A sample shirt with the Canyon Creek label hung inside the charred remains of a factory in Karachi where at least 262 workers died in a fire in September.
The garment factory, owned by Arshad and Shahid Bhaila, who are brothers, had been certified as safe three weeks before the blaze.
"It's a hard time of year," Susan's father, Chuck Cox, tells PEOPLE. "Our daughter's still missing. Someday, we will find out what happened to her."
He added that he is not sure what to make of a West Valley City, Utah, police announcement Thursday that their investigation into Susan's Dec. 6, 2009 disappearance remains active but "has been scaled down," with a reduction in the number of full-time investigators working the case.
The announcement came at the same time that more evidence emerged of the alleged obsession Susan's father-in-law, Steven Powell, had toward her. Authorities released nearly 4,500 pictures that they say he secretly took of her at home and elsewhere.
Cox says he's hopeful that the police are still doing everything possible to solve Susan's case, but he hasn't ruled out suing the department for failing to arrest Susan's husband, Josh Powell, for her murder.
More than two years after Susan's disappearance, Josh on Feb. 5 murdered the couple's two sons and committed suicide by blowing up his house.
Cox's lawyer, Anne Bremner, says Cox "goes back and forth" over whether to sue West Valley City. "He wants them to find her. A lawsuit can have a chilling affect on things."
Cox and Bremner say they do plan to file a lawsuit against the state of Washington for continuing to give Josh visitation with his children despite what they claim were mounting concerns regarding his mental stability.
Although Cox and the police believe that Josh Powell knew more than anyone what happened to Susan, they also strongly suspect that his father, Steven Powell, should still be looked at more closely.
Steven Powell
Ted S. Warren / AP
In numerous interviews with PEOPLE, Steve and Josh Powell denied any involvement in Susan's disappearance and have suggested that she ran off with another man.
Steve Powell was prosecuted for surreptitiously photographing his neighbor's young daughters (and is serving a 30-month sentence), but the investigation also unearthed journals in which Powell described his interest in his daughter-in-law, as well as the thousands of photos, which were released Thursday to the Associated Press.
In a journal entry, Steven Powell recalls a sexually charged dream in which Susan asks him, “Do you think I would make a good wife for you?” None of the pictures show Susan naked, although there are images of her crotch and backside.
"We think he knows exactly where our daughter is," Cox says.
Once Susan disappeared, Josh sold the family's home in Utah and moved with the boys into Steven Powell's house in Puyallup, Wash., only about two miles from the Cox family.
On Thursday, families streamed to Puyallup’s Woodbine Cemetery to remember the Powell boys and other children who died tragically and to dedicate a memorial: a bronze angel inspired by the novella The Christmas Box, in which strangers learn the value of love following a child’s death.
The novella's author, Richard Paul Evans, also attended the dedication. The memorial is on a hill overlooking the boys' gravesites 75 yards away.
"We get a lot of support from a lot of people and we're going to make it through," Cox says.
Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.
Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.
"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.
It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.
"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.
And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.
"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."
But what does that mean, really?
Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:
One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.
Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."
Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.
A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.
There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.
Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.
When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.
Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.
Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)
On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:
"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"
Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.
Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.
Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.
Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.
Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.
As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.
nita.lelyveld@latimes.com
Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.
NEW YORK — The return of protests, tanks and death to the streets of Cairo this week is harrowing. So is the power of the rampant conspiracy theories that cause both Muslim Brotherhood members and their secular opponents to sincerely believe that they are the defenders of Egypt’s revolution.
Criticisms of President Mohamed Morsi’s power grab and rushed constitutional process are legitimate. So are complaints that the country’s secular opposition is poorly organized, lacks majority support and refuses to compromise.
Barring a surprising change in direction, Egypt’s experiment with democracy seems to be headed toward failure. The country’s flawed constitution will likely be ratified in a referendum on Dec. 15. A frustrated and distrustful opposition will boycott subsequent Parliamentary elections. Mr. Morsi will lead a “soft authoritarian” government similar to that of former President Hosni Mubarak. Small opposition parties will exist, but the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance of the state, politics and society will never be in doubt.
U.S. officials — ever eager for stability in the Middle East — will turn a blind eye and establish a “working relationship” with Mr. Morsi.
“I think the impulse of most American administrations is to show up in an Arab country and say, ‘Take me to your leader,’ ” Nathan J. Brown, a George Washington University professor and leading expert on Egypt, told me in a bleak interview this week. “I don’t think we have many alternatives. The United States is not in the position to back a military coup or the opposition.”
Mr. Brown is correct. Yes, the United States has some economic leverage in Cairo, but in general America remains radioactive in post-Mubarak Egypt. After 40 years of the U.S. backing Egyptian strongmen who made peace with Israel, Washington is hugely mistrusted.
A September 2012 Gallup Poll found that 82 percent of Egyptians opposed the country’s government accepting any economic aid from the United States. By comparison, 42 percent of Egyptians surveyed — roughly half that number — opposed the country’s peace treaty with Israel.
For those who think more “American leadership” is the answer: a U.S.-backed military coup — which it is doubtful the U.S. could engineer — would radicalize Islamists across the region and be an enormous gift to al Qaeda. Similarly, if Washington openly backs the country’s secular opposition, those opponents will be viewed as American stooges and lose popular support.
“A much more effective strategy for the United States is to call for a dialogue between Morsi’s government and the opposition behind closed doors,” said Dalia Mogahed, the American scholar who conducted the Gallup survey. “The U.S. coming out publicly on the side of the opposition will be used against them.”
The only small cause for hope is that Egypt’s struggles are not unprecedented. Other countries have undergone agonizing and turbulent transitions as well. Thomas Carothers, an expert on transitions to democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that what is occurring today in Egypt is typical when a long-disenfranchised group gains power. Distrustful and insular after years of struggles, it is often reluctant to share power and still views itself as deeply vulnerable.
Mr. Carothers said Egypt’s struggle mirrors the difficult transition still under way in Bolivia. Seven years after Evo Morales was elected that country’s first president of indigenous descent, a tense “fundamental rebalancing of political power” is still playing out in Bolivia. The country’s traditional elite and the indigenous movement still struggle to trust each other and share power. Bigoted arguments that democracy does not work in the Arab world do not apply in Egypt.
“There is nothing particularly Arab about what is happening,” Mr. Carothers said. “It’s not an Islamist issue per se.”
There is another international comparison that should give the Brotherhood pause, according to Mr. Carothers. South Africa’s African National Congress gained a monopoly on power after the country’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994. With no viable opposition, the ANC grew increasingly corrupt as opportunistic figures flocked to the only patronage show in town.
“The party just became a self-sustaining machine,” Mr. Carothers said. “People start joining your party out of sheer opportunism.”
That may not matter to the Brotherhood. Its fear of being forced from power it has finally attained may lead it to become the kind of governing party its members once loathed.
The stark picture painted by Shady Humid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, in this excellent piece in Foreign Policy this week, may prove to be true. There may be no common vision in Egypt, as Humid argues; there may be no consensus on what the Egyptian nation should be.
If there is a common ground, the surest way to reach it is for there to be more democracy in Egypt, not less. Yes, the flawed draft constitution is likely to be ratified on Dec. 15. But the opposition should not boycott the vote or subsequent legislative elections.
In a best-case scenario, the “no” vote could reach as high as 30 percent, according to Mr. Brown, the George Washington University professor. The opposition could then run in subsequent legislative elections. It would not win a majority, but perhaps it would win enough seats to be a viable opposition to the Brotherhood. Two groups that loathe each other would be forced to sit in Parliament together.
Time and a desire to win elections might make them compromise and save Egypt’s fading chances at democracy.
David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East” will be published in March 2013.
12/06/2012 at 06:00 PM ET
Courtesy Just One Eye; Inset: Sipa
We’re positive we weren’t the only ones whose jaws dropped when we read that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen‘s fashion line, The Row, is selling $55,000 backpacks.
But this isn’t exactly the Jansport you carried your Trapper Keepers in during elementary school. The extravagant accessory is designed in collaboration with renowned artist Damien Hirst and it’s been dubbed “wearable art.” The backpack is limited edition — as in, there are only 12 of these babies. Each bag features black patent, Nile crocodile leather and is adorned with various designs (like pills or gold circles) courtesy Hirst.
Initially the price of the backpack was originally kept hush-hush and The Row declined to release that info. But when we called Just One Eye (the site selling the creations), they shared with PEOPLE.com the five-figure price tag.
But before you go thinking that absolutely no one is going to drop $55,000 on a backpack, consider this: The Olsens released a similar a purse for $39,000 earlier this year — and it sold out. Tell us: If you had all the money in the world, would you buy this backpack? If not, how much would you pay for it?
–Jennifer Cress
PHOTOS: SHOP STAR STYLE — FOR LESS!
SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.
Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.
Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."
Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.
Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.
___(equals)
Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Before sitting down for tea in Echo Park, the poet reaches for her iPhone.
"I have to turn this thing off," she explains, silencing the ringer. "It's getting too noisy these days."
As a publisher, educator and author of seven books of poems, Eloise Klein Healy is a stalwart of the Los Angeles literary scene. Her phone has been buzzing more than usual in recent weeks as she prepares to take on a new title. On Friday, Healy will be named L.A.'s first poet laureate.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided earlier this year that his city, like others, should have a namesake poet. The mayor, who chose Healy from a pool of three finalists recommended by a selection panel, said he was moved by the grace of her writing and by her "belief in the power of poetry, and her commitment to sharing this power far and wide."
Healy spent her formative years in Iowa and still maintains an air of Midwestern modesty. She says she doubts the quality of her poems won her the laureate honor.
She guesses it had more to do with her long involvement in the arts community, especially the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and her subject matter: Los Angeles looms large in her work.
She writes lovingly of helicopters and bougainvillea, of strip malls and Santa Anas. Car thefts and stabbings are part of the backdrop. Freeways wind freely through her verse.
In a poem called "Los Angeles," Healy describes the city as an older sister who was less pretty and less charming than her younger sibling. "There was something about your proportions / that was indelicate — your more abundant waist," she tells the city.
But in the final verse, a person enters and loves Los Angeles anyway:
Nobody expected it
and you never told about
the lover who met you
loose and large
in the late afternoon
and loved you all night,
completely out of proportion.
Healy says she writes about Los Angeles to understand "the influence of place on people."
It's a technique she employs often. Once, while working on a book of poems about Sappho, the classical lyric poet, Healy traveled to the poet's birthplace on the island of Lesbos in Greece. "I wanted to walk on a beach where she could have walked," Healy said. "I wanted to look at that horizon."
Healy is 69, but she seems much younger. She is trim, with olive skin and snow-white hair. For years, she lived down the street from the small Sunset Boulevard cafe where she sipped tea one morning this week. She chronicled her time in the neighborhood in a book called "Artemis in Echo Park."
Since 1988, she has lived in Sherman Oaks with her partner, Colleen Rooney.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Congolese rebels and government officials prepared on Thursday for direct peace talks in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, their first face-to-face encounter since the rebels relinquished Goma, one of Congo’s principal cities, after capturing it last month.
“Since May, we asked Kabila to come to the table,” said Amani Kabasha, a spokesman for the March 23 rebels, or M23, at the rebel-held border post of Rumangabo. Mr. Kabasha said his delegation was awaiting vehicles sent by the Ugandan government to carry them to Kampala. “He didn’t agree, he used force, arms, fighting. But now, because he was defeated, he agrees,” Mr. Kabasha said, referring to President Joseph Kabila.
An uneasy rhythm of commerce and calm returned to Goma this week as Congolese government soldiers again patrolled the streets and the port and airport reopened, allowing a fresh influx of people and cargo, as well as much-needed humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 people displaced by the recent fighting.
“It’s as good as it has been for the last two and a half weeks,” Tariq Riebl, a humanitarian coordinator for Oxfam in Goma, said Thursday. But the situation remained “very dynamic, very fluid,” he said.
In the strategic area of Masisi, to the northwest of Goma, fighting has continued to flare between government troops and numerous militias. Masisi has long been a hotbed of militia groups and ethnic tensions, and humanitarian relief workers said they were increasingly worried about the situation.
Furthermore, neither side has said it has any real faith in the upcoming talks, which delegates said would likely begin Friday, or possibly late Thursday.
“It’s not a negotiation,” said a Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende. “We will receive a grievance from M23 and help the president compare with what was decided in 2009,” when the peace agreement for which the rebels are named was signed on March 23.
“We are not very optimistic, because we know that M23 is a very small part of the problem; we need the problem to be solved regionally, and internationally,” Mr. Mende said.
The governments of Uganda and Rwanda have denied accusations by a United Nations panel of covertly supporting the M23 rebels, including in the rebels’ capture of Goma. Both countries have been accused of supporting other Congolese rebels groups in the past.
Many of the rebels’ demands, which the government has dismissed, would benefit Rwanda and Uganda, which are two main transit points for commercial exports from eastern Congo.
“We want more than decentralization, we want federalism,” said Mr. Kabasha, although the specific demands had not yet been finalized. “The eastern parts of Congo’s interests are in eastern Africa. Decentralization means that the leader is near the population.”
In recent days there have been reports of lootings and rape, summary executions and recruitment of children, the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs has said. In Goma, there have also been reports of targeted killings.
Dancing With the Stars
In the midst of her thyroid diagnosis Brooke Burke-Charvet – a mother of four – has learned just how vulnerable children can be at such a time, and how differently each one can respond to that kind of stress and anxiety.
"I've really realized that everything I'm going through, my family is going through too," the Dancing with the Stars host, 41, writes in a new blog post.
Burke-Charvet decided initially not to reveal the diagnosis to daughters Neriah, 12, Sierra, 10, and Rain, 5, and son Shaya, 4. "I didn't want them to worry," she writes. "I know that my younger ones still don't have a great concept of time and I didn't want them to be anxious, worried and asking 1,000 questions."
Soon, the kids overheard things, and she and her husband David Charvet told them what was going on. Each child reacted differently, says Burke-Charvet – with emotions ranging from anger to fear to surprise, hope, protectiveness and worry.
As she comforted each child in a different way, Burke-Charvet also cared for her husband as he was caring for her.
"He's been so strong and such a rock," she writes. "He's trying not to show any of his fears and concerns so that he can be strong for me. But we've had our moments and I think it's so, so important that you care for everyone in a family that's dealing with a medical crisis the same way you emotionally care for the patient themselves."
As the surgery approaches, she has packed her bag, sorted things out at the house and stocked the fridge with leftovers for the family. Now, she just wants the surgery to be over.
"I'm not afraid anymore," she says. "I think I've been dealing with it so much the past couple months that now I'm ready to just get it done and put this behind me. My only need is being ok for my husband and my children so they don't have to go through any pain and making this as easy as possible for them."
SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.
Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.
Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."
Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.
Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.
___(equals)
Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
A fundraiser put on by heavyweights in Los Angeles' liberal-leaning environmental community should have been a tough crowd for Kevin James.
But James, affable, polite and the only Republican candidate in a Los Angeles mayor's race dominated by City Hall Democrats, had no trouble chatting up guests as he made his way around the crowded event for the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters.
Richard Mueller, an executive with a multinational manufacturer, and Dave Alba, his business partner, seemed happy to corner him. The men spent several minutes outlining a massive freight automation project they are hoping to bring to San Pedro — a tough sell in labor-friendly L.A. They were at the party hoping to line up support for the project.
James listened intently, asked questions and took cards from both men before moving on. Afterward, Mueller declared himself impressed. James' candidacy gives the business community hope that private-sector interests will be given real attention in the mayoral race, he said.
"In this city, you have to work both sides — business and labor," Mueller said. "He'd be a win-win."
James, 49, an Oklahoma native with a sharp legal mind, has emerged as the dark horse in a field made up of career politicians. Although the lawyer and talk-show host has never spent a day in the rough and tumble of public office, he says he'll curtail what he characterizes as the cronyism and scandal that dogs City Hall, cut red tape for businesses, foster jobs and demand reductions in public worker pensions to bring stability to the city's chronically underfunded budget.
And he can do that, James insists, because he's the only outsider of the major candidates who will appear on the March primary ballot. The others are Controller Wendy Greuel, previously a city councilwoman, and council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry.
If elected, James would make history as the first gay mayor of Los Angeles. He's never tried to hide his homosexuality, he says, but he also does not make an issue of it. He's now a well-regarded litigator in private practice, a former radio talk show host and a longtime activist with AIDS Project Los Angeles who served for a time as its chairman.
In debates and at events, James displays a commanding grasp of city issues. And he seems to be everywhere, shaking hands wherever there might be potential supporters. The GOP establishment has taken note.
Former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has endorsed James, and a "super PAC" made up of well-connected GOP donors recently formed to independently support his campaign without having to comply with the city's contribution limits. Those moves, political analysts say, have given his run a new legitimacy.
"In the past couple of months he's gone from being an afterthought to a long shot to a plausible outsider candidate," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist and professor at USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.
Friends call him hard-working and passionate about what he thinks should be done to return L.A. to economic vibrancy. Todd Eagan, an attorney who's worked with James for years at Lavely and Singer, an entertainment law firm, said James was the firm's go-to guy when facing a tough legal issue.
"Kevin is the person who can cut through to the main issues and solve the problem," Eagan said. "He has a tremendous grasp of the details of any situation."
Another longtime friend, Steve Reymer, said James has a big heart for animals, adopting a rescue Dachshund, Lisa Marie.
Raised in Norman, Okla., James received an accounting degree from the University of Oklahoma and later moved to Houston to earn a law degree. In college, he registered as a Republican. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1988, he interned at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, one of the city's premiere law firms. He also worked for three years as an assistant federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, handling criminal cases involving drugs, money-laundering and insurance fraud before returning to private practice.
James said that as he became involved in AIDS Project Los Angeles — serving six years on its volunteer board and still serving as an honorary ambassador — he switched his party registration to Democratic because he thought the GOP was too slow to respond to the AIDS health crisis. In later years, as he began to focus more on economic rather than social issues, he said, he again switched his voter registration to decline-to-state.
Craig E. Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, called him an "effective and well-spoken" board member during his tenure. In board meetings, even when voicing a dissenting point of view, he was always calm and reasonable, Thompson said.
AIDS Project Los Angeles often used James as its official spokesman during those years because he was personable and articulate, Thompson said.
James began filling in as a host on KABC-AM talk radio (790) in 2003 and moved to Oklahoma City the following year to host a morning drive-time show.
In early 2005, he returned to his Laurel Canyon home and registered a third time, back to Republican. The move was prompted by his growing concerns about the economy and his feeling that if he delved more deeply into politics, the GOP would benefit from having more openly gay members in its ranks.
After two days of sometimes ear-splitting debate, India’s Lok Sabha, or lower house, of Parliament voted down a measure prohibiting large foreign retailers like Wal-Mart from entering the country. Of the 543 members in the house, 218 voted in favor of a proposition banning these companies from the country, and 253 against.
Rival leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, walked out before the debate and their parties’ abstentions helped defeat the measure.
The issue will now travel to the upper house of Parliament.
Allowing foreign multi-brand retailers into India has been a matter of debate for years, and was fast-tracked this year by a government under fire from allegations of corruption and paralysis. Here’s recent India Ink coverage on the issue:
The United Progressive Alliance government announced in September that they would allow big department stores who carry multiple brands, like Wal-Mart Stores, into the country but “laid out some very specific conditions,” Heather Timmons reported.
In an interview with India Ink in the same month, Anand Sharma, the minister of commerce and industry, said that despite the conditions some companies had “already expressed interest, from Tesco to Carrefore to Wal-Mart and Marks and Spencer.”
Explaining the benefits for rural producers he said:
“It will benefit the rural economy with the farmers, who will get a better price for what they produce. What perishes to a large extent will reach the market or the kitchens.”
The announcement was met with skepticism from industry and analysts, Vikas Bajaj reported, but there was hope that “If they follow through, it could prompt a new economic boom in India, where once-brisk growth has slowed markedly in recent years. But it is a big if.”
In a later article he focused on the way foreign direct investment in retail “often divides Indians as much by age as by their livelihoods.”
“Those younger than 25, a group that includes about half the country’s 1.2 billion people, appear quite open and eager to try foreign brands and shopping experiences, researchers say,” Mr. Bajaj wrote.
The Prime Minister, in a rare address to the nation, tried to assuage small retailers’s fears in late September, by saying that they “had nothing to fear from the impending arrival of giant Western retailers like Wal-Mart or Carrefour because there was a place for everyone, large or small, in a growing economy.”
The government may be overly optimistic about the benefits of allowing foreign direct investment into the retail sector, judging by Wal-Mart’s experience in other countries.
And even if that is not true, “any long-term impacts of Wal-Mart’s Mexico business have been overshadowed this year by the company’s involvement in a bribery scandal there,” and was “sure to find similar demands for bribes in India – especially now that ample evidence exists that the company has paid them elsewhere,” Heather Timmons wrote in an article titled, “Can Wal-Mart Build a Nation?”
In November, Wal-Mart said that an internal “investigation into violations of a federal anti-bribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer’s most important international markets,” Stephanie Clifford and David Barstow wrote in the New York Times.
John Krasinski and Matt Damon at the Promised Land premiere in N.Y.C.
Andrew H. Walker/WireImage
"Matt is one of the coolest guys I know, and I'm totally in love with the guy, but he doesn't even know my name," Krasinski joked to PEOPLE at the New York premiere of his new movie Promised Land on Tuesday.
"I would love to have a bromance with him," he continues, "but I don't even know if I could even use the word 'bromance' because he and Ben are so tight and like a married couple that I'll never get in there."
The Office star, 33, first met Damon through his wife Emily Blunt when she starred in 2011's The Adjustment Bureau with him.
Soon, he got the opportunity to work with Damon himself in Promised Land (out in theaters Dec. 28), a new film the pair wrote and star in together. Although Krasinski spent multiple weekends at Damon's house to write the script, he is not satisfied with their strictly working relationship.
"I must be the bromance mistress," he said. "I'm on the outside of the relationship, only working with him on the side while really he's suppose to be with Ben. I'm clearly the mistress and this has got to change!"
Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.
The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.
In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.
In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.
Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.
He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.
About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.
Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.
But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.
The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.
Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.
Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.
Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.
"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.
The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.
The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.
Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.
"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.
Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.
The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.
___
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
SAN FRANCISCO — California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told local law enforcement agencies Tuesday that they were not obligated to comply with a federal program whose stated goal is to deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes.
It was Harris' first public assessment of Secure Communities. Under the program launched in 2008, all arrestees' fingerprints are sent to immigration officials, who may ask police and sheriff's departments to hold suspects for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release so they can be transferred to federal custody.
Although the intent may have been to improve public safety, Harris said that a review of data from March through June showed that 28% of those targeted for deportation in California as a result were not criminals. Those numbers, she noted, had changed little since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a year earlier pledged to reform the program to focus on the most serious offenders.
"Secure Communities has not held up to what it aspired to be," Harris said. The law enforcement bulletin she issued Tuesday stated that "immigration detainer requests are not mandatory, and each agency may make its own decision" about whether to honor them.
Harris said her office conducted its analysis after dozens of agencies across the state inquired about whether they were compelled to honor the ICE requests.
Some elected officials and local law enforcement have complained that — in addition to pulling in those found guilty of minor offenses or never convicted — Secure Communities had made illegal immigrants fearful of cooperating with police, even when they were the victims.
Harris, a former prosecutor, echoed that view Tuesday.
"I want that rape victim to be absolutely secure that if she waves down an officer in a car that she will be protected … and not fear that she's waving down an immigration officer," Harris said
While immigrant-rights advocates applauded her announcement, they said it did not go far enough. Allowing police chiefs and sheriffs to craft their own policies without state guidance, they said, could lead to disparate enforcement and enable racial profiling.
This "should eliminate the confusion among some sheriffs about the legal force of detainers," said Reshma Shamasunder, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. "The only logical next step is a strong, statewide standard that limits these burdensome requests."
One attempt by legislators to do just that unraveled in October with Gov. Jerry Brown's veto of the Trust Act. The proposed law by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would have forbidden police departments to honor federal detainer requests except in cases in which defendants had been convicted of a serious or violent crime.
Ammiano on Monday reintroduced a modified version of the measure. Harris said she had opposed the bill's last iteration for going "too far" and had not seen the current version, but looked forward "to working with the governor and any of our lawmakers to take a look at what we can do to improve consistency."
"It's very difficult to create formulas for law enforcement," she said, noting that local agencies should have the freedom to determine which federal hold requests to honor. For example, she said, an inmate with five previous arrests for forcible rape but no convictions might still be deemed too great a risk for release.
Some law enforcement agencies, including the San Francisco Sheriff's Department and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, have declined to comply with federal requests to hold non-serious offenders. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck followed suit last month, announcing that suspected illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes would no longer be turned over for possible deportation.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who opposed the Trust Act, is among those who have argued that compliance with Secure Communities was mandatory.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said that Harris' opinion was welcome guidance that may offer sheriffs more flexibility in how they deal with immigration detainees.
"The attorney general's opinion is going to be taken very seriously," Whitmore said. "The sheriff applauds it and is grateful for it." Baca, he added, has been working with the attorney general and the governor on the issue.
In a written response to Harris' announcement, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency's top priorities were the deportation of criminals, recent border-crossers and repeat violators of immigration law.
"The federal government alone sets these priorities and places detainers on individuals arrested on criminal charges to ensure that dangerous criminal aliens and other priority individuals are not released from prisons and jails into our communities," the statement said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
cindy.chang@latimes.com
Romney reported from San Francisco and Chang from Los Angeles.
Funny isn’t an adjective often used to describe Afghanistan. Yet to many Afghans, the war and the foreigners waging it can present a surprising source of humor.
Afghans around the country tell anecdotes about encounters with NATO troops. The best of these are encapsulated, shared and sometimes aggrandized in the form of half-funny, half-sad tales told over warm chai or at picnics. Sometimes told with a laugh, sometimes told with a tone of bitterness, these stories tend to be about cultural mishaps and miscommunication that, 11 years after the start of the international intervention, still occur with alarming frequency.
Every province seems to have its own variations of these tales. Here, I will share three that I heard while meeting with local entrepreneurs in Bamian, Kabul and Kandahar city, respectively. All of them are based – or so my informants tell me – on actual events.
But even if they are apocryphal, these are the narratives that Afghans are telling in everyday conversations about foreigners – when the foreigners aren’t around.
1. A Disproportionate Response
Over a picnic lunch on the shores of beautiful Band-e-Amir, Afghanistan’s first national park, an 18-year-old high school student from Bamian Center laughingly told me this story:
One day, the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team had lunch with some local village elders. At the end of the meal, they wanted to thank their hosts. One of them spoke on behalf of the team, saying: “Thank you for your great hospitality. The food was delicious.”
But the interpreter was confused. He translated: “Thank you for your great food. We will build you a hospital.”
The elders were surprised, but delighted. But not so much when the hospital never materialized.
Later, I shared this with a friend who works for NATO. He shook his head. “That’s no joke,” he said. “I caught my interpreter making the same mistake in Daikundi last week.”
2. “Not on the agenda!”
A colleague in Kabul who works in a nongovernmental organization that does media training had a collection of linguistic mishaps to share. This one was the most memorable.
A United States military trainer was making a routine visit to an Afghan government official whom he mentored. He was excited because new computers had just been delivered, and he wanted to hear how the devices were working.
The trainer had a thick Southern accent that, evidently, his interpreter found hard to understand.
“How’s the system?” the trainer asked.
“How’s your sister?” the interpreter said, translating.
The government official was visibly angry, to the American’s confusion: “My sister?! Who are you to be asking about my sister?!” The interpreter translated the official’s response into English, but said “system” instead of “sister.”
Trainer: “Yeah, your system! We just delivered new computer systems.”
Interpreter’s translation: “Yeah, your sister. You have beautiful sister.”
The Afghan, roaring: “You better stop talking about my sister!” The interpreter kept the miscommunication going, again telling the American that the official had said “system.”
Trainer: “Hey, relax! It’s on the agenda.”
The Afghan, huffing and puffing: “My sister is most definitely NOT on the agenda!” He stormed out.
The American was perplexed. The interpreter shrugged.
3. The Best Job Ever
I recounted these anecdotes to a friend whom I was visiting in Kandahar city. After having a good laugh, this friend shared one as well. “This one is definitely true,” he said, “because my friend was the interpreter!”
Back in 2004, an officer at Kandahar Airfield hired a group of local residents to do some manual labor. When the workers arrived, the officer instructed his interpreter: “O.K., tell them to get their shovels and start working. I will be back in an hour.”
The interpreter thought it was an odd request, but he translated anyway: “O.K., he says to go shower and come back in an hour.”
And so the workers went to the local bathhouse. When the officer returned, he angrily asked the interpreter, “Where have all the men gone?”
“They went to the bathhouse,” the interpreter replied.
The officer was furious. “Why would they do that?”
“Well, because you told them to…”
The officer suddenly understood what had happened. He grabbed a shovel and shoved it at the interpreter. “SHOVEL! I said shovel, not shower!”
At least in this story, there was a moment of comprehension and a confrontation was avoided. But all these stories make me wonder: How often have hospitals been accidentally promised? And how often did those mistranslations cause bad blood? We may never know.
Eileen Guo lives in Kabul, where she runs Impassion Media, a start-up that delivers social media and mobile technology solutions in emerging markets and frontier environments. She first worked in Afghanistan as a research assistant for the military’s Counterinsurgency Training Center and wrote about her experiences for At War. You can read more of her writing about Afghanistan at her personal blog, and follow her on Twitter.
VIENNA (Reuters) – An Austrian student group plans to go to court in a bid to make Facebook Inc, the world’s biggest social network, do more to protect the privacy of its hundreds of millions of members.
Campaign group europe-v-facebook, which has been lobbying for better data protection by Facebook for over a year, said on Tuesday it planned to go to court to appeal against decisions by the data protection regulator in Ireland, where Facebook has its international headquarters.
The move is one of a number of campaigns against the giants of the internet, which are under pressure from investors to generate more revenue from their huge user bases but which also face criticism for storing and sharing personal information.
Internet search engine Google, for example, has been told by the European Union to make changes to its new privacy policy, which pools data collected on individual users across its services including YouTube, gmail and social network Google+, and from which users cannot opt out.
Europe-v-facebook has won some concessions from Facebook, notably pushing it to switch off its facial recognition feature in Europe.
But the group said on Tuesday the changes did not go far enough and it was disappointed with the response of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), which had carried out an audit after the campaign group filed numerous complaints.
Facebook, due to hold a conference call later on Tuesday to answer customer concerns about its privacy policy, said its data protection policies exceeded European requirements.
“The latest Data Protection report demonstrates not only how Facebook adheres to European data protection law but also how we go beyond it, in achieving best practice,” a Facebook spokesman said in an emailed comment.
“Nonetheless we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the DPC concludes.”
LOSING PATIENCE
Europe-v-facebook founder Max Schrems, who has filed 22 complaints with the Irish regulator, said more than 40,000 Facebook users who had requested a copy of the data Facebook was holding on them had not received anything several months after making a request.
“The Irish obviously have no great political interest in going up against these companies because they’re so dependent on the jobs they create,” Schrems told Reuters.
Gary Davies, Ireland’s deputy data protection commissioner, denied Facebook’s investment in Ireland had influenced regulation of the company.
“We have handled this in a highly professional and focused way and we have brought about huge changes in the way Facebook handles personal data,” he told Reuters.
Schrems also questioned why Facebook had only switched off facial recognition for users in the European Union, even though Ireland is the headquarters for all of Facebook’s users outside the United States and Canada.
Facebook is under pressure to reverse a trend of slowing revenue growth by selling more valuable advertising, which requires better profiling of its users.
Investors are losing patience with the social network, whose shares have dropped 40 percent in value since the company’s record-breaking $ 104 billion initial public offering in May.
Last month, Facebook proposed to combine its user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram, loosen restrictions on emails between its members and share data with other businesses and affiliates that it owns.
Facebook is also facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States, where it is charged with violating privacy rights by publicizing users’ “likes” without giving them a way to opt out.
A U.S. judge late on Monday gave his preliminary approval to a second attempt to settle the case by paying users up to $ 10 each out of a settlement fund of $ 20 million.
Europe-v-facebook said it believed its Irish battle had the potential to become a test case for data protection law and had a good chance of landing up in the European Court of Justice.
Schrems said the case could cost the group around 100,000 euros ($ 130,000), which it hoped to raise via crowd-funding – money provided by a collection of individuals – on the Internet.
(Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Mark Potter)
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Suspect in N.Y.C. subway killing
Ki-Suck Han, 58, of Elmhurst, Queens, was shoved in front of a southbound R train at the 49th Street station at around 12:30 p.m., according to NBC New York. He was later pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital.
Witnesses said the suspect had been mumbling to himself before getting into an argument with Han on the platform.
After being pushed, Han tried to climb back up on the platform but was struck by the train before he could make it to safety.
One witness videotaped part of the verbal altercation and turned the tape over to police, which released it publicly in an effort to identify the suspect. The man was last seen wearing a dark jacket, a gray T-shirt and a cap.
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $1 per gallon at the pump.
"Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest," al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. "God has given us a blessing."
To those looking for a global response to climate change, it's more like a curse.
Qatar — the host of U.N. climate talks that entered their final week Monday — is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $500 billion globally last year. Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.
"We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution," said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.
His group presented research Monday showing that in addition to the fuel subsidies in developing countries, rich nations in 2011 gave more than $58 billion in tax breaks and other production subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. figure was $13 billion.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent by 2050.
Yet the argument is just recently gaining traction in climate negotiations, which in two decades have failed to halt the rising temperatures that are melting Arctic ice, raising sea levels and shifting weather patterns with impacts on droughts and floods.
In Doha, the talks have been slowed by wrangling over financial aid to help poor countries cope with global warming and how to divide carbon emissions rights until 2020 when a new planned climate treaty is supposed to enter force. Calls are now intensifying to include fossil fuel subsidies as a key part of the discussion.
"I think it is manifestly clear ... that this is a massive missing piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister for climate change.
He is spearheading an initiative backed by Scandinavian countries and some developing countries to put fuel subsidies on the agenda in various forums, citing the U.N. talks as a "natural home" for the debate.
The G-20 called for their elimination in 2009, and the issue also came up at the U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Frustrated that not much has happened since, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Monday she planned to raise the issue with environment ministers on the sidelines of the talks in Doha.
Many developing countries are positive toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, not just to protect the climate but to balance budgets. Subsidies introduced as a form of welfare benefit decades ago have become an increasing burden to many countries as oil prices soar.
"We are reviewing the subsidy periodically in the context of the total economy for Qatar," the tiny Persian gulf country's energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told reporters Monday.
Qatar's National Development Strategy 2011-2016 states it more bluntly, saying fuel subsides are "at odds with the aspirations" and sustainability objectives of the wealthy emirate.
The problem is that getting rid of them comes with a heavy political price.
When Jordan raised fuel prices last month, angry crowds poured into the streets, torching police cars, government offices and private banks in the most sustained protests to hit the country since the start of the Arab unrest. One person was killed and 75 others were injured in the violence.
Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Sudan have also seen violent protests this year as governments tried to bring fuel prices closer to market rates.
Iran has used a phased approach to lift fuel subsidies over the past several years, but its pump prices remain among the cheapest in the world.
"People perceive it as something that the government is taking away from them," said Kretzmann. "The trick is we need to do it in a way that doesn't harm the poor."
The International Energy Agency found in 2010 that fuel subsidies are not an effective measure against poverty because only 8 percent of such subsidies reached the bottom 20 percent of income earners.
The IEA, which only looked at consumption subsidies, this year said they "remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum toward their reform appears to have been lost."
In the U.S., environmental groups say fossil fuel subsidies include tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels.
Industry groups, like the Independent Petroleum Association of America, are against removing such support, saying that would harm smaller companies, rather than the big oil giants.
In Doha, Mohammed Adow, a climate activist with Christian Aid, called all fuel subsidies "reckless and dangerous," but described removing subsidies on the production side as "low-hanging fruit" for governments if they are serious about dealing with climate change.
"It's going to oil and coal companies that don't need it in the first place," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report
____
Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter
A Chino Hills residence allegedly housing women from China who want to give birth to U.S.-citizen children is on the verge of being shut down by the city after complaints about traffic and a sewage spill.
The home is on a hilltop at the end of a long driveway on Woodglen Drive, an area zoned for single family houses. City officials have issued a cease and desist order, alleging that the site is being used as a hotel in a rural residential zone. They plan to take the property owner to court.
"Who the customer base is, is not our concern," said city spokeswoman Denise Cattern. "Our concern is that it's a hotel."
A website that city officials believe is associated with the business describes a full range of services, from shopping trips for pregnant women to assistance obtaining American passports for newborns.
A 30-day stay at the Chino Hills facility, along with a month of prenatal care, costs $10,500 to $11,500, according to the Chinese-language website, www.asiamchild.com.
Asiam Child is based in Shanghai, with branches in Anhui province and Nanjing, the website says.
The property owner, Hai Yong Wu, did not return a call seeking comment. A man who left the hotel in a black BMW on Monday afternoon would not speak to reporters.
So-called birth tourism appears to be an active but largely under-the-radar industry in Southern California. One local Chinese phone book has five pages of listings for birthing centers, where women from China and Taiwan stay for a month or so before going home with their U.S.-citizen babies. When the children get older, they may return here to study, perhaps paving the way for the rest of the family to immigrate more easily.
In San Gabriel last year, code enforcement officials shut down a facility where about 10 mothers and seven newborns were staying.
Federal immigration officials say there is no law prohibiting pregnant women from entering the U.S. But obtaining a visa through fraud would be a crime, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Chino Hills officials have notified federal authorities about the residence. Kice said she could not confirm whether ICE is investigating.
Neighbors report seeing groups of pregnant women walking along the quiet cul de sac. Cars from the residence sometimes drive down the street at unsafe speeds, they said.
In addition to the single-family zoning violation, the city has cited the owner for allegedly constructing additional rooms without a permit. A sewage spill estimated at 2,000 gallons also prompted a cease and desist order.
"It would be nice to have my neighborhood back. It was a quiet little street," said neighbor Sonya Valez.
On Saturday, a group called Not in Chino Hills staged a street-corner protest against the site.
"They go back," said Rossana Mitchell, a co-founder of the group. "They don't pay taxes, they don't assimilate."
cindy.chang@latimes.com
PRAGUE — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday warned President Bashar al-Assad of Syria not to use chemical weapons and said that the United States was prepared to act if he ignored the warning.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a news conference in Prague on Monday.
Syrian civilians fled from the village of Ras al-Ayn on Monday, after Syrian jets bombed the village.
“This is a red line for the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I am not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
There have been signs in recent days of heightened activity at some of Syria’s chemical weapons sites, according to American and Israeli officials familiar with intelligence reports. Mrs. Clinton did not confirm the intelligence reports or say what sort of activity was occurring.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry, in a swift response, said the government “would not use chemical weapons, if it had them, against its own people under any circumstances.” The statement was reported on Syrian state television and on the Lebanese channel LBC.
Mrs. Clinton, who made her comments after meeting with Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, indicated that the two sides had discussed the situation in Syria, including the potential chemical weapons threat.
Mr. Schwarzenberg described the situation in Syria as “rather chaotic” and “highly dangerous.” He said that Czech troops who specialize in the detection of chemical weapons and decontamination were in Jordan training with forces there.
An American task force has been deployed to Jordan and has been helping the Jordanians deal with the escalating humanitarian crisis, including an exodus of more than 200,000 refugees from Syria to Jordan. The force is also planning how to respond, if necessary, to a chemical weapons threat.
Although Mrs. Clinton’s reference to a “red line” echoed a warning issued by President Obama in August, it was the most explicit warning from a ranking American official since reports of renewed chemical weapons activity began to surface in recent days.
Mrs. Clinton stopped in Prague on her way to Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. A major topic of the NATO meeting is a Turkish request that the alliance deploy Patriot antimissile batteries in Turkey. The Turkish government is concerned about Syria’s ballistic missiles, which could carry chemical weapons, and it wants NATO to guard as many as 10 sites inside Turkey.
What exactly is happening at Syria’s chemical sites is unclear. One American official said Sunday that “the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation,” which goes beyond the mere movement of stockpiles among Syria’s several dozen known sites. But the official declined to offer more specifics.
Over the weekend, the activity in Syria prompted a series of urgent consultations among the Western nations, which have long been developing contingency plans to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require more than 75,000 troops. But there were no signs that any American action was imminent.
So far, Mr. Obama has been very cautious about intervening in Syria, declining to arm the opposition groups directly.
The Aakash2 is available for $ 40.41 (2,263 rupees), but the government of India will subsidize half the cost for schoolchildren. The tablet is conceived as a tool to help end India‘s rampant illiteracy. Aakash2 will bring school-age children connectivity and unprecidented access to books.
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: Zynga Holiday Campaign Turns Virtual Goods Into Real-World Donations]
The Aakash2, the second generation of the monumental, ultra-cheap tablet from Indian manufacturer DataWind, arrived in the U.S. Wednesday, with a welcome at the U.N. Headquarters in New York.
DataWind is hoping to prove to the tech and development communities that the $ 40 Aakash2 is faster than its predecessor, the original Aakash, which was much-criticized for its glacial processor.
[More from Mashable: The Top 5 Gadget Innovations of 2012]
You may be wondering what exactly you can put in a tablet that sells for just $ 40.41. The 7-inch Android-powered device has 512 MB of RAM, a 1 Ghz processor, 4 GB of flash memory, a multi-touch capacitative screen, front-facing camera, an internal microphone and speakers. The Aakash2 includes a USB hub, an adapter cable, a wall charger and a 12-month warranty.
Sunseet Singh Tuli, DataWind’s CEO and the visionary behind the tablet, points out that Aakash2 wasn’t conceived for the same demographic as the iPad. It’s developed out of the requisite “frugal innovation” that guides India and the developing world.
“Frugal innovation isn’t about creating an iPad killer, it’s about creating an iPad for him,” said Tuli, pointing to a presentation slide of a lower-class man who’s primary motivation is to receive an education. “This is not a straight commerce effort — it’s an educational effort.”
Even the tablet’s name — Aakash, which means sky in Hindi — references that it was created to awaken students’ potential. The government of India has committed to subsidize 50% of the cost of the device for students, making it available for roughly $ 20.
According to DataWind, the technological breakthrough of the Aakash2, which is why the device can be made so inexpensively, is twofold. First, much of its memory and processing power is transfered to backend servers. Second, the parallel processing environment speeds the user experience in remote areas and congested networks.
The Aakash2 also eliminates hardware features deemed unnecessary for the target audience, such as bluetooth and the HDMI interface. It uses open source software to cut costs, as well.
“This tablet seeks to empower the world’s neediest and bridges the digital divide within our society,” said Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s permanent representative to the U.N. at the launch event. “To us, Aakash2 is the epitome of such high end innovation and excellence.”
The Aakash to was designed and developed in Canada, though it was conceived, assembled and programmed in India. DataWind and the Indian government have received criticism because the process is not entirely domestic, though both said they are committed to moving more of the production process to India when cost allows.
The Indian government has committed to equipping all 220 million students in the country with low-cost computing devices and Internet access over the next five years. To put that number in perspective, just 250,000 tablets were sold in India in 2011. It will cost $ 1.6 billion per year at the rate of equipping 40 million students for each of the next five years. The national government has committed to covering half the cost — $ 800 million per year — and will count on state governments and institutions to cover the remaining 50% of costs. Though it sounds like a daunting figure, $ 800 million is only 5% of India’s annual education budget.
“More and more schools in some of the most impoverished areas are using technology, text messaging and mobile applications to enhance the quality of education and open new doors,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday. “Our challenge is to leverage the power of technology and bridge the digital divide.”
During Wednesday’s event at the U.N., Tuli presented Ki-moon with an Aakash2 tablet for each of the U.N. ambassadors.
Not surprisingly, other countries throughout the developing world have noticed the Aakash tablet’s potential. Thailand, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil and Panama have all expressed interest in bringing the low-cost tablet to their students.
“The next arms race is to equip our children with knowledge and information,” Tuli said.
If you’re wondering when you can get your hands on an Aakash2 in the U.S., DataWind plans to begin selling the device in the U.S. in early 2013.
Do you think this low-cost tablet has the power to bridge the digital divide and combat illiteracy? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper
Todd Nakamine
The Lone Ranger actor joined Alice Cooper on stage at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on Thursday.
"Johnny was in great spirits," a fellow concertgoer tells PEOPLE. "He was really happy and at ease, especially on stage with the rest of the band."
During their performance, Depp and Cooper played several cover songs including The Doors' "Break On Through (To the Other Side)," The Beatles' "Revolution" and Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady."
Depp – who stepped out solo – was enjoying a "guys night" and wasn't "with any ladies," the source adds.
– Jessica Herndon
CHICAGO (AP) — The now familiar term "Asperger's disorder" is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But "dyslexia" and other learning disorders remain.
The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation's psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday.
Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.
This diagnostic guide "defines what constellations of symptoms" doctors recognize as mental disorders, said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor. More important, he said, it "shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care."
Olfson was not involved in the revision process. The changes were approved Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., by the psychiatric association's board of trustees.
The aim is not to expand the number of people diagnosed with mental illness, but to ensure that affected children and adults are more accurately diagnosed so they can get the most appropriate treatment, said Dr. David Kupfer. He chaired the task force in charge of revising the manual and is a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
One of the most hotly argued changes was how to define the various ranges of autism. Some advocates opposed the idea of dropping the specific diagnosis for Asperger's disorder. People with that disorder often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects but lack social skills. Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label.
And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services.
But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.
The new manual adds the term "autism spectrum disorder," which already is used by many experts in the field. Asperger's disorder will be dropped and incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis. The new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.
Kelli Gibson of Battle Creek, Mich., who has four sons with various forms of autism, said Saturday she welcomes the change. Her boys all had different labels in the old diagnostic manual, including a 14-year-old with Asperger's.
"To give it separate names never made sense to me," Gibson said. "To me, my children all had autism."
Three of her boys receive special education services in public school; the fourth is enrolled in a school for disabled children. The new autism diagnosis won't affect those services, Gibson said. She also has a 3-year-old daughter without autism.
People with dyslexia also were closely watching for the new updated doctors' guide. Many with the reading disorder did not want their diagnosis to be dropped. And it won't be. Instead, the new manual will have a broader learning disorder category to cover several conditions including dyslexia, which causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words.
The trustees on Saturday made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several work groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.
The revised guidebook "represents a significant step forward for the field. It will improve our ability to accurately diagnose psychiatric disorders," Dr. David Fassler, the group's treasurer and a University of Vermont psychiatry professor, said after the vote.
The shorthand name for the new edition, the organization's fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is DSM-5. Group leaders said specifics won't be disclosed until the manual is published but they confirmed some changes. A 2000 edition of the manual made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.
Olfson said the manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders."
Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York who was on the psychiatric group's autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger's in the old manual would be included in the new diagnosis.
One reason for the change is that some states and school systems don't provide services for children and adults with Asperger's, or provide fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.
Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said small studies have suggested the new criteria will be effective. But she said it will be crucial to monitor so that children don't lose services.
Other changes include:
—A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids' who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.
—Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner .
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