F R O M T H E PA G E S O F
Monday
August 17, 2009
Midnight in New York
Nine pages © 2009 The New York Times
Taliban Intimidate Afghan Voters
TARAKAI, Afghanistan — A
group of Taliban fighters made
their announcement in the ba-
zaar of a nearby village a few
days ago, and the word spread
fast: anyone caught voting in the
presidential election will have
his finger — the one inked for the
ballot — cut off.
So in this hamlet in southern
Afghanistan, a village of adobe
homes surrounded by fields of
corn, the local people will stay
home when much of the rest of
the country goes to the polls on
Thursday to choose a president.
“We can’t vote. Everybody
knows it,” said Hakmatullah,
a farmer who, like many Af-
ghans, has only one name. “We
are farmers, and we cannot do a
thing against the Taliban.”
Across the Pashtun heartland
in eastern and southern Afghan-
istan, where Taliban insurgents
hold sway in many villages, peo-
ple are being warned against go-
ing to the polls.
In many of those places, condi-
tions have been so chaotic that
many Afghans have been unable
to register to vote. In many ar-
eas, there will not be any polling
Stimulus Money Roils Education Reform Debate
Holding out billions of dol-
lars as a potential windfall, the
Obama administration is per-
suading state after state to re-
write education laws to open the
door to more charter schools and
expand the use of student test
scores for judging teachers.
That aggressive use of eco-
nomic stimulus money by Edu-
cation Secretary Arne Duncan
is provoking heated new debates
over the uses of standardized
testing and the proper federal
role in education, issues that
flared frequently during Presi-
dent George W. Bush’s enforce-
ment of his signature education
law, No Child Left Behind.
A recent case is California,
where legislative leaders are
vowing to do whatever is neces-
sary, including rewriting a state
law barring the use of student
scores in teacher evaluations, to
places to go to.
The possibility of large-scale
nonparticipation by the coun-
try’s Pashtuns is casting a cloud
over the Afghan presidential
election which, American and
other Western officials here be-
lieve, needs to be seen as legiti-
mate by ordinary Afghans for
the next government to exercise
real authority over the next five
years.
Doubts about Pashtun partici-
pation are injecting uncertainty
into the presidential race itself,
and particularly into the cam-
paign of the incumbent, Hamid
Karzai. Five years ago, Karzai
rode to an election victory on a
wave of support from his fellow
Pashtuns, who make up about 40
percent of Afghanistan’s popula-
tion.
Polls show that Karzai is lead-
ing the other candidates. But
those predictions could be over-
turned if a large number of Pash-
tuns stay away from the polls.
The threats against the lo-
cal population in villages like
Tarakai show a change in the
Taliban’s tactics from previous
years. Five years ago, the insur-
ensure that the state is eligible
for a chunk of the $4.3 billion the
federal Department of Educa-
tion will soon award to a dozen or
so states. The law had the strong
backing of the California teach-
ers union.
Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana,
Tennessee and several other
states have moved to bring state
education laws or policies into
line with one or more planks in
President Obama’s school im-
provement agenda.
The administration’s stance
has caught by surprise those
educators and officials who had
hoped that Obama’s calls during
the campaign for an overhaul of
the No Child law would mean a
reduced federal role and less re-
liance on standardized testing.
The No Child law requires every
American school to bring all stu-
dents to proficiency in reading
Visit The Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com
gents largely allowed voting to
go forward. At the time, Afghan
and American officials believed
that the prospect of voting was
so popular among ordinary Af-
ghans that Taliban commanders
decided that opposing it could set
off a backlash.
But things are different now.
The Taliban have surged in
strength since 2005. Mr. Karzai,
though he is the leading candi-
date, is vastly more unpopular
than he was then.
As a result, Taliban leaders
are actively trying to disrupt
the candidates’ campaigns and
preparations for the vote. They
have warned Afghans against
voting.
“Afghans must boycott the
deceitful American project and
head for the trenches of holy
war,” said a communiqué re-
leased by the Taliban leadership
last month. “The holy warriors
have to defeat this evil project,
carry out operations against
enemy centers, prevent people
from participating in elections,
and block all major and minor
roads before Election Day.”
 DEXTER FILKINS
and math by 2014 and penalizes
those that do not meet annual
goals.
The proposed rules make test-
ing an even more powerful factor
in schools by extending the use of
scores to teacher evaluation.
Much of the grumbling is from
educators who say they support-
ed Obama’s candidacy.
“I am a public school teacher
who vehemently wanted to vote
for a president who would save
us from No Child Left Behind,”
Diane Aoki of Kealakekua, Ha-
waii, wrote to the Department of
Education.
But the administration’s re-
quirement that states link test
scores to teacher evaluation,
Aoki said, means “the potential
is there for the test frenzy to get
worse than it is under No Child
Left Behind.”
 SAM DILLON
Obama Hedges
On Public Option
For Health Care
The Obama administration
sent signals on Sunday that it has
backed away from its once-firm
vision of a government organiza-
tion to provide for the nation’s 50
million uninsured and is now open
to using nonprofit cooperatives
instead.
Kathleen Sebelius, the Secre-
tary of Health and Human Servic-
es, said on Sunday morning that an
additional government insurer is
“not the essential element” of the
administration’s plan to overhaul
the country’s health care system.
“I think there will be a competi-
tor to private insurers,” she said
on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“That’s really the essential part, is
you don’t turn over the whole new
marketplace to private insurance
companies and trust them to do the
right thing. We need some choices,
we need some competition.”
Her less-than-forceful insis-
tence on a government insurance
organization was paralleled by
Robert Gibbs, the president’s
press secretary.
“What I am saying is the bot-
tom line for this for the president
is, what we have to have is choice
and competition in the insurance
market,” he said on CBS’s “Face
the Nation.”
Rahm Emanuel, the White
House chief of staff, has fought to
retain the government insurer in
the Obama health plan but conced-
ed last week that the White House
might not have a choice.
“We have heard from both
chambers that the House sees a
public plan as essential for a final
product, and the Senate believes
it cannot pass it as constructed
and co-op is what they can do,” he
said.
Gibbs implicitly echoed that as-
sessment today, saying: “What
the president has always talked
about is that we inject some choice
and competition into the private
insurance market.”
 JOSEPH BERGER
International
Obama Hopes for Cooperation From Egypt
CAIRO — In White House meet-
ings beginning Monday, Presi-
dent Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is
expected to tell the Obama ad-
ministration that Arab nations
want peace, but are unwilling to
abide Obama’s call to make good-
faith concessions to Israel until
Israel takes tangible steps like
freezing settlements, an Egyp-
tian official said.
As part of its effort to resus-
citate the peace process, the
Obama administration has asked
Arab countries to make small but
symbolic gestures to normalize
relations with Israel, like allow-
ing planes to fly through their
airspace or improving cultural
ties. The administration has also
asked Israel to freeze all growth
in settlements.
So far, neither side has agreed
to Obama’s proposed first steps
and so the president is expected
to look to Mubarak for help in
breaking the latest Middle East
deadlock, regional analysts said.
Clerics in Iran Denounce the Supreme Leader
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
— A group of Iranian clerics has
issued a anonymous letter calling
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, a dictator and de-
manding his removal, the latest
and perhaps strongest rhetorical
attack on him yet in the country’s
post-election turmoil.
While the impact of the clerics’
letter, posted late Saturday on op-
position web sites, may have been
diluted by the withholding of their
signatures, two Iranian experts
vouched for its authenticity. Its
publication came atop other un-
usual verbal attacks on Khame-
nei in recent days.
Last week a group of former
American Held in Myanmar Is Turned Over to Senator
BANGKOK — An American
man who was sentenced to seven
years of hard labor last week
for intruding at the home of
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-
democracy leader, in Myanmar
was released Sunday and left the
country together with a visiting
American senator, Jim Webb.
The release of the American
came one day after Webb, D-Va.
, held meetings with the leader of
Myanmar’s ruling junta, Senior
Mubarak flew from Cairo to
Washington on Saturday for his
first American visit in five years,
accompanied by Foreign Minis-
ter Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Gen.
Omar Suleiman, chief of Egypt’s
intelligence service. He was
scheduled to meet Monday with
Vice President Joseph R. Biden
Jr. and other officials, and is to
meet with Obama on Tuesday.
Mubarak will tell Obama that
from the Arab perspective, the
best way to build confidence is
to press Israel to freeze settle-
ments, implement an economic
plan to improve life in the West
Bank, ease pressure on Gaza and
agree to negotiate with all issues
on the table, including the sta-
tus of Jerusalem and refugees,
said Ambassador Hossam Zaki,
spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign
Ministry.
“If they do this and engage
immediately in negotiations
with Abu Mazen, this is a recipe
for openness and the Arabs will
lawmakers issued their own let-
ter calling his qualifications into
question.
A day earlier, a member of the
state body empowered to dismiss
Khamenei called for an “emer-
gency meeting” to address criti-
cisms.
The letters do not pose any real
threat to Khamenei, who retains
the loyalty of the security ser-
vices and most of the political
elite. The clerical establishment
is heavily dependent on him and
scarcely any member would dare
to openly challenge him.
Still, the verbal attacks illus-
trate the erosion of a powerful ta-
boo. Long unquestioned, Khame-
Gen. Than Shwe, and with. Aung
San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced
Tuesday to 18 months of house
arrest.
At a news conference in Bang-
kok on Sunday, Webb said the
meetings and the release of the
American, John Yettaw, were ges-
tures that could be helpful as part
of the foundations for a relation-
ship “of good will and confidence
building so that we can have a bet-
ter situation in the future.”
Monday, August 17, 2009
make the gestures needed,” Zaki
said, referring to Mahmoud Ab-
bas, president of the Palestinian
Authority. “But they don’t want
to make this first step. They are
demanding the Arabs make the
first step. The Arabs should not
make the first step. They are the
occupying power. The occupation
must end.”
In many ways, Mubarak’s visit
to Washington signals a new be-
ginning to an old script, as Arabs
and Israelis argue which side
should go first, Arab states revert
to their old roles in the region,
and the United States tempers its
criticism of Egypt’s political and
human rights record in return for
Egypt’s regional cooperation.
During the Bush years, the re-
gion’s more radical forces, those
against the peace process, had
the upper hand, including Iran,
Syria and Hamas, the militant
Palestinian group that now con-
trols the Gaza Strip.
 MICHAEL SLACKMAN
nei’s status as a neutral arbiter
and Islamic figurehead have
suffered in the weeks since he
blessed the June 12 presidential
election, which many Iranians
believe was rigged. The crack-
down on street protests that fol-
lowed has only deepened public
anger with him. In recent days
the phrase “death to Khamenei”
has begun appearing in graffiti on
Tehran walls, a phrase that would
have been almost unimaginable
not long ago.
In their 11-page letter, the cler-
ics blamed Khamenei for the vio-
lence after the elections, in which
dozens of people were killed and
possibly many more.  (NYT)
Webb said he would discuss his
trip with State Department offi-
cials when he returned to Wash-
ington.
Webb described Yettaw, 53, as
“not a well man,” and Yettaw ap-
peared tired as he and the senator
arrived at a Bangkok airport.
“I believe what happened was
regrettable,” Webb said. “He was
trying to help. He’s not a mean-
spirited human being.”
 SETH MYDANS
2
in brief
Afghanistan Debate
KABUL, Afghanistan — Pres-
ident Hamid Karzai moved to
strengthen his chances of re-
election on Sunday, just four
days before the voting, by ap-
pearing in a live televised de-
bate with two of his opponents
and allowing an Uzbek warlord
to return to Afghanistan to ral-
ly support. His security chiefs
also announced that the Tali-
ban would allow more polling
stations to be open in the south,
Karzai’s stronghold.
The warlord, Abdul Rashid
Dostum, the Uzbek commander
whose men are accused of kill-
ing hundreds of Taliban prison-
ers of war in 2001, arrived in Af-
ghanistan from exile in Turkey
on Sunday evening, said Sardar
Mohammad Rahman Oghli, a
member of Parliament who is
an ethnic Uzbek.
Dostum’s return is expected
to boost ethnic Uzbek support
for Karzai, even though his rep-
utation may put off some vot-
ers.  (NYT)
Plot Against Allende
SAO PAULO — President
Richard Nixon discussed with
Brazil’s president a coopera-
tive effort to overthrow the
government of Salvador Al-
lende of Chile, according to re-
cently declassified documents
that reveal deep collaboration
between the United States and
Brazil in trying to root out left-
ists in Latin America during
the cold war.
The formerly top secret mem-
os, published Sunday by the
National Security Archive in
Washington, show that Brazil
and the United States discussed
plans to overthrow or destabi-
lize Allende, President Fidel
Castro of Cuba and other lead-
ers. (NYT)
Agents Replaced
MEXICO CITY — In a sweep-
ing move to root out corruption
among customs agents and re-
duce the influx of huge quan-
tities of illegal drugs into the
country, the Mexican govern-
ment replaced hundreds of in-
spectors at airports and border
crossings over the weekend, of-
ficials said. (NYT)
national
Big Fees and Few Jobs at Some Search Firms
NAPERVILLE, Ill. — In retro-
spect, Kerry Fischman said he
should have paid more attention
to the nagging concern he felt
when the saleswoman from the
job search company kept press-
ing him to sign the contract and
send in his credit card number.
But it had been just two weeks
since he lost his management
job at Georgia Pacific, the paper
products company, and the mael-
strom of emotions was still fresh.
“Obviously, the anxiety and the
fear were there,” Fischman said.
“That’s all you ever heard on the
news, how many more thousands,
tens of thousands, lost their jobs.”
Seeking an edge, Fischman paid
the company, ITS Corp., $8,250 at
the end of December, believing it
would help him land a six-figure
job in the Denver area, which he
said the saleswoman promised.
But the company did little more
than redo his résumé and push
him to cold-call employers, he
said. Fischman, 58, now believes
Genes Tied to Disparity in Hepatitis C Treatment
The standard treatment for in-
fection with the hepatitis C virus
is a 48-week course of the antiviral
drugs interferon and ribavirin that
gives some patients flulike symp-
toms and severe depression. The
treatment varies in its effective-
ness, being much more successful
in Americans of European descent
than in African-Americans.
A Duke University team has
now uncovered the principal rea-
son for the disparity between the
races. It lies not in differing com-
pliance to the treatment or access
to health care, as some have as-
sumed, but in genetics.
In Murder Case, Thought to Be a Botched Robbery, Blogger Finds a Twist
PENSACOLA, Fla. — The state
attorney said it was a robbery.
Byrd and Melanie Billings, the
parents of 13 adopted children with
special needs, were murdered in
their house just a few miles from
here because they were rich.
But Rick Outzen, a local blogger
and publisher of a small alterna-
tive weekly, heard a darker tale. A
few days after the killings on July
9, someone told him that Billings
used to own a seedy strip club and
had a reputation for ruthlessness
in the used-car business. Others,
insisting on anonymity, said some
the firm misrepresented its ser-
vices and exaggerated its capa-
bilities. He eventually found a job,
but without the help of ITS, and
got a partial refund from the com-
pany after threatening to report it
to the authorities.
Company officials deny that
ITS misrepresented itself. But
Fischman’s experience highlights
the vulnerability of job seekers
as they cast about for help in the
most difficult job market in de-
cades and encounter a bewilder-
ing and largely unregulated ar-
ray of individuals and businesses
offering assistance. While some
customers have benefited from
their work, others have accused
the companies of using mislead-
ing sales tactics.
“Career management” or “ca-
reer marketing” companies like
ITS, which charge hefty up-front
fees, are easy to stumble upon
on employment web sites. Some
firms place advertisements that
appear to be job postings but in-
Using a genetic test called a ge-
nome-wide association study, the
Duke team found that the coding
at a single site on the DNA made
all the difference in people’s re-
sponse to the treatment.
The site is close to the gene for a
special kind of interferon, known
as interferon-lambda-3. Some peo-
ple have the DNA unit T at this site,
and others have C. Since a person
inherits two copies of the genome,
one from each parent, individuals
may have T’s on both copies, C’s
on both, or one T and one C.
People with the CC version, or
allele, respond much better to the
of the seven suspects charged with
the murders told the police it was
a contract killing.
And with a 277-word blog post on
July 19, Outzen, 52, became a con-
troversial player in a case that has
drawn international attention.
His coverage so far has attract-
ed assignments from The Daily
Beast, and help from volunteer
researchers outside Florida. It
has also brought rebuttals from
competing media outlets, and the
threat of a lawsuit from Henry
Cabell Tice, a used-car salesman
here who has not been charged
Monday, August 17, 2009
stead are lures for sales pitches.
Several state attorneys gen-
eral offices said they have fielded
complaints about career counsel-
ing firms in this recession.
“Many employment services
provide valuable help, but oth-
ers misrepresent themselves
and their services in an attempt
to take your money,” said Illinois
Attorney General Lisa Madigan,
who succeeded several years ago
in banning one career counseling
company, Bernard Haldane Asso-
ciates, from doing business in the
state. “To find legitimate agen-
cies for your needs, it’s critical to
do your homework first.”
Many of the firms do little
more than provide ordinary job-
search assistance — overhaul-
ing résumés and cover letters,
giving advice on how to network
and helping sort through public
job listings. While this can be a le-
gitimate and useful service, much
of it can also be obtained more
cheaply. MICHAEL LUO
standard hepatitis treatment than
do those with the TT allele. The C
versions are more common in Eu-
ropeans than in Africans, and this
explains half of the difference in
the response between the two rac-
es, the Duke team said in a report
released Sunday on the Web site of
the journal Nature.
The C versions are even more
common among East Asians,
about 75 percent of whom respond
well to the standard treatment,
compared with 55 percent of Eu-
ropean-Americans and 25 percent
of African-Americans. 
 NICHOLAS WADE
in the murders and who denies
claims by Outzen’s sources that
he might be linked to the crime.
But Outzen has not had to re-
tract anything that he has written.
The Escambia County sheriff, Da-
vid Morgan, said in an interview
that Outzen’s anonymous sources
were largely right. Morgan would
not confirm that someone paid
$20,000 to $50,000 to have Billings
killed, as Outzen has written, but
he said the police are investigat-
ing the claim.
Kevin Doyle, publisher of The
Pensacola News Journal, said
3
in brief
California Wildfires
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. —
Hot, dry winds and high tem-
peratures continued to fan wild-
fires across California Sunday.
A fire near Swanton and Bon-
ny Doon was about 50 percent
contained Sunday, after burning
10 square miles since Wednes-
day and leading to evacuations
of about 2,400 residents. The
blaze threatened more than 250
homes and had damaged two
outbuildings.  (AP)
Milwaukee Mayor
Attacked With Pipe
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee
Mayor Tom Barrett was hospi-
talized Sunday after a man at-
tacked him with a metal pipe
as the mayor tried to assist a
grandmother yelling for help
near the Wisconsin State Fair.
Barrett, 55, was in stable con-
dition at a hospital with a frac-
tured hand and other head and
hand wounds, official said. (AP)
Allstate Pitchman
Dies at Age 96
NEW YORK — Ed Reimers,
the actor who told television
viewers ‘’you’re in good hands
with Allstate’’ for decades, died
Sunday in upstate New York,
a relative said. He was 96. Re-
imers, who also was an an-
nouncer for several TV shows
in the 1950s and ‘60s, died at his
daughter’s home in Saratoga
Springs, said Dean Lindoerfer,
his nephew by marriage. The
cause of Reimers’ death wasn’t
immediately clear.  (AP)
Outzen is benefiting from his vo-
cal support for Morgan in the 2008
election. But in the eyes of many
here, Outzen has become an ex-
ample of journalism that trades
objectivity for love of place.
“I don’t always agree with him,
but he is the conscience of the com-
munity,” said Mort O’Sullivan,
chairman of the Pensacola Bay
Area Chamber of Commerce.
“People have come to trust that
Rick’s going to be out there, push-
ing us in ways sometimes we’re
not comfortable with.”
 DAMIEN CAVE
business
Tribe and Professor to Make Fuel From Algae
IGNACIO, Colo. — An unusual
experiment is unfolding here on
the Southern Ute Indian Reserva-
tion in southwest Colorado.
With the twin goals of making
fuel from algae and reducing
emissions of heat-trapping gases,
a start-up company co-founded
by a Colorado State University
professor recently introduced a
strain of algae that loves carbon
dioxide into a water tank next to a
natural gas processing plant. The
water is already green-tinged
with life.
The Southern Utes, one of the
nation’s wealthiest American
Indian communities thanks to
its energy and real-estate invest-
ments, is a major investor in the
professor’s company. It hopes
to gain a toehold in what tribal
leaders believe could be the next
billion-dollar energy boom.
The 1,400-member tribe also
has a long history of herbal medi-
cine use that made growing algae
for fuel appealing. “It reminded
The Newspaper That Doesn’t Want to Be Free
PARIS — Not long ago, when
other media executives were
convinced that the only way to
succeed on the Web was to give
away their content, The Financial
Times played the eccentric.
“We were regarded as slightly
freakish,” says John Ridding, the
newspaper’s chief executive.
Indeed, the newspaper started
charging readers for access to its
Web site in 2002. Now, with other
publishers moving to imitate
FT.com by erecting so-called pay
walls, Ridding feels vindicated.
The Financial Times is adding to
its paid-content strategy with a
On the Swoopo Auction Site, Paying for the Privilege of Placing a Bid
Some people will stop at nothing
to snap up a bargain — even if it
means paying too much.
That is the paradoxical prin-
ciple behind Swoopo, a Web site
that offers a seductive and con-
troversial proposition to online
shoppers.
The site, which started in Ger-
many and was recently intro-
duced in the United States, sells
products in auctions that typically
top out at a fraction of the retail
price. This month, a new 40-inch
Samsung TV, which normally
sells for $1,500, sold for $67.92, and
people of herbs that are helpful
here, like bear root, which is har-
vested in the mountains,” said
the tribe’s chairman, Matthew
J. Box.
The Colorado State profes-
sor, Bryan Willson, who teaches
mechanical engineering and is
a co-founder of the three-year-
old company Solix Biofuels, said
working with the Southern Utes
on their land afforded his com-
pany advantages that would have
been impossible in mainstream
corporate America. The tribe
contributed almost one-third of
the $20 million in capital raised
by Solix, plus free use of land and
more than $1 million in equip-
ment.
“If you’re going with strict ven-
ture capital, they’re looking for
a blistering return on capital in
three to five years,” Dr. Willson
said. “The Utes have a very long
economic view. They’re making
decisions now for future genera-
tions as opposed to the next quar-
plan to accept micropayments for
individual articles.
FT.com has not attracted a
huge paying audience, with about
117,000 worldwide, up from 101,000
in 2007. Yet FT.com is lucrative be-
cause it charges a premium for its
content. A premium subscription
to the Web site costs $300 a year in
the United States. Adding the print
version costs $100 more.
Pearson said last month that
operating profit at FT Publishing,
the unit that includes The Finan-
cial Times, had fallen 40 percent
in the first half of the year, with
revenue down 13 percent. Because
a white LG refrigerator with a
price tag of $1,498 went for $77.90.
But there is a catch, of course:
Swoopo users are charged 60
cents every time they bid, and
those charges add up quickly.
The complicated machinations
behind Swoopo and its online
imitators are drawing attention
from critics who say they prey on
human foibles, like the tendency
of people to overlook small incre-
ments of money. These critics
also say that players face long
odds in Swoopo’s auctions, where
they must compete against peo-
Monday, August 17, 2009
ter, and that is just fundamentally
different.”
But the tale of any start-up is
written between the margins of
inspiration and hard-edged real-
ity.
More than 200 other companies
are also trying to find a cost-ef-
fective, scalable way to achieve
the same end.
“This is still a very young indus-
try, with a lot of claims out there
that are sometimes difficult to
believe,” said Al Darzins, a group
manager at the lab’s National
Bioenergy Center.
Darzins said Solix’s model was
different from most: the algae
is grown in closed bags, lined up
vertically in the water tanks, with
the intent of increasing yield. But
for every hopeful, he said, the
crux will be controlling costs.
“Solix has an interesting idea;
whether it will work, I don’t
know,” Darzins said. “It’s all go-
ing to come down to the econom-
ics.”  KIRK JOHNSON
of rate increases by FT.com, rev-
enue from Web subscriptions has
risen 30 percent over the last year,
Ridding said.
For other online publishers, the
big question is whether consumers
would be willing to pay for general
news, as opposed to specialized fi-
nancial news.
“I sometimes think there’s too
much fatalism around — people
throwing up their hands and say-
ing it’s not possible for general
publishers to charge,” Ridding
said. “I think it is possible, and nec-
essary, for them to charge.”
 ERIC PFANNER
ple in the United States, Britain
and Germany. And they say that
Swoopo is making a nice profit
on each item when all the bidding
fees are tallied.
Bidders spent a cumulative
$2,337 in their losing effort to buy
the $1,498 refrigerator, for exam-
ple. Swoopo says it must spend
much of that revenue to advertise
the auctions and attract custom-
ers to the site, which it says had 2.5
million visitors in July, double the
number it had a year earlier.
A growing number of small imi-
tators with names like GoBid and
4
in brief
No Deal With Firm
Tied to Madoff
BOSTON — The Massachu-
setts secretary of state’s office
has rejected a proposed settle-
ment by an investment firm to
repay nearly $6 million to state
investors who lost money in
Bernard Madoff’s fraudulent in-
vestment scheme.
A spokesman for the office,
Brian McNiff, said Sunday that
his agency is not accepting
Fairfield Greenwich Group’s of-
fer to refund nearly a dozen in-
vestors in the state because of-
ficials are still trying to identify
all the affected investors.
The attorney general, William
F. Galvin, filed a civil fraud
complaint against Fairfield
Greenwich in April, saying offi-
cials misrepresented how much
they knew about the fraud.
 (AP)
Bird Repellent
WEST FARGO, N.D. — A
West Fargo company that’s
marketing an ecologically
friendly repellent intended to
keep blackbirds away from sun-
flower fields is trying to find out
if its product can help limit bird
strikes to airplanes.
An experiment this summer
at an airport showed the repel-
lent, known as Flock Buster,
drove away geese temporar-
ily from a nearby lagoon, said
John Nord, director of the Dev-
ils Lake airport.
The non-toxic, viscous liquid
has four different tastes and
three smells demonstrated to be
unpleasant to the birds.  (AP)
Rockybid are popping up.
People who use these sites say
they can be addictive, frustrating
and potentially rewarding.
Last month, Carolyn Parslow,
who manages a flea market in
Trumbull, Ohio, won a new refrig-
erator on Swoopo for $9.66 — plus
the $61.80 she spent on bids. But
she says that she has lost far more
auctions than she has won.
“As soon as you think you have
it figured out, you lose,” Parslow
said. “You pull your hair out more
than you jump up and down with
excitement.”  BRAD STONE
business
A Reinvented AOL Blossoms as Print Retreats
The name AOL, apart from
conjuring echoes of the most di-
sastrous merger in business his-
tory, redounds with the archaic
sound of a phone-driven modem
screeching as it connects with
some fusty computers seques-
tered in Dulles, Va., the former
headquarters of the company.
But AOL is now manufactur-
ing a broad array of digital me-
dia that is free for the grabbing.
There are 300 working content
producers in its New York head-
quarters, backed by hundreds of
other freelancers and program-
mers in Bangalore, Dublin and
Dulles, cranking out copy and ed-
iting photos for more than 80 Web
sites. Politics Daily, which began
in April, already has 3.6 million
unique users a month, while Po-
litico, a much more established
name, has 1.1 million. In the ag-
gregate, the media properties at
AOL have about 76 million unique
visitors.
Part of the way that AOL has
been able to achieve quick cred-
ibility is by grabbing talent that is
on the loose because of trouble in
the rest of the industry.
“I’m not going to deny that the
availability of talent has acceler-
ated many of our efforts,” said
Martin Moe, who is in charge of
the news sites at AOL. “Suddenly,
in the last 18 months, this huge pool
of talent has become available.”
Visitors to sites like Engadget
and FanHouse may not know that
those sites emanate from a com-
pany that used to confine most of
its communication to telling them
they’ve got mail. Which is sort of
the idea.
Since he arrived in April, Tim
Armstrong, chief executive of
AOL and the former head of sales
at Google, has made it clear that
he expects AOL, using its Me-
diaGlow division, to be one of the
largest sources of ad-supported
content on the planet. He’s a bit
more chaste in person.
“We are just a small little com-
Monday, August 17, 2009
pany that has gone through some
challenging times that is trying to
find a way to come up with ideas
that will connect with an audi-
ence,” he said.
This is probably version 8.0 of
the revolution at AOL. When its
core dial-up business began to fal-
ter, AOL was going to be the next
Windows. Then it was going to be
the largest media company in the
world by virtue of a merger with
Time Warner. Then it was an en-
tertainment channel.
Next up was an emphasis on the
member experience, then a jab at
providing broadband, followed by
portal initiatives, free e-mail and
then a huge advertising initiative
called Platform A. Finally Time
Warner announced plans to spin
the enterprise out on its own by
the end of this year.
And wouldn’t it be funny if about
the time that Time Warner forced
AOL to stand on its own two feet, it
actually was able to?
 DAVID CARR
5
Steel Mill Workers
Fight Privatization
HONG KONG — A Chinese
provincial government halted
the privatization of a state-owned
steel mill on Sunday after thou-
sands of workers protested last
week and took an official hostage.
The protests, in Henan Prov-
ince in central China, were the lat-
est sign of increasing labor activ-
ism in China’s steel industry, the
world’s largest and a cornerstone
of China’s economy. Three weeks
ago, rioting workers beat to death
an executive who had been over-
seeing the sale of another state-
owned company, Tonghua Iron
and Steel. The privatization of
Tonghua was immediately post-
poned after that death.
The official Xinhua news agen-
cy said that the workers had de-
cided on Saturday to halt their
protests, which had attracted up
to 3,000 participants at a time, af-
ter a government mediation team
agreed to reconsider the takeover.
 KEITH BRADSHER
journal Monday, August 17, 2009 6

Kenya and Uganda Threaten to Go to War Over a Rock in Lake Victoria

MIGINGO ISLAND, Lake Victoria — This able — Nile perch. But Lake Victoria, one cover the lake’s surface like a coat of thick
little island doesn’t look like much. of the world’s biggest bodies of fresh water, green paint, are choking off the fish.
It’s a slab of rock, not even an acre big, which 30 million impoverished Africans It is irrefutable evidence, environmental-
packed with rusty metal shacks, heaps of depend on for their survival, may be running ists say, of climate change, overpopulation,
garbage, glassy-eyed fishermen and squads out of these fish. According to a recent study, pollution, deforestation and a dozen other
of prostitutes, essentially a microslum bath- Nile perch stocks are down by nearly 70 per- modern ills coming to a head in a vital corner
ing in the middle of Africa’s greatest lake. cent, and several fish factories have recently of Africa that is not prepared to deal with it.
But baby Migingo is creating a huge fuss. closed, threatening a crucial African indus- “You’ve got an ecosystem that is totally out
The island happens to lie right along the try worth hundreds of millions of dollars. of balance now,” said Nick Nuttall, a spokes-
disputed watery border between Kenya and But there may be an even bigger issue here man for the United Nations Environment Pro-
Uganda, and politicians in the two countries — the lake itself. Lake Victoria, like so many gram, which has been closely watching Lake
have even threatened to go to war over it. other lakes across Africa — Lake Chad, Victoria. “It should be an extreme concern for
The reason? Lake Faguibine in Mali and Lake Wamala in anybody who cares about the future of 30 mil-
Fish. Lots of them, but maybe not enough. Uganda — is rapidly receding. Water levels lion people. The pressures on this huge natu-
The island is an angler’s paradise, sur- have dropped more than three feet in the last ral asset in east Africa are increasing.”
rounded by schools of tasty — and export- ten years and explosive algae blooms, which A bilateral border commission is now por-
ing over dusty colonial documents, trying to
crossword Edited By Will Shortz figure out if Migingo is in Kenya or Uganda,
but the commission itself has been beset by
PUZZLE BY MIKE BUCKLEY
ACROSS 45 Solar
financial woes and rival patriotic feelings.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 Container for phenomenon The Ugandan government claims that
serving wine 48 Laudatory poems 14 15 16 Migingo is in Ugandan waters and that it is il-
7 Kindergarten 50 A pair
legal for Kenyans to fish there. The subtext is
17 18 19
learning
51 See 26-Across
that fish are essential to Uganda’s economy,
11 Sounds during
53 Chinese blossom
20 21 22 which does not have the manufacturing or
backrubs tourism industries that Kenya has.
14 Witty 56 Big name in 23 24 25 26 27
elevators According to Henry Aryamanya-Mugisha,
15 Lunch or dinner 28 29 30 31 32 director of Uganda’s environmental pro-
57 Fashionable
16 Gift at Honolulu
60 Official with a
tection agency, overpopulation and over-
airport 33 34 35 36 37
whistle farming on the Kenyan side of the lake are
17 1966
61 ___ Tin Tin 38 39 40 41 decimating these wetlands where the fish
19 Norse war god
62 2008
spawn. At the same time, rapid deforestation
20 Treasury 42 43 44
secretary 66 “i” topper
is reducing the amount of rainfall that flows
Geithner 45 46 47 48 49 50 into the lake, and all the new development in
67 French eleven
21 ___ guy (one the area is pumping fertilizer, industrial pol-
68 Mark slightly 51 52 53 54 55
who gets things longer than a lutants and even raw sewage into the water.
done) hyphen 56 57 58 59 60 “It’s very, very sad,” Aryamanya-Mugisha
22 Flank said. “It’s happening so fast. Five years ago
69 ___-cone
23 Drinking cup 61 62 63 64 65
there were plenty of fish.”
70 Be overrun (with)
26 With 51-Across,
71 Declares 66 67 68 That is why Migingo is so ideal. The water
roles for 17-, 38-
and 62-Across emphatically around it is relatively deep and filled with
28 Big part of an
69 70 71
perch, and once there, fishermen do not
elephant DOWN 8/17/09 (No. 0817)
spend as much on fuel, because they basi-
29 Jacob’s first wife 1 Roman 300 9 Chocolate When doubled, a
31 49 Draw like
cally cast a line and pull up dinner.
32 Pictures at a 2 Ginger ___ substitute villain’s chuckle Albrecht Dürer “It’s like no other place,” said Charles
hospital 10 ___-mo 34 Close calls, 52 Where the action Okumu Chambu, a Migingo angler.
3 Place to pull over
33 City on the Black
11 Nissan sedan perhaps is  JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Sea 4 Be of help to
12 Period of one’s 35 One taking to the 54 Where the action
36 Actress 5 Physicist Enrico slopes
prime is
Zellweger 6 Flub
13 Fire truck sounds 37 Static, e.g. 55 Helen who sang
38 1989 7 Bullets and BBs “I Am Woman”
18 Double curve 39 Nobel Prize-
42 Theater walkway 8 Borscht winning U.N. 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
22 Emphasize
58 Jimi Hendrix’s
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23 Pooh-bah hired Tom Brady, Editor
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by a board of e-mail: digesteditor@nytimes.com
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broadcast •
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opinion Monday, August 17, 2009 7

e d i t o r i a l s of t h e t i m e S Paul Krugman

The View From the Bottom The Swiss Menace

Federal Reserve policy makers said last
Wednesday that the recession appeared to be
hitting bottom. Among the end-is-near indica-
tors was consumer spending which they said
had begun to stabilize.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department
reported that retail sales fell in July, after ris-
ing in May and June. It turns out that the earlier
boosts had come mainly from higher prices for
necessities like energy, not from more spend-
ing on more items. And while the government’s
cash-for-clunkers program boosted car sales
last month, retail sales on everything else fell
by 0.6 percent, a much worse showing than
economists had expected. The downbeat news
was reinforced on Friday, when the University
of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index also
fell unexpectedly.
Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70
percent of economic activity. So the latest data
could be a warning that the recession is not bot-
toming out, as the Fed believes. Or — almost as
grim — the data may be evidence that hitting
the bottom will not be followed by a rebound,
but by a long spell of very weak growth.
The good news is that over the next several
months, stimulus spending is likely to lift eco-
nomic growth considerably.
Policymakers, eager to declare the reces-
sion over, need to pay close attention and be
ready to do more to rescue the economy. Other-
wise there is a high risk that once the stimulus
begins to fade, the economy will too.
Consumer spending won’t truly recover
until employment revives. Unfortunately,
Intel’s Human Rights
Intel has decided to appeal the $1.45 billion
fine leveled against it by the European Union
for engaging in anti-competitive behavior and
it is claiming that the proceedings have vio-
lated its human right to due process. Several
European companies are also testing the tactic
to fend off Europe’s aggressive antitrust regu-
lator.
They argue that in antitrust cases the Eu-
ropean Commission unfairly plays the role of
prosecutor, judge and jury — hindering their
ability to mount an effective defense. They ar-
gue they should instead be entitled to the due
process rights that European Human Rights
law grants in criminal cases to ensure that the
accused — usually powerless individuals— are
not steamroller by the overwhelming power of
the state.
This concept of powerlessness doesn’t fit In-
tel, a company with annual sales of $38 billion.
It especially doesn’t fit given what it was found
guilty of: giving hidden rebates to computer
makers that bought all or virtually all of their
chips from Intel and even paying some to de-
lay or hinder the introduction of products that
had microprocessors from its rival, Advanced
Micro Devices.
job growth is not expected to resume before
next year. From there, it could take another
two years or so to recoup the devastating job
losses of this recession. Spending will also be
restrained as households work off their heavy
debt loads and try to rebuild the trillions of dol-
lars of wealth they have lost in the housing and
stock markets.
At the same time, families will face more
pressure from higher state taxes and from
cuts in public services.
The financial system is also not out of the
woods. Commercial property loans are in-
creasingly prone to default. Mid-sized and
smaller banks, heavy lenders to developers,
are especially in harm’s way. Many will fail,
and as they do, credit will become even harder
to come by for businesses and consumers. And
the residential foreclosure crisis continues.
Joblessness, weak spending and state fiscal
distress will all require more federal spending
— on unemployment benefits and aid to states,
to replace the demand that is lost as consumers
retrench. Bank weakness will require federal
regulators to efficiently shut down insolvent
institutions, so that losses do not deepen and
make eventual failures even more damaging.
Mounting home foreclosures will require the
Obama administration and Congress to come
up with alternatives to current — inadequate
— relief efforts.
It is already clear that policy makers need
to do more to ensure that whenever the bot-
tom comes, the economy does not stay mired
there.
Intel has already hired a squadron of law-
yers and is appealing the Commission’s deci-
sion before Europe’s Court of First Instance
in Luxembourg, Europe’s lower court. If it
doesn’t like what that court says, it can appeal
its case to the European Court of Justice.
The process is all quite similar to what hap-
pens when the Federal Trade Commission in
this country rules against a company for violat-
ing antitrust law. FTC cases are tried before an
FTC administrative law judge — an FTC em-
ployee. Any appeal must then go to the FTC’s
five commissioners. Only after that can a com-
pany appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
American regulators have been far less
vigilant than the E.U. The FTC only opened a
formal investigation into Intel’s business last
year, after rulings against the company by
Japan and Korea, and a preliminary decision
by the E.U. that Intel was abusing its dominant
position.
We suspect that at least part of the motiva-
tion for Intel’s human right’s bid is to raise
sympathy among American anti-trust regula-
tors for a poor abused American near-monop-
oly — and thereby blunt any impulse to follow.
The FTC should know better.
Let’s talk about health care around the ad-
vanced world.
Every wealthy country other than the Unit-
ed States guarantees essential care to all its
citizens. There are, however, wide variations
in the specifics, with three main approaches
taken.
In Britain, the government itself runs the
hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all
heard scare stories about how that works in
practice; these stories are false. Like every
system, the National Health Service has prob-
lems, but over all it appears to provide quite
good care while spending only about 40 percent
as much per person as we do. By the way, our
own Veterans Health Administration, which is
run somewhat like the British health service,
also combines quality care with low costs.
The second route to universal coverage
leaves the actual delivery of health care in
private hands, but the government pays most
of the bills. That’s how Canada and, in a more
complex fashion, France do it. It’s also a sys-
tem familiar to most Americans, since even
those of us not yet on Medicare have parents
and relatives who are.
Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about
such systems, most of them false. French
health care is excellent. Canadians with chron-
ic conditions are more satisfied with their sys-
tem than their U.S. counterparts. And Medi-
care is highly popular.
Finally, the third route to universal cover-
age relies on private insurance companies,
using a combination of regulation and subsi-
dies to ensure that everyone is covered. Swit-
zerland offers the clearest example: everyone
is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t
discriminate based on medical history or pre-
existing conditions, and lower-income citizens
get government help in paying for their poli-
cies.
So where does Obamacare fit into all this?
Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, us-
ing regulation and subsidies to ensure univer-
sal coverage.
If we were starting from scratch we prob-
ably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True
“socialized medicine” would undoubtedly
cost less, and a straightforward extension of
Medicare-type coverage to all Americans
would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style
system. That’s why I and others believe that
a true public option competing with private
insurers is extremely important: otherwise,
rising costs could all too easily undermine the
whole effort. But a Swiss-style system of uni-
versal coverage would be a vast improvement
on what we have now. And we already know
that such systems work.
So we can do this. At this point, all that stands
in the way of universal health care in America
are the greed of the medical-industrial com-
plex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda ma-
chine, and the gullibility of voters who believe
those lies.
sports Monday, August 17, 2009 8

Boldly, Bolt Rewrites 100-Meter Record Book in brief

BERLIN — All those curious
to know just how fast Usain Bolt
might have gone if he had not
stopped sprinting near the end of
his world-record run at the Olym-
pics last year now have a clearer
answer.
Bolt pushed himself from start
to finish Sunday night, and the re-
sult was a time of 9.58 seconds in
the men’s 100-meter final at the
world track and field champion-
ships: eleven-hundredths of a sec-
ond better than his game-chang-
ing mark of 9.69 in Beijing.
Tyson Gay, the understated
American who was considered
Bolt’s biggest threat here, ran the
race of his life, setting a national
record of 9.71. But Gay was beaten
convincingly in the Olympic Stadi-
um as Bolt took the biggest bite out
of the men’s 100 record since elec-
tronic timing became mandatory
for record ratification in 1977.
Yang, Ranked 110th, Is First to Topple Woods
At the start of the 2008 season,
Bolt was a novice 100-meter run-
ner better known for his vast po-
tential in the 200. Less than two
years later, Boit has become the
first man to crack the 9.7-second
barrier and the 9.6-second barrier,
which were considered distant
dreams only a few years ago.
The scary part for Bolt’s rivals
is that he is still just 22, well short
of the traditional prime age for
sprinters.
“I’m really happy Usain Bolt
won the record,” Gay said. “I know
that might sound strange. I knew
it was humanly possible for some-
one to run that fast. Unfortunately
it wasn’t me. I’m very happy with
the race.”
Bolt was up to his usual antics
before the start, striking a light-
ing-bolt pose and covering his face
with his hand and then removing it
to reveal a variety of expressions.
After all that, he got off to a fine
start by his standards in Lane 4.
Men of his height — Bolt stands
6 feet 5 inches — are generally
slower out of the blocks than their
more compact rivals.
Bolt did not stop running after
the finish line. Title and record
secure, he slapped his chest and
loped 100 more meters around the
curve, celebrating his first world
championship gold medal to go
with the three Olympic golds he
won last year in Beijing.
Bolt said that his priority was
not the record, which deserves a
spot on the short list of the great-
est track and field performances
if Bolt’s drug tests are and remain
negative.
“For me, it was all about go-
ing and winning, because I knew
these guys were ready,” he said.
“Tyson was doing well all season.”
 CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
Jankovic Vanquishes
World’s Top Player
MASON, Ohio — Neutralizing
the world No. 1, Dinara Safina,
Jelena Jankovic cruised to a 6-4,
6-2 victory at the Lindner Fam-
ily Tennis Center.
Jankovic’s victory was the
first of her career against a cur-
rent No. 1 and was made all the
sweeter by the fact that Jank-
ovic held the top spot at the
start of the year. She had fallen
to No. 5 but will move to No. 4.
after her showing here. (NYT)
Mets’ David Wright
Is on Disabled List
The Mets placed David
Wright on the disabled list with
postconcussion symptoms Sun-
day, the day after a 93-mile-an-
hour fastball from Giants pitch-
er Matt Cain hit him with such
force that it knocked off his hel-
met. 
AL Scores
(NYT)

CHASKA, Minn. — Y. E. Yang,
ranked No. 110 in the world, took
on No. 1 Tiger Woods and never
blinked.
Yang, of South Korea, stunned
Woods on Sunday at Hazeltine
National by shooting a two-under-
par 70 in the final round to win the
P.G.A. Championship with a score
of eight-under 280.
Woods finished three strokes
back after a final-round 75, and
Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy
tied for third at 285.
Yang, 37, became the first Ko-
rean man to win one of golf’s four
major championships. He was
also the first golfer to overtake
Woods in a major championship
in which Woods had the lead going
into the final round.
Woods missed his final par putt
— one of eight putts from inside
10 feet he missed on Sunday. He
putted out for the 75, which tied his
highest closing round as a profes-
sional in a major championship.
The losing margin was a five-shot
swing from the start of the day,
which Woods entered leading by
two.
“You never know in life, this
might be my last win as a golfer,”
Yang, smiling, said through an in-
terpreter. “But this is a great day.
It’s going to be a great foundation
for me to continue playing on the
PGA Tour.”
It was new territory for Woods,
who had built a 14-0 record in the
majors he led after 54 holes. He
was stoic afterward, more angry
about his putting than anything
else.
“I hit the ball so much better
than my score indicates,” he said.
“I hit it great all day, and just
didn’t make anything. I played
well enough to win the golf tour-
nament, but I did not putt well
enough to win the golf tournament.
It was just a bad day at the wrong
time, and that’s the way it goes.”
 LARRY DORMAN
Sunday’s Games
Kansas City 3, Detroit 2
L.A. Angels 17, Baltimore 8
Tampa Bay 5, Toronto 2
Texas 4, Boston 3
Cleveland 7, Minnesota 4
Oakland 3, Chi White Sox 2
Seattle 10, NY Yankees 3
NL Scores
Sunday’s Games
NY Mets 3, San Francisco 2
Washington 5, Cincinnati 4
Florida 10, Colorado 3
Colorado 7, Florida 3 (make-up game)
Houston 8, Milwaukee 5
St. Louis 7, San Diego 5
Pittsburgh at Chicago, ppd., rain
L.A. Dodgers 9, Arizona 3
Philadelphia at Atlanta, late

WEATHER
High/low temperatures for the 20 hours ended at 4 p.m.
yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches)
for the 18 hours ended at 2 p.m. yesterday. Expected
conditions for today and tomorrow.
Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PC-
partly cloudy,R-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SS-
snow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.
U.S. CITIES
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
Atlanta 88/ 71 0 86/ 71 C 90/ 70 PC
Albuquerque 90/ 63 0 92/ 62 S 87/ 64 PC
Boise 77/ 51 0 82/ 54 S 88/ 57 S
Boston 87/ 71 0 92/ 71 S 94/ 73 S
Buffalo 86/ 66 0 89/ 70 S 82/ 70 T
Charlotte 84/ 66 0.03 89/ 68 C 91/ 68 PC
Chicago 88/ 70 0 84/ 69 T 82/ 65 PC
Cleveland 91/ 66 0 94/ 70 S 87/ 71 T
Dallas-Ft. Worth 97/ 79 0 99/ 78 S 98/ 78 PC
Denver 78/ 46 0 74/ 53 PC 78/ 55 PC
Detroit 90/ 69 0 86/ 70 T 85/ 69 T
Houston
Kansas City
95/ 75 0 95/ 77 PC 94/ 77 C
84/ 71 1.43 82/ 70 T 82/ 65 PC
Los Angeles 77/ 64 0 79/ 63 PC 80/ 64 PC
Miami 91/ 73 0.07 91/ 82 PC 89/ 80 PC
Mpls.-St. Paul 77/ 71 0.25 78/ 61 PC 79/ 59 PC
New York City 91/ 73 0 92/ 72 S 92/ 73 S
Orlando 91/ 73 0.10 92/ 74 PC 90/ 76 T
Philadelphia 91/ 70 0 93/ 70 S 94/ 71 S
Phoenix 105/ 81 0 108/ 81 S 108/ 81 S
Salt Lake City 76/ 48 0 80/ 51 PC 83/ 55 S
San Francisco 73/ 55 0 74/ 56 PC 76/ 56 PC
Seattle 73/ 54 0 80/ 55 S 80/ 58 S
St. Louis 90/ 78 0 88/ 72 T 86/ 71 C
Washington 92/ 71 0 93/ 72 S 94/ 73 S
FOREIGN CITIES
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
Acapulco 94/ 77 0.08 88/ 75 T 88/ 77 T
Athens 89/ 75 0 88/ 68 S 88/ 70 S
Beijing 88/ 79 0 82/ 73 T 82/ 73 C
Berlin 89/ 61 0 84/ 63 PC 77/ 57 PC
Buenos Aires 54/ 46 0.55 59/ 43 PC 57/ 41 C
Cairo 93/ 75 0 95/ 73 S 95/ 75 S
Cape Town
Dublin
75/ 43 0.01
64/ 55 0.20
68/ 52 PC
66/ 55 Sh
59/ 45 R
66/ 55 C
Geneva 91/ 61 0 88/ 68 PC 88/ 66 S
Hong Kong 93/ 82 Tr 90/ 81 C 90/ 81 PC
Kingston 91/ 79 0 88/ 79 T 90/ 79 Sh
Lima 66/ 60 0 70/ 59 S 70/ 59 S
London 78/ 59 0 75/ 55 PC 77/ 54 PC
Madrid 99/ 64 0 97/ 70 S 95/ 73 S
Mexico City 80/ 53 0 77/ 50 Sh 72/ 52 Sh
Montreal 85/ 70 0 90/ 66 PC 90/ 68 T
Moscow 69/ 50 0.24 79/ 57 PC 75/ 63 T
Nassau 91/ 79 Tr 93/ 79 T 93/ 81 T
Paris 90/ 61 0 82/ 63 PC 86/ 60 S
Prague 86/ 57 0 88/ 70 PC 79/ 59 S
Rio de Janeiro 85/ 61 0 86/ 66 S 86/ 66 S
Rome 92/ 68 0 90/ 72 S 90/ 70 S
Santiago 53/ 39 0.94 54/ 32 C 46/ 36 R
Stockholm 69/ 57 0 70/ 55 Sh 68/ 52 R
Sydney 79/ 48 0 70/ 50 S 68/ 48 S
Tokyo 92/ 75 0 86/ 72 PC 84/ 72 C
Toronto 84/ 68 0 86/ 72 PC 79/ 64 T
Vancouver 66/ 55 0 77/ 57 C 81/ 59 PC
Warsaw 85/ 54 0 86/ 64 PC 75/ 59 PC
sports journal
For Olympics, Vancouver Ponders Its Ice
VANCOUVER, British Colum-
bia — Ice appears such a simple
concoction — water turned really
cold. This time of year, its favored
role is usually the one it plays at
the bottom of a glass.
But ice is a year-round, lifelong
science for the people hired by the
Vancouver Organizing Commit-
tee to produce complex forms of it
for the Winter Olympics, coming
in February.
Beyond the usual challenges
in constructing ice surfaces to
meet the needs of different sports
in different arenas, Vancouver’s
location presents a twist, with its
combination of sea-level elevation
and high humidity, unique among
Winter Olympic host cities.
Toss in the usual broadcast de-
mands accompanying the Olym-
pics — extra banks of hot lights
and inflexible event schedules
among them — and the so-called
icemeisters may want to make
some extra cubes for a stiff drink.
Already, six months before the
Olympics, they oversee a busy
calendar of events and train-
ing sessions to test the limits of
the refrigeration systems, and
gauge the effects of spectators in
the building and athletes on the
ice. They experiment with water
filtration and air circulation and
train teams of workers in the art
of resurfacing.
About half of the Olympic
events will take place on carefully
crafted ice between one and two
inches thick. Varying by arena, it
must be a specific temperature,
texture, composition, even color
Murray Moves Past Nadal Into No. 2 Ranking
MONTREAL — Andy Murray
lingered on center court at Stade
Uniprix long after his match. He
signed oversized tennis balls,
programs, hats, even an arm that
was thrust at him from the grand-
stand.
It had been that kind of week.
In winning the Rogers Cup, Mur-
ray overtook Rafael Nadal for the
No. 2 ranking; tied Nadal for most
titles this year with five; added
$435,500 to his bank account; won
his ATP Tour-leading 50th singles
match this season; and bolstered
his confidence for the United
States Open.
After outlasting Juan Martín
del Potro on Sunday afternoon, 6-7
(4), 7-6 (3), 6-1, Murray opened a
(thank you, television), whether
spread across a vast surface in-
side an arena or down the side
of a mountain. It must hold its
consistency for weeks despite
the collaborative efforts of ice’s
enemies, from the obvious (the
sun, sharp objects and thunder-
ing 1,400-pound bobsleds) to the
not-so-obvious (open arena doors,
spectators and spinning 90-pound
figure skaters).
“You can’t just go out there and
make ice,” said Hans Wuthrich,
in charge of the surface at the
newly built curling arena, where
the final step is a delicate spritz
of scientifically configured water
droplets strong enough to alter
the course of 44 pounds of sliding
granite.
The five ice specialists, each
with deep Canadian ties, have ex-
tensive experience from previous
Olympics. On behalf of ice, they
helped design new locales and the
upgrades to existing ones. They
toured Vancouver’s water-treat-
ment plants to study their prod-
uct’s key ingredient. They ponder
every ice-dooming possibility.
Consider the challenge facing
Tracy Seitz, who will make ice for
competitors in bobsled, luge and
skeleton at the Whistler Sliding
Centre.
The serpentine track, nearly a
mile long, starts at an elevation of
3,080 feet and drops to 2,582 feet.
In February, it sometimes snows
at the top and rains at the bottom.
Occasionally, the opposite oc-
curs.
The track’s straight parts are
585-point lead on Nadal for the No.
2 ranking. The Open begins Aug.
31; Murray lost in the final last
year to Roger Federer.
At Wimbledon, the last tourna-
ment Murray played before this
one, he fell in the semifinals. Mur-
ray said he had answered the same
question over and over about how
he would come back. “This was the
perfect way,” he said.
The Rogers Cup final was billed
as a contest between young stars
with contrasting styles. Murray,
22, is a complete player, built with
the body of an accountant, who has
what many believe is the best re-
turn in tennis. Opposite him stood
the sixth-ranked del Potro, 20, a
big-bodied banger with one of the
Monday, August 17, 2009
U-shaped. High-banked curves
are C-shaped, arcing up about 15
feet to a gravity-defying overhang
to accommodate speeds of more
than 95 miles an hour.
Parts of the track angle toward
the midday sun. Parts are always
in shadow. Some competitions
will be at night.
The trick is to keep the ice,
no matter the forces working
against it, between 24 and 25 de-
grees Fahrenheit. Warmer, and
the outer layers can turn slushy.
Colder, and the brittle ice can
crack in sheets. Inconsistencies
can be dangerous, even fatal.
“We want to make sure the ice
doesn’t change considerably in
the heat of a race,” Seitz said.
Competitions can take several
hours, he noted. But medals are
often determined by hundredths
of a second. Even indoors, most
ice begins the same way — atop
concrete disguising a maze of re-
frigeration pipes. Water is added
in thin layers because that makes
stronger ice than filling a rink
with an inch of water as if it were
a giant ice-cube tray.
“The water in Vancouver is
incredible,” said Mark Messer,
the icemeister for the Richmond
Olympic Oval, where speed skat-
ing will take place. “It’s very, very
clean. We have a filtration unit
that we’re using at Richmond,
and when putting it through there
it almost makes the water too
clean. You need to have a slight
bit of impurities there to just
kind of hold things together.”
 JOHN BRANCH
fastest serves on the tour.
What followed was more top-
level tennis at the Rogers Cup,
where the top eight players in the
rankings advanced to the quarter-
finals for the first time in men’s
tennis. Del Potro took the first set
without breaking Murray’s serve.
It was the only set Murray lost in
the tournament.
Del Potro had defeated Nadal
and Roddick to reach the final, but
in the third set Sunday, he ran out
of energy during his ninth match
— and sixth three-setter — in the
past two weeks.
Asked what made the difference
in the 2-hour-44-minute match,
Murray said, “He obviously was
tired.” GREG BISHOP
9
AL STANDINGS
East
Yankees
W
74
L
44
Pct
.627 —
GB
Boston 66 51 .564 7{
Tampa Bay 63 54 .538 10{
Toronto 55 61 .474 18
Baltimore 48 69 .410 25{
Central W L Pct GB
Detroit 62 55 .530 —
Chicago 60 58 .508 2{
Minnesota 56 61 .479 6
Cleveland 51 66 .436 11
Kansas City 46 71 .393 16
West W L Pct GB
Los Angeles 70 45 .609 —
Texas 66 50 .569 4{
Seattle 61 57 .517 10{
Oakland 52 65 .444 19
al Leaders
G AB R H Pct.
Mauer Min
ISuzuki Sea
92 353 69 133 .377
110 486 69 175 .360
Bartlett TB 96 351 63 120 .342
MiCabrera Det
Jeter NYY
114 436 69 144 .330
112 473 79 153 .323
Cano NYY 117 471 79 151 .321
Rolen Tor 88 338 52 108 .320
Crawford TB 116 464 77 148 .319
MYoung Tex 113 457 65 145 .317
Figgins LAA 113 446 92 139 .312
Home Runs
CPena, Tampa Bay, 31; Teixeira, New York, 30;
AHill, Toronto, 28; Morneau, Minnesota, 28.
Runs Batted In
Morneau, Minnesota, 94; Longoria, Tampa Bay,
88; Teixeira, New York, 86; Bay, Boston, 83.
Pitching
Beckett, Boston, 14-4; Halladay, Toronto, 13-5;
Verlander, Detroit, 13-6; Sabathia, New York, 13-7.
NL STANDINGS
East W L Pct GB
Philadelphia 65 49 .570 —
Florida 63 55 .534 4
Atlanta 61 55 .526 5
Mets 55 62 .470 11{
Washington 43 75 .364 24
Central W L Pct GB
St. Louis 67 52 .563 —
Chicago 60 55 .522 5
Milwaukee 58 59 .496 8
Houston 57 61 .483 9{
Cincinnati 50 67 .427 16
Pittsburgh 46 70 .397 19{
West W L Pct GB
Los Angeles 70 48 .593 —
Colorado 65 53 .551 5
San Francisco 63 54 .538 6{
Arizona 54 64 .458 16
San Diego 49 70 .412 21{
NL leaders
G AB R H Pct.
HaRamirez Fla 110 427 76 152 .356
Sandoval SF 111 421 52 139 .330
Pujols StL
DWright NYM
117 412 93 134 .325
115 426 74 138 .324
Helton Col 110 406 60 129 .318
Braun Mil
Tejada Hou
114 453 84 143 .316
116 473 59 148 .313
CaLee Hou 117 444 52 139 .313
FLopez Mil 110 445 60 139 .312
Victorino Phi 110 447 81 139 .311
Home Runs
Pujols, St. Louis, 38; Reynolds, Arizona, 37;
AdGonzalez, San Diego, 32; Dunn, Washington,
31; Fielder, Milwaukee, 30; Howard, Philadelphia,
28; Ibanez, Philadelphia, 27.
Runs Batted In
Fielder, Milwaukee, 105; Pujols, St. Louis, 104;
Howard, Philadelphia, 87; Braun, Milwaukee, 86;
Dunn, Washington, 86; HaRamirez, Florida, 82;
DLee, Chicago, 81; Reynolds, Arizona, 81.
Pitching
Wainwright, St. Louis, 14-7; JSantana, New York,
13-8; Marquis, Colorado, 13-8; JoJohnson, Florida,
12-2; CCarpenter, St. Louis, 12-3; Lincecum, San
Francisco, 12-3; Cain, San Francisco, 12-4.