LONDON (AP) — Royal officials say Prince Harry showed up at a London police station to help a friend who had been mugged.
Harry's Clarence House office says the 27-year-old prince went to support a friend who was reporting a robbery.
British media say Thomas van Straubenzee was robbed in a south London street while on the phone with Harry, who raced …
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Lloyd Allen, a longtime friend of Martha Stewart, will be inAlderson Saturday to sign copies of his book about her, "BeingMartha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and her Amazing Life."
Stewart served her prison sentence on a conviction related to astock trading scandal at the women's federal prison in Alderson andAllen …
MILAN (AP) — Summaries Monday from Italy's Serie A (home teams listed first):
| Napoli 2, Chievo Verona 0 |
|---|
Napoli: Miguel …
Results from the 11th round of Spain's first-division football league (home teams listed first):
Saturday's Games
Valladolid 1, Real Madrid 0
Valencia 2, Sporting Gijon 3
Sunday's Games
Getafe vs. Sevilla
Recreativo Huelva vs. Barcelona
Malaga vs. Villarreal
Almeria vs. Mallorca
Athletic Bilbao vs. Osasuna
Atletico Madrid vs. Deportivo La Coruna
Espanyol vs. …
Eugene Szczeblowsky yesterday became the sixth city employee toplead guilty to federal charges stemming from a continuing grand juryinvestigation into inspector and licensing payoffs.
In a short arraignment proceeding, the Consumer ServicesDepartment inspector pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts foraccepting money from retailers in 1983 and 1985.
He admitted the crimes as part of a negotiated plea agreementwith the U.S. attorney's office. Like the …
TRENTON, N.J. - Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday it would reduce its global work force by up to 4 percent, or up to 4,820 jobs, to cut costs due to a slump in sales of its heart stents and its No. 2 drug, plus looming expirations for key drug patents.
The health care company, which employs about 120,500 people in 57 countries worldwide, predicted the restructuring would entail pretax charges totaling $550 million to $750 million in the second half of 2007 and would include additional, unspecified steps besides job cuts.
Excluding the charges, the New Brunswick, N.J.-based maker of contraceptives, contact lenses, prescription drugs and baby products still expects to meet …
Indians vote Thursday in the world's biggest-ever democratic elections, beginning a month of polling widely expected to leave this South Asian giant with a shaky coalition government as it deals with the global economic slump.
In a nation of nearly 1.2 billion people long accustomed to divisions _ of region, religion and caste _ there has been little in the campaign to knit the country together.
"A poll of pitches and promises, but no national issues that connect," lamented the Times of India newspaper in its front page headline two days before the election.
The Thursday vote is the first of five phases that will span a month, in which …
LOS ANGELES The Los Angeles City Council laid the legalgroundwork Friday to reinstate suspended Police Chief Daryl F. Gates,who was placed on a two-month leave in the explosive aftermath of theRodney King police beating.
After meeting behind closed doors for four hours, councilmembers announced a complex plan by which the city would settle animproper-suspension lawsuit Gates plans to file Monday, effectivelyreinstating him.
Attorneys for Gates approved the deal and said Gates would agreenot to file any future claims against the city as part of hissuspension, said City Attorney James Hahn.
The legality of the move was in question, however. The counciland …
LONDON (AP) — Health experts warned Thursday there could be more E. coli cases across Europe and elsewhere after finding that recent deadly outbreaks were probably linked to contaminated Egyptian fenugreek seeds.
They say the fenugreek seeds are likely to blame for a massive food poisoning outbreak in Germany beginning in May that killed 49 people and infected over 4,000, as well as a much smaller outbreak in France in June. More than 800 people have developed a life-threatening kidney complication after catching the bug.
In a report issued this week by European authorities, the French E. coli strain was found to be genetically similar to the one in Germany. Fenugreek seeds …
Google Inc. said Wednesday it would look into a complaint from Cambodia that an online map showing the country's border with Thailand was wrong, though it stopped short of saying it would change the document.
The Internet giant was responding to a request last week from Cambodia to replace a Google Earth map that the government said was "devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious."
Cambodian-Thai relations have been strained by competing claims to the border area near an 11th-century mountaintop temple called Preah Vihear. The world court awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but sovereignty over the …
SPRINGING HIGHER: Australia's central bank jacked up its key interest rate in a move to ward off higher inflation as the nation's economy booms.
SURPRISE MOVE: The decision was a surprise. The Reserve Bank said it expected inflation to go higher because of the country's mining boom — which is being driven by rising Asian powers China and India. The bank said Australia's economy is facing a "large expansionary shock" because of the high prices its mineral exports are fetching overseas.
WEATHERING THE STORM: Australia was one of the few developed nations to avoid a recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Its economy was insulated by government stimulus spending, less risk-taking by banks, and demand from Asia for commodities.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Kim Clijsters and Li Na won their matches in contrasting styles on Friday to set up a repeat of last year's Australian Open final in the fourth round.
Defending champion Clijsters beat Daniela Hantuchova in straight sets. Li went through after Anabel Medina Garrigues twisted her ankle and tearfully retired while trailing 3-0.
Clijsters beat Li 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 at the 2011 Australian Open for her only title of the year. She later was sidelined by injuries.
"That was one of my favorite matches I've ever played. I won, so that helped," she said. "Of all the Grand Slam finals I've played, that was the one with the highest standard."
Li won the next Grand Slam she entered, lifting the French Open trophy to become the first Asian player to win a major singles title.
"Although she lost, I think it helped her to win the French Open," Clijsters said.
Li agreed.
"After that match I was feeling I really can win the Grand Slam," she said.
Clijsters takes a 5-2 career advantage into the match. Li said fans will witness similar styles.
"I think we play the same way, like play against a mirror," she said.
___
TOUGH QUESTIONS: Jelena Jankovic is speaking from experience when she tells the media to lay off Caroline Wozniacki.
Jankovic will play top-ranked Wozniacki in the fourth round of the Australian Open in a meeting of players who held the No. 1 spot without winning a Grand Slam title.
The 26-year-old Serb, through to the fourth round in Melbourne for the first time since 2009, is relieved she doesn't have to justify herself.
"I'm not in that situation right now, so I don't have to deal with any of that," said Jankovic, who reached the No. 1 ranking in August 2008 and held it for 18 weeks. "It's kind of nice to be a little bit away from that and just really focus on my tennis, on my game, and don't really have to answer those questions every day from you guys."
Wozniacki has been No. 1 since Oct. 11, 2010, although she could lose the top spot after this tournament to one of three players. She needs to at least reach the quarterfinals to have any chance of holding on.
The Dane reached the U.S. Open final in 2009, losing to Kim Clijsters, but hasn't reached another Grand Slam final since claiming the No. 1 ranking.
"I've proven myself for the last two years. I've finished No. 1 twice in a row," Wozniacki said Friday. "For me, the most important thing is to keep improving."
Jankovic, whose best Grand Slam result was a runner-up finish at the 2008 U.S. Open, hopes the media will go easy on the 21-year-old Wozniacki.
"I think you kind of give her a little hard time sometimes," she said. "I think sometimes you just should let it go.
"She's pretty young. I think she's gonna win those big tournaments in the future sooner or later."
___
AUSSIE TEEN TOMIC WINS:
Australian teenager Bernard Tomic won a cat-and-mouse battle with Alexandr Dolgopolov, another potential star of men's tennis with a near-identical game.
"Isn't it like a mirror? Now I know how it is playing myself," Tomic said in an on-court interview after a 4-6, 7-6 (0), 7-6 (6), 2-6, 6-3 win that lasted 3 hours, 49 minutes.
The 19-year-old Australian set up a fourth-round meeting with his childhood hero, Roger Federer, at Melbourne Park on Sunday.
"I've watched his matches since he won that first Wimbledon (in 2003)," Tomic said. "To me, I don't enjoy watching tennis, but when Roger plays on TV, it's a pleasure to watch."
Tomic, Australia's best hope of ending a 36-year wait for a homegrown men's singles winner, is through to the last 16 in Melbourne for the first time.
He needed five sets to beat Fernando Verdasco in the first round, and four to get the better of Sam Querrey.
Tomic has played Federer once, losing in four close sets on grass in a Davis Cup match last year.
"I looked up to him a lot. He was like my idol," he said. "To me, he's the best player to play."
___
OLDIES BUT GOODIES: For all the talk about the young up-and-comers like Bernard Tomic and Milos Raonic, the older guys were still getting it done at Melbourne Park.
Eight men over the age of 30 advanced to the third round of the singles draw at the Australian Open: Ivo Karlovic (32), Juan Ignacio Chela (32), Michael Llodra (31), Lleyton Hewitt (30), Roger Federer (30), Julien Benneteau (30), Feliciano Lopez (30) and Nicolas Mahut (30).
It's the most men over 30 in the third round of any Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 1978, when 12 men reached that stage.
Three of the veterans played on Friday. Federer eliminated Karlovic 7-6 (6), 7-5, 6-3 in the early afternoon, and Lopez held off John Isner.
In one of the more intriguing matchups pitting the old guard against the young guns on Saturday, Hewitt, a two-time Grand Slam champion, was to play against Raonic, a powerful 21-year-old Canadian who has shot up the rankings in the past year.
Hewitt's body has given out on him in recent years — he's undergone two hip surgeries and a foot operation. But Federer is still picking him to beat Raonic, who had hip surgery himself last year.
"I think it's going to be an open match because Lleyton doesn't give away anything," Federer said in a nod to a player who held the No. 1 ranking before he did. "I've seen that happen so many times that I'll just pick Lleyton because he's playing well and he's playing at home."
Federer is also closing in on an important milestone — his next match will be his 1,000th on tour.
"How do I feel?" he said. "I feel good. I feel healthy. I don't know if I can play another 1,000, but I feel like it's a lot of tennis."
Only two 30-somethings made it to the third round on the ladies side: Greta Arn (32) and Serena Williams (30). They were to play each other in the third round.
___
Associated Press Writer Justin Bergman contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects that eight men over 30 in third round; updates to add most men over 30 in Grand Slam since 1978)
Hyman "Hy" Salkind, a Chicago area merchant who finished hiscareer in Gurnee, Ill., died Wednesday in North Miami Beach, Fla. Hewas 85.
Formerly of Evanston and Northbrook, Mr. Salkind founded hisfirst Great Chicago Surplus Store at 1393 N. Milwaukee toward the endof World War II. Over the next several years, he guided thefamily-run business as it expanded to more than 30 stores inIllinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.
In the mid-1950s, the popularity of the military surplusbusiness declined. He began selling his stores to concentrate on onegeneral merchandise store by founding the Big Gurnee Discount Storeon property he owned in that town.
Mr. Salkind sold Big Gurnee, now known as Welton's Market, in1980 and retired.
A philanthropist, he was a founding member of Beth Emet The FreeSynagogue in Evanston. He also was a founder and supporter ofParkview Home for the Aged in the Humboldt area.
To help Israel establish its independence, he donated vastamounts of blankets and medical supplies to the fledgling country.Prime Minister David Ben Gurion personally visited Mr. Salkind tothank him for his help and to persuade him to return to Israel. Mr.Salkind turned down the request but enlisted others to help him buyBen Gurion's first car and have it shipped to Israel.
"This guy was everyone's Uncle Hy,"' said his nephew, Jerry Gold."Everybody knew him."
Surviving are his wife, May; two sons, Sander and Peter; abrother, Martin, and three grandchildren.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Piser WeinsteinMenorah Chapel, 9200 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Burial will be inShalom Memorial Park, Rand Road and Illinois 53, Palatine.
A private prison company based in Florida has been indicted in the death of a Texas prisoner just days before his release.
The indictment released Thursday alleges The GEO Group let other inmates fatally beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. with padlocks stuffed into socks.
He died four days before his scheduled release from a facility in southern Texas.
A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a 2006 civil judgment. He died in 2001.
Calls to The GEO Group and the Willacy County District Attorney's Office were not immediately returned Friday.
Roger Hiorns
ARTANGEL AT HARPER ROAD
Having previously coated small models of gothic cathedrals, car engines, and other objects in bright blue copper sulphate crystals, sculptor Roger Hiorns took this technique to virtuosic heights with Seizure, 2008, encrusting an entire apartment wall-to-ceiling in sparkling azure crystals. This startling superimposition of nature onto culture was achieved by first sealing watertight an empty three-room apartment in a 1960s public-housing block condemned for demolition. A hole drilled into the ceiling from the apartment above allowed the artist to pour more than eighteen thousand gallons of the selftransforming liquid, copper sulphate, into the "tank" below. When the apartment was drained about two and a half weeks later, the result was a magical space entirely sheathed in a seamless stretch of thick, gleaming blue crystals. Bare lightbulbs were reborn as jagged, lapis lazuli disco balls; the tub is now like some aquatic goddess's sapphire bath. Endless allusions to sublime natural phenomena abound: Seizure is a cave; a coral reef; a diamond mine; stars twinkling in outer space; or some glittering, underwater treasure.
Long lines of the curious formed to visit what quickly became a must-see London wonder. Coinciding, as it happens, with the catastrophe occurring in the nearby financial district, Hiorns's construction - a sprawling expanse of uncontrollable, unpredictable growth based on toxic materials, doomed to collapse and existing parasitically off housing is eerily prescient. A symbol of the moment, Seizure also suggests some primeval geological past, or the decadent excesses of the nineteenth century, recalling the windowless, overdecorated interiors fantasized in Joris-Karl Huysmans's � Rebours (Against Nature, 1884), or perhaps some kind of postapocalyptic bunker, its stony walls hyperbolically fortified against whatever perils rage unseen outside.
Dark and airless, this tenement-housing apartment has not been rendered unlivable so much as exposed for how unlivable it always was, what with its oppressively low ceilings, poky rooms, minuscule hallways, and claustrophobic bathroom. Seizure nevertheless perpetuates the love affair that British artists have with the working-class home, from Richard Billingham's family photos to George Shaw's quiet paintings of impoverished provincial landscapes. Fifteen years ago, Artangel, the same heroic art-enablers who made Seizure possible, produced Rachel Whiteread's House, 1993, another monument to the London working-class dwelling. There, in another impressive feat of engineering, the interior of a three-story Victorian row house was cast in concrete. House rendered the air solid while dispensing with the walls; Hiorns inverts the process by rendering the walls rock solid and draining the interior. His grotto is a staggering mix of the dangerous (Careful! Those crystalline edges are razor-sharp!) and the precious, a jewel in a rough neighborhood. Sited near the location where Charles Dickens once observed a crowd's ravenous enthusiasm for public executions, not far from the scene of a recent teenage knife murder, and with little more than the Thames River separating it from the collapsing financial district, Seizure became a potent epicenter for multiple London legends. Like House, Seizure attracted crowds perhaps unaccustomed to visiting contemporary art galleries. The art world, like the banking world, is an impenetrable and baffling mystery to many. When it's as spectacular as this, however, everybody gets interested.
-Gilda Williams
THIS oil painting by one of Bristol's greatest artists, isexpected to fetch up to GBP300,000 when it is auctioned by Sotheby'sat their Important British Pictures sale in London on June 13.
The picture, called Portrait of George Nugent Grenville, LordNugent, is by Bristol-born Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).
Sir Thomas went on to become one of the greatest portrait paintersof his generation.
On March 30, 1820, his importance was confirmed when he waselected president of the Royal Academy in London.
Lawrence is one of only a handful of Bristol-born artists to beelected to the Royal Academy since it was founded in 1768.
The Lord Nugent portrait belonged to Russian ballet dancer RudolphNureyev and was last sold at auction in 1987 for GBP60,000.
A broad coalition Thursday asked legislators to consider the human costs involved in Gov. Ryan's proposed budget cuts and to tax the rich rather than play a fiscal balancing game on the backs of the poor.
The activists have come up with an alternative plan that would yield Illinois more than $1 billion without cutting social services programs.
The need to shift the cuts from the poor to a tax increase on casinos, cigarettes and other vices was made very clear by Jennifer Jacobs, personal assistant coordinator for Access Living and Gwendolyn Jackson, 42, both wheelchair bound. Jacobs assist Jackson who said she needs help dressing, eating and bathing.
Jacobs said if the funds are cut 50 percent for this program, it would force many disable persons to live in nursing homes where the care is not individualized and living is no longer independent.
At a press conference held at the James R. Thompson Center, Ralph M. Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountabilit; Sid Mohn for the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Right; Stuart Ferst of the Anixter Center/Metro-Chicago Human Services Coalition; Maria Whelan, executive director of the Day Care Action Council of Illinois and others made their case against the cuts.
"The tax policy in this state is atrocious," said Martire. "It's a human rights issue.
"We are overtaxing low-income people, and on the flip side, are underfunding the spending programs they need. It's an absolute moral outrage," he told the Chicago Defender.
Martire gave Ryan an alternative proposed budget cuts list. Out of 12 possible proposals, Martire said if Ryan would simply use three of his suggestions, it would yield $1 billion without cutting any social programs.
Martire said currently Illinois assesses a 58-cents per pack tax on cigarettes--that in 2000 yielded $478 million in revenue to the state.
As a revenue alternative, he wants to increase this tax to $1.33 per pack which would generate more than $537 million. "It would also reduce smoking" especially in youth.
Families earning well into six figures will see the cost of aHarvard education reduced by thousands of dollars per year under amajor financial aid initiative that is bound to draw attention farbeyond the school's ivy-covered walls.
The announcement Monday, the latest of several recently by elitecolleges concerning aid, reflects a shift toward making top schoolsmore affordable to even upper-middle-class families. The Universityof Chicago moved this year to replace many loans with grants.
Harvard admits its full list price of $45,620, while comparableto other elite private universities, is a burden to all but the mostwealthy.
"This could inspire other expensive colleges to make tuition moreaffordable," said Sen. Charles Grassley.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on Germans to stand together against racism and anti-Semitism as the nation marks the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom known as "Kristallnacht" or "Night of Broken Glass."
A memorial concert and other events are being held to mark the anniversary of the Nazi-incited riots that killed more than 91 Jews and damaged some 1,000 synagogues.
The chancellor is taking part in an official ceremony later Sunday along with Charlotte Knobloch, the director of the Central Council of German Jews.
Merkel has stressed that it is not enough to remember the events of Nov. 9, 1938 through memorials and ceremonies, but "we must always think how it was that it could come to this singular event, the Holocaust."
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said Tuesday that whistle-blower website WikiLeaks' decision to publish entire contents of classified U.S. military documents was irresponsible and could put innocent lives at risk.
WikiLeaks drew worldwide publicity in late July when it posted a huge trove of secret U.S. military documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. Defense Department has warned it could have blood on its hands for publishing documents that name Afghan sources.
Wales said he supported the need for avenues for whistle-blowers to expose wrongdoing but called for journalistic integrity and responsibility to censor unrelated information that could put people in danger.
"The issue that I have with WikiLeaks is they have a tendency to just want to publish absolutely everything, and I think that can be very, very dangerous," Wales told a business conference in Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur. "I don't think (WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange wants those people killed. However, if he irresponsibly follows the policy of releasing absolutely everything, it is incredibly dangerous for those people.
"I think it is really important when we have sensitive information, that we do rely on responsible journalists to sort through it for us. It's much better than dumping all kinds of crazy information online and get people killed."
Assange has defended WikiLeaks' policy, saying the goal was to give a complete picture of the war efforts and a more accurate account of civilian deaths. He has also said the documents didn't reveal troop movements or other sensitive tactical information.
Wales said WikiLeaks got famous in the first place by using the word "wiki," which he said was unfortunate.
"I have absolutely nothing to do with WikiLeaks and I don't even approve of what they are doing," he said. "I would distance myself from WikiLeaks. I wish they wouldn't use the name. They are not a wiki."
The WikiLeaks leak is unrivaled in its scope, but so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation.
ONE OF the themes of the Water Environment Federation's 14th Annual Residuals and Biosolids Management Conference, to be held in Boston in late February, is understanding and communicating risks attendant with biosolids management. We will be asking ourselves, "how do we communicate that the risks of using biosolids are very low?"
But here is the real risk! We are at risk of losing our programs and increasing costs of our programs because of our failure to communicate the benefits of biosolids.
Most of us have witnessed personally the consequences of not gaining public support for biosolids recycling. We have spent countless hours "jumping through hoops," preparing for presentations, putting together public information material, just to see it ridiculed by people who have taken the "truth" off the Internet. We ask: "If not land application, do you really prefer incinerators and landfills instead?" We hear in reply: "That's your business to figure out," and we are stymied in taking action and moving forward.
We have seen how easily fear is raised in people's minds when opponents use terms like "heavy metals" and "pathogens," and we have experienced first hand our powerlessness to earn the public's confidence when we present facts to the contrary. We have seen the boards or officials of public agencies become stalled in their decisions to take cost-effective, environmentally sound actions for the fear of a media lashing.
We appreciate the frustration of farmers who see a nutrient source upon which they rely become suddenly unavailable, a key tool for economic survival taken from them. We share the rejection that farmers feel when their livelihood is threatened by the complaints of former urbanites who are now their neighbors, because we experience the same feeling of rejection when we are accused of being stream and land polluters.
A PLAYFUL SOLUTION
Not one who likes to end on a negative note, I want to suggest a solution: Be Playful with Your Biosolids. "Playful?" Is Toffey really this nutty? That goes without saying. By "playful," I would suggest holding biosolids "beauty" competitions for the best looking/smelling biosolids, having biosolids field days with balloon rides, hiring a PR firm to advertise biosolids benefits, having a "name your community's biosolids" competition, holding a "best yield with biosolids" competition among farmers, hiring urban rappers to do a biosolids rap, commissioning a biosolids computer action game (I am working on this, so don't steal any of my ideas). We could be playful with our biosolids stories - our success stories, our "horror and humor" stories, and our wild boasting to the media about our good work.
All of these are designed to allow the public, our customers, to develop a positive association with biosolids before they hear something (or smell something) wrong about it. Does it not sound reasonable that people who "already know that biosolids are okay" because of your lighthearted, human interest, "playful" items in the media, are less likely to pay attention to a "bad biosolids" story than those people who know nothing about biosolids and are hearing about biosolids for the first time when the story is negative?
The web sites listed below are just a start of what is available to you for background information on some of the "risk" issues. Start with Desmond Morris's site. Morris discusses "totemic taboos" and "deep-seated human fear of being poisoned." In reaction to the diet of "anxiety-makers," Morris tells of his mother, on her death bed at the age of 99, asking for a gin and tonic to be fed through a straw and saying, "if you've got to go, you might as well go with a swing."
As things are going today, we have done a great job with the science, we have great regulations, we have great new management tools and great new equipment. But we are losing the battle for the public hearts. We ought not miss out on the opportunity to "go with a swing" by being playful with our biosolids.
The web sites: Bill Desmond Morris - http://www. sirc.org/articles/ desmond.html; FirstScience.Com http://www. firsts cience. com; junkscience.com - http://www.junk science.com/; American Council for Science and Health - http://www. acsh.org/; Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy: Toxic Chemicals and Risk Assessment - http://www.pacificresearch.org/issues/enviro/99eindex/ toxic.html; WSU Agrichemical and Environmental News - http://www 2.tricity.wsu.edu/aenews/; First Science.Com - http://www.first science.com.
[Author Affiliation]
Bill Toffey is biosolids utilization manager with the Philadelphia Water Department.
The Detroit Red Wings activated Swedish defenseman Niklas Kronwall from the injured list on Thursday.
Kronwall missed 13 games after injuring his collarbone on Jan. 30 against Phoenix. In 48 NHL games this season, he has five goals and 20 assists.
Kronwall is expected to be back in the lineup on Friday when Detroit faces the San Jose Sharks at home.
HOUSTON (AP) — Texans coach Gary Kubiak has insisted his defense was improving, even as opponents continued to pile up big plays and points.
Houston finally backed him up Sunday, beating Tennessee 20-0 for the franchise's first shutout since 2004.
There's no time to relax, though. The Texans (5-6) have a quick turnaround before facing Michael Vick and high-powered Philadelphia (7-4) on Thursday night.
Vick leads the NFL with a 106.0 passer rating, and Philadelphia ranks second in total offense (399.3 yards per game) and points per game (28.2).
That would seem to be another mismatch for a Houston defense giving up 386.4 yards and 286 yards passing per game.
Lately, though, a few changes have produced a subtle turnaround and Kubiak is encouraged.
Kevin Bentley has moved into the middle linebacker position, allowing Brian Cushing to go back to his more familiar spot on the outside.
Kubiak has reduced the work load for rookie cornerback Kareem Jackson, who's allowed long passes in Houston's losses. And defensive coordinator Frank Bush has moved from the press box to the sideline, improving communication with his players.
"We've done some things differently," Kubiak said. "All those things together have got it balanced out a little bit. And really, for the first time in a while, we've had the same guys on the field for about three weeks. That sure helps."
Houston's defense was struggling even before All-Pro middle linebacker DeMeco Ryans was lost for the season with a ruptured Achilles' tendon on Oct. 17.
Cushing, who was suspended for the first four games, played middle linebacker for the next two games, both Houston losses.
Bentley, who was Ryans' backup, has played middle linebacker for the past three games. He intercepted a pass and recovered a fumble in Houston's 30-27 loss to the New York Jets two weeks ago.
The switch has also spurred Cushing closer to the form that earned him Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2009. Cushing led Houston with seven tackles on Sunday, including four for losses.
"Everyone is where they need to be, and the calls have been simplified a little bit," Cushing said. "We're really comfortable, finally. It took a little bit of time, but I think we are where we need to be."
The Texans held the Titans to 162 yards on Sunday, easily Houston's best defensive performance of the season. Pro Bowl running back Chris Johnson finished with a career-low 5 yards rushing, and rookie quarterback Rusty Smith threw three interceptions to Glover Quin.
Houston has four interceptions in the past two games after getting only five through the first nine. Bush says the Texans are not only making more plays lately, but also reducing mental miscues.
"A lot of mistakes have been cut down, guys are playing faster, playing harder, they're more conscious of what's going on," Bush said. "Really, they've just taken ownership of everything we're doing. They're starting to believing that it's their defense, and not just me making calls."
But the Texans say that having Bush on the sideline for the past two games may be the biggest factor of all in the recent progress.
"We're a lot more interactive with him," Cushing said. "We can talk over our problems right there, instead of through the phone on every other series."
Safety Bernard Pollard said Bush has also brought some much-needed energy to the field.
"Having Frank on the sideline, that's a blast," Pollard said. "He brings a lot of excitement to the sideline. He's been snatching up players the last couple of weeks, having fun, and getting aggression out of that excitement."
The Texans said they still have a long way to go, and they'll get an idea of just how far against Vick and the Eagles.
Pollard is eager to see if Houston's defense is up to the challenge.
"Good things come to people who keep working hard, and that's the only thing we can do," Pollard said. "All we can do is grind right now, continue to grind, and let the chips fall where they may."Notes: The Texans waived DT Malcolm Sheppard and activated TE Anthony Hill from the physically unable to perform list. ... Kubiak said TE Owen Daniels is "50-50" to playing on Thursday night after missing the past four games with a hamstring injury.
DAILY MAIL STAFF
County officials want to get skateboarders off the streets andsidewalks.
Their plan: Build a skate park at Coonskin Park.
Kanawha County Parks and Recreation Commission officials arescheduled to discuss the matter Tuesday during a 6 p.m. publichearing at Outdoor Extremes, which is located on MacCorkle Avenuenext to Budget Tapes and Records.
"We have decided a skate park is a project we want to pursue,"said Stephen Zoeller, the Kanawha County Parks and RecreationCommission director. "We are actively and aggressively making plansto put one in."
Their next step will be accepting recommendations and proposalsfrom organizations and businesses, Zoeller said.
"When we get them, we will decide what we think is best," he said.
Officials have set aside $50,000 for the project, which they wantto build next to the park's family center. They want to attract 12-to 18-year-old skaters, Zoeller said.
"We want to try to provide activities for a group that we think isunderserved," Zoeller said.
The only legal option for local skateboarders is Outdoor Extremes,a Kanawha City bicycle shop where they can practice their tricks andperfect their skills in the store's indoor skate park.
About 30 teenagers and young adults pack the cinderblock basementeach day to skate its quarter pipes, half pipe, bank ramp, roll-in,fun box and rail, Owner Chad Hall said.
Another skate park project failed last year.
Charleston City Council members in March 2001 approved donatingspace for an outdoor skate park at the North Charleston CommunityCenter. The plan called for a local nonprofit group, Skaters forSkaters, to take legal responsibility for the land and pay to buildthe network of ramps and banks. But that project has yet to happen,reportedly from a lack of funds.
There was no legal option for years. Outdoor Extremes closed itsindoor skateboard park in 1999, then reopened in 2001 after Hallovercame a series of bureaucratic battles with city officials.
Haddad Riverfront Park, Town Center Mall and Laidley Towerreplaced Outdoor Extremes during its two-year hiatus, asskateboarders did what they always had done when there were no skateparks here. They took to the city's streets. And its parking garages.And its sidewalks. And its hand rails. And its steps. And its parkbenches. Anywhere they could hand plant and tail spin.
Ramps and rails at Coonskin Park will not get all the daredevilsoff the streets, Hall said.
"Us building the indoor park, it didn't solve the problem," hesaid. "Them building an outdoor park, it won't solve the problem.There are always going to be kids who want more difficult challenges.They want their tricks to be bigger and better. They want to push thelimit."
There will be fewer opportunities to do so at Coonskin Park,Zoeller said.
"We will have to follow certain guidelines for insurance andcertain parameters for safety," he said. "But it will still be a funpark.
"We don't want to build something kids look at and say, 'Whatever.I'm not interested.' We want them to look at it and say, 'Cool. Iwant to get on that.' That's our goal."
Writer Jacob Messer can be reached at 348-7939 or by e-mail atjacobmesser@dailymail.com.
It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George W. Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for his infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.
It was certainly bold. An hour-and-a-half's drive from where Bush stood, the U.S. military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture." It was in Panama and, later, at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found.
According to declassified training manuals, SOA students - military and police officers from across the hemisphere - were instructed in many of the same "coercive interrogation" techniques that have since migrated to Guant�namo and Abu Ghraib: earlymorning capture to maximize shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food "manipulation," humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions - and worse. In 1996, President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that U.S.-produced training materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment."
Some of the Panama school's graduates returned to their countries to commit the continent's greatest war crimes of the past half-century: the murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the systematic theft of babies from Argentina's "disappeared" prisoners, the massacre of 900 civilians in El Mozote in El Salvador, and military coups too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that choosing Panama to declare "We do not torture" was a little like dropping by a slaughterhouse to pronounce the United States a nation of vegetarians.
And yet, when covering the Bush announcement, not a single mainstream news outlet mentioned the sordid history of its location. How could they? To do so would require something totally absent from the current debate: an admission that the embrace of torture by U.S. officials long predates the Bush administration and has in fact been integral to U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War.
It's a history that has been exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records, and truth commissions. In his upcoming book A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy synthesizes this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an indispensable and riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture," based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training programs.
It's not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they blame abuses on "a few bad apples" - so too do many of torture's most prominent opponents. Apparently forgetting everything they once knew about U.S. cold war misadventures, a startling number have begun to subscribe to an anti-historical narrative in which the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to U.S. officials on September 11,2001, at which point the interrogation methods used in Guant�namo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact.
The principal propagator of this narrative (what Carry Wills termed "original sinlessness") is Senator John McCain. Writing recently in Newsweek on the need for a ban on torture, McCain said that, when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them." It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as McCoy writes, "its agents were operating 40 interrogation centres in South Vietnam that killed more than 20,000 suspects and tortured thousands more," a claim he backs up with pages of quotes from press reports as well as Congressional and Senate probes.
Does it somehow lessen the horrors of today to admit that this is not the first time the U.S. government has used torture to wipe out its political opponents - that it has operated secret prisons before, that it has actively supported regimes that tried to erase the left by dropping students out of airplanes? That, at home, photographs of lynchings were traded and sold as trophies and warnings? Many seem to think so. On November 8, Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott made the astonishing claim to the House of Representatives that "America has never had a question about its moral integrity, until now." Molly Ivins, expressing her shock that the United States is running a prison gulag, wrote that "it's just this one administration...and even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice-President Dick Cheney." And in the November issue of Harper's, William Pfaff argued that what truly sets the Bush administration apart from its predecessors is "its installation of torture as integral to American military and clandestine operations." Pfaff acknowledged that, long before Abu Ghraib, there were those who claimed that the School of the Americas was a "torture school," but he says that he was "inclined to doubt that it was really so." Perhaps it's time for Pfaff to have a look at the SOA textbooks coaching illegal torture techniques, all readily available in both Spanish and English, as well as the hair-raising list of SOA grads.
Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never before"? I suspect it has to do with a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of the Bush administration's crimes. And the Bush administration's open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented - but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it: not the torture, but the openness. Past administrations tactfully kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned, but they were practised in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush administration has broken this deal: Post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimized by new definitions and new laws.
Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the Bush administration's real innovation has been its in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by U.S. citizens in U.S.-run prisons, and transported to third countries in U.S. planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette, more than the actual crimes, that has so much of the military and intelligence community up in arms: By daring to torture unapologetically and out in the open, Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability.
For those nervously wondering if it is time to start using alarmist words like totalitarianism, this shift is of huge significance. When torture is covertly practised but officially and legally repudiated, there is still the hope that, if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and when those responsible merely deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the juridical person in man"; soon enough, victims no longer bother to search for justice, so sure are they of the futility (and danger) of that quest. This impunity is a mass version of what happens inside the torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them.
In Latin America, the revelations of U.S. torture in Iraq have not been met with shock and disbelief, but with powerful d�j� vu and reawakened fears. Hector Mondragon, a Colombian activist who was tortured in the 1970s by an officer trained at the School of the Americas, wrote: "It was hard to see the photos of the torture in Iraq because I too was tortured. I saw myself naked with my feet fastened together and my hands tied behind my back. I saw my own head covered with a cloth bag. I remembered my feelings - the humiliation, pain." Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured in a Guatemalan jail, said, "I could not even stand to look at those photographs...so many of the things in the photographs had also been done to me. I was tortured with a frightening dog and also rats. And they were always filming."
Ortiz has testified that the men who raped her and burned her with cigarettes more than 100 times deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with an American accent whom they called "Boss." It is one of many stories told by prisoners in Latin America of mysterious Englishspeaking men walking in and out of their torture cells, proposing questions, offering tips. Several of these cases are documented in Jennifer Harbury's powerful new book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way.
Some of the countries that were mauled by U.S.-sponsored torture regimes have tried to repair their social fabric through truth commissions and war crimes trials. In most cases, justice has been elusive, but past abuses have been entered into the official record and entire societies have asked themselves questions not only about individual responsibility but collective complicity. The United States, though an active participant in these "dirty wars," has gone through no parallel process of national soul-searching.
The result is that the memory of U.S. complicity in far-away crimes remains fragile, living on in old newspaper articles, outof-print books, and tenacious grassroots initiatives like the annual protests outside the School of the Americas (which has been renamed but remains largely unchanged). The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the current torture debate is that, in the name of eradicating future abuses, these past crimes are being erased from the record. Every time Americans repeat the fairy tale about their pre-Cheney innocence, these already hazy memories fade even further. The hard evidence still exists, of course, carefully archived in the tens of thousands of declassified documents available from the National security Archive. But inside U.S. collective memory, the disappeared are being disappeared all over again.
This casual amnesia does a profound disservice not only to the victims of these crimes, but also to the cause of trying to remove torture from the U.S. policy arsenal once and for all. Already there are signs that the Bush administration will deal with the current torture uproar by returning to the Cold War model of plausible deniability. The McCain amendment protects every "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government"; it says nothing about torture training or buying information from the exploding industry of for-profit interrogators. And in Iraq the dirty work is already being handed over to Iraqi death squads, trained by U.S. commanders like Jim Steele, who prepared for the job by setting up similarly lawless units in El Salvador.
The U.S. role in training and supervising Iraq's Interior Ministry was forgotten, moreover, when 173 prisoners were recently discovered in a Ministry dungeon, some tortured so badly that their skin was falling off. "Look, it's a sovereign country. The Iraqi government exists," Rumsfeld said. He sounded just like the CIA's William Colby, who, when asked in a 1971 Congressional probe about the thousands killed under Phoenix - a program he helped launch-replied that it was now "entirely a South Vietnamese program."
And that's the problem with pretending that the Bush administration invented torture. "If you don't understand the history and the depths of the institutional and public complicity," says McCoy, "then you can't begin to undertake meaningful reforms." Lawmakers will respond to pressure by eliminating one small piece of the torture apparatus - closing a prison, shutting down a program, even demanding the resignation of a really bad apple like Rumsfeld. But, McCoy says, "they will preserve the prerogative to torture."
The Center for American Progress has just launched an advertising campaign called "Torture is not US." The hard truth is that for at least five decades it has been.
[Sidebar]
"The embrace of torture by U.S. officials long predates the Bush administration and has in fact been integral to U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. It's a history that has been exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records, and truth commissions."
[Sidebar]
"The Bush administration's open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented-but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it: not the torture, but the openness. Past administrations kept their 'black ops' secret. The Bush administration tortures openly and without shame."
[Author Affiliation]
(Naomi Klein is the bestselling author of No Logo and other books, and is active in the movement for global justice.)
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