TGIF Edition 29 January 2010

29 NZTONIGHT January 2010

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ISSN 1172-4153 | Volume 3 | Issue 53 |

| 29 January 2010

Cell-phone ban fails to cut crashes on the INSIDE

By Justin Hyde

US laws barring hand-held cell phone use by drivers do not reduce crashes according to the first large study on their effects, raising questions about whether bans on texting or other moves to reduce distracted driving will have the benefits safety advocates hope for.

But the study by an arm of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) drew a sharp rebuke from federal officials who called it “irresponsible to suggest that laws banning cell phone use while driving have zero effect.”

The back-and-forth reflect the move by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to make reducing driver distraction and pushing for banning texting behind the wheel a cornerstone issue.

LaHood said today that federal and state efforts had only just begun, with two bills working their way through Congress.

The study has also come as a surprise to New Zealand officials, where cell phone use and texting while driving was banned in November last year.

“I’m surprised by its findings, to be honest with you,”said Chris Ryan, executive director of the New Zealand Insurance Council today.

The US IIHS analyzed crash rates in New York, California, Connecticut and the District of Columbia after banning hand-held cell phone use by drivers, comparing them with rates before the bans were in place and to nearby states that had no such prohibition.

Other studies done by the IIHS and others had shown drivers were four times more likely to be involved in a crash if they were using their cell phones, and that the laws were effective in reducing the number of drivers who held their phones

behind the wheel.

“Crashes aren’t going down where hand-held phone use has been banned,” said IIHS President Adrian Lund.“This finding doesn’t auger well for any safety payoff from all the new laws that ban phone use and texting while driving.”

Michigan lawmakers are poised to join 19 states in barring texting while driving, and Congress is considering two bills to bar the practice nationwide. Six states bar hand-held cell phone use, and 21 states block novice drivers from using any type of cell phone.

Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said driver distraction played some role in 15 percent of highway deaths, or 6,000 people a year.

The IIHS says one issue may be that drivers are simply switching to using hands-free devices with their phones, which have been shown not to reduce the safety risk from distracted driving, or that other distractions remain in place. But crash rates have been fairly steady or declining over the past few years, even as more people with cell phones use them more frequently.

No study has yet attempted to measure the effect of the bans against texting behind the wheel.

NHTSA said outside studies had shown that driver distractions were just as serious a challenge to safety as driving drunk, and that it takes years of laws and enforcement to change behaviors.

XT compo?

Don’t call us, we’ll call you says Telecom WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – Thousands of Telecom XT mobile customers who have had their service cut off since Wednesday morning will have to wait until next week to hear news of compensation, the company’s chief executive said today.

The problem had affected about 4 percent of the network south of Taupo.

About 30 cell sites were this afternoon still without service. They were based in the lower South Island, including Timaru, Invercargill, Dunedin

and Queenstown and a number of sites across rural Southland, Otago and South Canterbury.

The cause of the outage was now under extensive investigation, but was suspected to be within the transport layer between the cell site and the Christchurch switch, the company said in a statement.

This was a different issue to the one that caused a disruption of services in December.

Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds said he

“When it comes to distracted driving, we are only at the starting gate,” the agency said in its statement.

New Zealand’s insurance industry spokesman Chris Ryan told TGIF. “There’s a degree of logic to their conclusions.

It’s very hard to be able to say categorically that just one initiative, like banning hand held phones, is going to increase safety, but in our view it’s still a move in the right direction.

“There are so many distractions in a car, from children in the backseat to even getting distracted by talking to somebody on a handsfree phone. It happens. The thing that really made up our minds in the end was that we were seeing increasing numbers of young people, and inexperienced drivers, texting as opposed to talking on the phone.That was a big driver for us.

“In our submissions however we also said people should be allowed to use handsfree because it allows people to have the discretion to use their phones when they think it’s safe.

“Our view would be that the move to banning hand held phones was a good move because it raised awareness of the dangers of being distracted in the car, but it is not a panacea,”said Ryan.

CLIMATE STUNT Nats pinged by Greens Page 2

COOL SUMMER More cold predicted Page 3

STARR-CROSSED The Beatle speaks Page 14

– Detroit Free Press, with extra reporting by TGIF

hoped the remaining affected sites to be running by tomorrow morning.

“The clear signal we have had from customers is that they want the issue resolved, so that has been our full focus today. Now we have a clear plan, the time is right to think about compensation.

“We will be announcing compensation plans for significantly affected customers early next week,” Dr Reynolds said.

Meanwhile, the cellphone problem has caused major disruption at the New Zealand Masters Games in Dunedin.

“Try running the country’s largest sporting event without cell phone coverage, it’s a joke,”games man-

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ager Aaron Joy said.

“It’s not a contingency we planned for, you expect that you can rely on Telecom. I am unable to make or receive calls or texts, nobody can get hold of me, frankly communication here is by pigeons. I’ve got to rely on other people to get messages through.

“I’ve missed so many phone calls and people think that I’ll get the message they have left for me but of course I don’t.”

Tomorrow the Games were due to begin with thousands of competitors competing in 71 activities.

Mr Joy said if the outage continued they would think about changing providers.

– NZPA

NEW ZEALAND

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off BEAT POLAR BEAR SURVIVES ICE DRIFT, THEN SHOT REYKJAVIK (DPA) – A polar bear believed to have drifted ashore from Greenland has been shot and killed in north-east Iceland, reports said today.

The young bear was spotted Wednesday by a farmer who alerted police to the area near Thistilfjordur.

In December 2008, a government commission recommended that the large and dangerous mammals be shot given the high cost of repatriating them.

The commission was set up after two polar bears landed on the northern coast of Iceland during the summer of 2008, apparently after being swept to sea on ice floes from Greenland, several hundred kilometres away.

CUSTOMER ADMITS RAT-IN-BURGER CON APPLETON, WIS., (UPI) – A Wisconsin woman who brought a dead rat to a restaurant and hid it in her food in an attempt to obtain money from the business pleaded no contest to extortion.

Debbie Miller, 43, pleaded no-contest to a felony extortion charge and a misdemeanor charge of obstructing police in Judge Dee Dyer’s Appleton courtroom Tuesday, the Appleton Post-Crescent reported Wednesday.

Miller, who is scheduled to be sentenced March 8 in Outagamie County Court, was accused of bringing a dead rat to The Seasons restaurant April 17, 2008, and planting it in her food. Authorities said she threatened to go to the media if restaurant bosses would not pay her $500,000.

However, tests on the rat verified that it was a domestic breed, not a wild animal, and had been cooked in a microwave. The Seasons does not use microwaves.

The extortion charge carries a maximum penalty of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, while the obstructing police charge carries a maximum jail sentence of 9 months and a $10,000 fine.

POLICE: AMERICAN IDOL SPARKED STABBING ST. PETERSBURG, FLA., (UPI) – Florida police said they arrested a woman who allegedly stabbed and severely burned her boyfriend after an argument over American Idol.

St. Petersburg police spokeswoman Jennifer Dawkins said Cynthia Bettis-Ware, 52, and Kevin Johnson, 47, began arguing about the events on American Idol while watching the Fox program Tuesday at the Empress Motel, which they list as their permanent address, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported Thursday.

Dawkins said Johnson changed the channel to stop the fighting and went to bed and that Bettis-Ware insisted on continuing the argument.

Dawkins said Johnson awoke as Bettis-Ware stabbed him five times in the back and twice in the chest with a butter knife. She also severely burned him with hot cocoa before he managed to take the knife and run from the motel room.

Bettis-Ware chased Johnson with a second knife until a crowd formed outside and she went back into the room, where police arrested her, Dawkins said. She was charged with first-degree attempted murder and held at the Pinellas County jail without bail.

JOYRIDING 8-YEAR-OLD DRIVES INTO CREEK POTTSVILLE, PA., JAN. 28 (UPI) – Police in Pennsylvania said an 8-year-old joyriding in his grandmother’s car was not injured when he plunged the vehicle into a creek.

Investigators said the boy took his grandmother’s car for a spin in Schuylkill County’s North Manheim Township and drove over an embankment on Market Road, causing the vehicle to land on its side in the water, WFMZ-TV, Allentown, Pa., reported Thursday.

The boy was uninjured and was able to climb out a window, police said.

29 January 2010

Climate deadline PR stunt

By Ian Wishart, & NZPA

The Green Party has slapped the Government for failing to meet a UN deadline on climate change, even though the deadline no longer exists.

The UN IPCC had given countries until January 31st to sign up to the Copenhagen Accord with details of their emissions cuts programme to 2020, but the UN confirmed a week ago it was abandoning the January 31st deadline in the wake of the Copenhagen debacle.

“The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday”reported the Financial Times last week,“after the United Nations waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.

“Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth. But Yvo de Boer, the UN’s senior climate change official, admitted the deadline had in effect been shelved. “ ‘By [the end of] January, countries will have the opportunity to . . . indicate if they want to be associated with the accord’, he said.“[Governments could] indicate by the deadline,or they can also indicate later.”

In line with that, Prime Minister John Key recently made it clear that he saw the January 31 deadline as movable and New Zealand would not be signing until its conditions were met.

Among the Government’s concerns is that it wants rules altered so forests planted pre-1990 can be harvested and re-planted elsewhere in the coun-

try. It also wants a change to the rules around wood so that emissions are not counted if felled wood is to be used, for example, in furniture rather than burnt.

New Zealand made progress on those issues at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen last month but nothing was ratified.

New Zealand’s conditional target for reducing climate harming emissions is to reach 10-20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

At a media conference earlier this month Mr Key said he did not expect to be signing up by the initial deadline:“Eventually we are going to sign it... we are going to work our way through negotiations.”

Yet in a news release today Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said that position cast doubt on the Government’s intent to tackle climate change.

He admitted January 31 would be seen as a “soft deadline”but missing it was not a good signal.

The Government was worried about restrictions on the ability of New Zealand to meet targets by importing emissions credits, Dr Norman said.

“If every country takes the approach of importing carbon credits rather than actually cutting domestic emissions, then we will fail to cut greenhouse emissions globally. Our children will inherit the result,”Dr Norman said.

The UN talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement that fell well short of countries’ original goals after prolonged negotiations failed to paper over differences between rich nations and the developing world.

Critics have complained the explicit deal struck to limit global warming to 2 deg C provided no details of how this goal would be reached, and that the emission cuts that were promised would be insufficient to get there.

Meanwhile, a new peer reviewed study in the journal Nature published this week has revealed the computer models used by the UN IPCC may have seriously overestimated the amount of warming feedback caused by rising CO2.

The latest study caps off a horror week for the IPCC, after being forced to admit it was wrong about melting Himalayan glaciers, and that it had relied on press releases from lobby-group WWF, rather than peer reviewed scientific studies, on a range of issues.

Then came the news yesterday that climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had indeed broken the law by suppressing data and hiding information away from skeptical scientists.

Williams snaps Achilles tendon WELLINGTON, JAN 29 – All Blacks lock Ali Williams’ rugby season may have lasted just four minutes after hobbling out of tonight’s Super 14 pre-season match between the Blues and Chiefs at Albany.

Williams is expected to undergo surgery early next week after appearing to injure the troubling achilles tendon which required an operation last July and saw him miss the entire 2009 All Blacks campaign.

Initial reports tonight suggest the injury is the same as eight months ago and could even see 28-year-old Blues forward Williams sidelined for all of 2010.

After falling awkwardly Williams being escorted from the North Harbour Stadium by two Blues medical staff, struggling to put weight on his lower right leg.

The game was less than four minutes old and will be an enormous wrench for Williams, who had

trained well with the Blues for the past six weeks, had undergone a careful recovery from the injury, as well as a shoulder operation. He recently spent time in California as part of his recuperation.

If Williams is ruled out of international rugby, it will be an enormous blow to the All Blacks and their coach Graham Henry, who struggled to replace the athletic Aucklander last year. Isaac Ross was employed with mixed success through the June tests and Tri-Nations while provincial journeyman Tom Donnelly was an effective performer on the season-ending tour.

Williams’last test was in 2008, a season when he started all 15 tests.

His injury follows news that long-time locking partner Chris Jack will be sidelined for a month with a wrist injury. Jack rejoined the Crusaders this year after two years overseas.

– NZPA

$1.5B broadband plan gets closer WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – A group of regional lines and fibre companies have put their hat in the ring to work with the Government on its $1.5 billion broadband roll-out.

The 19-strong New Zealand Regional Fibre Group (NZRFG),today submitted what it called a number of closely aligned proposals for consideration in the Government’s ultra-fast broadband initiative.

The group said its bids covered about 80 percent of the country and it was proposing to extend out beyond the 33 main centres the Government has highlighted as priorities for ultra-fast fibre broadband.

NZRFG founding member Vector also hoped to secure the Auckland region contract – where it already has substantial investment in fibre.

Vector chief executive Simon Mackenzie said that in its submission to Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH), which is running the tender process,Vector proposed to take its ultra-fast fibre network past 133,000 Auckland premises, including 18,000 businesses, within two years, connect 255 Auckland schools and 57 medical facilities within three years and pass 57

percent of businesses within four years.

Two of the NZRFG bids are consortium-based and many others incorporate regional collaboration between members.

The consortium proposals are from Waikato-based WEL Networks (the combination of WEL, Waipa and Velocity Networks and Hamilton Fibre Network), plus the Otago and Southland joint venture partnership of Flute Network (Dunedin and Central Otago’s Aurora Energy,along with Southland’s Electricity Invercargill and The Power Company).

Aurora Energy and the management company representing the other two Flute partners, PowerNet, are NZRFG members.

However, all other South Island NZRFG members – Enable Networks, Network Tasman, Electricity Ashburton,Alpine Energy, Network Waitaki and Westpower – were will to work together.

Northpower has also submitted a bid for the Northland region.

The North Island trio of Unison, Horizon Energy and Eastland Group have all expressed interest in

rolling out the initiative across their geographic areas.

CityLink and Electra have pitched further proposals to establish fibre networks in the Government’s preferred candidate areas in the lower North Island.

Telecom earlier today said it had provide a preferred commercial model proposal and an alternative commercial model to CFH. The alternative proposal focuses on delivering a national network using Telecom’s fibre-to-thenode programme as the logical springboard for the Government’s vision of fibre-to-the-home proposal, said chief executive Paul Reynolds.

CFH chairman Simon Allen said he would know by the end of the day how many proposals had come in after 38 expressions of interest were received in November last year.

CFH will evaluate the proposals before reporting to Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce – NZPA

NEW ZEALAND

29 January 2010

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NIWA: Sorry, summer ends cold, like it began WELLINGTON, JAN 29 – There may not be much of a difference in temperatures as autumn slips in to replace an uninspiring summer, National Climate centre NIWA says.

The current El Nino continues at moderate strength in the Pacific, but is likely to weaken during the autumn.

That means temperatures were likely to continue to be on the cool side, and drier than normal conditions were also likely to continue in the north of the North Island.

The centre’s latest climate outlook forecasts that for February to April mean sea level pressures were likely to be higher than normal to the north of the country and will be associated with slightly stronger than normal westerlies over the country.

NIWA said autumn rainfall totals were likely to be in the normal or below normal range in the north and east of the North Island and in Marlborough, normal or above normal in the western South Island, and in the normal range in other regions.

Temperatures were likely to be near average or below average in all regions.There would still be variability, with some warm spells at times, especially in eastern regions in north-westerly wind conditions.

River flows and soil moisture were likely to be near normal or below normal in the North Island, near normal in the north and east of the South Island,and normal or above normal in the western South Island.

Regional predictions for the next three months: Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty:

Temperatures were equally likely to be near average or below average. Seasonal rainfall totals were expected to be near normal or below normal, while river flows and soil moisture levels were forecast to be below normal.

Central North Island, Taranaki, Wanganui, Manawatu and Wellington:

Seasonal temperatures were likely to be average or below average. Rainfall was expected to be near normal, while stream flows and soil moisture levels were likely to be near normal or below normal, for

the three months as a whole.

Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa:

Temperatures averaged over the three months were likely to be near average or below average. Seasonal rainfall totals, stream flows and soil moisture levels were forecast to be below normal.

Nelson, Marlborough, Buller:

Seasonal temperatures were expected to be below average. Rainfalls, stream flows and soil moisture levels were likely to be normal overall,but with below normal rainfalls more likely in the east of the region.

West Coast, Alps and Foothills, Inland Otago, Southland:

Temperatures were forecast to be average or below average. Seasonal rainfall, stream flows and soil moisture levels are equally likely to be near normal or above normal.

Coastal Canterbury, East Otago:

Temperatures were expected to be near average.

Seasonal rainfall totals,soil moisture levels and stream flows were all forecast to be in the normal range.

in BRIEF Kiwi drops half a cent WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – The New Zealand dollar ended its domestic session recovered from a dip to near US70c and dealers said risk aversion continues to be the dominant sentiment in the market at the moment.

The NZ dollar was US70.43c at 5pm from US70.36c at 8am and US70.99c at 5pm yesterday.

Dealers attributed a dip to US70.14c around 1pm local time to a run lower by the Australian dollar, rather than a speech on monetary policy by Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard.

In a speech to the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce, Dr Bollard said that New Zealand’s inflation targeting monetary policy had proven flexible, durable and successful, but economic growth required more than this.

The NZ dollar had risen to around US70.60c but fell from that level when the Australian dollar was sold quite aggressively, a dealer said.

He attributed the selling to ongoing risk aversion and a shift in sentiment about the prospects of further rate rises in Australia.

The euro also hit a nine-month low against the yen and a six-month low against the dollar today as concerns about Greece’s fiscal situation intensified.

Weakness in the euro has also affected sentiment for high risk currencies like the NZ dollar.

The Australian dollar was US89.26c at 5pm from US90.15c at same time yesterday. The Australian dollar market was seen by dealers as having potential for a squeeze on those holding short, or previously sold, positions.

Traders are also waiting for US fourth quarter gross domestic product figures. The US economy was expected to have grown by an annualised 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter, double the rate for the third quarter.

The NZ dollar market may be affected by a public holiday in Auckland on Monday but the market operates normally.

Against the Australian dollar the NZ dollar was A78.93c at 5pm from A78.73c yesterday. It was worth 0.5052 euro from 0.5062 yesterday and 63.38 yen from 64.11 yen.

The trade weighted index dropped to 64.72 from yesterday 64.97.

– NZPA

RICKARDS APPLIES TO BE DUTY SOLICITOR WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – Controversial former top cop Clint Rickards has applied to become a duty solicitor in Auckland.

Legal sources confirmed to NZPA tonight that Mr Rickards applied to the Legal Services Agency, which is still considering his application. About a month ago it was reported he had completed the courses necessary to become a duty solicitor.

His work as a defence lawyer could see him cross examining victims of sexual assaults.

Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas alleged in 2004 that she had been the victim of sexual violence in Rotorua in the 1980s at the hands of Mr Rickards as well as two other police officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum.

Mr Rickards was assistant commissioner of police when her allegation became public.

All three were found not guilty of sexual violence charges against her at a 2006 High Court trial, and of sex charges against another unnamed Rotorua woman a year later.

PARTY BUS CO. RULED UNSAFE FOR SCHOOLS WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – Auckland bus operator PBC Party Bus has had its school bus contracts terminated after some of its vehicles failed safety tests.

Concerns were raised following police spot checks on commercial vehicles found a number of buses in the company’s fleet were not roadworthy. Subsequent checks by the New Zealand Transport Agency also found a number of defects.

The Education Ministry today said it would not compromise on safety even if it meant terminating a contract so close to the new school term.

Alternative providers had been found to replace most school bus services in the North Shore and Northland areas provided by the company.

The ministry said it had worked with the police and the New Zealand Transport Agency to restore confidence in the safety of the company’s fleet, however it was not given the assurance it needed so terminated the contract.

NZERS STILL AMONG THOSE STRANDED IN PERU WELLINGTON, JAN 29 NZPA – Seven New Zealanders remain stranded at the fabled Machu Picchu in Peru following a weekend of flooding and mudslides that cut access to the area.

So far 14 New Zealand tourists have been rescued from the area and flown to Cusco in southeast Peru, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokeswoman told NZPA. It was not known exactly when the remaining seven would be airlifted out, she said.

“But we’re in contact with them and they are safe and well.

“Peruvian authorities are continuing their evacuation efforts and that’s been working quite well,” she said.

“We’re just waiting to hear the news about the rest of them coming out.”

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EDITORIAL

29 January 2010

Editorial

The melting of public opinion John Key and his team must really be wondering what they sucked themselves into, when it comes to climate change.

From Nick Smith’s gung-ho days last year, where climate change was a number one priority, to the trainwreck that was Copenhagen just before Christmas, it’s a salutary lesson in how politics can change on a dime.

Around the world, OECD governments who bought into the catastrophic climate change lie are now witnessing voters desert them by the truckload, as public faith in climate science melts faster than a Himalayan glacier.

Far faster, in fact, after revelations that the 2035 disappearing Himalayas claim was fictional, even though it had not only appeared in the IPCC 2007 report but even – can you believe this – been rated as“very likely”(more than 90% certain) to occur.

I dealt with the melting glaciers meme in Air Con, but for anyone with even half a brain it should have been obvious that the highest mountain range in the world, where temperatures are so far below freezing that you’d need a 30C rise in temperature to melt the ice, was not going to disappear in 28 years, let alone three hundred years. It’s a fair bet the Himalayas might never disappear.

President Obama, who once boasted of turning back the rising oceans, and whose every breath last year seemed to incorporate climate change, spent only a few seconds on the topic in his State of the Union address this week, and even then he was laughed at. (It’s a must-watch clip!)

The tide on climate change has turned. In New Zealand there has been a massive drop in public belief about global warming being caused by humans, and likewise across the world. The latest

US polls have the issue ranking dead last in the top 20 issues of public concern.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did an Obama and made climate change almost invisible in his state of the nation addresses this month.

And yet New Zealand is now one of the few countries in the world lumbered with an Emissions Trading Scheme, because our government was dumb enough to buy into the hype, thanks mainly to Nick Smith.

There is still time to convince John Key to pull out, and you can email him (politely) with your comments.

On the home front, we’re delighted to report a recovery by little Isabella, whose finger was amputated just before Christmas. Despite the surgeons’ pessimism, we prayed, the finger took, and she’s had a good summer after all.Thanks for all your prayers SUBSCRIBE TO TGIF! and best wishes.

Comment

Manchester United’s U.S. owner leaves fans seeing red

By Henry Chu Los Angeles Times

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – Who says religion is dead in Britain?

This industrial city is full of true believers who pack their chosen temples, sing their anthems and stone the occasional heretic.What does it matter that the houses of worship are sports stadiums,the saints (and sinners) are strapping lads in jerseys and shorts, and followers live and die by goals and penalty kicks?

But there’s trouble in paradise, at least for fans of Manchester United, the world-famous team that’s been home to stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

Man United, or just plain United to the faithful, is one of the richest, most successful squads in English history, with scads of trophies to its name. It’s a global brand whose enormous reach can be seen in the red jerseys worn by admirers from Johannesburg to Japan.Ticket sales, tacky memorabilia and victories on the field keep the revenue and the recognition rolling in.

Yet the franchise is drowning in debts exceeding $1 billion.

Yes, that’s billion with a B, as in“Beckham,”who got his start here, bending it like no one else. Or as in“bonds,”which the club issued in desperation last week – $800 million worth – to try to claw itself out of its hole.

And B as in“bloodyYanks,”who are the ones that many, if not most, of United’s fans blame for the unholy mess their beloved team has gotten into.

They curse the name of Malcolm Glazer, the

tic banner at a protest outside Old Trafford, United’s stadium, before a game Saturday. Inside, spectators chanted:“Love United, hate Glazer,”a slogan that’s also on stickers slapped on lampposts around the neighborhood.

A shout of“Stand up if you hate Glazer”got threeAmerican processed-foods tycoon and owner of the quarters of the fans in the stadium – which seats Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who engineered a highly 76,000 people – to their feet, news reports said. leveraged buyout of Man United in 2005, taking it “What irritates me more than anything else,” off the stock market and turning it into a private Bradford told an American reporter,“is that Maltrophy, albeit one saddled with debt. colm Glazer has done this very American thing – That was insult enough for the many fans who please don’t take offense – where he buys the club, had bought shares in the team out of a fierce sense of then uses that to pay off his debts.” loyalty and a desire to own a personal stake, however “Malcolm Glazer isn’t a football fan,” Bradford small, in the club. added.“Malcolm Glazer is a businessman. . . . He’s Now there’s injury too. come over here and bought Manchester United Even as United founders financially, if not in the because of the brand and how big we were, but I standings, its cross-town rival, Manchester City, is on don’t think he understands football”– or the special the ascent.Like Man United,City has a relatively new culture that surrounds the sport in Britain. foreign owner. But he’s an oil sheik from Abu Dhabi, Like many soccer teams here, United began, in United Arab Emirates, who has been showering the 1878, as a local amateur workingman’s club. It has team with cash,enough for it to poach star Argentine always been firmly rooted in the community. striker CarlosTevez last year from – who else – United.

But fans say that they and their concerns are now Just to rub it in, Tevez scored two goals during being given the cold shoulder by Glazer and his six City’s shocking 2-1 win over United last week in adult children, all of whom sit on the board. United the Carling Cup tournament. United avenged the followers especially are smarting over an increase in loss Wednesday with a 3-1 victory that earned it a ticket prices and a new season-ticket scheme, unique spot in the cup finals. among soccer clubs in Britain, that obliges holders Still, City supporters, no less fanatical than their to pay for cup games as well if they want to hold United counterparts, can barely keep from crowing on to their subscriptions. Many fans feel that they as their Persian Gulf petrodollars take it to Ameri- are paying for the Glazers’sins. can financing.

“They haven’t put in any money at all – just taken “The arrogance that Manchester United as a foot- money out of it,” said Duncan Drasdo, who heads ball club and their supporters have shown over the an organization of supporters that’s campaigning years – it’s come back to bite them in the bottom,” to oust the Glazer family.“They’re opportunistic, Kevin Parker, a die-hard City man for nearly 40 seeing where they can grab value at the expense years, said gleefully.“Nobody will really be crying of other people.” over what’s happening to Manchester United.”

Only the sale of Ronaldo, who may be the world’s Except, that is, for United fans, who glumly rec- best soccer player, to Real Madrid for the record ognize the change in fortunes (literally). sum of about $130 million prevented the club from “Manchester United at the moment is like an old posting a loss last year. tractor dragging a dead weight behind it – 760 milIn a spot of good news, enough investors were conlion pounds in debt,”said Liam Bradford, who helps fident in the team, if not necessarily the Glazers, that edit a United fanzine.“Man City is like a brand-new last week’s bond issue was heavily oversubscribed. tractor going on rocket fuel.”

But fans reel at reports that lawyers’ fees for the Tension between devotees of the two sides has bond issue added an additional $24 million to the been especially ugly as they face off in the Carling club’s debit column.

Cup, a tournament involving 92 English soccer Antipathy for the Glazer family is so virulent teams.And as in all such wars of religion that have that Man United’s revered manager, Alex Ferguracked this island nation, people have gotten hurt. son, who has avoided criticizing his Yankee bosses, In last week’s matchup at City’s stadium, someone has appealed to fans to“stand together rather than in the stands lobbed a lighter at United player Patrice take action that will damage ourselves more than Evra.Police also confiscated other potential projectiles anyone else.” from fans – golf balls and darts – and made more than But no one seems in a mood to heed Ferguson’s a dozen arrests. Security was extra tight for Wednes- plea. Someone is tampering with their core beliefs, day’s game; about a dozen people were arrested. dissing the sacred relationship between team and But for all the hostility directed at their rivals,fans fans and proving themselves to be poor stewards. of Man United,also known as the Red Devils because The sooner the Glazers are gone, the better, many of the horned devil on the club crest,are hurling more United fans say.And then, with a sigh of relief and invective these days at their own team’s owners. probably a swig of beer, they can finally go back to “Glazer – forever in your debt,”declared a sarcas- the Devils they know.

5

Spare a thought for Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE – Despite baking heat, hundreds of Haitians queue up every day before embassies and consulates in Port-au-Prince, in the hope of getting a visa that will allow them to leave behind their ruined country.

But only very few have a real chance of getting out of Haiti, an extremely poor nation devastated on January 12 by the quake whose death toll has already reached 170,000.

People stand in line for hours, holding children by the hand and carrying documents, confident that their particular quake tragedy will move diplomatic officials. They often have nothing to back up a visa request beyond their wish for a better life.

There are many such stories, but they are basically one and the same: those standing in line have relatives abroad that they would like to join, they lost their home in the quake, they have children who are nationals of another country, they lack opportunities within Haiti, they lost their job, the university they used to attend collapsed.

Canadian and French diplomatic missions are among the favourites, due to the language factor. In Haiti, many people speak French as well as Creole. There are also long queues at the US Embassy, and at the Embassy of the Dominican Republic, which shares with Haiti the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

US soldiers guard their country’s embassy, near Portau-Prince airport. People sit in the sun, without water, shade or even a hat for protection, eager to tell their story to anyone willing to listen.

“I have no home to live in, I need my family. I don’t know if I can go, but I want to go. I’m here to look for the chance to go to the United States,” says Reginald Doblass.

Doblass, who is waiting in line with his sister, has relatives in Boston.

Rose Marcelin Pierre, 28, comes up with two children, aged 8 and 9. All are impecably dressed, with clean clothes and well-combed hair, even though they are living in a camp since the quake destroyed their home. Rose’s husband lives in Orlando and has legal residence in the United States. Now, she wants to join him.

“They said no, they told me to go back home. They are only dealing with US citizens,” she says sadly.

Anothen broken dream. Another fate decided.

Aline Ramo and her son, Dan, who is 11 months old, are lucky. They were summoned to sort out the paperwork to get the boy a passport.

She has a visa, and Dan’s father is a US citizen. They are hoping to go to Connecticut.

Similar scenes take place in the Canadian Embassy.

Andrelie Benjamin wants to move in with her uncle, who is a Haitian-Canadian.

“I lost my house. We have nothing, only what I’m wearing,” she says.

But Canadian officials already turned her down.

“Only Canadians can go in. I want to get out of Haiti, my whole family is abroad. If they cannot do anything for me, at least for my mother, who is 70 years old,” Benjamin says.

Andrelie leaves her phone number, she insists, even if the person she is talking to says they cannot help.

“You never know, maybe. I’ll also give you my brother’s number,” she says.

Junior Francois is 25 and depressed. He used to study law and was planning to graduate in July from the State University in Port-au-Prince, but the building collapsed.

Now he has no lessons or job, beyond some occasional work as a Creole translator for the many foreigners that have arrived in Port- au-Prince since the quake.

Wherever he goes, he takes his documents, and the photos of a trip he made to the Dominican Republic as a representative of his school, just to show that he has travelled. He shows a Dominican visa that is stuck onto his passport.

Francois dreams of getting to see Paris, but so far he has only gotten to the Swiss Embassy. And it was to no avail.

“For four years I left home at 6 in the morning and I returned at 8 in the evening,” he says. “I spent all my savings in books. Now I have nothing. What am I going to do?

My life has been destroyed.”

– DPA

ANALYSIS

6

29 January 2010

WE HAVE CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THAT OFTEN CAN’T BE FULFILLED. “THIS IS ABOUT GOING IN WITH A REALISTIC VIEWPOINT

Long love

Study examines successes of lengthiest marriages

By Anita Creamer McClatchy Newspapers

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. – At the statistical intersection where increased life expectancy balances out the divorce rate, there is a surprising new cultural demographic: More Americans are reaching and exceeding the 40th wedding anniversary.

What’s keeping more married couples together ‘til death do them part? Todd Migliaccio, a Sacramento State associate professor of sociology,is working to figure that out in a series of interviews with area couples married 30 years or longer,or with a surviving spouse.

“We tend to focus on the fact that more people get divorced now,” said Migliaccio, 37, who set the demographic bar for his research at 30 years of mar-

riage to include more couples’ stories.“But maybe we should focus on the increasing number who stay married longer.”

It’s a sunnier approach,after all.There’s only so much the group most at risk of divorce – newlyweds married five years or less – have to share with the world.

On the other hand, couples who have stuck it out through thick and thin might have a few things to teach us.

So far, Migliaccio has interviewed six couples, some of whom he found after posting a request for volunteers at Sacramento’s Hart Senior Center. His plan was to videotape them talking about their long and happy marriages as a way to sweeten the dose of reality he provides students in class.

“I have students who, at the end of class tell me, ‘I don’t want to be married,’”he said.“I tell them, ‘This is not about scaring you. It’s so you can go into marriage with open eyes.’

“We have certain expectations of marriage and family that often can’t be fulfilled,”Migliaccio added.

“This is about going in with a realistic viewpoint.”

Compare that with the pop-culture focus on brides, wedding dresses and ridiculously expensive weddings, which all but ignores the fact that after the wedding comes the marriage.

“I knew I was in love when he went away on vacation with his parents,”said Barbara Metzinger, who had been married to her husband,Ernest,for 60 years when he died in the spring of 2007 at the age of 80.

Metzinger is not among Migliaccio’s interview subjects, but she should be.

“While he was away on vacation, we both just about died being separated,”she said.“It was prob-

ably puppy love, but to us it was real. And it grew into a great big love.

“Everybody starts with what they think is true love, but it takes many years of living together for that deep love to take hold,”Metzinger said.

They met when she was 15 and he was 19, a sailor just home from serving in World War II.They married a month after her 16th birthday.

“I loved his family,”said Metzinger, a 79-year-old state worker who lives in Carmichael, Calif.“When I met his family, I could see this would be a happy marriage and a happy life.”

It was, through raising four kids – who have since produced 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandkids, with one more on the way – and through their share of ups and downs.

“Leaving was never an option,” she said.“Even in some of our darkest days, it was never discussed.

We loved each other.We were going to go forever.”

Sacramento resident Judie Panneton and her husband, John, have been married almost 29 years.

Panneton, 56, says she fully expects them to cross the line into Migliaccio’s research demographic when they celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2011.

“If you weather storms together, which we have over the years, and if you grow closer rather than apart, then in the future you can weather just about anything,”she said.

OK, but what exactly does that involve?

Metzinger suggests negotiation, as well as having both shared and individual interests. Panneton says respect is the key.

They’re both right, says Migliaccio. Communication, respect and shared interests are among the themes emerging from his interviews.

“These are not check boxes,”he said.“You develop a communication style and openness, and from that comes common interests and respect for the individual. I’m trying to get my students to stop looking for check boxes and the ideal picture.”

He also wants his students to learn that sooner or later, every marriage faces difficulties.

“The key is how you overcome obstacles,”he said.

“Every marriage that’s together 40 years is not perfect all the time. These people had their problems, and they worked through them.

Walker’s World

The lost generation

By Martin Walker

PARIS – A specter is starting to haunt Europe.Youth unemployment is reaching record levels and the implications for social stability are alarming.

Unemployment among those ages 15-24 is now averaging 20 percent across Europe, with an extraordinary peak of 43 percent in Spain. But it is above 20 percent even in prosperous Luxemburg, the country with the highest income per capita in the European Union.

Youth unemployment is expected to surge even higher in June as a new class of school-leavers and fresh university graduates hits the sluggish labor markets.

Youth unemployment grew dramatically last year, according to the latest figures from Eurostat, the EU statistical arm. Between January and October 2009 it soared from 18 percent to 24 percent in Ireland; from 12 percent to 18 percent in the Czech Republic; from 21 percent to 28 percent in Slovakia; from 18 percent to 28 percent in Finland; and from 17 percent to 24 percent in Denmark.

Only Germany and Holland succeeded in keeping unemployment rates stable at not much more than 10 percent, with generous labor market subsidies, training programs and free higher education. But some of these measures run out this year, with governments hard put to find new money to continue them, particularly when there are no new jobs for the trainees once their courses finish.

The obvious concern is the kind of youth unrest that has roiled the streets of Athens this winter, or the mass demonstrations that have become a regular feature of French life, or the kind of riots

that swept through some of Britain’s ethnic neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the United Kingdom, the Prince’s Trust (sponsored by the future King Charles) has identified a different kind of concern:the levels of drug and alcohol abuse and despair that are building a lost generation.

The impact of such an unskilled, inexperienced and pessimistic generation can affect labor markets,economic output and political life for decades as their children grow up in underprivileged homes.

“The emotional effects on young people are profound, long term and can become irreversible. We must act now to prevent a lost generation of young people before it is too late,” said Martina Milburn,

that today’s unemployed do not become tomorrow’s unemployable.”

The trust, a charity, is seeking to raise US$75 million this year to help steer unemployed youth into jobs or training programs. But at $1.50 per week for each of them, that will not achieve much. And the current financial straits of the British economy and government finances mean there is not much public money available for more education or training programs. The U.K. government’s share of the economy is expected to hit 50 percent this year, well ahead of Germany.

Youth unemployment in the United States is more than 19 percent and is expected to top 20 percent

A POLL FOUND THAT ONE IN 10 OF THOSE WHO HAD BEEN OUT OF WORK HAD TURNED TO DRUG OR ALCOHOL ABUSE. AND THOSE WITHOUT WORK OR A PLACE IN HIGHER EDUCATION OR IN A TRAINING PROGRAM WERE TWICE AS LIKELY TO FEEL DOWN, DEPRESSED, ISOLATED OR REJECTED the trust’s chief executive, as she launched a report this month into Britain’s 1 million young jobless.

A poll commissioned by the trust found that one in 10 of those who had been out of work had turned to drug or alcohol abuse.And those without work or a place in higher education or in a training program were twice as likely to feel down, depressed, isolated or rejected.

Young people bore the brunt of the recession, Milburn added.“The result is a generation of undiscovered skills and talents. We must invest in these young people, rebuilding their self-esteem, to ensure

this year.But it is much higher among ethnic minorities,and levels of incarceration are traditionally very much higher in the United States than in Europe.

The real alarm about youth unemployment is that there is little sign in Europe or the United States of much relief this year,as the bumpy recession proceeds at too slow a pace to get companies hiring again.Business investment late last year was 20 percent down on the already diminished levels of 2008.

There is not much sign of new vigour in the European economies,where the credit crunch is hitting the ability of governments in Greece and Eastern Europe

to borrow.Even the United Kingdom is worrying that its AAA credit rating may get marked down.

It is a curious twilight period, with the recession theoretically over but not much recovery under way and stretched governments already wary of any more deficit spending. Even if youth unemployment does not translate into riots and crime, the real price could be paid in the years to come as a lost generation with little motivation, less training and few prospects – and drug or alcohol dependency – drags down the economy of the future.

– UPI

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WORLD

8

update

in 60 seconds US PROTESTS IRAN EXECUTIONS WASHINGTON (DPA) – The United States strongly condemned Iran’s execution of two dissidents overnight, saying the murderous act was a “low point” in the Islamic state’s repression of political speech.

“The US strongly condemns these unjust executions,” White House deputy spokesman Bill Burton said. “We see it as a low point in the Islamic Republic’s unjust and ruthless crackdown of peaceful dissent.”

Iran hung two dissidents early this morning and sentenced nine others to die. Iran accused the two men, Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, of being members of monarchist groups plotting attacks against Islamic rule.

They were also accused of belonging to the armed People’s Mujaheddin, a group Iran considers a terrorist organization.

Iran has arrested and charged hundreds of people following mass demonstrations that broke out in August after President Mahmoud Ajmadinejad was re-elected in what protestors called fraudulent balloting.

There were conflicting reports about when the two executed men were arrested.

“Murdering political prisoners who are exercising their universal rights will not bring the respect and legitimacy the Islamic Republic seeks,” Burton said. “It will only serve to further isolate Iran’s government in the world and from its people.”

SEVEN IS MICROSOFT’S LUCKY NUMBER SEATTLE (DPA) – The successful launch of new operating system Windows 7 propelled Microsoft to record revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, the software giant reported today.

Microsoft reported net income of US6.7 billion, a 60 per cent increase on the year prior, while revenue rose 18 per cent to 19 billion dollars.

“This is a record quarter for Windows units,” Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, said in a news release.

“We are thrilled by the consumer reception to Windows 7 and by business enthusiasm to adopt Windows 7.”

The company said it sold more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses in the second quarter, making the operating system Microsoft’s fastest-selling in history.

That helped the company’s Windows and Windows Live division rack up 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, an increase of about a third over the period a year earlier.

But Microsoft’s entertainment division, which includes its Xbox business, saw revenue fall from 3.3 billion dollars to 2.9 billion dollars, while its Business Division’s revenue also tapered from 4.88 billion dollars to 4.74 billion dollars.

MARKETS SLUMP IN US NEW YORK (DPA) – US stocks fell today, continuing a global sell-off amid renewed fears that Greece will not be able to pay off its debts.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that the European Union was considering financial aid for Greece, but the report was denied by Germany and France. European stocks fell earlier in the day.

With one trading day left in January, the decline puts the Dow Jones Industrial Average on pace for its worst monthly performance in nearly a year. The morning selloff was fed by worse than expected figures on weekly jobless claims and durable goods orders.

Markets rallied slightly in the afternoon in anticipation of the Senate confirming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second four-year term at the helm of the US central bank.

The Senate’s 70-30 vote came soon after markets closed, ending investors’ jitters over a popular backlash against Bernanke’s Fed and government bail-outs that could have derailed his nomination.

Technology stocks were hit after chipmaker Qualcomm reduced its sales forecast. The company’s chief executive Paul Jacobs blamed the numbers on a “subdued” economic recovery in the United States.

The blue-chip Dow fell 115.7 points, or 1.13 per cent, to 10,120.46. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 12.97 points, or 1.18 per cent, to 1,084.53.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 42.41 points, or 1.91 per cent, to 2,179.

The US currency climbed against the euro to 71.58 euro cents from 71.3 euro cents on Thursday. But the dollar edged lower against the Japanese currency to 89.91 yen from 89.95 yen a day earlier.

29 January 2010

Talkfest pushes global governance DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – The World Economic Forum (WEF) saw divergent views between politicians and business leaders over financial regulation today, as calls continued to come in from leaders for global cooperation and reform.

“We need to reform international financial institutions, tighten global financial regulation and put in place regional financial assistance mechanisms,” China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang said.

He pledged the emerging powerhouse economy, set to become number two in the world in the near future, would focus on internal consumption as a means of growth.

The economic crisis dictates that countries“work in tandem with each other,”the vice premier told the gathering of 2,500 politicians and business leaders in Davos.

His calls for regulation and reform were similar to speeches delivered President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who opened the forum yesterday, and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who holds the chair of the G20 group of emerging and developed economies.

“The focus of the G20 must shift toward putting in place the longer term framework for policy coordination that will ensure the sustainable and balanced growth of the world economy,”said Lee. Fears of too strong a backlash against big banks and companies were being heard in the Davos corridors, as it became clearer that many governments, including those of US President Barack Obama and Gordon Brown in London, were in favour of tightening the reigns.

Various businessmen,including George Soros,were using the forum as a chance to press a point that too many taxes and rules would hurt the recovery.

This view seemed to get some backing from Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, a country that did not need to bail out a bank, who said his government “will not go down the path of excessive, arbitrary or punitive regulation of its financial sector.”

“Bank bashing” would lead to overregulation

Financial institutions should set up internal safeguards against problems that reared their heads in previous years, said Ferit Sahenk, a Turkish financier.

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean Claude Trichet said banks must cut dividends as well as bonuses in order to restructure their balance sheets and start issuing loans to the“real economy.”

Politicians were still feeling public upset over the crisis – the retaliation against “obscene” bonuses was the most overt sign of this anger – and recalled that it was the state that bailed out business when that model failed.

But even with a recovery apparently underway, which politicians said was largely a result of concerted government actions through forums like the G20,it was on shaky legs,and would anyway be weak.

The debate at Davos was heading towards one focused on whether a new model of capitalism could be devised, as suggested by this year’s slogan: “Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild.”

Issues like labour rights, medical care, the environment and other aspects of the new-old capitalism were tossed around inside the debate rooms as FEARS OF TOO STRONG snow fell outside in the Swiss mountain town.

The mantra of renewing the market-economy was A BACKLASH AGAINST repeated by numerous participants, even if exact, BIG BANKS AND COMPANIES concrete measures were not presented, at a forum WERE BEING HEARD IN more inclined towards ideas and theoretical ideals than decision making.

THE DAVOS CORRIDORS, And former US president Bill Clinton was in AS IT BECAME CLEARER Davos to help bring attention to Haiti.

Amid debates on the sidelines about the need to THAT MANY GOVERNMENTS rethink how to deliver assistance in emergencies, WERE IN FAVOUR OF Clinton took up the centre stage to call for more TIGHTENING THE REIGNS donations to the poor and earthquake-struck nation, along with private sector investment. and hamper growth, said Jacob Wallenberg, with Sitting next to him was Denis O’Brien, from the Investor AB, a Nordic holding company, echoing Irish company Digicel, who urged other capitalists comments by Ben Verwaayen of Alcatel-Lucent, to invest in Haiti with the call:“Don’t do it just for who was marketing an idea of“cohesive capitalism” altruistic reasons but for economic reasons.” that took more than profits into account.

– DPA

Ford accelerates into profit

By Jerry Hirsch Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – Ford Motor Co. posted a profit of US$2.7 billion for the year, a dramatic turnaround for the company, which weathered one of the worst years in the history of the automotive industry in comparatively good health.

Separately, Ford confirmed it has stopped making a limited-production commercial van in China because the vehicle contained gas pedals that were similar in design to the component involved in Toyota Motor Corp.’s recall. Under some conditions, the pedal can cause unintended acceleration in a vehicle, according to Toyota.

But in a conference call today, Ford executives were upbeat about the automaker’s future, saying that it should be profitable this year, despite ongoing economic turmoil.

“While we still face significant business environment challenges ahead, 2009 was a pivotal year for Ford and the strongest proof yet”of the success of the company’s effort to forge“a path toward profitable growth by working together as one team, leveraging our global scale,”said Alan Mulally, Ford’s chief executive.

“Global economic conditions are reviving but remain fragile,”he said.

In the U.S., sales of Ford brands in the fourth quarter rose 13 percent from the same period a year earlier. The company grabbed 15.3 percent of the U.S. auto market, its first full-year gain since 1995.

“In every part of the world, we are providing customers with great products, building a stronger business and contributing to a better world,”Mulally said.“Our progress has helped us gain market share in most of our major markets.”

Ford’s profit, announced prior to the opening of

the stock market, amounted to 86 cents a share and compared with a loss of $14.8 billion, or $6.50 a share, in 2008.

The automaker’s results represented a “modest beat” over Wall Street expectations, said Itay Michaeli, an industry analyst with Citigroup Global Markets in New York.

“The key story going forward is whether Ford can sustain pricing momentum and cons control during an upturn,”Michaeli said.

Other analysts believe that is the case.

“If they can make $2.7 billion in one of the worst auto years in history,once sales really start to pick up, Ford should be a good-looking company,”said John Wolkonowicz, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass.

In addition to an improved vehicle lineup, he said, Ford should benefit from the “hobbling” of rival Toyota Motor Corp. from its massive recall and ongoing problems involving faulty floor mats, gas pedal assemblies and unintended vehicle acceleration issues.

That should be good for the company and its workers. In the last month, Ford has announced plans to recall or hire as many as 2,200 employees in next two years.

Already, Ford’s financial performance last year triggered a profit-sharing payment to 43,000 eligible U.S. hourly employees that is part of the 2007 UAW-Ford Collective Bargaining Agreement. The average amount is expected to be about $450 per eligible employee. Salaried employees, however, will not get the performance bonuses Revenue in 2009 fell to $118.3 billion from $138.1 billion, a reflection of lower sales resulting from the

global economic slump. For the quarter, Ford said it earned $868 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with a loss of $6 billion, or $2.51 a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue dropped to $29 billion from $34.5 billion.

The company ended the year with $25.5 billion in cash, more than double what it had a year ago.

But Ford executives said they remained concerned about the auto company’s high level of debt and how that put the business at a competitive disadvantage to U.S. rivals General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group, which were able to shed billions of dollars in loans through their respective bankruptcy reorganizations last year.

Ford ended 2009 with $34.3 billion in debt,up $7.4 billion from the end of the third quarter.The increase was a result of Ford borrowing $7 billion to fund a retiree health care trust fund run by the United Auto Workers union.

“We are fully aware that we have too much debt on our balance sheet. ...We will continue to work on it,”said Chief Financial Officer Lewis Booth.“We still have a lot of work to do to improve the business.”

Ford officials called the production stoppage in China an“isolated”incident sparked by an internal review that examined if any of the issues dogging Toyota would affect Ford products.

Although the Toyota recall affects millions of cars, Ford said it used the pedal in a vehicle with limited production of less than 2,000 units.The pedals were made by Elkhart, Ind.-based CTS Corp. – the same company that built the pedals involved in the Toyota recall – and went into the diesel version of Ford’s Transit Classic, built by Jiangling Motors Co. in Nanchang in southeastern China.

9

WORLD

29 January 2010

Haiti crisis deepens

By Jacqueline Charles and Daniel Chang Miami Herald

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – Hundreds of thousands of people still need food and shelter, all schools remain closed, and efforts have intensified to protect children from human trafficking in post-earthquake Haiti.

Meantime, a U.N. official addressing the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., today said more than 75 percent of Haiti’s capital will have to be rebuilt.

“We need the international A-team on this,”Paul Farmer, the U.N.’s deputy special envoy to Haiti, told the Senate committee.

In the short-term, Farmer said, Haitians need more relief than their quake-hobbled country can process.

“We must hasten our efforts to get tents, tarpaulins and latrines or composting toilets to Haiti,” Farmer said.

The massive relief effort has been hampered from the start, though, by logistical problems and poor coordination between the Haitian government and the 109 nations and more than 500 international humanitarian agencies working in the country.

Haitian leaders frustrated with the slow pace of aid began buying and distributing food themselves this week.

The U.N.’s World Food Program estimates that 2 million people need nourishment,but the agency has been able to feed only about 460,000 people to date.

U.S. military leaders said today that Haiti’s ability to absorb massive relief shipments will increase in the coming weeks.

“We’re still not up to meeting the needs of the Haitian people as far as the amount of supplies that are there,” Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said in a news conference.

Fraser said the capital’s south pier – the fastest route for moving large amounts food, shelter and medical supplies – will not be repaired for another two months.

But a U.S. military force of more than 20,000

Thousands mobbed relief trucks that were distributing supplies to earthquake victims in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, January 28, 2010. /Peter Andrew Bosch/ Miami Herald/ MCT)

troops and 23 ships with helicopters, beach-landing craft and bridge connectors have been moving about 200 containers a day through the port.

By next week, Fraser said, the port should be able to move 500 containers a day.

Meantime, the Haitian government reports that 112,392 have died and 196,501 people have been injured by the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck on Jan. 12.The U.S. State Department said 76 Americans are confirmed dead, and more than 13,000 have been evacuated.

Haitian government officials said more than 260,000 people have migrated from the capital and other quake-damaged areas to cities in the north and west.The number of people made homeless by the quake is estimated to number between

800,000 and 1 million, with most living in hundreds of squalid camps in the capital.

International health officials say they are concerned about the spread of disease at the camps, many of which lack sanitation systems.

Cases of tetanus have been reported as well as suspected cases of measles in Leogane, according to the World Health Organization. A vaccination campaign for diphtheria, tetanus, and measles will begin next week.

The Pan American Health Organization reported Thursday that medical teams are seeing a shift in the types of cases they are receiving.

There is a decrease in trauma cases, and a growing caseload of diarrhea. Mental health cases also are increasing, the PAHO reported.

US wants countries to take Gitmo detainees

By Carol Rosenberg McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI – A yearlong review of evidence against men who are being held as terrorism suspects at Guantanamo has concluded that most of them should be released or transferred to third countries.

The review has angered human rights advocates, however, by concluding that “roughly” 50 of the detainees should be held indefinitely, even though there isn’t enough valid evidence to prosecute them.

Only 35 of the men should face trial, either in civilian or military courts, the review concluded.

That’s far fewer than the 60 or 70 cases that the Pentagon’s chief prosecutor has said his unit is preparing to try before military commissions.

The review, whose results have been divulged to a handful of reporters but not publicly announced, provides the first specific numbers for what the Obama administration thinks should be done with the detainees who are still at Guantanamo.

The prison camp has held about 770 prisoners since it opened eight years ago, according to statistics provided by an administration official, who agreed to detail the review only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.As of today, the Pentagon was holding 192 foreign captives at Guantanamo across a range of prison camps, including seven in a special segregation site for those whom federal judges have ordered to be released.

Nearly 580 have been released over the years, according to the official.“More than 530”of those were released during the administration of President George W. Bush, the official said.

Six agencies – the Departments of Defense, Justice, State and Homeland Security, as well as the staffs of Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair – agreed unanimously that “roughly 110” prisoners who are still at Guantanamo were eligible for release, the official said.

Since the panel finished its work, four of those prisoners have been transferred to Europe, bringing the number of those eligible for release to 106.

The official didn’t explain how the panel had reached its decisions and didn’t break down the various categories of detainees by nationality.

According to the official, Obama’s National Security Council still could revise the panel’s conclusions “in light of variables that could change a detainee’s status.”Among those variables, the official

said, might be court rulings ordering their release or a change of conditions in a country such as Yemen.

Nearly half the detainees at Guantanamo are Yemenis. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama ordered that no more detainees be released toYemen because of the role Islamic militants there might have played in the Christmas Day bombing attempt of a Detroit-bound airliner.

The official provided no information on how many of the detainees in each category are among the 11 still being held whom U.S. district judges in Washington have ordered released.

Who might be among the 50 was difficult to guess.

One likely candidate is Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi whom the military initially charged with being part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy.Those charges were dropped in November 2008, however, after Pentagon official Susan Crawford, who must approve all military commission prosecutions, determined that al-Qahtani had been tortured in Guantanamo and couldn’t be tried.

It’s easier to fill out the ranks of the likely candidates authorized for trials, though only partially.

The names of 12 are already known: five, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who are scheduled to be tried in civilian court in New York, and seven, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Yemeni who’s accused of plotting the November 2000 attack on the USS Cole, who have been authorized for trials before military commissions.

Five other detainees have had preliminary military commission charges filed against them, though Crawford has yet to approve them.

That leaves at least 18 prisoners authorized for trial who’ve yet to be named.

All schools in Haiti remain closed, but schools in nonaffected areas will reopen on Monday, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Concerned about human trafficking, the U.N., Red Cross and Haitian officials stepped up registration of children separated from their families, U.S. officials said Thursday.

“We have concerns about traffickers,” said P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman.“We have concerns about pedophiles. We’ve seen a couple of cases of those in recent days.”

In other developments Thursday, U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., introduced legislation to speed recovery efforts in Haiti, focusing on three areas: debt relief, infrastructure development and trade.

Sweden’s wolves get fresh blood STOCKHOLM (DPA) – Sweden has announced plans to inject fresh blood into its wolf population that is threatened by inbreeding, including possible import of 20 wolves in coming years.

Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said the plans included moving wolves within Sweden, for instance from areas in the north used for reindeer herding.

Any move of wolves hinged on acceptance from people in the areas affected as well as hunting organizations, he added.

“The government’s policy is to ensure that Sweden’s wolf population numbers over 200 wolves,” Carlgren said.

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency was to be tasked with studying an import of wolves from Sweden’s eastern neighbours.

Earlier this month, Sweden staged the country’s first licensed wolf hunt for over four decades, allowing a total quota of 27 wolves to be shot – a little more than 10 per cent of the total Scandinavian wolf population.

The last wolf in the quota was reported shot Thursday.

Conservationists have criticized the hunt saying it threatened an endangered species and there was lack of sufficient supervision from government or regional authorities.This led to a breach of the quota in one region.

Carlgren said a review of the hunt would be made.

Controlled hunting of wolves has been allowed previously, including that of animals that attack livestock including reindeer.

– DPA

•

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11

SPORT

29 January 2010

Phoenix’s Vince Lia is tackled

by Queensland Fury’s Rostyn Griffiths in the A-League football match at Westpac Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand, Friday, January 15, 2010. NZPA / Ross Setford

Phoenix face Ashes WELLINGTON, JAN 29 – Wellington Phoenix coach Ricki Herbert won’t heap any further pressure on his players despite the crucial nature of tomorrow’s A-League soccer match against Adelaide United in Christchurch.

The sixth-placed Phoenix will be desperate to end their two-match losing streak when confronting an Adelaide side who bring up the rear in the standings but are far from easy-beats.

Indeed, they have never lost to the Phoenix in eight meetings, suggesting the hosts will do it tough registering the three points they need to virtually cement the club’s first ever place in the competition’s top-six playoffs.

Victory will give them with a chance of finishing in the top four and earning a home playoff match while defeat could leave them prone to missing out on the post-season completely.

“This is a very, very important match for us but we have to be careful that we don’t let our emotions cloud the job at hand,”Herbert said.

“Every match has been pivotal for us, from round one on.

“As a team we acknowledge what this match means in the context of our playoff ambitions but ultimately it’s as important as our first, or our last, and that’s exactly how we’ll be treating it.”

Phoenix skipper Andrew Durante noted the

Henin awaits fairytale ending MELBOURNE – Justine Henin could complete her career comeback fairytale with a victory over Serena Williams in this weekend’s Australian Open women’s final, with the Belgian taking a Grand Slam advantage into the clash with the four-time American champion.

Her US opponent could tie the 12 Grand Slam crowns of tennis pioneer Billie Jean King should she triumph for the fifth time at Melbourne Park.

Henin, bidding for her eighth trophy at a major, has beaten Williams in four of six Grand Slam meetings as they face off for the first time in Melbourne.

Between them, the pair of current and former world number one players own 76 titles (Henin 41, Williams 35), including 18 Grand Slam titles (Williams 11, Henin 7).

Henin is playing in only her second event after reversing her May 2008, retirement, when she stepped down due to burnout while atop the WTA rankings.

She could also duplicate the exploit of countrywoman and longtime rival Kim Clijsters, who won the US Open in September after making a comeback.

“This is more than a dream,”said Henin, 27 and unseeded.“I’m so happy to play against Serena; if I want to win another Grand Slam, I’ll have to beat the best player of the world.

“That’s just the biggest challenge I could get,” she said.

“I have to be honest, I didn’t really expect that.

But now that’s a reality that is coming. I will try to be at my best.”

Williams narrowly leads the series 7-6, winning

their last match in Miami nearly two years ago after losing the previous three – all of them Grand Slam quarter-finals.

“She’s playing really well, she’s doing great,”Williams said of Henin after both finalists beat Chinese opposition in their semi-finals.“It will be good. I hope to serve well. But regardless, I’ll have to do other things well, too.”

Henin will be playing in her third Melbourne final after defeating Clijsters in 2004 and retiring in controversial circumstances against Amelie Mauresmo trailing 6-1, 2-0 in 2006.

The Belgian has reached a dozen Grand Slam finals, winning 7 titles, most recently at the 2007 US Open.

Williams owns Australian Open honours in oddnumbered years starting in 2003 and hopes to break that mark with her fifth title in Melbourne at the weekend.

“I definitely think of her as a rival, I think we bring out the best game in each other,” Williams said.“If we both just play our hearts out, that’s what creates a good rivalry.”

Henin will take a 41-17 career record in finals into the match.

“We respect each other a lot for that,”the Belgian said.“We’re both real fighters, we want to win.”

She said that getting used to the drama and intensity of playing for the big prizes was one of the reasons she returned to the game.

“I want to play, I’m fresh mentally and emotionally – even if it took me a lot of energy in the last few weeks to come back and play my first matches and face all of this again.

“It’s coming very early for me to be in a Grand Slam final. It’s a lot of things to deal with.”

– DPA

increased level of expectation from supporters and media since returning from a twin-loss Australian road trip.

“We’re being talked about as a team that could be in the playoffs for the first time and as players we know that if we don’t achieve that ambition we’ll only have ourselves to blame,”he said.

“Here and now, though, the focus is on beating Adelaide. In that respect we’ll do exactly what we always do – play to the best of our ability and work for the win.”

Herbert said the 2-0 loss to Perth and 4-0 humbling at the hands of Melbourne weren’t reasons to despair.

“That was a test of our character and determina-

tion,”Herbert said.

“We know we are a good team – two poor results doesn’t change that – and I’ve been impressed by the resolve of the players to set things right. That starts on Saturday night.We’re likely to have a huge crowd there at AMI Stadium driving us on and everyone is pumped up for something special.”

The return of specialist left back Tony Lochhead is a welcome boost to a Phoenix squad that is for the most part unchanged from the midweek match against Melbourne.

Brazilian midfielder Daniel has been included in a 16-man squad that will be trimmed by one tomorrow.

– NZPA

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WEEKEND

29 January 2010

13

TV & Film

Tooth Fairy

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Movie picks

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Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, is a desperate drama of a father racing against time to find a cure for a rare genetic disease that is killing two of his children. So you know going in that the challenge for director Tom Vaughan is how to handle the science and the sentiment – tear-soaked terrain that has proved difficult for filmmakers over the years from Love Story to Lorenzo’s Oil. Vaughan opts for restraint on both fronts, giving us a life-and-death story that feels brisk, businesslike and oddly emotionless as we follow the deterioration of the kids and the difficulties of the research, as well as the business of turning a scientific theory into a life-saving, and as important, profit-generating treatment.

Speaking of profit, the film is also first off the assembly line of CBS Films, created a couple of

years ago to put the network in the feature film business with an eye to modestly budgeted movies for grown-ups. If Extraordinary Measures is the template, a sort of uplifting drama that neither touches the heart nor tests the brain – a film that wouldn’t make the Showtime (also owned by CBS) or HBO quality cut – then the venture is at best a work in progress.

The film was inspired by the very real struggles of the Crowley family, whose two youngest children were born with Pompe’s disease (a cousin of multiple sclerosis), and The Cure, Geeta Anand’s book about their plight. It opens on Megan’s (Meredith Droeger) 8th birthday as she zooms around the house in her wheelchair, breathing tube at her neck, funny and feisty despite her illness. Though the scene sets a hopeful tone the filmmakers will mostly cling to, the darker reality is never far away.We soon learn that life expectancy for a child with Pompe is 9 years.

And so the clock is ticking, with the tension in the story coming from two sides – the advancing disease that is draining the life out of Megan and 6-year-old Patrick (Diego Velazquez) and the difficulties of getting any drug developed these days, particularly for such a rare condition. (In Pompe’s case between 5,000 and 10,000 worldwide are thought to be affected.)

mi H

0Cast: Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, Keri Russell, Meredith Droeger 0Director: Tom Vaughan 0Length: 105 minutes 0Rated: PG (for thematic material, language and a mild suggestive moment)

Mia

Extraordinary Measures

Avatar Book of Eli Extraordinary Measures ItÕs Complicated

The Lovely Bones The Messenger The Spy Next Door Tooth Fairy © 2010 MCT

THE FILM WAS INSPIRED BY THE VERY REAL STRUGGLES OF THE CROWLEY FAMILY, WHOSE TWO YOUNGEST CHILDREN WERE BORN WITH POMPE’S DISEASE (A COUSIN OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS), AND THE CURE, GEETA ANAND’S BOOK ABOUT THEIR PLIGHT Written by Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat), the film holds closely to the essence of the Crowleys’ saga, which means there is a lot to cover.The filmmakers set a breakneck pace with scenes served up quicker than fast food at a drive-through – we’ve barely found our footing in Nebraska, where John Crowley (Fraser) has tracked down the leading researcher of Pompe, Dr. Robert Stonehill (Ford), when we zoom back to John’s office in Portland.

Then we’re off to the house or the hospital or some new place that we’ll forget before it even has a chance to register. Between the business emergencies and the kids’ medical crises, you need a flow chart to keep up.

Extraordinary Measures also would have been helped by less corporate intrigue and more character.You feel it especially keenly with Ford, who does a credible job as an eccentric and ornery scientist, but there’s not enough meat on the bones for him to really dig in. Meanwhile, Fraser attacks his role like a linebacker, barreling through scenes in a breathless effort to keep up.

One of the nicer turns is by Keri Russell as John’s wife,Aileen, who makes you believe her brave front as she stays home and cares for the kids.And young Droeger gives Megan that old-soul optimism that you find in children who have spent too much of their life being rushed through hospital corridors.

The story is poignant and compelling, but ultimately the film doesn’t have the heft it needs to fill out the big screen. If CBS Films wants to play in The Blind Side arena (a connection they’re evoking in ads), they’re going to have to step it up significantly to even get in the game.

0Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Julie Andrews, Ashley Judd 0Director: Michael Lembeck 0Length: 101 minutes 0Rated: PG (for mild language, some rude humor and sports action) Dwayne Johnson tries to cash in on his Game Plan -proven kid appeal and Fox strains to find a little Disneymagic in Tooth Fairy, a sugary blend of Enchanted and Monsters, Inc. that will make you want to brush midway through it.

Instead of The Game Plan’s arrogant football player who must learn sacrifice, humility and teamwork from a child, the former wrestler known as The Rock plays a cynical, washed-up minor league hockey player who has to learn a lesson about encouraging, not discouraging, children’s dreams and fantasies.

Derek (Johnson) already has the nickname The Tooth Fairy thanks to his team enforcer role and his brutish skills on the ice. “You can’t HANDLE the Tooth!”

He wears that has-been’s swagger, complete with a “bonus baby” Corvette now a few years past its last tune-up. And he loves his puns. “That’s the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth!”

He’s popular in Lansing, but he can’t help ruining that by telling kids who want to grow up to be stars the long odds working against their hockey dreams. But when he disillusions his girlfriend’s daughter about the Tooth Fairy, the Fairy Godmother of Tooth Fairies calls him on the carpet. She’s Julie Andrews and she’s not keen on Mr. Cynic, especially after he makes fun of her accent.

He’s busted for “first degree murder of fantasy.”

Derek is sentenced to be a tooth fairy, at her beck and call. No matter what he is doing, when the fairy Blackberry buzzes, wings pop out, he trots out his magic wand, shrinking cream, amnesia dust and other tricks to go crawl under a kid’s pillow, retrieve a tooth and leave a dollar bill in its place.

Silly screenwriter. Everybody knows the REAL Tooth Fairy leaves Sacagawea dollar coins.

There are many “fairy” gags, a few too many “Let’s get small” references (Billy Crystal shticks it up in a cameo) and “wing envy” jokes, and entirely too many minutes pass before TV actor-turned-director Michael Lembeck teaches ol’ hockey puck-for-brains his lesson.

As Fred Claus ham-fisted as this is, the glint of what might have been a cute kids’ comedy still glimmers in random moments. But that Disney touch (which even Disney has trouble replicating) is missing. Even the hockey is unconvincing. So no dollar under the pillow for this cavity.

Watch the trailer – By Roger Moore

Watch the trailer

– By Betsy Sharkey

REVIEWS

14

29 January 2010

Music

BEING ON THIS QUEST FOR A LONG TIME, IT’S ALL ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF. FOR ME, GOD IS IN MY LIFE. I DON’T HIDE FROM THAT. ... I THINK THE SEARCH HAS BEEN ON SINCE THE ‘60S. ... I STEPPED OFF THE PATH THERE FOR MANY YEARS AND FOUND MY WAY (BACK) ONTO IT, THANK GOD

WENN

Ringo Starr relishes new challenges, but he’s forever a Beatle

By Randy Lewis Los Angeles Times

The 69-year-old visitor to the downtown Grammy Museum strolled with fascination through its new exhibit of Alfred Wertheimer’s celebrated 1956 photos of Elvis Presley at 21, just as the impossibly handsome young singer was on the threshold of stardom.

Like most other visitors taking in the remarkably unguarded photos, this bearded gentleman exhibited affection and appreciation for the blackand-white portraits of Presley’s quiet moments – lunching at a diner; teasing, and being teased, by a female fan – some of the last such moments he

would enjoy before exploding as the biggest star in the pop music universe.

But occasionally came an expression that none of the others wandering the gallery could offer: understanding.

“The start of all our careers was quiet like that,”said Ringo Starr, the former Beatle enjoying a relatively quiet few minutes of his own,perusing the Elvis photos before a question-answer session and performance a short time later.“We didn’t expect any problems,and then suddenly it gets wild – and it did.”

Things are, of course, less wild today for Starr than they were 45 years ago when the Fab Four supplanted Elvis at the top of the pop heap. The world’s most famous drummer was a Beatle for eight

years, and he’s been an ex-Beatle for five times that long now. But hardly a minute goes by when the topic doesn’t come up.

After making his way through the photo display, Starr headed straight for the museum store in search of an Elvis T-shirt but quickly found himself faced with apparel bearing his own visage along with those of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Eventually, though, he found what he was after and slipped on the Presley shirt for his evening session, an event he took on in conjunction with the release last week of his latest album,“Y Not.” It’s a milestone for him in a couple of respects: It’s the first time in his half-century career he’s taken the wheel as producer, in addition to sing-

ing, drumming and co-writing most of its songs.

He’ll be singing some of those songs during his next All-Starr Band tour, during which he’ll become the first Beatle to turn 70, on July 7.

Is 70 a big number?

“No – not as big as 40 was,”he said, looking a good 15 years younger than you might expect.

He’s trim – like McCartney and his late pal Harrison, he’s an avowed vegetarian – and outfitted in a black band-collar peacoat, black jeans and the ever-present dark glasses. His hair and beard are close-cropped, only a few wrinkles on his neck betraying his age.

“Y Not”doesn’t vary greatly from the approach he’s taken through much of his solo career: lots of collaborations with high-profile musician friends, some lightweight rockers that give him the opportunity to exercise his well-honed chops behind the drum kit and a couple of meatier numbers that let the man of a thousand quips touch on the matters of the spirit that mean the most to him.

“You can be serious in a good up way,”Starr said.

“I think this record has captured where I’m trying to be musically and as a writer. My spirits are high.”

As the years roll by, he said,“I think (spiritual issues) are more prominent.”On“Y Not,”that manifests in “Peace Dream,”which name checks Lennon and reiterates his message from“Imagine.”On 2008’s “Liverpool 8,”it showed up in the unflinchingly direct ballad “Love Is”and “R U Ready,”a country gospel rave up about the universality of spiritual yearning.

“Being on this quest for a long time, it’s all about finding yourself,”Starr said.“For me, God is in my life. I don’t hide from that. ... I think the search has been on since the ‘60s. ... I stepped off the path there for many years and found my way (back) onto it, thank God,”a reference to the wild days of rampant alcohol and drug use that ensued after the Beatles broke up, when Starr ran amok, often in the company of Lennon and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson.

Van Dyke Parks, with whom he wrote the album’s first single,“Walk With You,” was also part of that circle at times.

“Ringo and I survived Harry Nilsson, who’d introduced us,” Parks said last week. “So many acquaintances I reveled with in the lettuce years later sobered up and dropped me like a bad habit.

Ringo is an exception. What a lad! He called and I spent an afternoon with him in hot pursuit of a transitive idea. It was fun.”

It’s also yielded one of the album’s high points, “Walk With You,” a song expressing gratitude toward a loved one that is elevated further by an echoing harmony sung by McCartney.

Starr had invited his other half in the Beatles rhythm section over to add a bass part to “Peace Dream.”“He understands my drumming,” Starr explained to the Grammy Museum audience later from his perch on a stool at the front of the stage, adding with a straight face:“We used to play together.”

“While he was at the house I played him some of the other tracks, and when he heard ‘Walk With You,’he said,‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for that.’The great thing is that he doesn’t just sing harmony, he sort of answers my part,”he said, adding with a wizened laugh:“That’s why he’s the genius.”

Liverpool 8

REVIEWS

29 January 2010

NEW CD RELEASES

15

Books

The kind of love that strengthens

Spoon

0Transference 0Merge Ever since 2001’s “Girls Can Tell,”the Austin,Texas, foursome Spoon has been making the most of a minimalist approach to spiky, Brit-punk-influenced rock ‘n’roll.Transference doesn’t upset the apple cart, by any means:The Britt Daniel-led band plays to its strengths with a taut set of jagged tunes that say as much with what they leave out as what they put in. The mood is darker this time, though, and the band seems more intent on pleasing itself by tinkering with dub-flavored experimentation and extended instrumental codas than targeting audience expansion.“I’ve got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows / Got nothing to lose but emptiness and hang-ups,” Daniel sings on the hypnotic vamp“Got Nuffin,”and there isn’t anything on Transference quite as catchy as, say, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,”from 2005’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Still, a Spoon-ful goes a long way.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out 0Amy Bloom 0Random House, $25

Imagine a store that sells different kinds of strength.

Like the insurance company that promises to find just the right policy for your needs, this store would help you find exactly the strength you need: strength to leave, strength to stay, strength to lose (a limb, a spouse), strength to accept, strength to absorb cruelty and still be a good person. Where the God of Love Hangs Out is a strength store in book form.

Amy Bloom’s first collection of stories, Come to Me (1993), was about different kinds of love, so it makes sense that Bloom would be well-positioned to write about strength.You can’t have one without the other.

Salt and pepper; bread and water.

The first thing you notice in this wise and resounding collection, this community of linked stories, is Bloom’s familiarity with her audience. She has a kitchen-counter style that may or may not come – Dan DeLuca from her years as a psychotherapist.“It’s all just as bad as it sounds,”she asides to her reader;a shortcut,a Ringo Starr nod to the ramifications of an affair between two in a 0Y Not lifelong foursome of friends:William and Clare cheat 0HIP-O on spouses Isabel and Charles. William and Clare belong together; ramifications or no. Stories come to a grinding halt,as every writer,psychologist,human So much for getting by with a lit- being knows, when the creator starts judging her tle help from his friends. For this characters. Instead, a real writer plays the “sin”out, studio collection, Ringo enlists over an afternoon,a few years,a couple of generations. noted songwriters such as Van Time passes in jerky leaps: a year and a half later, Dyke Parks, Dave Stewart, Rich- five years later, two wars later. Here, Bloom joins ard Marx and Glen Ballard, as the ranks of the unforgettable: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s well as stellar musicians such as Paul McCartney, eyeless time; Virginia Woolf’s impassivity in the Joe Walsh, Benmont Tench and Don Was. progress of her characters’ lives.This little dust ball But all the king’s men couldn’t redeem the dreary – love between two people and the atomic risks that “Y Not.” must be taken to see that it lives – gathers characters There are some nice touches evident, like McCa- around it. Children have children; friendships last, rtney’s harmony on “Walk With You” and Tench’s households grow to sloppy fiefdoms and boom! bang! piano on “Time.” But only the initial song, the before you know it, community is created on a series metronomic rocker “Fill in Blanks,” has the sort of dumb, flat pages, started with a strong love, often of retro but comfortable vibe suited to Ringo’s held together by a preternaturally strong woman,the mossy voice.The rest of the album sounds recycled human sacrifice who dies with a big smile on her face. and stagnant.

As for plot, Bloom’s stories move, NewYork style, – David Hiltbrand toward the next bad thing. Every happiness is followed by hardship; there’s no escaping the ineviSnoop Dogg tability, the yin and the yang. How is the hardship 0Malice N Wonderland handled? Heavy drinking? Acerbic wit that cur0Priority/EMI dles into bitterness? Stoicism? An over-emphasis on cleanliness? Bloom plays out all the possibilities.

Complicating everything is the human tendency Snoop Dogg – slippery-tongued toward delusion,“the lush, streaming light of what is rapper, host of“Snoop Bowl VIII” not.”Sometimes, as in“The Old Impossible,”magical – has a pattern in his recording thinking is a way of imagining a better future. In history. Going back to 1993’s other places, as in the title story, the overwhelming four-star“Doggystyle,”one album desire to have a“normal”life fuels the fantasy.Someis great, the next merely good-to- times a willful evenness,the careful managing of emoOK. All feature his laconic drawl and syrupy flow. tions is all it takes to keep the faulty present at bay: As for his recent output, 2006’s “The Blue Carpet “Clare is good,spiky company,and she is the very best Treatment” was decent and 2008’s “Ego Trippin’” companion to have in a bad situation.Trouble brings was solidly experimental and delicious. out the cheer beneath her darkness, unlike everyday Following this pattern,“Malice”is back to decent. life, which tends to have the opposite effect, and she There are lame tracks recorded with rappers holds her liquor like an old Swede,but Charles has to Kokane and Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em.The crunk“1800” put up with that squinty, unyielding nature, and he – produced by/costarring Lil Jon – is particularly does it with real grace.”And then there are the times dated.There are some clunker wordplays like “I’m when no amount of “managing”can smooth a path gettin’Richard like Pryor.” to a desirable future, when words fall flat because But other collaborations in “Wonderland” are there’s no way to arrange the truth.“By-and-By,”a sultry, with subtly dramatic rhythm schematics, story about a girl murdered by a serial killer, is like such as “Gangsta Luv,”produced by and featuring that.And Bloom lets it be like that – the girl’s mother R&B smoothie The-Dream. And R. Kelly, Pharrell talking to the girl’s roommate on the phone;the killand Philly crooner Jazmine Sullivan enhance their er’s sister fixing him dinner and hiding him from the Dogg duets.“Malice” is best, however, when Dogg police. It’s hard to make beauty out of some things. raps alone and sinks into the belly of the beats, as Linked stories capture time in a unique way – its in the sparsely arranged “Upside Down.”When, in jolting, jarring, scary, inevitable, shoulder-shrugging “2 Minute Warning,” Snoop drops,“Ponytail still essence. They are a big help for a reader, mired in swingin’ / hair still braided / Laker to a Clipper / I the present, trying to conjure the next phase, the won’t be faded,”all you can think is how right he is. next generation.

– A.D. Amorosi

– By Susan Salter Reynolds

Author’s second Ancestors a sampler novel fails to connect of marvelous prose The Unnamed

Ancestors and Others

We’re a nation, a people, on the move. Always have been.

But why are we always moving? Maybe it’s the need for the new, or a restless spirit of renewal. Or, as it is for the central character in The Unnamed, it’s an illness that strikes without warning, explanation or, unfortunately, much of a point.

Joshua Ferris’ first novel, 2007’s Then We Came to the End, was a National Book Award finalist.

Smart, funny and not too self-serious, it’s an engaging workplace novel in which semiabsurdist days at the office coalesce into a narrative showing that a job is the sun around which much of modern life orbits – and what happens when that light starts looking like it might go out.

The Unnamed, Ferris’ second book, is smart, sad and very, very self-important.And, unlike Then We Came to the End, it doesn’t have much of a heart.

What it has is a mystery.Tim, a successful lawyer with a beautiful, loving wife and an inevitably terse daughter, battles a strange disease that forces him, at the drop of a hat, to start walking until he stops – sometimes, several towns away. His wife, worn down by constantly having to retrieve and nurse her spouse, turns to drink and thoughts of escape.

His colleagues and clients are baffled by his bizarre absences (although he’s been the subject of articles in medical journals, he keeps his malady a secret; cynically, he blames his vanishing act on his wife, who, he lies, has cancer).

Storytelling’s filled with figures driven to wander, from Odysseus to George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air. But most of the time, such fictional walkabouts have a purpose: to be free, to spread a particular gospel or to just get back home.

In The Unnamed, Tim is driven by something without purpose or ideal. His affliction destroys his health, his relationships and even a life or two.

What starts as a quirk turns into the equivalent of the annoying co-worker whose familiar stories drone on and on.

Deep into his journey, Tim realizes that, in his despair and self-pity over his condition, he has never bothered to see where he is going. That lack of connectedness is pervasive in The Unnamed, and makes the book’s few moments of humanity – Tim’s daughter’s attempts to connect with her father, his encounters with an unexpectedly sensitive lobby guard – all the more jarring.

If that’s Ferris’point, it takes too long to make it.

Barn animals that can speak only on Christmas Eve riff, wisely and comically, on humans and their stories. Composer Franz Joseph Haydn has an otherworldly experience while looking through the telescope of his contemporary, astronomer William Herschel.A blind woman and her young companion visit old graves to recover vintage roses.A reclusive science fiction writer is visited by a woman from another world, who informs him that he’ll be given the choice of two doors into fantastical realms in appreciation for his strange stories.A couple of Civil War buffs take advantage of a future service that brings their Confederate ancestors back to life for short visits, with tragicomic results.

These are a few of the sometimes homespun,sometimes surreal short stories in North Carolina author and poet Fred Chappell’s new collection, Ancestors and Others. Of the many books I read in 2009, it was by far the best, a treasure chest of gemlike stories, masterfully written and brilliantly unpredictable.

Chappell’s strange,beautiful fables cross a number of genres, including historical fiction, science fiction, Southern Gothic and primitive Appalachian storytelling. Even his gravest tales contain humor.

My favorite was “Alma,”narrated by a lonesome mountain man in a postapocalyptic future whose wilderness haven is invaded by a motley slaver whipping along a chain gang of dirty, starved women.

Although the protagonist does not have the words to say why, he is profoundly unnerved by the brutality and by the women, especially one who calls herself Alma. (“I was thunderstruck,”he says.“I didn’t have the least idea that women could even talk, much less have names.”)

Here’s how it begins: “I feel different about women than a lot of men do and I’ll tell you why. It’s because I had me my own woman one time. I lived real close with her and that has made me think thoughts apart.”

One minute, Chappell channels the sensibilities and limited grammar of a rural resident of his native North Carolina. In the next, he embraces the baroque tone of 17th-century high society.You think of Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, O’Connor and many others while reading him.

Describing his writing is rather like describing the taste of a rare and rich dish. The only way to really experience it is to sample it. Rest assured this reader will be seeking out his other works after having discovered him in this one.

– By Chris Foran

– By Pamela Miller

0Joshua Ferris 0Reagan Arthur Books/Little Brown, $24.95

0Fred Chappell 0St. Martin’s Press, $27.99

HEALTH

16

29 January 2010

Drunk and disengaged cation puts women at risk for many, many bad outcomes, including car crashes, victimization and many long-term health problems.”

DETROIT – This promises to be a good year for According to the latest statistics from the Renee Palmer. Next month, she celebrates 10 years National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholof sobriety. Looking back, Palmer hardly recognizes ism (NIAAA), the number of women who reported the woman she was in her 30s: a woman who would abusing alcohol – having at least four drinks in a empty a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi, leaving just day – rose from 1.5 percent to 2.6 percent from enough to season a half-pint of vodka.

1992 to 2002. For women ages 30 to 44, the number A woman who hid liquor bottles around her house more than doubled, from 1.5 percent to 3.3 percent. so people wouldn’t know how much she was drinkWilsnack’s studies also show the prevalence of ing. A woman who got so drunk that she barely intoxication among women rising significantly, esperemembers how her truck crashed into a car one cially among women in their 20s.The percentage of February morning. A woman who lost custody of women reporting being intoxicated jumped from her then 8-year-old son, Ryan.

27.4 percent to 42.9 percent between 1981 and 2001.

“Temporary custody is granted to the father,”the Among women in their 20s, the numbers shot from judge said.“The mother is ordered to seek treatment.” 47.6 percent to 62.7 percent.

Palmer, now 43, didn’t fight the judge’s order.“I Alcohol abuse poses greater threats to women knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know than men, experts say. how to stop.”

“Women are more likely to experience alcoholBut her worst day marked the beginning of her related organ damage – that is damage to the brain, best years. It put Palmer on the road to recovery heart and liver – and recent studies show drinking from alcohol abuse, a problem that is trapping a even at low levels is a risk factor for breast cancer,”says growing number of women.

Dr. Deidra Roach, a spokeswoman for the NIAAA. Reports indicate that the number of women bat“In addition to the health risks, the risks of intertling alcohol addiction may be on the rise. Some are personal violence increases for women,”Roach says. busy moms, like Renee Palmer once was, struggling “They are at increased risk for victimization. to meet family obligations. Some drink to fit in with “If a woman is intoxicated and in a situation friends or business associates. Some use alcohol to where there is a potential for sexual abuse, it places escape the complexities of life. her at greater risks for violence, for exposure to “There is a huge cause for concern,”says clinical STDs. It impairs judgment,” she says.“The consepsychologist Sharon Wilsnack of the University of quences of that are extremely serious.”

North Dakota, one of the nation’s leading experts Generally, women and men drink for different on women and alcohol. reasons, says Beth Glover Reed, a University of “There has been a striking increase in the number Michigan psychologist who has studied alcohol of women who report getting drunk. And intoxi- abuse among women. Reed contends that women

By Cassandra Spratling Detroit Free Press

are more likely to use drinking as a coping mechanism, whereas men are more likely to drink as a social outlet.

Tanis, a 46-year-old Livingston County, Mich., woman who prefers not to give her last name, started drinking when she was 36. She was a mother of three children – the youngest, now 19. She believes she was trying to fight depression stemming from the death of her mother, who committed suicide when she was 9.

When Tanis felt bad, she drank. Beer on weekends became beer and wine every day.

“The compulsion was so strong, I’d go to the store to buy it and I had to have a drink before I got home,”she says.

She drove her kids while drunk.“I was driving but feeling like I had complete control,”Tanis says.

“I know now that’s insanity.”

Tanis sought treatment after her husband threatened to leave her. After one of many arguments, she checked herself into a treatment program at Brighton Hospital, a substance-abuse treatment facility run by the Henry Ford Health System.

She’s been sober since 2001 and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at least twice a week.

One of the worst parts of her year-long addiction, she says, was thinking she was mentally ill.

“I knew I had a drinking problem, but I thought I was crazy,”Tanis says.“Come to find out, take away the drink and your life comes back together.”

The support of other women gives Renee Palmer strength.

She has grown from a woman who wouldn’t even talk in therapy to a group moderator for Women for

Sobriety, a national self-help group started in 1976 for women who battle alcohol abuse and addiction.

“Women have different problems,” says Palmer, who began moderating WFS groups in 2001.“I can sit here and talk and share about what’s stressing me”and a participant in the program will “understand because she’s been there.”

In February of 2000,Palmer landed in jail after she wrecked her truck.The judge gave custody of Ryan to her ex-husband,and Palmer spent six months in daily one-on-one and group therapy through the Eastwood Clinic in Dearborn, a division of the St. John Health System. She also started going to AA meetings and Women for Sobriety meetings.

A life unraveled by alcohol began to come back together. She remarried that November to a man who encouraged her recovery.

A year after becoming sober she began moderating group meetings of Women for Sobriety, using herself as the best example that you can begin again.

Her advice to other women is to stop hiding and denying the problem.“If you’re not honest,you’re not able to deal with what’s going on, and that leads to bad decisions.You have to be honest so you can deal with how you’re feeling instead of pushing it away or burying it with drinking,”Palmer says.“If you’re honest, you’ll get help and make better decisions.”

In late fall of 2001, sobriety gave her two of her most treasured gifts – custody of Ryan in October and the birth of a second son, Robert, in November.

“My mom is the definition of a hero to me,”Ryan says.“She overcame her addiction,worked on our relationship and now she’s out there helping other women better themselves and realize they don’t need alcohol.”

Healthy Living

A tall, cold one

Yes, this refreshing blend of water, barley, hops and yeast can be good for you, provided you drink in moderation.

A beer a day • One study suggests that drinking a beer a day may reduce heart attack risk; another study found that heart patients who had a beer daily lived longer • Beer is a good source of folate, an important B vitamin, as well as of niacin, magnesium and potassium • Of course, while one is good, four or five aren’t better; heavy drinking – more than 21 a week for women, 35 for men – can cause serious health problems • Pregnant and nursing women, people with gout should avoid beer; diabetics, the chronically ill and those on medications should talk with their doctor © 2009 MCT

Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, About.com, MCT Photo Service Graphic: Pat Carr

Baby boomers not losing hearing as much as parents did

By John Fauber Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MILWAUKEE – Although they were the first generation to endure rock concerts, boom boxes and iPods, the baby boomers have lost less of their hearing than their parents, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

The findings suggest that hearing can be preserved even as people age.

“We didn’t know that,”said Wen Chen, a program director with the National Institute on Aging, which financed the study.

The study used data from the Beaver Dam Offspring Study,which involved 5,275 people from that community and their offspring born between 1902 and 1962.

While everyday life may be getting noisier, actual hearing loss from one generation to the next has declined, said Weihai Zhan, lead author of the study, which was published Friday in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Overall, the baby boomers had 31 percent less hearing loss than their parents.

Among men who were born between 1944 and 1949, 36 percent had a hearing impairment. However, among men born between 1930 and 1935, 58 percent had a hearing loss at the same age.

Among women born between 1945 and 1949, 12 percent had hearing impairment, compared with 23 percent among women born between 1930 and 1939.

Prior to the study, it would have been expected that 66 million Americans would be hearingimpaired by 2030. However, the new findings suggest

that number is more likely to be 51 million.

The authors cautioned that because the study was based in the mostly white Beaver Dam, Wis., area, its results do not necessarily apply to other regions or racial groups.

Still, the findings run contrary to the belief that large numbers of baby boomers are destined to lose their hearing because of exposure to loud music.

Indeed, hearing loss from one-time events such as concerts may be temporary, while daily exposure to excessive noise is a bigger concern, co-author Karen Cruickshanks said in a statement.

More stringent rules about workplace noise and fewer people working in noisy industries such as mining and manufacturing also may be contributing to less hearing loss in the younger generation.

Reduced smoking may also play an indirect

role, said University of Wisconsin researcher Zhan.

Smoking increases the risk of heart disease, which can lead to less blood flow to the inner ear, he said.

Another factor may be better health care and antibiotics resulting in less inflammation and infection, said Cruickshanks, a professor of population health sciences and ophthalmology and visual sciences.

If hearing loss was genetically determined, you would not see this loss over a generation, she said.

The authors concluded that there was strong evidence that environmental, lifestyle or other modifiable factors might contribute to hearing impairment in older adults.

“These data suggest that hearing impairment with aging is a preventable or delayable disorder rather than a normal part of the aging process,” they wrote.

SCIENCE/TECH 17

29 January 2010

iPad could threaten e-reader success

By Dan Gallagher MarketWatch

The big reveal Apple’s iPad is larger in size but similar in design to the iPhone.

Displays full soft keyboard

0.5 in.

(1.3 cm) iPhone LED-backlit screen; works as portrait and landscape

1.5 lb. (680 g)

Take your pick • Two versions available; Wi-Fi only and 3G and Wi-Fi

Available 16 GB 32 GB 64 GB

Wi-Fi March $499 $599 $699

NOTE: 3G models come with pre-paid data plans

Familiar territory • Syncs via USB to Mac or PC, just like iPod or iPhone • Can run nearly every app from Apple’s App Store Source: Apple

3G, Wi-Fi April $629 $729 $829

Keyboard dock will be available

in.

9.7 m) c (25

SAN FRANCISCO – When Apple Inc. debuted its latest creation – a tablet device called the iPad – on Wednesday, some were asking how the new product will affect the growing class of e-reader devices, led by the Amazon Kindle.

The iPad has been the subject of much speculation for months, so Wednesday’s news came as little surprise.The device sports a 9.7-inch touch screen that operates like a large version of the company’s popular iPhone. Users can play music, watch videos and surf the Internet with the iPad, as well as send e-mails and run other office applications.

But Apple is also trying to break into the e-book market with the device. The company launched a new online bookstore, through which users can purchase and download books to the device.

That’s a direct shot against the Kindle, which downloads best-selling titles straight from Amazon. com – often for prices of $9.99 or less.

“It’s clearly going to offer a lot of competition for the Kindle,” Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets said of the iPad. “It’s an elegant device.And the biggest surprise is the price point. Apple is clearly wanting to put this into the hands of a lot of consumers.”

The price on the device was a surprise to many who had predicted the iPad would hit with a near-$1,000 price tag.

The iPad will start at $499 for a WiFi-only device with 16 gigabytes of

memory. The same device with a 3G connection through AT&T will cost $629, and users will have to buy a data plan that ranges from $15-$30 per month.

The Amazon Kindle, by contrast, starts at $259 for a version with a 6-inch screen and full wireless connectivity.A larger screen version called the Kindle DX sells for $489.

“It’s wrong to read through the $499 price point as the real price,”said Tim Boyd, who covers Amazon for MKM Capital Partners. He noted that the full two-year cost of ownership for the cheapest iPad will be $1,349 with an unlimited data plan.

Amazon investors do not seem worried.The stock closed up 2.7 percent Wednesday.Apple shares rose 1 percent by the closing bell.

“The market reaction here is saying there is room for both,”Boyd said.

Amazon is not the only maker of e-readers. Sony Corp. also has a line of reader products, the latest of which hit the market just before Christmas. Several other manufactures, including Samsung, debuted e-reader devices at the Consumer Electronic Show earlier this month.

Ben Schachter of Broadpoint AmTech said Amazon is still going to have to take the iPad into account, given its broad functionality.

“Amazon is certainly going to have to respond,”Schachter said.“The Kindle is essentially a one-function product. Amazon is going to have to decide what their intentions are here. Do they want to simply focus on books or broaden out? It’s certainly a new ball game for them.”

Touchscreen navigation

© 2010 MCT

Graphic: Melina Yingling

Tech toys become tools in Haiti IT’S SOMEHOW APPROPRIATE THAT SILICON VALLEY, ITS PEOPLE AND ITS PRODUCTS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THE EFFORT TO BRING SOME HOPE TO HAITI. AT ITS BEST THIS IS A PLACE BUILT ON THE CONCEPT OF COLLABORATION: MANY COMING TOGETHER FROM DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS TO SOLVE A COMMON PROBLEM

Julian Stratenschulte

By Mike Cassidy San Jose Mercury News

It’s easy to get caught up in the glitter and froth surrounding the high-octane, high-tech wonders that emanate from Silicon Valley.

The valley has been cranking it out for years – semiconductors, lasers, GPS, mobile phones, apps, search engines, wireless, social networking. It is, after all, pretty cool stuff.

But sometimes it takes something horrible to really underscore just how wonderful it all is.

I’ve been thinking about that when I think about Haiti. I’ve been marveling at how much good various tools from here, or of here, are doing in the midst of incomprehensible tragedy.

Sure, the Web, social networking sites, our beloved mobile phones and laptops all lend themselves to wasteful and vapid uses.But then comes Haiti.And with Haiti

it’s apparent that technology’s killer app is saving lives.

The pictures and stories from the Caribbean country just don’t stop. Indescribable misery followed by indescribable misery.The injured waiting in pain. Children starving. Parents dying.

But there have been other Haiti stories, too. Stories of volunteers creating dynamic databases that help lost loved ones in Haiti connect with their worried relatives on Hispaniola and abroad. Stories of people who might have wondered whether a $10 donation could make a difference, and who now have an answer:Text“Haiti”to 90999. Enough people have done so to raise well over $25 million for the American Red Cross.A dozen or more other organizations have raised millions more with their own texting programs.

It’s one thing to be able to close a deal or vote for the next American Idol with your cell phone; it’s quite another to send desperately needed help

to a country on the brink.

The Red Cross turned to Twitter to spread the word about texting.And many of us turned to Facebook to find out how we could help.We gathered on the Global Disaster Relief page to commiserate and to find links to Oxfam, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, CARE, Catholic Relief Services and others.We sent money to support those who have the expertise to do some needed good amid the unfathomable bad.

The real heroes, of course, are on the ground – rescue and relief workers and Haitians who pulled their neighbors from the rubble and are now caring for them in untenable conditions. But even real heroes can use some help.

Inveneo, a San Francisco nonprofit co-founded

by Bob Marsh, has two engineers in Haiti working to build a long-distance wireless network so nearly three dozen nongovernmental relief agencies can make phone calls and exchange digital data with each other and their offices worldwide. (I’ll think about that next time I’m tempted to say that I simply couldn’t live without wireless.)

“There are a lot of guys like me who are helping out,” says Marsh, whose belief in technology’s power for good goes back at least to when he was a founding member of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975.“We’ve got quite a few guys who have been helping us out.”

It’s somehow appropriate that Silicon Valley, its people and its products are contributing to the effort to bring some hope to Haiti. At its best this is a place built on the concept of collaboration: many coming together from different directions to solve a common problem. In this case, the problem isn’t how

to build the must-have eReader or iSlate, but how to save the lives of hundreds of thousands.Technologists by their nature are optimists – believers who maintain that the thorniest problems can be solved with deep thought and hard work.

Science Matters

Dogs’ astonishing noses

Researchers are gradually discovering why dogs have such an exquisite sense of smell – their noses, nervous systems and brains all play a part.

1 2

10% of dog’s brain is dedicated to sense of smell

Air enters through front of nostril Side of nostril sends exhaled air toward rear

Keeps outgoing air from mixing with incoming air

2 Air flows into

moist, warm nasal passages lined with 200 million chemical sensors Human nose contains only about 8 million

Why dogs sniff 0.2 sec.

Dog inhales through both nostrils as fast as 5 times a second

Dog’s brain compares strength of scent on right and left sides

If scent is weaker

in left nostril, dog turns to right to follow source of scent

If scent is stronger

in next sniffs, dog knows it is moving toward the source

Source: Gary Settles of Pennsylvania State University, New Scientist, Australian National Broadcasting Corp., MCT Photo Service Graphic: Helen Lee McComas © 2010 MCT

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TECHNOLOGY 19

29 January 2010

Why we didn’t get a Wii

By Chris O’Brien San Jose Mercury News

Before the holidays, I knew exactly what I was going to write in this space.

My wife and I were planning to buy a Wii for Christmas. It would be my first video game system since my Atari back in the early 1980s. And I expected to wax joyfully about our family’s plunge into the world of video games.

Except things didn’t quite work out that way.

We did buy a Wii. But 24 hours and one panic attack later, I returned it with immense relief.

Perhaps this makes me a traitor to the economy, or an unwelcome Luddite in the gloriously hightech Silicon Valley. But before a geek lynch mob hunts me down, let me explain why we opted – mostly – for a tech-gadget-free holiday.

I’ve had almost no interest in video games since I was in junior high school. I came of age in the Pac Man-Donkey Kong generation. After bowling league on Saturday mornings (yes, I was on a bowling team), I’d head for the arcade and play Galaga or Ms. Pac Man. But as games became more complex, more lifelike, I lost interest. I owned the first Atari, and I played Frogger on it. But that’s about as far as it went.

When I became a columnist almost two years ago, I felt pretty comfortable writing about most topics because I’ve covered just about everything in my decade in Silicon Valley. But video games were a definite blind spot for me.As the XBox, PlayStation and Wii consoles made video games one of the most popular and lucrative forms of entertainment, I abstained.

Filling in that knowledge gap was one of the ways I rationalized getting a Wii: I needed it for work.

Yeah, that’s it.

But really, my interest in video games has been

rekindled because of my two kids, Liam, 7, and Kalian, 4. They’ve become increasingly curious about computers. My wife and I, like many parents, have been trying to strike a balance between letting them explore computers, and keeping them from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends. Our current rule is that each kid gets 30 minutes of“screen time”once a week to play games online, surf the Web or print out coloring pages.

Beyond that, Liam has been playing with Wiis when he visits friends, or his cousins, or believe it or not, our local YMCA. The Wii seemed by far to be the most family-friendly gaming system. And with the price falling to $199, this seemed like the right time to dive in.

So the week before Christmas, I drove over to the nearest Best Buy.And that’s when the anxiety set in.

There were plenty of Wiis in stock, so no problems there. I picked one up and was asking an employee a couple of questions when he noted that the console came with only one controller.

Hmmm. One controller plus two kids equals eyegouging fights Christmas morning. I knew I needed another one, which cost $49.

Then I began looking for a couple of games to go with it. I knew we’d be paying a bit more for these.

But as I looked at some games we wanted, like“Lego Rock Band,”I realized that I needed other controllers, like a microphone, drums or guitar.These could run an additional $100 or more if I got all of them.

So I passed and didn’t get any games, figuring they could just play the games that came with it for now.

As I examined the box, I realized that I had forgotten that the Wii could also be connected to the Web.The problem here was that our cable modem is in the kitchen (don’t ask) and the TV is in the living room. Guess that’s a headache I’d have to figure out later.

NOW, IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, WE WILL PROBABLY – PROBABLY! – GET A WII NEXT YEAR. BUT FOR NOW, THE KIDS SEEM QUITE CONTENT WITH THE OTHER CONSUMER ELECTRONIC GADGET WE DID BUY THIS YEAR: A CALCULATOR As I was finally checking out, the cashier asked if I wanted any batteries.“Batteries? For what?”I wondered. She explained that the controllers ran on batteries. Gulp. I grabbed a package of rechargeable batteries, for about $30.

Having spent about $90 more than I expected, I had a few knots in my stomach on the way home

and was kicking myself for not doing my research.

Bad columnist. Bad. Back on the couch, as my wife and I were discussing this, we also started trying to figure out what the new policies governing this device would be.Would we still have only 30 minutes of screen time a week?

Could they play it every day for 10 minutes? One thing was sure:They’d be asking for it every second of every day.

Cue the panic attack. The next day I returned the whole thing. No questions asked, thank you very much.

Come Christmas morning, I knew I had done the right thing. First of all, had there been a Wii, it would have overshadowed every single other gift.As it was, Liam was excited by his Lego sets and Bakugan ball.

Kalian was tickled by her Groovy Girls dolls. (Our attempts at gender-neutral parenting have not been 100 percent successful.) And both of them have been enjoying some basic board games we got this year: Trouble and Operation (which technically is a consumer electronic device).All of these would likely be gathering dust on a shelf somewhere if we kept theWii. Now, it’s not like we’re anti-video games. In fact, Liam’s favorite activity during his screen time is to play“The Hunt for R2-D2”on the Lego.com Web site.

And Kalian likes to play some Barbie games online.

Both of these are free.The graphics are richer than anything I could have imagined back in my Atari days.Why shell out $10 to $30 for new games when there are so many free kids games online at places like the Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network sites?

Now, in all likelihood, we will probably – probably!

– get a Wii next year. But for now, the kids seem quite content with the other consumer electronic gadget we did buy this year: a calculator.

If I can maintain that childhood innocence, that appreciation of simple things, for one more year, then passing on the Wii this year was the right move.

Galileo navigates for Europe Germany’s OHB System AG will build the first 14 satellites for Europe’s global satellite navigation system. The system is expected to be technologically superior to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).

How it will work Coordinates positioning and timing signals between satellite and objects tracked

Galileo satellite

in circular orbit about 16,538 mi.

(23,616 km ) above Earth

Aviation

Ground station

Air traffic control, navigation and surveillance

Maritime

Surveillance, positioning, inspection, fishing

Search and rescue, police, fire brigades, ambulances

• Fully operational by early 2014; possibility of another 18 satellies to be ordered • Controlled by 14 ground stations around the world; central command in Europe, under civilian control • Positioning accurate to 3.3 ft. (1 m) • Costs estimated at 3.4 billion euro ($4.9 billion)

Possible applications Emergency security

• Will work with existing U.S. and Russian global positioning systems

Road

Route guidance, emergency assistance, traffic information

Rail

Traffic control, cargo monitoring, passenger information

Source: European Space Agency, NASA, EU Commission, Galileo online

Other

Science, environment, agriculture, space, leisure © 2010 MCT