OBAMA PUT UNDER PRESSURE TO VISIT US/MEXICO BORDER
Page 5
a*** 1 *
92.02
MOV
[N Df
54.39
nys£
11,104.73
DOW JONES TOPS 17,000 ON STRONG U.S. JOBS REPORT
Page 24
Logan Keeler watches fireworks in Prospect Park in New York. Americans around the world will celebrate Independence Day today, July 4, 2014 with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches and ceremonies.
(Joshua Bright/The New York Times)
Arthur threatens holiday plans along US East Coast
ALAN BLINDER © 2014 New York Times KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. - The
sun was still shimmering Thursday afternoon when Bill Peters stared out of the Cypress House Inn and pronounced his property nearly ready for Hurricane Arthur. Most of the storm shutters were closed. He would soon be contact ing scheduled guests to see whether they wanted to delay their arrivals by a day or two. And, scrawled in blue chalk outside the front door, someone had left a message: “Go away, Arthur!!!”
As Peters, who has run his inn here on the Outer Banks for a decade, prepared for the arrival of a surpris ingly strong storm, some of his guests were still at the beach.
Such was Thursday on North Carolina’s coast, a place where thousands of residents and visitors mostly shrugged off the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. Forecasters announced late in the morning that the storm
would probably graze the coast with sustained winds of at least 96 mph.
“My friends paid a lot of money for their vacation,” said Shane Sanner, 23, who was visiting from Pennsylvania with about a dozen others, as he arrived at Jennette’s Pier in nearby Nags Head with a fishing pole. Although a waitress at a
popular local restaurant laughed and shook her head when asked whether she knew anyone evacuating, a steady flow of automobiles headed inland Thursday and only a few vehicles could be seen on the highway traveling to the coastline.
Continued on page 3
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
,«IUP FRONT
g
Ukraine:
Poroshenko shakes up military leadership
DAVID McHUGH Associated Press KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shook up his faltering military Thursday, appointing a new defense minister and top general while speaking angrily about the years of decay and corruption that left the forces unable to deal effectively with the wellarmed eastern insurgency. His tougher tone, analysts say, reflects public pressure to continue the fight against the insurgents in
tration and to help “purge the army of fhieves and graffers.” Accusations of corruption have been rife as Kiev’s operation against the rebels continues. “Today the revival of the army is starting from scratch, an army which is capable of fighting and winning," Poroshenko said in parliament.
Poroshenko's shakeup underscores the complex job he faces of making peace overtures and at the same time suppressing the insurgency that threatens to
peatedly violated and ultimately expired. Foreign ministers from Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France are pushing to get talks going again by Saturday, with the aim of achieving a cease-fire honored by both sides.
Rebels in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where more Russian speakers live, have declared independence and occupied government buildings. The insurrection, in which more than 400 people have died, started
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, congratulates new Ukrainian defense Minister Valeriy Heletey during a session of the parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, July 3, 2014. Ukraine’s president shook up the leadership of his poorly performing military on Thursday, appointing a new defense minister and top general tasked with stamping out the corruption that has left the country’s armed forces faltering before a pro-Russian insurgency.
(AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
the regions bordering Russia— even with a rickety military that’s had little success.
Poroshenko denounced the “complete collapse” of the government’s ability to supply the armed forces in a sometimes angry, finger-wagging speech in parliament.
He won quick approval for his choice of former top police official Valery Heletey as defense minister, replacing Mikhailo Koval. He also tapped Lt. Gen. Viktor Muzhenko as chief of the military's general staff and Yury Kosyuk, an agriculture magnate and one of Ukraine's richest men, to oversee defense issues in the presidential adminis tear his country apart or create a permanent twilight zone beyond government control.
Other pressures come from outside: Ukraine and the West say Russia is helping arm the rebels and letting its citizens cross the border to fight, while key allies France and Germany are pushing Poroshenko to pursue talks over attacks.
The president’s forceful words and demeanor contrasted with his emphasis on starting a peace process voiced in his inaugural address June 7. He declared a unilateral ceasefire for 10 days in hopes rebels would lay down fheir arms and join talks. But the cease-fire was re affer pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was driven from office by a protest movement among people wanting closer ties with the European Union instead of Russia. Russia called Yanukovych’s ouster a coup by radical nationalists and seized Ukraine's Russian-speaking Crimea region.
Poroshenko was elected in a special election May 25 to replace Yanukovych and faces high expectations.
“The level of impatience in society is very high," said Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the Institute of World Policy research institute in Kiev. “They want to see results. ”□
This image posted on a social media account frequently used for communications by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), shows Omar al-Shishani standing next to the group’s spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. Al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group’s Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.
(AP Photo)
Iraq Kurdish leader urges an independence referendum
RYAN LUCAS BRAM JANSSEN Associated Press BAGHDAD (AP) — With large parts of Iraq in militant hands, a top Kurdish leader called on regional lawmakers Thursday to lay the groundwork for a referendum on independence, a vofe that would likely spell the end of a unified Iraq.
The recent blitz by Sunni militants across much of norfhern and western Iraq has given the country's 5 million Kurds — who have long agitated for independence — fheir best chance ever to seize disputed territory and move closer to a decades-old dream of their own state.
But the Kurds still face considerable opposition from many in the international community, including the United States, which has no desire to see a fragmented Iraq.
A Western-established nofly zone in 1991 helped fhe Kurds sef up fheir enclave, which has emerged over the years as a beacon of stability and prosperity, while much of the rest of the country has been mired in violence and political turmoil. The three-province territory was formally recognized as an autonomous region within Iraq following
the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Speaking to the regional legislature Thursday, the president of fhe Kurdisfan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, told lawmakers to set up an electoral commission to “hurry up” and prepare for “a referendum on self-determination.”
“We will be in a better position and we will have better (political) weapons in our hands. But how we will do this?" he said. “What kind of steps will there be? For this, you have to study the issue and take steps in this direction.
It is time to decide our selfdetermination and not wait for other people to decide for us.”
Barzani spoke behind closed doors, but The Associated Press obtained a video of his address.
Kurdish leaders have threatened for years to hold an independence referendum, but those moves were often more about wresting concessions from the central government in Baghdad than a real push for statehood. The recent Sunni offensive has effectively cleaved the country in three, bringing the prospect of full independence within reach. □
U.S. NEWS If' 3
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Eat I Drink I Dance
rRIHJiVU | JJ I’M V b ,A
LW> A&MrJi
KUTiHOf
<S»S) ...
trip i ■ 585 4)61
Wrr ETty vM wth pitot. bnrtfd Idcmw.-wt pr-tvwT
Arthur threatens holiday plans along US East Coast
pleasantness of its early Hurricane Isabel heavhours was a surprise. ily damaged in 2003. “I
“I thought that I wouldn’t thought the red flags would get to come here today,” be flying and fhere would Blankenship said as she be sand blowing. But it's stood below a pier that beautiful now.”
Tybee Island Ocean Rescue Senior Lifeguard Todd Horne, right, and Mark Eichenlaub, left, hang a yellow flag that warns swimmer of strong rip currents from Hurricane Arthur along the beach, on Tybee Island, Ga., Thursday, July 3,2014. The storm has bypassed the Georgia coast as predicted, but forecasters are warning beach goers to beware of dangerous rip currents in its wake.
(AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
Hot dog eaters weigh in on eve of famed NY contest
Continued from front
Ashley Scadding, who spent Thursday morning on the beach and decided in the afternoon to leave, said she and her husband chose to depart after meteorologists announced that the storm had strengthened. But she said they were not evacuating because they feared for fheir safety.
“To be honest, we weren’t sure about flooding for our car, and we need to be back for work and need the car to be back,” said Scadding, who had planned to stay until Saturday.
Whether the hurricane would be the first to make landfall in the continental United States since 2012 remained unclear. Forecasting models indicated its center would probably stay just east of the shore as it passed overnight, but the Dare County authorities ordered a mandatory evacuation of Hatteras Island, and Gov. Pat McCrory declared emergencies for 26 counfies. Many communities rescheduled Independence Day celebrations, and the storm forced shutdowns of the federally operated Wright Brothers National Memorial and Cape Lookout National Seashore. Emergency officials along the coast were preparing for the possibility of flooding and isolated tornadoes, and lifeguards placed yellow flags reading “dangerous current" on beaches by midday.
But for Cheryl Blankenship, who was holding her 9-month-old son at the edge of the Atlantic, Thursday was another day at the beach, even if the
RACHELLE BLIDNER
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The top
four contestants in the annual Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest on New York's Coney Island weighed in Thursday with seven-time champ Joey Chestnut tilting the scales at a solid 205 pounds (93 kilograms) — 75 pounds (34 kilograms) more than his top competitor. Matt Stonie, who finished second last year.
Chestnut hopes to demolish his competition by downing 70 hot dogs in just 10 minutes Friday just steps from where holiday beachgoers are showing off their bodies.
Two-time female champion Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, at a mere 100 pounds. (45 kilograms), will try to eat more than 45 hot dogs to defend her title against 115-pound (52-kilogram) Miki Sudo.
The top four stared each other down at the weigh-in for dramatic effect as Mayor Bill de Blasio presided. Although he joked he was just in it for fhe free hot dog. Thirteen women and 17 men will compete Friday before a live crowd of about 30,000 and a TV audience of about one million. To prepare, the top competitors said they were fasting Thursday. But Irish contestant Colin Shirlow
Dan and Erica Robinson, who were passing through Kill Devil Hills on their honeymoon, actually intended to drive through the storm as they traveled toward South
Seven-time hot dog eating champion, Joey Chestnut, poses while weighing in during a news conference to promote the upcoming Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot-Dog Eating Contest tomorrow Thursday, July 3, 2014, at City Hall in New York.
(AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Carolina.
They briefly considered repeating to Virginia before opting for what they said would be a bit of adventure.
“At the red light, we said, ‘Left or right?’??” Robinson said. “And right took us south.”
Her husband added, “You don’t want to end up in a Category 5, but this is going to be wimpy.”
Others who considered leaving the Outer Banks chose to stay because, without an ordered evacuation, they were ineligible for refunds on their lodging.
Although plenty of vacationers were sticking with their plans, members of the hospitality industry were concerned about the loss of business on a weekend that is among the most lucrative of the year.
“It's not a season-killer, but it's a chunk of revenue that we won’t get back,” said Peters, who had cancellations. □
grabbed a free hot dog during the weigh-in to get a first taste of the Nathan's Famous dogs he'll have to consume come crunch time. Thomas said last year she made a strategic mistake that kept her from matching her 45-dog record but has learned her lesson. Sudo, meanwhile, said she will go to the gym at 5 a.m. to work up an appetite.
Chestnut, a full-time professional eafer who earns between $150,000 and $230,000 a year, said he will have a lot of caffeine before the event and then fast for two to three days after the contest to recover. □
FRIDAY 4 JULY
au.S. NEWS
g
ffe & tA BL©SS®MS i e
Lunch & Dinner
Located in the lower lobby of the hotel. Please use side entrance
Japanese and Chinese Restaurant
in parking lot.
J.E. Ira us quin Boulevard. 77, [ex-Westin Hotel) Tel: 586-3388.
Drought won’t stop fireworks in dry western US
Customers walk into a Red Hot Fireworks tent in Phoenix. Although Phoenix has gone a full 120 days without any measurable precipitation there has not been any serious effort in the droughtstricken states to restrict fireworks. Arizona actually loosened its restrictions this year and allowed residents of the two most populated cities to set off fireworks around Independence Day.
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
The Blue
Dim
LC/h
r-^isjii ihi
3 Course Menu
Available on mondays, Wednesdays and todays.
just $ 38.99 P.P.
3 Course Menu
For Sundays dinner, and lunchtime during weekdays l
The perfect combination of local and international cuisine.
just $ 27.50 P.P.
—
Palm Beach 164 A NoonJL Aruba Lunch: 11:00 - 4:00pm, Dinner: 5:00 - llrtdpm Tel.: {297) 5B6-3843. E-mail: info a'aruba blue lob iter.com
ritflji psDJnotfouiJ ir« not velip wMt -other protections.
These promotions are subject to change at managements discretion
SUSAN BRYAN Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) — Arizona's largest city has gone four months without any measurable rain, and the neighboring southwestern state of New Mexico is in the midst of four years of severe drought.
But fireworks will still sparkle and pop during the days for the July 4 Independence Day holiday, despite the dangerously high threat of wildfires.
While some places in the West ban fireworks altogether, or greatly limit what you can light off when conditions are ripe for fire, other states are going in the opposite direction. Arizona actually loosened its restrictions this year and is now allowing residents of the two most populated cities to set off fireworks in the days around Independence Day, and an effort by the New Mexico governor to impose tougher rules during dry times has repeatedly fallen on deaf ears in the Legislature. Some lawmakers chalk it up to statehouse politics, while others say it's politicians’ reluctance to impose more regulations and take away the cherished tradition of setting off fireworks, even in severe droughts.
Phil Griego, a northern New Mexico rancher and a Democratic state senator, said the pastures around his village are so dry that the grass crunches under the hooves of horses and cattle when ranchers move the animals from one field to the next. Griego tried during this year’s legislative session to pass a measure that would have updated New Mexico'sfireworks laws to give cities and counties more authority to ban fireworks when fire danger is
high. Political wrangling stalled the measure in the Democrat-controlled Senate despite bipartisan support from lawmakers, fire chiefs around the state and Republican Gov. Susan Martinez, who has been pushing since 2011 for changes to the law. “This is critical because I don't think this drought and this situation we're in right now is going to pass any time soon,” Griego said. “For this year, it’s done and over, but we’ve got to start working on next year. We've got to have protections. Look at the fires that are taking place now with just lightning strikes.” Arizona began allowing the sale and use of certain fireworks in 2010. This year, the state updated its laws to prohibit cities in Maricopa and Pima counties — which include Phoenix and Tucson — from banning the use offireworks around the July 4 holiday. Previously, some cities in the area had banned fireworks, while others didn't, resulting in much confusion.
The Phoenix Fire Department is placing trucks in strategic places around town so crews can respond to brush fires within minutes. City employees will also be monitoring popular hiking trails, looking for anyone trying to set off illegal fireworks.
In Texas, legislation to give the state fire marshal the power to enforce stricter rules didn’t get far during the last session partly due to the lack of appetite among some lawmakers for imposing more regulations on small businesses. Some places in the West do restrict fireworks heavily. In Utah, more than 50 cities and towns have imposed additional restrictions this year due to the fire dangerO
SEE
I
U.S. NEWS If ' 5
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
The Pelican Pier is excited to be a part of Located between Holiday Inn Hotel & Playa Linda Resort
The FIFA WORLD CUP.1
Gentlemen receive a FREE SHOT, q nd.lqdiesrq JREE.SfiNGRlffl
THF PELICAN NFCT scored by the country you proudly represent.
Come and enjoy every game at the Pelican Pier and play
GUESS THE SCORE
Wearing your team’s T-shirt or face painting. to win awesome prizes.
4 july 2014
VS
France Germany
12:00 P.M.
VS
Brazil Colombia
4:00 P.M.
Obama under pressure to visit US-Mexico border
ERICA WERNER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is facing mounting calls from opposition Republicans to take a firsthand look at the immigration emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.
youngsters he’s seeking to deport and would risk upsetting immigration advocates who oppose the deportations if he were to meet with border patrol agents or other law enforcement.
Administration officials say
of America’s immigration laws. Obama announced this week that, due to a lack of progress on Capitol Hill, he was moving forward to seek out ways to adjust U.S. immigration policy without congressional approval.
President Barack Obama speaks at 1776, a hub for tech startups, Thursday, July 3, 2014, in Washington. Obama is facing mounting calls from opposition Republicans to take a firsthand look at the immigration emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
putting him on the spot concerning what he has called the “humanitarian crisis" of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children flooding in from Central America.
“If he doesn’t come to the border, I think it's a real reflection of his lack of concern of what’s really going on there,” declares Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016.
The White House said Thursday that Obama currently has no plans to visit the border when he travels to Texas next week, primarily to fundraise for Democratic congressional candidates. A trip to the border could result in awkward optics for the president, who would be unlikely to meet with
that Perry and other Republicans are merely trying to score political points rather than working to resolve a major problem. But the political concerns aren’t so easily dismissed for Obama.
The border crisis has put him in the difficult position of asking Congress for more money and authority to send the children back home at the same time he's seeking ways to allow millions of other people already in the U.S. illegally to stay.
The White House also wants to keep the focus of the debate in this midterm election year on Republican lawmakers whom the president has accused of blocking progress on a comprehensive overhaul
Obama’s options for that range from relatively modest changes in deportation procedures to broader moves that could shield millions of people in the U.S. illegally from deportation while giving them temporary authorization to work here.
Immigration advocates emerged from a meeting with Obama this week convinced that the president was at least considering the more aggressive approach. The advocates are pushing Obama to provide work permits to the up to 9 million people who would have been eligible for citizenship under a comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate a year ago that stalled in the Republican-led House.
Short of that, advocates want Obama to extend a “deferred action” program to all immigrants in the U.S. illegally who have children who are American citizens because they were born in the U.S. That program currently allows many young immigrants who arrived in the United States as children before June 15, 2007, to apply for work permits and two-year reprieves from deportation.
Those proposals stand in stark contrast to the Obama administration’s response to the influx of unaccompanied minors showing up at the border.
The president has asked Congress for $2 billion in emergency spending to hire more immigration judges and open more detention facilities. He’s also seeking the flexibility to speed up the youths' deportationsO
Enjoy our much celebrated
3-Course Dinner Special!
AjppaliEQi
* Flert Soup
► GnJon* Soup1 Clinch Fritter*
* E-s cjfigoC - 5d UleI
Entrta "~"1 * Fresh Calch of the &ay
___ —j-VnpAJfcj ts^ pur hocfl* chftl [u-fci \tm wfty you I**
■ Shrimp ir&r\ dlm iocj! wntm
-Willi CXTliiLD iQT TlLti « iA-*?i BCr£IOd Mr# lh s »gi.M V
■ FlJct WNgrvon* OKU US ^BTickwiDin
1 Grilled Bonaluss Chicken 8 re*i«I
rui -CiLke
C. h ltcg-I iitc- or B
kt Cream
Th*
N.uife .1 mi l ^ru bH Ivi Tu-j-d
: 25th ANNIVERSARY I
□pan u;iily Tram 5 DDurn - Ufctopm [closBd on Sun-days} For rijierv.aijcjits eafl: - Knpfllrasl 12, Dewnlcmn
hv.va- rln llvnoi-iiirutiui carat * dri^lwncxi-gisjflamoL nw
FRIDAY 4 JULY
ms. NEWS
m
US Financial Front:
June jobs report shows US recovery is accelerating
People wait in line for the Cleveland Career Fair in Independence, Ohio. U.S. employers accelerated their hiring in June, adding a robust 288,000 jobs and helping drive the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008, the Labor Department reported, Thursday, July 3, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
JOSH BOAK AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — A surprisingly robust job market is energizing the 5-yearold U.S. recovery and driving the economy closer to full health.
Employers added 288,000 jobs in June and helped cut the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, the lowest since 2008. It was the fifth straight gain above 200,000 — the best such stretch since the late 1990s tech boom.
The stock market roared with approval. The Dow Jones industrial average surged 92 points to top 17,000 for the first time.
The breadth and consistency of the job growth are striking in part because of how poorly the year began. The economy shrank at a steep 2.9 percent annual rate in the JanuaryMarch quarter as a harsh winter contributed to the sharpest contraction since the depths of the recession. Yet employers have shrugged off that setback.
They’ve kept hiring.
The unemployment rate dipped from 6.3 percent in May to its lowest level since the financial crisis struck with full force in the fall of 2008, when the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.
“This has now become a textbook jobs expansion,” said Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research at the consultancy CohnReznick. “It is both broad and accelerating.” At least one nagging doubt is dampening the enthusiasm: Can the stepped-up hiring lead to higher incomes? Wages have yet to outpace inflation for most workers. Eventually, analysts say, the falling unemployment rate should cause pay to rise more sharply. But no one knows precisely when.
The jobs report did make clear that, five years after the recession officially ended, the U.S. economy is showing more vitality even as major economies in Europe and Asia continue to
nearly 2.5 million jobs — an average of 208,000 a month, the fastest yearover-year pace since 2006. Economists say the steady U.S. hiring should fuel more purchases of goods from Asia and Europe and strengthen those economies at least slightly. Much of Europe is suffering from high unemployment. And China is trying to moderate its economy's growth without slowing it too much. “If we have some momentum going into the second half of the year, it helps the world economy because we're big consumers,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services.
The U.S. job gains in June were widespread. Factories added 16,000 workers, retailers 40,200. Financial and insurance firms increased their payrolls by 17,000. Restaurants and bars employed 32,800 more people. Only construction, which gained a
than usual in June, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago.
Over the past three months, job growth has averaged a healthy 272,000. And in May, the economy surpassed the jobs total from December 2007, when the Great Recession officially began.
Researchers at the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimate that 6.7 million more jobs would have been needed to keep up with U.S. population growth. One key challenge is whether the job gains will pull more Americans back into the workforce. Many people who lost jobs during the recession and were never rehired have stopped looking for work. Just 62.8 percent of American adults are working or are looking for a job, compared with 66 percent before the downturn.
The number of long-term unemployed has dropped
grown just 2 percent a year during the recovery, roughly in line with inflation and below the long-run average annual growth of about 3.5 percent.
The lack of strong wage growth means the Federal Reserve may not feel pressure to start raising shortterm interest rates soon as a way of controlling inflation.
“We are still not seeing any significant pickup in wage growth,” Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note. “We suspect that Fed officials will continue to cling to the view that there is still plenty of slack in the labor market.”
“It's becoming more difficult to find the candidates that we're looking for," said Brandon Calvo, chief operating officer at Cosentino North America, a Houstonbased firm that sells materials for kitchen counters and bathrooms. □
struggle.
Last month’s solid hiring followed gains of 217,000 jobs in May and 304,000 in April, figures that were revised upward by a combined 29,000.
Over the past 12 months, the economy has added
mere 6,000, reflected the slow recovery of previous years.
Local governments added 18,000 education workers. But that might have been a quirk: Many schools that had been closed for snow days stayed open longer
1.2 million over the past year to just under 3.1 million. But the government data suggests that numerous people without jobs have given up their searches — a trend that could drag on future U.S. growth.
And average pay has
STEAK, SEAFOOD, B.B.Q. & FUN!
Ex-Hadicurari BBQ & Grill with the same owner’s. We do our own daily fishing so we serve the freshest seafood on the Island.
Very reasonable price, exciting menu and
NO SERVICE CHARGE Dinner from 5:30 - 10:00
Monday - Saturday
FRESH CATCH & SEAFOOD
We are located close to the High-rise hotel's at walking distance.
_ RESERVATION SUGGESTED
TEL: 586-7333
HiW
PALM BEACH #33-A WWW.WACKYWAHOOS.COM
U.S. NEWS 1^7
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Citing cost;
Group lobbies against healthier school meals it sought
RON NIXON © 2014 New York Times WASHINGTON - When the Obama administration in 2012 announced long-awaited changes to require more fruits and vegetables and less sugar and salt in governmentsubsidized school meals, no group celebrated more than the School Nutrition Association. The group had anticipated the changes
ran the agency’s child nutrition division. He was a member of the School Nutrition Association who resigned in protest of the lobbying campaign.
The devils in this case, the association’s critics say, are the dozens of food companies that have paid millions in sponsorship fees to the School Nutrition Association, covering more than half of its $10.5 million
Mary Hill, executive director of Child Nutrition Services for Jackson public schools, pulls rolls from an oven at Thomas Cardozo Middle School, which has no deep fryers in its new kitchen, in Jackson, Miss., in June, 2014. The School Nutrition Association has launched a massive lobbying campaign that would allow schools to opt out of the very rules it helped to create.
(Aaron Phillips/The New York Times)
for three years, and it was enthusiastic in thanking President Barack Obama and his wife for their efforts to “expand children’s access to healthy school meals." Two years later, the association has done an about-face and is leading a lobbying campaign to allow schools to opt out of the very rules it helped to create, saying that the regulations that have gone into effect are “overly prescriptive” and too costly for schools that are trying to replace hamburgers and fries with healthier alternatives. Congress is listening, and it is considering legislation to delay the nutrition regulations for a year, some of which have already gone into effect. But some of the association’s onetime allies in the school-meal campaign are mystified, if not suspicious, concerning the group’s motivations.
“They sold their souls to the devil,” said Stanley C. Garnett, a former Agriculture Department official who
annual budget.
Reacting to the association’s change of heart, the House Appropriations Committee has passed a spending bill with a provision that would allow schools to waive the nutrition standards during the school year that begins in the fall. A vote by the full House is tentatively set after the July 4 recess. A similar amendment was offered for Senate spending bills, but Democrats canceled the debate after disagreeing with Republicans over that and other amendments. The School Nutrition Association says it still supports healthier options for schoolchildren whose lunches are subsidized, but a major problem, the group said, is that children are simply throwing away the fruits and vegetables. The waste amounts to $684 million each year, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the group. That money, she said, “is enough to serve complete reimbursable
school lunches to more outreach, the association with the high-powered than 228 million students.” replaced its longtime rep- lobbying firm of Barnes & As part of its legislative resentative in Washington ThornburgO
Feeling lucky?
Join us at the Hyatt Regency Casino
Tuesdays
Double Points Slots from 10:00 AM - Midnight.
Wednesday July 9, 2014
$1,000 Slot Tournament from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM.
Thursdays
$500 Spin & Win from 8:30 PM - Midnight.
Saturday July 26, 2014
$1,200 Blackjack Tournament from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM. Sundays
$250 Spin & Win Progressive from 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM.
Cash Prizes
End of the month
Triple Points Slots from 10:00 AM - Midnight.
HYATT
REGENCY'
RESORT
For more information, please contact our Players Advantage Club at 586 1234 ext. 4583.
FRIDAY 4 JULY
ms. NEWS
m
Algorithms and Why Computers Won’t Replace You Just Yet
SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN © 2014 New York Times
Consider these two tweets by Al Gore, both promoting the same article:
- “40% of smartphone users connect to Internet immediately upon awakening, before leaving bed. #TheFuture http://bit.ly/WYRz39 @TheAtlantic"
- “Cybercrime market now greater than annual global market for marijuana, cocaine, and heroin #TheFuture http://bit.ly/WYRz39 @ TheAtlantic”
Can you guess which one was retweeted more often?
Three computer scientists, Chenhao Tan, Lillian Lee and Bo Pang, have built an algorithm that also makes these guesses, as described in a recent paper, and the results are impressive. (The answer: The first one got more retweets). That an algorithm can make these kinds of predictions shows the power of “big data.” It also illustrates its fundamental limitation: Specifically,
guessing which tweet gets retweeted is significantly
easier than creating one that gets re tweeted.
To see why, it is useful to see how the algorithm
was built. It used a data set of around 11,000 paired tweets - two tweets about the same link sent by the same person - to learn which word patterns looked predictive and then tested whether these patterns hold in new data. This is usually how “smart” algorithms are created from big data: Large data sets with known correct
answers serve as a training bed and then new data serves as a test bed - not too different from how we
might learn what our coworkers find funny.
The end result is an algorithm that guesses well. It can guess which tweet gets re tweeted about 67 percent of the time, beating humans, who on average get it right only 61 percent of the time.
This is striking when you think of the enormous handicap the algorithm has. Yes, it could learn from 11,000 pairs of tweets. But it has no other knowledge. It has none of the wealth of contextual information you have accumulated over the years. It has never heard friends’ complaints about spouses checking their phone the first thing in the morning. It does not have a sense of humor or know what a pun is. It does not know what makes a turn of phrase elegant or awkward.
It must rely on a few crude features, such as length of the tweet, the presence of certain words (“retweet” or “please”) or the use of indefinite articles. Yet with so little, it does so much. This is one of the miracles of big data: Algorithms find information in unexpected places, uncovering “signal” in places we thought contained only “noise.”
But we do not need to roll out the welcome mat for our machine overlords just yet. While the retweet algorithm is impressive, it has an Achilles' heel, one
shared by all prediction algorithms.
We care about predicting retweets mainly because
we want to write better tweets. And we assume these two tasks are related. If Netflix can predict which movies I like, surely it can use the same analytics to create better TV shows. But it doesn’t work that way. Being good at prediction often does not mean being better at creation.
One barrier is the oldest of statistical problems: Correlation is not causation. Changing a variable that is highly predictive may have no effect. For example, we may find the number of employees formatting their resumes is a good predictor of a company’s bankruptcy. But stopping this behavior is hardly a fruitful strategy for fending off creditors.
The causality problem can show up in very subtle ways. For example, the tweet predictor finds that longer tweets are more likely to be re tweeted. It seems unlikely that you should therefore write longer tweets. The old adage that “less is more" is, if anything, truer in this medium. Instead, length is probably a good predictor because longer tweets have more content. So the lesson is not “make your tweets longer” but “have more content,” which is far harder to do. Another problem comes from an inherent paradox in predicting what is interesting. Rarity and novelty often contribute to interest ingness - or at least to drawing attention. But once an algorithm finds those things that draw attention and
starts exploiting them, their value erodes. When few people do something, it catches the eye; when everyone does it, it is ho-hum. Calling a food “artisanal” was eye-catching, until it became so common that we're not far away from an artisanal plunger.
In the Twitter example, the use of the words “retweet” or “please” were predictive. But if everyone starts asking you to “Share this article. Please,” will it continue to work?
Finally, and perhaps most perversely, some of the most predictive variables are circular.
For example, in another paper, the computer scientists Lars Backstrom, Jon Kleinberg, Lillian Lee and Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil predict which posts on Facebook generate many comments. One of the most predictive variables is the time it takes for the first comment to arrive: If the first comment arrives quickly, then the post is likely to generate many more comments in the future. This helps Facebook decide which posts to show you. But it does not help anyone to write a highly commented post. It says: “Want to write a post people like? Well, write one that people like!”
Continued on Page 27
LUNCH
MONDAY-FRIDAY
11am -3pm
DINNER
TUESDAY-SUNDAY
5:00pm-10:00pm
$25
4 COURSE EARLY BIRD
5:00pm - 7:30pm
Live music by:
every friday 7:00pm-9:00pm
Near low rise hotels
FOR RESERVATION?? 503-0090
LG. Smith Bivti. 160 near the tow rise Hoteis
Using the power of Big Data, algorithms can predict which tweets will be the most popular. Significantly harder is creating one that gets retweeted.
(Roman Muradov/The New York Times)
lulv 3-4-5 9:00am-7:00prn J Tuly 6 9:00am-3:00pm
ill 4 day* of total c*u*no“|
3t GO TH4- EBOOY!
for more Information call: 582-0105 or 730-6305
Facebookxom/SunSpecs Aru ba
., < 3M0RLP NEWS
In Seoul visit ;
China, South Korea leaders snub North Korea
FOSTER KLUG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) —
With a single meeting Thursday, the leaders of China and South Korea simultaneously snubbed North Korea, bolstered their already booming trade relationship and gave the U.S. and
Japan a look at Beijing’s growing influence south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
There were smiles, cheering schoolchildren and red carpets as Chinese President Xi Jinping began a two-day visit to Seoul.
JOSEF FEDERMAN Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military rushed additional forces to its southern border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, vowing to halt a growing wave of rocket fire from the Palestinian territory, while new clashes erupted in east Jerusalem in response to the death of an Arab boy who Palestinians say was killed by Israeli extremists.
Israel said the show of force on the Gaza border was a defense measure. But persistent rocket fire raised the prospects of a tough Israeli response, with the military
North Korea, meanwhile, welcomed the leader of its only major ally and crucial source of fuel and food to the Korean Peninsula with a flurry of recent rocket and missile tests, the latest on Wednesday. The launches, as well as a vow Thursday by North Korea's
military to conduct more tests, are seen in part as the North demonstrating its anger at being jilted for its archrival.
After their talks Thursday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye told reporters that she and Xi agreed
saying more than 40 rockets or mortar shells were fired from Hamas-confrolled Gaza on Thursday. Tensions have been high since three Israeli teenagers were abducted in the West Bank on June 12, sparking a massive manhunt that ended with the discovery of fheir bodies early this week. Israel has blamed Hamas for the abductions and launched a crackdown on the Islamic militant group in the West Bank, drawing rocket attacks out of Gaza and Israeli airstrikes in a near-daily cycle of refaliation.
The situation deteriorated
on the need to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons and would resolutely oppose any more nuclear tests.
North Korea is thought to have a handful of crude nuclear weapons and has conducted three atomic tests since 2006, the most
recent last year. Xi also called for negotiafions to end the North’s nuclear program and the uncertainty that lingers on the Korean Peninsula.
Xi’s decision to meet with Park over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un up
further on Wednesday after the burned body of a Palestinian youth, whose identity was confirmed Thursday as Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was found in a forest after he was seized near his home in east Jerusalem. The Palestinians accused Israeli extremists of killing the teen in a revenge attack over the deaths of the Israeli youths. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried Thursday to calm the situation, condemning Abu Khdeir’s killing and vowing to find the attackers. “We don’t know yet the motives or the identities of the perpe
ends the practice since Beijing and Seoul forged diplomatic ties in 1992 of Chinese presidents choosing to make North Korea their first official destination on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing, entangled in hostile territorial disputes across Asia, may see an opportunity to boost its influence with the rare neighbor that feels generally positive about China, while also further driving a wedge between U.S. allies Seoul and Tokyo. South Korea and China share a distaste of Japan’s more assertive military ambitions and what critics see as recent attempts by Tokyo to obscure its bloody past. Money has long been the focus of the relationship between China, the world’s second-largest economy, and South Korea, the fourth-biggest economy in Asia.
The countries are in talks on a bilateral free frade agreement. China is South Korea's largest trading partner, and Seoul says two-way trade topped $220 billion last year. That’s larger than the combined value of South Korea’s trade with the United States and Japan.
China and South Korea on Thursday agreed to measures that will expand the use of China’s tightly controlled currency and boost their already extensive trade ties. □
trators, but we will. We will bring to justice the criminals responsible for this despicable crime whoever they may be,” Netanyahu said in a speech celebrating U.S. Independence Day at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. “Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism, they have no place in our democracy.” Following an especially intense barrage of rocket fire, including fwo projectiles that hit homes in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, Israel sent tanks, artillery and ground forces to the border area early Thursday, defense officials said.Q
U.S. embassy in Uganda warns of ‘specific threat’ to country’s airport
ALAN COWELL © 2014 New York Times
The U.S. Embassy in Uganda said it had been warned of a “specific threat” of attack to the country’s main airport Thursday and that travelers therefore “may want to review their plans.”
The warning was one of several recent alarms in restive East Africa, where governments have sought to counter threats, particularly those by the al-Shabab militant movement based in Somalia.
The embassy did not specify what the threat entailed, but said it had “received information from the Uganda Police Force that, according to intelligence sources, ’’there is a specific threat to Entebbe International Airport,” which serves the capital, Kampala.
The warning, in a statement on the embassy’s website, said the attack could take place between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thursday.
“U.S. Embassy Kampala wishes to remind U.S. citizens of the continued threat of potential terrorist attacks in the country,” the statement said. “The targets for these attacks could include hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, shopping malls, diplomatic missions, transportation hubs, religious institutions, government offices, or public transportation.”
The embassy’s warning followed a separate alert Wednesday by Uganda’s Civil Aviation Authority, Reuters reported.
The alert also coincided with alarms about flights from Europe and the Middle East to the United States because of concerns that militants may have developed explosives undetectable by conventional airport security devices.
Uganda has troops in Somalia fighting al-Shabab as part of an African Union force and has been on alert in case that involvement draws reprisals. In 2010, alShabab claimed responsibility for attacks on bars in Uganda where people had gathered to watch World Cup soccer games. Scores of people were killed.Q
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye, left, greet children during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 3, 2014. Xi’s choice to meet with Park over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un upends the practice since Beijing and Seoul forged diplomatic ties in 1992 of Chinese presidents choosing to make Pyongyang their first official destination on the Korean Peninsula.
(AP Photo/Kim Hong-ji, Pool)
Israel rushes forces to southern border with Gaza
WORLD NEWSI™
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
fl SI
Jeep 7b/// f Sa/fr/v
Drive your own Jeep Wrangler or Kia Sportage, or (be a passenger) through the Country side, explore Aruba's secret beaches that you would never on your own, well present Aruba's total topside history by jeep with the island's best guides pointing out the way and stopping at the most iconic sites the island has to offer, such as Indian Caves, National Park, Baby Beach & more...optional join us for a nice Sailing a Snorkeling cruise after your Jeep Tour.
Visit us at Casa del Mar, Playa Linda, Holiday Inn Concierge/lobby desk/ beach huts or at our own Pelican Pier, located between the Holiday Inn & Playa Linda Resort.
For reservations call 587-2302 (Mon-Sun) Or book online at: www.pelican-aruba.com
C/3 pS
H £
EU urges wider fraud probe in Afghan elections
AMIR SHAH
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) —
The European Union called on Thursday for a more extensive investigation into
potentially widespread fraud.”
The statement came a day after the Afghan commission overseeing the vote postponed the release of
599 votes in 30 different provinces.
Thijs Berman, the head of the EU’s election monitoring team in Kabul, welcomed that step but said
sible detection of fraud.” Other factors also should be examined, including highly improbable votes for one single candidate in polling stations, or unlikely discrepancies between votes cast by women and men he added.
Given those factors, the number of problematic polling stations could well exceed 6,000 of the 22,828 stations nationwide, Berman said at a news conference in Kabul.
“An additional in-depth audit of the votes is necessary, given these highly worrying indications of potentially widespread fraud,” he said. “This is technically possible without much delay.”
Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and one-time aide to a famed
warlord during the Afghan anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign, garnered the most votes in the first round of voting on April 5 but failed to get the majority needed to win outright. He has alleged widespread ballot box stuffing and other efforts to rig the June 14 runoff vote in favor of his rival Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a former Finance Minister and World Bank official. Ahmadzai’s team also has registered complaints of fraud but called for the Independent Election Commission’s process to be respected. Whoever wins will replace President Hamid Karzai, the only leader the country has known since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban. He was constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.Q
Afghan villagers flock around free food donated by other villagers as they prepare to break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, July 3, 2014.
The European Union called on Thursday for a more extensive investigation into allegations of irregularities in Afghanistan's presidential election, citing “highly worrying indications of potentially widespread fraud.” (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
allegations of irregularities in Afghanistan’s presidential election, citing “highly worrying indications of
preliminary results until next week so it could audit the ballots from 1,930 polling stations that had at least
the commission's choice to audit “only polling stations with 599 votes and over significantly limits the pos
Peru:
Interior minister faces murder probe
FRANKLIN BRICENO
Associated Press
LIMA, Peru (AP) — The
newly named Peruvian interior minister says he has no intention of resigning despite a formal accusation he took part in the 1988 murder of a journalist as an army intelligence officer.
Daniel Urresti proclaimed his innocence to reporters Wednesday night, hours after an online news outlet revealed that the case had been opened against him last year.
The victim was Hugo Bustios of Caretas magazine, who was ambushed by
soldiers in the Ayacucho region while investigating extrajudicial killings of civilians during the conflict with Shining Path rebels.
“I am completely innocent. My hands are free of blood. I did nothing and have the right to the presumption of innocence,” Urresti, 57, told reporters. According to court papers obtained by The Associated Press, Capt. Urresti allegedly headed a military patrol that ambushed Bustios and a colleague, who survived. Bustios body was then dynamited.
Two soldiers were convicted six years ago in the kill ing, one of whom alleged that Urresti was among the killers.
Last year, a judge in Ayacucho, Bladimiro Chuquimbalqui, approved the formal investigation of Urresti based on the testimony of two other soldiers.
Urresti acknowledged to reporters that he had been questioned by a prosecutor in Ayacucho.
At the time of Bustios death, Urresti was assigned to an army base in Castropampa in a region of nearly daily combat with the Maoist-inspired Shining Path, according to the court papers.Q
Quiilil'i Ml-uIihhI
STEAK • SEAFOOD & SUN !
Same ws of Driftwood Seafood Restaurant.
We fish wr own daily fish so we serve the freshest cuality seafood on the Island.
The Best prices on the Island!
NO SERVICE CHARGE
Open for Lunch + Dinner 11:30am • 10:30pm Monday CLOSED
We are located close to the High + Low Rise Hotels
Reservation Suggested
nMm
FRIDAY 4 JULY
EWORLD NEWS
m
Tango Restaurant is open 7 days a week from 4 pm till II pm Indoor & outdoor seating - Large Terrace with live music
Served between 4 pus and 7 pm
Nob viJid in cMnhifiAEiu-ii whh aihrr Mm
Lotautd ac Ar&vfdk GatSm F*# ttLirvatiani taU (19 ?J 586 8600 - wWw.cdni^idmiKj.^rii
r j ^ r j w \ 3-Course Menu
U-j-Si—J 1
,'ial S22! s
n
1 &MUMA
WNE
IDltJE
Virus strikes hard in Haiti’s crowded shantytowns
DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Within a dense cluster of flimsy shacks made mostly of plasfic farp and wooden planks, a young mother cradles her sick, whimpering toddler while trying to guard against a fierce tropical sun. Delimene Saint Lise says she’s doing her best to comfort her 2-year-old daughter and control her spiking fever during what has quickly become a familiar agony in their makeshift community of shanties by a trashclogged canal in the Haitian capital.
“For the last three days, her body gets very hot and she's hurting all over,” Saint Lise said as she sat on a mattress inside their sweltering home with flapping plasfic walls in the capital’s dusty Delmas section. “I know because I had this awful illness before her." This latest scourge in Haiti is chikungunya. It's a rarely fatal but intensely painful mosquito-borne virus that has spread rapidly through the Caribbean and parts of Latin America after local transmission first started in tiny French St. Martin late last year, likely brought in by an infected air traveler. Haiti is proving to be particularly vulnerable because so many people live like Saint Lise and her neighbors, packed together in rickety housing with dismal sanitation and surrounded by ideal breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry the illness. “Chikungunya has been merciless in Haiti. Lack of basic infrasfruefure, poor mosquifo control measures, and deep social and economic disparities hampered prevention and treatment efforts,” says a new report on Haiti’s epi demic by the Igarape In- in May, there have been Health Organization says, stitute, a Brazil-based think nearly 40,000 suspected The only places with higher tank. Since the virus was cases seen by health work- numbers are the neighfirst documented in Haiti ers, the Pan American boring Dominican Repub
Residents of the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince wash in one of the trash-clogged, stagnant canals that criss-cross the Haitian capital and are a breeding ground for the newly arrived Chikungunya mosquito-borne virus. Painful symptoms of chikungunya generally dissipate within a week and people develop immunity after getting infected. But some patients can develop severe and even life-threatening complications including respiratory failure.
(AP Photo/David McFadden)
The chikungunya virus and the Caribbean
The Associated Press A look at the inroads by the chikungunya virus in Latin America and the Caribbean:
WHAT IT IS: The name chikungunya comes from the Makonde language of Tanzania. If translates as “that which bends up,” referring to arthritis-like aches in joints that cause sufferers to contort with pain. The virus is spread by two mosquitoes, aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus, both of which also transmit dengue fever.
WHAT IT DOES: Symptoms typically appear three to seven days after a mosquito bite and can include high fever, pain in the joints and back, and severe headache. Many sufferers can barely walk. It is rarely fatal, though there have
been deaths among the elderly and people with other illnesses. Symptoms typically last about five days, but in some cases joint pain lasts for months or even years.
WHAT CAN BE DONE: There is no specific treatment or vaccine. People with the virus should rest, drink large amounts of fluids and take acetaminophen to reduce fever and pain.
The best strategy is to avoid being bitten by a mosquito, so authorities have stepped up pesticide spraying in the region. WHERE IT IS FOUND: The virus has been known for decades in Africa and Asia, but the first locally transmitted case in the Western Hemisphere was documented in late 2013 in French St. Martin. There have since been more
than 260,000 suspected and confirmed locally transmitted cases throughout the Caribbean and in parts of Central and South America.
The Dominican Republic has reported the most with more than 135,000 cases, followed by Guadeloupe and Haiti, each with around 40,000.
The number of cases in Haiti, though, is likely much higher. There have been cases of the virus being contracted by visitors to the region from many other countries, including the U.S.
WHY IT IS SO BAD IN HAITI: Many people in Haiti live in flimsy houses and have little protection from mosquitoes. There is a lot of standing water that creates breeding sites for mosquitoes.O
lie and Guadaloupe. But there are many signs that the actual number is far higher in Haiti, a country of 10 million people that struggles with many burdens, from crushing poverty, lack of access to clean water and the fact that some 146,000 people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake still live in makeshift homes.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is now assisting Haiti’s health ministry to confirm new cases. But statistics are notoriously unreliable in Haiti, and public health experts say the number of people with the illness is unknown. Many poor Haitians don't bother seeking care at clinics so their cases go unrecorded, said Dr. Gregory Jerome of Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian program of the Bostonbased nonprofit organization Partners in Health.
It's clear the “attack rate of this infection is very high all over the country,” Jerome said. And it's not just impoverished districts. People in wealthier areas such as the tree-lined Port-auPrince suburb of Petionville and the scenic southern coastal town of Jacmel are complaining of cases. Instances of local transmission have been reported in about 20 nations or territories in the region, from the Virgin Islands, Dominica, Martinique and Puerto Rico to El Salvador in Central America and French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname on the northern shoulder of South America. In Haiti, it’s gotten so bad so quickly that many people are resigned to catching the virus known in Creole as “kaze le zo," or “breaking your bones,” for joint pain so intense some patients can barely walk or use their fingers for days.Q
Soccer Is a State Of Mind at Amazonia!
PALM BEACH - The new bar and lounge at Amazonia, entertained friends and soccer fans at the recent Netherlands Vs Mexico when the latter was eliminated from the FIFA World Cup 2014 games.
The bar is now preparing for the historic games France Vs Germany, and Brazil Vs Colombia on Friday; Argentina Vs Belgium and the Netherlands Vs Costa Rica on Saturday.
As Sushi Salsa moved to the south wing of Amazonia, the spacious lounge was outfitted with large screen TVs and will remain an active, friendly place for sports and entertainment, a before or after-dinner place, where guests may linger-longer in a comfortable area, sipping co*cktails or sampling an array of bar-bites.
The tasty bar-bites include BBQ Loin Ribs, Brazilian
Sausage, Grouper Fingers, Mozzarella Sticks, popular fried Dutch snacks and Coconut Shrimp, besides Tuna and Salmon Sushi and Sashimi, Seaweed Salad, Crab salad, and mouthwatering Sushi Salsa Rolls such as Crispy Eel, Tiger, Rainbow and Amazonia. Amazonia has recently undergone considerable upgrades and changes to prepare for FIFA World Cup 2014, which is approach ing its very end, after whittling itself from 16 feams fo eight, with only four teams in the quarter-finals who will fight it out to reach the Final which is to be played at the Estadio Maracana in Rio de Janeiro. That game and all the ones preceding it will also be watched at the Amazonia lounge by local and visiting soccer fans. □
FRIDAY 4 JULY
fl1 *l LOCAL
Wild For the World Cup!
Soccer Rules at La Cabana Beach Resort & Casino
EAGLE BEACH - The Accounting Goes to Brazil, a fun soccer themed luncheon was recently hosted
at the Chit Chat Cafe. The afternoon was organized by the diligent team of the Accounting Department
who also decorated the employee cafeteria with different national flags and clusters of colored balloons, including Fuleco as a special guest of the festivities.
oR ubo c America's FUNNIEST COMEDIANS * I 6 NIGHTS/WEEK® Marriott Resort!
JUNE
13th
to
JULY
11th
SHOWS
NIGHTLY
8:30PM
EXCEPT
TUESDAYS
RAY ELLIN
Host of the New Gong Show Live, LateNet with Ray Ellin, Comedy Central
CHUCK NICE I BRIAN SCOTT MCFADDEN ROBERT KELLY
m's Best Week Ever, NBC’s The Today Show, HGTV, TRU TV’s World's Dumbest
Late Show with David Letterman, Late Late Show, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Hit FX Series Louie, Opie & Anthony, Comedy Central Presents, HBO
DAN NATURMAN KEVIN MEANEY MIKE VECCHIONE JOE LIST
Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Comedy Central, Tonight Show
The Tonight Show, Uncle Buck on CBS, two HBO Specials, Hairspray, and Big
The Tonight Show, NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Comedy Central
Comedy Central, NBC's Last Comic Standing, HBO Comedy Festival
MINIMUM FOUR HOUR OPEN BAR available for only $20!
$10 FREE Slot Play with every comedy ticket purchased! ID required • See rules at Casino
Tickets ONLY $34 with thisAd~| Harriott Lobby orfromyour concierge
FREE WELCOME DRINK W/EACH TICKET PURCHASE • SEATING FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE • SHOW INTENDED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES
The Chit Chat Cafe hosts monthly themed luncheons organized by a different resort department each time. The themed luncheon are much-anticipated by resort associates as they are always creative and inventive and paired
with outstanding food, prepared by the dedicated kitchen staff. Picfured here are snapshots from the well attended and muchenjoyed festivity in the associate cafeteria at La Cabana Beach Resort & Casino. □
At Tango Argentine Grill:
A mix grill and more for the Montalvo’s
PALM BEACH - Ahh, this great couple had the right idea: they came to Tango Argentine Grill in the Arawak Garden and gorged themselves on a mix grill for two, one of the wonderful, exciting menu choices of this fabulous restaurant. A mix grill consists of filet mignon, lobster tail, chorizo and chicken, all grilled to perfection of course. The Montalvo's from Maryland, USA, could not resist desert of course, so they chose
the Argentinean crepes. The Montalvo's are firsttimers on the island. They were delighted with Tango's friendly staff, the amazing menu and the live music in the background The Arawak Garden is located across from the Occidental Resort on the hi-rise strip. The intimate plaza offers a choice in restaurants, a piano bar, live music and small kiosks to browse in. □
LOCALISE
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Melissa Mausser honored at the Divi Village Resort!
DRUIF BEACH - Recently, Miss Melissa Mausser was honored as an Ambassador of Goodwill after returning to Aruba for 20 consecutive years!
The symbolic honorary title
is presented in the name of the Minister of Tourism as a token of appreciation to guests who visit Aruba for 20-or-more years consecutive.
Mr. Ricardo Croes repre senting Aruba Tourism Authority conducted the ceremony at the Divi Village Resort.
Melissa commented that she will never change her vacation island for any oth er island.
Top reason for returning provided by the honoree was she considers Aruba to be the “Happy Island", the great weather, the friendly Aruban hospitality, white
sand beaches and the local food.
On the pictures Mr. Croes from ATA together with Miss Melissa and her proud parents at the Divi Village Resort.□
2014 WORLD FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
h. - 4b. x x l u k i _ JM
_■ June 16-Julv 11,2014
c,
feta
rawing Friday, July 11
June 16-July 11,2014
i yv Pa
Catch Football Fever
~ and win a Big Screen TV or
your share of over 500,000 Points, i r *'k Points Drawings every ,
starting at 9pm. \ First prize of 100,000 points!
Tarn entries daily with T ! slot and table play.
'W/ie’ie yftuSa to pfatf/
Open daily 10am to 4am - J.E. Irausquin BEvd 447 - 5&1.5000 - casinoalhambra.com
N pograms 4T4 sutyKi la or aiKtfairiHi viitftwi pnai rwiice-.
CASINO AND SHOPS
FRIDAY 4 JULY
™|L0CAL
Catch Football Fever!
Alhambra Casino Continues To Give Away Prizes During The World Cup!
The Grand Prize TV features a Dual-Core Processor and built-in Wi-Fi. Sharp's intuitive Smart TV lets you quickly connect to your favorite content and instantly access apps like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, plus streaming movies, music, games, and websites you love. The slim design and brilliant AQUOS LED dis EAGLE BEACH - Today the Alhambra Casino continues to give away fabulous prizes to happy winners in their exciting World Cup promotion, and everyone who participates in the promotion is eligible for the grand prize, a 70-inch Smart Led 3D HDTV! During the day there will also be entertainment and live dance performances by the colorful group Garotas Brasileras!
play is embraced by a striking new frame that’s thinner around the screen and slimmer in depth, so it can fit just about anywhere.
The Alhambra Casino will be giving away a huge 170,000 points which you can use as cash back.
weekend stays and dinners - it's like having a credit card for the best Aruba has to offer!
Visit Alhambra where you get everything under one roof: Gambling, Dining, Shopping and entertainmentO
°°tbait ck
Get a rree
lu> imbra T-Shirt
..n en you earn
500 Points today _ with your Alhambra Advantage Card !
Afliiimlirn Unt jnny fie jubstiliried tor t-shirt
'foMtcto yfotoda, to fttoy/
Open daily 10am to 4am • J.E, Irausquin Mud #47 • 583,&000 * cesinoalhgmbia.com;
Hull b* 44 Mfllltri UYMEiqt mimlHBi J.II pi E.]iJimi md |n>-nnliarrp |jp cpfcffcl: E» T-klPf* 4r <MlHj|iqn wi>!htg| prw Htitti
The Shops
At Alhambra Casino
01 firing a wide vanrdy of Retail h Dining Outlets, Salon & Spa Services, Souvenirs and more.
Bashin Ro&Hins * Donkin Donuts Fusion Piano & Wine 9 nr Jum Vnldez Caie - Subway ■ ft-Glass Hungry Pifonha * litlBrm&HD - The Salon Hollywood SifitthnIwiiB Aruba Aloe * Bijoux Te«iei Boutique Deher & Co * Diumb International The laiy LUard ■ The Merkel
CASINO AND SHOPS
Brazil’s Neymar runs with the ball during the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Brazil and Chile at the Mineirao Stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Saturday, June 28, 2014.
Associated Press
Neymar and Rodriguez to duel in World Cup quarters
TALES AZZONI AP Sports Writer FORTALEZA, Brazil (AP) —
Brazil striker Neymar and Colombia playmaker James Rodriguez have led their teams to the World Cup quarterfinals, dominating the attention and the scoring.
The 22-year-old stars will go head-to-head when Brazil plays Colombia on Friday, when only one will get the chance to continue his run at the tournament. Wearing the No. 10 jerseys, both have lived up to expectations so far, enough to be included in discussions about the tournament’s best players along with established stars such as Lionel Messi and Arjen Robben. Neymar has been decisive for Brazil, scoring four goals in four matches. Rodriguez has been crucial for Colombia with his tournament-leading five goals and creativity in attack.
> u
ded
Vic
Kli
in Wimbledon, London, Thursday,
Associatedll Page 19
*Kvitova
celebrates winning a point against Lucie Safarova of Czech Republic during their women’s singles semifinal match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships
Continued on page 20
FRIDAY 4 JULY
DISPORTS
Defending champ Blixt leads Greenbrier Classic
Jonas Blixt tees off on the ninth hole during the first round of the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Thursday July 3, 2014.
Associated Press
JOHN RABY AP Sports Writer WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia (AP) — Defending champion Jonas Blixt of Sweden shot a 6-under 64 to take a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Greenbrier Classic on Thursday.
Blixt tied for second in the Masters but missed the cut in three of his last four starts. Returning to The Greenbrier resort brought him back to a comfort zone.
Starting on the 10th hole in the morning with little wind, Blixt had six birdies on his front nine and made the turn at 5 under. Six of his eight birdies came on putts of 10 feet or less. He also chipped in from the rough for birdie on No. 16.
“The golf course is in perfect shape, like last year,” Blixt said. “You come back with a bunch of confidence knowing that you won here before.
“If I can get my putter to work the way it did today, I felt like I hit the ball on line every time, and it could be a really good week.” Rodgers is looking to make his third straight cut since turning pro. He holed a 118-yard wedge for eagle on the par-4 first hole — his 10th hole of the day.
After the round, he was back on the driving range. “Being a new pro out here, you’re always trying to figure out and establish your routines,” Rodgers said,
“and mine is just kind of cool down after the round and working on the things I felt like I can improve, and hopefully be ready for tomorrow.”
Also at 65 under were Chris Kirk, D.A. Points, James Hahn, Jason Bohn, Joe Durant, Jim Renner and Danny Lee.
Steve Strieker, who has wife Nicki carrying his bag this week, was among eight players at 66. Jimmy John son, his regular caddie, was already scheduled to carry Chris Kirk’s bag when Strieker became a late entry at The Greenbrier. Strieker is playing only his eighth tour event this year. He'll compete again next week at John Deere and is leaning against going to the British Open unless he has one or more high finishes before then.
“We'll just keep plugging along and see what hap pens," Strieker said.
Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson played alongside Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson, getting a close-up view as he contemplates his three captain’s picks for the Sept. 2628 event at Gleneagles in Scotland.
“The Ryder Cup’s a long way in the distance,” Watson said. “I'm watching other people as well. It’s fun to be out here to get to
know the young players a little bit better."
Watson took a similar approach in April, playing with Jordan Spieth at the RBC Heritage and Patrick Reed at Augusta National. Watson has said he would use a wild-card pick on Tiger Woods if he’s healthy and playing well, leaving all sorts of possibilities with the other two picks. Simpson, who shot 71 on Thursday, is 17th in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings and Bradley, who shot 67, is 18th. Others ahead of them in the Greenbrier Classic field are Kirk at No. 11, Brendon Todd at No. 13 and Kevin Na at No. 15. The top nine get automatic berths on the U.S. squad. Reed, also in the Greenbrier field, is at No. 9, while Phil Mickelson, not playing this week, is 10th.
“You’d think that one round or two rounds wouldn’t determine us being on the team.
That would be kind of silly,” Bradley said. “It doesn’t hurt to play well. Put it that way.”
Bubba Watson, the topranked player in the field at No. 3 in the world, had a 68. Only two rounds of 65 or better came during the afternoon when the wind picked up and the greens became more firm.
“I wish I could guess the wind differently, but otherwise it was a good day,” Watson said. □
OefWW
WORLD CLIP
mz IL3DW
First come, first served basis
. _ .
S € KSi
Saturday July 5th, 2014
» R i C4
1-rbit Minhili*
L DC ATE.ED AT
mar mom
DCIAN CXUH
1 f. hi'.. 4119,
4PM
$10 Menu +■ 2 Beers
wi 12re* Draft Baer $5
Bouchard gives Canada a Slam finalist at Wimbledon
Eugenie Bouchard of Canada plays a return to Simona Halep of Romania during their women’s singles semifinal match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Thursday, July 3, 2014.
Associated Press
HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer LONDON (AP) — Eugenie Bouchard could have lost her focus after the fourth game of her Wimbledon semifinal Thursday, when play was delayed for five minutes during Simona Halep’s medical timeout for a left ankle injury.
Bouchard also could have gotten sidetracked when action was halted again, smack-dab in the middle of a tiebreaker, because an ill spectator was being attended to in the Centre Court stands.
And everything really could have unraveled for Bouchard later, as she let match point after match point slip away. Able to steel herself time and again, the singular-of-purpose Bouchard became Canada’s first Grand Slam finalist by beating French Open runner-up Halep 7-6 (5), 6-2 at the All England Club.
“I'm able to not worry about the distractions," the 20-year-old Bouchard said. “What I do well is I really don’t let it get to me or affect me.”
In only her sixth major tournament, the 13th-seeded Bouchard will play for the championship Saturday against 2011 Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova. The sixth-seeded Kvitova defeated No. 23 Lucie Safarova 7-6 (6), 6-1 in the first all-Czech women’s Slam semifinal.
“I know how (it feels) when you hold the trophy,” Kvitova said, “so I really want to win my second title here, and I will do everything (so)
I can.”
Waiting in a hallway before walking on court, Kvitova and Safarova chatted, a pair of longtime friends who train at the same club back
home. From 6-all in the tiebreaker, Kvitova won 31 of 48 points the rest of the way, using her overpowering serve and forehand that work so well on grass to improve to 6-0 against Safarova.
In a year that zero American men or women reached Wimbledon's round of 16 for the first time in 103 years, another Canadian, Milos Raonic, will try join Bouchard as a finalist. The men’s semifinals Friday are old guard vs. new guard matchups: seventime champion Roger Federer against Raonic, and top-seeded Novak Djokovic against Grigor Dimitrov. As of now, the 24-year-old Kvitova is the only man or woman born in the 1990s to win a Grand Slam title. If Bouchard becomes the second, she also would be the youngest major champion since Maria Sharapova was 19 at the 2006 U.S. Open.
“It's what I've worked so long for,” Bouchard said, without a hint of irony.
Yes, Bouchard is clearly in a hurry — and, by the looks of her muted post-victory reaction, didn’t appear all that thrilled to get past the third-seeded Halep, who twisted her ankle in the early going and got it taped by a trainer.
“I feel like my job is not done here,” Bouchard said, “so there's no need for a huge celebration."
Taking the ball early while standing at the baseline, ending points quickly with flat groundstrokes, she reached the semifinals at the Australian Open and French Open this year before losing to the eventual champions.
“I totally feel like I belong," Bouchard said.
Halep led 3-2 in the tiebreaker when chair umpire
Kader Nouni noticed something was wrong with a woman in a lower-tier seat
— it was the warmest day of the tournament, topping 75 degrees (24 Celsius)
— and waved both players to the sideline. After a four-minute break, Halep went ahead 4-2. But on the next point, Bouchard hit a net-cord winner— “a lucky ball,” Halep called it. Bouchard took four of the next five points, too, closing the set with a swinging fore hand volley.
“I lost, a little bit, my concentration," Halep acknowledged.
Her opponent did not. “She’s pretty calm, always composed,” said Bouchard’s mother, Julie Leclair, who sat two seats away from Bouchard’s pal, “Big Bang Theory” actor Jim Parsons, in the player’s guest box.
“She’s been working for this since she was 4 1/2 years old,” Leclair said. “She just
goes out every day, trying to be the best she can be.” Bouchard's first match point came while ahead 5-1 in the second set, and Halep serving at 15-40. A fan yelled, Bouchard tried to call time and let her guard down, allowing Halep to hit an 81 mph (131 kph) ace. Bouchard tried to persuade Nouni to let them replay the point, but he didn’t. Two more match points came and went in that game.
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
DISPORTS
m
fH E SH S E d F D 0 D INK H D11
Aqua Grill wishes youi a Happy independerjtee^lky 5
AQUA GRILL ARUBA'S #2 SEAFOOD ™
Reservation: +(297) 586.5900 ■ Located al J.E Jrausquin 374. Patm Beadi, Am da
Gay beaten by Gatlin in return from doping ban
Justin Gatlin from the USA, left, competes next to Michael Rodgers from the USA, 2nd left, Tyson Gay from the US, 2nd right, and Pascal Mancini from Switzerland, right, in the men’s 100m race during the IAAF Diamond League athletics meeting, in the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise in Lausanne, Switzerland, Thursday, July 3, 2014.
Associated Press
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — In his return from a one-year doping ban, Tyson Gay finished second to Justin Gatlin, who ran a year-best 9.80 seconds in the 100 meters at the Athletissima on Thursday.
Gatlin got a great start and pulled away after 40 meters.
Gay clocked 9.93 to beat Michael Rodgers in an allAmerican 1-2-3. It was a decent performance from Gay, but still far from the level that made him the second fastest sprinter behind Usain Bolt. Gay won the 100 at Athletissima in 9.79 a year ago.
“I’m happy with my time. I’ve been training all year,” Gay said. “It’s been tough training.
I’ve been under a lot of stress and stuff like that, but I made it through."
Gay, the 2007 world champion, tested positive last year for an anabolic steroid. He cooperated with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation to have
his doping suspension reduced to one year.
Also at the Diamond League meeting, Olympic champion Kirani James outpaced LaShawn Merritt in the final straight to post a
year-leading time of 43.74 in the 400.
“LaShawn was strong and he pushed me,” James said. “I feel I’m in top shape and I'd like to carry this form to the Common wealth Games.”
World champion Caterine Ibarguen won the women’s triple jump with a year-best leap of 14.87.
In the men’s 200, Alonso Edward was the surprising
winner in 19.84, finishing ahead of Nickel Ashmeade and 2010 European champion Christophe Lemaitre. Yohan Blake, the Olympic runner-up, placed sixth in 20.48, slowly improving after a 2013 season marred by a hamstring injury.
World champion Bogdan Bondarenko and Andriy Protsenko both leaped 2.40 but Bondarenko won the men's high jump by needing one fewer attempt. Michelle-Lee Ahye beat worlds runner-up Murielle Ahoure in a photo finish to claim the women’s 100 in 10.98.
“I felt really good and very pleased to have won my first Diamond League event,” Ahye said. “The time was good. I know that if I can get the first 20-30 metres right, I can run a good race.”
Olympic bronze medallist Javier Culson held off a strong finish from Michael Tinsley to win the men’s 400 hurdles, and world champion Jehue Gordon finished a distant sixth.
World Cup
Continued from page 17
“I already knew that James was a great player,” Neymarsaid. “And now he has been showing his talent at the World Cup."
Rodriguez has been one of the tournament's sensations so far and has helped Colombia get over the absence of star striker Radamel Falcao, who missed the tournament because of a knee injury.
It didn’t take long for Rodriguez to become the focal point of a Colombia team that won all of its four matches seemingly without any real difficulty.
Colombia’s James Rodriguez celebrates after scoring his side’s fourth goal during the group C World Cup soccer match between Japan and Colombia at the Arena Pantanal in Cuiaba, Brazil, Tuesday, June 24, 2014.
Associated Press
“It's not easy to achieve what I’ve done, but my view is that when you have a dream and you really pursue it and picture things like this happening, then it can become a reality," Rodriguez told FIFA.com. “If you want something and you work hard for it, then it can happen.”
The Monaco player scored in each match, including two against Uruguay in the second round, and has been voted player of the match three times. One of the goals against Uruguay is already considered one of the best of the tournament so far. He chested the ball and quickly turned to fire a powerful shot over the goalkeeper from the
top of the penalty area. Rodriguez had already scored a stunning goal against Japan in the group stage, flicking the ball over the goalkeeper after getting past a defender with a nifty move inside the box. “James is outstanding despite also being young,” Neymar said. “He has been showing that he is a great player and needs to be congratulated for the tournament that he has been having. But I hope his run ends now and that Brazil advances.”
The Brazilian forward came to the tournament amid a lot more hype than Rodriguez, already knowing that he was carrying the responsibility of leading his
team to the title on home soil.
Neymar scored twice in the difficult 3-1 opening win over Croatia, then added two more in the 4-1 rout of Cameroon in the group stage. The Barcelona star also showed his cool by calmly converting his penalty in the tense shootout against Chile in the second round.
“I don’t know who will play better, I just hope that Brazil comes out on top,” Neymar said, referring to his duel with Rodriguez. “I’ve already said before the World Cup started that I don’t care about being the best player or the top scorer, all I want is to win the title.
SPORTS !?? 1
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Newcomers from Cuba, Japan make MLB All-Star pitch
MIKE FITZPATRICK AP Sports Writer NEW YORK (AP) — All-Stars from all over the world are ticketed for Minneapolis, where hometown favorite Joe Mauer will be conspicuously absent from the lineup.
Still new to Major League Baseball, Masahiro Tanaka, Jose Abreu and Yasiel Puig are just a few of the foreign-born players almost certain to get selected for the July 15 showcase. All-Star rosters will be announced on Sunday, and the game at Target Field should have a distinctive international flavor.
“It tells you something about how hard they’ve worked outside of our game fo get to this point,” New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.
“It tells you the level of baseball around the world and how good it is and the competition — and how hungry they are, in a sense, to be one of the best. Not just being happy with maybe signing a big deal and saying,
that’s enough. They want to continue to play and make a name for themselves. So it's pretty special what these guys have done.”
Yu Darvish (Japan), Koji Uehara (Japan), Yoenis Cespedes (Cuba) and Julio Teheran (Colombia) also have impressive stats, putting them in position to join familiar stars such as Miguel Cabrera (Venezuela) and Robinson Cano (Dominican Republic) from more common talenf pools oufside fhe United States. And some of these players, such as Tanaka (Japan) and Abreu (Cuba), have been here only for a matter of months.
“It's not surprising that some of these guys are able to play at such a high level right when they come over here, because they're just that good,” said Tampa Bay infielder Ben Zobrist, a two-time All-Star.
“You think of a rookie generally as a young kid that is getting his first experience on a very tough stage, and these guys have already
played on high international stages — even if if wasn't the major leagues. And they’re very polished players.”
Derek Jeter is on track for one last trip in his final season; the Yankees captain led American League shortstops in fan balloting when the latest update was released this week.
But one big name now sure to be missing is Mauer, the three-time batting champion from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Tabbed as an All-Star ambassador to help MLB promote the game, Mauer was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Wednesday with a strained muscle on his right side. And while it's an unfortunate injury for fhe Twins, it does save MLB and American League manager John Farrell from fhe Boston Red Sox the trouble of dealing with a
New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka delivers in the first inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium in New York, Sunday, June 22, 2014.
Associated Press
Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Yasiel Puig hits a double against the Cleveland Indians during the first inning of a baseball game in Los Angeles, Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
Associated Press
delicate situation.
Despite a recent hitting streak, Mauer is having his worst season at the plate. And since he moved from catcher to first base this year to protect his health, he now plays the same position as several of the AL's best hitters.
To put him on the roster only because the game is in Minneapolis would have been awkward — and it would have cost some other deserving player a spot. However, it also would have felt strange for the $184 million face of the Twins to be left out of fhe festivities. Es pecially for Minnesota fans. Mauer’s injury eliminates all that. The six-time AllStar and 2009 AL MVP can play some sort of role in the pregame ceremonies and soak in a well-earned ovation without it feeling forced.
“It’s tough to describe,”
Mauer said. “I definitely wanted to be a part of this as a player, but I guess that’s out of the question now."
Other choices remain difficult, even for fans and players who vote.
Cabrera or Abreu at first base for the American League?
Adam Wainwright or Clayton Kershaw on the mound for the NL? And all five members of the Dodgers rotation have their own worthy credentials.
“I'm looking forward to being a part of the game, but I'm not necessarily looking forward to the fact there's going to be some guys left out that have had AllStar-caliber seasons,” said St. Louis Cardinals skipper Mike Matheny, who will manage the NL team and help choose his reserves. “You just look especially at the starting pitching, it's just one guy right after another with very similar numbers." There are 34 spots on each roster, and at least 13 go to pitchers.
Plus, every club must be represented. So it certainly gets complicated.
“I don’t anticipate making everyone happy,” Farrell said.Q
FRIDAY 4 JULY
m SPORTS
AP source: Mavs, Nowitzki agree on 3-year deal
In this April 26, 2014 file photo, Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki (41) drives against San Antonio Spurs forward Tim Duncan during the first half of Game 3 of an NBA basketball firstround playoff series in Dallas.
Associated Press
SCHUYLER DIXON AP Sports Writer
Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks have agreed on what could be the final NBA contract for the big German.
A person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Thursday that Nowitzki would get a threeyear contract worth roughly $30 million. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been announced. New contracts can’t be signed until next Thursday. The 36-year-old Nowitzki is taking a big pay cut with a contract similar in value and structure to the one Tim Duncan signed with San Antonio two years ago.
Duncan, who also took a much lower salary, is exercising a player option to return for the final season of his deal after helping the Spurs win their fifth title since 1999.
Nowitzki just completed a four-year deal worth $80 million, and he left money on the table in that deal hoping the Mavericks
could get some pieces around him.
The pursuit of other stars is even more urgent with Nowitzki getting close to the end of what should be a Hall of Fame career. The 2011 NBA Finals MVP put off finalizing the deal until after the Mavericks met with free agent Carmelo Anthony, which happened on Wednesday. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently acknowledged that he couldn't
offer Anthony a max contract, so Dallas expects to be stressing the 2011 title led by coach Rick Carlisle, Nowitzki and center Tyson Chandler, who recently rejoined the team in a trade with the New York Knicks.
If the Mavericks miss out on Anthony, there are a number of other small forwards on their wish list, topped by Houston's Chandler Parsons. He is a restricted free agent, and the Rockets can match any offer.
WNBA Capsules
Dupree leads Mercury past Sky for 6th straight win
PHOENIX (AP) — Candice Dupree had 26 points and 14 rebounds to lead the Phoenix Mercury to their sixth straight win, 87-69 over the Chicago Sky on Wednesday night.
Diana Taurasi added 15 points, hitting a 3-pointer with 6:46 left in the third quarter to pass Katie Smith (6,452 points) for second place on the WNBA’s careerscoring list. Taurasi now has 6,457.
Allie Quigley scored 16 points to lead the Sky (8-9), who have lost four of six. Epiphanny Prince and Jamierra Faulkner added 11 each.
Britney Griner was held to four points but grabbed 11 rebounds and had three blocks for Phoenix (12-3). The Mercury, who have the best record in the WNBA and have won eight of their last nine, scored 13 consecutive points in the third quarter to stretch their lead to 19.
FEVER 80, MYSTICS 77 WASHINGTON (AP) — Natasha Howard scored 20 points and Erlana Larkins had 16 as Indiana used a big second-quarter to beat Washington.
The Fever outscored the Mystics 31-14 in the quarter, closing the first half with
a 20-5 run to take a 42-29 lead. Lynetta Kizer scored all 10 of her points in the quarter. Indiana (8-9), winner of two straight after losing five of six, shot 53 percent from the field. Monique Currie scored 18 points for the second straight game for the Mystics (7-11). All five starters scored in double figures, but Washington has lost two straight, both at home. Washington rallied in the fourth quarter as Kia Vaughn’s jumper cut Indiana's lead to 78-76 with 19 seconds remaining. The Fever made two free throws in the final 10.3 seconds.
MLS Roundup
Chivas USA beat Earthquakes 1-0
Chicago Fire's Harry Shipp (19) celebrates with teammates Mike Magee, left, and Quincy Amarika (24) during the second half of an MLS soccer game against Toronto FC in Bridgeview, III., Wednesday, July 2, 2014. The game ended in a 1-1 tie.
Associated Press
SANTA CLARA, California (AP) — Erick Torres scored his 11th goal of the season to give Chivas USA its first back-to-back victories of fhe Major League Soccer season, 1-0 over the San Jose Earthquakes on Wednesday night.
The Earthquakes failed
to clear Mauro Rosales’ cross into the box after two botched headers. Torres was waiting for fhe ball af fhe far posf and slid the ball to the left corner of the net to give Chivas USA the lead in the 53rd minute. Torres drew level with Dom Dwyer of Sporting Kansas City for second place in the Golden Boot race. New York Red Bulls’ Bradley Wright-Phillips leads Major League Soccer with 12 goals. In the day’s other match, Harrison Shipp's second-half goal gave the Chicago Fire a 1-1 draw with a 10-man Toronto on a rainy night. Toronto opened the scoring in the 42nd minute when Jermain Defoe floated a cross to the back post where an unmarked Jackson headed it past Sean Johnson. Chicago leveled the match in the 56th minute after Shipp's deflected shot inside the penalty area squeaked past goalkeeper Joe Bendik. It was Shipp’s sixth goal of the season.
Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi, right, shoots over Chicago Sky guard Courtney Clements, left, during the first half of a WNBA basketball game on Wednesday, July 2,2014, in Phoenix.
Associated Press
TECHNOLOGY!" 23
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
TOURIST GO FLEA MARKET
L.G. SMITH BlVd. LOOK FOR THE ORANGE FLAGS & TENTS
ARUBA ARTS-CRAFTS-SOUVENIRS-WATCHES - SUNGLASSES-SILVER-JADE-JEWELRY ■ DRESSES-BAGS-BRACELETS-CUBAN CIGARS ■ T-SHIRTS-SHORTS - WALLETS - DELFT BLUE
TELL & BRING YOUR FRIENDS
TRANSPORTATION EASY CONSTANT PUBLIC BUSSES - TAXI’S - TOUR BUSSES OR WITH YOUR OWN CAR.
Gall: 7345454 / 569-2089
SATURDAY & SUNDAY
from 8am - 6pm.
Stay a few hours. TAKE EXTRA CASH
Israeli’s chemical scanner could change shopping
In this Wednesday, May 28, 2014 photo, a man works with a pocket-sized scanner called SCiO at the Consumer Physics laboratory near Tel Aviv, Israel.
Associated Press
JON GERBERG Associated Press TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An Israeli inventor has created a scanner that he says could change the way we shop and take care of ourselves — by reading the chemical makeup of foods, drugs and other items we use.
The tiny gadget is still limited to a few key applications. But creator Dror Sharon envisions a machine that will compile a massive collection of data that will allow users to analyze the physical matter that exists around them.
“We wanted to find applications where people have the most visceral connection to the world,” said Sharon, CEO and co-founder of Consumer Physics. Hisgadget, called theSCiO, is an infrared spectrometer the size of a thumb drive. It is being marketed for three applications — food, pharmaceuticals and horticulture, or the health of
plants. Simply by pointing and clicking a miniature digital wand, users can see how many calories are in a piece of cheese or determine when a tomato will reach peak ripeness.
Its name evokes the Latin verb “to know.”
These features may seem more fun than life-changing at this point. But ultimately, advocates say, the SCiO could have life-saving uses, such as identifying contaminated foods or determining whether a drug is counterfeit.
“Immediately, the major impact will be increasing the awareness of people to the material world around them, which is already an enormous effect,” said Sanford Ruhman, a professor of chemistry and expert on spectroscopy at Israel's Hebrew University.
Ruhman, who is not involved with SCiO, said that while the technology has been growing smaller
and smaller for decades, the SCiO represents a significant new step. It is believed to be the first device of its kind.
A self-described “skeptic by nature,” Ruhman suggested that in the future the ability to detect chemicals could be very beneficial in fields such as health and security. “It is just the beginning of something that can become much larger," he said.
Sharon, an engineer with an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes the gadget as the next generation of “Googling.” He finds the current process of searching for information to be cumbersome. The user must think of a concept or question, identify a relevant set of words, type them into a search engine and hope they get some useful results.
With the spectrometer, he said, you can just point the
gadget at an item — without even necessarily knowing what it is. The device reads the item's molecular structure, matches the information to an everexpanding database and then can send additional data to your smartphone.
“I think it will change the world in many ways,” said Sharon. He said the device
could have potential uses for monitoring car tires, fuel tanks, soil analysis and the human body.
Sharon has raised over $2 million from over 11,000 supporters on the fundraising website Kickstarter. For now, he says the gadget’s capabilities are limited by the relatively small size of its database. □
Associated Press
Amazon vows to fight FTC on kids in-app purchases
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Amazon says that it is prepared to go to court against the Federal Trade Commission to defend itself against charges that it has not done enough to prevent children from making unauthorized in-app purchases. The FTC alleged in a draft lawsuit released by Amazon that unauthorized charges by children on Amazon tablets have amounted to millions of dollars. Seattle-based Amazon, com Inc. said in a letter Tuesday to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez that it had already refunded money to parents who com plained. It also said its parental controls go beyond what the FTC required from Apple when it imposed a $32.5 million fine on the company in January over a similar matter. Amazon's Kindle Free Time app can limit how much time children spend on Kindle tablets as well as require a personal identification number for in-app purchases, said Amazon spokesman Craig Berman. “Parents can say — at any time, for every purchase that's made — that a PIN is required,” he said.
By not agreeing to a settlement with the FTC, the
company faces a potential lawsuit by the FTC in federal district court.
Apple complained when the FTC announced its settlement with the company in January. CEO Tim Cook explained to employees in a memo that the settlement did not require the company to do anything it wasn’t doing already but he added that it “smacked of double jeopardy” because Apple had already settled a similar class-action lawsuit in which it agreed to refunds. The FTC wouldn't comment on whether it is investigating Amazon's inapp purchase policies, but
said in a statement: “The Commission is focused on ensuring that companies comply with the fundamental principle that consumers should not be made to pay for something they did not authorize.”
In the FTC's draft complaint, the commission said that after Amazon began billing for in-app purchase in November 2011, an Amazon Appstore manager described the level of complaints about unauthorized purchases by children as at “near house on fire" levels. It said Amazon began requiring password entry for in-app charges above $20
in March 2012, and then for all purchases in early 2013. However, for smaller purchases, entering a password once left open a billing window of 15 minutes to an hour in which new charges wouldn't require a password, the FTC said in the complaint.
Prompts from kid-targeted games like “Pet Shop Story” would sometimes not give a price for purchases, the FTC said. Sometimes the purchase prompts from games like “Tap Zoo” were easily mistaken for those using “coins," ‘’stars,” and other virtual currency, it said.Q
FRIDAY 4 JULY
^BUSINESS
Dow tops 17,000 after strong jobs report
KEN SWEET, AP Markets Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The Dow
Jones industrial average topped 17,000 for the first time Thursday, the index’s first big 1,000-point milestone this year, following news that hiring in the U.S. accelerated last month. The market rose from the start of trading after the government reported that U.S. employers hired more employees than investors and economists expected. Trading was extremely light, though, and the market closed early ahead of the Fourth of July holiday Friday.
Thursday’s gains add to what has been a strong month-and-a-half for Wall Street. Along with the Dow hitting 17,000, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is approaching its own milestone of 2,000. The indexes have risen as a steady stream of good news on jobs and manufacturing bolsters investor confidence.
“Right now the story is onward and upward,” said Neil Massa, senior trader at John Flanco*ck Asset Management.
The Dow rose 92.02 points, or 0.5 percent, to 17,068.26. The S&P 500 rose 10.82 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,985.44 and the Nasdaq composite rose 28.19 points, or 0.6 percent, to 4,485.93.
Investors were encouraged by the latest jobs report from the Department of Labor, which showed U.S. employers added 288,000 workers to their payrolls in June, far more than forecast. The unem ployment rate fell to 6.1 percent. The government also said employers hired more people in previous months than reported earlier: 217,000 in May and 304,000 in April. The U.S. economy is now creating around 231,000 jobs each month in 2014, compared to roughly 194,000 a month
sector expanded for the 13th consecutive month. While the Dow’s passing of 17,000 is a notable milestone, most Wall Street professionals don’t focus on it. The vast majority of mutual funds and investors use the broader S&P 500 index as their benchmark for how they are perform
crisis more than five years ago. Slow and steady can win the race; and it has.” The Dow’s 17,000 milestone is another reminder of its bull market run. The index has climbed more than 10,500 points since its Great Recession low of 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009. Among individual stocks.
Fireworks frame representatives of Macy’s as they ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, July 3, 2014. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped above 17,000 for the first time Thursday after the government reported a surge in hiring last month that was much bigger than investors and economists were expecting.
(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
the pet supply chain PetSmart rose the most in the S&P 500 on Thursday. PetSmart gained $7.48, or 13 percent, to $67.28 after the activist investor firm Jana Partners disclosed a 9.9 percent stake in the company.
Investors sold bonds after the strong jobs report. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.64 percent from 2.63 percent late Wednesday. Bond yields rise when prices fall.Q
last year.
“It topped even some of the most optimistic of forecasts,” Massa said.
The jobs report is the latest piece of data to show the U.S. economy continues to steadily improve. On Wednesday, the payroll processor ADP said private businesses added 281,000 jobs in June, up from 179,000 in May. Also this week the Institute for Supply Management said the U.S. manufacturing
ing. In fact, the Dow has lagged behind the rest of the stock market this year. The index is up 3 percent in 2014 compared with the S&P 500’s rise of 7.4 percent.
“That said, investors should be feeling good about Dow 17,000,” Scott Wren, a senior equity strategist with Wells Fargo Advisors, wrote in a note to investors. "The stock market has more than recovered from levels seen during the financial
Samsung to build $1B display factory in Vietnam
YOUKYUNG LEE AP Technology Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) —
The display manufacturing unit of Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday it secured approval from Vietnam to build a $1 billion factory in the Southeast Asian country.
Samsung Display Co. said that the plant in northern Vietnam will supply small displays for Samsung
smartphones and tablet computers starting sometime next year.
The move underlines the rise of Vietnam as a key handset production base for Samsung, the world's largest maker of smartphone and handsets. Samsung’s factories for mobile phones are also located in South Korea and overseas including China and Brazil. But it is Viet nam, where Samsung has opened its first handset factory in 2011, which analysts expect to become the largest manufacturer of Samsung's mobile devices. Samsung Display is the second Samsung subsidiary to open a plant to churn out mobile phone components there.
Production capacity at Samsung's two handset factories north of Hanoi
reportedly tops 200 million units a year, about half of its worldwide handset production.
South Korea is a major foreign investor in Vietnam, second only to Japan according to Vietnam’s government data. Manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are drawn by Vietnam’s low wages, plentiful numbers of young workers and tax benefits. □
ECB keeps rates on hold, cutting pace of meetings
PAN PYLAS Associated Press
The European Central Bank is taking a leaf out of the Federal Reserve’s book and will, starting next year, set monetary policy every six weeks instead of every month and publish minutes to its deliberations.
After the bank decided to keep its interest rates on hold Thursday, ECB President Mario Draghi told a press briefing the new timetable was not a sign the bank’s job in getting the 18-country eurozone back on track was done.
He said a meeting every month can cause excess volatility in the markets as traders look for action that is not always merited by economic fundamentals such as growth and inflation. “Maybe we should move to a 6-month schedule,” he quipped.
Though Draghi insisted that the ECB would not be synchronizing its meetings with the Fed, their timetables are now very similar. The Fed meets eight times a year, usually every six weeks.
The minutes are also a big development, as they will shed more light on policymakers’ thinking and bring the ECB in line with most other major central banks. More transparency from the ECB has been a demand of many in the financial markets over the past few crisisfilled years.
Marc Ostwald, a senior strategist at ADM Investor Services International, noted that the publication of the minutes may however undermine Draghi’s aim to have less market volatility around the ECB. “With 8 meetings a year and an additional 8 meeting minutes release dates, the fact is that there will in principle be more, rather than less ‘event risk’ surrounding ECB policy,” he said. Draghi on Thursday also fleshed out details of the ECB’s latest plan to flood commercial banks with up to 1 trillion euros ($1.36 trillion), one of the measures it announced last month, along with interest rate cuts, to help the economy and nudge up inflation.^
BUSINESS !" 25
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
US services sector expands at slower pace in June
PAUL WISEMAN AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — U S.
services firms expanded again last month but at a slightly slower pace than they did in May. Orders, exports and hiring grew faster in June. The Institute for Supply Management said Thursday that its service-sector index slipped to 56 last month, down from May's 56.3 reading. Any
figure above 50 indicates expansion, however.
The ISM is a trade group of purchasing managers.
The services survey covers businesses that employ 90 percent of the workforce, including retail, construction, health care and financial services firms. Fourteen of 18 services industries expanded in June, led by construction. “Construction activity was par ticularly strong," Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note. “This bodes well for the housing recovery, which has languished in recent quarters.” The services index bounced back this spring after sliding to the lowest level in four years in February in the midst of a bitter winter that caused restaurants and stores to close at times
across the country.
The economy shrank at an annual pace 2.9 percent from January through March, but most economists blame the slump on temporary factors — the bad weather and a sharp drop in business inventories. The economy has shown signs of strength as the weather warmed. Economists expect growth to rebound to an annual
pace of 3 percent or more for the rest of the year, boosted by rising consumer demand and a rebound in U.S. export sales.
Adding to evidence the economy is gaining momentum, the Labor Department reported Thursday that employers added 288,000 jobs last month and unemployment fell to 6.1 percent, lowest since September 2008.□
US trade deficit drops to $44.4 billion in May
MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The
U.S. trade deficit fell in May as U.S. exports hit an all-time high, helped by a jump in exports of petroleum products. Imports dipped slightly.
The trade deficit narrowed 5.6 percent in May to $44.4 billion after hitting a twoyear high of $47 billion in April, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
Exports of goods and services rose 1 percent to a record $195.5 billion in May while imports fell a slight 0.3 percent to $239.8 billion.
A lower trade deficit boosts overall economic growth when it shows U.S. companies are earning more in their overseas sales. Economists are looking for a smaller trade deficit in the April-June quarter which will mean less of a drag on overall growth than in the first quarter, when the economy shrank at an annual rate of 2.9
percent.
Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said he looked for the trade deficit to be just about half of the 1.5 percentage point drag it represented in the first
quarter.
Many analysts are looking for overall growth to rebound to a healthy rate between 3 percent and 3.5 percent in the second quarter.
In 2013, the trade deficit
declined 11.3 percent to $476.4 billion. That reflected in part a boom in U.S. energy production that cut into America’s dependence on foreign oil while boosting U.S. petroleum exports to a record high.
The larger trade gap in the first three months of this year, compared to the fourth quarter, shaved 1.5 percentage points from growth. That was a big factor in helping to push the economy into reverse. In addition to a higher trade deficit, the economy was held back by severe winter which dampened consumer spending.
In May, the U.S. trade deficit with China rose 5.4 percent to $28.8 billion. Through the first five months of this year, America's deficit with China is running 3.2 percent ahead of last year's record pace.
The rise in exports reflected record sales of U.S.-made autos and auto parts and an 11.3 percent jump in exports of U.S. petroleum products. The rise in U.S. production has helped lower the need for imported oil, which dropped by 5 percent in May to $28.3 billion, the lowest monthly import total since November 2010. □
A worker inspects a crate that will be loaded on the Amsterdam-bound Fortunagracht at the Port of Cleveland in Cleveland. The Commerce Department released international trade data for May on Thursday, July 3, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
Average rate on 30-year mortgages dips to 4.12%
M. CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) —
Average U.S. mortgage rates are near historically low levels.
Mortgage company
Freddie Mac said Thursday that the nationwide average rate for a 30year loan dipped to 4.12 percent, down from 4.14 last week. The average for the 15-year mortgage, which had taken a big dip
the previous week, was unchanged this week at 3.22 percent. Rates on oneyear adjustable mortgages averaged 2.38 percent this week, down from 2.40 percent last week. Mortgage rates are slightly lower than they were at the same time last year, having fallen recently after climbing last summer when the Federal Reserve began talking about trimming back the monthly bond
purchases it has been using to keep long-term rates low. At 4.12 percent, the rate on 30-year mortgages is down from 4.53 percent at the beginning of this year. Rates have fallen modestly this year as Fed officials have sent strong signals that while they are trimming their monthly bond purchases, they are in no rush to start boosting a key short-term rate the Fed controls.
To calculate average mortgage rate, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country between Monday and Wednesday each week. The average doesn't include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for a 30year mortgage was 0.5 point this week, the same
as last week. The fee for a 15-year loan, popular in refinancing, was also 0.5 point, unchanged from last week. The fee on a one-year adjustable rate mortgage was 0.4 point, unchanged from last week. The average rate on a five-year adjustable rate mortgage was 2.98 percent, unchanged from last week. The fee was 0.4 point, up from 0.3 point last week. □
FRIDAY 4 JULY
^COMICS
m
Mutts
“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. ”
Inscription on the Liberty Bell
6 Chix
_Jj All the King’s Men
WoW. HUMPTy'. Vou REALLY DO LOOK PUT TOGETHER AGAIN 1
B.S p$T&lN © 2014 Benits Epstein
Six Chix © 2014 King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Blondie
w
IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR THE, FIREWORKS/
Mother Goose & Grimm
WHEN PIP OB6WENCE SCHOOLS STAt?T TEACHING
sex 5p> CLASSES
Baby Blues
MvO^! 206
TU\$ WovJ
9\b WWTS IT SACK!
\
wfi
UJUN WOUlp NOD 6NE WMMG SOlAgTUlMG m? TU6M W€ IT BACK?
7/ X PW‘T TVW
VXle WAS GOING
to u&meso moA Ton . wmr \T/
Zits
^j0Ki
Conceptis Sudoku
1
2
3
4
6
5
4
5
8
2
7
9
8
9
2
1
3
1
2
8
8
4
1
9
3
7
Difficulty Level ★ ★ ★ ★
Sudoku is a number-placing puzzle based on a 9x9 grid with several given numbers. The object is to place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once. The difficulty level of the Conceptis Sudoku increases from Monday to Sunday.
>
(0
u
S
CD
+■»
(/>
£
7
1
4
2
9
8
5
6
3
6
3
2
4
5
1
7
8
9
5
8
9
6
3
7
4
1
2
2
9
8
7
4
5
1
3
6
1
5
7
3
2
6
8
9
4
3
4
6
1
8
9
2
7
5
8
2
5
9
1
3
6
4
7
4
6
3
8
7
2
9
5
1
9
7
1
5
6
4
3
2
8
ACROSS
1 Sworn promise
4 Deep pit
9 “_Anything”;
song from “Oliver!”
13 Actor Sandler
15 Hillside
16 Lunchtime
17 _ Scotia
18 Tea sweetener
19 _out; became
tattered
20 Lying down
22 Up in_; angry
23 Emcee
24 In one _ and out the other
26 Take willingly
29 Back and forth
34 Castle trenches
35 Brownishorange
36 Regulation
37 Facial problem
38 Bowling alley button
39 Destroy
40 Music from Jamaica
41 Dissolves
42 Idaho’s capital
43 Segment of speech
45 Like a forest
46 Wedding vow
47 Horse’s foot
48 Choose
51 Sabotage
56 43,560 square feet
57 Persons, places & things
58 Dweeb
60 Dabbling duck
61 Tango or twist
62 Music’s Lady_
63 Nervous
64 Surface glossiness
65 Rogers or Acuff
DOWN
1 Mover’s truck
2 Reason to bathe
3 Surfboard support
Created by Jacqueline E. Mathews
4 Lend a hand to
5 Not tactful
6 Cartoon bear
7 Reach across
8 Corporal’s superior
9 Look_;
examine one’s own motives
10 Entryway
11 Campus residence
12 Individuals
14 Sharp primitive weapon
21 Cuts off
25 Not _ longer; no more
26 Accumulate
27 Too confident
28 Narrow waterway
29 One of the five senses
30 Has debts
31 Liquid
32 Lift up
33 Possessed
35 Reveal a secret
Thursday’s Puzzle Solved
(c) 2014 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved.
38 Bounces back
39 Installing housetop shingles
41 Insane
42 Explosion
44 Apt; inclined
45 Deteriorate 47 Therefore
48 Cracker spread
49 Frosted
50 Rugged cliff
52 Webster or Wyle
53 Sand mound
54 Within reach
55 Consequently 59 Doris or Dennis
Continued from Page 8
These limitations are not meant to take away from the power of predictive algorithms.
It is truly amazing, for example, how well an algorithm can predict which tweets will get re tweeted.
It does remind us to moderate expectations.
Arthur C. Clarke once posited three laws of prediction.
The third is apropos here: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Because algorithms armed with big data can do some impressive things - self-driving cars! - we can too easily treat them like magic and overstate what they do. This can lead to extrap olations that are simply not realistic. (Soon computers will be doing my job!) It can create fears that are ill-founded.
(Soon companies will know enough about me to get me to buy anything!) It can create expectations that we are very far from meeting. (Soon computers will write movies!)
The new big-data tools, amazing as they are, are not magic. Like every great invention before them - whether antibiotics, electricity or even the computer itself - they have boundaries in which they excel and beyond which they can do little.
By the way, share this article. Please. □
Tel 533 0697 ^503-7*64 Sdtttltwd 70
Email: [emailprotected] Website: www.
.arubaqualityapartments.com ^l4|/
end y <»* StaY
Q uglily Apartments
■■Sfudia 6 Laft Apts. 'fully Furroshed
* KittiLtni / A\ f/ Cptile W *5w \Jmirtgj
Less rbjn E 'nil* from Eu§^ Ituch 6 4 Stf^MThUl. Fttl to -CtinttKl dr visit LIS,
Man - Fri: fiam-7pm. Sat i Sun: Som-’Spm.
B#NDIA
How to G&gch us!
CLASSIFIED!^
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Classifieds
DOCTOR
ON DUTY
Oranjestad Dr. Samuels
Marriott Aruba Surf
Club
GOLD Season Oceanside $9900 Oceanview $9k Oceanfront $17k 3 BEDRM 0V $17k PLATINUM Season Oceanview $16k Oceanside $17500 Oceanfront $27,500 3 BEDRM OV $27k Plat. Plus Holiday 51 OV $46k
Plat. Plus NY 52 OV $49k
DIVI WEEK PHOENIX wk 27, 7/5 to 12
ocean front studio Rm 804, all amenities 4150$ and Divi Dutch Village wk 27 7/5 to 7/12, ground floor unit 13, king bed queen sleeper. Steps to pool and ocean 3150$ e-mail [emailprotected] or US 508 651 0016
202091
TIMESHARE FOR SALE Divi Dutch Village
2 br, 2 bath sleeps 6, wk 26, 6/28 to 7/5 Rms 96-1 and 96-2 lock off 1 br, floor 3 Studio steps to ocean and pool 4950$ e-mail [emailprotected] or US 508 651 0016
_202091
TIMESHARE FOR SALE Aruba Beach Club
week 26, 6/28 to 7/5 ground floor unit 128, superior studio, excellent ocean views, steps to ocean and pool all amenities 3250$
e-mail [emailprotected] or US 508 651 0016
202091
FOR RENT
EMERGENCIA
911
POLIS 100
POLIS 581-1100
ORANJESTAD 582-4000
NOORD 587-0009
STA. CRUZ 585-4710
SAVANETA 584-7000
SAN NICOLAS 584-5000
FIRE DEPT 115
FIRE DEPT 582-1108
POLIS TIPLINE 11141
HOSPITAL 527-4000
AMBULANCE 582-1234
SAN NICOLAS
AMBULANCE 584-5050
PHARMACY
Oranjestad: Paradera Tel: 588-6638 San Nicolas: San Lucas Tel: 584-5119
INFORMATION
118
SETAR
582-2116
TAXI
582-5900
TAXI-TAS
587-5900
PROF. TAXI
588-0035
TAXI D.T.S.
587-2300
SERVICE ARUBA
583-3232
CRUISESHIP
Marriott Aruba Ocean
club
GOLD Season 2B Ocean view $9k 2B Oceanfront $14500 IB Oceanfront $8500 PLATINUM Season 2B oceanview $18500 2B Oceanfront $29k IB Oceanview $11500 **Destination points available between $6.5 and $7.5 per point.
We are the #1 Rental Timeshare
agent for Aruba!
We also RENT Aruba weeks for owners. Contact us to BUY, SELL or RENT any
888-888-2204 Ext 111 321-206-6293 Ext 111 321-250-7164 Fax
Fax Website:
www.conciergerealty.com
Violence Against Women
Wayaca Residence; 1 bedroom studio apartment US$675 = per month, maximum 2 persons, included gas and cable, excluded utilities, fully furnished with A/C, private entrance and parking. 1 month deposit. Call:592-9966 for appointment
FLEAMARKET Rococo Plaza
Tankl Leendert Rd 4A
SUNDAY 6 JULY
Start: 3 am Ph, 741-5640 ANTIQ LIES HOPS OPEN 9-5 DAILY SALE % $ www.anliqufrsaruba.CDm we sell Bubble Plastic
ARUBA
Dl NOS E TA!
July 9
Aruba Aiport American Airline Avianca Dutch Antilles Insel Air Jet Blue Spirit Airlines Tiara Air Venezolana
FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP CLINIC
Tel: 584-6440
Alcoholism & Drug Addiction, Anonymity guaranteed
FUNDACION
Anti-Droga
Aruba
(FA_DA)Jel: _583-299_9_
FUNDACION Respetami Teh 582-4433 _
Diabetic Foundation
Arubano
Teh 583-3808 _
Narcotics Anonymous Tel: 583-8989
Foundation Amor pa Prohimo
Tel: 583-3345/586-6976
Women in Difficulties
Foundation
Tel: 583-5400
Bloodbank Aruba Tel: 587-0002
524-2424
582-2700
588-0059
588-1900
588-9314
588-2244
582- 7117 588-4272
583- 7674
„.^SCIENCE _
U.S. study: Just thinking by yourself isn't much fun
In this Nov. 30, 2012 file photo, a pedestrian looks at his phone near steam vented from a grate near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a cold morning in Philadelphia.
Associated Press
MALCOLM RITTER AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) —Wouldn’t you love to escape this busy world and just spend some time alone with your thoughts? Maybe not, says a study of volunteers who actually tried it.
Some even started giving themselves electric shocks as the minutes ticked by.
“I think many of them were trying to shock themselves out of boredom,” said psychologist Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia. “It's just a sign of how difficult (being alone with one's thoughts) can be for people.... This isn't something that most people find really enjoyable.”
At least, that’s the case for people not trained in techniques like meditation, Wilson and co-authors say in a paper released Thursday by the journal Science.
In a series of experiments, college students left their cellphones and other distractions behind and spent six to 15 minutes alone in a sparsely furnished room on campus. They were told to entertain themselves just with their thoughts, or imagine doing one of three pleasant activities like hiking.
The experience was not exactly heaven. On a 9-point scale of enjoyment, their average rating was about in the middle. And about half the participants gave it a rating at the half-way mark or below.
In nonscientific terms, the overall verdict was: Eh. Doing it at home proved no more enjoyable. When the researchers had 61 people from the community try it at home, about half
admitted to cheating by doing things like checking their cell phones, writing or doodling. Their overall results were about the same as with the students.
The most startling experiment involved the electric shock. Students first shocked themselves in the ankle and rated how unpleasant that was. They were asked to imagine being given $5 and to specify how much they would pay to avoid another shock, or to receive one. Then they were told that if they wanted to, they could shock themselves again during their time alone, which ran 15 minutes. Of the 55 participants, 42 said they would pay to avoid feeling the shock again. But once they were left alone, even some of these volunteers chose to shock themselves anyway; 12 of 18 men and six of 24 women.
Wilson was surprised by
the overall results. When the experimenters began the study, “it seemed that it shouldn’t be that hard for people to use (their brains) to entertain themselves,” he said. “All of us have pleasant memories we can call upon, we can construct stories and fanta
JENNIFER KAY Associated Press ISLAMORADA, Florida (AP)
— Fabien Cousteau says his 31-day underwater living experiment in the Florida Keys was a monumental success that used tools of which his famous ocean explorer grandfather could only dream. Cousteau and a team of filmmakers and scientists dove June 1 to Aquarius Reef Base to study what effects climate change and pollution are having on a coral reef. The crew started decompression Tuesday inside the pressurized lab, 63 feet below the ocean’s surface off Key Largo. They resurfaced Wednesday and returned to the Aquarius command center in Islamorada.
The entire expedition was
sies.”
Maybe the problem is that while pleasant thoughts pop up naturally while we're doing something like driving or exercising, it’s hard to activate them on demand, he said.
“I think it’s an issue of mental control. The mind is built
broadcast in real time online, and Cousteau held video chats with classrooms worldwide. Cousteau says he was
to engage in the world and when you give it nothing to engage it, it’s hard to keep one train of thought going for very long.”
In any case, the result is probably not a consequence of modern-day life, Wilson said, because even in medieval and ancient Roman times, there were complaints that people don’t take enough time to contemplate. Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who didn't participate in the work, said he found the results “surprising and in some ways a disappointing statement about human nature.”
Most people have interesting things to think about “so I don’t understand why they find themselves such bad company,” Schooler said.
“This is innovative new research, which means it’s the beginning of our understanding of this phenomenon, and not the end," Schooler said. □
struck by the sunlight and fresh air when he emerged Wednesday morning, but he already missed his underwater home. □
Massage and escort service
Beautiful Latin Girls
Pick-up & Delivery
Serving Men ■ Couple ■ Women - All Genders
Red Light Tour
Bachelor Party Specialized, the best in the Caribbean
Call: 565-9535
Fabien Cousteau ends mission at undersea lab
Fabien Cousteau reacts as he returns to the dock after 31 days undersea in the Aquarius Reef Base, Wednesday, July 2, 2014, in Islamorada, in the Florida Keys.
Associated Press
PEOPLE & ARTS I*??
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2014
Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth reunite on new show
Original co-stars of the Fox television series “Beverly Hills, 90210” actresses Tori Spelling, left, and Jennie Garth, pose for a portrait in promotion of their upcoming ABC Family series “Mystery Girls” on Tuesday, June 24, 2014, in New York.
Associated Press
Savage’s ‘World’ comes full circle with spinoff
In this Monday, June 23, 2014 photo, actors Ben Savage, left, and Rowan Blanchard, from the upcoming Disney Channel series “Girl Meets World” pose for a portrait, in New York.
Associated Press
ALICIA RANCILIO Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Tori Spelling can crack Jennie Garth up.
When thinking of an upcoming scene from their new ABC Family sitcom, “Mystery Girls," Garth giggles at the memory of Spelling going for if, making a funny face and using a strange voice.
That’s just one reason the two like to work together.
“I feel safe doing some, like, goofy, crazy face and voice because it’s my friend. I know she’s gonna be there to support my efforts," explained Spelling in a recent interview.
“She knows I love it," added Garth, who readily admits she's the first to break character in a scene. Unless you skipped the 1990s, you know they were co-stars on one of the most popular TV shows of that era, “Beverly Hills, 90210,” about teens living in the exclusive Southern California zip code.
It went off the air after 10 seasons in 2000 but Spelling and Garth have remained friends. They even briefly reprised their roles for the CW's “90210” reboot. Spelling guest starred on a couple of episodes. Garth appeared on the first two seasons.
They never expected to work together full-time again but Spelling came up for the premise and it all fell into place.
On “Mystery Girls,” Garth and Spelling play former co-stars of a hit 90s detective TV show of the same name. They’ve gone their separate ways, until a crime occurs, and the witness will only talk to them. From this, they end up opening a detective agency.
Both actresses also serve as executive producers. They have their hand in the show’s look, wardrobe and “every little thing,” said Spelling.
“Our personalities are (to
be) micro-managers. We can't delegate that much but we’re learning,” she said. The two say they rarely disagree on decisions but Garth will defer to Spelling sometimes “because it was her idea.” They chose to do a sitcom because, “it's more fun than doing a drama," said Garth. “The schedule, the hours. We both have a lot of kids so it's like banker's hours compared to doing an episodic show like an hour-long drama or something.”
For Spelling, having a sitcom was a career goal.
“I did the best I could on ‘90210.’ Like I tried to make Donna funny. I was in a drama. Everyone else was great at drama but I was like, ‘I think I’m better at comedy so how can I interject comedy here and there?' and so Donna was kind of goofy and I did things here and there but I was always, this is harder for me. I wish I could do comedy.”
The gig also comes at a good time for Spelling's personal life. Her recent marriage struggles with actor Dean McDermott have been documented both in the press and on the Lifetime docu-series, “True Tori.” On that, cameras followed Spelling in the aftermath of learning her husband had an affair and he subsequently went to rehab.
Spelling says it’s undecided whether there will be more “True Tori.”
“It was something that I needed to do. ... I don’t know what the future holds," she said.
With all the rumors swirling around her personal life, she felt it was best to document what was happening on camera: “It was the best vehicle to tell my truth.” Still, putting her personal problems on display can seem strange to some. To that Spelling says, “It was something I needed to do so don't feel bad.'O
ALICIA RANCILIO Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Ben Savage says that when production wrapped on “Boy Meets World" in 2000 after seven seasons, he and his young co-stars were ready to expand their own worlds.
“I think at that point all the kids on the show were kind of looking forward to the next step in their lives,” the 33-year-old actor said. “'Boy Meets World' was really our childhood, and so when it ended, the cast was ready to say, ‘OK, let's see what’s next.’"
He didn’t have a clue “that 12 years later I’d be sitting at home and get a phone call saying we’re starting again.”
In “Girl Meets World," airing Fridays on the Disney Channel (8:30 p.m. EDT), Savage’s character, Cory, is still married to Danielle Fishel’s Topanga (they wed in the original show’s seventh season), and they now have two children. Fishel is back, along with many of the original crew members and writers.
“It's kind of like this nostalgic, deja vu thing for me,” Savage said. “Every day I get to work ... I see so many of the same faces
that I spent my entire childhood with. ... It's like you’re re-creating your childhood. Not many people get to do that."
“Girl Meets World" largely follows the couple's 12-year-old daughter, Riley (Rowan Blanchard), and her best friend, Maya, the way its predecessor focused on Cory and best friend, Shawn (Rider Strong).
Blanchard describes Riley as “Cory’s kid," who will have “countless resemblances” to her TV dad. Word traveled fast among pop culture enthusiasts
and fans of the original series after “Girl Meets World” was announced. With the attention came scrutiny. “’Boy Meets World’ was one of those shows people grew up with and felt very connected to," Savage said. “They’re very concerned about ‘Girl Meets World,’ and they’re not shy about letting us know.”
He thinks fans of the original series won't be disappointed.
“It’s not just retelling the same story. It's retelling a similar story but in a much more complicated world.”□
FRIDAY 4 JULY
A3 °|PE0PLE & ARTS
Shakira, Wyclef for World Cup closing ceremony
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Colombian pop star Shakira and hip hop artist Wyclef Jean will perform at the World Cup’s closing ceremony in Brazil.
Shakira will be at the World Cup for the third time and sing her “La la la (Brazil 2014)" with Brazil’s Carlinhos Brown ahead of the July 13 final at Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium. Wyclef, guitarist Santana and Alexandre Pires will combine on Dar Um Jeito, the main theme song for the World Cup. Announcing the lineup, FIFA also said Brazilian singer-songwriter Ivete Sangalo “will bring a distinctive local flavor to the show” with
In this March 20, 2014 file photo, Shakira poses during the presentation of her new album, “Shakira,” in Barcelona, Spain.
Associated Press a medley of well-known Brazilian numbers and will be joined by Pires.□
In this June 27, 2014 file photo, Ariana Grande performs at the iHeartRadio Ultimate Pool Party at Fontainebleau’s BleauLive at Fontainebleau Miami Beach, in Miami Beach, Fla.
Associated Press
Ariana Grande to perform at MTV Video Music Awards
NEW YORK (AP) — Ariana Grande will perform at the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 24. MTV announced Wednesday the pop singer is the first performer for the awards show, which will air live from California. Grande’s current single, “Problem,” has reached double platinum status and peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Plot 100 chart. It features white-hot rapper Iggy Azalea.
MTV reprised its popular countdown show “Total Request Live” for one day for Grande on Wednesday. It was dubbed “Total Ariana Live.”
The 20-year-old Grande will release her sophom*ore album, “My Everything,” a day after the VMAs. Grande was the star of the Nickelodeon sitcoms “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat.” Her 2013 debut single was the Top 10 hit “The Way.”Q
Fania Records celebrates 50th anniversary
In this March 5, 2009 file photo, salsa musician Willie Colon poses for a portrait in Mexico City. Associated Press
E.J. TAMARA Associated Press
A group of Latin musicians gave an historic concert at Yankee Stadium in the summer of 1973. About 40,000 fans danced to the beat of a genre that had a different flavor to the Sones, Guarachas and other Cuban rhythms of the era. It was called “salsa.”
The genre with percussion, keyboards, vocals and wind instruments was popular, especially in birthplace New York, thanks to its distinctive rock and jazz influence and its innovative arrangements that allowed improvisation and changes of instrument positions onstage. But it had never before brought together so many people.
It was made possible by Fania Records, which grouped its stars under one orchestra and name: Fania All Stars.
The concert featured Cheo Feliciano, Larry Harlow, Mongo Santamaria, Hector Lavoe, Willie Colon, Ray Barretto, Roberto Roena, Richie Ray, Bobby Valentin, Bobby Cruz and Ismael Miranda.
On Aug. 24, some of Fania’s stars will reunite in New York's Central Park to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the record label that has been compared to Motown Records because of its acceptance in the U.S. and Latin America. “Fania changed the outlook of the American popular music,” said Evelyn Figueroa, project director at the Smithsonian Latino Center and a salsa expert.
“It brought a diversity of rhythms, made a diversity of compositions where they blended everything, and it was all fascinating, and that creation and diversity made a tremendous change.”
The label, founded in New York in 1964 by lawyer Jerry Masucci and band leader Johnny Pacheco, promoted new Hispanic talent and focused on the quality of the music, Figueroa said. “Fania made musical art, and that is different from doing music to sell. That’s why it has endured, for the quality of the sound, the compositions, the rhythm,” she said. “Its goal was to create, not to sell.” Musicians such as Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and Ruben Blades were part of the label, as well as luminaries like Eddie and Charlie Palmieri, Adalberto Santiago, Tite Curet Alonso, Papo Lucca, Yomo Toro, Ismael “Maelo” Rivera, Joe Cuba, Machito, Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez, Tito Rodriguez and Tommy Olivencia.
The Associated Press recently spoke with Pacheco from his home in New Jersey.
“We gave it a sound that was only heard in New York,” Pacheco, 79, said. “If you look at different rhythms, salsa is the simplest music there is, what happens is that we give it flavor and a distinct feeling.”
Salsa was eventually overshadowed by other genres, tendencies and tastes, but Fania's music had faithful
followers — and attracted new ones. It influenced contemporary musicians like the Gran Combo of Puerto Rico and new generations that shine in other genres, like Calle 13.
Calle 13 vocalist Rene Perez said his rapping is inspired by the fluidity of “Maelo” Rivera's “soneo" and his awareness as a composer of Blades, with whom he recorded the song “La Perla.”
“There has not been another one like him,” he said of Rivera.
Fania’s music is so original, said the other half of Calle 13, Eduardo Cabra, that if one doesn't know what salsa is, one only has to listen to Barretto’s album “Indestructible,” especially the song “El hijo de Obatala.”
“I just need to play them that song and that album,” Cabra said. “This song defines what salsa is, it has rhythm: Ray Barretto’s solo, adding his voice and Tito Tito Allen’s ‘soneos.’”
The new owner of the label, Codigo Group, an entertainment company founded by New Yorkbased group Signo Equity, wants to attract young people.
It is offering new digital compilations on iTunes and on its website, and it has created the first app of Latin music for Spotify. Most of the label’s catalog is also on sale digitally.
The 50th anniversary celebration will also include the release of digital remixes with DJs like the duo The Whiskey Barons of Boston and more than 40 events including concerts, plays, dance shows and film projections.
Michael Rucker, chief marketing officer at Fania Records/Codigo Group, said the final concert for the 50th anniversary, in association with Central Park's Summerstage, will include an orchestra of 23 musicians.
“It will be beautiful,” Pacheco said. “Every time we come together is like a carnival. "□
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMESK*. . 4
A Grope and a Shrug
From 9/11 to BP to GM
FRANK BRUNI © 2014 New York Times
It was fully a decade ago that Dov Charney, the founder and (at that point) chief executive of American Apparel, decided that the right way to behave in front of a female journalist doing a profile of him was to masturbat*. Not once, mind you. “Eight or so times,” according to the story, in Jane magazine, which is no longer around.
A year or so later a string of sexual harassment lawsuits against him began, and in a deposition released in 2006, he defended a sexist slur as “an endearing term,” saying, “There are some of us that love slu*ts.” Onward he marched as the company’s CEO.
He survived revelations that he liked to strut around the office in his underwear, an image that “Saturday Night Live” spoofed in a 2008 skit. He survived public references to women as “chicks” with big or small breasts.
He even survived a determination by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2010 that American Apparel had discriminated against women “by subjecting them to sexual harassment.”
It wasn’t until two weeks ago that the company’s board of directors finally gave him the boot. To review his record is to be floored and outraged that it took so long. But that’s different from being surprised.
Charney’s story provides a familiar example of how, at least with men, we fail to distinguish sexual peccadilloes from sexual predation, lechery from hostility, chalking up the latter as the former and seeing all of it in one big, forgiving blur of testosterone.
His ouster at American Apparel happened, interestingly, around the same time that photographer Terry Richardson came under fresh scrutiny for accusations of sexual abuse and intimidation that go back many years and were brushed aside as his edgy legend in the fashion world flourished.
The two cases are reminders and alarms. Across a spectrum of occupations, there has often been an acceptance of the most driven and dynamic men as the messiest ones, possessing unwieldy appetites, pockets of madness, streaks of cruelty or all of the above. Boys will be boys and great men will be monsters, including to women. Too readily, we shrug.
Or we figure that a certain macho bravado is the key to their accomplishments and that certain lusts come with it - and won’t always be prudently channeled. That was many Americans’ spoken or unspoken attitude toward Bill Clinton, whose sexual behavior persistently threatened to be, or was, disruptive. His interest in seduction, prized in the political arena, couldn’t be switched off when he retreated behind closed doors. It was part of the charismatic bargain.
Under the constant gaze of a twitchy media, politicians have at least tried to be more careful since. And following the Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood hearings in the 1990s, there are clearer formal rules about how men should and shouldn’t engage women in the workplace.
But it’s astonishing how blind they can still be. I know male journalists who covered the humiliation and downfall of politicians like Packwood and nonetheless proceeded to crack lewd jokes or make crude remarks to female colleagues. When some other guy does that, he’s a creep. When you do it, it’s fun, flirty and maybe even appreciated. The male ego is a wondrous instrument of selfdelusion.
Charney’s in particular. A video of him prancing around naked that appeared on the Internet two months ago suggests just how besotted with every last inch of himself he is.
For as long as he was making oodles of money, business associates were besotted with him, too, no matter his misdeeds, which they saw - sickeningly - as part of some erotically charged mystique.
“That Jane article put him on the map,” Use Metchek, the president of the California Fashion Association, told Laura Holson of The Times back in 2011. “What is American Apparel without sex?” A year earlier, a profile of Charney in a Canadian newspaper noted that he had been “so colorful and infuriating that those qualities alone seem to have elevated the company’s profile.” Future masters of the universe, take note. You can masturbat* your way to the top. Onanism is a career strategy.
Sure, certain professions are more tolerant of acting out. But I fear that not just in fashion, art and entertainment but in Silicon Valley and other precincts, there’s a conflation of artistry and eccentricity - and of eccentricity and abuse - that sometimes excuses inexcusable conduct.
Does the premium that we place on boldness and boundary-flouting provocateurs create a tension between our entrepreneurial and moral cultures? It needn’t and shouldn’t, not if we’re honest and vigilant about lines that are nonnegotiable.
Charney crossed them, and when American Apparel looked golden, his associates looked the other way. Only when its luster dimmed and his genius was called into question did they see him for what he’d always been.Q
JOE NOCERA © 2014 New York Times
The title of Kenneth Feinberg’s 2012 book is: “Who Gets What: Fair Compensation After Tragedy and Financial Upheaval.” It is part memoir and part meditation on some of the well-known compensation systems he has administered during the course of his career, from the Agent Orange settlement to the 9/11 fund to the Gulf Coast compensation fund that Feinberg managed for BP. “Where is it written,” he muses at one point, “that the tort system, and the tort system alone, must be the guiding force in determining who gets what?” It’s a good question.
On Monday morning, however, Feinberg unveiled his latest effort, a new fund, proposed and paid for by General Motors, to compensate victims of its ignitionswitch failures with the Chevy Cobalt, the Saturn Ion and several other GM cars. It is very much tied to the tort system, as Feinberg was quick to concede when I spoke to him Monday afternoon. The family of a married father of two who had a $50,000-a-year job - and who died in an ignitionswitch accident - would potentially get several million dollars more than, say, the family of an unmarried, out-of-work 29-year
old. An investment banker who was seriously injured would get more than a laborer who was seriously injured because the investment banker’s potential earnings were higher than the laborer’s. That may not necessarily be fair, but it is the calculation that courts use to compensate people in the tort system.
There is a reason that the GM compensation fund is set up to replicate the tort system, of course. Like the 9/11 fund and the BP fund before it, the General Motors fund has as one of its primary goals to keep victims from filing lawsuits. Indeed, the quid pro quo is quite explicit: After Feinberg and his staff have made an offer in an ignitionswitch case, the victim has to be willing to sign a document saying he or she won’t sue to get the money. There is no cap on the total amount of money GM has agreed to spend on victims’ payments.
“It is designed to help claimants,” Feinberg said flatly. “It is not designed to punish GM.”
Although the fund will pay some money for pain and suffering, punitive damages are not part of the equation. Claimants - and their lawyers - seeking “punis” will have to forgo Feinberg’s offer of compensation and take their chances in court.
The fund has other features that have become associated with a Feinberg-run fund. On the one hand, it is probably overly generous to certain classes of claimants. “Contributory negligence” - that is drivers who were drinking, say, when they got into an ignition switch accident - will not be a factor in Feinberg’s calculations. People with minor scrapes that required a trip to the emergency room will get some money.
On the other hand, Feinberg isn’t just giving out cash willy-nilly. He is going to require documentation that the ignition switch was the “proximate cause” of the ac cident. I remember once asking Feinberg why he insisted on such rigor when he was handing out BP’s money. He told me that “if the process has no integrity, then people will begin to question the legitimacy of this alternative to the court system.”
The other thing about these funds is that they work. Some 97 percent of the families of 9/11 victims opted into that fund, according to Feinberg; the number for BP fund was 92 percent - this despite the best effort of some plaintiffs’ lawyers to undermine it.
In his book, Feinberg says that he thinks funds like the one established by BP should be rare because they set up “special rules for a select few.” He adds that “the American legal system, with its emphasis on judges, juries and lawyers all participating in adversarial give-and-take, works well in the great majority of cases.”
But I think the country would be better served if they became more frequent. Compensating people while keeping them out of the tort system is a worthy goal. For one thing, such funds can serve as a kind of public atonement for a company, as is the case with General Motors. For another, courts can be a crapshoot. Finally, these funds can pay people quickly, without years of litigation and the anxiety it brings. “Money is a pretty poor substitute for loss,” said Feinberg toward the end of his prepared remarks on Monday morning. He noted that the millions of dollars he is about to parcel out to ignition-switch victims and their families won’t bring back loved ones, or give a permanently injured person back his or her health.
In “Who Gets What,” he also points out that other cultures have different ways of offering compensation, and it often doesn’t involve money. “It is,” he concluded, “the limit of what we can do.”
It is also the American way.Q
A32IEEATIIDE
_ FRIDAY 4 JULY 20141 rCfll llllt _ ==s===sS=^
Chocolate Ganache, an Easygoing French Treat
JULIA MOSKIN © 2014 New York Times
Chocolate fudge and hot fudge sauce are American classics, but let’s face it: Fudge is fussy.
Fudge seizes if its sugar crystals get too large, stiffening up like a toddler in tantrum mode. It’s uncooperative in humid weather. Fudge has to be stirred constantly while it boils, then immediately pulled off the heat at softball stage, which requires simultaneous access to a candy thermometer, a cup of cold water and a YouTube video. It’s time to embrace some thing lower maintenance, easygoing but elegant. In short, something French: ganache.
Chocolate ganache is a fixture on dessert menus and sounds daunting, but in truth is just a melted-together mixture of chocolate and cream. It takes about 5 minutes to put together, can be adjusted to taste like a classic fudge topping or a sophisticated dark chocolate drizzle and is easily the most impressive thing you can serve over homemade ice cream, or use to transform store-bought ice cream or present on arrival as a house guest. There are plenty of recipes for fake “fudge sauce” with cocoa powder
and corn syrup and butter, but the pure, straight-ahead chocolate flavor and the ease of ganache make it unbeatable.
And the sauce is just the beginning.
“Ganache looks like a million things you want to make,” said the cookbook author Dorie Greenspan, who describes making ganache as “mesmerizing.” There is something miraculous in how the lumpy mixture you start out with quickly comes together into a smooth, glossy, mahogany-brown emulsion. After that, it’s just
a question of how to use it:
- Thin it with hot water to make a pourable sauce that becomes chewy and mouth-filling when it hits cold ice cream.
- Pour or pipe it warm over a cake, cupcakes or cookies; it will set as it cools to a soft, rich glaze. (If the icing loses its gloss as it sets, Greenspan advised, “Hit it with some heat from a blow dryer.”)
- Scrape it into a tart shell or pie crust, then let set at room temperature before refrigerating: It will firm up into a dense, velvety filling.
- Pour into a parchmentpaper-lined baking pan, sprinkle with chopped nuts or coarse salt and let set at room temperature. Refriger ate, then cut into diamonds or squares to make bite-size bonbons. Serve cold.
- Let it come to room temperature, then whip it in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment to make a fluffy cake frosting, or a filling for homemade sandwich cookies.
- Chill it, then use a melon bailer to scoop, roll into balls and dust with cocoa powder to make truffles.
Today, because top-quality chocolate is consistent and widely available, and because commercial cream is pasteurized and hom*og enized, ganache is nearly foolproof. It is equally good whether made in a $300 copper saucepan or in a measuring jar in the microwave. As long as you don’t burn it, ganache can endure rough handling and even neglect. (It lasts nearly forever in the refrigerator.) A chilled jar of it can be reheated several times in a saucepan of simmering water or in the microwave. If the sauce becomes grainy, a little hot water or cream and a whisk will restore its texture.
For any chocolate sauce or ganache, always use topquality chocolate with plenty of real cocoa butter, like Scharffen Berger or Valrho
na. Don’t go more than a few ticks above 70 percent chocolate solids; the cocoa butter that makes up most of the rest of the bar is needed to keep the mixture smooth. When buying cream, look for a pasteurized one from a local dairy; most national brands are ultrapasteurized, which changes the cream’s fat structure and flavor. (Also, read the label to make sure the cream is just that: cream. The Food and Drug Administration allows manufacturers to add emulsifiers, sweeteners and stabilizers to products labeled
“heavy cream.”)
In France, ganache is usually made with creme fraTche instead of sweet cream, giving it a tangy brightness. The cream can be infused with spices like cinnamon, ginger or black pepper; with herbs like mint or lavender; with extracts like vanilla, coffee, almond or orange. Rum, brandy and most other liqueurs are ganache friendly.
If instant gratification is the goal, Alice Medrich, a California chocolatier, has a quick formula for making hot chocolate sauce to taste. Over very low heat, melt any amount of bitter or semisweet chocolate, along with a half-cup of liquid: milk, cream, rice milk.
coffee, even water. Almond milk and coconut milk work especially well, because they are high in fat. (And, a bonus for some: The finished sauce will be vegan.) Keep whisking in liquid until the sauce has the consistency you like. If the taste is too intense (for example, if you have used bittersweet chocolate and coffee), mix in chunks of butter to tone it down. Add vanilla to round out the flavor and salt with caution. Not everyone is a fan of the salted-chocolate trend, especially children. This sauce may or may not be a ganache in the end, but you will hear no complaints. Pour with abandon.
CHOCOLATE GANACHE
Time: 5 minutes 14 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
3 tablespoons espresso, strong coffee or water 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 cup sugar (confectioners’, granulated or light brown)
3/4 cup heavy cream, preferably not ultrapasteurized 1 pinch coarse salt, more to taste
1. In a heavy saucepan, combine all ingredients and melt together over very low heat, stirring. (Alternatively, combine in a bowl and microwave at low heat for 2 minutes. Stir. Continue cooking in 30-second blasts, stirring in-between.)
2. Just before all the chocolate is melted, remove from heat and stir until chocolate melts and mixture comes together. It may appear curdled, but keep stirring or whisk vigorously; it will smooth out. If too thick to pour, whisk in hot water a tablespoon at a time. Taste for salt and adjust the seasoning. Note: This mixture can be used in many ways. Serve it warm to hot as a sauce over ice cream. Warm, you can pour or pipe it over a cake, cupcakes or cookies; it will set to a soft, rich glaze. Let it cool to room temperature and whip it in a mixer to make a fluffy frosting. Or chill it, then roll into balls and dust with cocoa powder to make truffles. Refrigerate leftovers in a jar; it will keep indefinitely. To rewarm (if using as a sauce or glaze), place the jar in a saucepan half-filled with simmering water, or uncover and heat in microwave at low heat.
Yield: About 1 1/2 cupsQ
Cooled chocolate ganache used as a cookie filling in New York. Preparing chocolate ganache may seem daunting, but it is actually an easy sauce that can be adjusted to taste like a classic fudge topping or a sophisticated dark chocolate drizzle.
(Evan Sung/The New York Times)
