The San Juan Weekly - 84th Edition

787-743-3346 / 787-743-6537

May 12 - 18, 2011

50垄

The

Central Government Pension Plans 92 % or

$18 Billion Unfunded P3

Emilio Navarro Dies at 105; Oldest Ex-Player in Baseball

P31

The Indian in America

Museum of the Americas Old San Juan

Threatening Moodys Downgrade of $28 Billion Government Debt

Mayra L贸pez Mulero Launches TV Show!

P24

P4

P19

The San Juan Weekly available on internet at www.sanjuanweeklypr.com

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The San Juan Weeekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

In Daring Ritual Hearts Beat as One

H E L LO !

Local News Mainland Pets Wine Viewpoint Fashion & Beauty Kitchen Enigmatic Portfolio

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Health & Science International Local Travel Travel Business Games Horoscope Cartoons Sports

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Afghan Hero Dog Is Euthanized

by Mistake

Enigmatic P18

With Liposuction, Belly Finds What Thighs Lose Health & Science P21

Glimpse Inside Bunker, From Qaddafi Daughter International P22

Pets P10

A Little Brother for Pétrus

Killing Adds Debate About Afghan Strategy and Timetable International P23

36 Hours in Singapore

Wine P12

Travel P25

In Neoprene and Kilts, Remembering a Risk Taker

Enforcing Copyrights Online, for Profit

Fashion & Beauty P15

Business P26

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

Moody’s Puts Puerto Rico On Notice

By Michelle Kaske

P

uerto Rico faces a potential credit rating downgrade from Moody’s Investors Service as it heads to market with its first new-money general obligation bond issuance in more than two years.

Moody’s placed $28 billion of outstanding Puerto Rico debt on watchlist for possible downgrade as higher retirement fund contributions could place stress on the commonwealth’s operating budget.

Moody’s rates Puerto Rico’s $9.2 billion of outstanding GO debt A3.

The rating action affects a combined $28 billion of outstanding debt that is linked to the commonwealth’s credit.

The government plans to sell $295 million of new-money GO bonds and $900 million of tax and revenue anticipation notes by June 30.

Preliminary actuarial valuations as of June 30, 2010 indicate that Puer-

to Rico’s employees retirement system faces an unfunded pension liability of $17.8 billion and has a funding level of 8.5%, according to Moody’s. Earlier calculations showed an unfunded obligation of $17.09 billion and a funding ratio of 9.8%, as of June 30, 2009.

To help repair the pension fund, Gov. Luis Fortuño last month proposed boosting the government’s annual retirement contribution by $48 million in fiscal 2012 and increasing it each year during the next decade.

In addition, the administration plans to inject $162.5 million into the retirement system, with the pension fund using that cash infusion to buy capital appreciation bonds from a potential sales-tax bond deal, said Juan Carlos Batlle, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico, the commonwealth’s fiscal adviser. The capital appreciation bonds should generate $1.2 billion for the fund over 40 years, he added.

Moody’s concern is that these ac-

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Exquisite Cuisine in an Oppulent Setting tions will help strengthen the pension fund at the potential expense of Puerto Rico’s operating budget.

“The watchlist action reflects the deeply underfunded nature of the commonwealth’s retirement system, and the risk that actions that significantly improve the funding ratio of the system may have such a significant cost to the commonwealth that the general fund would be strained to a point not consistent with the current A3 rating,” Moody’s analyst Emily Raimes wrote in a report. “The conclusion of the review could result in a rating change of one or more notches.”

Moody’s plans to complete its re-

view of the credit within 90 days.

Batlle said the GDB will meet with Moody’s within the next two to three weeks to explain in detail the pension changes and Fortuño’s proposed budget. The governor’s retirement initiatives require legislative approval.

The administration has yet to announce other pension reforms, such as increasing the retirement age.

“The governor’s recent proposal was probably not as aggressive as investors would have liked to have seen and that’s one of the things that Moody’s picked up on, but I think that’s a shawred concern among all investoWs,” said Joe Rosenblum, senior vice president and head of mun nicipal credit research at Alliance B Bernstein.

New York-based Alliance Bernstein holds $200 million of Puerto Rico te GOs and a small amount of Puerto G R Rico Highway and Transportation Auth thority debt, along with other Puerto R Rico credits, according to Rosenblum.

Puerto Rico’s pension challenges have been well known. Moody’s revih se sed Puerto Rico’s outlook to negative fr from stable in August due to the unfu funded liability and low funding levels. v A downgrade from Moody’s would place its rating more in line w w with the other credit rating agencies.

Fi Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s have ratings of BBB-plus and BBB for h the commonwealth. th Rosenblum said Puerto Rico b bonds already had been trading at a lower price level than a A3 rating w would warrant.

“They haven’t been trading at the Moody’s level, they’ve been trading M d differently,” he said.

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The San Juan Weekly

Mayra López Mulero Launches TV Show!

By Leo Fernández III She also represents Federal Agent William Marrero, Ana Cacho’s special friend with priviledges. Mayra is now launching a new television show which will combine cases with interviews and cameras on the street. We have seen her fight her cases in court. I await to be surprised by her tv show.

While we wait for its arrival, I will follow her court cases and the passion with which she defends her clients.

W

e see her on all the news, talk and even gossip shows. Her svelt figure, forged from extensive exercise is complemented by her impressive knowledge and intellect. The most prominent cases where serious crimes are allegated, she handles fearlessly. We see her representing Hilton Cordero and José Raúl Arriaga, to mention 2 of her clients in severe controversies.

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The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

In Haiti, Class Comes With a Peek at Lush Life

By SARAH MASLIN NIR

O

n a jungle-covered hill, about 25 Creole-speaking kindergartners chanted numbers inside a gleaming classroom, the ceiling laced with clotheslines of paper butterflies. Past noon, they spilled into the courtyard to dash across the gravel in a blur of blue and cream uniforms, each one embroidered with an anchor and the school’s name: “École Nouvelle Royal Caribbean”.

For years, Royal Caribbean Cruises has run a private resort on a sandy promontory nearby — a playground of lounge chairs, bars and even an alpine coaster that shoots guests though the forest.

The company has leased 260 beachfront acres, 90 miles north of th capital, from the government since 1986. Several times a week, up to 7,000 people descend for the day when mega ships berth here on a $34 million pier, offering a dizzying contrast to the poverty beyond the gates.

In the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the capital, the crui-

se line evoked harsh criticism when it resumed docking pleasure ships for frolicking vacationers — just six days after the quake killed 300,000 people and rendered million homeless.

Then the company opened the cheery school complex just outside the resort’s heavily guarded chain-link fences.

Other projects include a water distribution system in the village of Labadie. After the quake, the company donated $2 million in aid and helped import relief supplies.

While residents agree the school is a boon to the community, the praise is tempered by doubts. Its mountainous location is far from the towns it serves, and its failure to provide any meals — leaving many children hungry throughout the day — has critics wondering why the company has not done more.

The vast majority of the 200 or so students do not eat anything from early morning until they get home after school. Some students fall asleep at their desks from fatigue.

The school is stunning and serene, a haven from the towns from which the students

hail. It houses kindergarten through fifth grade.

Students are chosen by lottery, and around 20 percent are children of the company’s local employees.

The school cost around $550,000 to build and equip, according to Mr. Weis, and Royal Caribbean spends nearly $200,000 each year to run it. For this school, there is a $5 a month tuition, a fee organizers say they imposed to create a sense of stewardship among the families.

It is certainly a far cry from local schools like L’École Nationale Mixte in neighboring Fort Bourgeois, where splintering desks teeter on dirt floors behind doors of rusted sheets of corrugated metal, and rain pours through the roof, canceling classes.

Many students commute piled into the backs of pickup trucks, or “tap-taps,” jalopies that serve as local taxis. The company provided bus service but canceled because costs came to $15,000, vehicles were shoddy and rutted mountain roads are dangerous.

Residents like Eddy Hippolyte, a taxi

driver, say that some people feel that rather than build a showpiece, the company should have improved existing schools.

But others, like Jacques Renelle, 37, who teaches kindergarten, are more supportive. “The overall good outweighs these irregularities,” she said.

Mr. Weis is rankled by what he sees as the “give an inch take a mile” attitude he feels the company’s charity work engenders. “We have a responsibility to the community that we’re in,” he says. “But it’s not unlimited.”

Ms. Pénette-Kedar agreed. “The state does not provide for its people, so you end up having to take responsibility — not the full responsibility, because that’s not possible,” she said. “It’s not the job of the company, but you’re there.”

For students, who often spend recess kicking an empty plastic bottle around the school’s outdoor tables, the shining school is not the only oasis they know. The cruise’s resort lies just down the road, cut off by a fence. “I wish I could play there,” Rodman says, “But I don’t have any money.”

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

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Mainland 8

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

Famous List of the Infamous, Now in Need of an Update

By ERICA GOODE

A

red banner declaring “Deceased” was splashed across Osama bin Laden’s photograph on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 10 Most Wanted list on Monday, ending his 10-year sojourn among America’s most sought-after public enemies.

Bin Laden has been on the list since October 2001, sharing the limelight with an assortment of murder, kidnap and rape suspects, as well as the occasional white-collar fugitive like Semion Mogilevich, accused of defrauding thousands of investors of $150 million between 1993 and 1998. Bin Laden also appears on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

“The mastermind of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed thousands of innocent men, women and children has been killed,” the bureau noted in a statement on its Web site. It was un-

clear what would happen to the $27 million in rewards — up to $25 million from the State Department and an additional $2 million from the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association — that were offered for information leading to his capture.

Bin Laden’s death leaves an opening on the fugitives list, but Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said a replacement might not be named for some time.

“Anytime one of the 10 Most Wanted fugitives comes off the list, there’s a lot of careful consideration of who would replace that individual,” Mr. Bresson said. “I don’t expect it will be filled immediately.”

In fact, making the list is not so easy. Candidates are solicited from the bureau’s 56 field offices, and their relative merits are then debated by a committee made up of special agents from the Criminal Investigative Division

and representatives of the Office of Public Affairs. Final approval of a candidate rests with the bureau’s director.

Criteria for selecting fugitives for the list include the seriousness of the crimes — the person in question must have “a lengthy record of committing serious crimes and/or be considered a particularly dangerous menace to society,” according to the bureau’s Web site — and the likelihood that the attendant publicity will help the search.

But the process, those familiar with it have said, is not entirely free from politics.

If the price on a fugitive’s head is any indication, a candidate might be Ayman al-Zawahri, a colleague of Bin Laden’s on the Most Wanted Terrorists list; a $25 million reward has been offered for information leading to his capture. That is second only to Bin Laden.

Mr. Zawahri is wanted in connection with the bombings of the United States

Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

The Ten Most Wanted list has been in existence since 1950, when a reporter for the International News Service asked the F.B.I. for a list of the “toughest guys” the bureau was chasing.

In the 1950s, most of the fugitives featured were bank robbers, burglars and car thieves, according to the bureau, but in the 1960s, political radicals began to appear on the list, and in the 1970s, terrorists and organized crime figures were included.

Bin Laden’s 10-year tenure on the list fell far short of the record, held by Victor Manuel Gerena, who has been there for 25 years, wanted in connection with the 1983 robbery of a securities company in Connecticut. But it was considerably longer than the two hours Billie Austin Bryant spent on the list in 1969, when he was sought for the murder of two F.B.I. agents.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

Afghan Hero Dog Is Euthanized by Mistake in U.S.

By MARC LACEY

W

hen a suicide bomber entered an American military barracks in Afghanistan, it was not American soldiers but Afghan stray dogs that confronted him. Target and two other dogs snarled, barked and snapped at the man, who detonated his bomb at the entrance to the facility but did not kill anyone.

The dogs were from the Dand Aw Patan district, in the eastern Paktia Province near the Pakistani border. One died of wounds suffered in the blast, and months later, Target and the other dog, Rufus, were flown to the United States by a charity and adopted by families. Target — who received a hero’s welcome, including an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — went to live with the family of Sgt. Terry Young, 37, an Army medic who witnessed the animals’ bravery that night and helped treat the dogs and several American soldiers who were wounded.

The glory, though, was short-lived.

Target, after learning to get along with the Young family’s other dog in Arizona, becoming accustomed to dog food and to using a doggie door to relieve herself, escaped from her yard. She was captured last week and euthanized by mistake.

“My 4-year-old keeps saying: ‘Daddy, bring Target home. Daddy, get the poison out,’ ” Sergeant Young, a father of three, said in a telephone interview, his voice choking with emotion. “Obviously, at first there was extreme anger and horror. Now that a couple of days have passed, the anger has been replaced by sorrow.”

To say that Target was a celebrated mutt would be an understatement. Beyond caresses from Oprah, the shepherd mix had appeared on all the major television news channels upon her move to the United States and had won a local Hero Award as dog of the year.

Target, not used to being confined, escaped Friday afternoon from Sergeant Young’s home in the San Tan Valley area in central Arizona. After being spotted on the loose, she was reported to Pinal County’s animal control. Target was brought to the county animal shelter in Florence, where she was held just like any other run-of-the-mill stray. Because she had no tag, microchip or license with the county, her photo went up on the shelter’s Web site on Friday in hopes that her owner might respond.

Sergeant Young spotted Target’s photo online on Friday and paid the fee by computer to recover her. He mistakenly thought the shelter was closed for the weekend.

By the time Sergeant Young arrived at the pound on Monday, the shelter employee in charge of euthanizing animals that day

Target, right, and Rufus were brought to the United States after the dogs thwarted a suicide bomber’s plan in Afghanistan. had apparently picked the wrong dog out of the pen and administered a lethal injection, performing what the shelter referred to as “P.T.S.,” or put to sleep.

“I am heartsick over this,” Ruth Stalter, the county’s animal care and control director, said in a statement. “I had to personally deliver the news to the dog’s owner, and he and his family are understandably distraught.”

Barraged with criticism, the county ordered an investigation and placed the unidentified woman who euthanized Target on administrative leave. “This is unacceptable,” Ms. Stalter said, “and no family should be deprived of their companion because procedures were not followed.”

The county offered the Young family the services of a grief counselor who specializes in pet issues and agreed to refund the recovery fee and waive any fines, said Heather Murphy, a county spokeswoman. “We are not shying away from this,” she said. “We screwed up, and we’re acknowledging that.”

But Target’s fate has mushroomed into more than a family tragedy. Because of the dog’s fame and her heroics in battle, there has been an outpouring of grief.

A candlelight vigil is planned for Dec. 3 to honor Target. Sergeant Young said he might spread the dog’s ashes, which were provided by the animal shelter, at a memorial service, perhaps at the park where Target used to frolic off leash.

A lawyer specializing in animal issues has also contacted Sergeant Young, who said a lawsuit was possible.

Recalling those difficult days in Afghanistan, Sergeant Young said that perhaps because he and the other soldiers were living like dogs themselves, they bonded with the strays that found their way onto the base.

“Our rooms could be mistaken for kennels with the cement floors, smell of urine and feces, razor wire and chain-linked fence all around the compound,” he wrote for his hometown paper in Nebraska, The McCook Daily Gazette, just days after Target joined him in August.

Target had her own Facebook page for

those who wanted to follow her new life in the United States. Since word of her death has spread, fans have written of their shock and outrage.

“Nooooooooooo!!! So so sad :-( Thank you for all you did Target! Amazing that you survived a war, but not an American shelter ... something is wrong here, baby,” read one posting.

The page has been used to organize a write-in campaign to Pinal County officials to express outrage at what happened. The No Kill Advocacy Center has used Target’s death to raise the profile of its campaign to end the euthanizing of millions of cats and dogs at shelters every year.

And the Puppy Rescue Mission, the organization that raised the several thousand dollars to bring Target to the United States, has expanded its mission to encourage pet owners to install microchips in their animals so they can be easily traced.

At the shelter where Target died, there is significant despair as well, county officials

said. “On Monday, I spoke with the director and if she was not openly crying, she was fighting back tears,” Ms. Murphy said. “You don’t do this work if you don’t care about animals.”

“They love when someone adopts an animal or an animal is returned to its owner.

That’s the best part of the job,” Ms. Murphy said. “But there is roadkill to pick up, and we recently had to pick up 154 cats from a trailer with no running water. These jobs are thankless even on a good day.”

The official investigation into what happened will go beyond one employee’s error and look into the policies of the shelter, officials said. Already, one former employee has come forward to say that he almost euthanized the wrong animal on several occasions.

“They said, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it, mistakes happen,’ and we went on,” the former employee, Jason Melroy, told local television station KTAR. “I sedated a dog that wasn’t supposed to be put to sleep. Thank God another officer found it.”

A Registry Explores Dog Deaths by Breed

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

M

ost dog owners and veterinarians know that small dogs live longer than large ones, but until now there has been no thorough systematic examination of breed-related causes of death.

Now, a group of researchers has reviewed more than 74,000 cases of canine death recorded from 1984 to 2004 in the Veterinary Medicine Database, a registry established by the National Cancer Institute that receives reports from 27 veterinary teaching hospitals in North America.

For Pekingese and several other toy breeds, the leading cause of death is trauma, records show.

The analysis, published in the March/April issue of The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, found that the most common cause of death varies considerably from breed to breed and by age.

Golden retrievers and boxers had the highest rates of cancer, the leading cause of canine death over all. In several toy breeds — Chihuahua, Pekingese, Pomeranians and toy poodles — cancer was much less common. For them, the leading cause of death was trauma.

Diseases of the nervous system were the most common cause of death in older dogs, while gastrointestinal disease affected dogs of all ages equally. Death from diseases of the musculoskeletal system was common in larger breeds, but the big dogs suffered less from neurological and endocrine ailments.

The authors acknowledge that the study is retrospective and subject to errors of classification of breed and disease. Still, a co-author, Kate E. Creevy, an assistant professor of veterinary internal medicine at the University of Georgia, said that knowing what kinds of diseases a breed is prone to is helpful. “We can use that information to avoid disease rather than treat it.”

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 -18, 2011

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Wine

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The San Juan Weekly

A Little Brother for Pétrus

By ERIC ASIMOV

I

N this age of prosperity for the upper echelons of Bordeaux, where the grand chateaux all seem flush with cash, it can be hard to conceive of a time when even prestigious properties were money-losing propositions.

Yet those were the stories Christian Moueix heard growing up.

“Mon petit, I got Trotanoy for almost nothing! La Fleur-Pétrus, too!”

Mr. Moueix recalled his father, JeanPierre Moueix, saying as he recounted the family’s acquisition of two leading Pomerol estates in 1953.

The Moueix family’s ownership of both estates, and numerous others, has long been overshadowed by that great jewel in their possession, Château Pétrus, which produces Pomerols that are among the most expensive and sought-after wines in the world.

Indeed, Mr. Moueix (pronounced moo-EX) was visiting New York last week in an effort to shift a bit of the spotlight onto Château Trotanoy, leading a tasting of nine vintages for writers and a small group from the wine

trade in a second-floor room above Benoit, Alain Ducasse’s restaurant on West 55th Street.

In 2008, Mr. Moueix stepped back from Pétrus, which he had managed since 1970, leaving it in the hands of his brother, Jean-François. Now, among his many other interests, which include Dominus in Napa Valley, he is devoting more attention to Trotanoy, which he runs with his son, Edouard.

Not that Trotanoy has really been ignored or eclipsed. Regardless of Pétrus, Trotanoy’s wines have long been recognized as among the best in a region replete with excellent producers.

While the price of Pétrus these days is unfathomable, Trotanoy (pronounced troh-tahn-WAH) is merely expensive, still within the realm of possibility for those of ordinarily prosperous means.

One can scare up a case of the excellent 2001 Trotanoy for about $1,600, which would not buy even a single bottle of the ’01 Pétrus.

Where fine Bordeaux once had a narrow audience, China and other parts of Asia now drive a global market that helps push up prices. Along with the worldwide demand, viticulture and winemaking have greatly improved. Nowadays, the best producers can make good wine even in poor vintages.

Yet, Mr. Moueix is not sanguine about the state of his home region. He speaks of Bordeaux with reverence as a region that can make profound wines of elegance, balance, intensity and subtlety. But he sees styles in Bordeaux evolving in a way that threatens that distinctiveness.

He decries producers who allow their grapes to shrivel on the vine and become overly concentrated, and then try to pull too much out of the grapes in the winery — “extraction, that ugly word,” he calls it.

“I’ve been a producer of red wines for 42 years,” he said, as the wines for the tasting were poured. “I don’t intend to become a producer of black wines.”

Maintaining freshness — a lively, thirstquenching character — is a prime goal.

“Our whole objective is to produce wines that go with food,” he said.

The first wine, from the 2008 vintage, was indeed fresh, though a bit muted at first. With some air, the wine opened, hinting through youthful tannins of the complex aromas and flavors within. It was clear that Mr. Moueix loved the vintage, and that he was initially disappointed in how the wine was showing. He suggested at one point that the large Riedel glasses in front of us might not be the best size vessels for Trotanoy.

“I prefer smaller glasses,” he said, to the apparent dismay of the Riedel representative taking part in the tasting.

The value of big wine glasses is not the only conventional wisdom with which he takes issue. The importance of using new oak barrels is greatly exaggerated, he said. The proportion of new oak at Trotanoy is generally 30 to 50 percent, depending on

the vintage, and is used to let the wine breathe, not to flavor it. And while growers now understand that lower yields produce more concentrated wines, he said yields are often inappropriately low, producing dense wines.

“I was among the first to thin crops in 1973, but I had no idea of the lengths it would come to,” he said.

The 2007 vintage was not great, and while the ’07 Trotanoy was polished and elegant, it was the least interesting of the wines. “The ’07s are a bit ... neutral,” Mr. Moueix said, grasping for the right word.

By contrast, the 2006 was creamy and full in the mouth, bright and energetic, the first of the young wines that I believed I could drink now with pleasure. The 2005 was richer and more complex, a touch spicy and a bit floral but with great potential. It will need a lot of time.

The 2001 and the 2000 were a fascinating pair. The millennial vintage was greatly hyped and overshadowed 2001, but I find many ’01s far more interesting than the ’00s. The ’01 Trotanoy was lovely, graceful, vibrant and precise, while the 2000 seemed dense and ungainly to me, structured but without shape.

The final three vintages, served with lunch, were a treat. The ’98, with its luminous, lingering flavors, was one of the best Trotanoys ever, Mr. Moueix pronounced. That day, I think I preferred the elegant, complex, deeply mineral ’89 and the beautiful, still fresh 1995, which combined lightness with richness as only great wines can do.

Mr. Moueix drank the ’95 and sighed. “It’s so typically Bordeaux,” he said.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

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The San Juan Weeekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

LETTERS Working Your Way Up To Senator LORNA SOTO: First of all, condolences for the loss of your mentor and soulmate “Coquito,” and the wrecking of his elaborate legacy. But all is not lost, there’s ever a market for dope here, the word itself says it, how else could someone like you actually make it to senator?

But it’s time for you to transcend politics and go for narcotrafficking full-time. I mean, one must move up in life. And then you get to own a senator you yourself. Whom might you choose?

Nina Fotze, San Juan

Old Regressive Party Do you watch the Mexican soaps? They’re all about the lives of outrageous luxury of the wealthy and how they mercilessly step on the helpless poor. Why the insistent theme? Because that’s what Mexico is like. And what the penepeístas are turning Puerto Rico into.

First the mass firings with no attempt to re-employ the victims of the purge. To raise unemployment to bring wages down. Then the taking over of the Supreme Court by packing it with penepeístas to bypass judicial review, to dismantle Commonwealth democracy. Now the gentrification of the University of Puerto Rico, to do away with the troublesome middle class.

What’s next? Making all big business into virtual monopolies, as they’ve done already with banking, institutions other than Banco Popular are token leftovers, so don’t wonder why local bank practices get meaner and meaner. Then emasculating labor unions by repealing protective legislation and replacing it with the opposite.

Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Through the early 30s the Nazis were contriving a lot of the stuff Fortuño et al. are now doing here. Only Hitler wanted to conquer and oppress others, not his own people.

Nina Fotze, San Juan

The Real 007 Who’s the real James Bond ? the Sleuth Channel asks as they air a two-week 007 marathon. Why, Sean Connery, of course.

Not quite. To meet the real Bond you have to go through Ian Fleming. Then you encounter an 007 you never suspected.

Would you believe James Bond never fights? Unless he can ambush. Like the bad guys beat a young girl he’d befriended to provoke him, he just watched on indifferently.

Bond is a compulsive gambler---and he loses---

and bipolar---gravely so. He’s an alcoholic and needs seconal to sleep that he downs with scotch. He’s a tormented man, he wants to leave his job, but can’t let go of it. The British Secret Service uses his shortcomings to manipulate him, outright blackmail even.

He’s good at women, but doesn’t enjoy it, he suffers his loneliness and longs for love but it never works out for him. He senses that everything will ultimately end badly.

He’s knowledgeable in just about everything and where he isn’t he methodically reads up. As events unfold he’s constantly observing, anticipating and getting ready, Fleming puts the reader in James Bond’s mind, something the pitifully dumbed-down movies could hardly muster. Yes, if you’re not clever yourself, you won’t manage the books. But if you are and you do, it’s a trip, as Jack Kennedy discovered to his delight.

Bob Harris, Condado

Keeping the Electorate Dumb When politicians are asked why we don’t have one library to speak of in the Metro, they say we do. That the myriad libraries at the University of Puerto Rico are for all to use. Only that’s not the case. If you show up without a student card once upon a blue moon, they let you get away with it. But attempt to become a regular and you get tossed out. And don’t even glance at a computer, even students from other departments aren’t allowed use of them.

And forget Carnegie--all they have is a few old encyclopedias, they don’t even carry Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie. And the unwelcoming indoor Arctic climate. In any case you have to become a member and the cumbersome paperwork is plain not worth it. And Carnegie closes early in the evening and whenever school is out. Surely don’t show up during Christmas recess.

I remember New York City. There was a tiny library near my building in the North Bronx open till ten and they kept the best in encyclopedias and carried all the latest fare. It was a joy to spend an evening reading there and you met with neighbors at the lounge, even pretty girls.

One would expect monkey-see-monkey-do statehooders to emulate education for the people, this most American Jeffersonian value. Only that what they really are is vicious opportunists.

Agustín Manzano, Guaynabo

tion here. A law aggravates beating up your girlfirend, but only if she isn’t married to somebody else nor are you. Another law adds jail time for assaulting someone you hate---specially, one presumes, a politician. And the Penal Code subtracts time if you’re angry at the time you murder a person.

Talk about subverting democracy. What does a judge do when the law makes no sense? Whatever he feels like. And that’s the bottom line, what was ultimately intended, and if you suppose legislators are dumb or crazy, it’s you living in Fools’ Paradise.

And remember AIDS has killed off 25,000 young Islanders, not because the Catholic Church advised them not to wear a condom and they listened, as assumed. HIV got into the population here through shared needles by dope addicts---something that didn’t happen elsewhere---because the Legislature of Puerto Rico made OTC syringes illegal, in the untenable supposition that thus heroin use is deterred. Or they figured getting all the addicts killed was a solution to the drug crisis.

Now a baby died because the law says he must be left in the back seat of a car. That harried physician wouldn’t have forgotten her child there had she been seeing him. We’ve all made such goofs in our lives---I certainly have---only Lady Luck, or God, hasn’t allowed us to pay the price. Now the lawmakers, coercive as ever, are mulling merciless jail time for such careless parents.

And these days one can’t even count on the Supreme Court to knock down senseless and oppressive law. Fortuño, as part of his dismantling of democracy in Puerto Rico, packed the Court with partisan minions, meaning there’s no Separation of Powers here any longer. The new judges even had the audacity to violate the Constitution they exist to uphold by making a ruling without a case---that the UPR students may not strike at a time they were not striking. The United States and Puerto Rico Constitutions expressly prohibit this because it means asumption of absolute power by the Court.

Instead of deciding where the law is insufficient---the job of the Judiciary---they’re dictating law unbeholden to Constitutional constraints, is there anything that’s more of a dictatorship? And with the Supreme Court in the penepeístas’ back pocket, the word is totalitatian.

Piero Andujar, San Juan

The San Juan Weekly Send your opinions and ideas to: The San Juan Weeekly PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726

Commonwealth Foolish & Mean As you know, the books are full of idiotic legisla-

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San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

15

FASHION & BEAUTY

In Neoprene and Kilts, Remembering a Risk Taker

By ERIC WILSON

R

ihanna looked half naked in a black lace Stella McCartney gown with a sheer panel on one side. Beyoncé wore a form-fitting Pucci the shape of a pepper mill. Renée Zellweger’s gold lace dress, by Carolina Herrera, seemed demure by comparison, until she turned around to reveal the back, which plunged all the way into plumber territory.

“It’s a bit of a mystery how it is even staying on,” Ms. Zellweger said, as Paul McCartney, in a tartan blazer, tapped her on the shoulder to say hello.

If the fashion seemed especially exuberant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute gala on Monday night, and it certainly did, that was because its organizers had urged guests to take risks with their dresses in honor of the late designer Alexander McQueen, who is the subject of the museum’s spring exhibition.

Mr. McQueen, who committed suicide last year, was known for his provocative collections and daring tailoring, and so there were women in full feathered panniers (the socialite Daphne Guinness) and a laser cut neoprene gown with a full train (the model Aimee Mullins), and a guest with a sculpture of a

large egg on her head (the Italian editor Anna Dello Russo). Ms. Zellweger’s rear exposure, it turns out, was a nod to the designer’s notorious “bumster” trousers, which set an extreme low for waistlines.

“I remember there was a lot of blush, and a lot of red,” said Anna Win-

tour, the editor of Vogue and the driving force behind the ball, just after she had personally received some 790 guests, as is her tradition. “And I remember Marc Jacobs was wearing a red kilt.”

Actually, Mr. Jacobs, who was tracked down just before a Scottish-themed dinner was served in the Temple of Dendur, was wearing a quasi-kilt by Comme des Garçons that comprised a pair of shorts fronted with a kilt flap.

His business partner, Robert Duffy, was wearing a real one. “And he’s not wea-

ring any underwear,” Mr. Jacobs said.

This year’s guest list was typically elite, but also unusual in its mix, as Donald Trump was telling guests that he really was amused by President Obama’s jokes during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: “You’ll get me in trouble,” he told one guest who teased him. He was followed into the party by Gwyneth Paltrow (in backless Stella McCartney) and Jennifer Lopez (in raspberry Gucci, with a cutout in the front).

Ms. Mullins arrived with the designer Olivier Theyskens, who had custom made her dress using yards of neoprene that had been burned to give it a charred edge. It reeked of smoke.

“It’s a burn smell,” Ms. Mullins said.

“Let’s hope the fire alarm doesn’t go off.” Mr. McQueen, who once designed a bustier of live worms layered between clear plastic, probably would have adored it.

As the party went on, Kerry Washington stood at the entrance to the exhibition, reading the introduction printed on the wall. “I love this quote: ‘I’m a romantic schizophrenic,’ ” she said, citing a comment by Mr. McQueen. “I imagine if he had lived long enough, that would have been the title of his memoir.”

Kitchen

16

May 12 - 18, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Steamed, Roasted, Stir-Fried, Grilled

By MARK BITTMAN

I

t takes effort to maintain a sense of seasonality with asparagus, given that it has become a yearround product. But right now even the stuff in supermarkets may come from a local source — so that the stalks snap rather than bend when you apply pressure and the aroma and flavor are fresh rather than simply strong.

Still, even the best asparagus needs something, even if it’s as little as olive oil and lemon. Hence the following below, with the best cooking methods — steaming (or poaching; in the case of asparagus, they’re roughly equivalent); roasting; grilling (or broiling, which is always an alternative, because the broiler is nothing but an upside-down grill); and stir-frying — and flavors well suited to each.

There are several varieties of asparagus, including white, which is, in my experience, overrated. (You Northern Europeans may yell at me all you like; I’ve tried it everywhere.)

The most relevant difference for most of us is thick versus thin, and you can use either in any recipe here. In the 1990s, I considered skinny asparagus far superior to fat, because it requires no peeling and cooks in a flash. A few years ago, I began to better appreciate the delicious snap of thick spears as well as their relative sturdiness. Certainly if you’re steaming or grilling, thick is the preferable type. It really should be peeled; it will look, taste and bite more nicely if you take the time. And with thick or thin, you can snap the bottoms off or go the easier route and just chop off the last inch or two with a chef’s knife.

You might prefer asparagus crisp-tender or softer than that; either way, it’s done when you can pierce the thickest part of a spear with a sharp knife without much resistance. This might take less than five minutes for very slender asparagus, twice that long for thick. (Roasting is the slowest of the cooking methods here.) For all of these recipes, use 1 1/2 to 2 pounds to serve four people, and as always, add salt and black pepper to taste.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

17

Kitchen

Cooking Lamb With (Shh) Anchovies

By MELISSA CLARK

S

LIPPING a few anchovies into the stew pot is one of those sneaky little tricks that boosts flavor with virtually no effort. Unscrew the jar, plop in a couple of whole fillets, then watch them disappear into the sauce. They act as flavor enhancers, bringing out the character of the other ingredients while adding a salty, complex nuance but with none of the fishiness that the anchovy-averse might expect.

A lifelong anchovy enthusiast, I embraced this secret the minute I heard about it. Now, I rarely stew a leg of lamb or chunk of pork shoulder without tossing in a few small fish.

I don’t know why it took me so long to think of adding them to a pan of quickly sautéed meat, but it makes perfect sense.

Anchovies don’t require long simmering to disintegrate into a pan sauce. They don’t even need to be chopped. As any puttanesca fan knows, a few minutes of lazy stirring in a pan of simmering liquid or fat (usually

olive oil or butter) will turn them into tasty paste.

In fact, that method is the basis of one of my favorite instant, there’s-nothing-inthe-house snacks. Just empty a drained jar of anchovies into a saucepan and melt them down with a stick of butter. After five minutes, stir in a little minced garlic and spread the resulting savory mush onto crostini, topping them with slices of ripe tomato or shavings of prosciutto.

In this recipe, I concoct a similarly flavored sauce for juicy little lamb chops. I use olive oil in place of butter and throw in a handful of capers. The pungent garlic and anchovies bring out the sweetness of the meat while a few sage leaves add a musky note.

The dish comes together in minutes but tastes as if you’d spent hours over the stove fussing and fine-tuning. And because the salted fish and olive oil meld into a smooth sauce, you can serve the dish to people who think they don’t like anchovies, then tell them when only the lamb bones remain.

15 sage leaves 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped Lemon wedges, for serving.

Seared Lamb Chops With Anchovies, Capers and Sage Time: 35 minutes 6 baby lamb chops (1 1/4 pounds) Salt and pepper 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 3 anchovy fillets 3 tablespoons drained capers

1. Rinse the lamb chops and pat them dry. Season them with salt and pepper, and let rest for 15 minutes.

2. Over medium-high heat, warm a skillet large enough to hold all the chops in one layer. Add the oil and when it shimmers, add the anchovies and capers. Cook, stirring, until the anchovies break down, about 3 minutes.

3. Arrange the lamb chops in the skillet and fry, without moving them, until brown, about 3 minutes. Turn them over, and toss the sage leaves and pepper flakes into the pan.

Cook until lamb reaches the desired doneness, about 2 minutes for medium-rare.

4. Arrange the chops on serving plates. Add the garlic to the pan and cook for 1 minute, then spoon the sauce over the lamb.

Serve with the lemon wedges.

Yield: 2 servings.

18

May 12 - 18, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Hearts Beat as One in a Daring Ritual

By PAM BELLUCK

F

or as long as anyone in the tiny Spanish village of San Pedro Manrique can remember, people there have been walking on fire.

They do it every June 23, at midnight, celebrating the summer solstice by crossing a 23-foot-long carpet of oak embers that have burned for hours before sizzling down to a glowing red. The event is full of pageantry and symbolism: processions with religious statues, trumpets sounding before each firewalk, and three virgins (or, these days, three women who are unmarried).

So when scientists wanted to measure the physiological effects of firewalking to see if there were biological underpinnings of communal rituals, they encountered a few hurdles.

“We talked about measuring blood pressure, cortisol levels, pain tolerance,” said Ivana Konvalinka, a bioengineering doctoral student at Aarhus University in Denmark who helped lead the team. “We even talked about oxytocin,” a hormone involved in pleasure.

But with such readings difficult to obtain, they settled on heart rate, strapping monitors on fire-walkers and spectators to see whether the rates of spectators increased like those of people actually walking barefoot on hot coals.

Still, even persuading people to

wear heart monitors was no easy feat.

Before arriving, the research team of anthropologists, psychologists and religion experts had received permission from San Pedro Manrique’s mayor, but later he demurred, Ms. Konvalinka said.

“He said to us, if we are able to recruit people, then fine,” she said, “but he didn’t approve, and he told people not to participate.”

Some people dropped out or refused, including the people the firewalkers carry on their backs, a group researchers considered monitoring. But others approached researchers at the last minute. Ultimately, they monitored 12 fire-walkers, 9 spectators related to fire-walkers, and 17 unrelated spectators who were just visiting. The mayor also required monitors to be concealed so they were invisible to the crowd, which filled the town’s special fire-walking amphitheater, built for 3,000 spectators, five times the number of villagers.

The researchers wanted to investigate what draws people to communal rituals like fire-walking.

“There’s the idea about rituals that they enhance group cohesion, but what creates this group?” Ms. Konvalinka said. “We figured there was some kind of autonomic nervous system measure that could capture the emotional effects of the ritual.”

The results surprised them. The

heart rates of relatives and friends of the fire-walkers followed an almost identical pattern to the fire-walkers’ rates, spiking and dropping almost in synchrony. The heart rates of visiting spectators did not. The relatives’ rates synchronized throughout the event, which lasted 30 minutes, with 28 fire-walkers each making five-second walks. So relatives or friends’ heart rates matched a fire-walker’s rate before, during and after his walk. Even people related to other fire-walkers showed similar patterns.

Experts not involved in the study said despite the small number of participants, the results were intriguing. They build on research showing heart rates of fans of team sports surge when their teams score, and on studies demonstrating that people rocking in rocking chairs or tapping their fingers eventually synchronize their movements.

“It’s one study, but it’s a great study,” said Michael Richardson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati. “It shows that being connected to someone is not just in the mind. There are these fundamental physiological behavioral moments that are occurring continuously with other people that we’re not aware of.

There is a solid grounding of laboratory research which is completely consistent with their findings. It’s always hard to do these studies in the real world. This

is the first study that has kind of done it on a big scale in a natural situation.”

Richard Sosis, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, said the study was “quite exciting,” contradicting the “assumption that rituals produce cohesion and solidarity only if there are shared movements, shared vocalizations or shared rhythms,” activities like singing, dancing or marching together. With fire-walking, spectators simply watched, without sharing activity or rhythm with the walkers. And different types of spectators had different results, with villagers in sync but out-of-towners not.

Dr. Sosis, co-editor of a new journal, Religion, Brain and Behavior, said there could be parallels with more common rituals, like weddings, baptisms or bar mitzvahs. He cited an experiment in which Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist, attended a wedding and measured oxytocin levels of the bride, groom and some relatives and friends, finding that several experienced surges in oxytocin as if bonding with the couple.

David Willey, a physicist at University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, firewalks himself and has reasoned that it does not normally burn because the embers do not transmit enough heat in their brief contact with feet. Heart-rate synchronization makes sense, he said, based on his fire-walking parties, where “there is very much a group feeling.”

Researchers might find similar heart-rate synchronization in other high-arousal rituals like “bending rebar with your throat, walking on broken glass, bungee jumping,” he said.

“They can come to my backyard if they want.”

Ms. Konvalinka said the team plans another fire-walking study, this time in Mauritius. But they may also return to San Pedro Manrique. “At the end,” she said, “I think the mayor was O.K. with us being there.”

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

H

e is one of the most popular performers in romanticism.

Better known as “El Lujo de México”.This remarkable singer of romantic ballads with his melodious baritone voice with some powerful bass notes. With no doubt, he is one of the legends of music over the past half century.

By: Daniel Morales Pomales He is not a stranger for Puerto Rico celebrating this year 50 years of familiarity with our Island. He began in musicwas because his brother José Muñiz introduced him to artists developing their musical talent. After part of the choir at a church in Guadalajara and several musical groups, he moved to Ciudad Juárez in 1946, where he does not have

19

González who played in the Trío Culiacán. One day the third member of the trio did not arrived so Muñiz offered to substitute for that day claiming to know to play guitar, which was not true. Upon reaching the serenade, Muñiz and his teammates confessed but there was no alternative but to give him a pair of maracas to accompany as the third voice. The boldness paid off as Neri and Gonzalez were surprised by the style, originality and tenderness in the voice of Muñiz.

Eventually Juan Neri, vocals, slide guitar and director of the trio, asked him to stay full time, which took the role of a third voice in joint and solo parts. After many rejection he was discovered by a record company entrepreneur. They began to emerge as one of the most famous trios in this musical history of Latin America:

Marco Antonio Muniz and his Romance with Puerto Rico

much luck and decided to return to his native Guadalajara.

As a singer, he could not raise enough money to survive, so that during his early years he had to mix his artistic career with other trades such as baker and jeweler. As a reminder of this he still has a diamond on his left wrist.

His interest in show business led him to México City and take a job as a janitor at radio station XEW and later as an assistant singer to Libertad Lamarque and Benny Moré.

He was presented in one of the most famous cabarets of Mexico City known as The Bandit.

That’s where he met Juan Neri and Héctor

The Three Aces, a name adopted at the suggestion of his new manager and chosen at random from among several options. The Tres Aces managed to record eight albums, among which include such hits as: ‘Contigo en la distancia’, ‘La enramada’ and ‘Regálame esta noche’, to name a few.

In late 1959 and early 1960, two reasons led to the departure of Muñiz from the trio. Differences become more frequent with Neri whose alcoholism began to affect the trio for informality and inconsistency. On a tour to Puerto Rico and other countries, several people close to Muniz raised some concerns.

Muñiz began his career in 1960 as a soloist with the issues ‘Luz y Sombra’ and ‘Escándalo’.

In 1965, already recognized and established as a soloist, he begins one tour after another on the most important stages in Latin America, Spain and the United States, achieving success as ‘Adelante’, “Comprendeme’, ‘Capullito de alhelí’, Por Amor’among many others .

Usually Muñiz presentations have been in a private atmosphere type hotel

ballrooms and in large concert halls and stadiums.

Of the albums, the most successful are: “Marco Antonio Muñiz con los Trovadores en el Caribe”, “Corazón Maldito”, “Mi novies Guadalajara”, “Interpreta a Gabriel Ruiz Gonzalo Curiel” “Salsa, a la manera de Marco Antonio” with which he ventured into the tropical music, “Mi querido Borinquen,” a tribute to Puerto Rican traditional music, “Homenaje a Pedro Infante”, “Homenaje a José Alfredo Jiménez” Such was his fame here in Puerto Rico the singer whose stage name is Marc Anthony bears the name of Marco Antonio Muñiz as well as a tribute to the Mexican singer.

Apart from his many albums and concerts, Muñiz has constantly appeared on television across Latin America, mainly in Mexico and his beloved Puerto Rico.

Marco Antonio Muñiz has formally retired from the stage and limited his appearances. He currently lives in his native Guadalajara.

Marco Antonio Muniz, returns to Puerto Rico to present his show 50años de romance con Puerto Rico, Saturday, June 18, 2011 in Bellas Artes de Caguas, With this concert, he celebrates 50 years performing in Puerto Rico as a soloist.

Producers Angie Santa and Rolando Garcia decided to change the presentation of the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferré to Fine Arts in Caguas due to the impossibility of taking the discount and the amount of free tickets to people over 60 years of age, under Law 108.

“As much as we want, producers can not fully assume this benefit that the State offered to this population in any activity held in a theater or governmentowned space. There should be some limits on the number of tickets to those who enforce the law, or some exemptions to help the producer to make the business profitable. Under these conditions it is impossible to produce in the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferré, view Santa and Garcia.

Toño Muñiz will be as guest artist and musical direction by Quique Talavera.

Tickets are on sale at the CBA Caguas Ticket Center (787-792-5000). People who had purchased tickets for display in San Juan, must request their refund right where they bought their tickets.

HEALTH & SCIENCE 20

If Big-Brained Birds Can Make It Here...

Monkeys’ Memories Can Stretch Beyond What’s in Front of Them

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

A

bird that wants to live in a big city may need a big brain to survive, Swedish researchers report in a new study.

Brain size has previously been linked to the ability of animals of various species to develop new behaviors and adapt to changing environments. So, in the new study, the researchers cataloged brain size and body mass for 82 species of passerine birds — generally small, perching birds — and categorized them by their success, or lack of it, in living in 12 European cities.

They found that species with brains that were large in relation to their body size — crows and finches, for example — were more likely to succeed in cities.

The study was published online last week in Biology Letters.

Only a handful of species can survive in cities, and the authors speculate that increasing ur-

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

banization worldwide may result in a long-term decline in populations of smaller-brained birds.

Except for pigeons.

They are small-brained, said the lead author, Alexei A. Maklakov, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at Uppsala University. But the urban environment provides them with a close approximation of their natural habitat, so they need little intellectual energy to adapt.

There are plenty of tall buildings that resemble the rocks they normally nest on, and, Dr. Maklakov said, “they don’t have to invent any novel ways of finding food. The food we throw away is fine for them.”

Forget Straws: Hummingbirds Sip With Forks

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

S

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

ince the theory was first put forth in 1833, ornithologists have assumed that hummingbirds drink by capillary action: The bird curls its forked tongue into a straw shape, and the liquid is drawn up the tube by surface tension.

“Someone decided this, and no one has really changed their mind since,” said Margaret A. Rubega, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Connecticut. Now she and Alejandro Rico-Guevara, a graduate student at the university, report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that it is not that simple.

Using a highspeed video camera, the researchers photographed 30 The forked tongues of hummingbirds have tips hummingbirds of 10 species as they lined with hairlike extensions called lamellae. drank from a fee-

der. They also did postmortem microscopic examinations of the tongues of 20 additional birds. Their report was posted online Monday.

The edges of a hummingbird’s tongue are lined with lamellae, a fringe of hairlike fleshy extensions. The tongue is wet when it encounters the nectar, the tongue’s two tips are tightly closed, and the lamellae are flattened against it.

Then the tip of the tongue separates and the lamellae extend from each fork. As the bird pulls its tongue in past the surface of the liquid, the tongue tips come together, and the lamellae roll inward, trapping the nectar. At that point, Dr. Rubega said, capillary action probably moves the liquid into the throat.

The researchers found the same process when they a manipulated the tongues of dead birds. This means it requires no additional energy on the part of the bird — pulling the tongue past the surface of the liquid is enough to catch the nectar.

“The tongue is less than one millimeter thick,” said Mr. Rico-Guevara. “And it’s hidden inside a flower. But you use flat-sided feeders to avoid distortion, and you can see what happens.

It’s amazing.”

M

onkeys can recognize an object they have seen before, but now scientists have shown that they are also capable of a much more sophisticated form of memory: They can hold in mind an object without actually seeing it.

Recall is a routine part of human mental activity. It is what allows us, for example, to describe a person who is not present. But without language, animals have not been able to tell a researcher whether they recall something.

Now a study published on Thursday in Current Biology suggests that language is not necessary — either for having the ability to recall, or for proving it to an experimenter.

Researchers trained five rhesus monkeys. On a 5-by-5-inch grid on a computer screen, the monkeys were shown a shape consisting of three adjacent squares, one blue and two red in various patterns.

After a moment, the red squares disappear, and the blue square moves to a different box on the grid. After another delay, the monkey has to restore the red squares to their original places in relation to the blue one by pressing on the correct boxes of the grid. When he does so successfully, he gets a food reward.

All the monkeys performed the task with a success rate significantly above chance. In other words, they could recall the positions of the squares without seeing them.

The lead author, Benjamin M. Basile, a graduate student in psychology at Emory University, said that there may be aspects of memory previously testable only with language that are universal to primates.

“We just need to find ways to get at them,” he said.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

21 HEALTH & SCIENCE

With Liposuction, the Belly Finds What the Thighs Lose

By GINA KOLATA

T

HE woman’s hips bulged in unsightly saddlebags. Then she had liposuction and, presto, those saddlebags disappeared.

Photo after photo on plastic surgery Web sites make liposuction look easy, its results transformative. It has become the most popular plastic surgery, with more than 450,000 operations a year, each costing a few thousand dollars.

But does the fat come back? And if it does, where does it show up?

Until now, no one knew for sure. But a new study, led by Drs. Teri L. Hernandez and Robert H. Eckel of the University of Colorado, has answered those questions.

And what he found is not good news.

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned nonobese women to have liposuction on their protuberant thighs and lower abdomen or to refrain from having the procedure, serving as controls. As compensation, the women who were control subjects were told that when the study was over, after they learned the results, they could get liposuction if they still wanted it. For them, the price would also be reduced from the going rate.

The result, published in the latest issue of Obesity, was that fat came back after it was suctioned out. It took a year, but it all returned. But it did not reappear in the women’s thighs. Instead, Dr. Eckel said, “it was redistributed upstairs,” mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps of the arms.

Dr. Felmont Eaves III, a plastic surgeon in Charlotte, N.C., and president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said the study was “very well done,” and the results were surprising.

He said he would mention it to his patients in the context of other information on liposuction.

The finding raises questions about plastic surgery. Liposuction has been around since 1974 and is heavily advertised. Why did it take so long for anyone to do this study?

Maybe it’s because such a study is very difficult, said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine. It takes a team of researchers, and money. Fat must be measured precisely, with scans.

And surgery, said Jonathan Moreno, an ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the field, is not like other areas of medicine.

“A lot of it has to do with the culture of surgery, which is literally handson,” he said. Surgeons, he added, often feel a deep connection to their patients that makes it difficult for them to agree to clinical trials that involve randomizing patients.

Another problem, Dr. Moreno said, is that different surgeons have different skills and different techniques. Surgery is not like taking a drug, where one pill is just like every other.

So instead of doing rigorous studies, surgeons tend to innovate, inventing their own procedures and publishing anecdotes about patients, a practice that can be misleading.

But in this case, the outcome did not depend on the surgeon. It depended on the biology of fat. And obesity researchers say they are not surprised that the women’s fat came back. The body, they say “defends” its fat. If you lose weight, even by dieting, it comes back. And, the study showed, if you suck out the fat with

liposuction, even if it’s only a pound, as it was for subjects in the study, it still comes back.

“It’s another chapter in the ‘You can’t fool Mother Nature’ story,’ ” said Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an obesity researcher at Columbia University.

Some researchers have their own anecdotes. Dr. George Bray, a professor of medicine at Louisiana State University, once saw a young woman who was so distraught by her protruding abdomen that she had an operation to slice off some of her abdominal fat.

“Her lower abdomen was considerably thinner,” Dr. Bray said. “But the areas above it picked up the extra fat.”

Then there are the studies with laboratory rodents that had fat surgically removed. The fat always came back. And, like the women in the new study, the rodents got their fat back in places other than the place where it was removed, Dr. Klein reported. They grow new fat cells to

replace the ones that were lost.

The same thing happened to the women who had liposuction. It turns out, Dr. Leibel said, that the body controls the number of its fat cells as carefully as it controls the amount of its fat. Fat cells die and new ones are born throughout life.

Scientists have found that fat cells live for only about seven years and that every time a fat cell dies, another is formed to take its place.

But why wouldn’t the women grow new fat cells in their thighs? The answer, Dr. Klein said, may be that liposuction violently destroys the fishnet structure under the skin where fat cells live.

Nonetheless, the women in the study who had liposuction were happy, Dr. Eckel said. They had hated their hips and thighs and just wanted that fat gone.

As for the women in the control group, when the study ended and they knew the results, more than half still chose to have liposuction.

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The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

From a Qaddafi Daughter, a Glimpse Inside the Bunker

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

A

isha el-Qaddafi, the daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, likes to tell her three young children bedtime stories about the afterlife. Now, she says, they are especially appropriate.

“To make them ready,” she said, “because in a time of war you never know when a rocket or a bomb might hit you, and that will be the end.”

In a rare interview at her charitable foundation here, Ms. Qaddafi, 36, a Libyan-trained lawyer who once worked on Saddam Hussein’s legal defense team, offered a glimpse into the fatalistic mind-set of the increasingly isolated family at the core of the battle for Libya, the bloodiest arena in the democratic uprising that is sweeping the region.

She dismissed the rebels as “terrorists” but suggested that some former Qaddafi officials who are now in the opposition’s governing council still “keep in touch with us.” She pleaded for dialogue and talked about democratic reforms. But she dismissed the rebels as unfit for such talks because of their use of violence, hurled personal barbs at President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and, at one point, appeared to disparage the basic idea of electoral democracy.

After arranging the interview last week, Ms. Qaddafi spoke for more than an hour late Sunday afternoon, just hours before NATO escalated its airstrikes with an attack that disrupted state television and another on the Libyan leader’s compound in Tripoli. Ms. Qaddafi, one of the many unofficial and sometimes rivalrous Qaddafi family power brokers who dominate Libya’s economic and political life, said the crisis had pulled the family together “like one hand.”

Ms. Qaddafi said that she and her seven brothers “have a dialogue between us and exchange points of view” before anyone takes a major step in their common defense. She acknowledged that she had seen news reports that her siblings had proposed easing their father from power in a transition under the direction of her brother Seif al-Islam, but she declined to comment on the details.

She also pointedly declined to answer when asked if Abdel Fattah Younes, a top rebel military official who was a

longtime interior minister, was among the leaders who had kept in touch with the Qaddafi family.

“They say to us that they have their own families, daughters, sons, spouses, and they fear for them, and that is why they have taken those positions,” she said of those rebel leaders. “There are many members of the council who have worked with my father for 42 years and been loyal to him. Do you think they would just go like that?”

Instead of the angry defiance and vows of retribution issued by her father and her brother Seif, Ms. Qaddafi focused on how the West would rue the chaos she predicted would engulf a post-Qaddafi Libya. When pressed repeatedly on how her family could stay in power, she said more than once, “We have a great hope in God.” Ms. Qaddafi has appeared in public twice since the bombings began, before cheering crowds at the colonel’s compound, but she seldom speaks in public.

During the interview, she wore close-fitting jeans, Gucci shoes and a pale scarf that did not cover her long blond hair. At times, she laughed at her fate, recalling how the United Nations, after “begging” her to be an envoy for peace in the past, has now referred her to the International Criminal Court. Her staff presented an illustrated biography entitled “Princess of Peace.”

She said her experience as a volunteer on Saddam Hussein’s defense team offered relevant parallels.

“The opposition in Iraq told the West that when you come to Iraq they will greet you with roses,” she said. “Almost 10 years later they are receiving the Americans with bullets, and, believe me, the situation in Libya will be much worse.”

She taunted both President Obama and Mrs. Clinton, saying that Mr. Obama had “achieved nothing so far” and laughing as she posed a question to Mrs. Clinton: “Why didn’t you leave the White House when you found out about the cheating of your husband?”

Even as she deprecated the American leaders, she repeatedly called for talks. “The world should come together at a round table,” she said, “under the auspices of international organizations.”

At the same time, she ruled out any dialogue with the Libyan rebels who

Aisha el-Qaddafi, daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, at a pro-government rally in Tripoli now control the eastern half of the country; its commercial center, Misurata; and the western mountain towns of Zintan and Nalut, dismissing them as “terrorists” who “are just fighting for the sake of fighting.”

Under her brother Seif’s unofficial leadership, she said, the Libyan government had been on the verge of unveiling a constitution as a step toward democratic reform when “this tragedy happened and spoiled things.”

At the same time, she also derided, and possibly misunderstood, the basic ideas of checks and balances and public accountability in an electoral democracy.

“Let me say something about the Western elections that they say are a democratic system of ruling,” she volunteered, referring to handwritten notes she had prepared for the interview. In an election where one candidate won with 50 percent of the vote and another lost with 48 percent, she asked, “Do you call this democracy? Just this one vote? What happened to the 48 percent who said ‘no’?”

She complained of the “betrayal” of Arabs whose causes her father had supported and the Western allies to whom he had turned over his weapons of mass destruction. “Is this the reward that we get?” she asked. “This would lead every country that has weapons of mass destruction to keep them or make more so they will not meet the same fate as Libya.”

Without Colonel Qaddafi, she predicted, illegal immigrants from Africa

would pour into Europe, Islamic radicals would establish a base on the Mediterranean’s shores, and Libyan tribes would turn their guns on one another.

Citing unconfirmed Libyan intelligence reports, she asserted that the weapons-starved rebels had actually sold arms to the Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. “When my father was there, see how safe Europe was and how safe Libya was?” she asked.

Ms. Qaddafi initially dismissed reports of the handful of nights two months ago when protesters took over the streets of Tripoli and almost every other big city, pulling down Qaddafi posters and burning police stations. Then, told that journalists had seen the evidence, she argued the destruction proved they were not civilian protesters but “saboteurs.”

She also appeared to dismiss witnesses’ accounts of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces shooting unarmed demonstrators.

“I am not sure that happened,” she said.

“But let’s say it did: it was limited in scope.”

As for her father’s state of mind, she said with a laugh that he was not worried at all. “He is as strong as the world knows him,” she said. “He is quite sure that the Libyan people are loyal to him.”

Her family still hoped, she said, to go back to its previous position, what she called “a return to normal.” But, she added, “of course we can expedite that if NATO will stop bombing us.”

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

23

Killing Adds to Debate About U.S. Strategy and Timetable in Afghanistan

By MARK LANDLER, THOM SHANKER and ALISSA J. RUBIN

T

he killing of Osama bin Laden deep in Pakistan is sure to fuel the debate over the Obama administration’s strategy in Afghanistan, where 100,000 troops are still fighting a war to destroy Al Qaeda.

As President Obama approaches deciding how many troops to pull out of Afghanistan — and how fast — the deadly raid on Al Qaeda’s leader called into question the administration’s basic assumptions about how to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Islamic terrorists.

Administration officials insisted their commitments to Afghanistan and Pakistan would be undiminished by the death of Bin Laden. They said privately the pressure would mount to withdraw troops more quickly.

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said Pakistan would remain a partner against terrorism, regardless of what he conceded were questions about whether its government provided support to Bin Laden and disagreements about counterterrorism strategy. He said the NATO troop presence in Afghanistan was necessary to prevent that country from again becoming a “launching point” for Al Qaeda.

Officials in the State Department and Pentagon, as well as key lawmakers, said Bin Laden’s death was bound to alter the debate about a costly war soon to enter its second decade. Those questions will be even more pointed, on the eve of an election year and amid growing alarm about the budget deficit.

Pentagon officials said they were preparing for calls for a more rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. Critics of the war are expected to trumpet the death of Bin Laden as such a crippling blow to Al Qaeda that the movement, while remaining dangerous, is no longer an existential threat to the United States. Even before Bin Laden’s death, there was a camp within the administration and the Democratic Party — as well some voices among Republicans — calling for a rapid winding down of American involvement.

Pentagon officials acknowledged that NATO nations, many of whom already are reluctant to remain in Afghanistan, also may argue that Bin Laden’s death allows them to withdraw more rapidly than planned.

“I hope people are going to feel, on a bipartisan basis, that when you move the ball this far it’s crazy to walk off the field,” one senior administration official said. Officials who favor retaining a large troop presence said that while this was a significant victory, the securi-

ty gains in Afghanistan remained fragile.

When Mr. Obama ordered an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009 with a goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda, it included a broader counterinsurgency campaign to protect the population, rebuild the economy and shore up the fragile central government. This broader campaign, which goes far beyond a focused fight against Al Qaeda, is based on the goal of assuring that Afghanistan would never again become a safe haven for the terror organization.

The administration, officials said, was already moving away from this counterinsurgency strategy, toward one with more limited objectives for Afghanistan and a goal of political reconciliation with the Taliban, which once offered Al Qaeda sanctuary there. Drone strikes and nighttime raids, of the kind that killed Bin Laden, would figure even more prominently in such a strategy, officials said.

But reconciling with the Taliban will require an active role by Pakistan, which provides a haven for Taliban leaders. The strains between the United States and Pakistan could make that process more difficult. And Bin Laden’s death near Islamabad has rekindled suspicions in Afghanistan. On Monday, Afghan officials were withering in their criticism of Pakistan as the locus of terrorism.

“Pakistan is the problem, and the West has to pay attention,” said Amrullah Saleh, the former intelligence director of Afghanistan, who resigned last summer. Though jubilant at the death of Bin Laden, he said it was time for the United States to “wake up to the fact that Pakistan is a hostile state exporting terror.”

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was more diplomatic but said Bin Laden’s death should speed the end of the war. ” Mr. Karzai said to a meeting of Afghan district leaders. “The fight against terrorism is in its sanctuaries, in its training bases and in its financing centers, not in Afghanistan, and now it’s proved that we were right.”

Mr. Obama has set a deadline of July for beginning a withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.

American allies in the Persian Gulf believe that Iran may be chastened, however temporarily, by evidence of a forceful operation by the United States to protect its national security interests — and one that required violating the sovereignty of another nation.

“Pakistan is a huge country with lots of people, some of whom unfortunately sympathize with the goals of terrorists,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington.

“But their presence in the country should not be interpreted as, in any way, state complicity.”

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The San Juan Weekly

The Indian in América

Museum of the Americas, Old San Juan

A

mong the extraordinary permanent expositions offered buy the Museum of the Americas, we cannot exagerate the importance of the Indian in America: 22 Ethic Groups that Survived Conquest and European Colonizations.

Dr. Ricardo Alegría created the spectacular montage that displays extremely authentic sculptures by the swiss/peruvian artist Felipe Let- dels, in the actual communities whetersten, works that capture the daily re they lived.

Dr. Alegría acquired part of the life of the Amazonian tribes whose molds were made from living mo- collection “Sons of Our Land” from

Lettersten in order to donate it to the Museum of the Americas. He founded the museum in 1992 and has offered in its local at the Ballajá Center of Old San Juan, rare examples of Puerto Rican and Latin America modern and contemporary art along with a permanent exhibition that illustrates popular traditions from all over the hemisphere.

To these one must add the exceptional collection on African Heritage and sculptures of americanindian tribes. The Indians in America exhibition includes interactive stations, projections of scenes from the taino village as well as the documantary Amazon Bronze, about the technology used by Lettersten to make the sculptures.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

25

36 Hours in Singapore

By ONDINE COHANE

S

ingapore is booming. Casinos and hotels have sprung up; museums and galleries in former colonial landmarks have flung open their doors; and international designers have staked out prime real estate alongside up-and-comers just starting to make their fashion mark. TStreet vendors and sleek restaurants — new and well-established — serve up the city’s renowned mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic cuisines. Best of all, sexy lounges and rooftop bars are helping the citystate shake off its formerly staid image.

Friday 4 p.m.

1) BIRD’S-EYE VIEW - There are few better symbols of Singapore’s recent success — or excess than the year-old Marina Bay Sands (10 Bayfront Avenue; 65-6688-8868; marinabaysands.com), a gargantuan, three-towered complex with more than 2,500 rooms looms over the city. Even if you aren’t staying at the hotel or hitting the casino, a ticket costing 20 Singapore dollars, or $16.50 at 1.22 Singapore dollars to the U.S. dollar, will provide access to SkyPark, an observation deck with 360-degree views. In one direction you’ll see the city’s expansive harbor; in the other, its sparkling skyline. Entry also includes a gander at what is billed as the world’s largest infinity pool, an architectural marvel that links the tops of the trio of towers.

5 p.m.

2) DUAL PURPOSED - The city’s new Museum of Contemporary Arts (27A Loewen Road; 65-6479-6622; mocaloewen.sg), known as MOCA, exemplifies Singapore’s ability to conserve existing colonial structures while creating cutting-edge interiors. A former army barracks dating from the 1860s showcases artists from all over Asia. The gallery featured the Chinese provocateur Guo Jin and sculptors like Jiang Shuo and Wu Shaoxiang. This month the museum focuses on S. P. Hidayat, an up-and-coming Indonesian expressionist. In the fall a 2.5-acre sculpture garden will be unveiled.

8 p.m.

3) CULINARY ARTS - The food scene is notable. Restaurant André (41 Bukit Pasoh Road; 65-6534-8880; restaurantandre.com), opened in the Chinatown neighborhood with an eight-course seasonal tasting menu that combines Asian and European ingredients — Hokkaido scallop ravioli is served with cured purple shallots, basil and shiso flowers, while wagyu beef from Omi is accompanied by vegetables from France, all paired with wine from small producers in Burgundy and Alsace. The downside is the price (the tasting menu is 288 Singapore dollars; and wine pairings, 200 dollars). For a more reasonable

but still excellent meal, head to Wild Rocket (10A Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6339-9448; wildrocket.com.sg), a foodie favorite where a four-course tasting menu includes dishes like soft-shell crab with Granny Smith salad and baked red grouper with French beans and laksa broth, and costs 62 dollars.

11 p.m.

4) NIGHTTIME MAKEOVER - With nightlife options now ranging from multiplex techno clubs to more intimate spots that feature D.J.’s and specialty cocktails, the city is shedding its uptight reputation. In the Emily Hill complex a former colonial estate has been transformed into a multi-use compound that is home to artists’ studios and a theater school as well as Wild Oats restaurant and bar (11 Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6336-5413), where Singapore’s beautiful crowd convenes for drinks after dinner on a sprawling terrace. In Chinatown, Ying Yang (28 Ann Siang Road; 65-6808-2188), a black-and-white rooftop bar at the new Club hotel on Ann Siang Road, has also become a city hot spot — try the litchi martini for 18 Singapore dollars.

Saturday 10 a.m.

5) TRAINING WHEELS - After a coffee or fresh watermelon juice at Kith Café (7 Rodyk Street, nos. 1-33; 65-6341-9407; kith.com.sg) on Robertson Quay — where neighborhood families and fashionable couples convene for breakfast — rent a vintage single- speed French city bike or a Raleigh six-speed from Vanguard next door (65-6835-7228) for 10 Singapore dollars per hour. Singapore is still very orderly in many ways, which comes in handy when trying to navigate city traffic by bike; neighborhoods like Clark Quay and the Colonial Center are especially easy to explore. Just remember to get off your bike when going through the tunnels — or get a hefty fine for breaking a city law.

Noon 6) STREET SMARTS - A long tradition of strong regional cuisine and strict hygiene laws makes for some of the world’s best — and safest — street food. Nowadays most of the hawkers are concentrated in covered food halls so that ingredients are kept cool, and preparation methods and cleanliness can be kept to a uniform standard. At the Maxwell Road Food Center near Chinatown, vendors sell everything from dumplings to onion pancakes to dessert: at Tian Tian (No. 11), try the chicken rice; at Hokee (No. 79), the soup dumplings, and at No. 848, fresh fruit and juice (one, a bitter gourd and honey mix, promises “to reduce heatiness (sic).” Prices are 1 to 8 Singapore dollars.

2 p.m.

7) STYLE MAVENS - Many of the city’s young designers and fashion curators have set up

There are few better symbols of Singapore’s recent success — or excess, depending on your perspective — than the year-old Marina Bay Sands, a gargantuan, three-towered complex with more than 2,500 rooms. Even if you aren’t staying at the hotel or hitting the casino, a ticket costing 20 Singapore dollars ($16.50) will provide access to the most impressive feature: SkyPark, an observation deck with 360-degree views. shop in former chophouses along Haji Lane near Arab Street, a counterbalance to the ubiquitous shopping malls. Know It Nothing (51 Haji Lane; 65-6392-5475; knowitnothing.com) showcases mostly men’s clothes like checked shirts, well-cut khakis and hats, as well as a more limited just-launched women’s line.

Salad Shop (25 Haji Lane; 65-6299-5805) has chic basics like stylish summer dresses, many for less than 125 Singapore dollars, and Pluck (31/33 Haji Lane; 65-6396-4048; pluck.com. sg) is an emporium for home-grown talent with a collection that ranges from home accessories to bags and jewelry (and includes an ice-cream parlor on site).

5 p.m.

8) PASS THE CRUMPETS - For a taste of the British colonial past, book a table for high tea at the Tiffin Room at Raffles (1 Beach Road; 65-6337-1886; raffles.com), a hotel from the 1800s that hosted literary types like Rudyard Kipling and Noel Coward. Tea sandwiches, crumpets and a harp player, not to mention the white glove service, are the vestiges of a more rarefied era; 55 Singapore dollars a person for adults, 27.50 for kids.

8 p.m.

9) TABLE WITH A VIEW - Orchard Street, the city’s main shopping district, received a multimillion-dollar revamp in 2009 when it became home to another retail giant, a mall called the Ion Orchard. Now the Australian chef Luke Mangan has opened Salt Grill on the 55th and 56th floors (65-659-25118; saltgrill.com), with jaw-dropping views over the city. The menu includes dishes like yellowtail kingfish sashimi, a salad of seasonal baby vegetables, slow poached hen’s egg, buffalo mozzarella and candied walnuts, and more substantial entrees like a strip loin from Rangers Valley in Australia for 52 Singapore dollars. The combination of the panorama and

the food has made Salt Grill one of the city’s hardest reservations to snag.

Sunday 10 a.m.

10) GREEN SPACE - Join local residents on a Sunday morning stroll in the city’s impressive Botanic Gardens (www.sbg.org.sg; 5 Singapore dollars for access to the orchid area, otherwise admission is free), a 150-acreplus green space with meandering pathways, pretty lakes and an excellent variety of local plants and trees. Don’t miss the Orchid Garden with more than 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids of the show-stopping blooms.

Noon 11) SWEET AND SAVORY - Forget brunch.

Dim sum at the aptly named Dim Joy (80 Neil Road; 65-6220-6986; www.dimjoy.com/home. html) involves plates of delicate handmade dumplings based on seasonal ingredients from local markets like delicate char siew so (4 Singapore dollars) and chive and pork wor tip, as well as pan-fried radish cake (3.50 dollars), stewed pork belly and mui choy buns (8 dollars). Leave room for the sweet custard buns.

IF YOU GO With spectacular views over the city and a secluded pool area, the newly renovated Ritz-Carlton Millenia (7 Raffles Avenue; 65-6-337-8888; ritzcarlton.com) is a luxury option that’s also child friendly. Doubles start at 380 Singapore dollars, or about $312.

A few boutique hotels have sprung up in the last couple of years, including the Club (28 Ann Siang Road; 65-6808-2188; theclub. com.sg; doubles from 225 Singapore dollars) in a historic 1800s building; the Scarlet (33 Erskine Road; 65-6511-3333; thescarlethotel. com) in Chinatown; small rooms from 320 dollars; and Wanderlust (2 Dickson Road; 65-6396-3322; wanderlusthotel.com), the latest arrival in a 1920s building in little India; opening rates from 180 dollars.

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The San Juan Weekly

Enforcing Copyrights Online, for a Profit

By DAN FROSCH

W

hen Brian Hill, a 20-year-old blogger from North Carolina, posted on his Web site last December a photograph of an airport security officer conducting a pat-down, a legal battle was the last thing he imagined.

A month later, Mr. Hill received an e-mail from a reporter for The Las Vegas Sun who was looking into a Nevada company that files copyright lawsuits for newspapers. The email informed Mr. Hill that he was one of those that the company, Righthaven, was suing. Though the airport photo had gone viral before Mr. Hill plucked it off the Web, it belonged to The Denver Post, where it first appeared on Nov. 18.

Mr. Hill took down the photo. He was too late. A summons was delivered to his house. The lawsuit sought statutory damages. It did not name a figure, but accused Mr. Hill of “willful” infringement, and under federal copyright law up to $150,000 can be awarded in such cases.

“I was shocked,” Mr. Hill said. “I thought maybe it was a joke or something to scare me. I didn’t know the picture was copyrighted.”

Over the last year, as newspapers continue to grapple with how to protect their online content, Righthaven has filed more than 200 similar federal lawsuits in Colorado and Nevada over material posted without permission from The Denver Post or The Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The company has business relationships with both newspapers. Like much of the industry, the papers see the appropriation of their work without permission as akin to theft and harmful to their business, and are frustrated by unsuccessful efforts to stem the common practice, whether it’s by a one-man operation like Mr. Hill’s, or an established one like Matt Drudge’s.

Sara Glines, a vice president for the MediaNews Group, which owns The Denver Post, wrote in an e-mail that the patdown photo had been used on more than 300 Web sites with no credit to The Post or the photographer.

“We have invested heavily in creating quality content in our markets,” Ms. Glines wrote. “To allow others who have not shared in that investment to reap the benefit ultimately

Brian Hill posted a newspaper’s photo on his blog and was sued by Righthaven for infringement. hurts our ability to continue to fund that investment at the same level.”

Mark Hinueber, general counsel for Stephens Media, owner of The Review-Journal, echoed Ms. Glines’s concerns, saying that cutting and pasting articles “steals the potential audience for our editorial material and traffic to our Web sites.”

Some critics, however, contend that Righthaven’s tactics are draconian, and that the company hopes to extract swift settlements before it is clear that there is a violation of federal copyright law. Typically, the suits have been filed without warning. Righthaven rarely sends out notices telling Web sites to take down material that does not belong to them before seeking damages and demanding forfeiture of the Web domain name.

Defendants in these cases run the gamut. They have included the white supremacist David Duke, the Democratic Party of Nevada and Mr. Drudge. But little known Web sites, nonprofit groups and so-called mom-and-pop bloggers — people who blog as a hobby — are not exempt from Righthaven’s legal actions.

According to some Internet legal experts who have been watching the cases with growing interest, the way it works is simple: Righthaven finds newspaper material that has been republished on the Web — usually an article, excerpts or a photograph — and obtains the copyrights. Then, the company sues.

Whether the defendant credits the original author or removes the material after being sued matters little. None of the cases have gone to trial yet, and many have been settled out of court. In two instances, judges have ruled against Righthaven in pretrial motions. According to The Las Vegas Sun, which has tracked the cases, the only two publicly disclosed settlements were for $2,185 and $5,000.

In describing his company’s approach, Steve Gibson, Righthaven’s chief executive, said that there has been “voluminous, almost incalculable infringement” since the advent of the Internet and that years of warning people to take down copyrighted content had not worked. Newspapers, he said, needed a new way to address the problem of people appro-

priating their material without permission.

Eric Goldman, director of the high-tech law institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said reposting published material online could qualify as “fair use” if it didn’t diminish the market value of the original. Other critics of the suits contend that reposting material for the purposes of discussion does not constitute infringement.

“Many of the defendants are ill-informed about copyright law,” Mr. Goldman said. “They’re not trying to compete with a newspaper. They just don’t know the rules.” Mr. Goldman informally advised a company that was sued by Righthaven and settled out of court.

In an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Media Bloggers Association regarding a Righthaven suit in Nevada, Marc J. Randazza, a lawyer specializing in First Amendment issues, accused the company of acquiring copyrights for the sole purpose of going after defendants who could not afford legal help.

“Nobody can seriously believe that Righthaven, which publishes nothing anywhere, has acquired the full ownership of the articles it sues upon,” wrote Mr. Randazza, whose legal group recently filed motions to dismiss two other Righthaven cases, accusing the company of making fraudulent copyright claims.

Mr. Gibson denies that unwitting bloggers are a particular target and points to lawsuits like the one against Mr. Drudge. Righthaven accused Mr. Drudge of posting the airport pat-down photo on his Drudge Report Web site without permission. The suit was settled out of court, Mr. Gibson said.“The harm of viewer diversion has been achieved whether it is being shown on Momandpop.com or Chicagotribune.com,” he said. “If the accusation were true that we were just a purely greedy operation not advancing the interests of copyright law, then we wouldn’t be addressing viewer diversion.”

Ms. Glines said that MediaNews “reviewed every violation and only approved actions against sites that carried advertising and were not charities.”

Rachel Bjorklund wishes she had been sent a simple e-mail rather than slapped with a lawsuit. A stay-at-home mother in Oregon, Ms. Bjorklund was sued by Righthaven in March after she posted the airport pat-down photo on her blog, thoughtsfromaconservativemom.com.

“My reaction was, ‘Why didn’t you just contact me and ask me to take it down?’ That would have been no problem,” said Ms. Bjorklund, who plans to challenge the suit.

Mr. Hill, who suffers from autism and diabetes and lives on disability checks with his mother, said at that at one point Righthaven had offered to settle for $6,000, but he refused. A Colorado lawyer, David Kerr, has been defending him pro bono.

A federal judge presiding over the case criticized Righthaven last month for using the courts to settle with defendants scared of the potential cost of litigation. Shortly after, Righthaven moved to voluntarily drop the suit, saying it had not been aware of Mr. Hill’s health problems. But Righthaven also stated in court filings that a dismissal did not exonerate others it was suing and warned Mr. Hill against continuing to use copyrighted material.

Mr. Hill recently decided to revive his Web site, uswgo. com, where he posts links to various political articles and his own musings, which he had taken down after being sued. On the site, there is a notice explaining Mr. Hill’s belief that material posted there, even without permission, constitutes fair use. This time, though, Mr. Hill said he’s steering clear of any image or story that could cause him trouble with Righthaven.

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

27

Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S.

By BRIAN STELTER

F

or the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped.

The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers on Tuesday that 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously.

There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.

The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.

That second reason is prompting Nielsen to think about a redefinition of the term “television household” to include Internet video viewers.

“We’ve been having conversations with clients,” said Pat McDonough, the senior vice president for insights and analysis at Nielsen. “That would be a big change for this industry, and we’d be doing it in consultation with clients if we do it.”

Nielsen’s household figures suggest that while the TV

set is still firmly at the center of the average American’s media life, a small minority of Americans are finding ways to live without it. The “persistently rocky economy” is a factor, the company says in the report to be released Tuesday.

Similarly, the economy was the reason cited by Nielsen when the percentage of homes with sets declined in 1992.

That decline, the company’s report says, “also followed a prolonged recession and was reversed during the economic upswing of the mid-1990s.” If the current decline persists, it will have profound implications for the networks, studios and distributors that are wedded, at least in part, to the current television ecosystem.

Nielsen’s estimates incorporate the results of the 2010 census as well as the behavior of the approximately 50,000 Americans in the national sample that the company relies upon to make ratings projections. “One thing we are seeing in the Nielsen sample are fewer people owning TVs,” Ms. McDonough said. It was first evident in the sample in late 2008, she said, during the worst of the financial crisis and the recession.

Nielsen’s research into these newly TV-less households indicates that they generally have incomes under $20,000.

“They are people at the bottom of the economic spectrum for whom, if the TV breaks, if the antenna blows off the roof, they have to think long and hard about what to do,” Ms. McDonough said. Most of these households do not have Internet access either. Many live in rural areas.

The transition to digital broadcasting from analog in

2009 aggravated the hardship for some of these households.

Some could not afford to upgrade, Nielsen surmised, though the government tried to provide subsidies in those situations.

And some in rural areas could not receive digital signals as effectively as analog signals for technical reasons. In those cases, “if you’re an affluent household — or most middleclass households — you’re going to get a satellite dish. If you’re a struggling household, likely you’re not going to be able to afford that option,” Ms. McDonough said.

Then there are the tech-savvy Americans who once lived in a household with a television, but no longer do. These are either cord-cutters — a term that refers to people who stop paying for cable television — or people who never signed on for cable. Ms. McDonough suggested that these were younger Americans who were moving into new residences and deciding not to buy a TV for themselves, especially if they “don’t have the financial means to get one immediately.”

Nielsen has not yet assessed what proportion of the decline can be attributed to this behavior.

Games

28

May 12 - 18, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Wordsearch

Answers on page 29

29

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

There may be difficulty concerning an earth sign in your life. Romantic uncertainty will eventually clear; though, there may also be a dramatic end to a relationship. Do not be floored by the shock, as everything will work out for the best. Great peace of mind is on its way.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Your innate trust in life will blossom. There are changes on the horizon in your working life.

This may leave you feeling hard done by. Try to accept the upheaval as a challenge that will steer you ever onwards and upwards. The time is now!

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Please do not try to control those in your charge, as the constraints you place upon people will come back to haunt you. Move forward with courage and hold your head high. By the end of the year you will have reason to be proud.

Try some sublimation.

Do not worry unduly as there is a high possibility that someone close to you will come into money soon. Be careful that you do not blow a business venture by being overly confident in your management skills. Sometimes it is better not to tamper with something.

Gemini

Sagittarius

(May 22-June 21)

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Money matters are well starred but, it is important not to be complacent about a particular contract. There is an emotional entanglement with an earth sign that you must sort out. You have been unfair to a person and they are waiting patiently for you to speak.

It is not quite the right time for a big change; so do not make plans prematurely. You may be disillusioned with regard to a relationship that has an overseas connection. The person concerned is a live wire, so please handle with care!

Accept the state of play.

Cancer

Capricorn

(June 22-July 23)

A new relationship will transform you in ways that you do not expect. This year a marriage that takes place abroad will herald a new era in your life. Be careful with regard to the purchase of land or property, as it may be worthwhile to wait until you are absolutely sure.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Love and money are destined to make a dramatic entrance in your life soon. This will end a time of work-related stress. If you are waiting for love, be prepared. You are about to be blown away! Something extraordinary is about to hit you right between the eyes. Trust this.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Follow your instincts. Make sure you put your money where your mouth is! A legal matter will be settled in your favour, so relax and leave the procedure to run its course. Spiritually, there is a rebirth on the cards. You may find you are full of life’s joy.

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

IAt times you tend to accept your situation for the sake of a quiet life. This year will change the status quo. It is highly likely that you will raise both your standards and your expectations regarding romance. This is not a bad idea.

Be prepared for big change.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

In the past you have sometimes settled for less than you deserve. A work offer is on the way that looks very positive and, perhaps, involves a slight change of direction. Proceed with confidence, as this career move is timely. Make a good choice - and quickly!

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

It looks as if you are doing battle in your head concerning your working life. However, do take heart and review what you have achieved in the past year. Are things really that desperate? You are certainly working hard. At the moment there will be no relief with deadlines.

Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 28

30

May 12 - 18, 2011

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

Two Cows And A Chicken

Cartoons

The San Juan Weekly

Ziggi

The San Juan Weekly

May 12 - 18, 2011

31

Sports

The Mets, Short-Handed From the Start, Fall at the End

By DAVE CALDWELL

A

new rule pushed the Mets into unfamiliar territory. They opened a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants without left fielder Jason Bay, who went on baseball’s paternity leave list to be with his wife, Kristen, who was expecting their third child.

The Mets had won 7 of the 10 games in which Bay had played since he returned April 21 from a rib-cage injury. They badly needed his bat, especially with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, but the Giants held on then and scrambled to a 7-6 victory in 10 innings.

Leading off the 10th inning, San Francisco first baseman Aubrey Huff, who was in an 0-for-20 slump, smashed a 2-0 pitch from Taylor Buchholz off the facing of the upper deck in right field. Buchholz had allowed only one run in his previous 142/3 innings.

“I threw it right down the middle for him, and it was a good pitch to hit,” Buchholz said.

An inning earlier, David Wright had led off with a double to the right-field wall, and Carlos Beltran was intentionally walked. Ike Davis grounded out, moving up each runner one base, and Willie Harris was intentionally walked. But Josh Thole grounded into a 1-2-3 double play to send the game into extra innings.

Thole said he thought his best chance was to drive a pitch from Javier Lopez up the middle. He hit the ball off the end of

the bat and grounded it back to Lopez.

“We got some opportunities there, but we let it go away,” said Jose Reyes, who went 3 for 3 with three walks.

Thole had three hits Tuesday, but he grounded into two double plays and had a throwing error. Mets Manager Terry Collins said he might consider giving more playing time to the backup Ronny Paulino, who had five hits in his first start Sunday, a 2-1 victory over Philadelphia.

“I don’t feel like I need a mental blow,” Thole said. “It’s only May.” Despite their failure to score in the ninth, the Mets were fortunate to be tied after Francisco Rodriguez worked out of big trouble in the top of that inning. Emmanuel Burriss led off with an infield single that barely went 30 feet, stole second and went to third when Darren Ford laid down a bunt single.

But Aaron Rowand popped out to Davis, the first baseman, in foul territory, and Miguel Tejada popped out to second baseman Daniel Murphy. After Rodriguez intentionally walked Mike Fontenot, he got Buster Posey, the Giants’ cleanup hitter, to fly out to shallow center field.

After R. A. Dickey retired the Giants in order in the first inning, the Mets needed only four at-bats to grab a three-run lead. Reyes doubled into the right-field corner and Ryan Vogelsong, a 33-year-old journeyman, walked Murphy.

Wright lined out before Vogelsong, who last Thursday won his first big-league start in almost seven years, threw a 2-1 pitch that

Carlos Beltran being greeted by Ike Davis (29) after his first-inning homer.

Beltran smacked into the right-field seats. Beltran had not hit a home run in his previous 11 games and only one homer since April 9.

Dickey pitched another 1-2-3 inning in the second but got into trouble in the third, giving up four runs on four hard hits. Vogelsong rapped a run-scoring single through a Mets infield expecting him to bunt, and Rowand drove in another run with a single to center.

Tejada moved up both runners with a groundout, and Fontenot knocked in two more with a solid single. The benefit of Beltran’s blast had been undone in the span of six at-bats.

Emilio Navarro Dies at 105; Thought to Be Oldest Ex-Player in Baseball

E

milio Navarro, a former Negro leagues star thought to be the oldest living professional baseball player, died Saturday in Ponce, P.R. He was 105.

His death was announced by his family.

A 5-foot-5 infielder known for his base-running skill, Navarro, who was known as Millito, was the first Puerto Rican to play in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Puerto Rico Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.

As a shortstop and leadoff hitter for the New York-based Cuban Stars of the Eastern Colored League, Navarro batted .337 in 1929.

He played in the Dominican Republic with the Escogido Lions in the 1920s and in Venezuela with Magallanes and other teams in the 1930s. In Puerto Rico, he was the second baseman for the Ponce Lions for nearly 20 years.

Emilio Navarro was born on Sept.

26, 1905, in Patillas, P.R., and spent most of his life in nearby Ponce, where he lived by himself in a house he built for his family in the late 1950s. He is survived by 4 children, 11 grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

In 2008, Navarro threw out the first pitch before a game at Yankee Stadium.

He warmed up his arm, waved his hat and made a 30-foot toss on the fly to catcher Jorge Posada.

Asked that day how the sport had changed, Navarro’s eyes widened and he mentioned high salaries.

“I made $25 a week,” he said through an interpreter.

“It’s hard to get caught up in results, but when our offense has a night like that, the starting pitcher has to do his job,” said Dickey, who has not won since his first start of the season, on April 3.

Dickey gave up a solo home run to Schierholtz in the top of the sixth inning.

In the bottom of the sixth, Reyes tied the score at 6-6 by driving in Jason Pridie with a broken-bat single.

Now the Mets must face the Giants’ Tim Lincecum, the two-time Cy Young Award winner. The Mets faced the Cy Young winners Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee over the weekend in Philadelphia. Bay probably will not play Wednesday, either.

“It’s not something we want to do, but it’s something we have to do,” Collins said of the pitching matchups. “It’s something we’ve got to prepare ourselves for, and we’ve got to be charged up by it.”

INSIDE PITCH Sandy Alderson said the team would seek a second opinion for Jenrry Mejia, the prospect who tore the medial collateral ligament in his right elbow while pitching for Class AAA Buffalo. David Altcheck, the team’s physician, recommended surgery Monday for the 21-year-old Mejia, who pitched in 33 games for the Mets last year. When asked if Mejia’s future would be as a starter or reliever, Alderson said, “I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that the injury itself will dictate how he’s used.” ... Lucas Duda was called up from Class AAA Buffalo to replace Jason Bay in the starting lineup. He went 0 for 2.

Sports

32

May 12 - 18, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Twins’ Liriano Throws No-Hitter Against White Sox I

n his decade-long professional career, Francisco Liriano had never thrown a shutout or even a complete game. Not at any level, not in any league.

So much for those old stats. Now, he’s Mr. No-Hitter.

The struggling Minnesota lefty pitched the first no-hitter in the majors this season, hanging on Tuesday night for a most unlikely gem and a 1-0 win over Chicago White Sox. “It’s an opportunity for him that he will remember for the rest of his life,” said former Twins ace Bert Blyleven, who’s headed to the Hall of Fame.

Liriano (2-4) began the game with a 9.13 ERA and had been getting tagged so much that there was speculation he’d lose his spot in the Twins’ rotation.

Liriano dodged six walks and struck out only two. Of his 123 pitches, just 66 were strikes.

“To be honest I was running out of gas,” he said. “I just thank my teammates that they made some great plays behind me tonight.”

The final out came on perhaps Chicago’s hardest-hit ball of the evening, with shortstop Matt Tolbert taking two quick steps to snare Adam Dunn’s line drive.

“When I go out there I try to think positive,” the 27-yearold Liriano said. “I don’t want to think about, ‘They’re going to put me in the bullpen.’”

After lasting just three innings in his previous start against Tampa Bay, Liriano excelled on a cold night at U.S. Cellular Field. The Twins ended a six-game losing streak in a matchup of shaky teams.

Liriano mixed fastballs, sliders and soft stuff, kept the White Sox off-balance and showed the talent that he’s always possessed.

“He was using all of his pitches. It was such a nice thing to see him smile like that,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. “We’ve said that Liriano has electric stuff, no-hitter stuff. And, he did it tonight.”

Liriano made history more than four years after he underwent Tommy John surgery, hoping to recover from an elbow injury that threatened to take away his eye-popping repertoire and end his career. It’s been a long climb back — last season, he was picked as the AL comeback player of the year.

This year, the Twins have told Liriano to forget the strikeouts, try to pitch to contact, let the defense do the work.

With two outs in the seventh, third baseman Danny Valencia went behind the bag and into foul territory to grab Carlos Quentin’s hard hopper and then made a strong throw to first.

And on Liriano’s final pitch, Dunn hit a liner that appeared headed to left field. But Tolbert moved to his right, made the catch, spun around and raised the ball in triumph with his bare hand.

“I thought it was a base hit,” Liriano said. “When I saw him catch it, I was so excited.”

Tolbert sprinted to the mound, where the pitcher was being mobbed by teammates, to personally deliver the prize.

A season after the Year of the Pitcher featured six nohitters, there had been a few close calls in the opening months. Liriano, making his 205th career start in the majors and minors, finished off his bid.

Liriano survived a rocky ninth inning that began when Brent Morel grounded to shortstop, with Tolbert making a

one-hop throw that first baseman Justin Morneau neatly scooped. Juan Pierre walked and Alexei Ramirez popped to shortstop.

Liriano fell behind Dunn 3-0 in the count, then got a pair of strikes. After a foul ball, Dunn followed with his liner.

Dunn dropped to 0 for 16 against left-handers this season.

“As soon as I hit it, I saw him, and it was right to him,” Dunn said. “That’s pretty much the story of the day. There were some balls that, again, they made some great defensive plays.”

For Tolbert it was the end of an unforgettable experience. He got the start at shortstop as the Twins moved Alexi Casilla to second base.

“I was excited and a little nervous. It’s not every day that you get to play behind a no-hitter,” Tolbert said. “I was thinking somehow we had to get this guy (Dunn) out. I know he’s so dangerous. I was playing him up the middle a little bit, and he hit it in the right spot.”

Liriano was backed by Jason Kubel’s fourth-inning homer. He won in a game that took just 2 hours, 9 minutes.

Liriano, 3-0 against the White Sox last season, walked Pierre leading off the first and Quentin with one out in the second, but both were erased on double plays. Chicago put two on in the fourth, and center fielder Denard Span raced into left-center to grab Quentin’s long drive.

Minnesota turned its third double play in the eighth, when Morneau took an offline throw from Casilla and umpire Paul Emmel called Gordon Beckham out — replays appeared to show Morneau missed the tag.

“I didn’t feel him tagging me on the shoulder,” said Beckham, adding it might have kept the inning alive and forced Liriano to face another hitter.

Edwin Jackson (2-4) lost his fourth straight start despite allowing six hits in eight innings. Then with Arizona, Jackson no-hit Tampa Bay last June 26 despite walking eight.

It was the seventh no-hitter for the Twins-Washington Senators franchise and the first since Eric Milton’s against the Angels on Sept. 11, 1999. It was the first no-hitter in the major leagues since Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay’s against Cincinnati in last year’s NL playoffs.

The White Sox were no-hit for the 13th time, the first since they were beaten by Kansas City’s Bret Saberhagen on Aug. 26, 1991.

Liriano was acquired in 2003 from San Francisco in the famously lopsided trade that also brought Joe Nathan to Minnesota for A.J. Pierzynski.

He burst onto the scene in 2006, going 12-3 with a 2.16 ERA and dominating overmatched hitters with an untouchable slider. But the violent delivery caused him to develop arm problems toward the end of that season and had elbow-ligament replacement surgery that November.

His road back has been a long and difficult one. He missed all of 2007, then struggled to regain his form over the next two years, leading some to wonder if he ever would make it all the way back after going 5-13 with a 5.80 ERA in 2009.

NOTES: Twins DH Jim Thome was put on the 15-day DL with a left oblique strain, and Minnesota will recall INF Trevor Plouffe from Triple-A Rochester. ... The White Sox have lost 16 of 20 to fall into last place in the AL Central below the Twins.