Chain of Car Bombs Target Police, Government in Iraq's Anbar Province - washingtonpost.com

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Car Blasts Kill Dozens in Capital Of Anbar Province

By Uthman al-Mokhtar and Nada Bakri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009

RAMADI, Iraq, Oct. 11 -- Three car bombings targeted a police station and a government headquarters in the provincial capital of Ramadi in western Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 25 people and underlining the precarious situation in Anbar province.

Violence in the province had fallen sharply in the past year after local tribal leaders, backed by U.S. forces, defeated a homegrown al-Qaeda group and other militants. But explosions and suicide attacks in recent weeks were reminiscent of 2003 and 2004, when the insurgency was gathering strength.

Although the blasts did not appear to be set off by suicide bombers, they were timed to detonate in quick succession to kill as many rescuers and police as possible.

"The security forces are negligent," said Raad Sabah, a leader of the U.S.-backed militia that fought the insurgency in Ramadi. "They are busy with politics and the elections and their own business deals."

Rumors spread through Ramadi and other parts of the province about who was behind the attacks. Some suggested government officials were involved, part of the fallout from months of negotiations over creating alliances for Iraq's parliamentary elections in January. Others said that al-Qaeda was exploiting the rift between politicians ahead of the polls and blamed security forces for negligence. At least six senior security officials are running in the upcoming elections.

The first bombing occurred in a parking lot near the police headquarters for Anbar province and the provincial council building, when a 1991 Opel vehicle rigged with explosives detonated at 12:30 p.m. It killed the parking lot's attendant and another civilian. As it went off, senior provincial council officials, tribal leaders and security chiefs were meeting in the provincial council building.

Nine minutes later, after police, medics and firefighters had gathered at the scene, a gray Daewoo parked 15 yards from the first car detonated, killing 21 others, including policemen and firefighters. At least 67 people were injured in both bombings. About an hour later, a third car exploded near the Ramadi hospital where the dead and wounded were being brought, killing two people.

"It was an organized attack," said Bassel Mohammad, a taxi driver who was 30 yards from the bombing site and whose brother was among the victims. "The city is falling apart, people are dying, al-Qaeda is regaining strength and our leaders are busy with politics and the elections."

Iraqi policemen, unable to control the bombing scene, fired shots in the air in an attempt to disperse people who had gathered to look for loved ones.

Brig. Gen. Khamis Dulaimi, head of the emergency unit in the province, called the attacks a major security breach and said an investigation would be held to determine how they were carried out and why the cars weren't searched at checkpoints.

A curfew was imposed on Ramadi, and security forces declared an emergency. Schools and universities sent students home soon after news of the bombings spread. Mosques broadcast appeals over loudspeakers for people to donate blood.

Bakri reported from Baghdad.

Pakistani Forces Free Hostages Taken by Islamist Militants - washingtonpost.com

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Militants Had Taken Part of Army Facility

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 11 -- Pakistani commandos stormed a building within the nation's army headquarters early Sunday, freeing 39 hostages and ending a 22-hour standoff with their armed Islamist captors that revealed deep vulnerabilities in Pakistan's defense systems.

Three hostages and three soldiers were killed during the predawn operation to liberate the hostages, an army spokesman said. In total, 20 people -- including nine militants and eight soldiers -- died in the siege, which began Saturday morning when a squad of fighters armed with guns and grenades brazenly attacked the army command center in Rawalpindi, which is adjacent to Islamabad, the capital.

The Saturday attack seemed designed to publicly humiliate Pakistan's armed forces, which have been planning an offensive against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents in the volatile tribal region of South Waziristan, analysts said. As the standoff developed, it cast doubt on the military's ability to fend off the extremists and raised questions about whether the fighters -- who wore soldiers' uniforms and drove a van with military plates -- had infiltrated the army.

But once the tense showdown ended, the military began winning praise. Security analysts commended the rescue operation, during which commandos fatally shot one militant before he could detonate his suicide vest.

"It has been very competently handled," said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired army general. "They freed the hostages with a minimum loss."

An injured militant whom the army identified as the ringleader was captured, raising the possibility that Pakistani authorities might learn more about the insurgent cell that carried out the strike. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, said that the insurgent is named Aqeel but is also known as Dr. Usman. Abbas said that Aqeel had masterminded an attack this year on Sri Lanka's cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Sunday that the South Waziristan operation was "imminent" and said that Aqeel was a Taliban member with links to al-Qaeda, the news service Reuters reported.

The Pakistani Taliban's new chief has said the group would respond to the South Waziristan offensive with stepped-up attacks. The assault on the army headquarters came during the same week as a suicide bombing at a United Nations office in Islamabad and a blast that killed dozens at a market in Peshawar.

The U.S. Congress late last month approved a multibillion-dollar aid package for Pakistan, and Obama administration officials are pressing Pakistan's military to take on insurgents who operate within the nation's borders. The militants use the country as a base for planning attacks against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and against the Pakistani government. The possibility of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of extremists is one of the Obama administration's national security nightmares.

But in London on Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her British counterpart said they believed Pakistan's nuclear weapons were secure, despite the growing threats of Islamist militancy.

"We have confidence in the Pakistani government and military's control over nuclear weapons," Clinton said after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan in London and special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Betting Big on a Boom in Natural Gas

Image by SouthwestUSA via Flickr

With prices low and the promise of vast new supplies, businesses are making the switch from oil-based fuels and coal

By Steve LeVine and Adam Aston

Earlier this year the time came for Lloyd M. Yates, CEO of Progress Energy (PGN), to decide how the big Raleigh (N.C.) utility would meet the state's stringent smokestack laws. First he considered the easy solution: installing pollution scrubbers on the utility's old coal-fired plant in Sutton, N.C., at a cost of $330 million. Then his attention turned to natural gas, the price of which had plunged by two-thirds in the previous year. Sure, the recession accounted for some of the slide. But reports were also circulating of massive discoveries of natural gas in the U.S. Moreover, because the fuel emits half the carbon of coal, it seemed safe from the climate legislation being considered in Washington, which could impose steep penalties on emissions.
After weighing their options, Yates and his board decided against the scrubbers and opted to upgrade another coal plant to natural gas—a $900 million project. In Yates' calculations, that would satisfy the smokestack law and more than pay for itself over time. "It was like deciding whether to put a catalytic converter on a '52 Chevy," Yates says. "It was: 'When do you buy the new car?'"
The U.S. natural gas industry hopes that as Lloyd Yates goes, so goes the country. In summer 2008 the U.S. and much of the rest of the world were consumed by talk of peak oil and natural gas and fears that high fuel prices would persist forever. Today analysts still worry about the oil supply but far less about natural gas. U.S. gas producers, capitalizing on a technological breakthrough, have in recent years unlocked an enormous volume of natural gas in the shale rock under Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states. According to a July report by the Colorado School of Mines, the U.S. now holds 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, one third of it in shale, the equivalent of some 320 billion barrels of oil. That's more than Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels.
Of course, natural gas isn't interchangeable with oil and won't solve America's energy woes by itself. While natural gas can be used to heat homes and power vehicles, it's mostly used, like coal, to generate electricity.
But the supply estimates for natural gas are so vast and the plunge in prices so steep that they're forcing business leaders to rethink their long-term energy strategies—quickly. Utilities are debating whether to retrofit coal plants for gas. Big corporations such as AT&T (T) and UPS are beginning to convert large truck fleets from oil-based gasoline to natural gas. Even renewable-energy players are jumping in: As they try to coax more power from unpredictable wind and solar generators, they're finding that inexpensive natural gas helps keep their output steady.
It's not certain that the gas boom will fulfill its promise. "We don't know if it will be truly awesome or only theoretical in its impact," says David G. Victor, a professor and energy expert at the University of California at San Diego. While natural gas producers say they're sitting on the greatest volumes ever, they also face considerable barriers to getting their commodity to market. Prices are so low that many producers have closed their wells. Most utilities fitted with coal-burning units remain reluctant to invest in natural gas equipment. Critics say the water-intensive shale-drilling process poses risks to nearby drinking water supplies. And skeptics point to the late 1990s, another era when prices seemed permanently lowered, only to spike a few years later. "Utilities have been burned many times," says Andre Begosso, an energy strategist at Accenture (ACN), a consulting firm.
Yet the opening up of U.S. shale gas may make the current wave of discoveries different from those of the past. A technique developed in the late 1990s by tiny Mitchell Energy & Development is driving the action. Before hydraulic-fracturing, as the technique is called, gas that was encased in solid shale was untappable. Mitchell and others figured out how to inject the rock with water and chemicals to release the gas molecules. Another recent advance has made it possible for drillers to fan out horizontally, recovering gas from far larger areas than in the past. U.S. natural gas production rose 14% between early 2007 and mid-2008, in large part because of new fields such as the Barnett Shale in Texas.
And the shale boom is only in its infancy. In 2004, John H. Pinkerton of Range Resources (RRC) drilled the first such well in Appalachia, the Marcellus Shale, a 62 million-acre gas field spanning some 600 miles north to south. Since then Pinkerton has beefed up a one-person Pittsburgh office to 150 geologists, geophysicists, and engineers. Pinkerton says his production has quickly tripled, to some 90 million cubic feet a day. "We expect to double that next year, and again in the following years," he says.
In Raleigh, Progress Energy's Yates made his decision to shift to natural gas in the face of a state requirement to cut the utility's sulfur dioxide emissions in half, to 50,000 tons a year, by 2013. To do so in time, the utility had to act this year. After weighing the options it chose natural gas, in effect betting that prices would stay low for a while. Output at the plant will rise considerably, with a 950-megawatt natural gas unit replacing 397 megawatts of coal-fired capacity. And it will do so while also meeting the sulfur dioxide requirement: It will lower carbon dioxide emissions by 60% and nitrogen oxide by 95%, and will eliminate mercury emissions.
If Washington puts a cap on carbon emissions, Yates will likely face another decision on how to modernize Progress Energy's three other 1950s- and '60s-era coal-fired plants. Yates says natural gas will figure prominently in the calculations, while "we are not even considering coal because of its cost."
A few other utilities are making the shift to gas or considering doing so. Tampa Electric (TE) has transformed its coal-fired Gannon Power Station into a natural gas unit at a cost of $750 million. In April, developers of the Highwood Generating Station near Great Falls, Mont., dropped plans to burn coal and chose natural gas for a new plant. Portland (Ore.) General Electric (POR) is proposing to build two new natural gas plants.
Most utilities, however, remain on the sidelines. Natural gas prices have been so volatile over the years that executives are unwilling to make a long-term commitment. That's because if they lock in a guaranteed supply at higher prices than today's and prices don't rise to that level, they might have to raise the rates they charge customers. That wouldn't be an easy sell to regulators, who "are not keen on cost-recovery for wrong-way bets on supply contracts," says James Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry lobbying group.

Oddly enough, natural gas is finding more popularity among utilities that embrace renewable energy. Fears that cheap natural gas might take investment from costlier solar and wind power have proven overblown; instead, utilities are building both. Because gas turbines can vary their output with precision, they complement wind farms and solar fields that generate irregular power flows. The result is a more stable and reliable energy supply.


Florida Power & Light (FPL), the nation's largest renewable-energy developer, is building a solar thermal power plant that will be the nation's second largest. The Juno Beach (Fla.) company put its new facility next to an existing gas-fired plant so that when a cloud passes in front of the sun, the gas plant can keep the power flow steady. Public Service Enterprise Group, (PEG) a major mid-Atlantic utility, is developing gas and renewable projects simultaneously. "The ease of dispatching gas-combustion turbines makes them perfect complements" for wind and solar plants, says PSEG CEO Ralph Izzo.

General Electric (GE) has targeted a line of fast-start gas turbines at renewable projects. As part of a $320 million investment, Topeka (Kan.)-based Westar Energy (WR) has paired four of those turbines with 300 megawatts' worth of wind capacity spread around the region. It's a wind-rich area, where gusts not only die suddenly but also get too brisk, forcing the turbines to shut down for safety. In either event, gas turbines can kick in to maintain power. Westar committed to build the turbines back in 2006, when gas was double today's price. Now, with prices so low, "they offer an extra benefit, supplying regular power too," says Greg A. Greenwood, a vice-president at Westar.

Natural gas is also making a small dent in the transportation market. AT&T (T) in March announced that it would be replacing 8,000 service vans with natural-gas-powered vehicles. The 10-year, $350 million upgrade came as part of a $565 million alternative-fuel vehicle initiative started last year. Rising gasoline prices are turning skeptics into believers. From April to July the average price of a gallon of gasoline jumped by 22%, to $2.46, while the price of compressed natural gas for cars rose just 6%, to the equivalent of around $1.73. "When the price of gas rises at the pump by a cent and you're buying about 80 million gallons of fuel a year, it gets pretty expensive," says Jerome Webber, AT&T's vice-president for fleet operations. The company is betting the new vehicles will save it 49 million gallons of gasoline over the next decade. Transportation giant UPS, meanwhile, deployed 300 new natural gas vehicles in February alongside 800 already on the road.

The market for natural gas vehicles is limited by the dearth of fill-up stations in the U.S. Just 1,100 of the country's 162,000 stations sell natural gas, according to Natural Gas Vehicles for America. But that number is growing. Clean Energy (LNE), a Seal Beach (Calif.)-based company backed by T. Boone Pickens, has installed 184 natural gas stations in North America and plans to add up to 80 more in the next two years. Utah's Questar Gas has built 20 along that state's I-15 corridor and plans six more over the next 18 months.

Of course, the CEOs of natural gas outfits understand that such inroads don't amount to much compared with the massive reserves still sitting underground. They've descended on Washington in recent months to persuade lawmakers to create incentives for gas use in a climate-change bill moving through Congress. By boosting demand over the long term they hope to strengthen their position vs. Big Coal and Big Oil.
Whether or not they succeed in D.C., the shift away from coal and toward natural gas seems likely to continue, at least for a while, as the price and policy dynamics point in its favor. Says PSEG's Izzo: "We're building gas turbines because...there's no other option in the near term."

With Brian Burnsed in Washington

Betting Big on a Boom in Natural Gas - BusinessWeek

With prices low and the promise of vast new supplies, businesses are making the switch from oil-based fuels and coal

By Steve LeVine and Adam Aston

Earlier this year the time came for Lloyd M. Yates, CEO of Progress Energy (PGN), to decide how the big Raleigh (N.C.) utility would meet the state's stringent smokestack laws. First he considered the easy solution: installing pollution scrubbers on the utility's old coal-fired plant in Sutton, N.C., at a cost of $330 million. Then his attention turned to natural gas, the price of which had plunged by two-thirds in the previous year. Sure, the recession accounted for some of the slide. But reports were also circulating of massive discoveries of natural gas in the U.S. Moreover, because the fuel emits half the carbon of coal, it seemed safe from the climate legislation being considered in Washington, which could impose steep penalties on emissions.

After weighing their options, Yates and his board decided against the scrubbers and opted to upgrade another coal plant to natural gas—a $900 million project. In Yates' calculations, that would satisfy the smokestack law and more than pay for itself over time. "It was like deciding whether to put a catalytic converter on a '52 Chevy," Yates says. "It was: 'When do you buy the new car?'"

The U.S. natural gas industry hopes that as Lloyd Yates goes, so goes the country. In summer 2008 the U.S. and much of the rest of the world were consumed by talk of peak oil and natural gas and fears that high fuel prices would persist forever. Today analysts still worry about the oil supply but far less about natural gas. U.S. gas producers, capitalizing on a technological breakthrough, have in recent years unlocked an enormous volume of natural gas in the shale rock under Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states. According to a July report by the Colorado School of Mines, the U.S. now holds 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, one third of it in shale, the equivalent of some 320 billion barrels of oil. That's more than Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels.

Of course, natural gas isn't interchangeable with oil and won't solve America's energy woes by itself. While natural gas can be used to heat homes and power vehicles, it's mostly used, like coal, to generate electricity.

But the supply estimates for natural gas are so vast and the plunge in prices so steep that they're forcing business leaders to rethink their long-term energy strategies—quickly. Utilities are debating whether to retrofit coal plants for gas. Big corporations such as AT&T (T) and UPS are beginning to convert large truck fleets from oil-based gasoline to natural gas. Even renewable-energy players are jumping in: As they try to coax more power from unpredictable wind and solar generators, they're finding that inexpensive natural gas helps keep their output steady.

It's not certain that the gas boom will fulfill its promise. "We don't know if it will be truly awesome or only theoretical in its impact," says David G. Victor, a professor and energy expert at the University of California at San Diego. While natural gas producers say they're sitting on the greatest volumes ever, they also face considerable barriers to getting their commodity to market. Prices are so low that many producers have closed their wells. Most utilities fitted with coal-burning units remain reluctant to invest in natural gas equipment. Critics say the water-intensive shale-drilling process poses risks to nearby drinking water supplies. And skeptics point to the late 1990s, another era when prices seemed permanently lowered, only to spike a few years later. "Utilities have been burned many times," says Andre Begosso, an energy strategist at Accenture (ACN), a consulting firm.

Yet the opening up of U.S. shale gas may make the current wave of discoveries different from those of the past. A technique developed in the late 1990s by tiny Mitchell Energy & Development is driving the action. Before hydraulic-fracturing, as the technique is called, gas that was encased in solid shale was untappable. Mitchell and others figured out how to inject the rock with water and chemicals to release the gas molecules. Another recent advance has made it possible for drillers to fan out horizontally, recovering gas from far larger areas than in the past. U.S. natural gas production rose 14% between early 2007 and mid-2008, in large part because of new fields such as the Barnett Shale in Texas.

And the shale boom is only in its infancy. In 2004, John H. Pinkerton of Range Resources (RRC) drilled the first such well in Appalachia, the Marcellus Shale, a 62 million-acre gas field spanning some 600 miles north to south. Since then Pinkerton has beefed up a one-person Pittsburgh office to 150 geologists, geophysicists, and engineers. Pinkerton says his production has quickly tripled, to some 90 million cubic feet a day. "We expect to double that next year, and again in the following years," he says.

In Raleigh, Progress Energy's Yates made his decision to shift to natural gas in the face of a state requirement to cut the utility's sulfur dioxide emissions in half, to 50,000 tons a year, by 2013. To do so in time, the utility had to act this year. After weighing the options it chose natural gas, in effect betting that prices would stay low for a while. Output at the plant will rise considerably, with a 950-megawatt natural gas unit replacing 397 megawatts of coal-fired capacity. And it will do so while also meeting the sulfur dioxide requirement: It will lower carbon dioxide emissions by 60% and nitrogen oxide by 95%, and will eliminate mercury emissions.

If Washington puts a cap on carbon emissions, Yates will likely face another decision on how to modernize Progress Energy's three other 1950s- and '60s-era coal-fired plants. Yates says natural gas will figure prominently in the calculations, while "we are not even considering coal because of its cost."

A few other utilities are making the shift to gas or considering doing so. Tampa Electric (TE) has transformed its coal-fired Gannon Power Station into a natural gas unit at a cost of $750 million. In April, developers of the Highwood Generating Station near Great Falls, Mont., dropped plans to burn coal and chose natural gas for a new plant. Portland (Ore.) General Electric (POR) is proposing to build two new natural gas plants.

Most utilities, however, remain on the sidelines. Natural gas prices have been so volatile over the years that executives are unwilling to make a long-term commitment. That's because if they lock in a guaranteed supply at higher prices than today's and prices don't rise to that level, they might have to raise the rates they charge customers. That wouldn't be an easy sell to regulators, who "are not keen on cost-recovery for wrong-way bets on supply contracts," says James Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry lobbying group.

Oddly enough, natural gas is finding more popularity among utilities that embrace renewable energy. Fears that cheap natural gas might take investment from costlier solar and wind power have proven overblown; instead, utilities are building both. Because gas turbines can vary their output with precision, they complement wind farms and solar fields that generate irregular power flows. The result is a more stable and reliable energy supply.

Florida Power & Light (FPL), the nation's largest renewable-energy developer, is building a solar thermal power plant that will be the nation's second largest. The Juno Beach (Fla.) company put its new facility next to an existing gas-fired plant so that when a cloud passes in front of the sun, the gas plant can keep the power flow steady. Public Service Enterprise Group, (PEG) a major mid-Atlantic utility, is developing gas and renewable projects simultaneously. "The ease of dispatching gas-combustion turbines makes them perfect complements" for wind and solar plants, says PSEG CEO Ralph Izzo.

General Electric (GE) has targeted a line of fast-start gas turbines at renewable projects. As part of a $320 million investment, Topeka (Kan.)-based Westar Energy (WR) has paired four of those turbines with 300 megawatts' worth of wind capacity spread around the region. It's a wind-rich area, where gusts not only die suddenly but also get too brisk, forcing the turbines to shut down for safety. In either event, gas turbines can kick in to maintain power. Westar committed to build the turbines back in 2006, when gas was double today's price. Now, with prices so low, "they offer an extra benefit, supplying regular power too," says Greg A. Greenwood, a vice-president at Westar.

Natural gas is also making a small dent in the transportation market. AT&T (T) in March announced that it would be replacing 8,000 service vans with natural-gas-powered vehicles. The 10-year, $350 million upgrade came as part of a $565 million alternative-fuel vehicle initiative started last year. Rising gasoline prices are turning skeptics into believers. From April to July the average price of a gallon of gasoline jumped by 22%, to $2.46, while the price of compressed natural gas for cars rose just 6%, to the equivalent of around $1.73. "When the price of gas rises at the pump by a cent and you're buying about 80 million gallons of fuel a year, it gets pretty expensive," says Jerome Webber, AT&T's vice-president for fleet operations. The company is betting the new vehicles will save it 49 million gallons of gasoline over the next decade. Transportation giant UPS, meanwhile, deployed 300 new natural gas vehicles in February alongside 800 already on the road.

The market for natural gas vehicles is limited by the dearth of fill-up stations in the U.S. Just 1,100 of the country's 162,000 stations sell natural gas, according to Natural Gas Vehicles for America. But that number is growing. Clean Energy (LNE), a Seal Beach (Calif.)-based company backed by T. Boone Pickens, has installed 184 natural gas stations in North America and plans to add up to 80 more in the next two years. Utah's Questar Gas has built 20 along that state's I-15 corridor and plans six more over the next 18 months.

Of course, the CEOs of natural gas outfits understand that such inroads don't amount to much compared with the massive reserves still sitting underground. They've descended on Washington in recent months to persuade lawmakers to create incentives for gas use in a climate-change bill moving through Congress. By boosting demand over the long term they hope to strengthen their position vs. Big Coal and Big Oil.

Whether or not they succeed in D.C., the shift away from coal and toward natural gas seems likely to continue, at least for a while, as the price and policy dynamics point in its favor. Says PSEG's Izzo: "We're building gas turbines because...there's no other option in the near term."

With Brian Burnsed in Washington

Sony's Google Gambit - BusinessWeek

Image via CrunchBase

It is latching onto the search giant's open-source Android and other offerings as it plays catch-up with competitors

By Kenji Hall

Tokyo - It's starting to look like more than a schoolyard crush. As Sony (SNE) scrambles to recover from billions of dollars in losses, a flirtation with Google (GOOG) is becoming serious. It's the first PC maker to sell machines pre-loaded with the search giant's Chrome Web browser; the Sony Reader will be able to download e-books in a format backed by Google; and Sony Ericsson cell phones will use Google's Android operating system.

Google may be less excited about the tieups than Sony is, but the advances aren't likely to go unrequited. Last winter, Sony invited Google executives to Tokyo for discussions on integrating Android and other Google offerings into Sony's gadgets, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. "Sony believes Google's products and software can help differentiate it from competitors," says Tim Bajarin of tech consultancy Creative Strategies.

While Sony officials declined to comment, closer ties with Google clearly fit into the Japanese company's ambitions in software. For decades, Sony has excelled at making gadgets, but it has lagged in linking them to each other and to the company's music, movies, and TV shows. To speed that process, Chief Executive Howard Stringer four years ago put Apple (AAPL) veteran Tim Schaaff in charge of software. Last February, Stringer reshuffled top management, turning to younger executives who are, he said at the time, "network-centric and very open-minded." Cozying up to Google helps Stringer speed development of products that can tap into the Web.

The moves are part of a shift toward open-source software at Sony. The Web has been flooded with photos of a Sony Ericsson touchscreen phone running Android, an open-source operating system. Sony recently introduced a global-positioning device that synchronizes with Google Maps to pinpoint where photos are taken, and it's now offering a video camera that lets users quickly upload clips to YouTube. The company says it also may let Google and others create applications for its PlayStation 3 game console. "Open technologies are very important to consumers," Schaaff said in an interview last year. "Obviously we don't have a monopoly on innovation."

It's too early to say whether the strategy will pay off for Sony. Android alone won't automatically make Sony's products easier to use or more compatible with each other. And there's a risk that Sony's offerings will start to look more like those from rivals. Samsung, HTC, and Motorola (MOT) already have smartphones running Android, and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Asustek Computer are considering it for mini laptops. And there's little to stop others from offering the Chrome browser or compatibility with Google's book format on their devices. "Gaining competitive advantage from open-source software is difficult because it is available to competing manufacturers," says iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins.

Still, using Chrome may restore some cool to Sony's brand. Android gives Sony instant access to an online store where independent developers sell thousands of applications. That would allow the company to compete with similar services from Apple, BlackBerry (RIMM), Nokia, and Microsoft (MSFT). And in digital books, the Reader will have an edge on Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle, which can download content only from Amazon.com. "Sony knows it can't assign enough people to work on all these things," says Richard Doherty, research director at Envisioneering Group, a technology consultancy in Seaford, N.Y. "It can't do it alone."

Does the U.S. Chamber Speak for Big Business? - BusinessWeek

Image via Wikipedia

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's aggressive opposition to climate change legislation is costing it credibility, clout—and members

By Jane Sasseen

There aren't many who would willingly take on Apple (AAPL) icon Steve Jobs—and lecture him on technology. But Thomas J. Donohue, the combative head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, isn't one to step away from a fight.

So on Oct. 6, a day after Apple became the fifth—and most prominent—company to resign or reduce its role at the Chamber because of its aggressive opposition to climate change legislation, Donohue fired back. "It is unfortunate that your company didn't take the time to understand the Chamber's position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach," he wrote to Jobs. He stressed the Chamber's belief that business can spur much of the technology to reduce greenhouse gases, much as the private sector has "developed the innovations that we now take for granted, from the personal computer to the medicines that keep us healthy."

Donohue is renowned for his bulldog style. Now he and his colleagues find themselves embroiled in a fight over climate change that raises questions about how broadly they speak for business—and whether the Chamber, allied with the Republican Party for the last decade, can retain its influence in a heavily Democratic Washington.

$100 Million War Chest

The Chamber has moved sharply to oppose much of the legislation and many of the regulations and policies streaming out of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress on health care, labor issues, and finance. In a move some see as little short of a declaration of war on the White House, Donohue has been crisscrossing the country to raise $100 million to launch the "Campaign for Free Enterprise." It is intended to promote open markets and fight a rise in regulations and tax hikes that he argues will undermine job creation and the economy. "We are certainly not alone," says Donohue, adding that the Chamber's controversial policy choices reflect his members' views: "This is not me.…This is not my staff. We are delivering on the issues that concern the business community."

Many well-placed Democrats believe that hard-nosed attitude is starting to cost the Chamber credibility—on energy and beyond. "The more they get out in opposition on core issues to the Democrats, the more they will continue to alienate them," says a top aide to a key Democrat in the Senate. "The Chamber's best shot is to influence moderate Democrats, but the more unrealistic they get, the more they will leave the moderates wondering why they should work with them." As proof of the Chamber's flawed approach, Democrats point to its recent leading role in what many saw as an over-the-top attack on the Administration's plans for an agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Even moderate Democrats who are often supportive of the Chamber took note. "It's unfortunate that some business groups are allowing misleading information to confuse the debate," says one influential representative in financial matters, referring to claims by the Chamber and others that many small businesses would be covered by the proposal. "We should be debating the real issues."

The Administration, meanwhile, is going out of its way to foster ties with CEOs and business leaders on its own, rather than rely on the Chamber. "I'd rather talk to [Cisco (CSCO) boss] John Chambers than to the Chamber," says Valerie Jarrett, the Presidential adviser responsible for outreach to the business community. "I don't stop listening to the Chamber, but [the resignations] do make me question whether they have the pulse of their membership." Adds Hilary Rosen, managing partner of the D.C. office of communications strategy firm Brunswick Group and a White House confidant: "Most business leaders we speak to are looking for solutions. The Chamber's posture has become a barrier."

Business Roundtable More Pragmatic

The White House appears to be turning more to the Business Roundtable, a group of over 160 CEOs, for feedback and input on its policies. John Castellani, the Roundtable's president, says its members have met frequently with White House staff in recent months. The group's leaders, such as Ivan G. Seidenberg of Verizon Communications (VZ) and Andrew N. Liveris of Dow Chemical (DOW), have featured prominently on the list of CEOs invited to dine with the President or his top aides.

The Roundtable is seen as having a more pragmatic take on the business community's agenda. "We strive to be politically relevant, but not partisan," says Castellani. Much of its work is data driven. On climate change, the Roundtable neither opposes nor favors a tax or a cap-and-trade system as the best way to put a price on carbon emissions. Instead it has provided policymakers with extensive data on how different companies and markets would react at different price levels.

Donohue maintains many chief executives hold back on what they really think when dealing with the Administration. "We see CEOs act all friendly to get a seat at the table," he says. "Then they call us up and say: 'You better fix this.'" He plays the bad cop, the guy who has to tell it straight.

That dynamic has been driving the fight over climate change. The Chamber vehemently opposes legislation now before Congress as well as moves by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate harmful carbon emissions. In late August a top Chamber official even called for a public hearing, similar to the Scopes Monkey Trial, to rule on the evidence of human responsibility for global warming.

Rebellion Spreading

The Chamber has since repudiated the remarks, which referred to the 1925 trial that pitted religion against evolution. Donohue says the Chamber doesn't dispute the science of global warming, but it wants more debate on how the U.S. regulates it. Still, the damage was done: Utilities PG&E (PCG), Exelon (EXC), and PNM Resources (PNM), all of which back the congressional legislation, quit. "We came to the conclusion that the legislation they were looking for was not the legislation that would address carbon," says Shawn Cooper, chief of staff to PG&E's chief executive. "The difference on this issue—where we were and where the Chamber wanted to go—was just too significant."

That rebellion is now spreading from utilities to consumer companies that are burnishing their green credentials. On Sept. 30, Nike (NKE) announced that it would resign from the Chamber's board, although it will remain in the group and continue to debate climate change from within. Not so Apple, where CEO Jobs recently stepped up efforts to reduce its own emissions. On Oct. 5 the maker of the iPod withdrew from the Chamber. In a letter to Donohue, Apple chastised the Chamber, saying: "It is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort."

Donohue minimizes the importance of the defections. While he says the group would support strong curbs if they were combined with an effective international pact, it doesn't back the current legislation because it would hurt U.S. competitiveness. Those who have quit, he implies, either will benefit from the legislation or won't be harmed. What the opposition suggests "is that we are having an effect," he says. "We are amongst those who have raised serious questions about the content of the legislation."

Plenty of companies are sticking with the Chamber. Dow is in the Chamber as well as the Roundtable, but supports the current climate legislation. "We have let the Chamber know our position," says Rich A. Wells, vice-president for energy and climate change. So why not pull out? "They do other things for us, such as tort reform," he says. C.A. Howlett, a Chamber board member and senior vice-president for public affairs at US Airways (LCC), says that since "Tom [Donohue] came along, the Chamber's been completely revitalized." As for the recent uproar, he adds: "You can't make everybody happy all the time."

With Theo Francis and John Carey in Washington. Sasseen is Washington bureau chief for BusinessWeek.

Beyond Breaking the Buck - How to Retool Money Funds? - NYTimes.com

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By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

AFTER a fever of panic raced through the nation’s money market mutual funds in September 2008, the industry and its regulators promised quick action on new rules that would restore health and confidence to that $3.6 trillion market.

Investors are still waiting for new rules — and the industry is warning that some proposals for a regulatory cure may do more damage than the original disease.

The loudest debates have been over a proposal that would force money funds to allow their share prices to fluctuate.

For decades, investors have come to expect money fund prices to remain fixed at $1 a share — and with good reason. Although fund sponsors have repeatedly warned that they do not guarantee that price, they have also repeatedly bailed out any fund that seemed in danger of “breaking the buck” — reporting a share price below a dollar. As a result, most investors consider money funds almost as safe as bank accounts.

A floating share price “would ultimately destroy the industry” by undermining that confidence, predicted Michael R. Rosella, who specializes in investment management law at Paul Hastings in New York.

“Folks use their money funds as checking accounts — and without certainty about their principal value, they can’t do that,” Mr. Rosella said.

Almost none of more than 150 letters filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission supported the idea of a floating share price, although the White House nevertheless wants regulators to take a look at it. Still, that lopsided debate has obscured other regulatory proposals that could have sweeping and unpredictable consequences for the industry and its investors.

These proposals would create two categories of money funds, one for institutional investors and one for retail customers, and establish liquidity requirements that would inevitably allow retail funds to offer higher yields.

Other ideas under consideration would require funds to upgrade their software to handle share prices below $1, acquire some kind of private insurance to protect them from a run during a panic, and honor giant-sized redemption requests by distributing actual securities, rather than cash.

Critics of these proposals say they do not address what went so spectacularly wrong in September last year, when the giant Reserve Primary fund — forced to abruptly write down its Lehman Brothers notes after Lehman’s bankruptcy — broke the buck in an avalanche of disorderly redemptions and touched off a run that spread across the already uneasy money fund industry.

A temporary government guarantee program calmed the panic within a few days, but that program expired last month, and Reserve Primary fund investors are still waiting for the last of their frozen assets. Under a plan proposed by the S.E.C. and awaiting court approval, they could get as much as 99 cents back for each dollar invested. But the plan is opposed by many institutional investors, and additional litigation could delay the process.

Obviously, one lesson that could be drawn from that drama is that Reserve Primary could have broken the buck without setting off a panic if money fund shares had routinely fluctuated above and below $1.

But a floating share price would eliminate the threat of a run on money funds by eliminating money funds, said Mercer Bullard, founder of an advocacy group called Fund Democracy, and Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, in a joint letter to the commission.

Once the perceived safety of a stable price is gone, investors will simply search for yield, said James J. Angel, a securities law professor at Georgetown University. And that could “push more investors into short-term bond funds with higher risks.”

Another lesson from the run on the Reserve funds was that institutional investors, with their warp-speed timing and “hot money” habits, can turn a problem into a panic in a big hurry.

INSTITUTIONAL investors were latecomers to the money fund market — there were no statistics kept on their role until 1996 — but they made up for lost time. They currently comprise 67.2 percent of total money fund assets, up from 32.6 percent in 1996.

They were the first to race for the doors at Reserve, and their billion-dollar demands accelerated the pace at which things went haywire. That pattern was repeated across the marketplace.

From this experience, the S.E.C. has concluded that money funds primarily serving institutional investors should be required to maintain a much bigger cash cushion than funds serving less-twitchy retail investors. It has proposed that fund boards sort themselves into one category or the other, with bigger cash cushions — and, therefore, lower yields — for the institutional funds.

Paul Schott Stevens, president of the Investment Company Institute, the fund industry trade group, thinks that this is a really, really bad idea.

Two big things could go wrong, Mr. Stevens said. Fearful of being second-guessed by regulators, every fund could err on the side of caution and label itself an institutional fund, leaving retail investors nowhere else to go. Or institutional investors could try to sneak into retail funds to capture those higher yields, leaving retail customers no safer than they are now.

“The real issue is not who the customers are, but how they behave,” he said. Leaving it to fund managers to make that assessment and adjust their cash levels accordingly would provide greater safety, he added.

But regulators worry that his approach would burden retail investors with lower yields than they would need to accept if the cash needs of the hot-money guys were not factored into the equation — or, alternatively, allow funds to keep enough cash for retail redemption habits but too little for institutions.

Another lesson is that a money fund’s computer systems should be able to calculate share prices of less than $1, even if the fund never intends to break the buck. Those at the Reserve fund complex could not, and that greatly delayed the unwinding of those funds.

Regulators, obviously a little testy about this, point out that money funds should already have that software in place because there is no legal guarantee that they will never need it. But the industry argues that retrofitting every fund complex would increase fund costs while adding little benefit.

The idea of a private-sector source of insurance that fund sponsors could tap in a crisis was specifically raised by the White House, which has directed the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets to study the concept. Indeed, some large fund companies are quietly exploring the notion on their own, although Mr. Stevens declined to comment on that effort.

The S.E.C. proposals, however, are silent on that option — which strikes some critics as strange, because liquidity insurance is the one thing that might reliably have prevented the Reserve run.

But the approach raises a number of questions: Can money funds afford the expense? Would the cost further erode yields? And would it perversely encourage reckless fund managers — the familiar “moral hazard” issue?

PAYING off large redemption orders with securities rather than cash is already an option, but one that money funds almost never use. The S.E.C. is studying the wisdom of requiring such in-kind redemptions, while industry critics say the current arrangement works fine.

If there’s one undisputed lesson that regulators and the industry have drawn from the Reserve fund saga, it is that money funds need a better tool kit to deal with systemic panic like the one that followed Lehman’s bankruptcy.

The S.E.C. has proposed rules to allow funds to suspend redemptions more easily, but several critics argue that these proposals do not go far enough to protect the rights of investors caught in a forced liquidation, citing the difficulties that Reserve Primary investors have faced in getting the last of their money.

Given how controversial these proposals are, it is perhaps a blessing that there’s no sign they will be acted on quickly. The industry is still waiting for the report of the president’s working group, which was supposed to report on Sept. 15 but has postponed until Dec. 1 to allow it time to review the S.E.C. proposals more fully.

There are some signs that the market is weathering this continued uncertainty. While the assets in money funds have dropped since last March, trends suggest that investors are reacting more to rock-bottom interest rates than to safety concerns.

But privately, regulators are clearly still worried that the industry and its investors are missing the larger picture. The goal of these new rules, they say, is not only to protect money fund investors from another economic debacle, but also to protect the economy from another money fund debacle.

If doing that makes money funds less attractive to fund sponsors and investors, that seems to be a risk some regulators are ready to take.

Fair enough, said Mr. Rosella, the fund industry lawyer. “But if you’re going to kill money funds, do it directly,” he said. “Don’t kill them accidentally.”

For Twins in New York, a Long Struggle in a Tough Job Market - NYTimes.com

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By N. R. KLEINFIELD

SEVENTEEN months out of Rutgers University, they live in an unwelcome continuum of mass rejection. Between them, Kristy and Katie Barry, identical twins who grew up in Ohio, have applied for some 150 jobs: a magazine for diabetics, a Web site about board games and a commercial for green tea-flavored gum; fact-checking at Scholastic Books, copy editing for the celebrity baby section of People.com, road-tripping for College Sports Television.

They did not get any of these. More than a year has lapsed without so much as an interview. Apparently, even a canned response was impossible in New York.

“I wake up hopeful and check my e-mail and then all there is is the Merriam-Webster word of the day,” Katie lamented. “Or a stupid Facebook thing. So-and-so sent you a puppy. Or a drink. Great!”

Kristy recently friended an editor on Facebook, thinking that was the ticket. Zip. She talked up a guy on the subway, found out he worked at a radio station, dispatched a résumé. Zip.

They play softball, asking teammates what they are up to, sifting for leads. They took an improv class, something that might lead to something that actually led to nothing.

To imprint themselves on potential employers’ minds, they send Buckeyes, a chocolate-coated peanut-butter confection that is an Ohio specialty they make to perfection. “I’m going to send some out today,” Kristy said the other morning.

Eyes crusted with sleep, Katie rummaged through Craigslist, journalismjobs.com, Whisper Jobs. She fastened on a notice for an editorial assistant at Cure magazine, aimed at cancer patients.

A résumé entered cyberspace. “I’ve sent out something,” she noted. “I’m not wishing on milkweed seeds.”

Kristy: “I’m so tired of coming up with cover letters that I think are interesting, and then nothing.”

Katie: “You think, O.K., do I kick somebody’s door in?”

Kristy: “My computer is burning up. It’s saying, ‘I’ve uploaded your résumé so many times, I’m exhausted.’ ”

Good kids who went to good schools, the brassy, effervescent Barry twins, 24, always envisioned their young adulthood in New York City as a lush time of stimulating work, picturesque travel and a rich social orbit. But they graduated into a downbeat nightmare of a job market. According to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates under 27 so far this year averaged 7.1 percent, nearly double what it was in 2007 and the highest yearly average in the 30 years this data point has been tracked.

And so Kristy and Katie and most of their friends are forever hunting for jobs, both mundane interim work to sustain them and long-term positions that could mean a career. Many days, it is as if they are stalking something on the endangered species list.

•

They were born in Columbus, Ohio, the middle of six siblings. Their parents divorced when they were 15, and they don’t stay in touch with their father but are close to their mother. She is remarried and lives in Weehawken, N.J., selling items for estates and art dealers and doing freelance writing.

The twins began at Marietta College in Ohio, then transferred as juniors to Rutgers’s campus in Newark. They graduated in May 2008 with journalism degrees, internships under their belt and student loans totaling $39,000 apiece.

Their dream is to work together in sports reporting or have a TV show, but they are flexible. They talk of teaching piano, or inventing, say, a lipstick-case microphone. “If you’re in a bar you would hold it up and say, ‘This guy is creepy, get out of here,’ ” Kristy explained.

She works as a bartender, three nights a week, at Dive 75 on West 75th Street, making about $800 a week. Katie had been working at another bar, but was fired in June after landing in Cancun to begin a vacation. Her boss said she played the music too loud.

This summer, the twins moved from Newark into a cozy two-bedroom fourth-floor walk-up on West 73rd Street, $2,900 a month. They share it with their brother Zack, 22, a junior at Parsons the New School for Design. Occupying the living room couch is Zack’s classmate, Rostislav Roznoshchik, who works part time at the Blue Donkey Bar. He wants to be a public artist.

Growing up, they mowed lawns, shoveled snow, fetched mail for the elderly. And, of course, there was the squirrel lady, who could not countenance roadkill not receiving respectful burials. She gave the twins $5 an animal to shovel corpses off the streets and bring them to her. Money is money.

Those weren’t perfect jobs, and the last one they had in Ohio was what convinced them it was time to head East. They worked as clerks at the Dancing Donkey, a crafts store with a donkey out back named Donk for kids to feed. Business leaned toward slow. The twins invented games to endure the tedium, like who could stay the longest in her chair without moving.

Now, jobless, days going by one at a time, Katie found herself saying things like: “It’s driving me bonkers. Like what has my existence come to?” And: “I’m going to stab myself.”

She showed her nails: nibbled beyond existence. “I’ve been like a woodchuck,” she said. “My hands hurt.”

Kristy held up hers: gone.

•

The dogs today. To pick up spare money, Katie fills in for a dog walker when he’s away, which is not that often.

It’s not nanotechnology, but you do need to know technique. The first dog, Cassie, for instance, does not like to budge. The trick passed on from the owner was to drop a box of tissues on the dog’s hindquarters.

Sure enough: tissues dropped, dog out the door.

Dogs were fine, but the work got Katie’s thoughts going the wrong way. There’s a guy she sees around the neighborhood who wears plastic bags for shoes. When she’s walking dogs she begins to worry that that is going to be her, without work, stumbling along in plastic bags.

Of course the twins have no health insurance. Not long ago, Katie had a bad earache — felt like a screwdriver pushing into her ear — that she self-medicated with tea and over-the-counter pills. Kristy has been sensing pain on the right side of her jaw. It hurts when she eats something hard or yawns widely.

What they do have is friends, and they support one another. A guy who manages a tomato-canning plant gives them canned tomatoes, olive oil and coconut milk. An accountant ex-boyfriend of Kristy’s does their taxes. He also sends gifts, like a CD to learn Russian, although Kristy has never expressed even tepid interest in learning Russian. They, in turn, rake the leaves at his New Jersey home and wash his car.

Another friend works as a waiter at an Italian restaurant while he tries to locate voiceover work. The twins drop in with a big group, then he’ll round up people to run up a tab at Kristy’s bar.

One night at Prohibition, a bar on Columbus Avenue near 84th Street, they slid into outdoor tables with a dozen comrades. Their brother Zack told how he and a friend had been handing out homemade cards to strangers to lift their spirits. One says on the outside, “I would be lying if I said ...” And then inside it says, “That you aren’t gorgeous, because you are. Please pass this on to someone you feel is gorgeous.”

One member of the group was in law school, another training for a career in ophthalmology. Others were doing things like sleeping in a museum as part of an exhibition, selling at Bloomingdale’s, bartending.

A guy hoping to start an online business was taking a $600 aptitude test to tell him what he’s good at.

•

Mom came in for lunch, at a Chipotle on 42nd Street. They began by joining hands and saying what they were thankful for, then Mom said, “Tell me something new.”

Katie mentioned a baby-sitting job: two days.

They had gotten some good buys at a thrift shop: a coin belt for $3, an “Animal House” DVD for $2, an X-Men tennis racket for $3.27.

The twins love Mom, whose name is Tyna Walker-Lay, but she can get to them at times. Like when she says she can’t tell the relatives back home they’re bartenders. She says that just about every time they talk.

Katie said: “Relatives in Ohio think working in a bar is a step down from prostitution.”

Katie said to Mom: “You know, you once thought we should be schoolteachers and have the summers off.”

Mom: “That’s still a thought down the road.”

Mom points out, with regularity, that they need jobs with benefits. She has noted that a prison guard gets benefits.

Grandma e-mails from Columbus, telling the twins she prays for them. Or that Ohio has openings for office clerks. A few months ago, when Katie wrote that she had split up with a boyfriend, Grandma came back with: “Are you girls ever going to get married?”

Mom had to run: “Some of us have to be productive, have benefits, 401(k)’s.”

She told them she loved them.

•

They claimed a couch upstairs at the Aroma Espresso Bar on West 72nd Street, where they like to ingest caffeine and comb the Web: Think, think, think.

The other day, a brainstorm hit. They would devise a blog called Twin Town, write about their lives and invite guest material, somehow woo advertisers.

Kristy said she could do a photo display with the gnome bank that she had lugged around Newark, snapping pictures of it at the park, at a beauty store, in a police car.

Katie said she could list idiotic reasons people give for breakups. Kristy liked that one, mentioned the guy who ditched her because he said her jokes weren’t funny. Katie brought up the friend whose boyfriend left after telling her she slammed his car door too hard.

“Excellent,” Kristy said.

•

Happy Hour at Dive 75, Kristy at the bar. Familiar faces trickled in, spat out orders. Here was Ren Quiroz, the friend who manages the canning plant. Another friend, involved in pharmaceutical pricing, showed his new tattoo. Their roommate, Rostislav, arrived. He said he earned $4 at the Blue Donkey today. Katie showed up for a beer.

Kristy worked the crowd, playing Hot Dice and Connect Four. She doesn’t mind bartending, but it’s no career, not for her. As she put it: “Bartending is like dating a guy you know you’re not going to marry.”

And: “I keep wondering how do I propel myself out of the bar world, where I look cute and pour beer, into a world where I have thoughtful conversation about the world rather than stuff like why do people clap at the end of good movies. Or, why do you think Heidi Klum married Seal? I don’t care why!”

Katie was moping a bit, saying, “I’ve eaten so many canned beans lately.”

And: “I need a life coach to come in and tell me what I’m doing wrong. I keep singing that song, ‘Something’s Got to Give.’ ”

•

The wind picked up. They got drinks from Starbucks and sat in the park on Columbus and 66th Street, the acceleration of life around them.

Katie said that a friend put her on a list to get into focus groups: “They pay you to say if you like green ketchup or hate Lysol. I can do that.”

Kristy said the bar had been so slow one night that she found herself singing Celine Dion to the fish tank: “There’s got to be a way out of this,” she said.

They had been chewing over ways to get noticed, inject some news into their lives. Mom always told them: “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been.”

Kristy suggested hiring a helicopter to scatter her résumé over Manhattan.

They had a saxophone, so Katie thought of playing in the subway with a sign inviting job offers. “I could have Mom sing,” she said.

She dug out her phone and called Mom. Mom did not embrace the idea, mentioning how mortified she would be, saying she would have to wear a hat and dark glasses.

They looked up to find Michael Moore shambling past with a small entourage. They caught up to him, told him they admired him and were looking for jobs and wondered when he knew what he wanted to do. He told them how he was unemployed, collecting $98 a week, saw the General Motors chairman on TV, and on and on.

And: “I realized when bad things happen it’s really just the window to the next good thing happening. That’s not too hippy-dippy a thing to say, but that’s what I found.”

Kristy said, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

And Michael Moore said, “On the other hand, when things are going really well, it’s like, when’s the next shoe going to drop.”

He laughed. They laughed.

He said, “Thank you very much and good luck.”

•

Katie launched into “Nowhere Man,” then “In My Life,” the sax’s mournful wail ringing through the tunnels in the Times Square subway station on a Friday afternoon. Her sign read: “Don’t Give Money, Give Business Cards.”

Kristy had come along, lugging the milk cases that served as a music stand. It was their luck that a seven-piece band roared away on a nearby platform.

Some people took pictures. Most did nothing. A few cards fluttered into Katie’s case: a music combo, a realtor, a music editing firm, a comic book store, a placement agency and a dentist in Kentucky. Plus 54 cents.

They had had a meeting with Deadspin, a sports blog, but no real jobs there, just the suggestion to join an Australian football team and write about it. Katie was pursuing an internship at the United Nations. Kristy decided to try to interest New York magazine in an article about the effect on kids who appear in unflattering YouTube videos. From a posting on Monster.com, she heard from someone who wondered if she could translate Arabic.

“That was like the world laughing at me,” she said.

And so it went, and so it went. Jobs were out there somewhere. Something had to give.

Indigent Burials Are on the Rise - NYTimes.com

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By KATIE ZEZIMA

Coroners and medical examiners across the country are reporting spikes in the number of unclaimed bodies and indigent burials, with states, counties and private funeral homes having to foot the bill when families cannot.

The increase comes as governments short on cash are cutting other social service programs, with some municipalities dipping into emergency and reserve funds to help cover the costs of burials or cremations.

Oregon, for example, has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of unclaimed bodies over the past few years, the majority left by families who say they cannot afford services. “There are more people in our cooler for a longer period of time,” said Dr. Karen Gunson, the state’s medical examiner. “It’s not that we’re not finding families, but that the families are having a harder time coming up with funds to cover burial or cremation costs.”

About a dozen states now subsidize the burial or cremation of unclaimed bodies, including Illinois, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Most of the state programs provide disposition services to people on Medicaid, a cost that has grown along with Medicaid rolls.

Financing in Oregon comes from fees paid to register the deaths with the state. The state legislature in June voted to raise the filing fee for death certificates to $20 from $7, to help offset the increased costs of state cremations, which cost $450.

“I’ve been here for 24 years, and I can’t remember something like this happening before,” Dr. Gunson said.

Already in 2009, Wisconsin has paid for 15 percent more cremations than it did last year, as the number of Medicaid recipients grew by more than 95,000 people since the end of January, said Stephanie Smiley, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn tried to end the state’s indigent burial program this year, shifting the financing to counties and funeral homes, but the state eventually found $12 million to continue the program when funeral directors balked.

The majority of burials and cremations, however, are handled on the city, county, town or township level, an added economic stress as many places face down wide budget gaps.

Boone County, Mo., hit its $3,000 burial budget cap last month, and took $1,500 out of a reserve fund to cover the rest of the year. While the sum is relatively low, it comes as the county is facing a $2 million budget shortfall, tax collections are down 5 percent and the number of residents needing help is expected to grow.

“We’ve had a significant increase in unemployment, wages are dropping, industrial manufacturing jobs go away and companies scaled back or even closed their doors,” said Skip Elkin, the county commissioner. “But we feel an obligation to help families who don’t have any assets.”

The medical examiner of Wayne County, Mich., Dr. Carl Schmidt, bought a refrigerated truck after the morgue ran out of space. The truck, which holds 35 bodies, is currently full, Dr. Schmidt said. “We’ll buy another truck if we have to,” he said.

Many places are turning to cremation, which averages a third to half the price of a burial. However, they will accommodate families’ requests for burial.

Clyde Gibbs, the chief medical examiner in Chapel Hill, N.C., said the office typically averaged 25 to 30 unclaimed bodies each year. At the end of the 2008 fiscal year there were at least 60, Dr. Gibbs said. The office cremates about three-quarters of the remains, and scatters the ashes at sea every few years.

In Tennessee, medical examiner and coroners’ offices donate unclaimed remains to the Forensic Anthropological Research Center, known as the “Body Farm,” where students study decomposition at the University of Tennessee. The facility had to briefly halt donations because it had received so many this year, said its spokesman, Jay Mayfield.

The increase in indigent burials and cremations is also taking a toll on funeral homes, which are losing money as more people choose cremation over burial. In 2003, 29.5 percent of remains were cremated; by 2008 the number had grown to 36 percent, according to the Cremation Association of North America, and it is expected to soar to 46 percent by 2015, according to the association’s projection of current trends.

Don Catchen, owner of Don Catchen & Son Funeral Homes in Elsmere, Ky., who handles cremations of the poor in Kenton County, said the $831 county reimbursement for cremations was “just enough to cover the cost of what I do — I donate my time.”

In Florida, where counties switched to cremation a few years ago to save on costs, Prudencio Vallejo, general manager of the Unclaimed Bodies Unit of the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office, said cremations were $425, compared with $1,500 for a burial. They have risen about 10 percent this year, Mr. Vallejo said.

“Most people, the first thing that they say is ‘We wouldn’t be coming to you if we could afford to do it ourselves,’ ” he said.

Broward County, Fla., paid for the cremation of Renata Richardson’s daughter, Jazmyn Rose, who was born stillborn on Sept. 25, 2008. Ms. Richardson, 26, lost her job at an advertising agency in July and could not afford to pay.

The county spent about $1,000 on a cremation and pink urn, engraved with the baby’s birth and death date, and a Bible passage. It now sits in the bassinette where she was to sleep.

“I was strapped for cash, I was in mourning, and I didn’t know what they were going to do with her,” Ms. Richardson, of Davie, Fla., said. “I was honored that they went that far to help me.”

VOA News - After Accord Signing, Turkey Presses Armenia on Nagorno-Karabakh

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Turkey's prime minister says Armenia needs to withdraw its troops from a breakway enclave in Azerbaijan before Turkey will open its border with Armenia.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked the issues Sunday, one day after Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement to normalize relations after a century of hostility.

In Ankara, Mr. Erdogan said an Armenian troop pullout from Nagorno-Karabakh would ease the way for Turkey's parliament to ratify the deal on normalizing relations. Before the agreement can take effect, it must be ratified by the parliaments of both Turkey and Armenia.

Turkey shut its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan, which was fighting to keep control of the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Broader differences between Turkey and Armenia stem from the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during and after World War One.

The chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Sunday welcomed the Turkey-Armenia accord signed Saturday. He commended the effort and political will that leaders of the two countries have invested to overcome differences.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several hours Saturday working to resolve a last-minute dispute over statements to be made at the signing ceremony in the Swiss city of Zurich. In the end, neither Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian nor his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, spoke after signing the protocols to establish diplomatic ties and to reopen the border.

There is strong opposition to the deal in both countries.

Armenians want the massacres between 1915 and 1923 recognized as genocide, and many countries have done so. Turkey strongly rejects the genocide claim. It says the Armenian death toll is inflated and that many Turks also were killed during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The agreement calls for a joint commission of independent historians to examine the genocide question. Some experts say the commission would be a concession to Turkey as it would revisit an issue Armenia says has already been confirmed.