originals in a summer movie season packed with sequels like “Fast Five” and “Hangover 2”.

“As Marvel said to me when I joined up: ‘this is our most difficult property’.

There’s so many ways for this to go wrong: too kitschy, too campy, too broad comedy, too sci-fi,” said Branagh, adding that he relished the challenge of doing a movie so completely out of his comfort zone.

In Branagh’s version of the comic classic, the son of Odin, played by beefy Australian newcomer Chris Hemsworth, incurs his father’s wrath by rekindling an ancient conflict, is stripped of his powers, and brought literally down to earth. Aided by Portman’s scientist Jane Foster, he grapples with a newfound mortality and ultimately wins redemption.

Shot in 3D, the film is

packed with pyrotechnics and full-contact violence. But some may question whether Thor — unlike “Spider-Man” and “Iron Man” before it — has the mega fanbase to recoup a reported $150 million budget.

Hemsworth is a relative unknown when stacked up against the likes of Christian Bale (“The Dark Knight”) or “Iron Man” Robert Downey Jr. His character also speaks in stilted, archaic tones — a marked contrast to Ryan Reynold’s wise-cracking, allAmerican “Green Lantern”.

This year is off to a sputtering start, with 2011 North American ticket sales down 18 percent from the same time last year, at $2.7 billion.

Branagh, who burst into the American consciousness with his 1993 take on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, waves off Hollywood’s wider concerns.

“I’m immune to the idea of how to second-guess what an audience would spend its

money on. I can only come from the position of what I think is right for the story, and sometimes in the past I’ve got that right, and sometimes I’ve been wrong,” he said.

And he doesn’t rule out a second go at it.

“Thor” has already pulled in $93 million after being in Australia, released Britain, France, South Korea, and dozens of other countries, ahead of North America .

But “Fast Five,” the fifth entry in the “Fast and the Furious” street-racing franchise, raced to the biggest opening of the year at the North American box office last weekend, with an estimated $83.6 million in ticket sales.

“As thrilled as we are with the way it (‘Thor’) seems to be going now, it will be a few weeks before we understand the financial and creative fate of the movie. There are a thousand tales to tell. We’ll wait and see,” Branagh said.

Idris Elba responds to racist Uncle Luke addresses low fundraising ‘Thor’ comic book fans efforts for Miami mayor campaign

By ALLEN STARBURY

As Idris Elba prepares for the release of “Thor” in which he plays the role of all-seeing Heimdall, he’s also readying himself for a battle against fans who disagree with the part.

“Pure-fan” comic-bookers say its quite disrespectful to have a Black man play the role of a character rooted in Norse mythology.

Elba, 38, says it’s just outright racism talking.

“Purist comic-book fans are one thing,” said the 38-yearold actor in an interview with L.A. Times, “Out-and-out racism is another… Of course,

the more I speak on this topic, the more I fuel it. But, look, if people have a problem with me playing the character, just don’t go see the movie, you know?”

Well, they may do just that.

There is a website petitioning fans to boycott the film for inserting “left-wing social engineering into European mythology.”

“Thor” opens this weekend.

Meanwhile, Elba’s career keeps moving forward. He just finished filming Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance which is slated for release in 2012.

Rapper-turned-mayoral candidate, Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, has been having trouble raising funds for his campaign to run for mayor of Miami.

However, recent reports said that he raised just $250 bucks at his last fundraiser.

That number is not correct, Luke revealed recently ... but not by much.

In a statement released by his publicist, the Miami rap vet said he’s in major need of financial support for his campaign race.

“Recent reports online and on the radio claim that I raised ‘only’ $250 during a fundraiser in support of my current bid for Mayor of Miami-Dade County. These reports are wrong, but not by a lot,” Campbell said. “My campaign is not rolling in dough. There are no lobbyists or special interest groups supporting me. My campaign runs on donations from everyday people of $5 dollars at a time.”

Regarding the fundraiser

in question, Campbell actually raised close to $2,000 rather than the $250 that was reported. But, despite his low financial piggy bank, he says he’s doing well, as far as supporters go.

He says he’s currently tied with component Carlos Gimenez in second, but an estimated 62% of voters are still undecided. However, he’s confident that he can win their votes.

“I remain a believer in the people and a believer in our rights, and that is why I am running for the mayor,” Campbell said. “This is my town. I grew up here. My family and friends are here, and I am truly working for the community. My winning

will be because of the support I get from them. I’m with that type of history making. This is not a race about who is raising the most money; it is a race about helping and reaching those that live in MiamiDade.

“I am going door-to-door talking to individuals, gaining their respect all while I am growing in the polls,” he continued.

The former 2 Live Crew frontman officially filed to run for office last month. If elected, Campbell says he wants to build up the community by focusing on economic development, creating affordable housing, and cleaning up neighborhoods.

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

17

Hollywood has bin Laden death in its sights LOS ANGELES — Osama bin Laden’s death is blockbuster news for Hollywood, whose attempts to dramatize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely bombed.

Instead of churning out little-seen films about death and destruction wrought upon civilians and military personnel, the studios can now tap into resurgent American pride with movies about the hunt for the world’s most wanted man.

If only John Wayne were still alive or Arnold Schwarzenegger were younger to star in a gung-ho film about the daring strike by dashing Navy SEAL operatives on a compound in suburban Pakistan. Picture “Black Hawk Down” with a happier ending, or “Die Hard” in Islamabad.

Coincidentally, the Oscarwinning director of “The

Hurt Locker” — an Iraq war film that earned just $17 million at the box office — has a chance to reach a wider audience with an aptly named follow-up, “Kill Bin Laden.”

According to entertainment news Web site Deadline.com, Kathryn Bigelow and her “Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal have been working for some time on their project about an earlier, unsuccessful mission to nab bin Laden.

Details about the film’s plot were sketchy, Deadline reported, but the filmmakers will likely need to rework the script to take into account real-life developments. A spokeswoman for Bigelow said she was not talking.

Television will likely rush out a few quick movies if history is any guide. Within six months of the successful Israeli hostage rescue mission in Uganda in 1976, two

television movies had been broadcast. The rescue of U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch by Special Operations forces in Iraq also got a similarly quick turnaround time in 2003.

The Navy SEALs — short

Beyonce surprises New York students in support of the Let’s Move campaign

By ALETA WATSON In the spirit of First Lady Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, music maven, Beyonce crashed PS/MS 161 in Harlem early Tuesday to surprise students. The middle schoolers were shocked beyond words as the super-

star 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.

Kudos to Beyonce for showing the next generation how to be healthy, fit and fabulous at the same time!

for SEa, Air and Land — were notably depicted in a 1990 action thriller of the same name starring Charlie Sheen.

The film’s director, Lewis Teague, told Reuters that a new movie should be similar to “United 93,” a semi-factual real-time depiction of events aboard one of the ill-fated 9/11 flights, or to “Touching the Void,” which blended documentary footage and recreations to show a mountaineering mishap.

Ideally, the filmmakers should get full cooperation from the Navy SEALs, especially since Teague said they videotape all their operations.

And don’t forget a few good jokes, said Teague, a Middle East expert who spent about a year working closely with Navy SEALs in San Diego on his project.

“I would definitely do it

with humor,” he said. “It takes a very peculiar character to be a Navy SEAL — courage, stamina, dark humor, a witch’s brew of a warrior’s mentality.”

Can’t wait for the film?

How about the book? In another strange-but-true coincidence, former Navy SEAL sniper Howard Wasdin is bringing forward the publication of his memoir by two weeks to next week.

“Seal Team Six” is about Wasdin’s Navy SEAL training and his service in Somalia during the 1990s. Even though the book has nothing to do with bin Laden, Hollywood studios barraged Wasdin’s agent on Monday.

“This story is really on everyone in Hollywood’s mind right now so it is probably going to be a race about who can do this type of story,” Scott Miller told Reuters.

Alicia Keys gets personal in her fight against AIDS Alicia Keys was one of the performers at the recent Hope Rising! event in Toronto, held in aid of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which supports health groups dealing with the disease in Africa.

The R&B songstress, who co-founded the Keep a Child Alive organization, which provides medicine to families with HIV and AIDS, hopes that her appearances will help raise awareness of the deadly disease.

“These are human beings.

You put these numbers out there - 30 million dead, 33 million-plus infected, 16 million AIDS orphans - these are people, this isn’t like some dot on a chart,” says Keys. “It’s hard. You get these statistics and numbers and you start to lose the soul of what we’re really, really talking about.

Outside of her own philanthropic commitments, Keys urges people around the world to get involved, even if it’s something small.

“I think people get into

their head that there’s this need and you have to do this grand and huge thing for it to mean something and that’s not the case,” she says.

“Even just your constant commitment, however small or big, that is something that is giving life to someone. If it was your brother, or your mother, or your sister, you would say, ‘No, I’m not going to allow them to just die.’”

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

18

World’s millionaire ranks seen soaring through 2020

By JOSEPH A. GIANNONE The rich keep getting richer, both here in the United States and especially in the world’s emerging markets.

Public and private investments controlled by the richest families are expected to more than double in value to $202 trillion by 2020, from $92 trillion this year, according to survey of millionaires in 25 countries by Deloitte LLP. Meanwhile the ranks of families with more

than a million dollars will also increase, by two-thirds to 55.5 million in the developed world. They will more than double to 10 million in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil.

Still, Deloitte predicts the bulk of the world’s wealthiest families will continue to be found in the United States and Europe, despite the wealth management industry’s obsession with emerging markets.

“There’s no question these markets are of fundamental importance over the long

term, but wealth managers can’t overlook the value of their home base,” said Andrew Freeman, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Financial Services.

Deloitte notes that China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets are minting new millionaires at a faster rate than established markets, powered by economic expansion, commodity prices and development.

Across 10 emerging markets, millionaire household wealth is seen tripling to $25 tril-

lion from $7 trillion this year. By 2020 China will likely join the ranks of the top 10 richest economies with $3.6 trillion of wealth.

India’s average millionaire would be wealthier than the average American millionaire Among emerging markets, Deloitte expects China to continue to be the driving force in the growth of millionaire wealth, followed by Brazil and Russia. In the developed markets, Australia and Singapore will have the fastest growth rate of

millionaire households.

Millionaires in Singapore, a hub for wealth management in the Far East, may surpass Switzerland as the world’s highest per millionaire wealth by 2015 with $4.5 million, according to the study, conducted by Oxford Economics.

That said, the United States is likely to remain home to the most millionaires, doubling to 20 million households by 2020 from this year. The total wealth among U.S. millionaires will reach $87

show some strength in small and medium businesses. The weakness was actually in large businesses, and that is unusual. But certainly optimistic for a broader strengthening in employment.”

U.S. stocks opened little changed as investors weighed a fresh round of proposed acquisitions against a weaker-thanexpected private sector employment report.

Earlier on Wednesday, a separate report showed the number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell in April to the lowest monthly amount for the year so

far and were outpaced by a rise in plans to hire.

E m p l o y e r s announced 36,490 planned job cuts last month, down 12 percent from 41,528 in March, according to a report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Although job gains accelerated around the beginning of the year, improvement in the labor market was no longer quite as robust, Macroeconomic Advisers LLC Chairman Joel Prakken said in a conference call.

“Really there’s been no sign here of a fur-

ther acceleration from this read,” said Prakken.

“I’m becoming a little disappointed at not seeing stronger numbers, but of course the reason we’re not seeing stronger numbers is the economy has sputtered a little bit,” he added.

Friday’s report is expected to show a rise in overall nonfarm payrolls of 186,000 in April, based on a Reuters poll of analysts, and a gain of 200,000 in private payrolls.

Economists often refer to the ADP report to fine-tune their expectations for the payrolls numbers, though it is not always accurate in predicting the outcome.

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Private sector adds 179,000 jobs in April

By LEAH SCHNURR U.S. private employers added fewer jobs than expected in April, disappointing some who had been looking for stronger growth ahead of Friday’s key jobs report.

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179,000 jobs last month, shy of economists’ expectations for a gain of 198,000. The report is jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC. March’s figure was revised up to an increase of 207,000 from a previously reported 201,000.

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expected to show payroll growth eased last month. Higher gasoline prices and slower economic growth in the first quarter likely tempered hiring.

“Certainly people will look into this and be pessimistic or cautious about Friday’s numbers,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York.

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trillion by 2020, an annual growth rate of 9 percent.

As a result, Deloitte’s Freeman said banks, brokers and trusts have plenty of growth opportunities in states like California, Florida and New Jersey, which will by 2020 have the greatest density of U.S. millionaires.

Wealth in the study includes financial assets (stocks, bonds, and other investments) and nonfinancial assets including primary residence, durables, business equity and other assets.

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

19

House panel OKs new way to fund home mortgages

By CORBETT B. DALY WASHINGTON — A bill to create a new market for financing mortgages that would help wean the $10.6 trillion mortgage market off government support advanced in the House of Representatives.

The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises approved the legislation on a voice vote.

The bill, which the White House supports, would have to be approved by the full committee, the full House and the Senate before being sent to President Barack Obama for his signature into law.

The bill aims to establish a market for covered bonds, which are securities issued by banks and backed by pools of loans.

The loans underlying the covered bonds would remain on the issuer’s balance sheet.

That is different from the current U.S. mortgage system, in which lenders sell many of the loans they make to government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which then repackage them as securities for investors.

The panel’s chairman, New Jersey Republican Representative Scott Garrett, hopes to reduce the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a covered bond market.

“Covered bonds will serve not as a replacement” to existing credit

markets but should function as “an additional arrow in the quiver” for funding home mortgages, Garrett said ahead of the vote on his legislation.

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in March he was considering introducing a version of Garrett’s bill in the Senate.

Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, backed Garrett’s bill as one way to help the U.S. mortgage market on the margins, though she cautioned that it is not a panacea.

“Why not give it a chance?” Maloney said, adding that she considers covered bonds “a strong tool we could use to help ... our housing market rebound.”

The government

seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008 as losses on the loans they held spiraled. government, The through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration, now backs almost nine in 10 new mortgages.

In Europe, covered bonds have long been in use. But they have failed to catch on in the United States.

In a covered bond system, banks can borrow against the value of the underlying mortgages to obtain fresh capital to extend further loans. The bond investors have the right to those underlying assets in the case of a bank default.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has warned that a covered bond system could

Sony hires firms to clean up after breach

By JIM FINKLE and LIANA B. BAKER BOSTON/NEW YORK — Sony has hired outside investigators to help clean its networks and catch the people behind a massive breach that exposed the personal data of more than 100 million video game users.

The Japanese electronics giant has retained a team from privately held Data Forte that is led by a former special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service to work alongside the FBI agents, who are also probing the matter.

Sony said on Tuesday that it has also brought on cyber-security detectives from Guidance Software and consultants from Robert Half International Inc’s subsidiary Protiviti to help with the clean-up.

Officials with Sony and the three firms did not respond to requests for information about the investigation.

Agents with the U.S.

Federal Bureau of Investigation have said little about the matter, except that they are looking into the breach of data, which might include some credit card numbers.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, in a letter to Sony on Tuesday, asked the company to clarify the number of compromised credit card accounts and requested a detailed timeline outlining what the company knew about what was stolen and when it was known.

Blumenthal said he would ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the matter and check whether Sony’s subsequent handling of the breach would make it civilly or criminally liable.

“I would appreciate a direct and public answer detailing what

the company will do in the future to protect its consumers against breaches of their personal and financial information,” Blumenthal wrote.

“It’s a significant operation,” said David Baker, vice president of services with electronic security firm IOActive, which is not involved in the investigation.

He said that card issuers Mastercard and Visa Inc had likely appointed a firm to investigate.

Sony also said that it hired the law firm Baker & McKenzie to help it with the investigation.

On Monday, Sony said its PC games network had also been exposed to hackers, in an incident related to the massive break-in of its separate PlayStation video game network that led to the theft of data from 77 million

user accounts. Sony revealed that attack last week.

The PlayStation network lets video game console owners download games and play against friends. The Sony Online Entertainment network, the victim of the latest breakin, hosts games such as “EverQuest” and “Free Realms,” which are played over the Internet.

Sony said late on Monday that the names, addresses, emails, birth dates, phone numbers and other information from 24.6 million PC games accounts may have been stolen from its servers as well as an “outdated database” from 2007.

A Toronto law firm on Tuesday launched a C$1 billion ($1.05 billion) proposed classaction suit against Sony for breach of privacy, naming a 21year-old PlayStation user from Mississauga, Ontario, as lead plaintiff.

The damages would cover the cost of credit monitoring services and fraud insurance for two years, the firm, McPhadden Samac Tuovi LLP, said in a statement.

put its bank deposit fund at insurance increased risk for losses because the investors would have seniority over the agency in the event of default.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the FDIC’s concerns are legitimate and would have to be worked out.

“For this to work, you would be putting the taxpayer in some sense behind private investors, and that has its own consequences, but that is something we can work through and I think it can play a greater role in our system,” Geithner said in March.

The White House and Congress are in the midst of a major policy debate on how to overhaul the finance system for buying U.S. homes, which collapsed in 2008.

The Obama administration in February announced several steps to make government-backed mortgages more expensive in a bid to lure private capital back to the mortgage market.

It also announced plans to phase-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time and presented Congress with three options for replacing them longterm.

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that, pursuant to Title 5, Chapter 3, Subchapter 3 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York, a public hearing will be held at, 22 Reade Street, Borough of Manhattan on Wednesday May 11, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. on the following: REAL PROPERTY PUBLIC HEARING in the matter of the acquisition by the City of New York of fee simple (Fee) and conservation easement (CE) interests, and by the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC) of conservation easement interests using funds provided by the City of New York, on the following real estate in the Counties of Delaware, Greene, Putnam, Schoharie, Ulster and Westchester for the purposes of preserving and preventing the contamination or pollution of the water supply of the City of New York: NYC ID County Municipality Type Tax Lot ID Acres (+/-) Delaware Andes Fee p/o 260.-1-13.12 27.17 7168 Bovina CE p/o 153.-1-5 80.70 4236 2982 Delhi CE 171.8-1-3 & p/o 172.-1-1.1 106.00 Delhi CE 150.-1-91 & 94 170.90 2982 Fleischmanns Fee 287.18-2-22.2 0.47 7728 5116 Kortright Fee 85.-2-9 25.27 Kortright WAC CE 84.-3-1 71.00 6164 Middletown Fee 287.-1-38 52.90 7728 488 Roxbury CE 72.-1-22 33.00 Roxbury Fee 180.-1-21 & 202.-1-28.3 128.12 1646 Roxbury Fee 222.-4-1, 222.-4-3.41 thru 3.46 33.07 1826 1826 Roxbury Fee 222.-4-3.47 & 222.-4-road area 47.33 Roxbury Fee 177.-1-9 & p/o 177.-1-7.3 72.64 7623 7994 Stamford Fee p/o 131.-1-10.1 150.50 1765 Walton Fee 335.-2-14 201.00 Greene Ashland Fee p/o 77.00-1-5.1 129.21 2394 1646 Halcott Fee 124.00-1-1 200.00 1694 Hunter Fee p/o 182.00-5-4 41.50 1840 Hunter Fee 180.00-2-30 & 180.00-3-5 114.31 7376 Hunter Fee 196.00-5-38 thru 43 36.12 Jewett Fee 129.00-4-3.11 32.30 5437 4867 Lexington Fee p/o 128.00-2-1.2 29.00 2945 Windham Fee p/o 63.00-4-60 39.00 1516 Putnam Kent CE p/o 42.11-1-8 50.00 488 Schoharie Gilboa CE 207.-1-37 149.70 1173 Ulster Denning Fee 51.-2-16.112 23.60 4843 Olive Fee 45.4-2-8.100 5.60 919 Wawarsing Fee p/o 66.1-2-15 19.00 1508 Westchester North Castle CE p/o 107.02-1-5 20.81 A copy of the Mayor’s Preliminary Certificate of Adoption and maps of the real estate to be acquired are available for public inspection upon request. Please call (845) 340-7810.

Caswell F. Holloway Commissioner

Michael R. Bloomberg Mayor

Contractors will be required to comply with EEO, D/M/WBE and other federal and state procurement laws, regulations and Executive Orders.

MTA NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT (NYCT)

RFQ ID #: 6419, Due Date: 6/16/11 Title: A-36136, ADA Accessibility: Forest Hills-71st Continental Station, Queens Line (IND) in the Borough of Queens.

BIDS: Opening Date: 5/24/11, #5686, Pandrol; #5822, Rail capacitor train stop; #6041, EPROM, #5732, Baseplate assy; #6285, Engine mount; #6340, Window protection shield. Opening Date: 5/25/11, #4339, Condenser; #4344, Filter; #6081, Kit unloader valve; #6124, Differential carrier assy; #6138, Brake chamber; #6338, Tensioner belt; kit, LS1 A&B improvement; #6467, Oil. Opening Date: 5/26/11, #3172, Gloves; #3262, Gloves; #3266, Gloves; #5946, Event recorder; #6255, Pinch bar; #6364, Bolt, anchor; #6366, Handrail stanchion. Opening Date: 5/27/11, #3280, Gloves; #6420, Fire suppression parts; #6539, Bearing set; #6548, Radius rod pin & bushing. More detailed information & the MTA-NYCT contact(s) for the above solicitations can be found on our website at: www.mta.info/nyct/procure/nyctproc.htm

MTA BRIDGES AND TUNNELS (B&T)

Sealed Bids for the below solicitations must be received by B & T at the Bid Suite, 3 Stone Street, NY, NY 10004. Sealed Bids will be publicly opened at the above address on the dates/times indicated.

Bid #: 10-MNT-2879 – Maintenance and Repair of Fire Alarm Systems at Various TBTA and MTA Facilities. Due Date: 5/17/11, 3PM. Project description at www.mta.info/bandt/procure/rfppage.html Bid #: TN-82B – Interim Repairs of Orthotropic Deck Structures at The Throgs Neck Bridge Bid Opens: 6/9/11, 3PM. The project description can be found at www.mta.info/bandt/procure/solit2.htm Bid #: VN-03B – Toll Plaza Improvements at Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Bid Due Date: 6/22/11, 3PM. Project description at www.mta.info/bandt/procure/conrfp.html

MTA METRO-NORTH RAILROAD (MNR)

MNR will receive sealed bids for the following. Bids must be submitted on inquiry forms provided by MNR by the specified date and time. Bid documents are available at the Procurement & Material Management Department, 347 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10017, 212-340-3223. INQUIRY #, DESCRIPTION, (DUE DATE, TIME, CONTACT): INQ#: 3593, GCT Terrazzo Floor Replacement, (6/14/11, 2:30 PM, Paul Kennedy); INQ#: 77355, Construction Services for the Harmon Facilities and Yard Improvements (6/15/11, 2:00 PM, T. Paster 212-340-2331); INQ#: 1000003756, Purchase of Full Depth Rubber Grade Crossings, (5/17/11, 3:00 PM, Irene Gallante, 212-340-2616); INQ#: 8679-A, Purchase of 35 Ton Portable Rail Wheel Dolly, (5/26/11, 2:00PM, P.E. Herrera); INQ#: 1000003936, Jet Snow Blower Engine Upgrades, (5/24/11, 3:00 PM, Irene Gallante, 212-340-2616); INQ#: 8680-A, Frt Car Wheel Sets. 6 X 11 and 61/2 X 12.UTEX - 2 years, (6/16/11, 1:30 PM, James Butler); INQ#: 1-4085, General and Specialized Machine Shop Work, (5/26/11, 3:00PM, Tara Bugg, 212-340-2417). INQ#: 1000004086, Records Management, (6/3/11, 11:00 AM, Brian Spiegel).

20

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011 %

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DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

DAILY CHALLENGE

SPORTS

Brees says Bush can still S contribute to Saints

PORTS

By BRETT MARTEL NEW ORLEANS - Drew Brees says he has been in touch with Reggie Bush and hopes the running back will see that he can still play a key role with the Saints even though the club made a trade to acquire Alabama running back Mark Ingram in the first round of last week’s NFL draft.

Brees said he saw a Twitter post in which Bush wrote, “It’s been fun New Orleans,” shortly after Ingram was drafted.

Brees said he texted words of encouragement to Bush soon after.

“I think that’s just frustration a little bit, just because they draft a guy at your position,” Brees said. “But I think the message that was sent to him was, ‘By no means look at that as ... you’re getting shown the door, that we don’t want you,’ or anything like that.”

Brees spoke Tuesday before one of a series of workouts he’s organized at Tulane with Saints teammates, who are prevented from using team facilities or having contact with coaches during the NFL lockout.

Bush was not among the nearly 40 Saints who showed up.

Brees said he saw a parallel between the drafting of Ingram

Reggie Bush and the Saints’ decision to draft Bush in 2006, when running back Deuce McAllister was one of the club’s featured players.

“Deuce handled that situation better than anybody ever could have and he had one of his best seasons in 2006,” Brees said. “He was a huge part of our success. I think Reggie has that same potential to be that big a part of our success this year despite the fact that we’ve got three other guys.”

Before the lockout, the Saints signed Pierre Thomas to a fouryear contract. Chris Ivory, who led the Saints in rushing as a rookie last season, also will be

back.

Brees, who was in San Diego when the Chargers made a trade to draft quarterback Philip Rivers, said he was sympathetic to Bush’s initial reaction.

“He’s a young guy, he’s very prideful and wants to be great. He wants as many opportunities as he can get,” Brees said. “I think you immediately see (drafting of Ingram) as, ‘Oh, well, that’s taking opportunities away from me.’

But in reality, I think you’ve got to find the positive in it.”

Brees said more depth at running back will reduce the need for the Saints to have Bush carry the ball on traditional, bruising rushes into the line and allow him to focus more on his strengths, such as his elusiveness in the open field and his ability to play receiver.

As for the decision to draft Ingram, Brees added, “I think it’s great.”

“He adds an awesome element to an already impressive backfield that we have,” Brees continued. “When you have three physical backs like you’re talking about with Pierre and Ivory and Mark Ingram, you need that many guys to be able to pound the ball. And then you throw in Reggie, (who has the) ability to be split out and catch the ball and run the ball in any situation, that’s four guys that are pretty lethal.”

Study: Duerson had brain damage at time of suicide

By HOWARD ULMAN BOSTON - Dave Duerson, a former NFL player who committed suicide in February, had “moderately advanced” brain damage related to blows to the head, according to the researcher who made the diagnosis.

“It’s indisputable” that Duerson had chronic traumatic

encephalopathy, a disorder linked to repeated brain trauma, Dr. Ann McKee said Monday.

The findings were announced as part of an effort conducted by the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University’s School of Medicine. The CSTE Brain Bank has the brains of more than 70 athletes and military veterans, with football players comprising more than half of the athletes.

Duerson played safety in the NFL for 11 seasons, seven with the

Chicago Bears, and was chosen for four Pro Bowls before retiring in 1993.

“Dave Duerson had classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease,” McKee said, “and he has severe involvement of all the (brain) structures that affect things like judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory.”

The body of Duerson, who was 50, was found in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., on Feb. 17. He left a note asking that his brain be given to the NFL’s Brain Bank. He

shot himself in the chest, “presumably” to preserve his brain for study, said Chris Nowinski, co-director of the CSTE. The other co-directors are McKee, Dr. Robert Cantu and Dr. Robert Stern.

Duerson’s case was “moderately advanced,” McKee said. “The likelihood is that if he hadn’t had the CTE, he wouldn’t have developed those symptoms that he was experiencing at the end of his life and perhaps he wouldn’t have been compelled to end his life.”

21

BRIEFS

Bobcats F Cunningham faces drug-possession charge

RADNOR, Pa. - Police say Charlotte Bobcats forward Dante Cunningham faces a drug-possession charge after police found a small amount of marijuana in his pickup during a traffic stop in suburban Philadelphia.

Radnor Township Police Superintendent William Colarulo says officers responding to a reckless driving complaint on Friday stopped the former Villanova star.

Colarulo says officers smelled marijuana and recovered a suspicious substance after Cunningham consented to a search. That search also turned up a pellet gun in violation of a local ordinance.

Cunningham was arraigned and released on bail. Messages left with the team were not immediately returned Tuesday.

The Portland Trail Blazers traded Cunningham to Charlotte in February. He averaged 9 points and 4 rebounds in 22 games for the Bobcats.

Serena Williams’ stalker charged PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — A man was charged with stalking Serena Williams after police say they caught him trying to walk into her gated subdivision in South Florida.

Palm Beach Gardens police said 40-year-old Patenema Ouedraogo told officers he was going to Williams’ home Monday night “because he loves her” and “he knows the feelings are reciprocal.”

An attorney for Williams said he had recently obtained a restraining order after Ouedraogo tried to contact the player three times.

Subdivision security guards stopped Ouedraogo as he walked in a few minutes after Williams’ sister Venus returned home, police said. The guards had been told to call police immediately if they saw someone matching Ouedraogo’s description.

It was unclear if Ouedraogo has an attorney. He is being held on $25,000 bond.

According to the police report, Williams’ attorney, Malcolm Cunningham, got a restraining order to keep Ouedraogo away from Williams after he followed her to a meeting with her agent in Los Angeles in October.

Cunningham told police Ouedraogo pretended to be Williams’ assistant in Tampa earlier this year while she was at the Home Shopping Network.

Ouedraogo allegedly convinced HSN security he worked for Williams and was given access to her dressing room. Williams had him escorted from the building, but Ouedraogo waited outside for the rest of the day.

Cunningham said Ouedraogo also followed Williams to a radio interview in South Florida last month and demanded to speak with her.

“It’s been unsettling for her,” Cunningham said in an interview Tuesday. “He continues to show up places, including her community.”

On Monday, Palm Beach Gardens police said Ouedraogo told them he knew where Williams would be because he’d been following her on Twitter.

Police said they found in Ouedraogo’s backpack a book written by Williams and a letter to actor Tyrese Gibson asking him to arrange a meeting between Ouedraogo and Williams.

Ouedraogo called Williams “his dream soulmate” and said he would “do anything to meet her and let her know,” according to the report.

22

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

DAILY CHALLENGE

SPORTS

Heat threaten to shut Celtics’ title window

By ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI MIAMI - When the Boston Celtics climbed on the team bus in the bowels of American Airlines Arena late in the regular season, the mood had been thick with anger and disgust over finally losing to the Miami Heat. Only now, several sources said, the Celitcs discovered a deeper, knifing violation: Someone had snuck onto the bus and stolen cash and belongings from the coaches’ and players’ bags.

“It was pretty bad,” a source told Yahoo!

Sports. “A lot of stuff, a lot of money.”

Every time the Celtics leave this arena now, they leave more of themselves here. They leave with less of a season, less belief they can hold back LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. This time, it was two bludgeoning defeats to the Miami Heat - including a 102-91 Game 2 loss on Tuesday night - that have had far-reaching reverberations within the Celtics. So far, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade have delivered a systematic, spectacular obliteration of Boston.

They’ve shown a rhythm and resolve to play brilliantly, efficiently, and

maybe most of all, play together.

James had 35 points, seven rebounds and never committed a turnover. Wade had 28 points, eight rebounds and lived on the freethrow line. They’re much more together than these Celtics, much hungrier. They’ve made Boston’s stars look sluggish, stumped and within a whisper of getting pushed out of the way, out of the postseason.

Wade dominated Game 1, and James Game 2.

Everyone else feared this is how it would play with James and Wade together. Privately, the Celtics prayed they would have one more season until these two stars learned to play without the ball, learned

Gonzaga’s Demetri Goodson to transfer Gonzaga starting point guard Demetri Goodson has decided to transfer in order to play football, the school announced Tuesday.

The 6-foot, 175pound junior would have two years of football eligiblity remaining, according to Gonzaga, which does not offer football.

Goodson is the brother of Carolina Panthers running back Mike Goodson, who played at Texas A&M. “I have decided to pursue football next year,” Goodson said in a statement. “I would like to thank my coaches and staff for the oppor-

tunity to play here. I also want to thank the city of Spokane and all of the Zags fans who have supported me over the years. It’s been an awesome experience.”

Goodson started all 35 games as a junior, averaging 5.2 points and 2.6 assists to help the Zags to an 11th consecutive West Coast Conference title. His spot could be filled by freshman David Stockton, the former walk-on who is the son of Hall of Famer John Stockton. The Zags also have incoming freshman Kevin Pangos from Canada.

- Diamond Leung

to defend every trip, learned to give of themselves for the greater good of championship basketball.

“That is the vision I had during the freeagent period when I decided to come here,” James said. “It’s all coming together at the right time.”

This has been jarring for the Celtics. The Heat are beating them in the way the Celtics used to beat everyone else: smart, efficient offense in the fourth quarter, with the ball in the hands of their best players; and suffocating, unrelenting defense that takes away an opponent’s best players.

The Heat’s will is unmistakable and their belief is brimming. They’re younger, stronger, and they smelled blood in the shimmering green waters on Biscayne Bay. “It’s only our seventh playoff game together,” James said.

As much of a statement of fact, this was a warning too. The Heat teased the Celtics, and ultimately tore them apart in the fourth quarter. The Celtics pulled even with the Heat at 80, but the Heat made the

game so simple for themselves in the final minutes. Miami made sure it played through James and Wade, and Boston’s coaches and stars watched in disbelief as Big Baby Davis tried to make up-andunder moves on wild dribble drives to the rim.

“I’m Thunderbolt,” Davis declared. “I’m always crashing my way up.”

That’s wonderful, but he might want to give the ball back to Ray Allen and Paul Pierce when James and Wade are killing them down the floor. Still, Allen and Pierce were feeling the advanced years of thirtysomething bodies under the torrent of James’ and Wade’s assault. Pierce had gone to the locker room for treatment on a strained Achilles, only to return incapable of guarding James again. Allen had to leave the game to go the training room, because he couldn’t breathe after James had delivered an elbow into his chest. And Rondo’s back had stiffened so badly that he had to ask out of the game and lay on the floor for several minutes getting treat-

ment.

Doc Rivers found himself flummoxed over who was coming and who was going. “A circus,” the Celtics coach called it later.

No one cares about Boston’s injuries, because the Celtics still haven’t played well in the postseason when completely healthy.

Outside of Game 3 against the New York Knicks, when have they truly been impressive?

Truth be told, the Heat are rising now, gathering conviction that they’ve found the formula to topple the Celtics.

The Heat keep talking about Boston’s great defense, but it’s gone now. It wasn’t on the floor with Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic in Miami, but with Kendrick Perkins and Tony Allen in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night.

The Heat are still speaking with reverent and respectful terms about Boston, but privately they must be wondering: Are we talking about the old Celtics, or these Celtics?

After three days of rest the Celtics desperately need, everyone finds out this in Boston

on Saturday night: What do Boston’s stars have left in a big moment, a big spot?

And is it enough to hold off this train chugging toward them in the distance, James and Wade gathering speed, gathering momentum and daring to deliver Boston a final deathblow?

“We’ve never been down 2-0 together, so this has turned into our biggest test,” Rivers told Yahoo! Sports late Tuesday on his walk to the team bus. “But if we’re going to face this together, I’m glad we’ll face it in Boston.”

The Celtics have lost a lot in Florida over the past month - money and belongings, regular-season games that started to shed their invincibility and, now, two Eastern Conference semifinal debacles.

Assuming the Celtics manage to get one victory in Boston in Game 3 or 4, they could come back here next week on the brink of losing everything to James and Wade. That could be the end of Rivers as coach, the end of the Celtics’ championship window, the end of this great run.

Boise State self-imposes sanctions

By ANDREA ADELSON Boise State has self-imposed sanctions on its football program as it faces NCAA allegations charging the school’s athletic program with a lack of institutional control.

The NCAA brought the charges after finding 22 violations, including a major violation in women’s tennis and minor violations in football and three other sports, according to a report made public by the school and the

NCAA on Monday.

The Broncos will have at least three fewer preseason practices before their game against Georgia on Sept.

3, according to documents obtained by The Idaho Statesman.

The school also will have three fewer scholarships to give in the next two years, and three fewer practices before the season opener against Michigan State in 2012 as well, according to the report.

The NCAA can accept these punishments or dole out stiffer penalties following its Committee on Infractions meeting June 10.

The violations range

from coaches organizing low-cost summer housing and transportation for potential Broncos football players, to tennis and track and field athletes getting meals and housing in violation of NCAA rules.

“We pride ourselves on doing things the right way at Boise State.

As soon as we became aware that these inadvertent infractions were not in accordance with NCAA rules, we acted swiftly and without hesitation,” football coach Chris Petersen said Tuesday in a statement released by the school.

“The university, our staff and the involved

student-athletes worked together with the NCAA to resolve the situation, including reimbursement of the benefits received, and that money was donated to a local charity,” Petersen said.

After being notified by the NCAA of the potential violations, Boise State officials launched their own inquiry in 2009 and ultimately self-reported some previously unknown infractions.

But before a resolution could be reached with the NCAA, Boise State officials discovered more serious problems in the women’s tennis program last fall.

DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

Players unhappy with owners’ new offer

By CHRIS SHERIDAN & CHRIS BROUSSARD NEW YORK — NBA players are not happy with the latest formal collective bargaining proposal from the league’s owners, saying the new offer of a 10-year deal is only marginally different from the original one the owners made.

“Unfortunately, the proposal is very similar to the proposal the league submitted over a year ago,” union president Derek Fisher told ESPN.com. “This last proposal doesn’t look close to what we were expecting.”

NBA spokesman Tim Frank said the league delivered its offer to the union last week.

NBA It is the second formal offer made by the owners, who are seeking significant rollbacks in existing contracts, a hard salary cap and a larger share of basketball related income — 57 percent of which is guaranteed to the players under terms of the existing labor agreement, which expires June 30.

It is the second formal offer made by the owners, who are seeking significant rollbacks in existing contracts, a hard salary cap and a larger share of basketball related income — 57 percent of which is guaranteed to the players under terms of the existing labor agreement, which expires June 30.

Union director Billy Hunter previously has said the players are willing to give up their 57 percent guarantee, but he wants to keep most other elements of the existing deal. But the owners have taken a hard-line stance in

arguing that a new economic operating system is needed to give all 30 NBA teams an equal chance to be profitable and to contend for a championship.

In their initial proposal, the owners sought a reduction of nearly $800 million in salaries for the 2011-12 season. Players were paid a total of approximately $2.1 billion this season, and commissioner David Stern said last month that the league is projecting a $300 million loss for the current season.

The union has disputed that number, saying a majority of those costs are attributable to depreciation, along with interest payments on loans used to finance the purchase of teams.

The owners’ new proposal still seeks a similar financial cutback, though it would be phased in during the first two seasons.

“We are taking a close look at each piece of the proposal, and I along with my players and executive committee will be determining what next steps best move this process forward,” Fisher said. “I continue to work on this daily, take this very seriously, and have a responsibility to my players to try and get a deal done.”

Hunter, who has said publicly in recent months that there is a 99 percent chance of a lockout if the owners insist on sticking to the terms of their original proposal, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The NBA has not had a work stoppage since 1998, when the league lost games because of a labor dispute for the first time in its history. But the owners

emerged from that fight with two significant cost-control mechanisms — the luxury tax paid by the highest-spending teams, and the escrow tax withheld from players’ paychecks to ensure that the owners do not pay out more than 57 percent of designated revenues.

The escrow tax is in lieu of getting a “hard” salary cap to replace the existing “soft” cap system in which teams can exceed the salary cap through several means, including the Larry Bird exception (which allows teams to exceed the cap to retain their own free agents) and the mid-level exception (which allows over-thecap teams to acquire an additional free agent at a price equal to the league’s median salary).

The union made its only formal proposal to the owners last summer, and the sides have engaged in numerous informal meetings since then. Currently, both sides are keeping a close eye on developments in the NFL labor stalemate, where the players’ union has decertified and sued in federal court to have the lockout lifted, although an appeals court has issued a temporary stay that has effectively re-imposed the lockout until the matter is further reviewed.

“With the recent news that Round 1 ratings are at an all-time high, the popularity of the game globally has never been higher, we have to work to keep this going in the right direction,” Fisher said. “I will continue to urge our players to be prepared in the event of a lockout, but will remain steadfast in my efforts to drive this process forward.”

Blake Griffin wins ROY

By RAMONA SHELBURNE Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin will be named the NBA’s Rookie of the Year yesterday, according to a league source not authorized to speak publicly on the announcement.

The Clippers on Tuesday announced a news conference for the presentation of a major NBA award.

The high-flying rookie from Oklahoma had one of the best rookie season’s in NBA history. He averaged

22.5 points, 12.1 rebounds and 3.8 assists.

The 6-foot-10 power forward made the West All-Star team, becoming the first rookie All-Star in eight years, since Yao Ming in 2003, and even won the dunk contest in front of his Staples Center fans with an iconic dunk while flying over a car.

He was so dominant, the Rookie of the Year award was a virtual lock for the last two months of the season.

“If someone doesn’t vote for Blake, they haven’t watched a lot of basketball,” Clippers

coach Vinny Del Negro said before the team’s season finale against the Memphis Grizzlies on April 13.

Griffin sat out all 82 games last season after hurting his knee in the final preseason game and having surgery. He was the only player to appear in every game this season when injuries plagued the team.

Griffin was named the Western Conference’s Rookie of the Month six times, becoming the first player to sweep that award since Chris Paul did it with New Orleans in

2005-06.

The power forward had 63 double-doubles while single-handedly energizing the Clippers, who still missed the playoffs for the 13th time in 14 seasons. Los Angeles went 32-50 in its 18th non-winning season in the past 19 years, but Griffin’s nightly acrobatics and toughness always made the Clippers interesting.

Griffin was the NBA’s fourth-leading rebounder and the 12thleading scorer — the only rookie among the league’s top 45 scorers and top 20 rebounders.

DAILY CHALLENGE

23

SPORTS

Lockout has Fitzhugh content with career switch

By DENNIS WASZAK JR. NEW YORK - Some people called Keith Fitzhugh crazy. Others praised him for his admirable decision.

Turning down the Jets for trains? Yep, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“I’m so happy,” the free-agent defensive back recently told The Associated Press from his home in Atlanta. “It turned out just right for me.”

It sure did, especially with NFL players locked out and in a bitter labor dispute with the owners.

He has a secure job and a steady income, things he might not have if he had put his football dreams ahead of taking care of his parents.

Fitzhugh gained national attention last December when he declined an offer to join the New York Jets to remain a conductor with Norfolk Southern Railroad and stay on track financially.

His parents needed him, he said, and he couldn’t let them down. The decision landed the 24-year-old former Mississippi State star a guest spot on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and national television interviews with ABC and CNN, among several others.

“It was really a blessing because when I played football and was giving it my all, I never got the opportunity to do the things I got to do when I was just trying to do the right thing,” he said. “Never.

Not one time. Going out to L.A., going on Jay Leno and going on all these major networks, I feel like I was the hottest non-football-playing football player in the world.”

And, he was. Not that he couldn’t play, though.

Fitzhugh simply chose not to.

“I really didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal, to be honest,” he said. “It kind of blew me away.”

Fitzhugh ponders what would have happened if he had left the job with Norfolk Southern, and knows his decision appears awfully smart now.

“I have a lot of buddies out there and they’re ready to go back out and play,” he said. “In a way, I could be like, ‘Ha!’ and be laughing at them, but these are my buddies and what if the shoes were on the other foot? What if I had went and the Jets signed me? I would’ve been sitting around and wouldn’t have known what was going on.”

Not only that, but get this: Some of his friends in the NFL have even asked him during the lockout if he might be able to get them jobs.

“They’re like, ‘Hey, Keith, if this doesn’t work out for me ...’ and I just tell them, ‘Just go ahead and apply, just like I did,’” he said. “No big-name guys, but guys who are straddling that line like I was. When they hear about what I do, it’s kind of exciting to them, too, because you turn into a kid all over again. You’re riding a train that has 4,000 or 5,000 horsepower and you really can get into the thrill of it. It’s a fun job, man.”

But, he acknowledges, so is football. That’s what made his choice so difficult.

Jets coach Rex Ryan wanted Fitzhugh to help with New York’s banged-up secondary, likely on the practice squad, after safety Jim Leonhard broke a leg and backup James Ihedigbo sprained an ankle. The Jets also called defensive back Emanuel Cook with the idea that he and Fitzhugh, both of whom had spent time with the team in previous camps, could compete for a spot on the active roster.

Cook said yes, and joined the team. Fitzhugh declined, and was back on the railroad.

DAILY CHALLENGE

S SP PO OR RT TS S THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011

HEAT THREATEN TO SHUT CELTICS’ TITLE WINDOW

BLAKE GRIFFIN WINS ROY

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BREES SAYS BUSH CAN STILL CONTRIBUTE TO SAINTS

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PLAYERS UNHAPPY WITH OWNERS’SEE PNEW OFFER AGE 23

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