Tiger Woods will end his indefinite hiatus from the PGA TOUR at this year’s Masters Tournament at Augusta National.  It marks the first tournament that the world’s greatest golfer will play in since the unraveling of his private life to the tabloid and national media after his Thanksgiving night accident. How does it change the [...] Related posts:

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Montar uma banda, alugar um estúdio, afinar os equipamentos, ensaiar exaustivamente para, finalmente, gravar um álbum demo (com três ou quatro músicas) já figurou como etapas obrigatórias para o crescimento de músicos amadores. A trajetória, uma espécie de ritual de passagem, pode estar com os dias contados. Pelo menos para uma nova safra de produtores que viu, na internet, uma maneira de desconstruir o processo produtivo musical e espalhar na rede seus solos de bateria, guitarra, baixo e bases de sons eletrônicos.

A nova geração se autointitula “ghost-producers” da composição em larga escala. Formada por profissionais da música impacientes por esperar contratos para produzirem novos sons, eles criam sequências musicais e disponibilizam para a venda na internet — quem compra pode usar as faixas em produções próprias, amadoras ou profissionais, sem preocupação com os direitos autorais. “Existem pessoas pelo mundo que desejam gravar e não possuem recursos para pagar um produtor e os músicos. Com um pouco de conhecimento dos programas de mixagem por computador, eles podem juntar esses sons que vendemos e criar novas canções”, explica o musico Cláudio Pinheiro, que assina como Creizzy, produtor paraense radicado em Brasília que aposta no mercado virtual.

A ideia não é de todo nova. Desde que o microcomputador começou a ser base para as produções musicais em todo o mundo, as empresas de equipamento de som disponibilizavam os chamados sample packs, conjunto de sons, mas restringiam a venda a estúdios profissionais e gravadoras. O comércio direto com o público é recente.

Um dos mais antigos sites de distribuição popular desse tipo de mídia, o americano Beatport.com, data de 2004. Iniciativas brasileiras são raras nesse mercado essencialmente gringo. Os poucos músicos que atuam na área colaboram com portais internacionais, que já possuem distribuição e alcance garantido. Convidado por um desses sites a elaborar um pacote de bases de ragga, em 2008, Cláudio Pinheiro viu no mercado virtual uma boa chance de distribuição de suas composições.

Em parceria com o produtor Eduardo Figueiredo, o Dukey, começou a buscar em Brasília DJs e músicos dispostos a investir na área. Há dois meses eles lançaram o selo CDBeatz.com. “Nos focamos em artistas independentes que não têm produtores, mas as grandes gravadoras, principalmente nos Estados Unidos, França e Inglaterra, também nos procuram. Hoje em dia, o mercado é muito rápido. O tempo de produção de um CD caiu de um ano para poucos meses. Iniciativas como a nossa estão cada vez mais visadas”, explica Dukey.

Pacotes

A desconfiguração do mercado fonográfico mundial, causada pela crise na vendagem de CDs e o aumento da pirataria, forçou as grandes gravadoras a reduzirem lançamentos e contratações de novos artistas. Nos últimos cinco anos, a Federação Internacional da Indústria Fonográfica apontou uma queda de 80% no mercado brasileiro de discos, o que desencadeou na diminuição de custos pelas gravadoras. Além de serviços técnicos, como prensagem e distribuição, passaram a ser terceirizados também trabalhos criativos, como produção.

No mercado desde 2001, o DJ Thiago Augusto Rodrigues, mais conhecido como Anahatavibes, produz bases de trance, techno e house e mixagens para a distribuição em internet há dois anos. Ciente das dificuldades de assinar com grandes distribuidoras, apostou na rede mundial de computadores e vende sua produção por meio de dois selos virtuais. “Hoje o mercado é outro, não podemos depender das lojas de disco e álbum físico. A disponibilização do som de cada instrumento separado na rede é uma forma de adaptação que cai bem ao novo cenário”, acredita.

Além de participar de um duo de produtores, colaborar com outros artistas e tocar em festas de trance, Thiago aproveita configuração do mercado para extravasar suas produções, feitas com bateria eletrônica, sintetizador e softwares de música. “O mais difícil para artistas sem produtor é encontrar timbragens e texturas de som diferenciadas para a música que criam. Muitas vezes, aquilo que compus e deixei de fora dos meus CDs pode ser o som que outro compositor estava procurando”, complementa.

A concessão de uso das músicas, após download, varia de acordo com o site. Os gratuitos, em geral, autorizam a reprodução e mixagem para fins não lucrativos. Os downloads pagos, que podem variar de R$ 2 (apenas um instrumento) e R$ 600 (pacote), podem ser usados para qualquer fim. “Além dos artistas, as empresas de publicidade aproveitam o serviço para diminuir custos na criação de jingles e música de fundo nas propagandas. Uma vez que fez o download pago, o uso é irrestrito”, revela Eduardo.

Sempre em busca de novos sons, os DJs assumem parcela do público que utiliza o serviço e possuem até uma categoria de sons separada para eles nos sites, classificada como DJ Tools. Habituado a fazer pesquisas musicais na internet, o DJ brasiliense Komka encontrou rede uma sequência de voz que baixou para seu set. “Estava montando uma base que precisava de um vocal. É muito comum disponibilizarem faixas de voz nos sites voltados para a música eletrônica. Às vezes, usam para divulgar o som, outras, só para o lucro mesmo”, exemplifica.


ONDE BAIXAR
beatport.com
cdbeatz.com
junodownload.com
loopasonic.com
primeloops.com
proloops.com

Conheça alguns sons vendidos na rede


As “ofertas”
Conheça os sons vendidos na rede

» Acapella
Frase ou palavra cantada. O som da voz humana é comercializada com distorção típica da música eletrônica.

» Fx
Efeitos de som variados, como scratchs (agulha arranhando disco de vinil) e mudanças de frequência.

» Pads
Bateria gerada eletronicamente a partir de tambores silenciosos, que geram sinais elétricos ao receber pressão. O software os identifica de acordo com o som programado (bumbo, caixa ou pratos) e gera o barulho da percussão.

» Strings
Solos de guitarra e baixo são os mais comuns entre os sons de instrumentos de cordas vendidos online, mas também há pacotes de música clássica, com solos de viola, violino e harpa.

» Synths
Instrumento musical similar a um teclado, o sintetizador gera sons artificiais e distorções a partir de correntes elétricas.

This is not an invitation to give us a call the next time you go to a restaurant. This is a reminder of all the great books you can get for free on our green gift giveaway!

Yes, we have a book on sushi (Sustainable Sushi), another one on tofu (Tofu Cookery), Vegan (well, that's actually for your dog - The Simple Little Vegan Dog Book) and one on Desserts (Raw for Dessert). Not only that these are great and valuable books, but they're also printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper!

So what is this giveaway exactly? Well, for over two years Eco-Libris has been offering eco-conscious readers the opportunity to balance out their books by planting trees. At the same time our company has worked to promote sustainable reading, and reduce books' impact on the environment. Now we're combining the two, with a special giveaway that rewards customers with green gifts that promote green reading, from gift cards for Strand Bookstore and BookSwim to free "green" books, which participated in our green books campaign.

And how do you get a free book? It's very simple - if you balance out 50 books by planting 50 trees, you can choose one of these “green” books as a gift. Just choose a book from the list below and Email us its name after you complete the purchase on the take action page on our website, or enter it in the comments box during the payment process. If you want to, you can also give it to someone as a gift and we'll be happy to send it to them on your behalf!

Here are some more details on the "green" books you can choose from:

Raw for Dessert: Easy Delights for Everyone

Author: Jennifer Cornbleet

Now you can have your cake and eat it too! You can stay vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, or just plain health-conscious and still eat delicious cakes, pies, compotes, crumbles, custards, sorbets, ice creams, cookies, and candies. All raw!

Here are Jennifer's favorite no-bake, no-guilt treats. You'll learn to avoid white sugar, white flour, dairy products, trans-fats, saturated fats, and processed foods. And you'll be able to make easy-to-follow recipes for a reasonable amount of money, in a reasonable amount of time.

Some of the delectable desserts perfect for every occasion are: Summer Berry Compote, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Chocolate Cupcakes, Crème Brulée, Lemon Tart, Pumpkin Pie, and Knockout Brownie Sundae. Gorgeous color photos provide all the inspiration you need.

Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time

Author: Casson Trenor

Sustainable Sushi answers the question on the minds of millions who enjoy eating fish: how can we indulge the desire to dine well while keeping our health and the health of the oceans in mind? With painstaking research found in no other book on the market to date, this pocket-size guide profiles dozens of the most common fish and shellfish one might encounter at a sushi bar, details where and how they are caught, whether or not they are safe, and how they figure in the current fishery crisis.

Written by a fishery and sustainability expert who was himself netted long ago by the allure of Japanese cuisine, Sustainable Sushi offers simple, clear explanations of such topics as mercury and PCB levels, overfishing, and species extinction. In a storm of seafood shortages and frightening statistics, Sustainable Sushi shows readers how to enjoy the sushi bar without guilt.

Greening Your Small Business: How to Improve Your Bottom Line, Grow Your Brand, Satisfy Your Customers - and Save the Planet

Author: Jennifer Kaplan

The ultimate resource for small business owners who want to go green without going broke. Greening Your Small Business is the definitive resource for those who want their small businesses to be cutting- edge, competitive, profitable, and eco-conscious. Filled with stories from small business owners of all stripes, Greening Your Small Business addresses every aspect of going green, from basics such as recycling, reducing waste, energy efficiency, and reducing the IT footprint, to more in-depth concerns such as green marketing and communications, green business travel, and green employee benefits.

For companies too small to hire consultants to draft and implement green policies and practices, this guide is designed for easy use, featuring:
• Simple ways to make the workplace greener
• Two plans of action for going green (divided into two levels)
• Definitions for green terminology and jargon

The Simple Little Vegan Dog Book, Cruelty-Free Recipes for Canine

Author: Michelle Rivera

The Simple Little Vegan Dog Book by animal rights advocate Michelle Rivera shows how your companion canine can become a satisfied omnivore. This compendium of nutritious, plant-based recipes provide the nutrients your dog needs in order to maintain good health as well as the flavors they love according to the enthusiastic response from pets being fed this diet.

Although vegans will now be able to extend their lifestyle to include what they feed their dogs, you needn't be a vegan or vegetarian to profit from this information. Most dog owners are concerned about the quality of ingredients in commercial dog food.

Sweet Utopia, Simply Stunning Vegan Desserts

Author: Sharon Valencik

Sweet Utopia shows how to create the luscious flavors and familiar textures of traditional desserts without the use of eggs or dairy. These easy-to-make, yet sensational, desserts are all lactose- and cholesterol-free and perfect for vegans, anyone allergic to dairy or eggs, those who need to watch their intake of saturated fat, and last, but not least, lovers of sweets everywhere.

These recipes cover a wide array of goodies including cakes, cookies, pies, puddings, and other treats and are accompanied by over 130 full-color photos that provide inspiration and anticipation.

Tofu Cookery (25th Anniversary Edition)

Author: Louise Hagler

TOFU COOKERY 25th Anniversary Edition celebrates a quarter of a century of helping people prepare delicious dishes featuring tofu. Since then, tofu has become a household word, the health benefits of soy have been validated by thousands of scientific studies, and a goldmine of soy products can be found in supermarkets nationwide.

The best tofu dishes, however, can still be made at home. Soy-foods pioneer Louise Hagler expertly shows how easy it is to add a little tofu to both your favorite comfort foods and gourmet fare. To reflect today's tastes and trends, new recipes were added and the original recipes revised to use less salt and smaller amounts of more healthful fats. The latest cooking methods preserve nutrients as well as flavor.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Visiting U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Saturday that Israeli settlement building anywhere on occupied land is illegal and must be stopped, while a Palestinian teenager was killed in clashes with Israeli troops elsewhere in the West Bank.

The death of 16-year-old Mohammed Qadus, who Palestinians say was shot in the chest by Israeli security forces, comes amid heightened tensions between Israelis and Palestinians after Israel announced plans last week for 1,600 new homes for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem.

The settlement announcement has sparked outrage and protests from Palestinians, as well as condemnation from Israel's closest ally – the United States – and the U.N. secretary general.

From a hilltop observation post on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Ban got a closer look Saturday at some of the Israeli enclaves scattered across Palestinian-claimed territories.

The panorama included the sprawling West Bank settlement of Givat Zeev, home to 11,000 Israelis who live in rows of red-roofed houses, and Jewish neighborhoods in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, the Israeli-annexed sector of the city that Palestinians claim as a future capital.

The brief geography lesson came a day after Ban, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other major Mideast mediators – known as the Quartet – met in Moscow to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The mediators urged Israel to halt all settlement construction. Israel has agreed to curb settlement construction in the West Bank, but not in east Jerusalem, claiming the entire city as Israel's eternal capital.

On Saturday, Ban rejected Israel's distinction between east Jerusalem and the West Bank, noting that both are occupied lands.

"The world has condemned Israel's settlement plans in east Jerusalem," Ban told a news conference after his brief tour. "Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped."

The U.N. chief also expressed concern about what he said was a worsening humanitarian situation in blockaded Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Speaking later Saturday in Jerusalem alongside Israeli President Shimon Peres, Ban repeated the Quartet's call for a resumption of talks and for the establishment of a Palestinian state within two years.

Earlier this month, Israelis and Palestinians agreed to indirect talks, with U.S. envoy George Mitchell to shuttle between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, the negotiations were put on hold after Israel announced its new settlement plans.

The announcement – which came during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden – prompted a major diplomatic row between Israel and the U.S., though Clinton suggested Friday that a way could be found to renew negotiations. Clinton has asked Netanyahu for specific gestures, including canceling the most recent housing plan, and is to hear from the Israeli leader in a meeting in Washington early next week.

Senior U.S. officials in Washington say Netanyahu apparently has put in writing the pledges he made to Clinton during their telephone conversation on Thursday.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe contents of a private diplomatic contact between Clinton and Netanyahu.

Clinton reportedly asked Israel to revoke its recent building decision, roll back on plans for new Jewish homes and make goodwill gestures such as releasing Palestinian prisoners and lifting some West Bank roadblocks.

Meanwhile, Mitchell is returning to the region over the weekend and is planning to brief Abbas on U.S. efforts. Abbas has said he will not negotiate with Israel directly unless it freezes all settlement construction, including in east Jerusalem.

Palestinians fear that expanding settlements will take up more and more of the land they want for their state.

Netanyahu has agreed to a 10-month curb in West Bank construction that ends in September, but the construction of some 3,000 homes in settlements, begun before Israel declared the partial freeze, is continuing.

Nearly half a million Israelis live on war-won land, including some 180,000 in east Jerusalem and nearly 300,000 in the West Bank.

Violent protests have erupted several times in the past week in east Jerusalem, where residents are angry over both the new Jewish housing plans and unsubstantiated rumors that Jewish extremists are plotting to take over an Old City shrine, holy to both Muslims and Jews.

The city was largely calm Saturday, although in a minor incident Palestinian youths lobbed some rocks at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullet fire.

In the northern West Bank, a doctor at a Nablus hospital said Qadus died Saturday after being shot in the chest by Israeli security forces. Palestinians say a 17-year-old protester was also in serious condition after being shot in the head. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Israel's military confirmed that it dispersed a group of masked, rock-throwing Palestinians near the town of Iraq Burin with tear gas and rubber bullets. It said the Palestinians were holding a violent, illegal riot and were approaching a nearby settlement in a threatening manner. The military insisted that its troops did not use live bullets and said it was investigating reports of the Palestinian death.

Clashes take place in the village on a near weekly basis over a water well that Palestinians claim Jewish settlers are trying to seize for their own use.

____

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

More on United Nations

MÉXICO DF, 20 (EUROPA PRESS)

Al menos 23 personas han perdido la vida en distintos incidentes violentos registrados en las últimas horas en Mexico, principalmente en el estado de Sinaloa, en el norte del país, ocho de ellos en un tiroteo entre grupos rivales que emplearon incluso granadas en el enfrentamiento, según informó el diario 'El Universal' citando fuentes de la Procuraduría de Justicia de Sinaloa.

Los sicarios se enfrentaron en una carretera cercana a la costa occidental mexicana en la mañana del sábado. Las fuerzas de seguridad hallaron una camioneta con los cuerpos de cinco hombres parcialmente calcinados y con vestimenta color azul, similar a los uniformes de la Policía Federal.

Tres kilómetros más adelante, en otra camioneta, se hallaron los cadáveres de otros dos hombres fuertemente armados y con impactos de bala. Sobre el asfalto quedó la octava víctima, vestida con un uniforme falso de la Policía Federal y con una granada de fragmentación sin activar en la mano derecha.

Las primeras investigaciones hacen presumir que los ocho muertos viajaban en las dos vehículos y que cayeron en una emboscada tendida por individuos apostados en ambos lados de la carretera y sobre un puente les dispararon desde varios ángulos.

Los agredidos respondieron el fuego, por lo que les lanzaron granadas de fragmentación. Una de ellas alcanzó a los ocupantes de la camioneta, por lo que sus ocupantes perecieron de forma inmediata.

Uno de los presuntos delincuentes que se desplazaron en la camioneta al parecer descendió de la unidad e intentó responder la agresión, por lo que fue alcanzado por una lluvia de balas que le impidió lanzar una granada de fragmentación.

Desde un primer momento se descartó que las victimas fueran miembros de la Policía Federal, como en un principio se presumía por el tipo de vestimenta.

Tres hombres más fueron ejecutados en distintos puntos del estado. Uno de ellos, de 34 años de edad, fue encontrado envuelto en una manta e incinerado y con un disparo en la cabeza. En el lugar se encontró un recipiente con gasolina, lo que hace presumir que sus asesinos rociaron su cuerpo y le prendieron fuego. Además, en Culiacán hombres armados persiguieron y dieron muerte a balazos a dos hombres.

Por otra parte, se registró otro enfrentamiento armado en la zona de Celestino Gazca, a 115 kilómetros al sur de la ciudad de Culiacán, con un balance preliminar de cinco muertos, entre ellos dos agentes de la Policía Federal. Los datos que se conocen es que esta mañana varios hombres armados a bordo de dos camionetas atacaron a los policías de la Sección Caminos.

En Tamaulipas, en el noroeste de México, un militar y tres civiles perdieron la vida en un enfrentamiento registrado anoche en Ciudad Victoria. Dos personas más resultaron heridas.

Según informó el diario 'El Universal', que cita fuentes del Centro de Información Oportuna del Gobierno de Tamaulipas, civiles y militares se enfrentaron en las calles de la localidad.

Por último, efectivos del Ejército mexicano se enfrentaron anoche con presuntos secuestradores en la colonia Colinas de San Jerónimo de Monterrey, en Nuevo León (norte), con un saldo de tres delincuentes muertos y dos mujeres rescatadas.

Os advogados de defesa de José Roberto Arruda deram uma nova cartada na estratégia de questionar a decisão do Tribunal Regional Eleitoral (TRE) que cassou o mandato do político por infidelidade partidária. Eles alegam que se o mandato é do DEM, então só resta à Câmara Legislativa eleger indiretamente um candidato filiado ao partido. A defesa não definiu ainda em que instância entrará com o recurso para recuperar o cargo de Arruda, mas já sabe o argumento: de que ele não foi infiel ao partido, mas que se viu pressionado a pedir a desfiliação. Se for mantida a cassação sob a tese de que o mandato é do Democratas, a advogada de defesa de Arruda, Luciana Lóssio, cobrará então que o cargo permaneça nas mãos da legenda. “Não se pode entender que ele foi infiel. Não houve infidelidade, pois ele apenas atendeu um pedido e determinação do presidente do partido. Ele tem chance total de não ser cassado”, disse.

Alguns juristas já discordam do argumento da defesa de Arruda. “Uma eleição não se comunica com a outra nesse caso. Não existe essa relação direta. É mais uma estratégia da defesa”, avalia o advogado Luís Carlos Alcoforado. Para o deputado distrital Chico Leite (PT), que atuou como promotor de Justiça, também não existe correlação. “É um argumento interessante da defesa. Mas a partir do momento que o TRE decidiu, o jogo foi zerado. Não está prevista essa situação nos critérios de inegibilidade”, comentou.

Compromisso
A eleição indireta para governador do Distrito Federal, prevista para daqui a 27 dias, terá grande influência em outra definição: a de quem conquistará o mandato para os próximos quatro anos. Por mais que a Câmara Legislativa tente um acordo de cavalheiros para garantir que o eleito agora não saia candidato na disputa pelo Palácio do Buriti em outubro, nada na lei assegura esse compromisso.

Enquanto isso, os deputados distritais articulam as pré-candidaturas cientes de que o escolhido para o mandato-tampão poderá se manter à frente da chefia do Executivo local. O governador em exercício, Wilson Lima (PR); o deputado federal Alberto Fraga (DEM), o deputado distrital Pastor Aguinaldo de Jesus (PRB), e até o ex-ministro do Supremo Tribunal Federal Maurício Corrêa, aparecem como candidatáveis.

A Câmara Legislativa define amanhã o calendário eleitoral para a escolha indireta do governador do Distrito Federal. É esperado que seja aberto o prazo de inscrição dos candidatos já nesta semana. Os assessores jurídicos da Mesa Diretora da Câmara passaram o fim de semana analisando as regras da eleição. A fim de evitar a intervenção federal no DF, os técnicos fizeram um esboço da Lei Ordinária para impedir a participação de candidatos com ficha suja na Justiça ou com pendências fiscais nas eleições indiretas. O documento propõe que o eleito governador indiretamente não dispute o pleito em outubro. E restringe a candidatura para pessoas com menos de 30 anos, que seja eleitor no DF e pertença a um partido político há, pelo menos, 12 meses.

Essa rede de negociações pode ser adiada caso o recurso da defesa do governador cassado seja aceito pelos ministros do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE). Os advogados têm até amanhã para recorrer da decisão do TRE. Mas, caso os argumentos sejam negados, os distritais terão de correr contra o tempo para realizar as eleições e escolher o novo líder do Executivo. As alianças deverão estar bem costuradas desde já para o momento da disputa. Antes disso, os parlamentares terão de se preocupar com outros pontos importantes: a aprovação em segundo turno da emenda à Lei Orgânica que autoriza as eleições indiretas no DF. Na corrida para eleger um nome ao governo do DF, os distritais elegeram em menos de sete horas, na semana passada, a proposta de alteração da lei.

Wilson Lima, por exemplo, tem de estar certo de que vai ganhar para não colocar em risco o seu futuro político. Ele tem duas opções: esquecer as eleições indiretas para, em outubro, concorrer novamente a deputado distrital. Ou pode se manter à frente do Executivo até dezembro e correr o risco de não conseguir um cargo público para ano que vem. Ele tem até 3 de abril para se decidir. “Não dá para ser ingênuo. Quem ganhar agora, terá toda a máquina pública em suas mãos. E a tentação de se manter no poder é grande. Por isso, não podemos menosprezar a possibilidade do eleito agora querer ser governador por mais quatro anos”, avaliou um distrital.

Na busca por um nome para liderar interinamente o DF, os governistas apostam na candidatura de Fraga. Ele já teria se apresentado a alguns deputados como candidato. Para o DEM, é uma ótima solução. Fraga poderia sair candidato à reeleição com o espolio do governador cassado José Roberto Arruda e racharia a base de apoio de Joaquim Roriz. Em outra frente, Pastor Aguinaldo está em busca de apoio até do vice-presidente da República, José de Alencar, colega de partido, o PRB. Já Maurício Corrêa é mais discreto. Teria participado de conversas com os distritais, mas oficialmente não se coloca como candidato. “Não estou procurando me eleger, mas me sinto honrado de meu nome ter sido citado. Meu nome pode ser cotado, mas depois eu avalio se concorro ou não”, disse.

Em poucos dias, pré-candidaturas já foram infladas e logo depois naufragadas. Caso de Eliana Pedrosa (DEM) e Alírio Neto (PPS). Wilson Lima, que já foi um dos favoritos, perde apoio aos poucos. Um clima de descontentamento entre os distritais paira sobre ele, pois não estaria atendendo aos pedidos dos colegas no que se refere a abertura de espaço no governo. Ainda assim, ele se mantém na disputa. Eliana, Raimundo Ribeiro (PSDB) e Batista das Cooperativas (PRP), no entanto, foram colocados de escanteio. Os deputados temem a contaminação do processo pela proximidade ao governo Arruda. “Minha preocupação é conduzir este processo, seguindo rigorosamente as leis para que não haja brecha alguma para se questionar depois qualquer ato desta presidência”, afirma o presidente Cabo Patrício (PT).

Contagem regressiva

Terça-feira, 16 de março
O Tribunal Regional Eleitoral (TRE) do Distrito Federal condenou José Roberto Arruda por infidelidade partidária por 4 votos contra 3. O destino político de Arruda foi decidido por um voto, o de desempate, proferido pelo desembargador Lecir Manoel da Luz. Venceu, portanto, a tese do Ministério Público Eleitoral, de que Arruda cometeu infidelidade partidária ao se desfiliar do Democratas para evitar o processo interno de expulsão.


Terça-feira, 16 de março
O procurador-geral da República, Roberto Gurgel, enviou um parecer aos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) reforçando a necessidade da intervenção no DF. Para ele, o afastamento do governador e a substituição pelo presidente da Câmara Legislativa, Wilson Lima (PR), não restabeleceram a ordem institucional. O documento foi produzido antes de o TRE cassar o mandato de Arruda.


Quarta-feira, 17 de março
Um dia após a decisão do TRE, 19 dos 22 distritais aprovaram em primeiro turno a proposta que modifica a Lei Orgânica do DF para permitir a eleição indireta no Distrito Federal. A forma de conduzir este processo será discutida em 30 de março. A proposta foi aprovada em um intervalo de sete horas: pela manhã, na Comissão de Constituição e Justiça (CCJ); no início da tarde, na Comissão Especial de Emendas à Lei Orgânica; e, no fim do dia, em plenário. O deputado Paulo Roriz (DEM) dá uma “banana” aos estudantes que faziam críticas à atividade parlamentar na galeria da Câmara Legislativa.


Quinta-feira, 18 de março
Os deputados distritais começaram a estudar regras que impediriam a participação de candidatos com ficha suja na Justiça ou pendências fiscais nas eleições indiretas ao governo do DF. Para eles, o eleito deve se comprometer a não disputar o pleito de outubro. E quem decidir se candidatar deve ter mais de 30 anos, deve votar no DF, e pertencer a um partido político há, pelo menos, 12 meses. Além de apresentar declarações sobre seus antecedentes na Justiça e no Fisco.


Quinta-feira, 18 de março
A decisão do TRE foi publicada no Diário de Justiça. A partir de então, Arruda deixou de ser governador do Distrito Federal. Por prudência e segurança jurídica, no entanto, a vacância do cargo de governador de Brasília só será anunciada amanhã, quando esgota-se o prazo para recursos da defesa. Arruda só retomará o cargo se conseguir efeito suspensivo da decisão do TRE-DF em eventual recurso ao Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE).


Sexta-feira, 19 de março
Deputados distritais se reuniram com desembargadores do TRE para sanar algumas dúvidas em relação à eleição indireta do governador do DF. Os desembargadores sugeriram que os parlamentares se apeguem à Constituição Federal ao traçarem as condições para o pleito. Os magistrados ainda aconselharam os distritais a consultar um constitucionalista para esclarecer as dúvidas sobre a sucessão. Estavam no encontro Paulo Tadeu (PT), Eliana Pedrosa (DEM) e Cabo Patrício (PT).


Sexta-feira, 19 de março
Os estudantes que receberam uma “banana” do deputado Paulo Roriz (DEM) na sessão plenária da Câmara na última quarta-feira revidaram o ataque. Eles foram ao gabinete do parlamentar e deixaram uma penca da fruta em cima da mesa. Eles também protocolaram uma reclamação formal, pedindo a abertura de uma ação por quebra de decoro por parte do distrital. Mas nada conseguirão. A ação estava em nome de Pedro Roriz, e não de Paulo Roriz.

O estado de saúde do ex-governador José Roberto Arruda tem deixado advogados, médico e esposa preocupados. As suspeitas, agora, são de que Arruda esteja com quadro avançado de depressão. Após visita que durou cerca de quarenta minutos à cela que ocupa na Superintendência da Polícia Federal, o médico particular Brasil Caiado solicitou uma reavaliação psiquiátrica para o paciente. “Em 1º de março, Arruda fez o primeiro exame com terapeutas da Polícia Federal. No resultado, havia oscilações entre a normalidade e um pouco de depressão. Mas hoje (ontem) seu estado de saúde está bem diferente. Apesar de o coração estar com os batimentos bons e a pressão arterial ter respondido bem aos novos medicamentos, ele aparenta estar bem mais abatido, profundamente angustiado e com olhos cheios de lágrimas”, descreveu Caiado.

Flávia Arruda confirmou ao Correio a preocupação com o estado de saúde do marido. Discreta, ela chegou à sede da Polícia Federal às 12h40 de ontem para levar o almoço de Arruda. Acompanhada de duas amigas, a ex-primeira-dama entrou de cabeça baixa e, a princípio, preferiu não dar entrevistas. Na portaria da PF, recebeu uma sacola entregue pelo militar da reserva João Rodrigues de Sousa, 59, que também é pastor evangélico e tentava há um mês levar os livros para o governador. “Eu pensava em fazer isso, mas nunca consegui. Hoje (ontem) de manhã senti que deveria vir e tive a sorte de pegá-la na entrada”, disse, se referindo ao encontro com Flávia. Na sacola havia uma Bíblia, um CD com o testemunho de um homem, um vidro com água ungida, um lenço bento e um livro evangélico.

Os presentes provavelmente chegaram às mãos do governador cassado. Ao descer do carro, Flávia carregava a sacola vazia junto à frasqueira com o almoço de Arruda. Os agentes geralmente não proíbem a entrada de lembrancinhas. O encontro dela com o marido durou uma hora e dezesseis minutos. Depois, falou rapidamente com o Correio: “Ele está muito abatido, muito depressivo”.

Para conquistar a sua autonomia política, a população do Distrito Federal teve que enfrentar 26 anos de luta e muita mobilização. Depois de protestos, passeatas e assinatura de manifestos, a sociedade brasiliense conquistou o direito de eleger seus representantes. Agora, quase 25 anos depois da primeira eleição direta, a cidade vai se unir novamente para garantir essa conquista. A Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil no DF mobilizou 54 entidades, entre partidos políticos, associações comunitárias e representantes do setor produtivo, para formar um grande movimento popular contra a intervenção federal. O primeiro ato está marcado para a próxima quinta-feira. A partir das 16h, integrantes do movimento vão dar um abraço simbólico no prédio do Supremo Tribunal Federal, para defender a autonomia do DF.

O pedido de intervenção apresentado pelo procurador-geral da República, Roberto Gurgel, será analisado pelo STF até o mês que vem. O relator do caso é o presidente do Supremo, ministro Gilmar Mendes. Depois de apresentar seu parecer, ele submeterá o pedido à análise do plenário do STF. O ministro pode ainda realizar audiências públicas para discutir o assunto antes de elaborar seu relatório.

Além do abraço simbólico, os representantes do movimento contra a intervenção também vão entregar um manifesto ao presidente do STF. No texto elaborado pelas entidades signatárias, os representantes repudiam as denúncias de corrupção no governo e no Legislativo, exigem uma apuração rigorosa dos fatos, mas destacam que os serviços públicos estão sendo prestados normalmente — o que demonstraria que as instituições não foram atingidas pela crise política.

O presidente da OAB-DF, Francisco Caputo, explica que a ideia do abraço ao STF é mostrar que a sociedade apoia e confia no trabalho do Supremo. “Brasília confia muito na capacidade técnica e na sensibilidade jurídica dos ministros. Mas queremos provar que não há necessidade de decretação de intervenção. Por mais grave que seja a crise, nossas instituições estão funcionando”, afirma o advogado Francisco Caputo.

Constituição
No manifesto que será entregue nas mãos de Gilmar Mendes, os apoiadores do movimento contra a intervenção citam a Constituição Federal de 1988. O texto estabelece os critérios para a eventual nomeação de interventores para os estados e municípios. Pelos princípios constitucionais, a União pode usar essa medida apenas para manter a integridade nacional, repelir invasões estrangeiras, garantir a ordem pública e assegurar o livre exercício do poder nos estados e no DF. Além disso, a Constituição autoriza a intervenção quando é necessário reorganizar as finanças de unidades da Federação que decretarem moratória, para garantir o cumprimento de leis e ordens judiciais e para assegurar a observância dos princípios constitucionais.

Para o movimento contra a intervenção, não há justificativas para a decretação dessa medida na capital federal. “No atual momento da história do Distrito Federal, a intervenção seria inconstitucional por representar um ato de violência contra o pacto federativo e contra todos os cidadãos que moram e trabalham em Brasília — a capital de todos os brasileiros”, diz o manifesto. “Seria um retrocesso à democracia tão duramente conquistada”, conclui o texto.

Uma das preocupações do movimento contra a intervenção é o impacto que isso teria na economia do Distrito Federal. O presidente da OAB-DF teme a paralisação de obras públicas e, com isso, o aumento do desemprego. “Atualmente, mais de 50 mil pessoas trabalham nas obras que estão em andamento. A paralisação poderia gerar um caos social”, afirma Caputo. “O setor produtivo já tem sentido os impactos da crise política. Hotéis, lojas e taxistas registram movimento menor desde o fim do ano passado”, acrescenta.

Eleição indireta
Para o ex-ministro do STF Carlos Velloso, as instituições estão funcionando bem e, portanto, não haveria motivos para o Supremo decretar a nomeação de um interventor. Para ele, a preocupação agora deve ficar em torno da realização de eleições indiretas, como determina a Constituição Federal. “A crise política jamais pode ser interpretada como justificativa para uma medida excepcional e patológica, como a intervenção. O que precisa ser observado agora é a sucessão constitucional”, afirma o ex-ministro, que presidiu o STF entre 1999 e 2001.

O procurador-geral do Distrito Federal, Marcelo Galvão, também apoia o movimento. Ele destaca a importância da participação de toda a sociedade na luta pela garantia da autonomia política. “A crise é grave, mas as instituições estão respondendo com eficiência. Os serviços públicos essenciais são prestados de forma normal, regular”, destaca o procurador-geral do Distrito Federal.

Para Marcelo Galvão, nenhuma das hipóteses previstas na Constituição está presente no DF, para justificar a nomeação de um interventor. “Nenhum princípio democrático ou republicano está sendo ferido. Propor uma intervenção federal no DF não faz sentido porque temos uma normalidade institucional na cidade, todos que aqui vivem sabem que o cotidiano de Brasília não foi modificado pela crise política”, garante o procurador. “A intervenção não é boa para a cidade, nem para a população. Sobretudo, às vésperas de Brasília comemorar seus 50 anos”, defende.

Assuntos técnicos
Atualmente, os ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal só pedem a realização de audiências públicas quando as votações são em torno de assuntos mais técnicos, como as cotas raciais nas universidades ou a liberação de células-tronco em pesquisas.

Lista das 54 entidades

• Associação Brasileira de Bares e Restaurantes do Distrito Federal (Abrasel-DF)
• Associação Brasileira dos Construtores
• Associação Brasiliense das Agências de Viagens (Abav)
• Associação Brasiliense de Peritos em Criminalística do DF
• Associação Comercial do Distrito Federal
• Associação de Jovens Empresários do Distrito Federal (Aje/DF)
• Associação dos Criadores do Planalto (ACP)
• Associação dos Delegados de Polícia do Brasil (Adepol)
• Associação dos Idosos e Pensionistas do DF (Asaprev)
• Associação dos Procuradores do Distrito Federal
• Associação Geral dos Servidores da Polícia Civil do DF (Agepol)
• Caixa de Assistência dos Advogados do DF
• Câmara Legislativa do DF
• Câmara Vereadores Comunitários de Taguatinga
• Central dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras do Brasil
• Central Única dos Trabalhadores do DF
• Confederação Brasileira dos Aposentados, Pensionistas e Idosos (Cobap)
• Confederação Brasileira dos Trabalhadores Policiais Civis (Cobrapol)
• Confederação dos Servidores Públicos no Brasil (CSPB)
• Confederação dos Trabalhadores do Transporte Terrestre (CNTT)
• Confederação Nacional das Profissões Liberais
• Confederação Nacional dos Empregados de Empresas de Créditos
• Confederação Nacional dos Metalúrgicos
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Estabelecimento de Ensino e Cultura
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Transportes Aquaviários e Aéreos na Pesca e nos Portos
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Turismo e Hospitalidade
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (Conta)
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Indústria (CNTI)
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Saúde
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores nas Indústrias de Alimentação e Afins
• Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores no Comércio
• Confraria dos Cidadãos Honorários de Brasília
• Conselho Regional de Administração
• Federação do Comércio de Bens, Serviços e Turismo do DF
• Federação dos Empreendedores do Brasil
• Federação dos Empregados no Comércio do Paraná
• Fórum Nacional da Advocacia
• Fórum Sindical dos Trabalhadores
• Nova Central Sindical dos Trabalhadores
• O Sindicato da Indústria da Construção Civil do Distrito Federal (Sinduscon- DF)
• Partido da República (PR-DF)
• Partido Democrata Trabalhista (PDT)
• Partido Social Brasileiro (PSB-DF)
• Secretaria de Justiça (Sejus) – apoio técnico aos conselhos tutelares
• Sindicato das Empresas de Asseio e Conservação do Distrito Federal
• Sindicato de Hotéis, Bares e Restaurantes do Distrito Federal (Sindhobar)
• Sindicato dos Delegados de Polícia do DF (Sindepo)
• Sindicato dos Jornalistas
• Sindicato dos Médicos do DF
• Sindicato dos Procuradores do DF
• União Geral dos Trabalhadores
• União Geral dos Trabalhadores
• União Sindical Independente

When it comes to the health care reform bill, perfect is the enemy of good. But Republicans are the enemy of everything. And on Sunday, every member of the House GOP will likely vote against the final health care reform bill that will bring coverage to 32 million more Americans, end insurance company abuses involving rescission, pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps on payments, all while slashing the federal budget deficit by $1.3 trillion over the next two decades.

But in saying no in that simple up-or-down vote scheduled for Sunday, Congressional Republicans are choosing to perpetuate the worsening symptoms of an American health care system already in critical condition.

Here, then, are the 10 Republican No's on health care:

1. No Hope for the 50 Million Uninsured
2. No Improvement for 25 Million More Underinsured
3. No Halt to the Rapid Deterioration of Employer-Based Coverage
4. No Help for the 1 in 5 Americans Already Postponing Their Medical Care
5. No Drop in the 62% of Bankruptcies Due to Medical Bills
6. No End to Double-Digit Increases in Business Insurance Premiums
7. No Barrier to Family Premiums Doubling in 10 Years
8. No Reduction of the Near-Monopoly Status in 94% of Insurance Markets
9. No Reversing the Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
10. No Rescue for the 45,000 Uninsured Americans Needlessly Dying Each Year
11. No Chance for Failing Red State Health Care

The data and details behind each follows after the break.

1. No Hope for the 50 Million Uninsured
In 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau placed the number of uninsured people in America at 45.7 million, up from 37 million since the last time Republicans successfully blocked health care reform in 1993. But a February 2009 analysis by the Center for American Progress found that the recession had already added four million more to the rolls of the uninsured, a group which a study by Families USA last March found included 86.7 million Americans over a two-year span. And a July Gallup poll revealed the percentage of American adults without coverage catapulted to 16% from 14.8% since the start of the Bush recession in December 2007. All told, likely another five million people have pushed the ranks of the uninsured over 50 million.

And as the New York Times found last month in "The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care," should the Democrats fail to muster the needed votes this weekend, the future is bleaker still:

While estimates vary, the number of people without insurance is expected to increase by more than a million a year, said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a Washington consumer advocacy group that favors the Democrats' approach. The Urban Institute, for example, predicts that the number of uninsured individuals will increase from about 49 million today to between 57 million and 66 million by 2019.

2. No Improvement for 25 Million More Underinsured
The crisis doesn't end there. In June 2007, a devastating assessment from the Commonwealth Fund showed fully 25 million more Americans were "underinsured," a staggering 60 percent jump since 2003. As the study showed, the number of "people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses" has skyrocketed:

As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million underinsured adults in the United States, up 60 percent from 2003.

Much of this growth comes from the ranks of the middle class. While low-income people remain vulnerable, middle-income families have been hit hardest. For adults with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (about $40,000 per year for a family), the underinsured rates nearly tripled since 2003.

All in all, 75 million Americans - 42% of the people in the United States under age 65- have insufficient insurance or simply none at all.

3. No Halt to the Rapid Deterioration of Employer-Based Coverage
Making matters much worse is the rapid deterioration of employer-provided health insurance coverage. A 2007 report from the Economic Policy Institute showed a dramatic decline in employer-provided health care. That drop-off from 64.2% of Americans covered through workplace insurance in 2000 to just 59.7% in 2006 alone added 2.3 million more people to those without coverage. Census data since showed workplace coverage dipped further in 2007, down to an alarming 59.3%. A recent Thomson Reuters survey put the figure for 2009 at a stunning 54.6%. (Data from the U.S. Census revealed that it was only the expansion of government programs including SCHIP and Medicaid which offset the erosion of employer coverage in 2008.)

And recent surveys by National Business Group on Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the situation is quickly worsening. While the NBGH sampling of 507 firms each with over 1,000 employees revealed that 56% will hold workers responsible for a greater share of health care costs next year, the September Kaiser study was grimmer still:

Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.

Nine percent said they plan to tighten eligibility for health benefits; 8 percent said they plan to drop coverage entirely. Forty-one percent of employers said they were "somewhat" or "very" likely to increase the amount employees pay in premiums -- though that would not necessarily mean employees are paying a higher percentage of the premiums.

4. No Help for the 1 in 5 Americans Already Postponing Their Medical Care
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warns of a dystopian future of reform which "denies, delays, or rations health care," de facto rationing is already today's nightmare for millions of Americans.

An April 2009 Thomson Reuters survey of 12,000 people not only found that 20% of Americans have postponed or delayed medical care. That 1 in 5 figure is a staggering jump from 15.9% in 2006. Other jaw-dropping numbers from that report:

In the most recent survey, 21 percent of U.S. adults expected to have difficulty paying for health insurance or healthcare services in the next three months...

More than 54 percent who skipped care said they missed a doctor visit. Eight percent said they delayed or skipped medical imaging of some sort.

As McClatchy reported last fall, a new Consumers Union survey revealed that due to skyrocketing costs and reductions in coverage, Americans are forced to deny themselves needed medical treatment. Among the findings of CU's poll of a 1,002 respondents:

In the new poll 59 percent said that the cost of their health care had increased more than their other expenses over the past two years. Fifty-one percent said they had faced difficult health care choices in the past year. The most common responses were putting off a doctor visit because of cost (28 percent), not being unable to afford medical bills or medication (25 percent), and putting off a medical procedure because of cost (22 percent).

Twenty-eight percent said they had lost or experienced cutbacks in their health care coverage in the past year. The greatest concerns about health care expressed by respondents were a major financial loss or setback from medical cost due to an illness or accident (73 percent), not being able to afford health care in the future (73 percent), necessary care being denied or rationed by health insurance companies (73 percent), and the prospect of rising costs forcing them to choose between health care and other necessities (64 percent).

5. No Drop in the 62% of Bankruptcies Due to Medical Bills
Often, among those "other necessities" is one's home. Given the deterioration of the employer-provided health coverage and the skyrocketing costs of out-of-pocket care, it's no wonder, as a June 2009 study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation determined, medical bills are involved in over 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies:

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote. "Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations."

6. No End to Double-Digit Increases in Business Insurance Premiums
The failure of health care reform would mean there is no end in sight to the skyrocketing insurance premiums paid by businesses and individual Americans alike.

A report last year from the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast employers will face a 9% increase in health insurance costs in 2010. 42% of those business surveyed will pass at least some the new burden on to their workers. As PWC's Michael Thompson concluded in June:

"If the underlying costs go up by 9%, employees' costs actually go up by double digits," he said, noting that will have a "major, major impact" when many employers also are freezing or cutting pay.

As the Washington Post detailed, some business groups themselves are also ringing the alarm bell. A new report from the Business Roundtable concluded, "If current trends continue, annual health-care costs for employers will rise 166 percent over the next decade -- to $28,530 per employee." Antonio M. Perez, chief executive of Eastman Kodak and a leader of the Business Roundtable described the relentless pressure faced by employers and employees alike:

"Maintaining the status quo is simply not an option. These costs are unsustainable and would put millions of workers at risk."

A March report from Goldman Sachs forecast just how much risk. Coming hot on the heels of annual premium increases as high as 39% from Anthem Blue Cross and others, the Goldman Sachs analysis predicted insurance rates for individuals will jump by up to 50% in some markets.

7. No Barrier to Family Premiums Doubling in 10 Years
The implications of these trends for American families are clear. The exponential increases in the private market combined with the looming collapse of employer-based coverage could lead to a typical family health insurance policy to nearly double in cost.

Pointing to data from the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Center for American Progress warns that per capita medical costs are forecast to rise by 71% over the next decade. That would catapult the cost of the average family's insurance policy from $13,000 a year to over $22,000 by 2019. And as the New York Times reported just weeks ago:

Even those families that enjoy generous insurance now are likely to see the cost of those benefits escalate. The typical price of family coverage now runs about $13,000 a year, but premiums are expected to nearly double, to $24,000, by 2020, according to the Commonwealth Fund. That equals nearly a quarter of the projected median family income in 2020.

8. No Reduction of the Near-Monopoly Status in 94% of Insurance Markets
As Ezra Klein of the Washington Post noted, the Democratic health care bill addresses one of the Republicans' supposed key goals of enabling "insurance companies compete for your business and you can shop around for the best coverage and price."

But as the Commonwealth Fund revealed in a report titled, "Failure to Protect: Why the Individual Insurance Market Is Not a Viable Option for Most U.S. Families," that is a far cry from today's actual private insurance market, one in which Americans are simply priced out:

Over the last three years, nearly three-quarters of people who tried to buy coverage in this market never actually purchased a plan, either because they could not find one that fit their needs or that they could afford, or because they were turned down due to a preexisting condition.

Behind that market failure is the rapid emergence of health insurance monopolies in most areas of the United States. The past 13 years have seen over 400 corporate mergers involving health insurers. As the American Medical Association found, "94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated, and insurers are thriving in the anti-competitive marketplace, raking in enormous profits and paying out huge CEO salaries." As I noted in 2006:

In most states, the AMA concludes, the idea of choice among competing insurance providers is a myth. The study showed that in each of 43 states, a small group of insurers exerts such market dominance as to merit the Justice Department "highly concentrated" market methodology for assessing potential anti-trust action. In 166 of 294 metropolitan areas surveyed, a single insurer controls over half the preferred provider network and HMO underwriting. In North Dakota, for example, Blue Shield owns 90% of the market. It's no wonder that Jim Rohack, an AMA trustee, concluded, "This problem is widespread across the country, and it needs to be looked at."

9. No Reversing the Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
Mitch McConnell, George W. Bush, Tom Delay and a laundry list of other Republican leaders have pledged allegiance to the GOP's emergency room solution to the American health care crisis. As they put it, "no American is denied health care in America" because "you just go to an emergency room."

As it turns out, the disturbing trends above are having a cascading effect on waiting times and treatment at American emergency rooms. While high-profile cases of the deaths of untreated ER patients in Los Angeles and New York put a face on the crisis, a 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine revealed that U.S. emergency rooms can barely cope with the volume of patients in the best of circumstances, let alone in the wake of crises such as a terrorist attack or flu epidemic:

The study cited three contributing problems to the rise in emergency room visits: the aging of the baby boomers, the growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients, and the lack of access to primary care physicians.

The report found that 114 million people, including 30 million children, visited emergency rooms in 2003, compared with 90 million visits a decade ago. In that same period, the number of U.S. hospitals decreased by 703, the number of emergency rooms decreased by 425, and the total number of hospital beds dropped by 198,000, mainly because of the trend toward cheaper outpatient care, according to the report.

In 2008, a Congressional panel looked into the ability of the nation's emergency rooms to handle a terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 Madrid bombings which killed 177 people and injured more than 2,000. The results were unsettling: "None of the 34 U.S. hospitals surveyed earlier this year had the emergency space needed to handle a similar number of casualties."

10. No Rescue for the 45,000 Uninsured Americans Needlessly Dying Each Year
The death spiral of the American health care system - and the scorched earth tactics of the Republican Party to prevent its reform - has a body count.

Back in September, a study by Harvard Medical School found that almost 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance. To translate that into a metric even Tea Baggers can understand, that annual death toll exceeds the number of U.S. military personnel killed during the entire Korean War. For its part, Families USA estimates that as many as 275,000 people will die prematurely over the next 10 years because they do not have insurance.

Even using more conservative models, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein noted in December, the $940 billion Democratic health care plan could save 150,000 American lives over a 10-year span. Again, translated into Tea Bagese, that's more than was lost by the United States armed forces during World War I.

11. No Chance for Failing Red State Health Care
As it turns out, Republican obstructionism goes to 11.

In the ultimate irony of this entire debate, health care is worst precisely those states where Republicans poll best. The unhealthiest residents and worst health care systems can be found in those states (especially southern states) which most reliably back the GOP. And if health care reform passes, it will be blue state taxpayers who will fund the improved health care for their red state brethren.

The diagnosis isn't pretty for Republicans committed to denying the health care their constituents need most of all. A 2009 UnitedHealth Foundation analysis of 22 indicators revealed that nine of the top 10 healthiest states voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Conversely, 9 of the 10 cellar dwellers backed John McCain in 2008; four years earlier, the 15 unhealthiest states voted for George W. Bush for President.

In October, the Commonwealth Fund released its 2009 state scorecard for health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. There, too, Mississippi led the Republican south in providing dismal health care. Again, while nine of the top 10 performing states voted for Barack Obama in 2008, four of the bottom five (including Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana) and 14 of the last 20 backed John McCain. (That at least is an improvement from the 2007 data, in which all 10 cellar dwellers had voted for George W. Bush three years earlier.)

This week, Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun said of the looming health care vote:

"If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that's in people's pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States -- the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

As the numbers show, Broun's reaction should be, "thank you."

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

O Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego (MTE) contratou para o atendimento no call center uma empresa que aplicava diversos golpes contra a administração pública. Recentemente, a Higiterc — Higienização e Terceirização Ltda. foi declarada inidônea pela Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU). Um processo administrativo apurou o envolvimento de laranjas (1) nos contratos de mão de obra terceirizada. A sanção foi publicada no fim de fevereiro deste ano. A empresa está proibida de prestar serviços para o governo federal nos próximos cinco anos. Em 1º de março, o MTE firmou um contrato emergencial com a Apecê até que uma nova licitação seja realizada.

O contrato nº 36/2009, no valor de R$ 1,89 milhão, foi celebrado em 6 de novembro para a “prestação de serviços de atendimento receptivo” e deveria durar até 5 de novembro deste ano. A empresa, no entanto, pediu a rescisão amigável depois que uma decisão da Justiça do Trabalho penhorou capital e recebimentos da empresa. Na sentença, o juiz considerou a Higiterc sucessora de outra empresa. Uma liminar determinou que os valores sejam usados pelo ministério para o pagamento dos funcionários terceirizados. Os empregados denunciam, entre outras coisas, que estão com salários atrasados e ainda não receberam os acertos referentes à rescisão contratual.

Sem rastro
A Higiterc Higienização e Terceirização Ltda. funcionava em três salas de um prédio comercial na Região Centro-Sul de Belo Horizonte. Entretanto, segundo o porteiro, há cerca de 20 dias os responsáveis desocuparam os imóveis, sem deixar qualquer rastro, como novo endereço ou telefone para contato. A orientação dada pelos antigos inquilinos ao porteiro é não aceitar correspondências levadas por funcionários dos Correios e informar que a empresa não existe mais.

A Higiterc tem cadastro ativo como fornecedora do governo de Minas Gerais válido até setembro deste ano. O site da empresa, informado no cadastro, não existe. O nome citado como responsável pelas informações repassadas ao setor de compras do governo de Minas é de Ricardo Silva Franco de Albuquerque, de 31 anos. Ele também é mencionado como um dos representantes legais da empresa. Até meados do ano passado, vivia em uma casa simples, de tijolo e teto de amianto, construída nos fundos de um terreno em um bairro de classe média baixa de Belo Horizonte. Segundo a família, ele mudou-se e não informou o novo endereço ou telefone.

1 - No lugar de outra
O termo laranja costumeiramente designa uma pessoa que assume ou é forçada a assumir a culpa no lugar da verdadeira responsável pela ação. No jargão policial, simboliza quem acoberta crimes como tráfico, homicídio, violência sexual, roubo e outros. No universo político, refere-se a pessoas ou a empresas que cumprem o papel de “fachada” para que outras cometam irregularidades e ilicitudes.

Como um órgão fiscalizador contrata uma empresa enrolada como essa, que já tinha tido problemas com outros órgãos da administração pública?”
Lula Torres, diretor do Sinttel

Sempre viajando

“O Ricardo passa a maior parte do tempo viajando, seja para Brasília ou para cidades do interior de Minas Gerais. Ele não fala nada do que se refere ao trabalho dele com a gente”, afirmou uma mulher que se apresentou como irmã mais velha de Ricardo Silva, mas que não quis dizer o nome. Segundo ela, desde quando se mudou, o irmão aparece de vez em quando na casa, apenas para visitar a mãe e os amigos mais próximos. Os outros responsáveis legais da empresa, Marta Pereira dos Santos e Elias Gomes de Araújo, não foram localizados pela reportagem. Os dois são sócios de uma outra empresa: a Megassíndico Profissionais.

O Sindicato dos Trabalhadores de Empresas de Telecomunicações (Sinttel) critica a seleção da empresa pelo Ministério do Trabalho. “Como é que um órgão fiscalizador contrata uma empresa sabidamente enrolada como essa, que já tinha tido problemas com outros órgãos da administração pública?”, questiona o diretor do Sinttel, Lula Torres. Segundo ele, a empresa participou de um pregão eletrônico oferecendo um preço vantajoso, já que reduziu significativamente os salários dos atendentes. “Passou de R$ 900 para R$ 600 com a Higiterc”, denuncia. (AR)

O corte nos salários de servidores públicos que recebem acima do teto (1) constitucional será regulamentado em decisão a ser tomada pelo Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) na próxima quarta-feira. A arrumação deverá começar dentro da própria Casa. O tribunal terá que decidir sobre os vencimentos de 42 “marajás” do próprio TCU e do Tribunal de Contas do Distrito Federal e Territórios (TCDFT) que recebem acima dos rendimentos dos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF): R$ 25,7 mil. São casos de servidores que acumulam salários desses tribunais com aposentadorias de outros órgãos federais. No TCU também há casos de médicos que exercem as mesmas funções em outros órgãos públicos.

O voto do ministro-relator, Augusto Nardes, ainda não está pronto, mas o texto elaborado pelo corpo técnico do TCU já aponta caminhos a serem seguidos. A primeira conclusão é a de que a aplicação do teto constitucional precisa ser regulamentada por lei federal. Isso porque o tribunal não teria poderes para fazer determinações a órgãos de estados e municípios. Assim, deverá ser proposta a criação de uma comissão com representantes das presidências do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), da Presidência da República e da Presidência do Congresso. Eles preparariam uma proposta a ser votada pelo Legislativo.

Uma das principais polêmicas é sobre quem seria o responsável pelo corte da parte do salário que fica acima do teto. O consenso entre os auditores do TCU é que o pagamento do salário deve ser feito pelo empregador mais antigo. Assim, o empregador mais recente faria o corte, até que a soma dos vencimentos dos dois ou mais órgãos ficasse no limite de R$ 25,7 mil. O tribunal também deverá determinar que todo novo contratado no serviço público deve informar se tem outra fonte de renda na administração pública.

Banco de dados
Outra dificuldade é a criação de um banco de dados que cruze informações entre os três poderes e os três níveis de administração — federal, estadual e municipal, incluindo aposentados. Levantamento recente feito pelo TCU incluiu servidores da ativa dos três poderes, dos estados e dos municípios, além de aposentados do governo federal. Mesmo sendo parcial, esse cruzamento apontou ao menos 1.061 servidores com salário superior ao teto constitucional. Treze servidores recebem acima de R$ 100 mil. Há 26 servidores com cinco fontes pagadoras. Um deles tem 11 fontes pagadoras A projeção anual dos valores pagos indevidamente ultrapassa R$ 150 milhões.

Para o TCU, o órgão indicado para fazer um levantamento completo seria a Receita Federal, que dispõe dos dados salariais de todos os brasileiros que recebem acima de R$ 1,5 mil por mês. A Receita apenas forneceria os dados, porque não tem poderes para impor cortes. Mas também precisará ser discutida a questão da quebra do sigilo desses dados.

1 - Além do limite
Decisão tomada pelo Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) em setembro do ano passado permitiu que parlamentares acumulem seus vencimentos com aposentadorias além do limite do teto constitucional — R$ 25,7 mil. A decisão mantém o teto como regra geral, mas diz que a sua implementação, no caso de servidores de esferas de governo ou poderes distintos, depende da regulamentação da Constituição e da implantação de um sistema nacional de dados sobre remunerações de ativos e inativos.

O que diz a lei

O artigo 37, inciso XI, da Constituição diz que a remuneração dos ocupantes de cargos, funções e empregos públicos da administração direta, autárquica e fundacional, dos membros de qualquer dos poderes da União, dos estados e dos municípios, dos detentores de mandato eletivo e dos demais agentes políticos e os proventos, pensões ou outra espécie remuneratória, incluindo as vantagens pessoais, não poderão exceder o subsídio mensal dos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal.

• 2002 World Cup referee among suspects
• Previously convicted official got 10 years in prison

Chinese police have arrested three football referees on suspicion of match-fixing, including one official who presided at the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan. Although it is not clear what penalties the three could face, another referee, Gong Jianping, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2002 for taking bribes.

Lu Jun, who officiated in two World Cup matches, several Asian Football Confederation games and more than 200 Chinese league matches before retiring in 2005, was among those detained for taking bribes. Others reportedly detained were Huang Junjie, a nominee last year for the China Super League's best referee award, and Zhou Weixin, who retired in 2004 after being given an eight-game suspension for a bad decision. The reports quoted the head of the official football association, Wei Di, as confirming the arrests, but gave no other details.

"I was really shocked and hurt when Lu's name cropped up in the scandal," Wei told China Daily. "He is undoubtedly a first-rate referee in terms of working ability, but his morals are a far cry from his 'golden whistle' reputation."

The arrests come amid a sweeping probe into gambling and corruption in the league that has already netted more than a dozen players and officials, including Wei's predecessor, Nan Yong. Two Super League clubs have been relegated to the second tier for being associated with the corruption.

Facing intense pressure from the country's leaders, Wei has sworn to end such malfeasance but faces institutional hurdles including a lack of transparency, autocratic management and strong ties between coaches, players and gambling syndicates.

With more managers than any other country still in the Champions League, France has much to shout about

It is one of the great anomalies of French football that no coach born on their soil has ever won the European Cup. Despite their reputation for innovation and education, and the fact the competition was conceived by the French, the closest they can claim is the citizenship of Helenio Herrera, the mastermind of two triumphs with Internazionale in the 1960s. Herrera, though, was born in Argentina, had Spanish parents, grew up in Morocco, and ended up taking a French passport, so the link is tenuous at best.

The cast of coaches still going strong in this season's Champions League features three Frenchmen. No other nation has more than one. Laurent Blanc, Claude Puel and Arsène Wenger may not be among the favourites to be last man standing but all three can take credit for handling some curveballs during this tournament with concentrated coolness.

Bordeaux topped a troublesome group and have won seven consecutive European matches. Lyon were tactically superb in cutting down Real Madrid. Arsenal responded to a mini-disaster at Porto to progress stylishly.

The French coaching system is flourishing. An extraordinary 18 of 20 clubs in Ligue 1 are guided by local talent. Blanc and Puel, along with Didier Deschamps and Rudi Garcia – the pair whose teams fell out of the Europa League but retain excellent reputations for their progressive work at Marseille and Lille – are leading the way while all in their forties. All have benefitted from the methods introduced by Gérard Houllier, who set up a training programme at Clairefontaine in the 1990s. It is a three-year course, involves several internships, and evidently its graduates are given a fantastic schooling.

Not only does France have the most coaches left in the Champions League, it also has the most players by a long way. With 20, they top the list drawn from the starting line-ups who played in the last round of matches. Brazil are second with nine. England could muster only five.

For the French Football Federation, the reasons to be cheerful are manifold. With more clubs in the Champions League now than Spain, Italy or Germany (and the guarantee of one in the semi-finals after the draw paired Bordeaux and Lyon), a title race thrilling enough to have six teams at the top within a whisker of each other, more goals being scored, a trend for more open football, and domestic talent staying longer and not so easily tempted abroad at a young age, the scene is largely healthy. There is a renewed sense of confidence in French football. As the Lyon defender Cris put it: "People look at us differently now."

Blanc feels his Bordeaux side began to believe in themselves when they opened this Champions League campaign with a fighting draw at Juventus. The previous year they had been completely awestruck by Chelsea at the same stage and were thumped 4-0. "That first Juventus game, away against one of Europe's greatest teams, was very important for Bordeaux," Blanc says. "We went to Turin with the desire to play to our strengths and, above all, not feel what French clubs often feel against these big famous clubs – a certain fragility, a certain complex. In that first game, my players managed to lose their complexes. That set us up in the competition and helped us in the games that followed." Lyon certainly had no complex in the Bernabéu, either.

"This is not a mickey mouse league," assesses the France Football correspondent Philippe Auclair. "When the English newspapers publish the results and tables on a Monday morning, France is down there with Belgium and Holland in small print. You might have to change your font, my friends."

Now flip the coin. Last week, the French game was distraught when the hooligan problems that afflict the capital's club, Paris Saint-Germain, reached its nadir. For years the Parc des Princes has struggled to control running battles between its own fans. It is an insane situation. Rival gangs from opposite ends of the ground, the Kop de Boulogne and Tribune Auteuil, fight routinely. At the end of February, a 37-year-old man was hospitalised with savage injuries. His life support machine was switched off last Wednesday.

"The worst has happened," said the French secretary of state for sports, Rama Yade. "Passion has been transformed into sordid rage, senseless and murderous. Love of the team's colours has become hatred of the other person, hatred of sport, hatred of life. It's a victory for barbarity and a defeat for sport, fraternity and civilisation."

PSG will play their next three home games without spectators as the authorities try to find some kind of solution to systematic violence that has resulted in the death of one of their own supporters at the hands of another.

Although PSG are serial offenders and what happens there is an isolated case, there is concern that pockets of hooliganism have broken out at venues where the police would not expect it. Who would have thought they would need teargas in the Alpine town of Grenoble, or down on the Mediterranean coast when Nice fans ran amok? They, too, must play a match behind closed doors.

In the corridors of power they are keen to send out a message that any anti-social behaviour will be dealt with severely. France are bidding to host the 2016 European Championship and, although Italy and Turkey may claim to be in greater need in terms of rebuilding their homes of football, the French believe this tournament is imperative for them, too.

Within a couple of years of the World Cup in 1998, they realised the stadium adjustments they had made were already out of date, with the exception of the showpiece Stade de France. There are plans afoot to build new stadiums in Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. That is three of the current top five teams who badly need to have bigger and better accommodation.

Lille, for example, have a ground with a capacity of only 18,000. Lyon's plans for a new 60,000 ground in the east of the city have been ploughing on for some time. Local opponents flutter around their ambitions like a cluster of mosquitos – small, annoying and with the capacity to bite above their size. Just recently the club have been bogged down with research by a team of archeologists to make sure the foundations do not disturb anything, and they will soon be running tests to establish whether the stadium's carbon emissions will have any impact on the neighbourhood.

Lyon will get there eventually, but Euro 2016 would certainly cut through a load of hassle.

"France 98 was a low-budget job," says L'Equipe's Erik Bielderman. "2016 is important because the government would be able to overrule local opposition if it is in the general interest of the nation." More than half a million people have signed up to support the bid.

Although attendances do not compare to those in the Bundesliga, Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, they are substantially bigger than in the 1998 World Cup year. Lyon and Bordeaux are up by an average of about 10,000 per game. Marseille, who attract crowds of 50,000 regularly, are up by around 20,000. Even Lens are up by around 6,000, and theirs is in a sense the most impressive jump of all as they were champions in 1998 and are currently near the bottom of the table.

This weekend, a Wolves fan who wishes to see his team play at Aston Villa is expected to fork out £43. A Bordeaux fan who fancies watching the French champions in a top-of-the-table tussle with Lille can buy a ticket for €16 (£14.50), and can even take a child along for an extra €2.

France's successful clubs are eager to capitalise and generate even bigger crowds as, financially, the sums are hard to sustain. TV rights do not increase in line with players' wages. Sponsors are so hard to find that a number of clubs have no hard sell on the front of their shirts. Lyon did arrange something with a betting firm but since the league bans such organisations from appearing on kit, they have been selling sponsorship for individual league games. Not too long ago they advertised a pop band's latest release across their chests. This is Lyon, remember, the seven times champions not so long ago.

But who are the English to smirk at a time when a Premier League club are in administration after years of dangerously cavalier spending? The French league has for decades been the advocate of prudence. Every club must submit their accounts for inspection every year to the Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (DNCG), an independent board with the authority to hand out punishments for unmanageable debt: anything from a transfer embargo to relegation.

It seems to be an admirable plan. The Uefa president, Michel Platini, has used the DNCG as the inspiration behind his drive for financial fair play across Europe. But Philippe Auclair is not convinced it is a flawless model, as there is still mismanagement and rule bending in France. "It is healthier than most other leagues, and of the 20 clubs in Ligue 1, probably four are managed to perfection – Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Auxerre. But some others are basket cases who are so afraid of the DNCG they borrow or find a cash injection to wriggle out of it. We do have French versions of Portsmouth. The likes of Strasbourg and Nantes [both recently relegated] are not much better."

Paris Saint-Germain are likely to have run up a €20m debt by the end of the season, but they will probably get a warning instead of instant sanctions and will find someone or something to help them wriggle out of facing the music for their worrying bank statements.

The big financial upshot in France is the depreciation of the euro against the pound. A few years ago the best young talent was sure to be plucked away by wealthier clubs abroad, but now such players as Hugo Lloris and Yoann Gourcuff do not have their heads turned so easily. The French can pay salaries that are not too far from the elite leagues and the players have the bonus of knowing they will be first-choice regulars instead of rotatees at an overseas powerhouse.

Because more of the top players are sticking with Ligue 1, the standard is improving. There are high hopes, too, that a new generation is coming through.

Promising players, inspiring coaches, a strong chance to land Euro 2016 – particularly as some of the committee men may well feel inclined to do the right thing by Uefa's head honcho, Platini. Once Raymond Domenech has left the building (let's leave that for another day, please), the future might well be blue.

INDIAN WELLS (ESTADOS UNIDOS), 20 (EUROPA PRESS)

El tenista español Rafael Nadal no consiguió clasificarse para la final del torneo de Indian Wells, primer Masters 1000 de la temporada, tras perder ante el croata Ivan Ljubicic en un partido que duró dos horas y treinta seis minutos (6-3, 4-6, 6-7(1)).

El manacorí no podrá revalidar su título en Indian Wells, mientras que el tenista croata se enfrentará ahora al vencedor de la otra semifinal, que mide al estadounidense Andy Roddick y al sueco Robin Soderling.

El tenista mallorquín fue de más a menos en el encuentro, donde tras un primer set en el cual no sufrió lo más mínimo para ganarlo, se vio abocado a la derrota debido a fallos puntuales. Por su parte, el croata, número 20 del ránking ATP, salió victorioso al plantear el partido sin la presión de ser el favorito.

Rafa Nadal pareció no despeinarse para vencer al balcánico Ljubicic en el primer set. La clave estuvo en el primer y el último juego. Dos faltas de saque consecutivas del croata en el primero le dieron licencia al insular para colocarse con dos bolas de break. La primera la arregló con un 'ace', pero otro error no forzado le permitió al tenista español adelantarse en el partido.

El de Manacor dominó los peloteos largos y recuperó el sabor añejo de las mejores citas. Los golpes duros del croata eran contrarrestados por buenos derechas del español que podía hacer tanto una dejada espectacular como un gran revés paralelo, y finalmente se hizo con facilidad con el primer set.

Ya en el segundo, Ljubicic, que dejó en la cuneta a Novak Djokovic en cuartos de final del torneo, se entonó poco a poco con su saque, provocando que los restos cortos de Nadal le quedasen francos para su derecha y demostrando el porqué ha llegado a esta ronda final.

Ambos jugadores sacaron su mejor repertorio en el trascurso de la segunda manga, y aunque en esas condiciones Rafa Nadal debería haber demostrado su superioridad, una doble falta le condenó en el penúltimo juego, por lo que el croata, animado, empató el encuentro.

Ya en el set definitivo Nadal salió hundido moralmente, lo que hizo que perdiera el primer juego, pero el número tres del mundo sacó la raza que tantas veces le ha hecho ganar partidos y le devolvió el 'contrabreak' al croata.

La tensión era palpable en la pista central, donde ambos jugadores sufrían para llevarse su saque, principalmente un Ljubicic que pudo ver roto su servicio en una ocasión, mientras que Nadal --concentrado-- no le costó tanto. Al final, el partido se vio abocado al 'tie break', donde el tenista español no se encontró a gusto y acabó perdiendo por (7-1).

Rafa Nadal se marchó de la pista central de Indian Wells bastante desanimado, ya que tenía puesta toda su ilusión en volver a ganar un título, además perdió la oportunidad de igualar al número uno del mundo, Roger Federer, en Masters 1000 logrados, dieciséis.

--RESULTADO.

-Semifinal.

Ivan Ljubicic (CRO/N.20) a RAFAEL NADAL (ESP/N.3) 6-3, 4-6, 6-7(1).

Yes, there will be a D.C. United season this year.

If you aren't a soccer fanatic, you may not have realized that representatives from Major League Soccer and the MLS Players Union had been meeting for weeks -- and, recently, hours -- on end to try and hammer out an agreement which would circumvent any delay of the 2010 season, slated to begin this Thursday, March 25.

Negotiations had heated up and grown more public in recent weeks as the deadline to save the season neared. But a pair of marathon bargaining sessions in last two days led to this afternoon's resolution, which the mediator who handled negotiations dubbed a "major victory for the process of collective bargaining." MLS hasn't released precise details of the agreement; but it appears as if more guaranteed contracts and compensation increases for players were a big part of the deal.

United defender Bryan Namoff, D.C.'s sharp-looking union representative, talked about the efforts involved in the negotiations. "After a grueling 48 hours, we're very fortunate to sign a document that we feel moving forward will improve not only the rights of players, but the relationship we have with the League," said Namoff in a statement. "Being able to come to an agreement before the season starts is a huge relief and we can now really concentrate on kicking-off the 2010 season this week."

United President and CEO Kevin Payne was also looking forward to getting back to focusing on soccer. "All of us are excited to get on with the work of building our league into what we all envision it can be," said Payne. "We're very excited about the 2010 United team we have put together and are very pleased that we can now fully focus on winning the 2010 MLS Cup championship."

United will kick off its 2010 campaign at the Kansas City Wizards next Saturday.

The latest in a (more or less) weekly series of reviews throughout 2010, on randomly-selected episodes of the original Star Trek series, and presented in a "live blog" format as I rewatch the episode. Why? Well...why not?



Tonight's episode:
"Requiem for Methuselah"
third season
episode #76
original airdate: February 14, 1969

Summary: The Enterprise journeys to a supposedly uninhabited planet searching for the cure to a deadly disease afflicting the crew, and hijinks ensue. Oh, and this is the one with the guy they ripped off for Highlander.


The Enterprise arrives in orbit above a small planet in the Omega system (though not one prone to copying the U.S. Constitution verbatim like a bunch of plagiarizing pricks), its crew suffering from an epidemic of Rigellian fever. In order to combat the disease, a supply of Ryetalyn, the only substance known to be capable of curing the affliction, must be found. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy - the only members of the crew with contracts for the entire season, remain unaffected by the disease, and beam down in search of the life-saving mineral.

Once on the surface and - lacking any apparent means of collecting the ryetalyn other than digging it out with their bare hands - Kirk and Company are confronted by some sort of robot drone, which to the untrained eye looks like something that might've escaped from the top of a Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The drone starts shooting, and somehow disables the landing party's phasers, and is closing in to royally fuck up Jimmy T's day before it's called off by its owner, "Mr. Flint." Flint orders Kirk to get his fat ass of the planet, or else shit's gonna fly.

Duh duh DUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Kirk, his manhood questioned, orders Scotty to train all phasers on his coordinates. Suck that, Mr. Flint! The mysterious loner relents, and after McCoy described the effects of Rigellian fever, Flint pontificates about the bubonic plague epidemic that ravaged Constantinople in 1334. Talk about your segues. When asked by Spock if he's a student of history, Flint nods slowly, almost sadly, and answers. "I am."

Nah, there's probably nothing to that.

Flint tells Kirk he as two hours to get his shit and get gone, offering the services of the robot drone, which he calls "M-4" (no apparent relation to the M-5 super computer that was all ate-up with the dumbass in the previous season's episode "The Ultimate Computer"). He then invites Kirk and company to his home for refreshments.

Arriving at the Kaylar's fortress on Rigel VII Flint's castle, the landing party is treated to a quick tour of the place where shit from Antique Roadshow goes to die. Little do they know that as they converse, they're being watched by a hot blonde chick on her kickin' flat-screen TV. Among Flint's possessions on display throughout the front room are a "Shakespeare first folio, a Guttenberg Bible," and a few other choice tomes that form one of the most interesting collections of rare books McCoy's ever seen. Spock further comments about Flint's art collection, which is also as rare as it is eclectic.

We get it. Flint has an eBay fetish.

Elsewhere, Flint is talking with the hot blonde chick, Rayna. She wants to talk to the Enterprise officers, but Flint's having none of that. Her questions to him make her appear as a child. Or is she...something else???.

Nah. Probably not.

Meanwhile, McCoy and Kirk have found Flint's liquor cabinet. Even Spock wants a little Captain in him, expressing envy at the mysterious Flint's art collection. Among the paintings are several apparently unknown works by Leonardo da Vinci. The enigma is that the canvas and paints -- according to Spock's tricorder -- are of contemporary origin. What's up with that shit?

While Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are enjoying the free booze, M-4 arrives with a dimebag of crystal meth...uh...I mean, ryetalyn. Flint arrives, sucking up and trying to make nice after being a total dick earlier, and introduces Rayna to the landing party. According to him, she's the orphaned daughter of a friend who perished and now living with Flint as his ward. As you've probably already guessed, Kirk takes absolutely no interest in her. At all.

Rayna, however, homes in on Spock, talking nerdy to him and wanting to discuss various science-related topics. Flint offers a few activities to pass the time while M-4 processes the ryetalyn. In short order, Rayna is schooling Kirk old-school in billiards, and Spock is continuing his inspection of Flint's collection. Flint tells Spock to play him a song, because he's apparently the only one who knew Spock could play the piano. The next thing we know, Spock's pulling a Billy Joel, "la la la, de de da"ing right along, while Kirk and Rayna audition for Dancing With the Stars<.

McCoy shows up, letting Kirk knows that the crystal meth ryetalyn cooked up by M-4 sucks donkey balls, containing impurities and other crap as often happens when you make this shit in your garage. Flint offers to supervise the collection of more raw ryetalyn and do some breaking bad of his own, and he and McCoy head out to CVS or wherever to get the stuff they need. Spock, apparently not giving a damn about any of that, chooses this point to tell Kirk that the music he just played looks to have been written by the hand of , this time sheet music apparently written by the hand of famed ancient Earth composer Johannes Brahms, though it's on modern parchment. Say what?

Heading to Flint's lab, Kirk is poking around when Rayna shows up, and the good captain sees his opportunity to put on some of The Moves without Flint or Spock to get all up in his grill. She seems distracted, though, checking out a door in the lab that Flint's told her is VERBOTEN! She's troubled about something, but she doesn't know. It's these slow, streeeeeeeeeetched-out scenes that drag down far too many third-season stories which give me time to ruminate on the little things - like how bad Shatner needs a haircut and the nasty hair on the back of his neck trimmed with a straight razor, and the line of the girdle he was wearing under his uniform tunic at this point in the season. Man....my childhood hero has the same middle-aged spread I have. Damn.

Ah, well.

Kirk asks Rayna if she's happy living here with Flint, and she responds with unabashed adoration. For most people, that might be a sufficient answer, but not for CAPTAIN JAMES TIBERIUS BY THE GRACE OF GOD KIRK. Oh, no. Uh-uh. The gauntlet's been thrown down, yo, and Jimmy T knows just what to do next. Pucker up, buttercup. Don't be afraid. I've got candy, and so on.

Well, M-4 shows up, and it's got some shit to say about that.

The drone and Kirk do a little face-off, with Rayna telling M-4 to knock off that shit, but it's not listening. That's when Spock arrives in the nick of time and totally pwns the robot with his phaser. Take that, you Nomad knock-off-lookin' motherfucker!

Flint apologizes to Kirk, essentially telling him, "I should've known you'd be a dumbass, and told M-4 to just let you dumbass away." Then another drone appears, a replacement for the one Spock phaserfied, and Kirk and Flint engage in a bit of macho dick measuring before Flint heads off to check on Dr. McCoy and the processing of a new batch of ryetalyn. When he calls for Rayna to accompany him, she demonstrates reluctance to go with him, and Kirk is none too happy with the way he sees Flint treating her. Spock suggests that Kirk stop thinking with his little head for a while, but Kirk can't figure out the mixed signals Flint's sending with respect to Kirk's interactions with Rayna. "First he hooks us up, then he cock-blocks me. WHAT THE FUCK?"

Hmm...the closed captioning on my TV might be a bit off again.

Anyway, it seems that investigations into Flint's backgrounds are hitting dead ends. Uhura can't seem to find a record of him anywhere, and Spock's tricorder readings note that while Flint's human, he appears to be at least 6,000 years old. Kirk then realizes that something's up with respect to the ryetalyn processing. Is the delay deliberate? Is Flint keeping the landing party around for some hidden purpose?

The mystery deepens when Scotty contacts Kirk from the Enterprise and tells Kirk that there's no one by the name of Rayna Kapec in Federation databanks, no records of Flint being awarded custody of any orphaned child, nothing. Like Flint, she appears to be living totally off the grid. Spock suggests that all of this is secondary to getting the ryetalyn back to the ship, and he and Kirk are setting off in search of McCoy when Rayna appears. She's come to say good-bye, but Jimmy T's not about to leave until he samples the goods, if you know what I mean. He's closing in for the kill, and Rayna is all about all about getting a little Captain in her, if you know what I mean.

What Kirk doesn't know....what likely would dematerialize his little T-rektion if he were to find out, is that his every move is being watched by Flint on his VoyeurVision setup. Ewwwwww!!!!

While McCoy and Spock are trying to figure out where that darned robot is with the processed ryetalyn, Kirk's busy trying to convince Rayna that she loves him and that she should run off with him. She instead just runs off, leaving Jimmy T with a raging pair of decrystalized dilithium crystals, if you'll pardon the shameless Trekified innuendo. Kirk heads to the lab to learn that the ryetalyn's missing and that Flint appears to be jerking them around again. Spock locates it behind that mysterious door in the lab, and Kirk's about to blast it when it chooses that moment to slide open. Moody damned thing, ain't it?

Kirk is about to head inside when Spock suddenly blocks the door, offering to go inside alone and fetch the ryetalyn. Kirk and McCoy, understandably just as confused as the rest of us, ask Spock what's up with that shit. Rather than explain himself, Spock eventually steps aside, thereby extending this already too long episode by another minute for no discernible fucking reason whatsoever. Kirk leads the way into the secret room, and they find...well, another room. It's in there that they find the ryetalyn (three shot glasses' worth? To vaccinate 430 people?), but they also discover something else: androids that look like Rayna. After at least 16 "attempts," Flint apparently has built the perfect woman, with whom Kirk has fallen in love.

That guy. I tell ya.

Flint shows up to explain himself, and that's when it all comes out...Flint is "immortal," having been born on Earth 6,000 years ago and lived under numerous identities down through the centuries: Johannes Brahms, Leonardo da Vinci, Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson, Russell Nash, Connor MacLeod, etc. He's spent millennia living among friends, family, and lovers, then moving on before the nature of his immortality is suspected. Tired of watching lovers grow old and die, he strove to create an artificial companion, one who like him would not age with the passage of time. He contends that Kirk can't love her, because she's not real...except to Flint.

Why he didn't just order one of those "Real Dolls" from the internet is anybody's guess.

Kirk, realizing that *he's* the one who'll be doing some of that net-shopping, wants to leave, but Flint forbids it. They know his secret see, and he doesn't them to run off and blab to the galaxy that he's here. You see, he hasn't gotten the memo from Zefram Cochrane that these guys are good about not running off at the mouth about where to find famous figures from history who've tapped a keg from the Fountain of Youth. Kirk tries to contact the Enterprise, but Flint pushes a button a remote-control thingamabob he's got in his pocket, and POOF! The ship disappears from orbit!

The next thing we know, Flint's order of a model Enterprise from Masterpiece Replicas shows up. Oh, wait! It's the REAL Enterprise, reduced to the size of a fanboy's wet dream. The crew is trapped inside, shrunk down and frozen in time! Kirk is dumbstruck by this demonstration of Flint's power, but Flint shrugs and says, "Hey, I said I'd make you my bitch. Now suck it."

Kirk demands that Flint release his ship and crew, but Flint's focus is elsewhere. Rayna's emotions are churning you see, and he's got just the prescription for what ails her. Awwwwwwwwwwww yeah. Rayna overhears him, and it's obvious that she's not gonna like hanging with Flint in his swank crib if he insists on being a big ol' meanie to Jimbo and the gang. Flint relents, returning the Enterprise to its proper place in orbit. Kirk realizes that Flint's delaying tactics were deliberate, using the captain to stir Rayna's nascent emotions like the tenth-degree horn dog that he is. Now that Jim's got the pump primed (I know, I'm really going for broke with all these clever euphemisms, aren't I?), Flint's ready to take the conn and (forgive me) go where no man has gone before. (Audience "If you know what I mean!")

Kirk: "But hey! I love her, and she loves me!"
Flint: "Oh no he di-int!"

The next thing you know, Kirk and Flint are in full-on fisticuffs mode, battling for to defend Rayna's honor. After 6,000 years, you'd think Flint would've picked up a move or two. Obviously none of his past identities were Chuck Norris, Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Still, he does a pretty good job tossing Kirk around the room like a gorilla going after an American Tourister suitcase. Observing all of this, Rayna gets upset when she realizes that she's what's driving this testosterone-fest. "Enough of this shit!" she says. She'll be the one choosing where she goes and who she'll be going with. However, the strain of such unchecked emotion for the first time is too much for her. Unable to bear hurting either Kirk or Flint with her choice, she dies.

Later, after leaving Flint's planet, the Enterprise crew has dealt with the plague, and Spock reports to Kirk's cabin to tell him that they're on course for their next assignment. Kirk, in total emo mode, is lamenting the loss of Rayna and his loneliness before he puts his head down on his desk and wishes he could forget the whole thing (We pause here to throw up.). McCoy shows up, and tells Spock that Flint is dying, having sacrificed immortality by leaving Earth and whatever special conditions there brought about his unique existence in the first place. He will live the rest of whatever natural lifespan remains to him and then die.

Once McCoy leaves, Spock reaches over to Kirk and performs a Vulcan mind-meld, helping him to "forget."

(Which of course makes you wonder just what else he's made people forget over the years. Sneaky bastard.)

-----

I'll admit that I'm a sucker for "person out of time" stories, be they variations on Rip Van Winkle or Buck Rogers - where a character suddenly finds him/herself thrown far into the future - or like Flint, who are walking windows into history, having witnessed it firsthand and lived through the proceeding generations in order to be our guides. I dig characters like Connor MacLeod from the Highlander films, Casca the Eternal Mercenary, and even Elias Vaughn, who has lived long enough to experience the major eras of the Star Trek universe.

That said, the potential that came with the creation of the Flint character is largely wasted in "Requiem for Methuselah."

With this episode, we're very late in the game so far as third-season Star Trek is concerned, and it's starting to show around the edges. Like I said before, little details like controlling Shatner's hair have fallen a bit by the wayside, and the number of characters is cut to the absolute bare minimum to get through the episode. The only scenes set aboard the Enterprise are a couple of quick hits on the bridge and the ending scene in Kirk's quarters. Otherwise it's Flint's house. Even with the opening sequence set "outside," it's still just a bottle show, though one that takes place away from the standing Enterprise sets.

The story, again, is a talky affair, though it's at least interesting to listen to Flint recount what we soon "discover" are memories from throughout the thousands of years he's lived. Actor James Daly turns in a commendable performance working with what he's given, his naturally craggy face imbuing a certain world-weary quality into the millennia-old Flint. As for Rayna, the idea of building an android which might one day know what it's like to be human is interesting. Too bad Star Trek never followed up on the story potential there, right? Still, actor Louise Sorel does a nice job affecting a childlike innocence for Rayna, as well as providing subtle hints through word and action that the young woman is not what she at first appears to be. Later, she pulls off Rayna's "awakening" with intense emotion, only straying a bit too close to the line of demarcation for balls-out scenery chewing on one or two occasions. Shatner, on the other hand, has a couple of those classic Shatnerian moments, particularly when he's imploring Rayna to run away with him.

I'll give the writers and producers credit for finding an interesting way to show us the smaller Enterprise filming miniature. It's the original 3-foot model as designed by Matt Jefferies in 1964 and referenced by the model makers who later would build the larger model used for filming the bulk of the Enterprise optical scenes. While the larger model is interred at the Smithsonian, this smaller version has been lost for many years, a bit of TV and Star Trek history that's probably sitting over someone's fireplace. Sharp-eyed fans can see several noticeable differences between the two models, particularly in the shape of the saucer section. This little bit of geekitude is yet another of the many services we try to provide for our readers here at Wayback Reviews Headquarters.

I suppose one could argue that we get a little insight into the Kirk psyche with respect to his relationships with women. Every time we've seen him find someone with whom he could truly be happy - maybe even to the point of giving up that which he most holds dear, command of the Enterprise - it ends in tragedy for him. With that kind of track record, I might consider just going for the one-night stand, too. That, or just move to a cabin in Montana with a dog and a footlocker of beef jerky.

I wish they could've explored Flint's past in greater detail, but lucky for me, I get to write Star Trek novels every so often. Maybe one of these days I'll come up with a cool story where I can use the character. Meanwhile, Flint has made a couple of memorable appearances within the "expanded universe" of Star Trek novels: Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume I, by Greg Cox.

As for the episode? Middle of the road third-season entry. Eh.

On Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to set up a committee to examine whether condoms should be required on all pornographic film shoots within the Golden State.

California has run out of money, but it hasn’t yet run out of things to regulate.

For a government regulatory hearing, the testimony was livelier than usual. The porn star Madelyne Hernandez recalled an especially grueling scene in which she had been obliged to have sex with 75 men. The bureaucrats nodded thoughtfully, no doubt contemplating another languorous 18-month committee assignment looking into capping the number of group-sex participants at 60 per scene. In future, if a porn actress finds 75 men waiting for her on the set, they’ll be bureaucrats from Sacramento’s Condom Enforcement Squad.

The committee will also make recommendations on whether the “adult” movie industry should be subject to the same regulatory regime and hygiene procedures as hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. You mean with everyone in surgical masks? Kinky. If you’ve ever been in the filthy, C. difficile- and MRSA-infected wards of Britain’s National Health Service, it may make more sense after the passage of Obamacare to require hospitals to bring themselves up to the same hygiene standards as the average Bangkok porn shoot.

One can make arguments for permitting porn and for banning porn, but there isn’t a lot to be said for the bureaucratization of porn. Hard to believe there will be dull, bespoke California bureaucrats looking forward to early retirement on gold-plated pensions who’ll be getting home, sinking into the La-Z-Boy and complaining to the missus about a tough day at the office working on the permits for Debbie Does the Fresno OSHA Office.

Meanwhile, Obamacare will result in the creation of at least 16,500 new jobs. Doctors? Nurses? Ha! Dream on, suckers. That’s 16,500 new IRS agents, who’ll be needed to check whether you -- yes, you, Mr. and Mrs. Hopendope of 27 Hopeychangey Gardens -- are in compliance with the 15 tax increases and dozens of new federal mandates the Deemocrats are about to “deem” into existence. This will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II -- and that’s change you can believe in. This is what “health” “care” “reform” boils down to: fewer doctors, longer wait times, but more bureaucrats. And, when you walk into the Health Care Enforcement Division of the IRS, the staffing levels will make Madelyne Hernandez’s group-sex scene look like an Equity-minimum one-man play off-off-off Broadway.




Barack Obama, a man who not so long ago had time to jet across the world to make dreary Olympics-losing speeches about how his kind of town Chicago is, has now postponed his presidential visits to Indonesia and Australia in order to make sure “health care” passes this week -- or, at any rate, is “deemed” to have passed, which is apparently the way a quarter-millennium-old constitutional republic does things.

The president, his press secretary informs us, regrets having to postpone his trip for three months, but “passage of the health-insurance reform is of paramount importance.” Whereas Australia isn’t.

The visit had already been pared back to the bare minimum -- a quick refueling stop in Canberra, with a speech to Parliament and a grip’n’greet with the governor-general and the prime minister. Maybe the administration could simply “deem” the visit to have occurred, photoshop a souvenir snapshot, and stick it in the mail to their eminences. In much the same way, the Deemocrats are deeming their health bill to control costs rather than actually controlling them. Medicare doesn’t reimburse doctors the cost of treating the patient; it reimburses what the bureaucracy “deems” it to have cost. In a deemocracy, this works. In real life, it’s more problematic.

Investor’s Business Daily argues that the “health” debate is really a proxy fight on the size and role of government. According to their poll, 64 percent of people think the federal government has “too much power.” Correct. But a big chunk of that 64 percent voted less than 18 months ago for a man and a party explicitly committed to more government with more power, and they’re now living with the consequences. Obama is government, and government is Obama. That’s all he knows and all he’s ever known. You elected to the highest office in the land a man who’s never run a business or created wealth or made a payroll, and for his entire adult life has hung out with guys who’ve demonized (deemonized?) such grubby activities. Many of which associates he appointed to high office: Obama’s cabinet has less experience of private business than any in the last century. What it knows is government, and government’s default mode is to grow, and grow.

California is bankrupt: The dependent class and the government class that issues the checks to the dependent class have squeezed out the poor boobs in the middle who have to pay for it all. Everybody knows this. But a state that already has a Bureau of Home Furnishings cannot restrain itself from setting up a Bureau of Motion Picture Condom Regulation -- or, anyway, an impact study to study whether the Bureau of Impact Studies should study the impact of a Bureau of Motion Picture Condom Regulation.




Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they’ll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don’t have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.

Whatever is “deemed” to have passed in the next few days doesn’t end the debate but begins it. If you’re sick of talking about health care, move to Tahiti, because in the U.S. we’re going to be talking about it until the end of time, or at least until the Iranians nuke Cleveland.

It isn’t difficult. We need less government, with smaller budgets, fewer agencies, and vastly reduced numbers of public-sector union employees on less lavish remuneration. I’m confident the California Bureau of Condom Regulators can be retrained as porn-movie bit-players and once again make a useful contribution to society. But, if you’re not in favor of shrinking government, you’re voting for national decline, remorseless and ever accelerating.

Obama and Pelosi are strong-arming swing-state congressmen into taking one for the deem. It’s appropriate that it should take banana-republic maneuvers to ram this through, because it’s about government so powerful it can make up the rules as it goes along. Maybe regulators should roll a giant condom over the Capitol before it fatally infects the rest of us.

-- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn.

---

MÉXICO DF, 20 (EUROPA PRESS)

Al menos 23 personas han perdido la vida en distintos incidentes violentos registrados en las últimas horas en Mexico, principalmente en el estado de Sinaloa, en el norte del país, ocho de ellos en un tiroteo entre grupos rivales que emplearon incluso granadas en el enfrentamiento, según informó el diario 'El Universal' citando fuentes de la Procuraduría de Justicia de Sinaloa.

Los sicarios se enfrentaron en una carretera cercana a la costa occidental mexicana en la mañana del sábado. Las fuerzas de seguridad hallaron una camioneta con los cuerpos de cinco hombres parcialmente calcinados y con vestimenta color azul, similar a los uniformes de la Policía Federal.

Tres kilómetros más adelante, en otra camioneta, se hallaron los cadáveres de otros dos hombres fuertemente armados y con impactos de bala. Sobre el asfalto quedó la octava víctima, vestida con un uniforme falso de la Policía Federal y con una granada de fragmentación sin activar en la mano derecha.

Las primeras investigaciones hacen presumir que los ocho muertos viajaban en las dos vehículos y que cayeron en una emboscada tendida por individuos apostados en ambos lados de la carretera y sobre un puente les dispararon desde varios ángulos.

Los agredidos respondieron el fuego, por lo que les lanzaron granadas de fragmentación. Una de ellas alcanzó a los ocupantes de la camioneta, por lo que sus ocupantes perecieron de forma inmediata.

Uno de los presuntos delincuentes que se desplazaron en la camioneta al parecer descendió de la unidad e intentó responder la agresión, por lo que fue alcanzado por una lluvia de balas que le impidió lanzar una granada de fragmentación.

Desde un primer momento se descartó que las victimas fueran miembros de la Policía Federal, como en un principio se presumía por el tipo de vestimenta.

Tres hombres más fueron ejecutados en distintos puntos del estado. Uno de ellos, de 34 años de edad, fue encontrado envuelto en una manta e incinerado y con un disparo en la cabeza. En el lugar se encontró un recipiente con gasolina, lo que hace presumir que sus asesinos rociaron su cuerpo y le prendieron fuego. Además, en Culiacán hombres armados persiguieron y dieron muerte a balazos a dos hombres.

Por otra parte, se registró otro enfrentamiento armado en la zona de Celestino Gazca, a 115 kilómetros al sur de la ciudad de Culiacán, con un balance preliminar de cinco muertos, entre ellos dos agentes de la Policía Federal. Los datos que se conocen es que esta mañana varios hombres armados a bordo de dos camionetas atacaron a los policías de la Sección Caminos.

En Tamaulipas, en el noroeste de México, un militar y tres civiles perdieron la vida en un enfrentamiento registrado anoche en Ciudad Victoria. Dos personas más resultaron heridas.

Según informó el diario 'El Universal', que cita fuentes del Centro de Información Oportuna del Gobierno de Tamaulipas, civiles y militares se enfrentaron en las calles de la localidad.

Por último, efectivos del Ejército mexicano se enfrentaron anoche con presuntos secuestradores en la colonia Colinas de San Jerónimo de Monterrey, en Nuevo León (norte), con un saldo de tres delincuentes muertos y dos mujeres rescatadas.

Vying to become California's top law enforcement officer, Republicans John Eastman and Sen. Tom Harman had a potential political problem: Neither had prosecutorial experience.

Fast-forward a few weeks and – voilà! – problem solved, amid allegations from their opponent, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, that both are trying to mislead voters in the GOP primary for attorney general.

"It's an effort to deceive voters about their records, qualifications and occupations," said Kevin Spillane, spokesman for Cooley, who plans to challenge the designations in court, if necessary.

Bah, humbug, counter spokesmen for Harman and Eastman, who are fighting to replace Democrat Jerry Brown, a gubernatorial candidate.

Eastman requested the ballot designation "assistant attorney general," while Harman, R-Huntington Beach, is seeking "prosecutor/attorney/senator."

Both are hanging their hats on titles earned last month. The secretary of state ultimately will decide the validity of ballot designations for the June 8 primary.

State law requires candidates to justify their designation of a principal profession, vocation or occupation.

Eastman, a constitutional law expert who resigned Jan. 31 as dean of Chapman University School of Law, was hired weeks later by South Dakota to assist in a case involving federal mandates on prisons.

Eastman will be paid at least $20,000 in the case, Sisney v. Reisch, and, if it reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, he anticipates receiving at least an additional $100,000, documents show.

For researching and writing papers in that case, Eastman was named a "special assistant attorney general" for South Dakota on Feb. 23, shortly before filing candidacy papers that sought to promote that on the attorney general ballot.

Jeff Flint, Eastman's political consultant, said that Eastman had been doing work on the South Dakota case prior to last month's appointment and that it consumes a substantial amount of his time and provides a substantial portion of his current income.

Asked if seeking the "assistant attorney general" designation was a political decision, Flint replied: "It was an accurate decision."

Harman, meanwhile, was accepted last month into an Orange County Trial Attorney Partnership program in which veteran lawyers are sworn as deputy district attorneys, are trained, and then handle duties from filing cases to conducting trials without pay, spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder said.

Harman was sworn in as a deputy district attorney on Feb. 10, according to records signed by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, a Harman backer.

Schroeder said that Harman currently is in training for the program, which has existed for seven years. Harman has appeared in court, she said, but "I'm not sure exactly what he has done."

Harman, in candidacy papers, said that "although I cannot spend 40 hours per week in that job during the legislative session, I do work Thursdays and Fridays, and can greatly increase my hours during our recesses."

Spillane scoffed, saying, "It's another manipulation of the process ... It's all been orchestrated."

Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist, said that ballot designations as prosecutors can be extremely helpful to attorney general candidates – but can backfire if unjustified.

"Voters hate it when a candidate tries to fool them," he said.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said that effectively attacking a ballot designation does not necessarily negate its value.

"For every voter who sees a TV commercial, there's a lot whose only exposure to the campaign is going to be what they see on the ballot," he said.

Those of us who had never been to an APPT event before today didn't really know what to expect in the Coral Ballroom of the Manila Pavilion Hotel. We anticipated difficulties with names, directions, maybe even the stuffed fish...

Member Camille Giglio agreed to share her family story in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Over the last fifteen years, three lines of my ancestry have been validated, but the origin of one of my maternal great-great-grandfathers is as hard to pin down as the origin of his name. Michael Malarkey, where do you come from?

I started researching my father’s family upon discovery of a packet of letters that he had stored away in an old teakwood box. My maternal second cousin, Brian White, began his odyssey thirty years ago looking for his paternal and maternal sides. Our paths hit the same brick wall when it came to finding the Malarkey family. The search has been made more difficult due to the wide variety of spellings of the name.

My primary source of information about my maternal ancestry has come from one aunt, soon to be 100 years old. She provided me with a list of last names and the possibility that they came to America and settled in New York and Boston. The San Francisco Mission District Irish always had a distinctive Bostonian flavor to their speech.

My cousin and I started at different times and places with the one certain fact that Josephine Lucille Gallagher Byrne (my grandmother and his great-grandmother) was born in San Francisco on July 15, 1873, to James and Susan Malarkey Gallagher.

Susan Malarkey (McLarkey?) is first located in the 1860 Federal Census for Massachusetts, in Boston, with her age as 18 and her occupation listed as shoe binder and indicating that she was born in Boston. She was living with her parents, Michael and Maragus (Margaret), as well as her younger siblings: Annie and Michael, Jr. Her older brother, Frank, was living out of the home by that point in time.

No civil or church record can be found in the greater Boston area for her birth or marriage. Boston City directories show listings for Michael Malarkey in the South Boston neighborhood as well as listings for James Gallagher. Susan and James seem to be gone from the Boston area sometime between 1859 and 1864.

It has been suggested by a researcher at the New England Historical Genealogical Society that, since Moville was a port of departure for freighters, Michael and Margaret nee McGuinness sailed to the new world landing first in Nova Scotia coming later to Boston by overland route. This would explain the lack of records for Susan in Boston.

I am traveling to Nova Scotia later this year.

Continuing backward in time I began looking in Ireland for Michael Malarkey. The name Malarkey is not common and, especially the name Michael Malarkey is rare. Therefore I felt certain that I had found my Michael in the Griffith’s valuation records for the period 1846-64.

Michael is living on a tiny plot of land, more like a mud floor, thatched roof hut, outside of Moville, Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal in the townland of Drumaweer, for an unknown duration. But that’s all we know about him until he and a wife show up in the 1860 Boston census. Boston death records for Margaret list her maiden name as McGuinness and her father as John McGuinness.

In September, 2009, my brother, my husband and I took a trip to the Inishown Peninsula which is across the Lough Foyle from County Derry, Northern Ireland. We visited the plot of land on which the hut still stands albeit somewhat enlarged. We spoke with the owners of the land, the Carey Brothers, two elderly, single, smiling and rosy cheeked barley farmers. They still live on the land in a two room hut with worn out linoleum covering mud floors, possibly very like the one Michael lived in lo those many years ago.

The Irish, being always anxious to be helpful, directed us to a local author in a neighboring hamlet. There we where entertained for over an hour with stories of “the troubles,” of the famine and the 19th century English landlords of Northern Ireland. Apparently many descendants of those families driven from their homes on a snowy Christmas eve still live in the area. Those hardships are as alive today in northern County Donegal as though they had happened only last year.

From there we were directed to a member of the McGuinness family itself back in Moville. John McGuinness invited us in, talked about his ancestry, but could not give us any insight into our Michael and Margaret.

We may never be able to pin down the Malarkey ancestry but my cousin may be close to uncovering some of the mystery. He has made contact with a member of the Charles Gallagher family. James and Charles were brothers.

James Gallagher appears in the 1867 Great Register in San Francisco. According to the register, he was 27 years old, worked as a Laborer, lived in Ward 7, and was naturalized on September 5, 1859 in San Francisco U.S. District Court.

According to separate obituary notices both Charles and James died on the same day presumably in San Francisco, on April 12, 1878. A San Francisco newspaper obituary notice for 1878, provided by Brian White, reads as follows: "GALLAGHER - In this city, April 12, James GALLAGHER, a native of Ireland, aged 40 years. Boston papers please copy).

James was originally buried in Calvary Cemetery in San Francisco, but when the City closed all cemeteries in 1904, his remains were moved to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma. Susan is also buried in Holy Cross cemetery but with her second husband, Thomas Barden.

To date even though we have obituary notices of James and his older brother Charles’ funeral services, no information has surfaced as to why or where they died.

Apparently Gallagher family second or third cousins have resided in the general San Francisco Bay Area all these years for several generations.

Bill von Esmarch, great-great-grandson of Charles Gallagher, has supplied a photo of the three daughters of Charles Gallagher who would have been nieces of James Gallagher and cousins of my grandmother, Josephine Gallagher Byrne.

Mary, Margaret, and Hannah Gallagher of Palmyra, New York

Bill, Brian and I agree that if we could find the parents of James and Charles, we might be able to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of the Malarkey/Gallagher ancestry.

Information for this article was supplied by Camille Giglio, Brian White and Bill von Esmarch.

For more great Irish stories be sure to stop by the Third Annual St. Patrick's Day Blog Parade. It's also known as the 18th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture, hosted by Lisa at Small Leaved Shamrock. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

[Source: Louis Vuitton Trophy] Emirates Team New Zealand pulled off two key victories today, first winning match point in a Semi-Final race and then prevailing in the first Finals race of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland regatta.

The host team will continue its best-of-five match in the Finals tomorrow, racing against the Mascalzone Latino Audi team representing Club Nautico di Roma, which is the Challenger of Record for the America’s Cup.

Racing started in the approaches to the Rangitoto Channel off Auckland’s East Coast beaches in the early afternoon, after a long wait for an uncertain sou-west breeze to fill-in and settle. The shifty breeze was moderate all day, ranging between 10 and 14 knots.

Emirates and Azzurra were 1-1, after the Kiwi’s nail-biter one second win on Friday. There was plenty at stake. The Italian team won the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice last November, beating Emirates. The host Kiwi team had won the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series event in Auckland last year and they were aiming for a repeat victory.

Emirates Team NZ is 2 wins away from grabbing the LV Trophy. Auckland, 20 March 2010. Photo copyright Chris Cameron / Emirates Team NZ

Emirate’s skipper Dean Barker wanted the right side of the course and, with the starboard entry, he wielded the advantage with clinical detachment.

“It wasn’t easy that’s for sure,” Barker said. “Conditions aren’t exactly even or stable, it keeps you on the edge of your toes all the time. But it felt very controlled from our guys. The nice thing is the composure of our guys, which we’ve really been working hard on. Even though things got tight at times, the guys kept doing their job well.”

With their Finals berth safe, the Emirates team enjoyed a break until they returned to race Mascalzone Latino Audi. It proved to be a nail-biter for their Kiwi fans.

Barker pulled off a come-from-behind victory after conceding the lead at the second mark. In the pre-start, the New Zealanders came within centimetres of a penalty as they tacked away from ML Audi’s Gavin Brady but the incident was green-flagged by the umpires. Brady took the lead at the second leeward mark only to concede it when Barker split away on the windward leg and got back ahead.

Emirates Team New Zealand Managing Director Grant Dalton, who also sails on the boat, summed up the day. “I think the bottom line is that we can still sail a lot better. We have to just keep working at it. It tends to click eventually,” Dalton said. “Brady is a bit more aggressive, he came close to copping a couple of penalties today on the start, one I thought was pretty close on the edge. But that’s up to Dean, he deals with it all the time. The whole thing is a bit disjointed because you’re not flowing, week on week on week. So you can’t expect to be going at the normal rate of incremental improvement every day. But we’ve got to be reasonably happy at the moment, going one-up in the final."

Race One – Semi-Final: Emirates Team New Zealand def. Azzurra, 00:26 –Emirates had the starboard end advantage and used it throughout the prestart to hold Azzurra’s Francesco Bruni out from the right side of the course. They came to the line at speed on starboard, in a shifty 10-knot breeze, well separated and with the Italians just bow out. Emirates held for a few seconds and then tacked away into a right shift. When they closed for the first cross 30 seconds later the Kiwis on starboard had a lead of nearly two boat lengths. Approaching the top mark and above the port lay line, Italy pulled back into close contact on a big left shift, but NZ’s Dean Barker luffed them momentarily before the mark before bearing away and opening a lead of several boat lengths that he never relinquished. Tommaso Chieffi, Azzurra tactician, said “we entered on port so it was already a difficult situation. On the second beat, we had the jib halyard come undone. We had to ease the jib out, and that lost us about 20 seconds. God knows, if it was closer in the last part of the race, it may have been a different story but it wasn’t our day.”

Race Two - 1st Final: Team New Zealand def. Mascalzone Latino Audi, 00:12 – After his close miss, Barker coolly controlled the prestart, pushing Brady above the committee boat before returning and speeding off on starboard with the Italians trailing on his hip. Emirates first mark lead was 14 seconds but the Italians got on their wind on the run to round ahead at the leeward mark. Barker said, “you’re happy sometimes to give up some distance if it means that you put yourself in a stronger position. And we did a nice job of that on the second beat – in the end we were able to extend quite a bit.” Brady got out to the right but it didn’t pay. He let the boats get widely separated on a long port tack and the lead changed again as Barker found more favorable breeze on the left. Barker led by 12 seconds at the third mark and also at the finish. Brady’s tactician Morgan Larson took the long view. “We’re really happy, the guys are sailing the boat better than we have all week,” he said. “We’ve just got to get a little tighter in the afterguard and keep our communication good and look at it more like a match race.”

Emirates Team NZ leads Mascalzone 1-0 in the LV Trophy finals. Auckland, 20 March 2010. Photo copyright Chris Cameron / Emirates Team NZ

Race Three – Petit Final: Azzurra def Artemis – Italy’s Azzurra won their Petit Final match against Artemis as the Swedish boat copped two penalties in an early evening race. In the pre-start dialup Terry Hutchinson in the port entry boat was late completing his initial tack and the blue penalty flag went up. Francesco Bruni took Azzurra over the start line just to weather of Artemis and bow out. It was a one tack leg as the boats straightlined at equal speeds all the way out to the port tack layline where Artemis was forced to follow their opponent into the mark. The Italians dominated the next two legs until Artemis pulled level on the last run, only to be penalized again for failing to respond to a luff. Azzurra pulled away to win as the Swedish boat began its penalty turn.

Yet another great performance by Azzurra that leave Auckland 3rd overall. Auckland, 20 March 2010. Photo copyright Sander van der Borch / Artemis

Yet another great performance by Azzurra that leave Auckland 3rd overall. Auckland, 20 March 2010. Photo copyright Sander van der Borch / Artemis

Yet another great performance by Azzurra that leave Auckland 3rd overall. Auckland, 20 March 2010. Photo copyright Sander van der Borch / Artemis

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Contrastes

Le site Internet du Saint-Siège publie la lettre envoyée par le pape aux fidèles irlandais suite aux scandales sexuels qui ont touché l'Eglise dans le pays, dans laquelle il exprime sa «honte» et son «remord» pour les prêtres pédophiles. Cet article revient sur l'attitude que Benoît XVI a adoptée au cours de sa carrière vis-à-vis des accusations de pédophilie envers l'Eglise.

***

Le 10 mars, l'exorciste en chef du Vatican, le révérend Gabriele Amorth (qui occupe cette exigeante fonction depuis 25 ans), a déclaré: «le diable est à l'œuvre à l'intérieur du Vatican», et: «quand on évoque «la fumée de Satan» dans les saintes pièces, c'est totalement vrai y compris les dernières histoires de violence et de pédophilie». On peut y voir une confirmation que de terribles choses se passent dans la sainte enceinte, mais la plupart des enquêtes révèlent qu'elles ont une explication matérielle parfaitement valable.

Quelques jours après les dernières révélations sur la complicité constante du Vatican dans le scandale actuel -interminable d'ailleurs- de viols d'enfants, un porte-parole du Saint-Siège a fait une concession maquillée en démenti. Il est clair, a déclaré le révérend Federico Lombardi, que l'on se donne du mal pour «trouver des éléments qui permettraient d'impliquer personnellement le Saint-Père dans des affaires d'abus sexuels». Il a bêtement ajouté: «Ces tentatives ont échoué».

Il se trompe par deux fois. Tout d'abord, personne n'a eu de mal à trouver de preuves: elles sont apparues d'elles-mêmes, puisque c'était inévitable. Ensuite, le fait que cet abominable scandale éclabousse le sommet de l'église catholique s'inscrit dans un processus qui n'en est qu'à ses débuts. Il est pourtant devenu inéluctable quand le collège de cardinaux a élu vicaire du Christ sur la terre l'homme qui portait quasiment toute la responsabilité de la dissimulation de l'affaire dès son origine. (L'un des acteurs sanctifiés de cette «élection» était le cardinal Bernard Law de Boston, un homme qui a déjà eu l'occasion d'éprouver la clémence de la justice du Massachussetts [Law est accusé d'avoir laissé agir des prêtres pédophiles en connaissance de cause mais n'a jamais été condamné]).

Il y a deux problèmes ici, distincts mais liés l'un à l'autre: premièrement, la responsabilité individuelle du pape dans un épisode de ce cauchemar moral, et deuxièmement, sa responsabilité plus générale et institutionnelle pour l'infraction à la loi au sens plus large, et pour la honte et le déshonneur qui l'accompagnent.

La première histoire est facile à raconter, et personne ne songerait à la nier. En 1979, un garçon allemand de 11 ans, Wilfried F., a été emmené en vacances à la montagne par un prêtre. On lui a fait boire de l'alcool, il a été enfermé dans sa chambre, déshabillé et forcé à sucer le pénis de son confesseur (pourquoi nous limitons-nous à qualifier ce genre d'actes «d'abus»?) L'ecclésiastique incriminé fut transféré d'Essen à Munich pour une «thérapie» sur décision de Joseph Ratzinger, archevêque à l'époque, et il fut convenu qu'il n'aurait plus jamais à s'occuper d'enfants. Mais il ne fallut pas longtemps pour que l'adjoint de Ratzinger, le grand vicaire Gerhard Gruber, ne le renvoie vers des œuvres «pastorale» où il ne tarda pas à réitérer ses agressions sexuelles.

On entend dire bien sûr, ce qui ne manquera pas d'être en partie contesté, que Ratzinger ne savait rien de cette deuxième atrocité. Je cite ici le révérend Thomas Doyle, ancien employé de l'ambassade du Vatican à Washington et l'un des premiers à avoir critiqué la paresse de l'église catholique à réagir aux allégations de viols d'enfants. «C'est absurde» juge-t-il. «Le pape Benoît XVI est un micromanager. Il est de la vieille école. Un événement de ce type aurait forcément été porté à son attention. Dites au grand vicaire de trouver une meilleure ligne de défense. Ce qu'il essaie de faire, de toute évidence, c'est de protéger le pape».

C'est chose assez courante, à laquelle sont habitués les catholiques américains, australiens et irlandais dont les viols et les tortures d'enfants, et la dissimulation de ces actes par la tactique consistant à déplacer bourreaux et violeurs de paroisse en paroisse, ont été douloureusement et complètement exposés. C'est du même tonneau que l'aveu récent et tardif du frère du pape, monseigneur Georg Ratzinger, que s'il ignorait tout des agressions sexuelles qui ont eu lieu dans la manécanterie qu'il dirigeait entre 1964 et 1994, maintenant qu'il y repense, il regrette sa manie d'alors d'allonger des baffes aux garçons.

L'obstruction à la justice au niveau international pratiquée par Joseph Ratzinger avant que l'Église ne décide d'en faire son chef suprême est bien plus grave. Après avoir été promu cardinal, il a été chargé de la «Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi» (autrefois mieux connue sous le nom d'Inquisition). En 2001, le pape Jean-Paul II chargea ce département d'enquêter sur le viol et la torture d'enfants par des prêtres catholiques. En mai de cette même année, Ratzinger envoya une lettre confidentielle à chaque évêque, dans laquelle il leur rappelait l'extrême gravité d'un crime particulier. Mais ce crime, c'était la dénonciation du viol et de la torture. Les accusations, sermonnait Ratzinger, n'étaient gérables que dans le cadre de la juridiction exclusive de l'Église. Tout partage de preuves avec les autorités judiciaires ou la presse était absolument interdit.

Les accusations feraient l'objet d'enquêtes «de la manière la plus secrète... restreinte par un silence perpétuel...et chacun...doit observer le secret le plus strict qui est communément considéré comme le secret du saint office...sous peine d'excommunication» (les italiques sont de moi). Personne n'a encore été excommunié pour avoir violé ou torturé des enfants, mais en revanche, dénoncer ces crimes pouvait vous causer de sérieux ennuis. Et c'est cette même église qui nous met en garde contre le relativisme moral! (Pour en savoir plus sur cet épouvantable document, voyez les deux rapports publiés par Jamie Doward dans l'Observer de Londres du 24 avril 2005).

Non content de couvrir ses propres prêtres, le bureau de Ratzinger a même écrit des lois toutes personnelles sur le délai de prescription. La juridiction de l'Église, revendiquait Ratzinger, «commence à courir le jour où le mineur a atteint sa 18éme année» et dure 10 années supplémentaires. Daniel Shea, l'avocat de deux victimes qui ont poursuivi en justice Ratzinger et une église du Texas, qualifie très justement cette dernière stipulation d'obstruction à la justice. «Vous ne pouvez pas enquêter sur une affaire si vous n'en avez jamais connaissance. Si vous arrivez à la garder secrète pendant 18 ans plus 10 ans, le prêtre ne sera jamais inquiété».

La prochaine entrée de cette sinistre liste sera la relance des accusations portées depuis longtemps contre [feu] le révérend Marcial Maciel, fondateur de l'ultra-réactionnaire Légion du Christ, dans laquelle les agressions sexuelles semblent presque avoir été partie intégrante de la liturgie. Les plaintes d'anciens membres âgés de cet ordre impénétrable ont été ignorées et jetées aux oubliettes par Ratzinger pendant les années 1990, ne serait-ce que parce que le père Maciel avait été loué par le pape Jean-Paul II qui l'avait qualifié de «guide efficace pour la jeunesse». Voici venue la moisson de cette longue campagne de dissimulation. L'Église catholique est dirigée par un bureaucrate bavarois médiocre, autrefois chargé de la dissimulation de la plus immonde des iniquités, dont l'incompétence à cette fonction nous le montre aujourd'hui comme un homme personnellement et professionnellement responsable d'avoir activement permis une infecte vague de crimes. Ratzinger lui-même est peut-être banal, mais de toute sa carrière se dégage la puanteur du mal -un mal tenace et méthodique que l'exorcisme est impuissant à extraire. Nul besoin d'incantations médiévales. Ce qu'il faut, c'est que justice soit faite. Et vite.

Christopher Hitchens est chroniqueur à Vanity Fair et journaliste associé à la Hoover Institution de Stanford, Californie.

Traduit par Bérengère Viennot

LIRE EGALEMENT SUR LE MEME SUJET: Eglise: pourquoi la France est épargnée par les scandales pédophiles, Pédophilie: la tolérance zéro selon Benoît XVI et Le pape peut-ils se faire mettre à la porte?

Image de Une: Benoît XVI au Vatican  Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

BARCELONA, 20 (EUROPA PRESS)

El regatista Javier Hernández (RCN Tenerife) comentó tras su victoria en la 15ª edición de la Semana Olímpica de Barcelona en categoría Laser que se quitó "la espina que tenía clavada", ya que hace dos años estuvo a punto de alzarse con el triunfo.

"He participado muchas veces en esta regata y ganarla es una gran satisfacción. Hace dos años me quedé a las puertas de ganar el trofeo absoluto y este año me he quitado la espina. Estoy muy contento", señaló en el acto de entrega de premios de la Semana Olímpica de Barcelona, que tuvo lugar en el Parc del Fórum.

Por su parte, Onán Barreiros y Aaron Sarmiento que ganaron en la clase 470 Masculino, se mostraron "muy contentos con la victoria". "Ha sido una semana de regatas excepcional con doce mangas y con pruebas todos los días. Nos vamos muy satisfechos", señalaron.

Además, la vicepresidenta de la ISAF, Teresa Lara, mostró su satisfacción por la organización de la prueba. "Me ha gustado mucho el ambiente que se ha vivido en la Semana Olímpica de Barcelona y las ganas y el trabajo que se está haciendo para que nuestro deporte siga creciendo", afirmó.

Por último, el presidente de la Federación Catalana de Vela, Gerard Esteva, señaló la importancia de hacer recuperado esta prueba. "Hemos recuperado la Semana Olímpica de Barcelona y creo que esto es muy importante para el futuro de estas instalaciones del Centro Internacional de Vela que se está construyendo y que contamos que se ponga en marcha este mismo verano", concluyó.

A pesar del clima de volatilidad que está azotando al mercado en las últimas semanas, las bolsas internacionales han hecho pleno en estos días: todas han marcado máximos, en algunos casos anuales y en otros de dos meses, pero lo cierto es que han dado un nuevo paso hacia adelante. Sin embargo, estos máximos pueden ser simplemente un espejismo alcista, porque no han llegado a consolidarse, al menos en esta semana.

El Ibex 35 cerró la sesión del miércoles 17 en 11.166 puntos, su nivel más alto desde el pasado 26 de enero, cuando conquistó los 11.347,3 enteros. Sin embargo, el balance de la semana es negativo para el principal indicador de la bolsa española: ha retrocedido un 0,77%. Para el Dax alemán, el miércoles también fue una buena jornada: cerró en 6.024 puntos, su mejor resultado desde el 11 de enero y, además, ha terminado las ganancias con un suave avance del 0,6%.

Pero el español y el germano no son los únicos indicadores que marcaron máximos en aquella sesión. El Cac francés logró su mejor sesión desde el 19 de enero, al cerrar en 3.957,89 puntos. El Psi portugués, por su parte, se remontó a los niveles del 21 de enero, al igual que el Nikkei de Tokio.

Sin embargo, los máximos anuales han venido de la mano de Reino Unido y Estados Unidos. El Ftse británico marcó un máximo anual el miércoles y el viernes repitió la operación al cerrar en 5.650,13 puntos. El S&P marcó su máximo anual el miércoles 17, mientras que el resto de indicadores norteamericanos, como el británico, ha conseguido hacer doblete.

Entonces, ¿estamos ante una recuperación o ante un espejismo alcista? En realidad, es una mezcla de ambos porque, aunque las bolsas han dado un nuevo paso adelante, el mercado sigue muy inestable. La tendencia sigue siendo la misma que hace unas semanas: a una jornada de subidas le sigue otra de correcciones, situación que no da lugar a ningún tipo de garantías.

En esta semana los principales factores que han afectado al mercado han sido la decisión de la Reserva Federal norteamericana de mantener por un tiempo prolongado los tipos de interés en niveles mínimos para faciliar el crédito, las dudas sobre la economía griega y su rescate, la decisión de la agencia crediticia Standard & Poor's de retirar su amenaza sobre el 'ráting' de Grecia y el anuncio del Banco de Japón de duplicar el suministro de liquidez para combatir la deflación del país.

Todo ello sin olvidar los datos macroeconómicos y los resultados empresariales, que han servido de referencia en las últimas jornadas y lo seguirán siendo, según los analistas.

Mejor indicador de la semana y balance de 2010

Esta semana el indicador portugués ha arrebatado al español el título de mejor índice internacional. En las últimas cinco jornadas, el PSI 20 ha acumulado una subida del 1,46%, el doble que los norteamericanos Dow Jones y S&P, los siguientes con mejor resultado. Sin embargo, la situación cambia por completo cuando hacemos un balance anual: los índices de Nueva York lideran las ganancias anuales.

Desde finales de diciembre, el Dow Jones de industriales ha crecido un 1,5%, el Nasdaq 100 un 3,74% y el S&P un 3,9%. Pero todo el protagonismo se lo lleva el Nasdaq Composite, que se ha revalorizado un 4,4% en ese mismo período. El Ibex 35 y el PSI portugués, por su parte, siguen siendo los peores indicadores del mundo en lo que va de año: el español se ha dejado en el parqué un 7,87%, mientras que el portugués ha retrocedido un 4,37%.

Con todo, no parece que vayan a producirse cambios significativos en un futuro a corto plazo. Según un informe de Renta 4, "a nivel técnico, el Ibex 35 se moverá en las próximas semanas en una banda entre los 10.500 y los 11.600 puntos".

La Federación Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, FIDH, y la Organización Mundial Contra la Tortura, OMCT, hicieron pública su preocupación por la salud del periodista disidente Guillermo Fariñas, y a estas preocupaciones se sumó el Movimiento Autónomo de...

The draw for both the quarter finals and the semi finals of the Champions league was made yesterday and Arsenal of course drew the club that everybody wanted to avoid in those quarter finals. On Wednesday March 31st we play at home to current Champions league holders Barcelona and we travel to their stadium 6 days later for the second leg. It couldn't get any harder for Arsenal but as I see any progress in the Champions league as a bonus I'm not particularly bothered at the prospect of playing them.

Don't get me wrong I want Arsenal to win of course but if they do go out there is no disgrace in losing to a team who currently hold six trophies and play what is considered by the majority of unbiased commentators to be the best football of any team in the world at the moment. For me the most important thing is the battle for the Premier league and it would be terrible if we were to slip up in that due to our Champions league commitments. Of course that opinion could change if we were to fall off the pace in the league but I don't think that will happen.

It will be a huge occasion when Thierry Henry comes back to Arsenal and I'm sure he will get a fantastic reception from the fans. We will also get to see Cesc play against the club that have tried everything they know to get him to sign for them and I hope he can show them exactly why Arsenal will not be selling him. The first leg is only 11 days away and before we know it Arsenal will be standing on the pitch with Barcelona as the Champions league music blares around the Emirates. Whenever I hear that music it makes the hair on my arms stand up as I know it's a really big game. It's funny that we get to hear it every single season but it has never been heard at White Hart Lane.

If we can somehow manage to get the better of Barcelona we will have a semi final date with either Inter Milan or CSKA Moscow and to say it's the tougher side of the draw is an understatement as "Manure" will play Bayern Munich in the quarter final and the winner of Lyon v Bordeaux in the semi final if they progress. I know we have to beat them all if we are going to win the trophy but I'm sure there must be an easier route to the final.

Anyway I'll deal with all of the business of the Champions league as the event gets closer but first of all we have the little matter of a Premier league game at home to West Ham today. With "Manure" and Chelsea not playing until tomorrow we have the chance to go second in the league with a win and a four goal win would see us top the table. West Ham had a mini revival recently but their form has slipped again and they find themselves two places and three points above the relegation zone. I think that they're too good to go down but I suppose that hasn't stopped other teams from being relegated in the past.

At least we can expect West Ham to try to play football against us and that in itself will be a nice change. Their away record this season is very poor with one win, five draws and nine defeats in the league so far this season. They have scored 13 goals and conceded 27 and with all of that in mind we simply have to put them to the sword.

The boss said yesterday that both Cesc and Rosicky had been passed fit to play and with Song back from suspension our options are better than they have been for quite a while. Interestingly enough I heard no mention of Vela yet again and it really would seem that he has disappeared from the scene at the moment. We are still without the injured RVP, Gallas, Ramsey, Djourou and Gibbs but we are no longer on top of the table for injuries. 

I see the team as Almunia in goals with Sagna, Vermaelen, Campbell and Clichy at the back. The midfield should consist of Song, Cesc and Diaby with Bendtner, Arshavin and Nasri up front. There is of course a case to be made for Eboue at right back as he offers more going forward than Sagna but I think the manager will start with Sagna. With Cesc back Nasri should revert to a wide position although I think the manager likes to play Walcott at home where we have a big pitch and so much possession. The midfield is the strongest one we have and they should be able to dominate West Ham and create plenty of chances for the whole team.

The big question for me is if we can manage to keep a clean sheet for a change and I would love to see Almunia give a commanding performance for a change too. I hope the players can put all thoughts of our game with Barcelona out of their heads and concentrate from the first minute. I'll be happy if we win the game but I'll be much happier if we don't leave it until injury time to get our winning goal. My nerves can't take all these grandstand finishes and wins with almost the last kick of the game. I expect Cesc to take control of the game from the first minute and dominate the game  as he builds up to the battle with his hometown club.

I predict a 3-1 win for Arsenal and I'll be surprised if Cesc doesn't score  at least one of the goals. I was at the last league match at the Emirates when we beat Burnley 3-1 and Bendtner missed a hat full of chances. I said at the time that at least he was getting in the right positions and if he continued to do that the goals would hopefully come. He has four goals in two games since then and his injury time winner may have been scuffed a little but it was priceless for Arsenal. More of the same today would be very much appreciated and I hope he has his shooting boots on. 

There was some bad news yesterday when the boss said that he thought Gallas was 80% out of the Champions league first leg against Barcelona and the thought of Campbell trying to stop Barcelona's quick moving game is a bit of a worry. What's even more worrying is that Campbell finds it hard to play two games in a week and if he plays at Birmingham next Saturday we could see Silvestre lining up against Barcelona. I need to take something to calm my nerves just at the though of that. 

The club site is full of stories about the Barcelona game after the manager's press conference yesterday and a few other stories too. Interestingly he spoke about the possibility of Portsmouth fielding a weakened team in the league after the FA deducted 9 points from them for going into administration which left them 17 points from safety with nine games left. They are effectively relegated but they have an FA Cup semi final against either The Spuds or Fulham and there is speculation that they will concentrate on that and rest players in their league games. With Chelsea going there next Wednesday it's very important for us that Portsmouth play their strongest team and perform at the required level. I'm sure that their manager would love to put one over on Chelsea after being sacked as their manager not so long ago. 

He also spoke about the Gallas contract negotiations and he said that they are still ongoing and his injury won't affect them. Apparently Gallas has being seeing a specialist in a rehab centre in the south of France and he will be back at the club on Wednesday but things will have to be taken slowly as there have been two recurrences of the injury already. That gives him one week to make the Barcelona first leg which is probably too soon but it would be good if we could have him available for the return leg six days later. 

I'll be going to the supporters club in Bray to watch today's game live on ESPN which unfortunately means that I will miss out on LadyArse's fantastic live blog that she is running during the game. I tried to get it on my phone but my phone doesn't support whatever format it is and I'll have to stick to my beer and chat with my fellow Wicklow Gunners. As we near the time for prizes to be handed out I hope we can get a good turn out and the half time cocktail sausages and chips or wedges are always appreciated. That's it for today. Come on you Gunners.

Here's a video concentrating on Henry's contribution in the 2006 Champions league final.

And to finish today's title track from Jimmy Cliff. We have the hardest draw of all in the next round of the Champions league but as the song says "The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all".

See You Tomorrow.

There are defining moments in every club's season and only time will tell whether Aston Villa look back at the end of campaign and point to this fixture as one of the reasons why Champions League football slipped through their fingers.

John Carew's second goal of the afternoon, eight minutes from time, rescued a draw for an uninspiring Villa side, to deny Wolverhampton Wanderers their first victory over their west Midlands rivals in 30 years.

This had looked like being a routine home victory when Carew sidefooted Villa ahead, in the 16th minute, from a marginally offside position after a flowing move that saw Stewart Downing, Milner and Ashley Young combine.

But by the time the interval arrived, the complexion of the game had completely changed.

Two Wolves goals in the space of 18 minutes had Mick McCarthy punching the air on the touchline as the home supporters rubbed their eyes in disbelief at the alarming turnaround.

Villa's concessions were so bad that it seemed difficult to believe they had started the day with the best defensive record in the Premier League.

Stilian Petrov will have to accept some blame for the Wolves equaliser, after his reckless challenge on the impressive Kevin Doyle gave David Jones the opportunity to deliver a free-kick deep into the Villa area. But questions will also be asked of Brad Friedel's decision to stay on his line.

Even then, the Wolves right-back Ronald Zubar managed to clear the ball before Jody Craddock bundled home.

Villa suddenly looked anxious and, with seven minutes of the first half remaining, Wolves grabbed a second, again in farcical circumstances.

This time, Doyle fed Jones and the former Derby County and Manchester United midfielder stepped inside Carlos Cuéllar with embarrassing ease before feeding Matt Jarvis.

There still seemed to be enough Villa bodies in the penalty area to clear the ball, but, unfortunately for Martin O'Neill, one of them, Milner, turned the ball into his own net as Jones threatened to pounce.

The sight of Downing heading the ball down into the ground and over the bar from inside the six-yard box, three minutes later, merely added to the feeling that this was not going to be Villa's day.

Wolves must have anticipated an onslaught after the restart, much the same as Reading experienced in the FA Cup quarter-final a fortnight ago, but Villa remained sluggish and it was not until the 70th minute, when Karl Henry hacked clear Emile Heskey's header, that they came close to an equaliser.

That remained the case until the 82nd minute, when it was Wolves' turn to press the self-destruct button.

Craddock and Christophe Berra committed the cardinal sin of allowing Friedel's long punt upfield to bounce, inviting Carew to flick the ball on to Heskey. From there, it was transferred to the onrushing Steve Sidwell, whose left-footed shot was swept past Marcus Hahnemann by Carew.

Villa rejoiced, but there were no celebrations at the final whistle.

We all know (or, at least some of us do) that Spain - more specifically, Madrid - was in the running to host the 2016 Olympic games. This was very important to Spain and a lot of money (A LOT) was invested to make sure Madrid was not only capable and prepared to host such an illustrious event, but also to ensure that it was presented as the best possible candidate. For a while, all seemed well. It looked as though we had the support of Europe (it looked that way...for a while) and we had been assured by the president of the International Olympic Committee (a European), Jacques Rogge, that continent rotation would not be an issue. We even managed to beat the U.S., despite Obama's charismatic presence during the decision-making process. Everything seemed to be pointing to a Madrid 2016 Olympics! And then, it all went south. Literally. The committee decided that Rio de Janeiro should host the event instead. There was a big hullabaloo and all the usual garrulous individuals came out and did what they usually do (blah, blah, blah). Lula even shed tears!

At first, like any other Spaniard, I was disappointed. I knew how much money had been spent and what something like this would have meant for Spain, especially in the context of an international financial crisis that has hit us quite a lot harder than in other places (save for Greece, of course). After a while, my disappointment became a sour, cynical disposition. Rio, I scoffed. Rio has one of the highest crime rates in the world! What were they thinking? Will they be able to guarantee the safety of the athletes? What about the spectators and tourists? Admittedly, it seemed like pure madness! I couldn't understand what would possibly cause someone to choose a huge, overcrowded, poor, crime-ridden city like Rio over Madrid, one of the great European capitals! No, this was by far not my proudest moment. I couldn't get off my high horse. I even smirked a bit when I heard common criminals had somehow managed to shoot down an army helicopter just outside of Rio! Surely, I thought, they must be having second thoughts now!

The Olympics weren't the only sporting event scheduled to head south. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be held this summer, as most everyone knows, in South Africa. I'm not much for the football, so I didn't really give this much thought when it was announced. This all changed today, after reading Emm in London's Shout South Africa post and watching the great collaborative video. Not only does South Africa have some talented musical artists that deserve more international recognition, but the purpose of the video really struck me.

Our side of the world, the privileged North West (in which I was not born but have, by pure chance, been allowed to live), tends to pride itself as the pinnacle of human civilization. Our side of the world gave mankind democracy, human rights, classical philosophy, the most important scientific achievements, some of the greatest literature on the planet, the Indo-European language family that has managed to conquer the globe, the United Nations and the idea of global cooperation for the betterment and advancement of all, etc. Yes, we gave the world a lot and have, perhaps rightfully so, placed ourselves on a pedestal, as superior to all other earthly regions - even those that share our cultural heritage and have been shaped by us for centuries. We, so caught up in our own narcissism, also tend to ignore the rest of the world unless it suits us! And why shouldn't we, we ask ourselves. We're better and far more interesting! 

I fell into this trap after Madrid lost the bid to host the 2016 Olympics and am quite ashamed of having done so. I should have been happy for Rio! Since the rebirth of the Olympic Games in the 19th century (and, naturally, their actual beginnings in the 8th century BC), Latin America has only hosted the event once! Brazil will be the second Latin American - and the first South American - country to host the Olympics! Similarly, South Africa will be the first African nation ever to host a World Cup! Yes, these countries have their own individual problems and, when compared to wealthy European and North American nations, may seem like odd choices for such prestigious events, but they're not! Poorer nations in the southern or eastern hemispheres have just as much right to host these sorts of events as we do! Furthermore, they need these sorts of events more than we do! For Brazil and South Africa, these sporting events are wonderful opportunities to attract attention, tourism and massive financial investments. They represent the hope for a better, more prosperous tomorrow. Who are we to stand in the way?

• Brian T. Smith of The Columbian: "During what has already been a surreal, unbelievable season, the sight nearly defied reality. The image: A recently fired Tom Penn, former Portland Trail Blazers vice president of basketball operations, carrying boxes filled with possessions out to his car. This was it for Penn. This is what it had all come down to. The Blazers had just wrapped up another practice at the team’s workout facility in Tualatin, Ore. And as a mid-March sun shined down Thursday afternoon, Penn -- the former golden boy who at times shined as bright as his friend and ex co-worker, Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard -- was suddenly on the outside looking in. Once the boxes were inside his car, Penn hopped in, closed the door and drove away. But while he was able to watch three years with the Blazers suddenly disappear and dissolve in the rearview mirror, questions surrounding his unexpected departure — and the implications of what his firing means for the future of the organization — are not going anywhere. Moreover, they are mounting and gaining weight. 'In my many years of doing this, nothing was more baffling or befuddling than this action with Tom,' said Warren LeGarie, agent for Penn and Pritchard. 'This is one I can’t explain.' Reached late Thursday night by telephone in Los Angeles, Blazers president Larry Miller attempted to explain. Miller said he could not reveal specific details about what caused Penn to be relieved of his job Tuesday, in a move that was originally chalked up to 'philosophical differences.' But Miller did make an effort to paint a broader picture. He said it was not one person who decided that Penn and the Blazers should suddenly part ways -- it was a group senior management decision that involved executives in Seattle and Portland."
• Israel Gutierrez of The Miami Herald: "You know what? This wouldn't be so bad. Heat-Magic in the playoffs? If the records held up, this would be the matchup in the first round, and in terms of entertainment value and intrigue, this would be the best option right now. Forget the fact the Heat actually has a chance against the Magic, which the regular-season series would indicate, as would Dwyane Wade's history of success against Orlando and his former coach. That's too obvious a reason. This goes even deeper than that. So many story lines that it actually would be a shame if it didn't happen, at this point. ... Wade-LeBron would be fun, sure, but it wouldn't be much of a fair fight. Heat-Celtics would be OK, if you want to see the Heat against an aging team, but it doesn't have the same pizazz. Heat-Hawks might give the Heat its best chance at winning, but my goodness, it's just plain boring. Heat-Magic would be must-see. Let's see if someone can make that happen."
• Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: "Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy was asked if regular season games between teams translates in any way to the postseason. He shook his head. 'I've studied enough to know,' he said, 'that it doesn't hold true.' At least Van Gundy hopes that's the case. The Magic will have the higher seed if they face the Miami Heat in a possible playoff series, and they'll be favored. But hit rewind. When the Magic look back at their four games against the Heat, including Thursday's night's thrilling 108-102 overtime victory at American Airlines Arena, they certainly wouldn't be strutting into a postseason match-up with their chests puffed out to here. They've been warned. The Magic needed to play bonus basketball just to emerge from the season series with a 2-2 draw. 'You can't sleep on these guys,' said Rashard Lewis, who scored seven of his 24 points in OT."
• Jeff Schultz of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Four weeks ago, the Hawks lost consecutive games at Phoenix and Golden State. There were signs of settling. At 34-20, they basically were a .500 team (15-14) after a meteoric 19-6 start. But since then, they’ve won nine of 13. A win at New Jersey actually put them 20 games over .500 for the first time in 13 years. Can’t remember seeing that in any headlines. They’re doing it in ways you want to see, particularly in March. When Johnson missed consecutive games with an injury, others stepped up their game, particularly at the offensive end. Even Jeff Teague played. Remember Jeff Teague? 'I like the fact that everybody is making a contribution,' general manager Rick Sund said. 'I like our chemistry.' So here’s the question: Has anybody noticed? The Hawks rank 20th in the NBA in home attendance at 16,092. Of the 10 teams behind them entering Thursday’s games, seven have losing records. Eight are out of the playoff picture. The two exceptions: Charlotte and Milwaukee. Both play in significantly smaller markets. ... Maybe this will get people’s attention: The race for the Southeast Division title and the No. 2 seed in the East isn’t dead yet. Nobody is catching Cleveland. But the Hawks play four games in the next six days, the last one coming against the Magic. They have only 15 games left. It’s safe to say if they’re going to make a move on Orlando, it’s now."
• Scott Fowler of The Charlotte Observer: "I just asked new Bobcats owner Michael Jordan a question and liked the answer I got -- he said he's open to changing the nickname of the Charlotte NBA franchise he just bought if enough people think that should happen. Jordan said this after his big press conference Thursday, in a smaller interview session with five local print reporters, including both myself and The Observer's Bobcat beat writer, Rick Bonnell. I've been advocating a name change this month in my column which Jordan said he had read. So when I asked him about a possible name change, he teased: 'How did I know you were going to ask that?' Then Jordan said this, word-for-word: 'The thing is that I’m open for anything. It’s a commitment. We have to go through the league. It’s a process. It’s a financial commitment. Am I willing to look at that and say can we go down that road? Yeah. If I get the understanding from the community, from the public, that we need it and it signifies change, yeah, I would do that. But once again, it’s a process. It’s a $3-million to $10-million investment to do that. I’m not afraid of that, as long as at the backside of that, the public is going to be happy about that, that it’s going to be great for the organization. I think it [could be] a new beginning. Yeah, I would do that. I would consider that.' "
• Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald: "From a local perspective, the most interesting line in Michael Jordan’s 'Welcome to NBA ownership news conference' on Thursday was this one: 'The thing that I can get out of this, I want to have fun,' Jordan said. 'I want to provide entertainment to the public and to the city of Chicago … I mean, to the city of Charlotte. Or Chicago, too. I want to provide entertainment to everybody.' Was Jordan secretly wishing he was being introduced as owner of the Bulls instead of the Charlotte Bobcats? Well, from a business standpoint, of course he’d rather be running a large-market NBA team. But that’s the biggest reason Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t invite Jordan to join the Bulls’ ownership group -- there’s too much money being made to get out now."
• Bob Finnan of The News-Herald: "Some people can't get past his 8.9-point scoring average. For those who are hung up on forward/center Anderson Varejao's meager average, wake up. One could make a case the 6-foot-11, 260-pounder is the Cavaliers' second-best player this season. He's not well-loved around the league by the players. He's respected, but they can't stand playing against him. Many players don't want anything to do with how hard Varejao plays. Varejao has a major fan in Detroit. Pistons coach John Kuester said Varejao is simply 'the best.' Said Kuester: 'You're talking about one of the all-time best people.' Kuester isn't thrilled when his team faces Varejao, who is second on the Cavs with 7.9 rebounds per game. 'I hate him,' Kuester joked. 'He's the kind of guy you love coaching and hate coaching against.' "
• Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News: "Tim Duncan did something Wednesday night in Orlando that he'd not done in 962 career games. The Spurs are hopeful he won't soon do it again. Duncan went 1 for 10 in the Spurs' 110-84 loss to the Magic, the lowest shooting percentage of his career. Duncan's teammates weren't sure what to make of his poor shooting performance, which resulted in a season-low five points, but they remain confident Duncan will rebound. They've seen Duncan recover from bad games before, though never one quite as nightmarish as this. 'I totally, blindly trust him,' guard Manu Ginobili said. 'It was one of those games. Things happen. He's going to bounce back for sure.' ... Asked after the game if Duncan had just experienced an off night, coach Gregg Popovich chuckled and said, 'I hope so.' "
• Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman: "Lost in the non-stop national nitpicking of Kevin Durant’s defense is another player whose performance on the defensive end could be even more problematic for the Oklahoma City Thunder. That player is Jeff Green, who has had more than his share of highs and lows this season. But it’s one recent four-game stretch in particular that raises the question of whether his defense could eventually pose a problem in the postseason. In consecutive games against Denver, the Los Angeles Clippers, Sacramento and New Orleans, Green struggled to defend Carmelo Anthony, Craig Smith, Carl Landry and David West. At the time, Green’s performance could be overlooked because the Thunder went 3-1 in those games and had won 12 of 15. But with the stakes soaring higher as the season winds to an end, it seems Green’s efforts will be the key to the Thunder’s fate from here out and into the postseason. Oklahoma City has built its season on defense, and the next chance for Green to prove he can put the clamps on a premier frontcourt player comes tonight when the Thunder takes on Toronto at 6 inside Air Canada Centre."
• Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald: "The Kevin Garnett you’re seeing now isn’t the same Big Ticket who gained the Celtics admittance to the Garden rafters two years ago. You know it; the Celtics know it. But Danny Ainge believes it is as much about the logical career progression for someone who’s played 1,184 games as it is his right knee issues. The C’s general manager acknowledges Garnett doesn’t have the same lift, but he’s encouraged that he’s getting up and down the floor better. ... What’s critical is that Garnett recognize the changes and adjust. NBA people have been saying for years that he is not the best when it comes to some of the positional minutiae, but Garnett always has had the energy, desire and physical gifts to recover when an opponent gained a step on him. Now the foes are finishing. 'I think now he has to be a little more sound fundamentally,' Ainge said. 'He’ll have to do it more, because he’s not the same athlete. He’s had some adjustments to make, for sure. KG’s got to do a better job of keeping guys in front of him because he can’t catch up. But that’s the case with everyone on our team.' The question is whether Garnett can perform as well as the Celtics need him to in the postseason. 'Yes,' Ainge said. 'Absolutely.' "
• Jim O'Donnell of the Chicago Sun-Times: "Tonight, LeBron James and his polka averse will be at the United Center to mercy-throttle the spring-broken Bulls. At 54-15, they own the league's best record. The Los Angeles Lakers (50-18) are second. If the script plays out -- always a massive 'if' in Cleveland -- the Cavs will blow through the Eastern Conference playoffs and then dispatch Kobe Bryant and the Lakers for the franchise's first NBA crown. If that happens, it would be Cleveland's first major championship since 1964, when Brown, Frank Ryan, Gary Collins, et al., shut out young Don Shula and the Baltimore Colts at the old lakefront Municipal Stadium. It is a dream scenario -- really, a scream-dream for encrusted Clevelanders. Because when life looks like Easy Street around Public Square, there is departure at the door. And on July 1 -- as every basketball fan worth his video streaming from Shaker Heights to Shanghai knows -- LeBron James is a free agent. Will he stay or will he go? No one outside of James' innermost sanctum -- headquartered at his $15 million, 33,000-square foot mansion near Akron -- knows for sure. Even there, the issue may still be on the table. Around Cleveland, fans -- by Jungian conditioning -- are braced for the ominous 'whatever.' "
• Mike Ganter of the Toronto Sun: "Things are clear again for Andrea Bargnani and that’s a huge deal for the Raptors. The Raps centre had lost his focus over the past few weeks with his role changing in the absence of Chris Bosh and then again when Bosh returned. On Wednesday night, however, Bargnani was back to being the guy who not only produced points on one end, but was productive on the defensive end of the floor, as well. 'We need him to focus,' head coach Jay Triano said. 'When we were rolling, he was doing more things and it becomes a confidence building thing for him. If he’s not making shots (he has to) do something else so we can keep him on the floor. Defend, be there on the help side, rebound and box out.' "
• Frank Isola of the New York Daily News: "The Knicks gave a no-show performance in Boston the other night which isn't the first time that’s happened. If only the Knicks can find a way to be as reliable as Burke Wallace. He always shows up in Boston when his favorite team is in town. Wallace is the Knicks most loyal fan in New England and he’s been crossing enemy lines for 18 years now, all in the name of his beloved Knicks. How’s this for loyalty (or insanity): Wallace has attended every Knicks preseason and regular season game in the Boston area since April 8, 1982. That’s a total of 41 games, including Wednesday’s Knicks-Celtics game on St. Patrick’s Day. Wallace, who was raised in Albany and served in the United States Coast Guard, is such a cockeyed optimist that he worries that his streak will end when the Knicks face the Celtics in the playoffs. Not if but when. As Hubie Brown likes to say, '….and you love the passion.' "
• Michael Lee of The Washington Post: "Fabricio Oberto said he felt a little freer, a little lighter during Thursday's practice, the first time in nearly a week that the Washington Wizards reserve forward was allowed do his regular routine without being linked to a heart monitor. Oberto played in four of the past five games with three wires and patches attached to his chest and an electrocardiography monitor connected to his shorts. The device and wires were attached to him continuously for seven days -- when he slept and showered -- and was a part of his continued care following a procedure Oberto had last June to correct an irregular heartbeat. 'I don't worry about it. It's just when you move, you feel all the sticks and patches on your chest. But it's always good when you finish,' said Oberto, who had to complete the same exercise in late December. 'It's just to see if my heart is in rhythm at all times, if it has some skips or something.' Oberto said a company in New York observed his heartbeat via computer throughout and sent the results to Andrea Natale, the Austin-based doctor who performed the procedure last summer."
• Patrick Hayes of The Flint Journal: "To me, the mark of success in the NBA Draft is simply one thing: does the GM consistently find players who turn into contributors at the NBA level? All of the 'he took player x when player y was available and player y is an All-Star now!' gripes are certainly fun, but they are a waste of time. Every GM can be subject to that kind of revisionist history, and Dumars certainly is. But overall, Joe Dumars is far from the worst GM in the league when it comes to finding talent. He's right in the middle of the pack, actually. There are far worse guys teams could have overseeing their drafts than Dumars. I write this knowing it will surely lead to the typical, 'Yer just a Joe D apologist, LOLz!!!' comments, but that's not why I write it. Context is always a good thing. To say that Dumars is bad at drafting players based on a couple high profile failed picks is only part of the picture. Sure, his only two lottery picks as GM were epic fails. And yes, he has to get the team's lottery pick right this year. But I like comparisons, and compared to other current NBA GMs, Dumars does an adequate job at finding talent in the draft."

Each week, NASCAR makes the top 12 drivers in points available for a 15-minute media session.

The faces marching through the infield media center are typically familiar: Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, etc.

But there were two strange faces in the media center at Bristol: Scott Speed and Paul Menard.

Speed’s presence wasn’t entirely unexpected. After all, despite his lack of NASCAR success, he is an ex-Formula One driver.

But Menard?

The driver sponsored by his billionaire father’s company (Menards) has never really sniffed Sprint Cup success. In three full seasons, he’s finished 28th, 34th and 32nd in points.

And yet, here he was on Friday at Bristol, ninth in points after four races.

It’s early, but Menard has been impressive so far.

“It’s been a good start,” he said. “We haven’t had any real bad luck so far, so, knock on wood, hopefully we can keep that going and keep having solid finishes.”

Menard spoke quietly, calmly and with little emotion. He said it was “cool” to be in the top 10, but added, “It’s early in the year and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

And for visiting the media center more often, which would mean he continues to stay in the top 12?

“I can definitely get used to it,” he said.

• Jankovic beats battling Alisa Kleybanova 6-4, 6-4
• 'I feel that I'm coming back, and my game is getting better'

Jelena Jankovic believes she is back near her best after reaching the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

The sixth seed from Serbia was made to work hard for a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Alisa Kleybanova, which sets up a semi-final against the eighth seed, Sam Stosur.

Jankovic is trying to reach her first final since October, and before this week had failed to reach the quarter-finals at each of her last four tournaments.

Her run of poor form has been little in evidence at Indian Wells, however, and Jankovic is hopeful the good times can continue. "I think every win that I'm getting gives me a lot of confidence," she said.

"I feel that I'm coming back, and my game is getting better and better. It gives me more motivation. I feel like I can work much harder. I know what I need to work on just to get better as a player in general."

Jankovic was rarely troubled and was broken only once as she saw off the plucky challenge of the 20-year-old Kleybanova, seeded 23rd.

Jankovic had won their previous meeting this season, in her country's Fed Cup tie against Russia, but Kleybanova beat her more illustrious opponent twice last year.

The youngster forced four break points in the first set, but paid for her failure to convert any of them as Jankovic took her only opportunity – and with it the set.

Jankovic was dominant on her own serve throughout both sets, and two breaks to Kleybanova's one earned her the second and a place in the last eight.

"I'm really happy that I got so far this week," said Kleybanova, who upset the two-time champion Kim Clijsters in round three.

The Australian Stosur progressed to the semis with a 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) win over 28th-seeded Spaniard María José Martínez Sánchez.

Stosur was pushed all the way in a keenly contested match, forcing the only break of service in the opening set before trading breaks in the second on her way to sealing the match on the tie-breaker.

The second seed Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark and Agnieszka Radwanska, the fifth seed from Poland, will meet in the other semi-final.

Ivan Ljubicic (CRO), 31.

We're not sure if Ivan Ljubicic does well at Indian Wells because he likes the surface, or the weather, or just because it's his birthday every year when he's there.

In 2008, after a dramatic upset win over Tommy Robredo in a third-set tiebreak, Ljubicic's birthday present was a date with Roger Federer in the round of 16 at Indian Wells (not to mention a cake and personal birthday wishes from the then- No. 1).

Last year, for the big 3-0, he pulled off another third-set tiebreak upset win, this time over Igor Andreev, and saving five match points in the process. He also beat No. 8 seed Gilles Simon. His present? A date with Andy Murray in the quarter-finals.

This year wasn't much different. He upset a tired Novak Djokovic in the fourth round, and took out Juan Monaco in the quarters to set up a date with Nadal in the semi-finals.

Every year, a better result even at his advanced age (and let's face it; he looks even older than his actual age).

Ljubicic, a former world No. 3, looked done a few years ago. A year ago, he was barely in the top 70 (he's 26 now). But his renaissance has been nice, and he's a popular, decent guy so no one resents him for it.

He's been an ATP Tour board member, a stalwart Davis Cup competitor since 1998. The only thing he really hasn't accomplished his career is making big noise at a Grand Slam. He's won nine titles, all of them, not coincidentally, on fast surfaces. He's particularly good indoors.

Robert Lindstedt (SWE), 33.

Lindstedt got to a career high No. 15 in doubles just before Wimbledon last year, and is currently No. 31. He never did much in singles, getting to No. 309 back in 2004.

He has won six career titles, three of them with Martin Damm of the Czech Republic last year. This year he got to the final in Marseille with Julian Knowle.

Sophie Ferguson (AUS), 24.

Currently at No. 159, not too far off her career high of No. 140, Ferguson hasn't made much of a breakthrough on the big Tour. She's played the Australian Open the last five years because, well, she's an Aussie. But she's only one one match (that was in 2005).

Other than that, the only Slam she made was the 2005 French Open, where she lost in the first round.

 

The 46th Congressional Cup scheduled next Tuesday through Saturday will be sailed on Catalina 37s, but that’s nothing new. They’ve been sailed in the United States’ only Grade 1 Open match racing event for 20 years, and that doesn’t seem about to change. The 10 skippers who will sail next week, with current International Sailing Federation (ISAF) [...]

Hungry? Run on down to your local shuk and get yourself a butternut squash.

Butternut squash is still in season. Try stuffing it with quinoa, the seed that the pre-Columbian Native Americans called “mother of the grains.” With its nutty taste and high nutritional protein levels (not to mention amino acids and minerals), quinoa’s a super-food. Nowadays you can buy it in health food stores and supermarkets everywhere.

Like rice, quinoa cooks up light, yet satisfies hunger. Get it organic if you can, and wash the grains before you start cooking.

Put the quinoa to soak for half an hour in water to cover, then drain it and rinse it briefly again, till there are no more “suds”. These suds are caused by bitter natural substances, saponins. It’s nature’s way to repel birds and insects in the field. Unfortunately saponins also repel people at the table. Quinoa tastes good only if you rinse it before cooking. Once rinsed and ready, its characteristic nutty taste comes through for you to enjoy.

Butternut Squash Stuffed with Quinoa

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

Ingredients:

1  butternut squash

2 tsp. olive oil

salt, pepper, cumin, and ground coriander seed – a few pinches of each

1/2  cup raw quinoa

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup cilantro or parsley – or wild edibles like nettles or chicory

1 small onion

4 halves of sun-dried tomatoes, put to soak in 3/4 cup  plus 1 Tblsp hot water

The water from soaking the tomatoes

more salt and pepper to taste

2 Tblsp. olive oil for sauteeing

optional: Parmesan cheese to grate over the finished dish

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 F – 190 C.

Start by washing the quinoa as advised above. Set it aside to drain.

1. Cut off the end of the squash. Slice it in half. Remove the seeds. Cut most of the flesh out.

2. Rub 1 tsp. of olive oil into the cavity of each half. Drop pinches of salt, cumin, and coriander over the halves, and rub the spices in. Grind some fresh pepper over them.

3. Put the squash halves to bake, cut side up. They will need about 20 minutes.

4. Put the dried tomatoes in a small bowl and rehydrate them in the 3/4 cup hot water. Allow them to soak 5 minutes.

5. Remove the tomatoes from the water and save the water. Put the tomatoes aside.

6. Cook the quinoa with the 1/2 tsp. salt and the water from the tomatoes. Just put it all into a small pot over a low flame, cover, and let it steam till it’s done – about 15 minutes.

7. Chop the flesh of the squash.

8. Peel and dice the onion.

9. Rinse the cilantro or parsley and chop it up. 10.  Scissor or chop the tomatoes up coarsely.

11. Sauté the onions in a little olive oil, till they’re golden.

12. Add the chopped squash to the frying pan and cook, stirring often. The squash and onions should cook up within 15 minutes.

13. Add the chopped cilantro or parsley and the tomatoes.  Stir. Cook till the greens are wilted.

14. Tip the contents of the frying pan into the pot where the quinoa cooked. Stir everything up well. Taste, and season if needed. You may like to drizzle a little more olive oil into the mass.

15. Remove the squash halves from the oven and let them cool slightly so you can handle them. At this point, the flesh should be tender and slightly charred.

16. Spoon the stuffing into the squash shells. Mound it up. The dish is now ready, but a generous amount of Parmesan cheese grated over the stuffed squash puts a great finish on it.

If the squash has gotten cold, just pop it back into the hot oven for a few minutes.

Eat it with a soup spoon for scooping out the filling and the flesh of the squash.

Enjoy!

More Green Prophet seasonal recipes:

• Creamy Eggplant Soup
• Preserved Lemons
• Majadra – Lentils and Rice

How to Clean White Shoes

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Cleaning shoes has been a challenge for humans since we first covered our feet. White shoes are a particular problem, especially in the summer months when people are active. White shoes are made from a variety of materials and your cleaning method will depend on what material your shoes are made from. In this wikiHow we'll examine the culture of shoe cleaning, and cobble together some advice for those who prefer not to buy new shoes every three months.

Steps

Rubber Shoes

• If your shoes are not made of leather, follow these steps. Warning: Don't do this with leather shoes or they will be ruined!

1. Assess the damage to your shoes. Are they muddy? Scuffed? Or just lightly soiled?
2. Get a good cloth and wrap around it around your hands like brass knuckles. use this to scrub away obvious dirt, mud and grime.
3. Wash the cloth with a liberal amount of soap. Rub the soap all over the white part of the shoes.
4. Get a stiff brush and brush all over the soap covered parts.
5. Wash the soap off with a clean cloth.

Suede shoes

1. Any leather shoe not made from smooth leather needs special cleaning techniques.
   • Clean suede shoes using this method.

Canvas shoes

1. Clean canvas shoes by spot washing using a mild detergent and soft toothbrush.
2. Once clean, consider spraying canvas shoes with a "Scotchguard" type fabric protector. Test the spray on the tongue of the shoe to make sure it won't stain.

Machine washing

• Some people wash their shoes in the washing machine. There are a few tips to remember:

1. Remove the laces and any other removable parts.
2. Use the warm, not hot, cycle.
3. Add regular detergent.
4. Either place the shoes in a bag with towels to protect your washing machine or just dump them in with a load.
5. Do not use the dryer as this will probably melt your shoes, destroy your dryer, or both. If you feel you must use the dryer use a very low heat and a protective bag.
6. Let the shoes air dry or use paper towels.
7. Note: even if the shoe is machine washable multiple washes can break down the adhesive that holds the shoe together.

Clean smooth white leather shoes

• Cleaning leather shoes is considerably more complicated. Leather is skin, and so most methods that clean skin will also clean leather. To complicate matters there are a vast set of choices in commercial leather cleaning products. Proper care for leather shoes involves more than cleaning, but also protecting and polishing the leather. To clean leather properly, determine which type of leather you have. The instructions here are for smooth leather.

Clean smooth leather with soaps.

1. Use a soft cloth to remove obvious dirt and dust from the surface of the shoe.
2. Remove the laces.
3. Rinse the shoes with warm, not hot, water, inside and out.
4. Prepare a solution of warm water and a 'natural soap'. Common soaps for cleaning shoes include:
   • Saddle soap is the most common choice.
   • Liquid detergent like dish-washing liquid.
   • Regular hand soap.
5. Use a soft brush and scrub every part of the shoe with the soap mixture.
   • Do not scrub too hard or your could damage the surface of the leather.
   • Remove scuff marks with a nylon backed brush, or wait until the conditioner is applied.
6. Rinse the shoes in warm water again, both inside and out.
7. Stuff your shoes with paper towels. The paper will absorb the water and make the drying process go faster.
   • Replace the paper when it gets water logged.
   • Do not use newspaper as the black ink can run and ruin your shoes.
   • Stuffing your shoes with paper also helps them hold their shape as they dry.
8. Allow your shoes to drip dry.

Clean your shoes with commercial products

• Shoe cleaners come in gels, foams, sprays, liquids and creams. You can also use leather cleaning products designed for car seats.

1. Put your shoes and all materials on top of several layers of newspaper before you begin.
2. Remove any laces.
3. If your leather shoes have a lot of old polish buildup, you may want to use a pre-cleaner.
4. Read the directions on your leather cleaner.
5. Many leather cleaners come with an applicator top, or you can use a soft shoe brush.
6. Use the brush to rub the cleaner into any cracks and seams.
7. Remove the cleaner based on the packet instructions.

Leather shoe products

• There are many products on the market for cleaning leather shoes. Leather is leather, so any leather cleaner, be it for jackets or car seats, will also clean your leather shoes.

1. Shoe wipes can be bought all over and are great for spot cleaning. Some people also use Baby Wipes.
2. A Clorox Bleach Pen is used by many to spot clean white shoes, especially in seams and in stitching.
3. Clean-n-Brite is also used by many to safely clean white leather. You can visit website, there is a page about cleaning leather.
4. KIWI Sport Shoe Scrub-Off Heavy Duty Cleaner has good results.
5. A Magic Eraser, which you can buy in any art store, has also had good results in spot cleaning shoes.
6. Permatex DL Hand Cleaner is a product for cleaning skin that works well on almost all leather. You can find this product in hardware stores.
7. Goo Gone is an excellent cleaner, also often found in hardware stores. Follow the dilution directions on the packet and eventually Goo Gone will remove just about anything.
8. Goop waterless hand cleaner is another excellent hand cleaning product used by contractors to remove the harshest dirt from skin and as such is also a great leather cleaner. Goop also removes stubborn stains that other products may not reach, and thus is a good first treatment for very dirty shoes.

Condition your shoes

• Conditioning your leather shoes will help soften and moisturize the leather, and protect it from drying out and cracking.

1. Use a leather conditioner especially made for smooth leathers. Do not use a cleaner and conditioner in one product.
2. Use a 'natural' conditioner that absorbs into the material, not a synthetic conditioner.
   • Some people use Mink Oil as shoe a conditioner.
3. Choose a conditioner that is the same color as your shoe.
   • If you still see scratches or other imperfections choose a shoe conditioner in a shade one shade lighter than the color of your shoe.
4. To condition your shoes:
   1. Rub a small amount of conditioner into the shoe using a clean cloth or applicator.,
   2. Cover the entire shoe with conditioner.
   3. Wait a few minutes.
   4. Wipe the shoes free of any extra conditioner.

Polish your shoes

• An important stage in shoe cleaning is to polish your shoes. High-quality leather shoes should be polished at least once a month.

1. Choose the correct polish for your kind of shoe.
2. Choose the correct color of polish.
   • If you wish you can use mutiple polishes: white for the white parts, black for the black.
3. Understand that shoe polishes come in four basic forms: waxes, pastes, liquids,and creams.
   1. Creams and pastes add moisture to your shoe by soaking into the leathers as they work. Because they actually penetrate the surface of the leather, creams and pastes cover scratches and other imperfections. Creams and pastes work well on all types of shiny or smooth leathers.
   2. Wax shoe polishes are good for protecting form the elements but do not treat the actual leather of your shoes.
   3. Liquid shoe polish is easy to apply, but like wax, doesn't penetrate or condition the leather.
   4. Shoe polish paste is the longest lasting, but is very messy and slow to work with. Shoe polish cream is a great compromise, and is available in lots of colors.
4. To polish your smooth leather shoes:
   1. Apply the polish to a small area of the shoe to make sure the color matches.
   2. Rub the polish into the shoe with a soft clean, lint-free cloth.
   3. Apply the polish in small, circular motions.
   4. Be sure to get plenty of polish on any imperfections.
   5. Allow the polish to dry.
   6. Shine your shoes by buffing them with a soft cloth or brush made specifically for shining shoes.

Toxicity of shoe polish

• Commercial shoes polishes can contain potentially harmful chemicals. Even those products that claim to be free usually do not list their ingredients, so it is difficult to know for sure. If you are concerned about the safety of working with shoe polish there are some tips and alternatives you can consider.

1. The EPA (Enviromental Protection Agency) has identified a chemical called Perchloroethylene (PERC) that does not occur in nature. The largest US user of PERC is the dry cleaning industry, but it is also used in textile mills, chlorofluorocarbon producers, vapor de-greasing, metal cleaning operations, and the makers of rubber coatings. In commercial products PERC is often found in aerosols, solvent soaps, printing inks, adhesives, sealants, polishes, lubricants, typewriter correction fluid and shoe polish. PERC enters the body when breathed in with contaminated air or when consumed with contaminated food or water. It is less likely to be absorbed through skin contact. Once in the body PERC can remain for a long time, stored in fat tissue.
2. If you choose to use shoe polish always take precautions:
   1. Wear gloves.
   2. Use in a well-ventilated area.
   3. Keep all polish out of the reach of children or animals.
   4. Discard any rags or extra polish as you would dispose of other potentially harmful household chemicals.
3. If you would prefer not to use shoe polish consider one of the many folk solutions to polishing your shoes including the use of vegetable oil or petroleum jelly.

Folk Remedies

• Over the years keeping leather shoes clean has been a classic common sense problem, something that was important to a variety of people including soldiers and others in uniform, nurses and such, for hundreds of years. As a result there are many folk remedies for various stages of the leather shoe cleaning problem.

1. Westley's Bleche-Wite whitewall/blackwall tire cleaner is reported by some to be an excellent leather shoe cleaner. Note: Tires are made form rubber, so this method may work better on rubber shoes.
   1. Use a scrub brush and rinse the shoe with water.
   2. Use a clean cloth to rub in the tire cleaner.
   3. Rinse.
   4. Note: tire cleaner does a great job getting that foam rubber between the boot and the sole white again.
2. Grease stains on leather can be treated with this method.
3. Toothpaste is used by many to clean their leather shoes.
   1. Put a dab of toothpaste on a washcloth or old toothbrush.
   2. Gently rub the stains with the toothpaste.
   3. Rinse.
4. Mildew can be removed from leather shoes.
   1. Mix:
      • 1 cup of rubbing alcohol
      • 1 cup of water.
   2. Sponge the solution onto your shoes and work it into the leather well.
   3. Allow to air dry.
   4. Clean, condition, and polish.
5. Petroleum jelly is reported by some to be a good cleaner and protector for leather shoes.
   1. Apply jelly to a smooth, clean, lint-free cloth.
   2. Rub in the jelly using a circular motion.
   3. Let them rest a little while.
   4. Wipe off the jelly using a clean cloth.
6. The inside of a banana peel has been reported to work for smooth leather shoes.
   1. Test in an inconspicuous area like the tongue of the shoe.
   2. Rub the banana peel all over the shoe.
   3. Clean with water and a clean cloth.
7. WD40 is used by some to clean and protect their leather work shoes.
   1. Remove any obvious direct, mud or other debris.
   2. Spray the shoes with WD40.
   3. Gently buff using a lint-free cloth.
8. Furniture polish is used by some to keep thier leather shoes in good condition. This may not be the best solution for white shoes, but if you can find white furniture polish it may work.
   1. Clean very dirty shoes with a household cleaner.
   2. Spray the polish lightly over the shoe.
   3. Wipe away any excess polish with a clean cloth. The polish helps seal in moisture so leather shoes don't dry out and crack.
9. Olive oil or walnut oil may also clean and protect smooth leather.
   1. Test the oil in an inconspicuous spot like the tongue of the shoe to ensure color fastness.
   2. Work a small amount into shoe using a soft cloth.
   3. Polish with a soft cotton cloth.
10. Use lemon juice to remove regular dirt spots from leather :
    1. Mix:
       • 1 part lemon juice
       • 1 part cream of tartar
    2. Work the paste into the spot with a soft cloth.
    3. Let it sit for a few hours, if needed.
    4. Come back and apply a little more paste.
    5. Work it in and then wipe clean.
11. Ink spots can be removed in two ways:
    • Dip a cotton swab into rubbing alcohol and rub the spot.
    • Use a non-oily cuticle remover. (Note: That is "cuticle" remover, not nail-polish remover.) Leave it on overnight and wipe it off with a damp cloth.
12. Keep leather supple, use the following homemade mixture of vinegar and oil:
    1. Mix:
       • 1 part white vinegar
       • 2 parts linseed oil
    2. Pour the solution into a jar with a lid.
    3. shake well and apply to the leather with a soft cloth.
    4. Let it sit for 12 hours and buff.
    5. If the cloth starts to soil, be sure to change it often.
13. Road salt can be removed from leather with a vinegar solution:
    1. Mix:
       • 1 part water
       • 1 part white vinegar
    2. Dip a soft cloth into the solution.
    3. Blot the solution over the shoes to remove the salt. You may have to do this several times to clean the entire surface.
    4. Rinse the shoes with clear water when you are done.
14. Water spots can be removed from leather by:
    1. Moistening the area with a little water.
    2. Let it dry or gently blow dry. Never place leather in the sun to dry.
15. VO5 hair conditioning gel is reported to be a good leather cleaner.
    1. Remove most of the dust and obvious dirt with a damp cloth or brush.
    2. Rub a little dab of gel over the surface and wipe with a soft cloth to a shine.
    3. A little gel goes a long way, so don't use too much.

Tips

• Leather should be kept out of direct sunlight.
• The next time you buy a pair of leather shoes, condition them before ever wearing them. This will help insure that your shoes are best protected from the start, and will save time on future cleanings.

Warnings

• Rags or clothes used that come in contact with the shoe polish should also be immediately discarded.
• Remember: When removing spots from leather, always test any cleaning method on an out-of-the-way spot first.
• Don't try to use shoe polish to change the color of your shoes. If you need your shoe color changed, consult a shoe repair shop.

Things you will need

• Newspapers
• Gloves
• Soft Cotton Cloths or Rags
• Soft Shoe Brush (optional)
• Smooth Leather Shoe Cleaner
• Leather Conditioner for Smooth Leather Shoes
• Shoe Polish, or a Shoe Polish Alternative
• Leather protector (a Waterproofing Product)
• Laundry detergent

Related wikiHows

• How to Make Your Sneakers Look New Again
• How to Polish Shoes
• How to Clean Suede Shoes
• How to Wash Shoes
• How to Stretch Shoes That Have Been Dyed
• How to Lace Your Shoes
• How to Keep Your Shoes from Stinking
• How to Make Glitter Shoes
• How to Clean Smelly Sneakers
• How to Clean Your Converses

Sources and Citations

• EPA Warning on shoe polish

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Clean White Shoes. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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Lovesong of Jack McNally
Atomjack Magazine, February 2008

We forget - we always forget - exactly why things fall apart among friends.

Alcohol. Air planes. Divorce. Aliens.

I ran into Jack McNally at the old Black Dog on Throckmorton, east of downtown Fort Worth. That bar was a merging point between hipsters and college kids, and Jack and me were too old to be college kids. Roaches were more common than yuppies like me. Nobody ordered anything that came in a glass unless it was bought with a fake ID from some kid that hadn’t been around long enough to notice the rats.

Jack McNally was still dressed like a hipster. He mostly fit right in except we were a couple years older than just about everybody there. He came here because he had always come here when he was in town. I only ran into him because he was in town indefinitely.

He and I both grew up in Fort Worth, but I went off to college and came home, and he had stayed out in New Orleans until that hurricane washed through and pushed everybody back to where their mothers and fathers still had the bedroom just like it used to be.

I was in a suit because I was an insurance agent, and he was in jeans because he was a bartender now, hanging out in this college kid and hipster bar on his night off.

Last I heard of him he was married, and his name was John, and he was working in a family business. He told me everybody called him “Jack” now, and he had divorced the girl he had flown to London to marry. He had spent the last five years since his college diploma working for his ex-wife’s father all day and all night until the old man had succeeded in shoving the family business between the daughter and Jack, that new husband no one had really wanted around.

Jack and I had never smoked out together, back in the day, but we had always meant to do it. We were friends in high school, in the way that people in high school can be friends with each other without seeing each other off campus. We were in the same English classes – I had been one year ahead in English, and he was one year older than me, and we were in the same classes. We had both made out with the same theatre girls and neither one of us really wanted to share stories about how far we’d gotten with whom because we were both a little afraid that the other had gotten farther.

That was at a private school in the middle of Fort Worth. Back then, we both had to drive miles over highways in the morning to get to school on time from our different corners of the city. We lived too far apart to be close friends, but we were friends enough to drink together a while that night.

Then, he graduated and went off to New Orleans, and I was still in high school for a year. Then, I graduated and went off to College Station. I graduated, and then I came home to south Fort Worth, and I had forgotten all about him.
I had stopped smoking pot and cigarettes entirely after the aliens had abducted me. He had dirty, yellow teeth now and that lazy look in the eye that twinkled like too much marijuana.

I never expected to see him again.

We forget – we always forget – exactly why we had never stayed in touch when we see someone like that again.

Jack McNally stopped hitting on the college girls long enough to pat me on the back and remember my name.

We talked about the teachers that had died since we had left.

His mother had died. She had been a teacher at our private school. I hadn’t heard about that one. He asked me what I was up to, and I was just the guy in a suit with the proverbial apple for a face. (Referencing famous surrealist paintings is what yuppies have to do to hang in hipster bars.) Jack told me about his hurricane-induced placeless-ness, his divorce. I bought him a beer. Life had kicked him around even more than me, and I had been abducted by aliens and transformed into something nearly inhuman. (I never told Jack about the aliens.)

Then Jack disappeared into the crowd. He talked to the college girls in the room like he was going to win their heart someday. He worked that room. Every time I turned around, he was talking to some new girl that didn’t mind the free drink but wouldn’t mind if Jack left, either. Jack was cracking jokes and mugging and smiling and talking about philosophy because he had majored in that in college and this was a hipster bar where that sort of thing was supposed to work. He was puffing cigarettes as if they weren’t responsible for his yellow teeth and talking about M-Cats because he wanted to be a neurologist.

He came back to me from his rounds. When he and I were talking, I encouraged Jack to be a nurse because he’d never make it through medical school if he was the same guy I remembered – the same guy that I was watching right now. I encouraged him to think about nursing because nurses usually make more money than doctors after you do a cost benefit analysis including years spent in school, pay raises, and all those debts.
Aliens had taught me to think like a businessman about everything.

After Jack had faded into the background noise again, I leaned over to the woman next to me – she was older than me by about seven years, but she was still beautiful and she was dressed in designer clothes. She didn’t give a shit about anyone buying her drinks. I asked her if she had ever met that guy, Jack McNally.

She said she had never met that guy. She asked me why I wanted to know.

I shrugged. “Just trying to make conversation, I guess,” I said, “if you had met him, we could talk to each other about that guy.”

“I’ve never met him,” she said. She pulled out a cigarette and leaned over like I was supposed to light it for her. I didn’t smoke, but I had a lighter.

Then, I asked her if she knew the meaning of life.

“Never waking up alone,” she said, without hesitation. She gazed into the red tip of her cigarette. She looked at me past the embers. “What do you think it is?”

“I was going to say something else, but I like your answer better.”

“They always do. What were you going to say?”

“Genuine human connections.”

“Same thing,” she said.

I agreed with her at the time.

Jack McNally waved at me from between two girls in red dresses - two girls that looked like Momma’s make-up and fake IDs from where I stood across the bar, by the doorway. The two girls in red dresses leaned back to make eyes at each other behind Jack’s back, and they were laughing about the creepy guy over ten years older than them who thought he stood a chance in hell. Jack looked like he was king of the world right there, between those two pretty girls - like he didn’t know a damn thing.
I left with the older woman. In the back of my mind I thought about Jack McNally with his yellow teeth and the glaze beneath his pupils from that way natural disasters have of humbling arrogant hipsters. Disaster: his bartending certificate was worth more than his philosophy degree. Disaster: his mother died so young. Disaster: his marriage failed. Disaster: he lost that family business in the divorce. Disaster: a hurricane threw him out of his beloved city, like God was kicking his ass.

Even from the door, I heard Jack rattle off his lines too loud about the M-cats to girls too young to really know what that means, but old enough to know a line when they hear one.

In my mind, I wished him all the best luck in the world.

The older woman and I walked down the street because she didn’t live far away. She lived in a building downtown, in a loft like an artist, but she wasn’t an artist. She was only a seducer of artists. Her last boyfriend was a junky actor that had left her for a college girl in a red dress. Now, she wanted a rebound fuck from a warm body. I was warm enough.

Her bedroom was up a flight of stairs. It smelled like old sex. In the slanting light of her setting the mood with candles, I saw the stains on the sheets that hadn’t been washed properly in weeks.

“Take off your shoes,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to see the soles of your feet.”

“Feet are your thing?” She kicked off her shoes. She sat on her bed. She lifted her right foot up to my face. “I like feet guys.”

I took her foot in my hand. I stroked it like a kitten – a living thing.

She liked it.

I asked her, “Did you know that you have three souls?”

“Fuck,” she said, laughing, “I didn’t think I had any.”

I kissed her big toe, gently. “You have three,” I said, “I learned this from some aliens. You have a soul hidden in the bottom of your feet, and then you have the soul in your spinal column, and then there’s a soul just inside of your eyes. Everybody has three souls. You can live without the soul in your feet, and the one in your eyes. The one in the feet is just the energy that’s fallen away and collected where it’s like an id puddle, and the one behind the eyes is extra soul to filter your head from the energies in the air. But the one in your spinal column can live forever if you process it just right. That’s the real you. That’s your electricity.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Where did you say you got that?”

“Aliens.”

“Like immigrants, or like fucking space?”

“Both. I was abducted by aliens and they’re taking over the world a little bit at a time.” I ran my hands along the bottom of her right foot. When I wasn’t talking, I was sucking on her toes like popsicles. They tasted almost as bitter as her voice sounded, but what did I expect meeting an older woman at a hipster bar with a sex dirty bed?

She leaned back. “That feels good,” she said, “but tell me about your aliens, crazy boy. Did they anal probe you?”

“Of course,” I said, “They also sent me on a mission to anal probe others.”

“Don’t anal probe me,” she said, “I don’t like it. Fuck, you are a toe-sucking fiend! Keep doing that. I like that. It feels amazing.”

I was finished with three of her toes by now. I had started with her big toe because it took the longest and I had moved down the line to the last two toes. I stopped to take a breath. “These aliens,” I said, “They caught me in a field drunk and cow-tipping with some hicks outside College Station. They took me into outer space. They anal probed me. They did all kinds of crazy shit to me. They made me kill those fucking hicks and process them because they wanted to show me the future.”

“What did the aliens look like?”

“They looked like aliens. Big, black eyes and big, white, light-bulb heads. Their skin was gray and spongy. They only had three fingers on each hand. They were fucking aliens.” I finished the last two toes on the right foot. I put it down on the dirty carpet and picked up the other foot. I started with the big toe.

She leaned back and moaned a little. She pulled at her shirt until her small breasts looked up at me like melted teacups. “You should be a writer. You tell some crazy fucking stories. My ex was like that. He was an actor, and a junkie. I told you about
him, right? I fucking hate drugs, but I keep falling for junkies. Suck my nipples next, crazy boy,” she said. Her nipples were erect already.

I finished her toes and complied to her request. I got her right nipple first. Then, her left. She had her eyes closed by now. She had lost enough blood that she was completely out of her head. She started muttering men’s names, like she couldn’t remember mine and was having a brainstorming session out loud.

I got her legs next. Then, I anal probed her, searching for the soul that hides in the spinal column to the brain. I got that next. After that, I kept taking her, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but all the blood she had lost.

When I was done, I rummaged around her apartment for a cable outlet. I couldn’t find one in that old building, so I had to use a telephone jack. I flipped my thumb open like a pez dispenser. I pulled out the right cord. I plugged my left thumb into the wall, and waited in the dark until sunrise for all the data to transfer. Just like when I sold an insurance policy, I had to plug the computer into the wall and wait for the data to transfer. When I process a body, I plug into the wall and wait for the data to transfer. Telephone jacks took longer.

When I was done, I washed the blood off my clothes in her dryer, and washed up all the blood with bleach and club soda. It was morning, now.

I had a sales meeting in the morning. I put my suit back on; I put on my white smile. I drove to North Dallas from downtown Fort Worth to meet with the sales team.

In our sales district, we had about eighteen people. Some of them were so far out in the countryside that they couldn’t always make sales meetings. Usually only seven or eight showed up for the meetings regularly. We were all ages, from all walks of life. None of us were married, though. A couple were divorced with kids.

My boss was from Idaho. He was six foot eight, and shaped like a walrus complete with the scraggly beard. He had recruited me right out of college. My senior year, I went to a big city jobs convention, and he was there and we shook hands and we knew each other right then and there wasn’t a need for an interview.

He had brought us donuts. I didn’t eat the donuts because I knew they wanted me to keep skinny. An older guy could be a little hefty, and a girl just had to be female, but young guys couldn’t do anything if they weren’t skinny.

We spent an hour talking about the changes to the disability plans, then he told us each individually how we were doing meeting our quotas.

We clap for each other. We cheer. I’ve been here five years. In my mind, I can’t help but think about the faces I don’t see. Sometimes, someone just disappears from the table, and nobody tells us why.

We clap, we cheer, and we smile like we mean it. Everybody’s missed quota a few times. Nobody knows exactly where the tipping point might be. Nobody asks.

I was lucky I had gotten that older woman last night, barely in time to meet quota. My boss and I were going to have to meet in person after the sales meeting. While everyone else was out selling insurance policies and employee benefit plans, I was going to be in an office explaining how I wasn’t collecting the souls the aliens wanted, and I wasn’t exceeding the quota.

We had a talk, him and me, about what my real priorities were.
I told him that I had been doing this for years just fine, and I was in a dry spell, and I was having doubts about the aliens that never felt the need to prove the paradise to us lately.

“Get over it,” he said, “Humanity is counting on you. If you want anyone to survive the tipping point, you have to process them for us. I know the aliens don’t really feel the love like you and I do, but they are giving us our only chance.”

“I miss sleeping,” I said, “I miss dreaming.”

My boss shrugged. “You writing books, still?”

“I am.”

“Well, you think you have time to do that if you’re asleep? You’ve been here long enough to know how gifted we are - how special we are. Nobody else has the opportunities we do. Everyone we process is rebuilt on the other side, and we get extra time in our day because we never have to sleep, and we get these great products to sell to people to help them survive a little longer past the tipping point so we can save even more of them. We’re like angels.”

“I don’t mean to sound negative, sir…”

“I don’t have time for negativity,” he said. “You should take a week off from sales and get your priorities straight. Take it as an opportunity to research the environmental disasters brewing right now, and save a few good girls. You were a true believer, and I know you will be again. You just need to think about your priorities a while.” He glanced down at his watch. “You’d best head to the rest room. I don’t want any blood in my office. Be sure to pick up the new disability packets on your way out.”

I looked at my watch, too, and cursed it. I took off for the restroom as fast as I could. My stomach twisted up and grumbled before I made it all the way down the hall.
We had the processing system down by now. We knew exactly when my expulsion would hit based on how long it’s been since the download.

In the restroom, the diarrhea hurt enough to make me have to bite down in my tie. I bit down on the smaller end because sometimes I got all the way through. When I turned around afterwards I saw chunks of the woman’s bones floating in a rainbow of bodily organs and fluids.

I went to work, after that. I sold insurance. I went to a café after work, with a fancy laptop, so I could write a novel, or a short story, or anything to help me drown out the doubts in my head.

I had seen the aliens rebuild the hicks when I had first processed them.
I was supposed to trust them to rebuild everyone else I sent to them through the wires.

Jack didn’t know that about me, and I never told him, and I never will.

During my week off, I sent one of my books out in the mail. A couple months later, someone bought it. I was still working in insurance and I was still processing women. But, I felt better about it because the aliens made me so I never had to sleep and that meant I had so much time to write and I was doing something I had always wanted to do that was mine and wasn’t part of anyone else’s plans.

I told Jack about the book the next time I saw him.

We forget - we always forget - exactly why people fall apart. We look back and think fondly of the good times and a purple haze descends over the strange tension in the air that had pushed people away from each other like magnetic polarities.

(Money. Alcohol. Bad Music. Slow Cars.)

I ran into Jack McNally again at Black Dog, the same hipster bar, on another day after I had sold a book. Jack came over long enough to hear how I was excited because I had just sold this book I had written. I bought Jack a beer. He asked me what it was about, and I wanted to hit him. I did hit him. I punched him in the gut. I didn’t punch him hard. “That’s what it’s fucking about!” I shouted.

That pissed him off. “Anybody can hit anybody!” he said, “How can that be what your book is about?” He hit me just as I had hit him.

I realized that I hit a lot harder than he did. I wanted to hit him again, and I didn’t really know why.

“I fucking hate post-modernism!” I shouted, drunk, “All that cold rationality! Where’s the fucking heart, the fucking emotion!?” I punched him in the shoulders, the arms, the stomach. I wasn’t hitting hard enough to damage him - just making a point.
He punched back. “I fucking hate post-modernism, too!” he shouted, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to hit anybody!”

We hit each other for a while, me pulling my punches so we didn’t end up in a fist fight, and him hitting about as hard as he actually could and working up a sweat.
Weird thing was, we both wanted to fight each other. I could see it in his eyes, how he hated me and he wanted to hurt me. I wanted to hurt him, too.

Then, we debated whether Rumi was Arabic or Persian. I knew Rumi was Persian, but I wanted to give him something he could hold over my head. He didn’t have anything he could hold over my head except the aliens.

Also, we talked about how much we loved all those post-modern authors. We fucking loved post-modernism.

He smiled and he told me that he hated my guts. I think the smile was a lie. He was just baring his teeth. He hated me because he wanted to write a book. He wanted to be an author. He wanted to be the proverbial guy in a suit with a green apple for a face that was always leaving with the beautiful woman, always paying for drinks with fresh cash and driving a nice car to a nice place far away from parents and shipwrecks and tooth decay.

I asked him what he had been doing with all his time, and he told me he had been working for his ex-wife’s family company before the divorce, then bartending, studying for the M-cats, and taking some biology classes at the university so he could be a neurologist. He had a Philosophy degree and a broken marriage and the cigarettes and the jobs at hipster bars. This was supposed to be the kind of thing he’d do, eventually, but he never had.

I was living all of his broken dreams. He didn’t say that out loud. Instead, Jack introduced me to this blonde girl and this gay guy that everyone had known in high school but me. I couldn’t remember their names, and they couldn’t remember mine. We bar hopped together for a while. We ended up at this place on the edge of downtown because of a jukebox that played “The Payback” by James Brown. When Jack drove us there – he shouldn’t have been driving but he was – the blonde who was sweet on me was trying to find common ground in music. We had nothing in common. Jack didn’t help because he took her side of things and refused to change the subject. The gay guy realized everyone in this car was straight so he kept staring out the window at the men in the street who were probably just homeless bums. Hope springs eternal to the drunken and the horny.

And that blonde, she kept singing along to music I didn’t like, and she kept insisting that I had to like this song. I had to love this band. Jack was saying how I was full of shit and didn’t know shit because I didn’t know shit about this band.
In the last bar, we fed enough quarters into the jukebox to make James Brown sing until mid-afternoon. Those three white hipsters danced and mugged like black soul singers. I watched them do it, a little horrified at it. The rest of the bar ignored us for their own private Casablancas.

I guess I wasn’t drunk enough, yet. We played pool until nobody could remember who was stripes or solids. Then we all drove off into the night in our separate cars as if we all weren’t too drunk to drive.

And all of us alone at the end of the night, and nobody had anybody’s phone number, because we had all ran into each other, fallen together for a while, and then disappeared into the street lights like nothing had happened and no one had really connected to each other and none of us were really friends.

I had to stop at a strip club on the way home, and pay money for the quota. Dirty ones like that, all covered in pastels and powders and glitter make me sick for a week. I have headaches from all the beauty products and illegal drugs. The strippers that do it for money always have kids somewhere waiting for their momma to make enough money to buy them a better nasty apartment, a little closer to the meth dealer’s place.

And my boss hates it when I send through one of those and it gets back to him. I have to tell him that I didn’t know how nasty she was when I met her. Even strippers can put on clean clothes and go to a bookstore. My boss never told me how many warnings I got before they shut me down. I had had a few warnings about not meeting quotas and sending in girls that didn’t belong in human paradise. I had that fear like what salesmen get that gives them a desperate edge if you look at them just right.

I didn’t tell my boss about it, but I blamed Jack at the time, and I wondered why he and I had ever considered ourselves friends.

We forget – we always forget – exactly why people drift away from each other. I told myself that I wasn’t going to hang out with Jack anymore. Something about him, and I didn’t know what, kept humans from coming together. Some people, they carry dissipation on their shoulders like bad weather that never leaves.

I felt like maybe the hurricane came to New Orleans simply because Jack called the place his home at the time. If I sent him to paradise, the place would melt in too much rain just because he was there to spoil everything. So, thinking about Jack McNally, I figured what the aliens were saying about selectivity was probably right.
Still, I thought about processing Jack McNally, to save him from his own miserable life, and give him another chance to start over somewhere new because I felt sorry for the guy and for some reason I had this weird feeling that we were friends once for an hour or two or a few moments in time.

What we do with the people we process is this: we download their DNA, and the three souls. We rebuild them in space, one cell at a time like watching a bloody rice krispy treat melt into a puddle of pink human all dazed and confused and scared shitless about the transformation.

The aliens are doing this because humans are an endangered species down here.

We barreled past the environmental tipping point decades ago. The glaciers will melt. The jungles will die. The dwindling algae in the oceans will drain the world of fresh air. The cities will fall to our own natural disasters. The living things here will die and die for generations. We won’t understand we’re fucking each other after the end of the world until the oceans rise in a flood of melted ice one awful year of rising water to claim all the ardent environmentalists left alive. Anyone left will be in the mountains, and maybe they’ll figure out a way to survive, but they’ll probably be too busy killing each other over the last resources to do what really needs to be done to survive more than a couple generations. People don’t tend to plan cosmically. Then, there won’t be anyone left.

All of us are going to be Jack McNally, soon, shipwrecked and dying and we don’t even comprehend the where or why of it all.

That’s what the aliens had told me up there, in the spaceship.

When I was abducted, I was with these meat science and technology graduate students – a bunch of hicks pursuing PhDs. They showed me around the agricultural facilities in the dark while we were all hammered, and we were tipping cows because they were mad at a professor for canceling their research project.

I felt like an idiot because I was a dean’s list English major and I felt dumber than these drunken hicks throwing science terms around the asses of cows, and every single one of them on the drunken edge of dropping out.

Then, the aliens got us all in a flash of light.

They flushed the alcohol out of us with needles and tubes, and it hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt. They pulled our souls out from our asses – us screaming like we’re dying of pain - and they showed the souls to us on a computer screen. They explained things to us without souls around to muck up our primitive reasoning. Then they gave us our souls back, and that hurt, too. They picked me because the computer said my soul was the best for the mission.

I had my guts opened, and changed. I had my arm bones peeled out and replaced with strange technology. My throat and teeth were rebuilt into something new. They pointed at the hicks, who were strapped down, now, naked and screaming for God to save them from this nightmare.

The aliens never asked my permission. I’m angry about that. But nobody asked the dolphin if it wanted the radio tag pierced into the dorsal fin, and nobody asked the chimpanzee if he wanted to be a cosmonaut and it was the same thing to the aliens.
The hicks were passed out. I was told to start my pre-programmed task. I was horrified, but I had been horrified for quite a while now so this new horror was nothing. I started at the bottom of their feet. I climbed up the top of their knees. I anal probed them with my altered organs before I ate their torsos, to pull out their souls. I devoured them toe to head.

Then, the aliens showed me how to download the DNA and the souls together with my new hand. They even showed me in front of my eyes how people came back to life after I processed them. It looked real, to me, but part of me is never completely certain any of this is real. Afterwards, I watched them be rebuilt before my eyes. They were going to paradise. I was going back down to earth. I was told to expect messages to come back to me when I plugged into the wires. The aliens told me where to find my new boss, and what I’d be doing for a living now, during the day.

That’s how I found my place as an insurance agent. That’s how I know my quotas, and what the aliens tell me about the people I saved, how they’re so happy now. I guess every job comes with inspirational e-mails.

The aliens – and my boss - told me to go find the kind of people who could carry the species bravely into this brand new colony, where the grass is green and the trees are perfect and the future is full of hope like I can’t even imagine because I’ll never go there.

My boss liked to call us merciful angels. He liked to give us rousing speeches about what the alien paradise is like for the people we chose, who consented to go when they consented to sleep with an angel. We’re supposed to fall in love with the people we’re saving. We’re supposed to believe that we’re saving them, and save them because we love them.

The other thing my boss talked to us about during our little meetings was how sometimes we spent too much time in hipster bars, and strip clubs. We had to save some church girls, some college kids, some upstanding citizens. We had to stop saving bar flies. The aliens wanted people with hope in paradise. We didn’t want to doom paradise to the same fate that was happening here by sending them too many losers.
I had been hearing that for five years. I had been looking around the room at new faces, where old faces disappeared.

We said hello to each other in the meetings. We knew each other’s names. We knew each other’s territories. At the end of the workday, I wasn’t the guy looking to grab a drink with a co-worker. I was afraid of them, and of what might happen if people learned the truth about the people I was saving sometimes, too much. I was destroying them because they were like me, or I was saving them because they were like me.

We were not supposed to save the people like Jack McNally – the people like me.

Tooth decay. Alcohol. Gasoline. Hurricanes.

I ran into Jack McNally again, one more time. I sat down next to him on the smoker’s patio in a café in the museum district. He was studying the menu for a restaurant across the shopping complex. He was a bartender there, now, starting soon.

He asked about my clothes.

I had had insurance meetings in the area, and I had figured jogging in the nearby park would be a better use of my time than grinding home in traffic. I had changed out of my suit, and into my running clothes. Since there was still traffic, I was going to get a drink and write for a while. I told him how I once sat down and did the math and even with the occasional pastry indulgence, waiting in a café for an hour or two while traffic dies is cheaper than the gas it costs to drive home in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I had written a book doing this. I had read a hundred books doing this. “Time-management,” I had said.

He lit another cigarette.

I asked him how he was doing.

He pulled his answer out of his cigarette. “Fine,” he said, “Starting microbiology in the fall. Just studying for those M-cats.”

I looked over his shoulder, and he was studying the salads and which ones came with what kind of sauce.

He saw me do that. We looked each other in the eye.

We sat in silence.

Nothing happening for a long time.

The wind picked up. The wind died down. Cars drove like beams of neon light over the highway bridge past the shopping complex.

Then, I said it was great seeing him again, and I’d probably run into him someday soon. We had been running into each other everywhere, after all.

Then, I was typing inside that café, with a beautiful young woman sitting across from me. We were talking about my day job and her schoolwork and all the stupid things that people talk about in cafes. We were talking about religion and neurology as if we knew a damn thing about the afterlife and the chemistry of souls.

Jack came in reeking of cigarette smoke. He stopped a moment to say hello to the beautiful girl I was talking to, like he hoped for an introduction. He patted me on the shoulder like he was proud of me for meeting this beautiful girl. He congratulated me with a smile and a nod and a wink.

She saw him do it, too. Her eyes changed at that.

I wish Jack hadn’t done that. I could smell how clean her skin was from where I sat across from her. I looked in her face and saw no make-up. I saw what women wore make-up to look like. I saw a soul in her eyes that would spill from her spine like drinking water in a desert. I felt hope from her like something so beautiful I could taste it. I wanted to save her, because I was in love with her like I was supposed to be.

Then, Jack McNally showed up.

I wish Jack the best, and I wish him all the luck in the world. I also wish not to run into him again. He saved her life without even knowing it, in his way, and it occurred to me that Jack and I were never friends, and if we were ever friends, we weren’t anymore, and we would never be friends again. Fuck Jack McNally and everyone like him.

He’s probably writing about me in his malformed, soon-to-be-abandoned book right now, shaping my narrative to suit his own glory. I probably did the same with him right now.

That’s because we look backwards and shape our own story. We forget – we always forget – exactly why things fall apart.

Tooth decay. Hipster Bars. Hurricanes.

Lonely death.

The organizers of the 2010 Delta Lloyd Regatta are aiming to make the Dutch stop of the ISAF Sailing World Cup series bigger and better than ever.

Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence in Butner, N.C. On Dec. 18, Madoff was moved to the prison’s low-security medical center for treatment. At the time, the Bureau of Prisons said that rumors of an assault were false and that Madoff suffered from dizziness and hypertension.

Da incentivi all'acquisto di motocicli a quelli per le cucine e le lavastoviglie, dagli aiuti per immobili ad alta efficienza energetica ai bonus per internet veloce per i giovani. E ancora, dal tessile alle macchine agricole, rimorchi e semirimorchi, le gru, la nautica da diporto, il settore aeronautico e l'emittenza televisiva locale. Sono questi i settori per i quali, a partire dal prossimo 6 aprile scatteranno, gli aiuti varati oggi dal governo con il dl incentivi.

Un decreto incentivi che "vale" 420 milioni di euro, ma 300 sono destinati al rilancio dei consumi mentre i restanti 120 milioni vanno al sostegno del settore tessile (70 mln per la realizzazione dei campionari tessili) e 50 milioni per il sostegno all'innovazione al settore aeronautico, al prototipo innovativo di nave multiuso per le emergenze, all'emittenza televisiva locale e all'agenzia per la sicurezza nucleare.  Ma il governo non ottiene il plauso di Confindustria.

Le misure adottate si legge in una nota della confederazione degli imprenditori - «sono finanziariamente limitate e molti settori in difficoltà non possono beneficiare dei vantaggi previsti dagli interventi. Ci rendiamo tuttavia conto che la situazione della finanza pubblica non permette il varo di misure più consistenti. Chiediamo che le risorse tolte al credito d'imposta per la ricerca - prosegue Confindustria - siano al più presto ripristinate per garantire quelle imprese che hanno già realizzato gli investimenti in innovazione, necessari al superamento della difficile congiuntura economica».

Contrario anche Pier Luigi Bersani, segretario Pd: "«Questi incentivi sono una cosa ridicola rispetto ai 2-3 miliardi spesi per Alitalia. Li hanno promessi per  mobili, elettrodomestici, carri agricoli, tricicli e cose varie, e in questo modo  hanno bloccato da mesi il mercato», ha sottolineato, perchè «sono mesi che dicono incentivi, incentivi, incentivi e la gente non compera perchè li aspetta». «Non sono queste le cose che servono» - insiste Bersani - «si possono sollecitare un po' i consumi, ma bisogna spingere sull'innovazione, sulle soluzioni dei problemi strutturali della piccola impresa, darle degli orizzonti, aiutarla per la ricerca, l'internazionalizzazione».

Anche i Consumatori "bocciano" il provvedimento di governo. «Mettere in campo 300 milioni di euro (di cui solo 200 milioni subito) che, se anche fossero tutti utilizzati, coinvolgerebbero neanche l'1% delle famiglie italiane, è come buttare una goccia d'acqua per innaffiare un deserto», dicono i presidenti delle due associazioni dei consumatori, Elio Lannutti e Rosario Trefiletti.

Gli sconti Motocicli, 10 mln: 10% del prezzo di acquisto per motori fino a 70 kw e senza limiti di cilindrata. contributo massimo 750 euro.

Motocicli elettrici/ibridi, 2 mln: 20% del prezzo di acquisto. contributo massimo 1500 euro.

Cucine componibili con elettrodomestici efficienti, 60 mln: 10% del prezzo di acquisto. contributo massimo 1000 euro.

Elettrodomestici, 50 mln: 20% del prezzo di acquisto su lavastoviglie, cucina da libera installazione, cappe, forni elettrici, scaldacqua a pompe di calore, stufe). contributo massimo da 80 a 500 euro a seconda del prodotto.

Acquisto nuovi immobili ad alta efficienza energetica (classe a-b), 60 mln: contributo per un importo pari a 116 euro al mq (con massimo di 7 mila euro) per la classe a e 83 euro al mq (con massimo di 5 mila euro) per la classe b.

Internet veloce per i giovani, 20 mln: contributo per i giovani che acquistano nuovi pacchetti di Adsl.

Rimorchi e semirimorchi, 8 mln: contributo di 3 mila euro per rimorchio con abs e 4 mila euro con abs+esp a fronte di radiazione.

Macchine agricole-industriali, 20 mln: 10% del prezzo di acquisto llegata a pari sconto da parte del concessionario.

Gru a torre per ediliza, 40 mln: 20% del prezzo di acquisto. Contributo massimo di 30 mila euro. inverter, motori alta efficienza, batterie rifasamento, ups, 10 mln: 20% del prezzo di acquisto. Contributo massimo da 40 a 200 euro a seconda del prodotto.

Nautica da diporto, 20 mln: 20% del prezzo di acquisto su motori fuoribordo e stampi per scafi. Contributo massimo 1000 euro. realizzazione campionari tessili, 70 mln: sostegno fiscale. aeronautico; navi, tv locale, agenzia nucleare, 50 mln: sostegno fiscale.


Dal 6 aprile i cittadini e le imprese avranno a disposizione un call center che sarà gestito da Poste italiane per ottenere tutte le informazioni pratiche necessarie. I consumatori dovranno rivolgersi al rivenditore chiedendo di poter utilizzare l'incentivo. Il rivenditore verificherà la capienza dell'incentivo per via telematica o via telefonino entro tempi prestabiliti e comunicherà al consumatore la disponibilità dell'incentivo che diventerà uno sconto sul prezzo d'acquisto. Il rivenditore recupererà poi l'incentivo presso gli sportelli delle Poste. Per l'acquisto di immobili è prevista la certificazione di efficienza energetica da parte dell'Enea.

Indian Wells: Andy Roddick Interview March 17th

A. RODDICK/J. Melzer 7-6, 6-4

Q. You had a really nice drop volley on set point. Were you waiting to pull that serve volley, or you just saw his court positioning?
ANDY RODDICK: I saw his court positioning. You know, I knew that if he was going to be staying back, he was going to be 10 or 12 feet back, and if I could get the kick wide enough, you know, he'd either have to hit a winner from back there, which would have been a heck of a shot, or I was gonna get a chance to kind of dictate the point with the volley. And.
The dropover presented itself, and I was able to execute it.

Q. What's the reason for so much success against him?
ANDY RODDICK: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, we've had a lot of close matches, a lot of matches that, you know, I've won a first-set tiebreaker.
You know, I don't enjoy the matchup as much as a 10-0 record would suggest. He's always tough, and I think there's definitely a little bit of luck involved there.

Q. Speaking of 10-0, you don't often play two guys in a row where you have such a tremendous record. Your record against Tommy is amazing.
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, I mean, especially two guys you have a record against who are both flirting with being top 20, you know.
Again, I don't know. I've always seemed to play well against Tommy. You know, that, and, again, I remember a match specifically in Rome where it was cold out and I was literally serving and volleying on second serves. I won a match I had no business winning just by trying to confuse and conquer a little bit.
I was able to win it. Some of those, it just happens like that.

Q. Do you remember the first match you played against him in juniors?
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, I played him in Australia in the semifinals of a warmup tournament for the Australian Open, and I lost that one.

Q. Was that the only time you lost to him ever?
ANDY RODDICK: I think that's the only time we played in juniors, yeah. Yep.

Q. When you see he wins, does that give you a little bit of boost?
ANDY RODDICK: No. I mean, the thing that I've been preaching all week is, you know, tennis doesn't -- it doesn't have much of a -- you've got to start over again on a daily basis, you know.
There's no entitlement just because I beat No. 4. There's no guarantees. You still play the match. You still have to go out and execute.
You know, that's just the way it is. You know, plus here the ball gets up a little bit more; it's a little slower. He's going to probably feel a lot more comfortable than playing on some of the faster courts we've played on before.
We've played at the US Open and at Wimbledon, and that's obviously probably a much bigger advantage for me.

Q. Are you happy with your game right now?
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, I think so. I could have returned a little bit better tonight. I was having a lot of trouble picking up what he was going to do with the serve. I think he mixed it up real well with paces and spins and whatnot. It really kept me off balance.
I definitely didn't feel comfortable there tonight. But as far as the way I'm hitting the ball, I feel fine, yeah.

Q. A marked improvement from San Jose and Memphis?
ANDY RODDICK: I think it's a big difference from those two. I was getting through matches there, but I didn't feel real good about -- and I was pretty honest with you guys. I said, I don't really feel like I'm playing that well. You know, I'm surviving. And I'm decent at that.
But there wasn't a whole lot of confidence in what I was trying to do. I had game plans, and a lot of times I wasn't able to execute it. That's pretty frustrating at times.

Q. So when you feel the tick up in your game, is it you're holding serve easier?
ANDY RODDICK: I think it's preparation. I think I was able to go home, dial it in, work on what I needed to, and then there's a sense of confidence.
The difference between playing well and not playing well is, let's say that last game tonight on a deuce point I was able to stick, you know, seven or eight backhands in a row crosscourt to where I felt like he was going to have to play a high-risk shot up the line if he wanted to get out of it.
When you're not playing well, you leave one of those short or make an unforced error. I think that point is kind of a microcosm of playing well and not playing well.

Q. Are you going to watch NCAA games all day tomorrow?
ANDY RODDICK: You know, I'm going to fight the battle between playing nine holes, watching NCAA games, fitting in practice. I'm actually really looking forward to tomorrow.

Q. How is your golf game? Nadal shot a 74 yesterday.
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, it's not like that, no. 74 is a good -- that 's what I get on the third hole.

Q. Somebody was saying Mardy was the best the other day.
ANDY RODDICK: Mardy is very good. He's a scratch golfer. But I'm pretty sure I heard that Henman had beaten Monty in a charity XO at St. Andrews in a round, which I thought was pretty good.
I know he's consistently shooting --

Q. The next Scott Draper.
ANDY RODDICK: -- 67, 68, and he's not scared to practice a lot. So, no, I'm not very good.

Q. Every day is a new day. You can't be displeased with how the draw is breaking matchup-wise.
ANDY RODDICK: You know, some days -- sometimes are great. Sometimes you get bad draws. It starts over every week. You know, I've had good ones; I've had bad ones. That's the way it is.
You guys, you're going to write about a story about intriguing matchups, and you're going to look ahead. That's part of it. That's part of it that we appreciate it, because you sell the games.
But we're focused on whoever we have to play that next day, and that's how we prepare. We kind of start over each day. You know, so I think how we look at is probably a little bit different.
Ours is probably a little more boring and probably doesn't help you much.

Q. But Federer and Robredo, who...
ANDY RODDICK: Well, yeah, but, I mean, that's anybody. In any sport, if you're asking them if they're more likely to win or play against the guy who's the best ever in their sport or someone who is a very, very good player and has had a very, very good career, it's not much of a fair question to Tommy.

Q. Do you have a course you'd like to play here? Where have you played golf here? Is there a course you would really like to play here?
ANDY RODDICK: You know, I'm not good enough to really play anything. I've got to try not to be pissed off tomorrow before I play the next day, so maybe like a pitch and putt somewhere.

Q. What are your thoughts about this last 24 hours? We saw Roger get beat and then Novak get beat earlier today. You must have at least took notice of those two results.
ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, to be honest with you, I didn't know Novak had lost until I got -- it got brought up in news feed. I kind of -- well, I spend my day kind of, you know, trying to -- when you play a night match, you're spending your day trying not to stress too much or watch too much tennis or go on overload.
But, um, I watched a bit. It happens. I know Roger -- I'm pretty sure I read somewhere he's been sick recently. I don't know if that had much to do with it, but, you know, it's tough to not play between Australia and here and expect to come out and be match tough.
Normally he's good enough to get through it, and then all of a sudden by the quarters, semis, he's played his way into it. Novak is the opposite; he's played so much recently. It happens.

Q. How hard is it for a guy like Novak to come so far after a really emotional Davis Cup effort and then have to travel...
ANDY RODDICK: Well, it's brutal, and we're -- on top of that, he played in Dubai the week before and had a bunch of tough three setters to go and play at home on clay in an emotional tie, and a tie that was historic there, because I don't think they had ever been past the first round.
So that was a pretty big emotional thing, especially with him being the leader and then having to come here, you know, in totally different conditions.
That's never easy. And especially, I mean, he had split sets the first two matches. So that's a lot of emotional and physical baggage for a couple of weeks.

Q. Given your level has been pretty high when you've been healthy the last year and a half, getting close to the time where you should get the next Masters Series shield...
ANDY RODDICK: Say that one more time.

Q. The next Masters Series shield...
ANDY RODDICK: Oh. I mean, again, you win tomorrow and then renegotiate for the next day. You know, I'd love to have another Masters Series shield. Pretty much any time would be a good time for me, yes.

Q. Have you had a chance to see the actual airplane that your wife's picture is on, and do you plan to ride on that plane?
ANDY RODDICK: I have not, and I'm not going to give you that quote. Sorry.

By FastScripts