San Juan Weekly 92th Edition

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July 7 - 13, 2011

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Drug Gangs Spark “Roaring 20’s” Violence

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Cholera Confirmed in Puerto Rico P3

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U.S. Territories Hospital Care Quality Lower Than in U.S. States

Arecibo Lighthouse Museum and Historical Park P6

Javier Colón Wins Competition ‘The Voice’

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The San Juan Weeekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

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Business P27 San Juan Weekly Star has exclusive New Times News Service in English in Puerto Rico

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

Quality of Hospital Care in U.S. Territories Lower Than in U.S. States H

ospitals in U.S. territories appear to have poorer outcomes and higher mortality rates for patients with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure or pneumonia, compared to hospitals in U.S. states, according to a report published Online First today in the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

U.S. territories, including the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands are home to almost ďŹ ve million residents, according to background information in the article. “Studies about hospital quality of care in the U.S. typically exclude hospitals in the U.S. territories or combine them with other U.S. regional areas, masking potential differences between quality of care between the territories and states,â€? writes Marcella Nunez-Smith, M.D., M.H.S., of Yale University School of Medicine, and colleagues.

Using process measures (publicly reported, evidence-based standards of care speciďŹ c to patient conditions), Nunez-Smith and colleagues sought to compare performance of hospitals in the U.S. territories and U.S. states. The authors examined data on 57 territorial hospitals and 4,799 stateside hospitals

that discharged at least one Medicare feefor-service adult patient with a primary diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF) or pneumonia (PNE) between July 2005 and June 2008.

Compared with hospitals in the states, hospitals in the territories demonstrated worse performance on all core processes measured for AMI, HF and PNE. Hospitals in Puerto Rico performed similarly to other territories on most core processes measured. The hospital mean (average) 30-day risk standardized rate for all-cause mortality (death) was signiďŹ cantly higher in the territories compared with the states for AMI, HF and PNE. After adjusting for condition-speciďŹ c core process measures and hospital characteristics, mortality rates in the territories compared with states remained high for all three conditions. Additionally, the unadjusted mean 30-day risk-standardized readmission rates also were signiďŹ cantly higher in U.S. territories for AMI and PNE, but not for HF. Based on their ďŹ ndings, the authors note that “in comparison with the states, for every 100 AMI admissions in the U.S. territories there are approximately two additional deaths, for every 100 HF admissions there is one additional death, and for every 100 pneumonia admissions there are three additional deaths.â€? “Compared with hospitals in the

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U.S. states, hospitals in the U.S. territories have signiďŹ cantly higher 30-day mortality rates and lower performance on every core process measure for patients discharged after AMI, HF and PNE,â€? the authors conclude. “Despite the national effort to address health care disparities through increased public reporting and standardizing hospital performance, hospitals in the U.S. territories have been largely neglected.â€?

Understanding Health Care Disparities in the U.S. Territories “I applaud Nunez-Smith and colleagues for embarking on an effort to assess the quality of care in the U.S. territories despite the limited data available in national health care and disparity reports and heath care policy data warehouses,� writes Nilsa Gutierrez, M.D., M.P.H., of the Department of Health & Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, New York, in an accompanying commentary. “To understand the complexity of factors contributing to health care disparities in the U.S. territories, it is necessary to appreciate key federal funding policy

Ăłptica ashford

differences between U.S. states and territories, given that Medicare and Medicaid are the two principal sources of federal health care funding. The unintended negative effects of these policy differences are evident, and their impact on access to care and treatment, services and delivery system infrastructure are measurable.â€? “Lack of publicly available data are the single most important factor in limiting our knowledge base on the quality of care and services in the U.S. territories,â€? Dr. Gutierrez concludes. “Beyond the imperative for the establishment of publicly available databases that feature ‘territory-only’ public health data, territorial public health leaders may consider it necessary to monitor additional socioeconomic and geopolitical factors that inuence the availability and quality of health care, treatment and services. This will go a long way in demonstrating the extent of unintended effects on the U.S. citizens and nationals residing in the territories, their role in widening the quality gap, and the interventions necessary to fully develop territorial health care delivery systems.â€?

Cholera ConďŹ rmed in Puerto Rico P

uerto Rico is reporting the U.S. island’s ďŹ rst case of cholera linked to the current outbreak in neighboring Hispaniola.

Health Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez Feliciano said that the case involved a 70-year-old man who had visited the Dominican Republic for a week.

Gonzalez said the man is hospitalized in San Juan. Privacy laws prohibited them from releasing more information about the case.

Health ofďŹ cials believe the disease is unlikely to spread because of better sanitation in the U.S. island. It is transmitted by a bacteria and can be all but prevented if people have access to safe water and regularly wash their hands.

It has killed more than 36 in the Dominican Republic, and more than 5,500 people in Haiti since October.

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The San Juan Weekly

Feuding Drug Gangs Spark Violence In PR

P

ower struggles between drug gangs have led to a surge in homicides in Puerto Rico this year, local police and the FBI told CNN. Police statistics show the number of homicides so far this year in the U.S. island commonwealth is 16% higher than last year’s figure for the same time period -- an increase authorities attribute to drug violence.

“We believe what may be happening here is that struggle for power or the take over of power at certain drug points,” said Harry Rodriguez, a spokesman for the FBI in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

There have been 526 homicides so far this year, compared to 452 during the same period in 2010, Puerto Rico Police Agent Hilda Rivera said.

The surge in violence has led to an upswing of fear among residents, including members of Puerto Rico’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, who say police are not doing enough to protect them.

After three openly gay people were killed earlier this month in a one-week period, the Washington-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force decried what it called an “epidemic of anti-LGBT violence” in Puerto Rico In an interview with CNN, a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rican police department denounced any speculation that the crimes had anything to do with the sexual orientation of the victims.

“They were part of the rising crime here. They were not targeted for being homosexual. I just don’t think there is a connection,” Rivera told CNN. Of the more than 500 murders on the island in 2011, five of the victims were gay, she said.

Authorities said they suspected drug gangs were behind the slaying of four men who were shot in Rio Piedras Saturday. Three of the victims had criminal records related to drug trafficking, police said.

“This was a planned attack. The victims did not have a chance to get away. At this moment we have no suspects,” Commander Orlando Melendez, Supervisor of Criminal Investigations in Puerto Rico told CNN affiliate WAPA-TV. In the past few years, the FBI and other authorities have cracked down on drug-trafficking organizations in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez said.

And a Puerto Rican police initiative has dismantled some supply chains, he added.

Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuno has pointed to the April conviction of Angel Ayala-Vazquez, alias “Angelo Milliones” -- who led Puerto Rico’s most powerful drug trafficking organization -- as a sign that authorities were taking action.

Aware of the perception that the island has seen an increase in drug related homicides, Fortuno listed security among his campaign platform slogans in his reelection bid announced this week. He said he planned to transform the approach to fighting crime by “attacking its roots” and “breaking the major criminal organizations.”

Fortuno also said he plans to implement new technology with “100% inspection of trucks entering the island” and centralized systems of DNA to catch criminals.

“We have arrested more than 5,960 criminals, dismantled more than 440 points of drugs and increased our conviction in drug related arrests to 90%,” his campaign website said.

But Francheska Gonzalez, a transsexual who was the victim of a beating in April, said she was one of the survivors of a series of attacks against the LGBT community on the island. Police must do more to protect residents, she said.

“The aggressors continue to be on the streets,” she said.

“I am scared for my life, for my health and for everything,” said Gonzalez, adding that attackers hurled hateslurs while beating her, breaking a vertebrae and rupturing one of her breast implants.

“This is about members of the Puerto Rican LGBT community feeling safe in their communities and being able to take care of the ones they love. ... This must stop now,” Pedro Julio Serrano, communication manager of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said in a written statement.

This month the department announced it would be creating a new protocol system to “guarantee the civil rights and protections” of all the island’s citizens.

“During this time we have the task of ensuring that members of the LGBT community are heard and addressed efficiently,” Superintendent of Puerto Rico Police Department Jose Figueroa Sancha said in a statement.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

Javier Colón Wins the Competition ‘The Voice’ The young Puerto Rican will record an album and receive a prize of $ 100,000

P

uerto Rican singer, Javier Colón, won the NBCcompetition, ‘The Voice’. He will get a contract to record an album with Universal Republic Records, a prize of $ 100 thousand and the right to be called ‘The Voice’.

“I want to thank everyone who voted and believed in me,” were the words of Columbus after hearing the decision. He then hugged his mentor and jury Adam Levine.

During the program, each of the finalists sang accompanied by one of his favorite singers.

Columbus made a keynote presentation along with Stevie Nicks.

“One of the best performances

you’ve done. I’m speechless. It was a great duet. You deserve to win the competition,” said Levine.

In one of the brief interventions that Columbus had in the show, acknowledged the support of his fans and said they had been absolutely wonderful to vote for him.

Columbus entered the right foot to the competition. From day one, when he played the classic Cindy Lauper, “Time After Time,” won the favor of judges Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Levine and Blake Shelton. Just as the audience in singing the success of Michael Jackson “Man in the Mirror”.

As the weeks went by, the interpreter continued to earning the respect of judges, the public and his opponents, who considered the hardest to fight ... And he was right.

“Canto a long time and am strug-

gling for some time,” said the artist to the site a few weeks ago HollywoodLife.

This competition means a lot to Columbus because it would be his last attempt to become a singer recognized. He earned a contract with Capitol Records, who made two albums and toured, but never managed to excel.

Young, 33, Dominican father and Puerto Rican mother, he began writing songs at age 13. His father was a big influence for him as working at a radio station and involved him in the world of music.

The singer was born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and studied music at University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

7 Mainland

U.S. Drops Deportation Proceedings Against Immigrant in Same-Sex Marriage

By KIRK SEMPLE

I

n a decision that could have far-reaching effects on immigration cases involving same-sex couples, federal officials have canceled the deportation of a Venezuelan man in New Jersey who is married to an American man, the couple’s lawyer said Wednesday.

The announcement comes as immigration officials put into effect new, more flexible guidelines governing the deferral and cancellation of deportations, particularly for immigrants with no serious criminal records.

Immigration lawyers and gay rights advocates said the decision represented a significant shift in policy and could open the door to the cancellation of deportations for other immigrants in same-sex marriages.

“This action shows that the government has not only the power but the inclination to do the right thing when it comes to protecting certain vulnerable populations from deportation,” said the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway.

The case has been closely watched across the country by lawyers and advocates who viewed it as a test of the federal government’s position on the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

In February, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that the administration viewed the act as unconstitutional and would not defend it in the courts. Gay rights advocates asked the administration to postpone all deportations for same-sex married couples until the courts decided whether the marriage act was constitutional, but the ad-

ministration said it would continue to enforce the law.

The Venezuelan man, Henry Velandia, 27, is a salsa dancer who immigrated in 2002 and was legally married last year in Connecticut to Josh Vandiver, 30, a graduate student at Princeton University. But Mr. Velandia was denied legal residency as Mr. Vandiver’s spouse because of the Defense of Marriage Act. Under immigration law, an American citizen can petition for legal residency for a spouse, as long as the spouse is not the same sex.

Last month, an immigration judge in Newark suspended Mr. Velandia’s deportation, saying he wanted to allow time for the attorney general and the courts to work out whether, under some circumstances, a gay partner might be eligible for residency.

On June 9, Mr. Soloway received a call from Jane H. Minichiello, the chief counsel at the Newark office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, informing him that the agency had agreed to his request to close the deportation proceedings. According to Mr. Soloway, Ms. Minichiello said pursuing Mr. Velandia’s deportation “is not an enforcement priority at this time.”

Immigration agency officials confirmed Mr. Soloway’s account of the conversation but would not comment further.

The judge granted the motion to close the case on June 13, and Mr. Soloway received an official copy of the order on Wednesday.

The decision to cancel the deportation came as federal immigration officials were thoroughly reviewing their deportation

Josh Vandiver, left, and his husband, Henry Velandia, outside the immigration court in Newark on Friday. policies.

“I can start breathing now after so many months of fighting,” said Mr. Velandia, 27. “I was holding my breath for fear of any moment being sent away.”

But he pointed out that while the de-

cision was “a big step forward,” it still did not address the underlying issue of whether same-sex marriages should be recognized by the federal government.

“The fight isn’t over,” Mr. Velandia said.

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The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

Common Sense and Sensibility

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

T

his month, the Supreme Court ruled that police, when questioning a child suspected of committing a crime, must take the suspect’s age into account and may have to provide Miranda warnings in circumstances that would not require the warnings to be given to an adult suspect. The vote was 5 to 4, and the author of the majority opinion was Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The premise that children are different from adults and may feel coercive pressure when an adult would not, she said, was simply one of “commonsense reality.”

The decision, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, is significant in its own right, but as an expression of common sense that sparked a vigorous dissent from four justices, it also shines a light on how polarized the court has become.

Coming a few days after the 45th anniversary of the court’s ruling in Miranda v. Arizona and 11 years after then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s declaration that the Miranda warnings “have become part of our national culture,” the decision also raises a question about the future of the Miranda decision itself.

Miranda requires that a suspect who is “in custody” must be given the familiar advice about avoiding self-incrimination and requesting a lawyer. While a person under arrest is obviously in custody, the decision made clear that custody is to be understood in context; if all that counted was a formal arrest, the police could all too easily evade Miranda’s requirement altogether. Rather, as the court elaborated in subsequent decisions, what matters is the “objective inquiry” of whether, given the circumstances of the interrogation, a “reasonable person” would feel free to terminate the encounter with the police and leave the room.

In the case the court decided this month, the question was whether a suspect’s age is part of the context that should be taken into account. Might a hypothetical “reasonable child” feel himself “in custody” even if a reasonable adult would not, and how should

that matter for purposes of Miranda?

J.D.B. was 13 years old when a uniformed police officer pulled him from his middle-school social studies class and, along with another officer and two school administrators, questioned him behind a closed door about recent burglaries in the neighborhood.

Only after the boy confessed was he advised of his rights and permitted to catch the school bus home. The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to suppress his confession, ruling that age was not a proper consideration for the determination and that J.D.B. had not been in custody during the questioning.

Justice Sotomayor’s majority opinion did not resolve the question of whether J.D.B. had been in custody. Instead, the court held that a child’s age was relevant, and instructed the North Carolina court to take account of J.D.B.’s age in reconsidering the custody question. Justice Sotomayor said that considering age should clarify, rather than complicate, the obligation of the police toward young suspects, as well as the ability of judges to assess the nature of a given interrogation. She explained: “In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.” That was true, she said, even of “those whose childhoods have long since passed.”

So why did this common-sense opinion receive only five votes (the others were Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan) rather than nine? Granted that common sense has no place in the legal pantheon. The late Karl Llewellyn, a Columbia Law School professor and leading advocate of “legal realism,” used to tell beginning law students that “the hardest job of the first year is to lop off your common sense, to knock your ethics into temporary anesthesia.” Still, the question of what happened in the J.D.B. case is especially pertinent with respect to Chief Justice John G.

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Roberts Jr., who in other constitutional contexts has seemed quite comfortable taking a child’s age into account.

Three years ago, for example, the chief justice voted with an 8-to-1 majority (only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented) in holding that school administrators had violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure by forcing a 13-year-old girl to strip in order to search her underwear for illicit prescription medication.

And just last year, he joined a 6-to-3 decision that barred a sentence of life without parole for crimes other than murder committed by those under the age of 18.

That decision, Graham v. Florida, was based on the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

While agreeing with the result, Chief Justice Roberts did not join Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, which established a categorical rule against the life-without-parole sentence in the circumstance under review. In a separate concurring opinion, the chief justice agreed that age was always relevant but said that courts should take “the particular defendant and the particular crime” into account, rather than impose a categorical bar to the sentence.

In the case at hand, a violent robbery, he said the 16-year-old defendant’s evident immaturity as well as his chronological age made life without parole an inappropriate sentence.

So it was surprising to find the chief justice joining the dissenting opinion that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the new Miranda case. The thrust of the dissent, also joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, was that the majority opinion was “fundamentally inconsistent with one of the main justifications for the Miranda rule: the perceived need for a clear rule that can be easily applied in all cases.” Justice Alito went on to insist that a clear rule meant that any personal characteristics of the suspect, including age, could not be considered by the police or by the courts in deciding whether a suspect was in custody.

Miranda v. Arizona was based on the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination. True, the court has subsequently indicated that Miranda was not compelled by the Fifth Amendment but rather is a “prophylactic rule” designed to prevent Fifth Amendment violations. But even so, why is age an appropriate consideration under the Fourth and Eighth Amendments but not the Fifth?

The answer to this puzzle, or at least the one that leapt out at me from the 18 pages of the dissenting opinion, was the dissenters’ extreme dislike for Miranda itself. Justice Alito refers repeatedly to Miranda’s “rigid standards,” its “inflexible” requirements and the “high cost” to the criminal justice system of having to suppress “confessions that are

often highly probative and voluntary by any traditional standard.” (The dissenters’ bigger target is undoubtedly the exclusionary rule, which requires the suppression of illegally obtained evidence, and which, based on recent decisions, is hanging by a thread.)

Justice Alito wonders why the police are still required “to provide a rote recitation of Miranda warnings that many suspects already know and could likely recite from memory.” In a footnote, he cites survey data indicating that large majorities of the public know that they have a right to remain silent and a right to have a lawyer appointed if they cannot afford one.

Justice Alito observes that the J.D.B. decision “portends” an “extreme makeover of Miranda.” I parse the warning inherent in that ambiguous sentence as follows: The majority’s abandonment of what Justice Alito calls the “one-size-fits-all reasonable-person test” will make it difficult to avoid taking other characteristics, like intelligence or education, into account in the custody inquiry; limiting the personal inquiry to age alone would be “arbitrary.” But extending the J.D.B. decision to pick up other characteristics, would, in Justice Alito’s words, “further undermine the very rationale for the Miranda,” namely, its ease of application that is its “core virtue.” In a don’tthrow-me-into-that-briar-patch move, Justice Alito suggests that at that point, the Miranda rule morphs into the case-by-case appraisal of a confession’s “voluntariness” that the Warren Court intended the 1966 decision to replace. At that point, Miranda becomes redundant, anachronistic, unnecessary — take your pick — and it’s time to kiss it goodbye.

I referred earlier to the decision in 2000 in which Chief Justice Rehnquist turned away from an opportunity to revisit Miranda, in a case in which the court considered the constitutionality of an obscure act of Congress that purported to trump Miranda and make the voluntariness standard the law of the land. In a majority opinion declaring the anti-Miranda statute unconstitutional, the chief justice delivered an astonishing performance.

The young Associate Justice Rehnquist, for whom the young John Roberts clerked, had been perhaps Miranda’s most outspoken opponent on the federal bench, whittling away at the precedent when he could and obviously biding his time until he could bury it entirely.

But by late in his career, Chief Justice Rehnquist had bigger goals in mind, limiting his battles to those that served what he deemed higher institutional needs like preserving the Supreme Court’s prerogative, vis-a-vis Congress, to “say what the law is.” The decision by his protégé and successor to vote in dissent in the new Miranda case has reinforced my belief that Chief Justice Roberts clerked for the wrong Rehnquist.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

9 Mainland

Debt Limit Dog Days

M

onday’s meeting between President Obama and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was intended to revive the debtlimit talks after Republican negotiators walked out last week, insisting that they won’t agree to raise the limit unless Democrats agree to trillions of dollars in deficit reduction — with no tax increases at all.

Before the meeting, Mr. McConnell insisted that “it’s time for Washington to take the hit, not the taxpayers.” While both sides said the talks would continue, there is little sign the Republicans will consider a compromise. The government has barely a month to raise the debt limit or begin to default on its

obligations, with potentially disastrous consequences for the economy.

Talking about Washington taking the hit may play well on the hustings, for now. But the truth is that if the Republicans get their way, taxpayers will be the ones to take the hit, as basic services are cut drastically.

Nor will a spending-cutsonly approach fix the deficit. If the Bush tax cuts are extended beyond their expiration at the end of 2012, lost revenue from the cuts — plus related interest costs — would account for 45 percent of the projected $11.2 trillion in deficits in this decade.

The Republicans’ fierce opposition is even more absurd when you consider the relati-

vely modest tax increases proposed by Democrats.

Ending unnecessary subsides for oil companies would raise $40 billion over 10 years, while a tax accounting change that would also apply mainly to oil companies could raise $72 billion over five years. Getting rid of a tax break for corporate jets would raise about $3 billion.

Closing a loophole that allows private-equity money mangers to pay tax at about the lowest rate in the tax code would raise about $20 billion over 10 years.

The Democrats’ most ambitious proposal would limit the value of various write-offs for taxpayers making more than $500,000. That could possibly save upwards of $100 bi-

llion over a decade. Those are all workable ideas, but they do not add up to much in the context of a deal that is aiming for $2 trillion to $4 trillion in deficit reduction.

The fixation on the deficit has drawn attention away from the far more urgent problem of unemployment. Deficit reduction, done right, requires enactment of a plan for spending cuts and tax increases that can be implemented as the economy recovers.

President Obama needs to do a better job of explaining the stakes to Americans. The Republicans need to put the country’s economic interests above their partisan ambitions. There is not a lot of time.

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The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

Your Dog Is Watching You

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Y

ou may be teaching your dog new tricks, without even trying.

Dogs are constantly learning from the reaction of human owners, picking up facial cues and anticipating their owner’s behavior, new research suggests. The findings, published online in the journal Learning and Behavior, show that dogs essentially are always in training, and help explain how many owners unknowingly teach and reward their dog’s bad behavior.

Research conducted at the University of Florida focused on the role of eye contact and facial cues in influencing canine behavior. Earlier studies have suggested that dogs seem to know when they are being watched and even wait to perform forbidden behavior like digging in the garden when they know their owners aren’t looking.

In this study, researchers studied how human cues triggered begging

behavior among 35 pet dogs, 18 shelter dogs and 8 wolves raised in captivity.

First the animals were taught that the human strangers helping with the experiment were reliable sources of tasty treats. The testers stood close together and called to the animal, and both offered rewards of Spam cubes or Beggin’ Strips treats.

After four rewards, the experiment began. Two testers stood against a fence or wall, about 20 feet apart and with food in their pockets. The dog was held about 20 feet away, equidistant from both testers. In one condition, one tester faced the dog while the other turned her back. In another, a tester held a book near her face, while the other tester held the book in front of her face, as if she were reading. In a third condition, one tester held a bucket near the shoulder, while the other put the bucket over her head, blocking her eyes.

Then, both testers called out to the dogs.

All the animals -– pet dogs, shelter dogs and wolves -– ignored the person whose back was turned and sought food from the person who was looking at them.

“The question was, are dogs and wolves responsive to a human’s attentional state?” said Monique Udell, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla. “Do they have a feeling of whether we can see them or not? Turning your back — that’s a cue all the animals were sensitive to.”

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But when the testers held books, it was only the domestic dogs who avoided the person who appeared to be reading the book.

“In a house where they’re used to people reading books, they are sensitive to those types of cues,” said Dr. Udell. “A pet dog will not beg from someone reading the book. They will go to the person looking at them. A wolf or a dog at a shelter is indifferent to that cue.”

Interestingly, in the bucket experiment, the animals, for the most part, were equally likely to seek food from the person with the bucket over her head as the person holding the bucket.

Dr. Udell notes that most dogs don’t typically see a person with a bucket on his or her head, so they haven’t learned how to read that cue.

“For us as humans, having a bucket over your head is very silly,’’ she said.

“Dogs and wolves don’t get that. For the most part dogs and wolves would be equally likely to beg from someone with a bucket on your head because buckets don’t hold much meaning.’’

Surprisingly, one dog, a Labrador, performed very well on the bucket task, and the researchers wondered if perhaps the dog had seen its owner wearing a motorcycle helmet or hats.

In the end, they couldn’t find an explanation for the dog’s strong performance and say it may simply be that the dog just got lucky in its guesses.

The experiment shows that dogs are tuned into whether humans are paying attention.

“Dogs don’t have to read our minds. Dogs read our behavior,” said Dr. Udell. “That might be why dogs are so successful in human homes.

They are watching us. They are quick learners, they can figure out when you are going to give them the next treat or whether you are going to give them a bath. Whether we know it or not, we are training them.”

Dr. Udell said pet owners often get frustrated with bad dog behavior without realizing that they themselves have reinforced it, either by giving the dog a treat when they beg, skipping a bath when they protest or letting them sleep on the bed or couch.

“If we as owners don’t remain consistent, the dog is learning what it’s allowed to do, even if in our heads, that’s not what we desire,” said Dr. Udell. “They are really good at knowing how to live the life they want inside the human home.”

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

11

36 Hours in St.-Tropez

By SETH SHERWOOD

F

RANCE’S most famous summer playground can be captured in one word: indulgence. Once the June sun starts to heat its bougainvillea-draped lanes and Mediterranean beaches, megayachts pack into the harbor, Maseratis and Bentleys prowl the cobbled streets, gazillionaires arrive by helicopter at musicpounding beach clubs, and Middle East royals and Asian industrialists shell out tens of thousands of dollars on Champagne in celebrity-packed nightclubs. Recent years have been fertile for new indulgences — not all of them reserved for the seven-figure set — thanks to new hotels, party spots and restaurants. Whatever your income bracket, there’s a place to play in St.-Tropez.

Friday 5:30 p.m.

1) ST.-TROPEZ 101 Where does Paris Hilton crash when she’s in town? How much does it cost to rent a multideck yacht for a week? How many cats and dogs has Brigitte Bardot cra-

mmed into her seaside house? For a crash course in the St.-Tropez lifestyle and lovely views of its coastal mansions, book a onehour cruise on Brigantin II (Vieux Port, in front of Café de Paris; 33-6-07-09-21-27; taxi-bateau.com; 9 euros, about $12.50 at $1.40 to the euro) and let Captain Stéphane regale you (in English and French) with anecdotes.

8 p.m.

2) AN INDIAN INTERLUDE The sunset apéro — short for apéritif — is a St.-Tropez ritual. Like bulls to a matador’s cape, tourists charge for the red terrace of the Sénéquier cafe. Instead, seek out the Pan Dei Palais hotel (52, rue Gambetta; 33-4-94-17-71-71; pandei.com), whose carved wooden screens and statues of Hindu gods feel right out of Rajasthan.

Surrounded by chaise longues and fourposter beds, the colonial-chic pool bar is a rarified spot to sip a Red One (Monkey Shoulder Scotch, amaretto, lemon, strawberry juice, fig syrup; 21 euros) while nibbling curried nuts and nuggets of Emmenthal.

9 p.m.

3) STAR-STUDDED SUPPER Stars are everywhere at Colette (Hôtel Sezz, Route des Salins; 33-4-94-44-53-11; hotelsezz-sainttropez.com). They’re overhead, glimmering down on the minimalist patio. They’re on the clever neo-Mediterranean menu, which was dreamed up by the Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire.

(Chef Jérôme Roy does the actual cooking.)

And at the Hotel Sezz, one of the town’s poshest new crash pads, there might be some stars of screen or boardroom lurking. Under Mr. Gagnaire and Mr. Roy, sea bream is given finesse via a carpacciothin preparation, cubes of red pepper gelatin and Mideast spices. For the coda, lush black-currant mousse is topped with pear sorbet and spiked with caramelized sugar.

A three-course dinner for two, without drinks, runs about 170 euros.

Midnight 4) THE CAVES OR THE QUAY? The stars also fill Les Caves du Roy (Hotel Byblos, Avenue Paul Signac; 33-4-94-56-68-00; www.lescavesduroy. com). Like a 1970s Las Vegas casino, this den of celebrities, princes and corporate titans is outfitted with pile carpet and electric palm trees. And, like a casino, you can lose your fortune there in 20 minutes, courtesy of expensive Champagne. Far more

wallet-friendly high jinks await at Le Quai (22, quai Jean Jaurès; 33-4-94-97-04-07; lequai-St.-tropez.com), with its black carpet, black banquettes, black glass tables and dolled-up crowd sipping mojitos (8 euros) while dancing to funk, soul and R&B legends.

Saturday 10 a.m.

5) ONE-STOP SHOPPING If your shopping list includes horsemeat sausages, camouflage bikinis and Iranian carpets, the Saturday morning market in the central Place des Lices is a must. Everyone from Ferrari-driving hotshots to stooped old women converges there, snapping up paella (14 euros per kilo), soap blocks and linen clothing.

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The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

Olive hounds should seek Le Kemia (33-6-63-46-79-61), which sells regional olive oil (12 euros) and jars of olive tapenade (3 euros). Sweet tooths will prefer the biscuits flavored with anis, lemon and orange-flower water (2.90 per kilo) at Chez Cathy (33-6-14-30-39-19).

Noon 6) SMALL PLATES, AND PRICES Buddha-like statues decorate Le Dit Vin (43, rue du Portail Neuf; 33-4-94-79-85-09), but this new tapas restaurant is no place for ascetics. A welcome addition to a gastronomic scene full of tourist traps and obscenely priced seeand-be-seen restaurants, this affordable establishment has a rustic, whitewashed dining room and terrace where you can sip the house rosé while dining on small plates of local delicacies. Especially good are the thin filets of marinated anchovies paired with zesty tomato bread. Lunch for two, without wine, runs about 45 euros.

2 p.m.

7) AFTERNOON à LA PLAGE Choosing a beach club here is as much a philosophical issue as a practical one. Club 55 is for the self-styled elite; Aqua is popular with gays; bikini tops are optional at Nikki Beach (Plage de Pampelonne, Route de l’Epi, 33-4-94-79-82-04; nikkibeach.com/sttropez; 35 euros for a sun bed). So are sobriety, frugality and timidity — all of which are in ever shorter supply as the afternoon advances, the house music booms louder and the bottles of Champagne flow more freely.

Stylish but more chilled-out, year-old New Coco Beach (Plage de Pampelonne, Route de l’Epi; 33-4-94-79-83-25; newcoco.fr) is almost next door. Equipped with

a restaurant and bar, it provides music whose volume won’t rattle your fillings and purple chaises (23 euros) that fill with a more bourgeois crowd.

5 p.m.

8) SHIRTS, HATS AND ROBOTS You can scarcely hurl a diamond in St.-Tropez without hitting an international luxury boutique. Fortunately, a crop of independent shops has sprouted up. La Chemise Tropezienne (23, rue Gambetta; 33-4-94-79-59-75; lachemisetropezienne.com) sells locally designed dress shirts (120 to 180 euros) that pair

well with the panama hats at Truffaux (5, rue des Commerçants; 33-4-94-56-51-38; truffaux.com). And if you’re furnishing a party pad, Luxury Stuff & Toys (1, place de la Croix de Fer; 33-4-94-97-51-55; luxurystuffandtoys.com) stocks twofoot-high Daft Punk robots (3,950 euros a pair) and clear crystal foosball tables (11,900 euros).

8 p.m.

9) AN ITALIAN EVENING You know you’re entering Italian territory when you spot breadsticks and hear the staff members rolling their r’s: “T-r-r-r-r-r-e-s bien, monsieur-r-r-r!” Since

setting up last year in a tiny passageway, Cristina Saulini (13, rue des Feniers; 33-4-94-97-46-10; cristinasaulini.com) has become one of the town’s hottest tables.

Here, you’ll find eggplant, sliced thin and topped with zippy tomato sauce and hot Parmesan. Plump as dinner rolls, the tortelli are sunk in Bolognese sauce and spill out a jackpot of molten cheese. For the strong, house-made cannoli beckon from the finish line. A meal for two, without wine, costs around 100 euros.

10 p.m.

10) A BOOZY QUARTET With its four bars, two-year-old Kube hotel (Route de St.-Tropez, Gassin; 33-4-94-97-20-00; muranoresort.com) is

essentially a party complex. The underground Ice Kube is a subzero room lined with ice; 38 euros gets you 25 minutes in a parka and four vodka cocktails. The rooftop Skybar specializes in Champagne and gulf views. In between, the poolside Terrasse Martini has white couches that highlight the clientele’s tans; the fourth bar is a sci-fi lobby lounge a few steps away — if you can still walk.

Sunday 10 a.m.

11) VILLAGE OF YORE It’s easy to forget that there’s a charming fishing village hidden underneath

the tides of Porsches and tourist throngs.

Climb the hill to the 17th-century citadel (33-4-94-97-59-43; www.sainttropez.fr) and gaze down at the blue Mediterranean, the green hills across the bay, the orange roofs of the village and the sunflower yellow dome of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption church. Then hit the Musée de l’Annonciade (Place Grammont; 33-4-94-17-84-10), a 16th-century church turned museum with exhibitions dedicated to the painters — from Matisse to Andre Derain — who found inspiration along the Côte d’Azur.

Noon 12) LUNCH ON THE SAND Media types, BMW-driving lawyers, hipster parents with their children, and others congregate at La Cabane Bambou (Plage de Pampelonne, Route de Bonne Terrasse; 33-4-94-79-84-13; cabanebambouplage.com), a laid-back beach club for Sunday lunch. The menu offers seafood and Gallic sweets like a crackly crème brûlée. Afterward, collapse on a beach mattress (17 euros) or into the massage cabin (30 minutes for 45 euros)— for a final indulgence.

IF YOU GO With its impeccably sourced retro furniture and panoramic terrace restaurant, the 27-room Hôtel Ermitage (Avenue Paul Signac, 33-4-94-97-52-33; ermitagehotel.fr) is the most effortlessly cool new hotel in town. Doubles from 120 euros (low season) or 260 euros (high).

Renovated in 2007, the 15-room B. Lodge (23, rue de l’Aioli; 33-4-94-97-06-57; hotel-b-lodge.com) swapped country décor for modern gray and white tones. A pleasant bar and restaurant sweeten the deal. Doubles starting from 80 euros (low season) to 140 euros (high).

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

13

14

The San Juan Weeekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

LETTERS EuThe Great Loser To Rubén Berríos: While the penepeísta troopers were cutting off the blood to our sons’ brains and sexually manhandling our daughters, you were smelling the roses. Now, with Obama on his way here, you ask us to take to the streets for you. You know where you can go.

My guess is independence would be more of the same, a kaleidoscoope of rhetoric and posturing doesn’t stand against we the people getting stepped on by the moneyed and their fork-tongued politician mouthpieces.

Once we respected you because you speak pretty.

But you’d now best slither out the same way you got in.

Heidi Frances Ramírez, Caparra Heights

Drugs, Crime & Politicians To Gov. Fortuño: You politicians tell us again and again, crime here is all about drugs. So medicalize them. The addict may satisfy his need and he gets the treatment he doesn’t seek on his own. Yet decades of slaughter have made our streets rivers of blood and the Commonwealth Government hasn’t bothered with the obvious, simple and cheap expedient.

Why would politicians and the business community who own them want crime and drugs to not go away? Can you own shares of puntos de drogas ? Unlikely, but there’s always bribes, er, campaign contributions. And the narcotraffickers can afford them.

And all of the above begs the question. Why don’t you and I do drugs, señor Gobernador ? Why aren’t we addicted and shooting up or selling the stuff?

To answer this you have to answer what nobody asks.

What do drugs do? They obliterate reality. And what must your life be like for you to want to do that, despite the well-known downside of becoming a junkie? Usually you have to be poor. The sterility and entropy of our public schools, not even libraries where you might make it on your own, a bully police, and media relentlessly pumping into your mind that an un-Hollywoodesque life like yours isn’t worth living and that disputes are resolved by splattering the other guy’s brains all over the ceiling with your trusty Uzi. Yes, blotting it all out starts to make sense.

Every Puerto Rican wishes upon a star to someday be led by an honorable and caring Fortaleza . Fat chance.

Heidi Frances Ramíre, Caparra Heights

Better Late Than Never Impelled by their unprincipled greed, the penepeístas have been transmogrifying the Puerto

Rican economy into a gambling casino. The neverending electronic-lottery transmutations, the sleazy McClintock-Acevedo one arm bandits in the friquitines islandwide, the government-sanctioned casino cheating on the tourists that’s heard of down the grapevine.

Now a church grouping is standing up to them on the latest the IVU lottery pointing out that gambling is a sin. It’s about time!

Mara Andere, Miramar

The Way We are When I see young Fortuño and his cohorts and the bankers and corporate honchos strutting around on TV, I long for the days when the U.S.S.R. was a threat to freedom and democracy. When Fidel spoke for hours over Radio Havana and, though we had no inkling what he was saying, we read about jittery Wall Street that day.

Yes, it can be a nasty thing that your side wins.

Particularly when the folks you waved the flag for all those years go on and step on you. You then come to the Kafkaesque realization that you’re a roach, that you’ve been one all along.

Agustín Manzano , Santurce

Statehooder Folly When my goddaughter got married I flew to Miami to attend the wedding. I fell in love with my comay’s house. That till I bumped against a wall and it felt and sounded like a karate kick might bring the whole roof to the ground. Gipsum board. And clapboard on top. This in a location that suffers both tornados and hurricanes and the most lightning strikes on the planet. Yankee ingenuity.

Joplin, Missouri. 139 croaked. If the twisters had hit Guaynabo, what then? A few broken windows and with some luck all those dogs sucked up. Because we’re in the Caribbean, where hurricanes happen,

and we have the sense to build homes accordingly.

No, Kenneth McClintock, the Americans don’t do everything better.

Agustín Manzano, Santurce

Dissing the Meanies I’m getting off the train at Sagrado Corazón. At the turnstile—bureaucrats have decreed for no comprehensible reason that you have to swipe the glitchy ATI card to get out of the station as well—I see the bus I need at the stop and it won’t be back for another hour or so. The card doesn’t work. I desperately slide it again and again through the four machines.

Nothing. An overweight employee flanked by two tall small-headed security toughs, lackadaisically signals me from across the hall to bring the thing over.

Instead I jump the bar. They all holler enraged. I catch the bus.

Mateo Peralta, Guaynabo

How Doth Weird Flow?

Albert Einstein’s Relativity cheats at nature. As you work up to Star Trek velocity, mass increases, exponentially off the charts. And time slows down, threatening to stop. What happens when you hit the speed of light is anybody’s guess. In fact that’s supposed not to happen.

Kenneth McClintock’s Reaganomic penepeísmo cheats at governance. Financial crises recur never-endingly, triggering serial tax hikes and quality of life collapses. Yet the state phases itself out, devolves into the black hole of monopoly capital and greed and savagery overcome any civilizing imperative.

So what happens when taxation approaches 100% of income, but government has ceased to effectively exist?

And Einstein spoke of singularities, overbearing quirks in space-time that hew to no organization or law. In Puerto Rico those would be the Police Department.

Rocco Sastre, Ponce

The San Juan Weekly Send your opinions and ideas to: The San Juan Weeekly PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 Or e-mail us at:

sanjuanweeklypr@gmail.com Telephones: (787) 743-3346 · (787) 743-6537 (787) 743-5606 · Fax (787) 743-5500

San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

15

FASHION & BEAUTY

Valentino Resort Collection

Chloé Resort Collection

Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri have not set out to reinvent the house of Valentino, but they have definitely opened a few windows. For resort, the breath of fresh air came in the form of a series of white embroidered lace dresses — both long and short — that carried the weight of their extreme workmanship with the lightness of a handkerchief.

C Clare Waight Keller will make her debut at Chloé for spring he 2012. But in the meantime, the 20 design team is sticking to the d DNA of the brand. Resort has D that 1970s vibe: secretary th scarf blouses, superwide sc trousers, trapeze dresses tr and this breezy, roman perlike top and p sk skirt ensemble. bl

Suiting Versace Resort Without falter, this year’s resort collections want you to have fun in the sun. Versace didn’t disappoint. Tropical touches included short asymmetrical dresses with a palm-tree print and pumps in a beach towel stripe. And there was no shortage of sex appeal either, like grommets on stark black trim and the exposed zipper on this va-va-va voom bustier.

From Stella McCartney’s lemon-drop blazer and candy-striped trousers to Jason Wu’s daytime-meets-nighttime navy suit with black piping, it’s evident from the resort shows that designers are suiting up in an anticipatory nod to fall. Translation? The cropped suit, nipped and trimmed from the leg to the sleeve, never looked so cool. Wear a facsimile now, before the weather turns brutal.

FASHION & BEAUTY

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San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

When Fashion Meets Fishing, the Feathers Fly a hair accessory. Some feathers come in solid colors, and others have patterns of contrasting colors.

The qualities that make the feathers so attractive to anglers — pliability and durability — are also what appeal to hairdressers. The feathers can be washed, blow dried, curled and flat ironed, and typically stay in hair for a few months.

By KATIE ZEZIMA

T

he most enthusiastic customers at the Eldredge Brothers Fly Shop of late are not looking to buy fly fishing reels or snag stripers. They are here to make a fashion statement.

In an improbable collision of cutting-edge chic and a hobby that requires drab waders, fly fishing shops around the country are suddenly inundated with stylish women looking to get in on the latest trend: long, colorful feathers that are bonded or clipped into hair.

Demand for the feathers, before now exclusively the domain of fly fishermen, who use them to tie flies, has created a shortage, forcing up the price and causing fly shops and hairdressers to compete for the elusive plumes.

“I’ve been out for probably a month,” said Bill Thompson, the owner of North Country Angler in North Conway, N.H. “There is that worry that next year, fishermen won’t have materials they’ll need.”

The circumstances are especially strange because a proudly stodgy and tradition-bound industry content to hide from the world beyond the river is competing in this niche marketplace with a fad that may not last as long as a trout’s spawning season.

“For someone to use them as a fashion statement is just sacrilegious,” said Bob Brown, 65, a fly fisherman who lives in an recreational vehicle parked in Kennebunk, Me. He said he had been tying flies for 50 years and this is the first time he had ever heard of a feather shortage.

“They’ve been genetically bred for

fly tying, and that’s what they should be used for,” Mr. Brown said.

Fly fishing feathers — which individually are called hackles and as a group called saddles — are harvested from roosters painstakingly bred to grow supple feathers. It takes more than a year for a rooster to grow feathers long and pliable enough for use by fly fishermen. Because no one could have predicted the fashion trend, there are not enough to go around.

Thomas Whiting, the owner of Whiting Farms, the country’s largest hackle producer, said the company stopped taking new accounts several months ago after being unable to fulfill orders for current customers. Today, about one-fifth of their feathers are used for “fashion fodder,” Mr. Whiting said.

Mr. Whiting produces about 80,000 roosters a year for feathers and owns specific genetic lines that guarantee long, strong feathers. Each bird has his own “apartment” where he is “truly pampered” before being euthanized and plucked, he said.

“The fashion world is a vastly larger animal than the fly fishing world,” Mr. Whiting said. “We can’t keep up with demand. Things are pretty crazy.”

The feathers, anglers said, are used to help the flies that mimic bugs that sit atop the water, which are called dry flies, as well as wet flies, which sink below the surface and are supposed to look like bait fish.

Dry flies typically use brown and neutral feathers, which women prefer for a more natural look, and flies that sink often use feathers in colors like yellow and electric blue, which deliver more pop as

“They’re just like hair and they don’t fade,” said Sheryl Miller, the artistic director at Fringe Hair Art in Kennebunkport, Me., where three feathers cost $25.

Here at the Eldredge Brothers Fly Shop on Saturday morning, Tom Cormier said, “Feather call,” from behind the counter as he hung up the telephone.

Another disappointed feather-seeker was on the other end.

The store is keeping and will eventually sell one saddle, a large mane of about 300 white, velvety-soft feathers that Jim Bernstein, the store manager, said sold for about $120 last year.

“I found out this is worth $1,000,” Mr. Bernstein said, adding that no fly fisherman would pay that much. “It would be nice if you had blond hair. It has that subtle barring on it.”

The store would have more, Mr. Bernstein said, were it not for a monthlong delay from its supplier. It has a

wall filled with packages of colorful feathers, but they’re the wrong ones — too short and wide for most people’s tastes.

But that seems to be changing.

“Now they’re buying any saddles, wider feathers, and that’s going to affect fly shops even more,” Mr. Bernstein said.

Mr. Bernstein has no problem selling to hair-extension seekers; he even teaches them how to dye the feathers. tea Todd Lanning, manager of South Fork To Outfi Ou tters in Swan Valley, Idaho, says the trend tre is good for fly fishing.

“It’s business. We’re happy to sell whatever feathers we can to whomever,” wh said sai Mr. Lanning, who has received some calls cal about his feathers. And, he likes the look. loo “I think it’s kind of cool,” Mr. Lanning nin said. “I think it’s kind of sexy, to be honest with you, for lack of a better word.” wo ord But other fly shops want nothing to do with w the fashionable. Tom Ciardelli, the owner of Hanover Outdoors in Hao nover, nove N.H., refuses to sell feathers to anyone anyo other than fly fishermen.

“We felt we would be better off with wit good will than just selling out,” Mr. Ciardelli said.

Mr The feathers are fetching big interest — and money — on the Interter net, with nearly 6,000 listings for “hair ne extension feathers” on the Web site etsy. exten com aand more than 6,000 listings on eBay. Feathers that used to cost a few dollars are fetching $20 each in some salons.

The situation has spawned some interesting business alliances.

“We do get our feathers from a local fly fishing shop,” said Rebecca Pellman, a spokeswoman for Vain, a salon with two Seattle locations. She said she understood why fishermen might be upset.

“Can you imagine some Dad type coming in for feathers and hearing, ‘Sorry, I sold them all for people’s hairdos?’ ” Ms. Pellman said.

She estimates that the salon has put feathers in the hair of at least 1,000 clients. But she and others recognize that the shortage, and the hairdos, will probably be short-lived.

“It’s a fad,” said Jim Makris of the Opechee Trading Post in Laconia, N.H., which still has some shorter feathers available. “And like all fads, it will go away. But right now, it’s hot.”

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

17

Kitchen

A Garlic Festival Without a Single Clove

By MELISSA CLARK “I’D rather have an ounce of garlic than a pound of truffles,” my father often said, setting the tone for garlic worship in our family.

When I was growing up, no meal was complete without several of the odoriferous cloves: from the omelets at breakfast to the garlic butter popcorn as a snack before bedtime. And if my dad never did get around to making garlic ice cream, it was only because he was perfecting his garliclaced gazpacho sorbet.

Given this history, it was no surprise that the first time I came upon a cascading pile of vivid green, curling garlic scapes at the farmers’ market, I had to buy some, even though I had no idea of what do with them.

Their graceful form gives few clues about their function. Garlic scapes are pencil thin and exuberantly loopy, and emanate a clean and mildly garlicky scent.

At the top of each is a tightly closed but bulging bud. I contemplated sticking them in a vase with the peonies, but ultimately realized I’d rather eat them.

Since my cookbook indexes came up empty in a search for scapes, I called my dad for advice. “Garlic scapes?” he said.

“Do you mean green garlic?”

He was referring to the tender crop of garlic that also appears in the market in spring, bulbs still attached to their green floppy tops. Having become addicted to their juiciness and musky sweetness, I always make a point to buy plenty when I see them.

But no, I told him, scapes look like curlicue tulip stems.

At the time he didn’t know how to cook them either, so I decided to wing it.

Since the scapes reminded me of extra-long green beans, I treated them as such, cutting them into two-inch lengths, blanching them and tossing them with a lemony vinaigrette.

They had a gently spicy undertone and an exquisitely fresh green, mellow taste. Unlike regular garlic, which needs some kind of vehicle to carry its intense flavor to the mouth, scapes are self-sufficient; vegetable and aromatic all in one.

Ever since that first batch, I gleefully buy scapes whenever I can, using them in salads, soups and pesto.

I use green garlic in dressings, dips and sautés. Even a breakfast of toasted baguette with butter is infinitely improved by a topping of thinly sliced raw green garlic sprinkled with crunchy sea salt and fresh thyme leaves. Much milder and more succulent than regular garlic, green garlic won’t cause your fellow subway riders to inch away from you.

Another bonus of green garlic: Because it’s uncured (not dried), there’s no papery skin. After trimming the roots and tops, all you need to do is peel off the outermost layer of the bulb.

It occurred to me, as I reveled in my alliums one evening last June, that this crop deserved a celebration, a party where I could serve a vampire-repelling repast showcasing garlic in its many incarnations.

So a few weeks later I trotted back to the farmers’ market to stock up. But I was too late. “All gone,” a farmer told me.

“Come back next year.”

Next spring, I promised myself,

I’d throw one garlic-palooza of a party.

Meanwhile, I had loads of time for planning and research. Scapes, I learned, are the flower shoots of the garlic bulb. Farmers cut them off to encourage the bulbs to grow plumper. When the garlic is harvested before individual cloves are formed, it is called green garlic.

By May my appetite was primed. I started bothering the farmers at the Greenmarket, asking when the harvest would be in. My urgency amused Bill Maxwell, of Maxwell Farms in Changewater, N.J., who, after telling me to cool my heels until mid-June, offered a pearl of scapes insight.

Although they’ve been gaining a following over the last few years, he said, scapes came to market “when someone figured out they could make money from something they were cutting off the garlic plant and getting rid of.”

Peter Hoffman, the chef at Savoy, added, “At some point someone realized the scapes were tender and delicious.” He suggested that I sauté them with other vegetables or soft-shell crabs, or even grill them whole to show off their curves.

Finally, the market bloomed with baskets of scapes that looked like twisted garden snakes and bunches of green garlic with their leek-like stems still attached.

As I scooped armloads into my bag, I daydreamed about my party. I came up with a menu to showcase the alliums in several manifestations: raw, quickly sautéed and slowly confited.

It was not an occasion for the faint of heart. I planned to ease my guests into the piquant depths slowly with a docile creamy soup of green garlic and scapes

sautéed in butter, then puréed. But while it bubbled away on the stove, and green garlic bulbs, slick with oil, roasted in the oven, I realized everyone would need a snack. So I decided to whip up a dip.

The pantry offered canned white beans and chickpeas. I considered hummus but decided to go for the paler legume to flaunt the scapes’ verdant hue.

I ground beans and scapes in the food processor with a little lemon, and less olive oil than I would have used behind closed doors. The dip was billowing and fluffy, with the color of sugar snap peas. It had a velvety texture that wrapped itself around an assertive, racy wallop so intense that I worried I’d scare even my garlic-loving parents out of the house.

Instead, my guests closed in on the bowl like house cats to cream cheese. The soup, more delicate and earthy than the dip, met a similar fate.

And so did a puffy soufflé filled with

Green Garlic and Chive Soufflé With Gruyère Time: 50 minutes 5 tablespoons butter, more for pan 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan 2 fat bulbs green garlic, root and green parts trimmed, outer layer removed 1/4 cup flour 2 cups milk 2 sprigs thyme 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt plus a pinch 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg 4 egg yolks and 6 egg whites 2/3 cup grated Gruyère cheese

1/4 cup chopped chives.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 2-quart gratin dish and sprinkle bottom and sides with Parmesan. Using a sharp knife or food processor, mince garlic.

2. Melt butter in a saucepan and let cook for 1 minute. Add flour and cook, whisking, until mixture is pale golden, about 5 minutes.

Whisk in the milk and thyme sprigs, and continue to cook, whisking constantly, until mixture is thick and smooth, about 2 minutes longer.

3. Turn off heat and whisk in salt, pepper and nutmeg. Transfer to a large bowl and whisk in egg yolks, one at a time. Whisk in minced garlic, cheese and chives.

4. In a mixer, whip egg whites with a pinch of salt until they hold soft peaks. Using a spatula, fold a third of the whites into yolk mixture to lighten it, then fold in remaining whites, taking care not to overmix. As you fold, pluck out and discard thyme sprigs.

5. Spread mixture in prepared pan and smooth top. Bake until golden brown and puffed, 20 to 25 minutes.

Kitchen

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chopped green garlic, chives and plenty of Gruyère cheese. This dish really threw my guests off guard.

“You think of soufflé as being all airy and light and a little bland,” a friend said, “then wham! The garlic smacks you in the face — you know, in a good way.”

For the next course I yielded to garlic’s subtler state, which it takes on while slowly confiting. To balance the sweetness, I sautéed the caramelized garlic with salty pancetta, fiery chili flakes, a squeeze of lemon for brightness and some chopped peppery arugula, then tossed it with penne. It was bracing and honeyed, with the lemon and chili preventing the garlic from being too cloying.

I pressed on to one more course, grilled chai-spiced chicken wings with green garlic aioli. The inspiration came from a baroque-sounding recipe on the Gilroy Garlic Festival Web site that included a marinade of green tea, lemon grass and curry paste. I decided to pare it down, seasoning the chicken with whole chai spices and making an aioli with just egg and oil — and loads of garlic.

The aioli was the most potent dish of the night, and everyone quadruple-dipped their wings into the bowl. When the last of it was licked clean, I mentioned dessert. My father leaned forward, perhaps thrilled that I might fulfill his garlic ice cream fantasy.

But no, he was just reaching for the wine, and was visibly relieved when I brought out fresh strawberries. “You know why I never made garlic ice cream?” he asked.

“Because it’s a terrible idea?” I answered.

“Exactly.”

Chai-Spiced Chicken Wings With Green Garlic Aioli FOR THE AIOLI: 1/2 fat bulb green garlic, green parts trimmed, outer layer removed 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt 1 egg yolk 1 cup extra virgin olive oil Freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste.

Time: 30 minutes, plus 6 hours’ marinating FOR THE CHICKEN: 1/2 fat bulb green garlic, root and green parts trimmed, outer layer removed, or 4 regular garlic cloves, peeled 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon cardamom pods (about 16) 1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest 1 star anise 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 pinch ground cloves 2 1/2 pounds chicken wings

1. Coarsely chop garlic and place in blender with olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, ginger, cardamom, orange zest, star anise, cinnamon, pepper and cloves. Blend mixture to a rough purée. In a bowl, toss marinade with chicken wings and cover.

Refrigerate for at least 6 hours or, preferably, overnight.

2. Preheat broiler to high. Use a paper towel to brush off most solids from marinade clinging to chicken, then arrange wings on a baking sheet. Broil until wings are golden brown and cooked through, about 5 minutes a side.

3. To prepare aioli, finely chop garlic. Using a mortar and pestle, pound green garlic with salt until a paste forms. Add egg yolk and continue to pound paste until incorporated, then add oil drop by drop until a thick, shiny aioli is achieved.

Stir in a few drops of lemon juice.

Aioli can be prepared a day ahead; store it in refrigerator. Serve wings with aioli for dipping.

Yield: 2 to 4 servings.

Penne With Roasted Garlic, Pancetta and Arugula Time: 2 hours 6 fat bulbs green garlic or 4 heads regular garlic 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for drizzling Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 pound penne rigate 1/2 pound pancetta, chopped 1 large pinch crushed red pepper flakes 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, or to taste 2 large bunches arugula, roughly chopped (about 5 cups) Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving.

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Trim hairy root and green stem from green garlic, or trim 1/4-inch off top of regular garlic, making sure to expose all cloves. Place garlic in a small, shallow baking dish, root side down, and drizzle each with a little olive oil. Cover dish with foil. Roast until cloves or bulbs are golden brown, about 40 minutes to 1 hour (green garlic will cook faster than regular garlic). If bottom of dish starts to burn before garlic is roasted, add one tablespoon water. Transfer to a rack to cool. Garlic can be roasted up to one day ahead; wrap well and store in refrigerator.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package directions until al dente.

3. While pasta cooks, heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat. Add pancetta and red pepper flakes. Sauté until pancetta is golden and crisp around edges, about 5 minutes.

4. Peel outside layer of green garlic, or if using regular garlic, squeeze cloves from their papery skins. Chop roasted garlic, and add to skillet with lemon juice and a large pinch of salt and pepper. Sauté for 2 minutes.

5. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water. Add drained pasta and arugula to skillet, place over low heat, and toss until arugula wilts. Add just enough cooking water to scrape up brown bits in pan (do this 1 tablespoon at a time). Taste and adjust seasoning, then serve with Parmesan.

Yield: 4 servings.

Reinvented Garlic Bread Time: 5 minutes 1/2 fat bulb green garlic, root and green parts trimmed, outer layer

removed 1 6-inch-long piece of baguette, halved lengthwise 2 tablespoons good-quality butter, softened Coarse sea salt like Maldon Thyme leaves, for garnish, optional.

1. Cut garlic in half. Toast bread, then rub cut sides of garlic all over toasted surface. Slice garlic as thinly as possible.

2. Spread bread with butter and sprinkle with salt. Top with sliced garlic. Garnish with thyme, if desired.

Yield: 1 to 2 servings.

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July 7 - 13, 2011

19

HEALTH & SCIENCE

New Drugs Fight Prostate Cancer, but at High Cost

By ANDREW POLLACK

A

group of new drugs is promising to prolong the lives and relieve the symptoms of men with advanced prostate cancer, but could also add billions of dollars to the nation’s medical bills.

In the last 15 months, three new drugs that extended the lives of prostate cancer patients in clinical trials have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and several other promising medicines are in clinical trials. Before last year, only one drug had been shown to improve survival — docetaxel, which was approved in 2004.

“What a great time it is in prostate cancer,” Dr. Daniel J. George of the Duke Cancer Institute proclaimed earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

And it’s a great time for the drug makers, with several drugs competing to fill a niche for longer-term survival. Analysts estimate that some of the new drugs, particularly Dendreon’s Provenge and Johnson & Johnson’s Zytiga, could reach annual sales of $1 billion or even much more.

The recently approved drugs and most of those in development are for cases in which the disease has spread beyond the prostate gland and is no longer held in check by hormone therapy.

Men with that late-stage cancer had a median survival of about a year and a half using docetaxel. The new drugs each added two to five months to median survival when tested in clinical trials. Doctors say that men taking more than one of the drugs in succession would be expected to live more than two years.

But the price of these drugs has already stirred concerns about the costs of care among patients, providers and insurers. For example, Provenge costs $93,000 for a course of treatment, while Zytiga costs about $5,000 a month. Another of the new drugs, Sanofi’s Jevtana, costs about $8,000 every three weeks.

With other pricey drugs on the way, said Joel Sendek, an analyst at Lazard, “We could be talking easily $500,000 per patient or more over the course of therapy, which I don’t think the system can afford, especially since 80 percent of the patients are on Medicare.”

Medicare has already fired what some analysts interpret as a warning shot over prices, conducting a yearlong inquiry into whether to pay for Provenge. In its final decision, due Thursday, Medicare is expected to pay for the drug when used according to the label.

Medicare officials denied that price was the reason for the review. But some pa-

tient advocates and politicians portrayed the review as a step toward rationing.

Private insurers are also paying only if drugs are used according to the label, according to doctors and patient advocates.

“The reality is, there’s pushback,” said Dr. Oliver Sartor of Tulane University.

Still, for now, one company’s price is prompting the next one to follow suit.

“The pricing environment is encouraging and getting better for us,” Andrew Kay, the chief executive of Algeta, told securities analysts earlier this month, after announcing that his company’s experimental drug had extended median survival nearly three months in a clinical trial.

Mr. Kay said he had initially thought that his company, which is based in Norway, would charge about $25,000 for a typical course of treatment with the drug, Alpharadin. But with the rival drug Jevtana costing about $50,000, Algeta and its partner, Bayer, are considering a higher price.

About 218,000 men in the United States get prostate cancer each year and about 32,000 die, according to the American Cancer Society.

In many cases, the cancer is caught before it has spread beyond the prostate gland and can be cured with surgery or radiation therapy.

If the cancer has spread, men usually are given drugs, particularly Abbott Laboratories’ Lupron, that suppress the body’s production of the hormone testosterone, which can fuel tumor growth.

The new drugs, for now at least, are for use when this hormone-deprivation therapy has stopped working.

“This is a small subset of people with prostate cancer,” said Dr. Charles Myers, a prostate cancer specialist in private practice in Charlottesville, Va., who is a survivor of the disease himself. However, he noted, “It’s the group of people who are dying.”

Provenge was approved in April 2010 for patients whose cancer was late-stage but not yet causing many symptoms.

Once symptoms, mainly bone pain, have appeared, men are likely to receive docetaxel, a generic drug also sold by Sanofi as Taxotere .

Two other new drugs are approved for use only after docetaxel has been tried. One, Sanofi’s Jevtana, is a chemotherapy drug in the same class as docetaxel; it was approved in June 2010. The other is Johnson & Johnson’s Zytiga, approved this April.

Many patients and doctors are most enthusiastic about Zytiga and Provenge because they are alternatives to chemotherapy, which many men want to avoid because of side effects. Provenge works by training the body’s immune system to fight the tumor.

Zytiga is a new form of hormone therapy. While Lupron mainly blocks production of testosterone by the testes, there is still some hormone produced by the adrenal gland or even by the tumor itself. Zytiga, by inhibiting an enzyme called CYP17, clamps down on testosterone production.

Doctors and patients say the new drugs can offer some men a decent quality of life, although they are not free of side effects. For instance, Zytiga, also known as abiraterone, can cause hypertension and liver damage and must be taken with the steroid prednisone.

Many men are likely to try several of the drugs. Mark Maldonado, a retired postal worker in Omaha, said that Jevtana had helped keep his cancer in check without debilitating side effects. But knowing that the drug would eventually stop working, he and his doctor “talked about abiraterone being the next step in our progress through the drugs.”

More competition is coming. Takeda Pharmaceutical and Medivation, a San Francisco company, are separately developing other drugs that block testosterone’s production or its effects.

Some of the most exciting advances, doctors say, are in the area of fighting the spread of prostate cancer to the bone. Such bone metastases are very common in men with advanced prostate cancer and account for most of the death and disability from the disease.

Cabozantinib, an experimental drug being developed by Exelixis, seems to be able to virtually eradicate bone metastases in some patients, at least as measured by bone scans, something no other drug has done.

Amgen won F.D.A. approval in November for Xgeva, a drug that reduces the risk of fractures and other problems caused by cancer in the bones. The drug can also delay the spread of cancer to the bones, according to the results of a more recent trial.

Dr. Christopher J. Logothetis, of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, predicted further progress.

“It’s beyond the individual drugs,” he said. “One sees a manual now on how to go forward.”

Saturn Moon’s Surface May Conceal Salty Ocean

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

F

ive years ago, scientists discovered that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, had geyserlike plumes spewing water vapor and ice particles.

These plumes originate from a saltwater reservoir, according to a new study published online by the journal Nature.

“We discovered that the plume is stratified in a composition of ice,” said Frank Postberg , an astrophysicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

“And the lower you go, the more salt-rich ice grains you find.”

Dr. Postberg and his collaborators analyzed samples of ice particles from the plumes gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

The analysis found that salt-rich particles make up more than 99 percent of the solids ejected in Enceladus’s plumes.

The researchers theorize that there are actually two reservoirs connected to the plumes. The first is a saltwater reservoir close to the moon’s surface that is directly feeding the plumes.

But feeding this reservoir, there is most likely a larger, deeper saltwater reservoir, Dr. Postberg said.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” he said.

Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth moon, is icy and just over 300 miles wide. The presence of water makes it one of a few other places in the solar system where life could exist.

But even if this isn’t the case, it makes life beyond Earth seem more plausible, Dr. Postberg said.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place,” he said, “it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe.”

HEALTH & SCIENCE 20

The Sun Is the Best Optometrist

By SANDRA AAMODT and SAM WANG

W

HY is nearsightedness so common in the modern world? In the early 1970s, 25 percent of Americans were nearsighted; three decades later, the rate had risen to 42 percent, and similar increases have occurred around the world.

There is significant evidence that the trait is inherited, so you might wonder why our myopic ancestors weren’t just removed from the gene pool long ago, when they blundered into a hungry lion or off a cliff. But although genes do influence our fates, they are not the only factors at play.

In this case, the rapid increase in nearsightedness appears to be due to a characteristic of modern life: more and more time spent indoors under artificial lights.

Our genes were originally selected to succeed in a very different world from the one

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July 7 - 13, 2011

we live in today. Humans’ brains and eyes originated long ago, when we spent most of our waking hours in the sun. The process of development takes advantage of such reliable features of the environment, which then may become necessary for normal growth.

Researchers suspect that bright outdoor light helps children’s developing eyes maintain the correct distance between the lens and the retina — which keeps vision in focus. Dim indoor lighting doesn’t seem to provide the same kind of feedback. As a result, when children spend too many hours inside, their eyes fail to grow correctly and the distance between the lens and retina becomes too long, causing far-away objects to look blurry.

One study published in 2008 in the Archives of Ophthalmology compared 6- and 7-year-old children of Chinese ethnicity living in Sydney, Australia, with those living in Singapore. The rate of nearsightedness in

Singapore (29 percent) was nearly nine times higher than in Sydney. The rates of nearsightedness among the parents of the two groups of children were similar, but the children in Sydney spent on average nearly 14 hours per week outside, compared with just three hours per week in Singapore.

Similarly, a 2007 study by scholars at Ohio State University found that, among American children with two myopic parents, those who spent at least two hours per day outdoors were four times less likely to be nearsighted than those who spent less than one hour per day outside.

In short, the biological mechanism that kept our vision naturally sharp for thousands of sunny years has, under new environmental conditions, driven visual development off course. This capacity for previously welladapted genes to be flummoxed by the modern world can account for many apparent imperfections. Brain wiring that effortlessly recognizes faces, animals and other symmetrical objects can be thrown off by letters and numbers, leading to reading difficulties.

A restless nature was once helpful to people who needed to find food sources in the wild,

but in today’s classrooms, it’s often classified as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

When brains that are adapted for face-to-face social interactions instead encounter a world of e-mail and Twitter — well, recent headlines show what can happen.

Luckily, there is a simple way to lower the risk of nearsightedness, and today, the summer solstice — the longest day of the year — is the perfect time to begin embracing it: get children to spend more time outside.

Parents concerned about their children’s spending time playing instead of studying may be relieved to know that the common belief that “near work” — reading or computer use — leads to nearsightedness is incorrect. Among children who spend the same amount of time outside, the amount of near work has no correlation with nearsightedness. Hours spent indoors looking at a screen or book simply means less time spent outside, which is what really matters.

This leads us to a recommendation that may satisfy tiger and soccer moms alike: if your child is going to stick his nose in a book this summer, get him to do it outdoors.

Forget About Crunches. Here’s How to Protect Your Back.

By JANE E. BRODY

I

f you have not suffered a vertebral fracture, adopting an exercise routine that improves posture and strengthens back muscles can go a long way toward preventing one. And if you are already plagued by back pain due to vertebral fractures, the exercises and protective movements described below may bring relief and prevent the problem from getting worse.

These guidelines and exercises have been adapted primarily from recommendations published in the medical journal Osteoporosis International.

First, it is critically important to know what not to do. Avoid those infamous stomach “crunches” and toe touches and any exercise or activity that involves twisting the spine or bending forward from the waist with straight legs.

Next, recall a mantra you may have heard often as a child: Stand up straight.

Good posture — proper alignment of body parts when you stand, sit or walk — reduces stress on the spine. Lift your breastbone, and keep your head erect and shoulders back, all the while gently tightening abdominal muscles and maintaining a small hollow in your lower back.

More advice from the experts: When sitting for long periods, place a rolled towel or small pillow at the small of your back. Walk with your chin in and head upright.

Learn to bend over safely from the hips and knees, not the waist. Start with your feet shoulder-width apart and keep your back straight. Do not twist; turn to face the object you wish to reach before you bend.

To reach your feet (for example, to tie your shoes), sit on a chair and cross one foot at a time over the opposite knee, or stand with one foot on a stool.

Lifting an object can be problematic. If possible, first get down on one knee and lift the object to your waist; then stand up, holding it close to your body.

When carrying packages, use two bags with handles packed as evenly as possible, and carry one bag in each hand. If you have recently had a vertebral fracture, limit the weight you carry to 10 pounds.

Another option: Use a backpack, preferably one with straps that snap in front at the chest and waist. In fact, according to Dr. Kristine Ensrud of the University of Minnesota, one of the recommended back-strengthening exercises involves wearing a small backpacklike device containing a two-kilogram weight.

Avoid overreaching. Don’t reach for objects on a shelf higher than one you can touch with both hands together.

Protect your back when you cough or

sneeze. Tighten your abdominal muscles, and place one hand on your back or press your back into a chair or wall for support. Alternatively, gently bend your knees and place one hand on them.

Additionally, exercise that strengthens abdominal muscles will also protect the back.

Try this one: Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor and a small pillow under your head. Tighten your abdominal muscles by pulling your pelvis and ribs together (push your rib cage toward the floor and tilt your pelvis toward it) while flattening your lower back toward the floor. Hold for five seconds, relax for five seconds, and then repeat 5 to 10 times.

Also helpful is strengthening your core. The Pilates plank exercise, which looks like the “up” part of a push-up, is excellent if you can do it. Lie face down, and raise your body into a benchlike posture, supporting it with your hands and toes and keeping your back flat. Hold the position for a count of 10, or as long as you can without undue strain. Over time, build up to a one-minute plank.

If posture is a problem, a suggested corrective exercise involves sitting or standing as tall as you can with your chin tucked in, stomach tight and chest forward. With your arms extended in a “W” position and shoulders relaxed, bring your elbows back to pinch your shoulder blades together. Hold for a slow count of three and relax for another count of three. Repeat 10 times.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

HEALTH & SCIENCE

21

Debris Gives Space Station Crew Members a 29,000-M.P.H. Close Call

By KENNETH CHANG

O

ne of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of space-age litter orbiting Earth zipped uncomfortably close to the International Space Station on Tuesday.

The six crew members of the space station took refuge in their “lifeboats” — two Soyuz space capsules they would use to escape a crippled station — as the unidentified object hurtled past them at a speed of 29,000 miles per hour, missing the space station by only 1,100 feet. The episode took place at 8:08 a.m. Eastern time.

“We believe the probability that it would the hit the station was about 1 in 360,” said Lark Howorth, who leads the team at NASA that tracks the space station’s trajectory. NASA rules call for precautions when the risk of impact is greater than 1 in 10,000.

In the section of the station run by the United States, astronauts closed the hatches in case the debris — commonly known as space junk — crashed through, to limit the danger of explosive decompression. To prepare for a rapid departure, the clamps holding the Soyuz capsules to the station were released.

“They would be one command away from releasing the hooks and undocking,” said Edward Van Cise, NASA’s lead flight director.

Mission controllers gave the all-clear signal four minutes later, and the crew members returned to work. There was no sign of damage or impact to the station.

It was only the second time in the 10-year history of people living on the space station that the crew needed to take such precautions; on March 12, 2009, a piece of

an old satellite motor went zipping by.

If the station had been hit, the crew could have quickly undocked and returned to Earth. The risk of space junk hitting a Soyuz capsule is much slimmer.

Usually, when NASA gets a warning, several days in advance, that something that might come too close to the station, it moves the station by firing thrusters. Or, if a space shuttle happened to be visiting at the time, the shuttle would nudge the station out of danger. That has happened 12 times.

This time, however, the warning came Monday evening, less than 15 hours in advance, too little time to plan a maneuver.

Since the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched was in 1957, the space neighborhood has become cluttered with human-made detritus — more than half a million pieces, by recent estimates, from the size of a marble on up. If the orbits of two intersect, the result can be a destructive collision.

“It’s getting kind of dangerous,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has become an expert on space debris. “Most active satellites now have a regular process of maneuvering to avoid debris.”

NASA estimates that for each sixmonth period, there is a 1-in-100 chance that some or all of the space station crew might need to evacuate, and most of that risk comes from the possibility of impact from debris or natural micrometeroids.

Over 10 years, the current planned lifetime of the station, the cumulative risk is nearly one in five.

“It’s at the level where it probably

won’t happen in the lifetime of the station, but it could easily,” Dr. McDowell said.

The debris includes spent rocket stages, and sometimes over time residual fuel combines and explodes. “You now no longer have a rocket stage,” Dr. McDowell said. “You have 500 pieces of shrapnel.”

Also still in orbit are broken satellites

or almost incidental litter. In the past, lens covers on satellite cameras and sensors were simply popped off and left to float away. Now satellite makers put the lens cap on a hinge.

Military antisatellite tests also make a big mess, notably when the Chinese blew up one of their satellites in 2007.

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July 7 - 13, 2011

Public Workers Strike in Britain Over Pensions

By SARAH LYALL

J

oining a growing wave of unrest in Europe over government austerity measures, tens of thousands of British teachers and public-sector workers walked off their jobs on Thursday to protest proposed changes to their pension plans.

More than 10,000 schools were affected by the strikes, as were universities, social security offices, courtrooms, airport customs desks and other governent operations. Union officials warned that the strike could be the first of a series of walkouts here in the next few months, reflecting growing unhappiness over layoffs, salary freezes, tax increases and a persistently sluggish economy.

Much of the workers’ anger, said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, has to do with a feeling of helplessness and resentment at having to suffer from the mistakes of bankers and others who caused the economic crisis. The government, Mr. Serwotka said in a statement, is “forcing some of the most vulnerable people in our society to pay for a crisis that was not of their making.”

Around Europe, workers are feeling the same way. In recent months, the Irish and Portuguese governments have been voted out of office on a tide of voter anger at their part in the financial upheavals and at the austerity measures that were imposed as a remedy. Britain has experienced waves of student protests, sometimes violent, over the government’s decision to increase tuition and cut education spending. In the past week, Greece has been convulsed with riots as residents reacted with fury to its harsh austerity package.

In Britain, it has come down to a test of Prime Minister David Cameron’s resolve, and his political fortunes, as he tries to hold firm to his stringent budget plans in the face of public unhappiness.

The issue exercising the strikers in Britain on Thursday was the government’s proposal to change their pension plans. Public pensions currently cost Britain nearly $50 billion a year, and the government says that with an aging population, the current pension arrangement is unsustainable.

As a result, it has proposed raising the working age to 66 by 2020, increasing

the monthly amount that public-sector employees are required to contribute toward their pensions and changing the way pensions are calculated. Under the current system, pensions are based on workers’ final salaries; the new plan would base them instead on an average career salary.

“Basically, it means we pay 50 percent more each month and get less when we retire,” said Olayinka Williams, 27, a middle manager at a secondary school in Camden, who took part in a large demonstration in central London.

Another protester, a 27-year-old teacher at an Islington elementary school, said that basing a pension on a career average, rather than a final salary, discriminated against women who take maternity leave or work part time to raise their children.

“We could have made a lot more in the private sector, but we chose to go into teaching,” said the teacher, who asked that her name not be used because she was afraid of reprisals from her school. The government’s budget cuts are really hitting home, she said; her parents, 55-year-old social workers, both lost their jobs this week.

Her anger, and that of other strikers, is set against a backdrop of wider complaints as the Conservative-led coalition government’s austerity program — which has imposed spending reductions of as much as 20 percent across most government departments — begins to bite.

Mr. Cameron has said the cuts are essential if Britain is to avoid falling into a situation as severe as that in Greece, which is swimming in debt, barely hanging on to its international bailout and enduring violent protests and strikes over its own, far harsher, austerity measures. . But the growing unhappiness with his plans demonstrates the difficulties faced by governments across Europe that have decided to save, rather than spend, their way out of the economic

crisis.

The International Monetary Fund recently applauded Britain’s spartan approach, saying that “strong fiscal consolidation” is “essential to achieve a more sustainable budgetary position, thus reducing fiscal risks.” But since the 2008-9 recession, the country’s recovery has been anemic, and many economists say they are alarmed at the direction things are going.

Inflation stands at 4.5 percent, pushed up by higher-than-expected prices in oil and other commodities. Gross domestic product rose by just 0.5 percent in the first quarter, while household spending slumped by 0.6 percent.

“We have an economy on a plateau,” Joe Grice, chief economist for the Office of National Statistics, said at the time.

In an interview, Andrew Scott, professor of economics at London Business School, said: “I always thought the government was going too far too fast, and that it would trigger protests that would make the cuts more difficult.”

Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, an independent study group, said that Mr. Cameron would be wise to slow the pace of his cuts.

“In our opinion, the fiscal plans were overly aggressive,” Mr. Portes said in an interview. “No serious economist believes that fiscal consolidation is unnecessary over time,” he added. “The deficit needs to be reduced; the question is what is a sensible and appropriate pace given economic development on growth.”

How public unhappiness will

affect the government’s political fortunes remains to be seen. The Labour opposition, aware that too close an association with unions in the past has worked against it, tried to walk a fine line on Thursday, sympathizing with the workers’ grievances while saying they should not have gone on strike.

The government sought to portray the strikes as unpopular, emphasizing how parents had to scramble to find childcare because schools had closed. Francis Maude, the government minister in charge of pension negotiations, said that with talks between the government and the unions still continuing, it was unacceptable for teachers to go on strike.

“It’s absolutely unjustifiable for parents up and down the country to be inconvenienced like this, forced to lose a day’s work, when they’re trying to go out and earn money to pay the taxes which are going to support teachers’ pensions,” he told the BBC. But as she took part in the demonstration, Lucy S., a primary school teacher in London, said that while parents had at first been skeptical of the walkout, they had come around once they understood what was at stake.

“Once you explain it to them, lots of parents are really supportive,” said the teacher, who did not want to give her full name because she did not want to get in trouble with her employer.

Dave Prentice, general secretary of Unison, a public-sector union with 1.3 million members, said that he had not yet polled his members about going on strike. But if the workers continued to be treated “with disdain” by the government, he said, that could well change.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

23

Wine & Liquor

Pisco Makes the Trip North

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

P

ISCO, the clear grape spirit of South America, is emerging from the mist of history and bringing rich freshness to cocktails. In New York and other cities, liquor stores and bars that carried no pisco a few years ago have several now and are adding more, making it the fastestgrowing spirit in the country.

The new piscos are a far cry from the famously rustic, hangover-inducing stuff that was previously available. Topshelf piscos are being made for Peruvian connoisseurs, and these newer entries are feeding the growing export market, often with an assist from American expertise, passion and money.

“Pisco is not quite mainstream yet,” said Julie Reiner, an owner of Lani Kai in Manhattan and Clover Club in Brooklyn.

“But it is gaining traction as the public learns about it.”

Peru leads the surge, with pisco exports to the United States having nearly doubled last year, according to Veritrade, an import consultancy.

Johnny Schuler, a restaurateur and television personality in Lima, is the distiller for Pisco Portón, a product aimed at the American market. Last month, Mr. Schuler said the company, which he owns with William Kallop, a Texas oilman, would spend millions promoting the spirit.

Pisco Portón may be one of the bestfunded new brands, but it is not the first at

the high end. In 2005, Diego Loret de Mola, a Peruvian-American who had worked in finance, began to import BarSol. Melanie and Lizzie Asher, sisters who were born in Peru, attended Harvard and now live in Washington, introduced Macchu Pisco in 2006. Within a year, they were the biggest exporters of Peruvian pisco, and they say their sales have increased 30 percent every year.

Campo de Encanto, a partnership between a mixologist and a sommelier in San Francisco together with a distiller in Peru, made its debut in 2010. So did Viñas de Oro, a line of 11 piscos that Timothy Childs, an entrepreneur from San Francisco and a founder of ClearGrape, discovered on a trip to Peru.

The boom has not hit with the same force in Chile, which disputes Peru’s claim as the birthplace of pisco, and where production dwarfs Peru’s by about eight to one.

Chilean pisco also tends to be cheaper than the newcomers from Peru. But by the end of the year, as many as a dozen more-refined Chilean piscos priced at around $40 a bottle will arrive on the market, starting in New York, said Mauricio Biacheri, the chairman of Puro Chile, a store in SoHo. What distinguishes the Peruvian newcomers is quality. “We get our grapes from a cooperative of women growers,” Melanie Asher said. “We monitor the wild yeasts, use cold fermentation and generally go beyond the rules.”

And there are rules galore. To be called pisco in Peru, the spirit must be made from grapes grown in designated coastal valleys from Lima south. There are 42 valleys, and 8 varietals, classified as aromatic, like muscatel or Italia, or nonaromatic, like quebranta, a highyielding grape that is the most widely used. After the harvest, which runs from February to May, grapes are crushed and naturally fermented, then distilled in copper alembics, like Cognac. Pisco is also distilled to proof, meaning it is not diluted with water before bottling.

The rules in Chile are somewhat looser, allowing added sugar and water, and some aging in oak.

Though there are similarities on the palate between pisco and grappa from Italy or marc from France, those potions are made from must, the dregs from wine-

making, whereas pisco is an eau de vie of grapes that is fragrant, fruity and often has a rich viscosity.

“There’s a real sense of terroir in pisco,” said Walter Moore, a founder of Campo de Encanto.

The rising tide has been fueled by the growing taste for South American cooking and ingredients, especially in Peruvian restaurants in a number of cities. Even in Peru, an appreciation has developed for the native cuisine and the drinks that go with it, thanks to restaurateurs like Gastón Acurio, who is based in Lima and has opened a string of places elsewhere. Mr. Acurio will add La Mar Cebicheria in New York in a few months, in the space where Tabla closed last year.

Some of the interest also can be traced to cocktail culture, which is obsessed with novelty. Acknowledging this, Peruvian pisco makers are showcasing their wares at Tales of the Cocktail, a convention in New Orleans next month that is heavily attended by bartenders.

No latter-day mixologist is likely to come up with anything to unseat the pisco sour, the national cocktail of Peru. Invented by an American bar owner in Lima about 100 years ago, it is a model of simplicity, made with sugar syrup, lime juice and egg white. Drops of bitters mark the froth on the surface.

“The pisco sour is a point of entry,” Lizzie Asher said. “You can do a lot more.

We want to avoid what happened with cachaça, which is known only for the caipirinha.”

At Rayuela on the Lower East Side, the mixologist, Amaury Robayo, makes a novel pisco drink with muddled strawberries and a jolt of jalapeño.

Rodolfo Mayor, the owner of the Pio Pio chain in New York, has turned his flags-

hip on 10th Avenue and 43rd Street into pisco central, with 17 different bottles on the bar. They can be drunk neat in a small glass, the traditional Peruvian way (Riedel now makes a crystal pisco glass), or in any of 16 cocktails. Besides the inevitable pisco sour, there is the classic Chilcano with pisco, ginger ale, lime and bitters; and the Viejo Verde, a pisco mojito. In August, Mr. Mayor plans to open Amaru, a pisco bar, in Jackson Heights, Queens.

In San Francisco, where the first shipments of Peruvian pisco landed in 1836, the pisco punch is an old standby made with pineapple and once, perhaps, cocaine. You’ll find it, without the drug, at new pisco-friendly bars like Cantina, Destino and Pisco Latin Lounge.

“For the pisco purist, it’s all very exciting,” Mr. Childs said. “It’s like the preProhibition days, only better.”

Panel Picks The wine panel held an informal tasting of nine Peruvian piscos. Among the favorites: BARSOL PISCO PRIMERO QUEBRANTA 80 proof, $30 for 750 milliliters: rich and balanced, with a whiff of violet.

CAMPO DE ENCANTO ACHOLADO 85 proof, $39.99: suggests hibiscus and tropical fruit; balanced.

MACCHU PISCO QUEBRANTA 80 proof, $22.99: citric with grassy, herbal notes.

PISCO 100 ACHOLADO 84 proof, $35.99: floral and fruity, hints of black pepper.

PISCO PORTÓN HACIENDA LA CARAVEDO 1684 MOSTO VERDE ACHOLADO 86 proof, $43.99: grapey and viscous, with a sweet finish.

VIñAS DE ORO ACHOLADO 82 proof, $31.99: vegetal and fairly neutral.

24 July 7 - 13, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Visiting the Arecibo Lighthouse Museum and Historical Park I

f you are only going to visit one historical attraction while visiting Puerto Rico, it has to be the Arecibo Lighthouse and Historical Park. This great historical attraction is designed to be interesting to both children and adults and it takes the form off a cultural theme park that pro-vides insight into five differentt aspects of Puerto Rico’s history. y.

All in all, it will take visitors on n a journey through time, from the he arrival of the Spanish to the Spapanish-American War. The Arecibo Lighthouse and Historical Park is probably one of Puerto Rico’s most informative tourist attractions. The park is situated around the Arecibo Lighthouse and includes the lighthouse itself, which is a very interesting part of the country’s history.

Visitors are able to start their journey in 1493 when the Spanish arrived and conquered the native Indian Tribes before firmly establishing themselves on the island. By 1898, the beautiful and practical Arecibo lighthouse was built to warn approaching ships of the impending danger of the rugged coastli-

ne. Just a short while later, the SpanishAmerican War took place relieving the people of Puerto Rico of Spanish rule.

During your tour you will be able to experience what life was like for a slave living at that time at the Slave Quarters, as well as get an idea of what life was like for the original Taino Indian inhabitants of the island. Being able to hop aboard the replicated pirate’s ship is always a treat, while learning about the Spanish Conquest - complete with replicated Spanish galleon - is very interesting.

Children can also explore the Pirate’s Cave, spend time at the Play Ground Grou or play with a variety of lovely vel animals at the mini-zoo. Then, of course, there is the lighthouse itself co which wh provides an excellent view of both bot Arecibo and the Atlantic Ocean.

If you y visit during whale watching season sea you may be fortunate enough to spot some of these delightful mas mmoths mm of the sea as they frolic in the waters wate below. The lighthouse also acts as a bit of a museum and has great displays disp with marine artifacts and other othe interesting articles. So why wait another anot second? The park is open between 9:00 and 18:00 from Monday to Friday and between 10:00 and 19:00 on Saturdays and Sundays. Arecibo Lighthouse is also open during public holidays and visitors will be expected to pay an entrance fee that is used to maintain the park and keep it in good condition.

San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

25

A Side Order of Romance, Please

By ELLEN AIRGOOD

E

AGER to leave town for the Fourth of July weekend, I was determined to finish a project at work that involved entering reams of data into a spreadsheet.

But late in the day I pushed a wrong key, and everything vanished. I spent the next anguish-filled hour watching a technical support person try to retrieve the file. At last he did, and I hurried to my sister’s.

I regaled Mariann with details of the near disaster as we headed up I-75 in my little red Subaru in the last trickle of rush-hour traffic. We were headed to a campground on Lake Superior, and the farther north we went, the better I felt.

I liked my job at the federal Environmental Protection Agency Motor Vehicle Emission Laboratory. I made decent money and my bosses kept promoting me, which I valued. My upbringing had instilled in me a desire to live rationally and safely.

My father’s family were the kind of people who wore shoes only in the winter, ate oatmeal for breakfast and had cold oatmeal cut into slabs and fried in lard for supper. He spent the year he was 5 in bed, waiting to die of what might have been tuberculosis; his parents couldn’t afford a doctor. No surprise that he, and we, would place a premium on stability.

Yet I yearned for adventure, also partly my father’s doing. When I came home from college talking job markets and practical majors, it was he who pounded his chair and said, “Do what you love!”

I embraced his mixed messages the way you would embrace two different but equally loved children. I liked my briefcase and dress shoes. But I was always kicking those shoes off, tugging at my skirt, walking to the water cooler — not to avoid working, but because I had to keep moving.

Mariann and I pitched our tent at Twelvemile Beach and hiked from the Hurricane River to Au Sable Lighthouse, clambering over sandstone outcrops, investigating the remains of shipwrecks. I wished, intently, that I had a dog. A fox dashed across the road and we saw a bear eating serviceberries out of a tree.

That night we listened to the faint booms of the fireworks in Grand Marais, Mich., 15 miles east. A great rainy wind came up, and it seemed as if our tent would blow away with us in it.

On Sunday we drove to Grand Marais for lunch. Mariann told me to choose the place, and I picked a cafe in a tiny clapboard building where a kettle-shaped wooden sign

announced: “Homemade soup.”

I asked the man behind the counter what kind of soup he had.

“No soup,” he said.

I crossed my arms. “Your sign says soup.”

“It’s too hot for soup.” His eyes were gleaming.

I gave him a look. It was barely 50 degrees and raining. Besides which, he was advertising soup. Nothing indicated the offer was weather-related.

“Try next door,” he suggested. “They might have soup.”

I went out and looked up and down the street. But no, nowhere else would do. We went back in. “How about a cheese sandwich and a chocolate malt?” I asked.

The man grinned. “O.K.,” he said.

I liked this man. I could tell he liked me. And that was that. Six months later we stood before a minister and made our vows in the living room of the farmhouse I grew up in.

I’d told Mariann I was going to marry this intriguing cafe owner — his name was Rick — on the way back to our campsite that first day.

“You’re crazy,” she’d said worriedly.

But pretty soon she smiled, shook her head, started getting into the spirit of it. “Well,” she said, “this is going to be interesting.”

“Interesting” didn’t describe it. It was rash and naïve, romantic and brave. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I was convinced this marriage was fate.

I was going to be a parent, too (Rick had three children from a previous marriage) and I was glad. I wanted a family. I was going to work in the cafe, and I was mostly relieved to leave the office behind.

Still, I didn’t know what it would mean to marry a man 10 years older than me who had custody of his children and was self-employed in a tiny village in the far north, who was not just independent and strong-willed but fiercely so. It’s one of those things you can’t understand until you do it.

My work at the shop started out harmlessly enough. We were married on New Year’s Eve, and the winter was quiet. I wanted to be with Rick during the day, and besides, I needed a job. Plus I knew that if the cafe was going to be our place, I’d have to do my part. But by June I was in deep. I saw things that needed doing — right this minute, all the time — and suddenly I was working 80 to 90 hours a week.

I’d never imagined myself as a waitress. I was reserved and quiet, and acting friendly from sunrise to sunset exhausted

me. The physical and spiritual shock of it was compounded by the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I didn’t even know I should count change back. A local woman dressed me down for that one day. With great condescension she explained how it was done as I stared at her in a haze of fatigue and anger. I’d graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan. Could she say that about herself?

No, she couldn’t, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was knowing how to count change back the old-fashioned way.

Eventually I realized that customers were all wonderful or terrible or somewhere in between, and it was up to me to decide which. I decided to find the terrible people informative: so this is what people are like at their worst. The wonderful people were cause for celebration and relief, and suddenly they were everywhere.

Women would wash coffee cups for me when I was too swamped to get to the sink. Men would make me laugh, sometimes in situations so frustrating I’d been on the verge of tears. Some people I simply adored for themselves, like George, who lived at the adult foster home across the street because he couldn’t manage on his own. George waited for me every morning on the picnic table outside. “Hello, hello!” he’d say, smiling with delight that here it was, 7 a.m., and here we were, going into the shop.

One day a photographer from National Geographic was there early, too, as well as a man who apparently traveled a lot for work.

They chatted about the relative travails of getting into Denver by air or rail as they waited for the coffee to brew. I watched George watch them. At a break in their conversation he leaned forward and asked, “Hey, fellows.

modern love Which is easier to drive: a train or a plane?”

They stared at him, nonplussed. Neither answered, and after a moment George leaned back, looking crestfallen. I wanted to hug him. I thought there was something for me here, something worthwhile and rare.

Here in the middle of nowhere I was getting to know people who were vastly different from me, and I’d really never done that before. I was paying attention to all of them.

I’d never really done that before, either.

STILL, I lived in a blur: taking orders, clearing tables, making muffins, whirling up malts, running out of something (lettuce, paper towels) and rushing out for more. I was always coated in a scrim of sweat and ice cream and muffin batter and was often too drained at the end of the day to bathe.

Sometimes I thought that Rick and I were working toward a great goal together.

Other times I just wanted to kill him. One day I was so angry that I hurled a mixing spoon at him. It clattered to the floor and we stared at each other. Really, it’s come to this?

I’m throwing spoons at you?

But then, walking home, we’d see the northern lights. We’d take a dip in the bay.

Some nights it was so cold the dog wouldn’t go in the water but would watch us from the shore, doubtfully. Other nights Rick would wander around the yard with a flashlight at midnight, peering at spiders.

“Come out here,” he’d call to me, wanting to share the pleasure of their iridescent colors.

I missed my family and friends. I missed libraries, good radio and bookstores. I missed a guaranteed paycheck.

But I never looked back. I looked ahead and hoped for easier days sometimes, but I never wished I hadn’t come. I had a home and a family, a dog and two cats, a commute that was often by snowmobile, and Lake Superior out the window — big skies, big water, big weather. A big life. My father would be proud.

26

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

I.M.F. Offers a Different Take on U.S. Growth

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

W

e pay a lot of attention to the Federal Reserve’s economic forecasts. It’s worth paying at least a little attention to a second opinion offered Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund, which houses another of the world’s largest herds of economists just three city blocks away.

The I.M.F. foresees a much less ha-

ppy and prosperous future for the United States. The fund, in its annual report on the American economy, said growth will not top 3 percent through 2016: 2011: 2.5 percent, 2012: 2.7 percent, 2013: 2.7 percent, 2015: 2.9 percent, 2016: 2.8 percent Those are abysmal numbers that imply that the United States has no imminent prospect of recovering the losses sustained during the recession, and that the Ameri-

can economy has been shunted onto a path of lower growth. As the I.M.F. notes, one important consequence is that millions of Americans would remain unable to find work for years to come.

The Fed, by contrast, predicted last week that growth will accelerate. It said the economy would expand up to 2.9 percent this year, up to 3.7 percent in 2012 and up to 4.2 percent in 2013.

Why is the I.M.F. so much more pes-

simistic? One key difference is that the multinational fund regards housing as a long-term weight on the economy, depressing consumer spending. Indeed, it said that continued weakness in the housing market could result in an even slower expansion.

“We think that housing difficulties merit more policy attention since they are central to the slow recovery and pose a critical risk,” the I.M.F. report said.

Fed Halves Debit Card Bank Fees F

By EDWARD WYATT

ees paid by retailers to banks for debit card purchases, a $20 billion annual expense that has been the subject of a furious political battle over the last year, will be cut in half after the Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to cap the charges.

The cap was mandated last year in the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, but the Fed action was far less draconian than bankers had feared. The new cap of 21 to 24 cents a transaction, down from an average of 44 cents before the law passed, is roughly double the 12 cents tentatively proposed by the Fed last December.

Consumers are unlikely to see any immediate change at the register because they do not pay the fees directly. But merchants have complained that as the cost of debit fees — a charge for processing payments — has risen in recent years, they have had to add it to the prices they charge. The new lower fees may eventually be reflected in lower retail prices for consumers or, most likely, in a slight slowing of price increases.

But banks said the caps would not pay for the cost of operating their electronic debit card networks, and they have warned that their customers can expect higher fees for other banking services as a result.

In approving the lower fees, the Fed’s Board of Governors said there was no way of knowing what the effect of the new rules would be, although they will be watching the results closely.

“I think this is the best available solution that implements the will of Congress and makes good economic decisions,” Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said in voting to approve the rule. The board voted 4 to 1 in favor, with Elizabeth A. Duke dissenting.

Ms. Duke said her primary concern was about an exemption built into the law that gives smaller banks with less than $10 billion in assets a pass on the fee cap. These

smaller institutions could charge retailers a higher transaction fee for debit card purchases.

Ms. Duke and other governors questioned whether and how that exemption would work. The board agreed to monitor the charges, known as interchange fees, to see how the revenues of small banks were affected, and whether merchants appeared to be rejecting cards that they knew would require them to pay a higher processing fee.

The new fee schedule includes three parts: a maximum interchange fee of 21 cents; a 1 cent addition that is allowed if the bank issuing the debit card develops a fraud-prevention program; and a variable charge of 5 basis points, or five one-hundredths of a percentage point, of the value of the transaction to recover a portion of fraud losses.

For the average debit card transaction of about $38, that variable fee would be roughly 2 cents, which would produce an upper limit, on average, of 24 cents a transaction.

The new rules will go into effect on Oct. 1. The Fed will accept comments on the proposal to allow a 1-cent addition for fraud-prevention efforts.

Since the Dodd-Frank law passed last year, lobbyists for consumers and retailers have been butting heads with bankers over the fee-setting process. At one point this month, banks pushed hard for a Senate measure aimed at delaying the fee caps, which was defeated in a floor vote.

Banking trade groups, retailers and consumer advocacy organizations all expressed some dismay at the Fed’s announcement — the bankers because they stand to lose fees and the retailer and consumer groups because the final charges rose sharply from the Fed’s initial proposal.

“While Congress spoke clearly that fee-fat banks can no longer sneak billions of dollars in stealth charges from debit card users, it appears that the Federal Reserve

buckled under the weight of the banking lobby,” Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, said in a statement.

Mallory Duncan, chairman of the Merchants Payments Coalition, a retailers’ group, called the new rule “unacceptable to Main Street merchants” and said the Fed “very clearly did not follow through on the intent of the law.”

Some banking groups also adopted a glass-half-full position. Frank Keating, president of the American Bankers Association, said the Federal Reserve took “a significant

step in reducing the harm that could have resulted from the proposed rule.”

“The final rule still represents a 45 percent loss in revenue that banks use to provide low-cost accounts to our customers, fight fraud and maintain our efficient U.S. payments system,” Mr. Keating said. “Consumers will see higher fees for basic banking services, and banks — particularly community banks — will still feel the revenue pressures that this rule will cause.”

Merchant trade groups said retailers paid $20.5 billion in fees last year to accept debit cards, including processing fees.

I.M.F. Urges Debt Limit Action in U.S. T

he International Monetary Fund urged the United States to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, warning that inaction could lead to higher interest rates that would harm the domestic economy and world financial markets.

The debt limit is the amount the government can borrow to help finance its operations. The United States reached its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit in May. It is at risk of defaulting on its debt if it does not raise that limit by Aug. 2. President Obama and Republican lawmakers have been at odds on a plan to raise it.

The I.M.F. also warned in its annual report on the American economy that rising budget deficits posed a risk to the economy. But it advocated a long-term strategy for reducing those deficits, not steep immediate cuts or tax increases.

Cutting the deficit too quickly could slow the weak recovery, the fund said.

The American economy will grow this year and next but at a weak pace, the I.M.F. forecast. The fund projected that the economy would expand 2.5 percent this year and 2.7 percent in 2012. Consumers are still paying off debts, which will reduce their buying power, and budget cuts at the federal, state and local levels would also reduce demand.

The I.M.F.’s forecast is below recent projections by the Federal Reserve. The Fed expects the economy will grow by as much as 3.3 percent next year. Many private forecasters, however, are more pessimistic and closer to the I.M.F.’s view.

The I.M.F. has 187 member nations and lends money to countries with troubled finances. It also regularly reviews major national economies to look for signs of trouble that could affect the world economy.

The San Juan Weekly

July 7 - 13, 2011

27

The Cloud Darkens

T

he Internet is getting scary. In recent weeks, hackers known as Lulz Security attacked the Web sites of Sony, the United States Senate, the C.I.A., PBS, among others. They stole names, email addresses and passwords of millions of users and published them online. Then, last weekend, they regrouped under a new name.

These attacks are among the hundreds of online security breaches this year alone, compromising data of more than 22 million people, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Targets have included Citigroup, Lockheed Martin and even RSA Security, which makes password tokens that big companies use to protect themselves from intrusion. A survey earlier this month by the Ponemon Institute found that 9 out of 10 companies had suffered an online attack in the last 12 months.

Companies and the government are unprepared. Citigroup didn’t track patterns of activity on its credit card site and

failed to notice immediately when hackers took data on more than two million card users, said Avivah Litan, a security expert of Gartner. Sony didn’t encrypt the data of users of its PlayStation network — phone numbers, passwords, e-mail addresses and account histories.

Recently, for several hours, Dropbox, a popular service for storing documents and other files in the so-called computing cloud, allowed anyone to log into any of its 25 million user accounts using any password. The company tried to keep the glitch quiet but was exposed by a security researcher. No wonder concern about Internet security from Americans has jumped sharply in the past few months.

Technology professionals are getting cold feet about moving more operations onto the cloud when poor corporate security practices are exposing customers to devastating identity theft and fraud. This vulnerability could stymie the Internet economy.

There is no fail-safe technology that is immune to hacking. Online security will evolve as hackers and security experts work continuously to outwit each other. Still, current standards are too low.

Companies — and the government — must devote substantially more resources to security, making it integral to every new application, rather than patching it on as an afterthought.

There are some signs of progress. Security experts are deploying a new worldwide system to identify Internet addresses that will make it very difficult to forge or spoof a Web site. In May, the Obama administration proposed legislatwion with sensible provisions to ensure that companies running critical infrastructure — like the nation’s power grid — have adequate systems to reduce the risk of an attack online.

The proposal would standardize 47 state laws on breach reporting, requiring notification of customers whose ac-

counts were compromised. This could be a powerful incentive for firms to take security more seriously.

Other tactics are also needed. The Federal Trade Commission wants rules to force companies to minimize the information they collect from customers and to dispose of such data as soon as possible.

The stolen Sony data, for example, had been on dormant servers for years.

We are putting our lives in the cloud, as companies and consumers store everything from family photos to corporate business secrets on remote servers. Beefing up online security is of paramount importance.

Games

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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

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July 7 - 13, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Times change and as you will find out, so do people.

Current circumstances may be unsettling, but what is going down is certainly not the end of the world. Ditch drama queen antics that will not win you any fans or favours. Be self-assured, approachable and face things head-on. Make a great impression and hone your skills of inner stillness. A place of calm is within reach.

A few smart moves and your feet will be firmly back on Terra Firma. Be patient with yourself and your current circumstances. Let life dictate what happens; you really do not have another option. Release loved ones: allow them go about their business. Tap into the boomerang effect. LET GO! What is for you will come back and shake down naturally right in front of you.

Taurus

Scorpio

(April 21-May 21)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Act on your feelings for a change. Things tend to go around and around when the Universe is trying to make a point. So pay attention to the patterns repeating in your life. Either break the chains once and for all or let things roll a while longer to clarify your thoughts. A proactive approach would be timely if you are feeling brave enough. Is there any point in the long goodbye?

Prepare to deal with a situation with which you never thought you would have to deal. Life sure does spring some surprises. There will always be a place in your heart for someone special, but new love is set to radically turn your world upside down and inside out. Perhaps you would rather the change was not happening? Remember, fate deals its hand as it will: non-negotiable!

Gemini

Sagittarius

(May 22-June 21)

Throw caution to the wind and let the breeze catch your hair. It is okay to live a little bit dangerously for now. You are bound to get away with it. However, that is not an excuse for bad behaviour! Just be aware that your hunches are very potent. You are on the ball, so do not be afraid to follow through. Fret not; you will love how everything pans out. Seize the moment and go for gold.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

The planets pave the way for big changes in your circumstances. It will not be some madly uncomfortable birthing process. But do prepare for a significant turn around in your life’s circumstances. Many planets are busy in your sector which enlivens you. Finally you can get things done on your own terms. Set radical plans in motion when you are ready, not a moment sooner.

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

If it is time to retire from a performance do so gracefully. You must get in touch with your true path. It will not serve you well to err off the beaten track. Having said that; you are bound to be surprised where that track eventually leads.

Follow on with the next thing and take things step by step. Only what is real will be given a chance to bloom. Intelligent risks will work out just fine.

It is time to let go. Release control and stop trying so hard to impress the right people. You’re onto a winner anyhow, so you do not need to do anything drastic to consolidate your position.

Your surety is pretty much guaranteed, but you do stand to sabotage your status if you keep fiddling and meddling with what should be left well enough alone. Why stress so much?

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

You may get a wrap on the knuckles from life, but in an amusing way. If your head is in the clouds you might as well read them while you are up there.

Hints and messages abound so enjoy the heavenly view. Sit loose to a load of old nonsense and prepare to shine. It is important to stay grounded as you go about your business. Do not push it in precarious situations; but be adventurous.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Give up trying so hard. You can barely please yourself at the moment, never mind anyone else.

Keep unnecessary activities to a minimum. Enjoy the bare bones of life and things will soon flesh out to your satisfaction, but think carefully about what your priorities should be. It is first things first!

Concentrate and be as organized as possible. Your time to shine will come.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Socially desirable you may be, but are you hurting yourself in the attempt to keep up appearances? It is a lonely view up there and you wouldn’t want to fall off your perch now, would you? Be circumspect and careful as you go about your business. If you take a back seat at this point, everything will work out just perfectly.

However, you must not be tempted to push things along.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Try looking at issues head on and do not be afraid to expose yourself when you have to. Sometimes vulnerability pays off; people respect it. So wear your heart on your sleeve and speak up. The softly, softly approach works every time. Ditch any paranoia or insecurity to which you are holding on. No-one is out to get you; don’t even go there. Do not sabotage your progress.

29 Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 28

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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

July 7 - 13, 2011

31

Sports

Fashion Forward

By ALEX WILLIAMS

F

ANS are still chuckling about Charles Barkley bursting out of the garish purple sports jacket he wore to the National Basketball Association draft more than a quarter-century ago. And who could forget Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls striding onstage in an oversize tan tuxedo and a giant paisley bow tie that seemed straight out of the Ringling Brothers fall men’s line?

Pro basketball’s new rookies have fashion under control.

But at last week’s N.B.A. draft, at the Prudential Center in Newark, only one outfit seemed to blind onlookers and scare chil- deals.

About 20 of the 60 players selected NOW Tristan Thompson (left), Kemba Walker (right) and THEN Samaki Walker in 1996 (middle). dren: the royal blue crushed-velvet sports jacket and floral tie worn by Craig Sager, the were present at the Prudential Center. An television analyst famous in the hoops world air of giddy anticipation hung over the board meeting. And why not? The N.B.A. is arena as the first pick of the 2011 draft was for his outré ensembles. serious business these days.

Instead, the newly anointed basketball announced. As expected, Kyrie Irving, a “This is the most important days of professionals, many enjoying a rare moment 19-year-old point guard from Duke with a everybody’s lives,” said Williams, 20. “On on national television, strode triumphantly choirboy smile, was selected by the Clevedraft day, you want to build your own onstage in handsomely tailored suits that land Cavaliers. brand.”

The 8,400 spectators erupted into apflattered their superhuman, ectomorph fraThe procession continued onstage. plause. Irving coolly exchanged hugs with mes.

The Brigham Young guard Jimmer Fredette “Before, players used to come looking family and walked onstage with the studied ascended the stage in Joseph Abboud, the right off the playground,” Mr. Sager said calm of the Oscar winner for Best Actor. He Kentucky guard Brandon Knight in Ermenebackstage before the main event, sounding wore a sleek navy pinstripe suit with a lagildo Zegna (“Whatever my agent tells me to like a lonely peacock. “Now they have han- vender striped necktie — courtesy of Giorget, I get,” he explained later). dlers, they have agents, they all want to gio Armani, and fitted at the designer’s meIn contrast to bygone years, the hangastore on Fifth Avenue a few days before. make them look nice.” dful of players who pushed the style enveAnd it’s not just at the draft, of course. After putting on his Cavaliers cap, beaming lope did so in understated ways. The CharPlayers across the N.B.A. have raised their for the cameras and answering countless lotte Bobcats’ new guard, Kemba Walker, fashion game. For proof, look no further called to mind a Gatsby-era dandy: he wore than Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade Kawhi Leonard. a bespoke steel-blue suit, a tasteful matching sitting front row at the recent Versace show argyle tie and pale pink saddle oxfords. in Milan, or Amar’e Stoudemire chumming “Dress to impress,” he said. The Indiana around with Anna Wintour during New Pacers draft pick Kawhi Leonard sported a THEN Joakim Noah in 2007.

York Fashion Week. The rookies, some still custom navy suit with white piping on the teenagers, have come to recognize how their lapels that called to mind a British schoolquestions about whether he could replace boy jacket. off-court wardrobe can influence their public LeBron James in the hearts of Cavs fans, Irimage, and as such, their future endorsement Perhaps the most GQ-ready look was ving expounded on his wardrobe choice in found on Tristan Thompson, the fourth the de facto green room, a curtained-off area player selected, also by the Cavaliers. The Tristan Thompson. where he was joined by his father and sister, forward from the University of Texas wore dressed in their Sunday best. He looked like a custom charcoal suit by Paper Brown Bag, the groom in a brideless wedding. a Harlem label, that called to mind a very “I thought about it a lot, honestly,” fashionable Pee-wee Herman with tapered said Irving, who was born in Australia and pants and a shrunken jacket. Thompson, 20, attended high school in New Jersey. Using comes to the league with a taste for Ferragathe public relations skills you’d expect from mo, YSL and Comme des Garçons. “I defia top pick who took an acting class at Duke, nitely like a European look, pride myself on he added: “I wanted to be dressed with the the European style,” he said. best, and what better way to do that than be Longtime fans of the draft may mourn outfitted by Giorgio Armani?” the passing of the crimson zoot suits and se“I’m not into the baggy clothes,” he ven-button monstrosities of drafts gone by, added. clips of which still get played for laughs on Moments later, Derrick Williams, a ESPN. But today’s players are loath to end up forward with Arizona and the second pick on the N.B.A. equivalent of Mr. Blackwell’s in the draft, showed up in the green room. worst-dressed list.

Wearing a conservatively cut black suit with As Thompson put it, “Guys don’t want a red silk tie by Élevée, he looked ready for a to be known as the clown of the group.”

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