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From the Los Angeles Times

Giving immigrant laborers an online voice

A new program teaches workers to use cellphones to tell their own stories and to document their lives and work.

By Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times

September 19, 2010

She approaches men and women unassumingly — on the crosstown bus, outside garment factories, along street corners when the light flashes red.

How's your day going? She asks in Spanish. How is work? Do you have children?

If they don't mind, she whips out her Flip Video camera and begins to record.

Two years ago, Maria de Lourdes Gonzalez didn't own a cellphone. Now the 62-year-old housekeeper carries a tape recorder and a video camera and regularly snaps photos and sends text messages.

Her interviews end up on her blog on vozmob, a new site launched by USC and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California , which works to organize and educate immigrant communities.

The idea is to give immigrants, mainly day laborers, an online space to speak their minds and share their stories. They are also encouraged to document their work as a form of self-protection.

Organizers rolled out the program last month with a mix of grants from various foundations, including $40,000 worth of cellphones to train laborers. They fanned out to local job centers to teach workers how to upload text, photos and videos. So far about half a dozen laborers have launched their own blogs. Others are experimenting, transferring bits of broken audio and blurry images onto the Web.

The contributions to vozmob.net are varied. In one post, a worker named Adolfo features a video clip of day laborers at a Hollywood center singing with an accordion player and guitarist as they wait for work. In another, a Long Beach laborer named Ranferi displays a photo of a cream-colored snake he found on the sidewalk and warns others to be cautious. A man named Marcos likes to upload samples of his handiwork: light fixtures he has installed, bathtubs he has tiled and water-thrifty gardens he has planted.

Politics often takes center stage, with posts featuring photos of immigrants rights marches and short, heated paragraphs blasting Arizona's new immigration law.

A grandmother of seven, Gonzalez prefers to be called a housekeeper, never a domestic worker "because domestic is for domesticated animals." She says she likes to hit the streets and record personal stories. When her subjects shy away from the camera — and many do — she records their hands, "the hands that do the work," she says.

She talks to pupusa vendors, men driving tractors, gardeners and seamstresses, and she films hands dry and calloused, covered with dirt or paint, bruised black beneath the nails.

On one morning bus ride, she spoke to Jacqueline Rivera, an undocumented worker who was about to lose her job. Rivera told Gonzalez she slept in a closet to save money for her children. The housekeeper's face in a grainy photo shows her lips turned up in a shy smile.

"The idea is to let those voices be heard," Gonzalez said, "to bring out of us what's already inside."

Amanda Garces, who is coordinating the project for the institute, said no one expects most participants to be so active. The hope is that some day laborers at least will become more comfortable with technology.

Until now, she said, anti-immigrant voices have ruled the online debate, spreading negative images.

On a recent morning, Garces gathered about 20 laborers at a center southwest of downtown. She demonstrated how to take photos and video of employers' homes and car license plates — documentation that could prove useful if they are not paid or are mistreated. She then encouraged the workers to practice what they'd learned.

Most came ready with their own cellphones, basic models that until now they had used only for calls.

Alfonso Sanchez, 43, listened closely as Natalie Arellano, a community organizer, showed him how to shoot a video clip of a fellow laborer.

"Is it recording yet?" he asked, squinting a few inches from the tiny screen.

"Yes, yes," Arellano told him. "You're ready. Now just do it over and over again until you remember the steps."

Like many, Sanchez has little intention to start a blog. He said he's mostly curious to see how much can be done with just a phone.

All around him, day laborers with muddy boots grinned as they held their phones in their weathered hands, recording one another.

"This gives you the tools to tell your own story and not let others tell it for you," Garces told the men.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-laborer-blogs-20100919,0,2641180,print.story

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Investors seeing farmland as safer bet than stocks

Wary of fluctuations on Wall Street, more wealthy Americans, private funds and foreigners are putting money into parcels of cornfields, fruit orchards and other U.S. agricultural products.

By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times

September 19, 2010

Reporting from Kern County, Calif.

As investors tire of Wall Street's roller coaster, more of them are plowing their money into land — farmland.

Few people understand this shift better than farm manager Carl Evers.

On a recent morning, Evers steered his pickup truck through a Central California almond grove, his drawling sales pitch at the ready. Evers is co-founder of Farmland Management Services, which runs about 30,000 acres of nut groves, fruit orchards and wine grape vines for a Boston investment firm. Sunburned and stocky, tugging down his wide-brimmed hat, he talked about how farmland — and the food it produces — is the safer bet these troubled days.

"You want to throw your money into something you can't touch?" said Evers, 50. "Or do you want to put your money here, into soil and sun, into food that feeds people around the world?"

It's the fourth time this year Evers has wandered through these trees and given his spiel to pension fund managers, hedge-fund operators and hungry investors on behalf of Hancock Agricultural Investment Group. He's reeled it off many more times over the phone.

Farmland has become hot. Average U.S. farm real estate prices — including the value of land and buildings — have nearly doubled in the last decade to $2,140 an acre, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Wells Fargo, the nation's top agricultural business lender in total dollar volume, said demand prompted it to increase farm lending 12% from 2008 to 2009. Since the recession began in December 2007, financial analysts say, agricultural investments have easily outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Wealthy Americans and private funds alike are gobbling up Washington apple orchards, Illinois cornfields and Louisiana sugar plantations. So are foreigners. In California, investors from countries including Spain, Switzerland, China, Egypt and Iran collectively boosted their holdings 2.5% from February 2007 to February 2009 to 1.08 million acres — about 5% of the state's total farmland. Overseas, U.S. and other investors are snapping up tens of millions of hectares of farmland in Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe.

Such investments generally involve a group of people who come together in a company or group of firms, pool their money and purchase parcels of land through a corporate structure. (Minimum investments can start around $25,000 and often require a commitment of at least six years.) After purchasing the land — whose value historically appreciates — it is usually then turned over to a farmer or a management firm, which handles day-to-day operations. If all goes well, investors can receive rent, proceeds from crop or livestock sales, or some combination of both.

For some, there is a sense of romanticism and relief at the idea of putting money into something as tangible as dirt.

"It's something people understand," said Jeff Conrad, president of Hancock Agricultural Investment Group. The enterprise manages about $1.3 billion of agricultural real estate for institutional investors, including public and corporate pension funds. "It's something you can touch, feel, see, visit."

Investors also understand that land is a finite commodity. The amount of arable land worldwide is dwindling, while the world's population is forecast to jump to more than 9 billion by 2050 from 6.9 billion today. That has water-strapped countries eager to establish secure food supplies and bolster biofuel production. Fast-growing economies such as China are stepping up food imports to feed a burgeoning middle class.

As a result, U.S. exports of meat, grains, nuts and other farm products are surging. Overall, federal officials estimate that U.S. farmers will ship $107.5 billion in agricultural products overseas in fiscal 2010 — the second-highest amount ever, according to the USDA.

Frustration with the stock market persuaded Dr. Stephen Rivard to bet on farms. The physician who lives in the Chicago area invested heavily in stocks, only to cringe as the value of his portfolio shrank 42% over the last decade. When a friend launched Midwest Organic Farm Management and asked him to bet on a farm, Rivard reached for his wallet.

As the country's economy suffered the worst decline since the Great Depression, he bought into more farms: So far, he's put $300,000 into three Illinois organic operations, including one called Two Roads Farms.

"My only regret so far is that I didn't invest more sooner," said Rivard, 57.

The payoff has been mixed. Three years ago, commodity prices jumped and Rivard enjoyed a 15% return on an annualized basis. But last season's harvest at Two Roads was a dud. Some of the fields were overgrazed by cattle. Heavy rains flooded the land. A lack of nitrogen in the soil made the corn stalks puny.

This year is more promising. D.D. Burlin, a Chicago-area stay-at-home mother, sank $25,000 from her savings into Two Roads for financial reasons and social concerns over how the food her family eats is produced. She recently toured her investment and wandered among the emerald-green fields of soybeans and oats.

"If people are willing to pay more for organic food, why can't you make money by doing the right thing?" said Burlin, 42.

By its very nature, farming is risky. The investments aren't liquid. Profits can fluctuate with weather, commodity prices and politics. Large parcels of good land can be hard to find. What is out there doesn't come up for sale very often.

With U.S. opportunities limited, investors are looking overseas. The result has been a land rush, particularly in the wake of the food price crisis earlier this decade. The World Bank reported this month that the number of large-scale farmland deals in 2009 amounted to about 45 million hectares, compared with an average of less than 4 million hectares each year from 1998 through 2008.

The report found that about half the 406 land acquisitions in Ethiopia and the 405 deals in Mozambique from 2004 to 2009 came from foreign investors. Foreign investment in Sudanese agricultural land was expected to increase fivefold by 2014.

Banks, universities and investment firms are closing some of the biggest deals.

Optima Fund Management, a New York fund, plans to acquire about 10,000 acres of Arizona farmland and California vineyards by year's end. Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management in Australia — which has invested in dairy, forestry and more than 7 million acres of land — is launching a second fund that may expand into Brazil. Pharos Financial Group, a firm backed by financier George Soros and based in Moscow, created an agriculture-focused private-equity fund in November and is scouting farms in Asia and Africa.

Such deals have sprouted a backlash and raised concerns of speculators becoming wealthy at the environmental and economic expense of local communities. John Peck, executive director of the anti-corporation advocacy group Family Farm Defenders, said institutional investors could distort global food production patterns by planting crops for profitability rather than nutrition.

Such critics also wonder whether investors have forgotten the cautionary tale of the 1980s U.S. farm crisis. A combination of low prices, high interest rates and plummeting land values devastated rural America. Thousands of family farms fell into foreclosure and scores of farm banks collapsed.

"Could we see the '80s all over again? Absolutely," said agricultural economist Michael Swanson, of Wells Fargo's Agricultural Industries Group. "The combination of high crop prices and ultra-low interest rates has farmers bidding historically high prices. It will end very badly for some of them."

Burlin isn't swayed.

"Right now," she said, "this still feels safer."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-farm-land-grab-20100919,0,7342477,print.story

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U.N. Millennium Development Goals appear out of reach in Africa

With only five years left to meet the targets of poverty reduction and healthcare improvements set for 2015, most of sub-Saharan Africa lags behind amid the lack of aid and political will.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

September 20, 2010

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa will not reduce poverty and hunger and improve child and maternal healthcare to meet the goals set a decade ago by the United Nations unless African and Western leaders do much more, several recent reports suggest.

The main reasons: Donors have failed to keep pledges and many African nations have not improved their governments or increased health spending as promised.

Only a handful of developed countries have met a pledge to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of their gross domestic product, while in some countries aid is declining. And only Rwanda, Tanzania and Liberia have met their pledge to spend 15% of their budgets on health, while in some African nations — Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and others — the proportion has fallen since 2000, according to a recent report out of Britain.

The average spending on healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa remains less than 10% of GDP.

The Millennium Development Goals were adopted by about 190 U.N. member countries in 2000 to tackle poverty, hunger, disease and early deaths in poor countries, with a series of targets set for 2015. The struggling efforts to meet those goals will be discussed at a three-day U.N. summit in New York beginning Monday.

Almost from the outset it was clear that countries and international organizations were not moving fast enough to meet the targets. The eight goals include halving the rate of poverty from 58% of the population in 1990 to 29% in 2015; reducing child mortality by two-thirds from 18% of births in 1990 to 6% in 2015; and cutting maternal mortality from .92% to .23% during the same period.

Other goals include providing universal primary education, combating HIV/AIDS and providing universal access to treatment, and eradicating malaria.

"There's progress, but not at all sufficient if we are to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015," said Elhadj As Sy, the Nairobi-based regional director of UNICEF. "Even in countries where we had a drop in child mortality, in the best cases we saw a reduction of 2.5 or 3% and we need a 5% reduction to meet the targets."

He said the situation is worst in countries mired in conflict, such as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the 10 years since the goals were set, meeting them has become more complicated, as the global financial crisis plunged an additional 64 million people into extreme poverty, many of them in Africa. Global warming threatens future food production in sub-Saharan Africa, but in the last five years the amount of arable land under irrigation has increased by less than 1%.

The most disappointment has been in the efforts to reduce child and maternal mortality, both of which were to be slashed by two-thirds by 2015. So far, child mortality has been reduced, but 14% of children still die before their fifth birthday.

The rate of maternal mortality had barely shifted, according to a U.N. report on the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.

There also has been little improvement in the poverty and hunger levels. In 2008, 32% of people in sub-Saharan Africa were undernourished, a proportion little changed since 1990, according to the recent report by Britain's Commission for Africa. More than 1 billion people worldwide were hungry last year, with insufficient nutrition a key factor in poor health and mortality.

Although the proportion living on less than $1.25 a day declined, the overall number in poverty has risen to more than 400 million.

One worrying element, according to analysts, is that the easier improvements — slashing debt, distributing mosquito nets, vaccinating children, improving primary school enrollments — have been carried out in many parts of Africa. With only five years left till 2015, far more challenging programs must be implemented, such as setting up decent health services for women in remote locations and improving the quality of primary education.

The U.S. has released its strategy to reach the goals, including providing an extra $63 billion for healthcare in developing countries, $3.5 billion to help improve agricultural production and $30 billion to help countries adapt to global warming.

"The road ahead will likely be more difficult than the road already traveled," said a USAID report on meeting the 2015 goals . "To meet the MDGs by 2015, historic leaps in human development will be required. Many of the remaining poor and undernourished will be harder to reach because they live in marginal areas or face ethnic, religious, and other kinds of deep-seated social exclusion. Some reside in conflict-affected or fragile states, where the prospects for development are least auspicious."

Osten Chulu, a policy advisor in Johannesburg to the United Nations Development Program, said the efficient use of aid in Africa was sometimes compromised by poor governance and the extreme disempowerment of populations who are unable to hold leaders accountable through democratic elections.

"In Europe and America, a politician is always wary of the reaction of voters," Chulu said. "But here, it's the other way around. People are afraid of politicians and civil leaders."

Chulu said governments in both developed and developing countries had failed in their commitments to meet the U.N. goals. "The question is not so much the money," he said. "It's how you use the money."

This week's summit is reportedly aiming to generate billions of dollars in pledges of aid. Nongovernmental groups such as Oxfam are calling for a much greater commitment from developed countries. In 2005, the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations promised an extra $50 billion in aid by 2010, but only 61% of it has been delivered.

"Unless an urgent rescue package is developed to accelerate fulfillment of all the MDGs," a recent Oxfam report said, "we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history."

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fg-africa-millennium-goals-20100920,0,5751264,print.story

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Many veterans with PTSD struggle to find supportive employment

Experts say simple accommodations can greatly improve their success in the workplace, but many employers are still wary of hiring those with mental disabilities.

By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times

September 19, 2010

Michael Butcher has applied for at least 25 jobs since injuries he suffered in Iraq forced him to leave the Army three years ago.

"I was even turned down by McDonald's," said the 29-year-old San Diego native.

The military is known for developing leadership, adaptability, loyalty and teamwork. But Butcher said when he tells employers he needs time off to see therapists for post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury, they don't call back.

"They think you are mental," he said.

After nearly a decade of war, many U.S. military veterans have lived through extended periods of combat stress and the trauma of losing colleagues. Nearly a third of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan report symptoms of PTSD, severe depression or traumatic brain injury, according to a 2008 study by the Rand Corp.

Many of these new veterans struggle to find and retain civilian jobs. Not only are they returning to the worst economy in decades, advocates say, but many employers do not know how to accommodate these invisible wounds and worry that they might "go postal."

"If you are a person with a lost limb, it's a little more straightforward what you might need," said John Wilson, assistant legislative director for Disabled American Veterans. "You might need a different kind of keyboard or voice-recognition software to do the typing."

But employers may not know what to expect from a person with PTSD or a brain injury. The symptoms can include severe headaches, memory lapses, poor concentration, slurred speech, loss of balance, a short temper and anxiety in a crowd.

"These elements can make it a challenge to do everyday activities in the workplace," said Raymond Jefferson, assistant secretary for the Veterans' Employment and Training Service in the U.S. Department of Labor. "But there are very reasonable accommodations employers can make to allow wounded warriors with PTSD and [brain injuries] to be high-contributing, high-performing members on the team."

When the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed its members in June, 46% said they believed post-traumatic stress and other mental health issues posed a hiring challenge. Just 22% said the same about combat-related physical disabilities.

Although media attention has helped make the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD and traumatic brain injury a government priority, veterans say it has also contributed to the stigma associated with these wounds.

"They hear so many stories on the news — this soldier got back from Iraq and killed his wife — which makes people a little reluctant to hire you," Butcher said.

Butcher deployed to Iraq in 2003 as part of a tank crew that repeatedly came under fire. One hot day he left a hatch open and the force of a grenade blast slammed his head against an iron shield.

Many veterans are using education benefits to improve their qualifications. But when Butcher enrolled in community college, the sight of Muslim students kneeling to pray triggered terrifying flashbacks. He left after one semester.

A friend helped arrange an internship at a computer manufacturing company, but Butcher said he got into frequent arguments with co-workers. After four days, he was asked to leave.

Butcher said he has since learned to walk away when he gets angry and uses weekly counseling sessions to relieve stress. But he said the flexibility he would need from an employer puts him at a disadvantage compared to job seekers who don't have special needs.

Officials with the U.S. departments of Veterans Affairs, Labor and Defense have worked to assure potential employers that the mental and cognitive disabilities of many veterans can be accommodated with little expense and minimum disruption.

Short rest periods — no longer than a smoking break — can make a big difference, said Ruth Fanning, who heads the VA's Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Service . The department also pays for adaptive technology, such as electronic organizers to help keep track of appointments and white-noise machines to reduce distractions.

Denita Hartfield, a veteran now working from home, takes a digital recorder into every meeting, writes lists in color-coded notebooks and covers her workspace with Post-it note reminders. A striking woman, fashionably attired, with a master's degree in criminal justice and weapons of mass destruction, Hartfield struggled as dean of students at a business school because her disabilities were not immediately apparent.

"I'd get ridiculed every time I had to go to a medical appointment," she said. "I'm not what people think a disabled veteran should look like."

Hartfield's 17-year Army career was cut short by a 2005 ambush in Iraq. She spent the next two years in and out of the hospital to repair three crushed ribs and drain fluid from around her heart. She is now home in Bakersfield, but commutes several times a week to medical centers in Sepulveda and West Los Angeles to treat a brain injury and PTSD.

To compensate, she would work 13-hour days, which caused more stress. But she said her supervisor would still complain when she had to leave for an appointment. When she was asked to delay surgery to remove shrapnel from her back, she resigned.

"I need my appointments to live," she said.

Hartfield now wants to set up her own business advising veterans and employers how to work together. She says more open communication would have helped in her case, but at first she did not want to acknowledge her disabilities.

"One of the problems is so many folks aren't even talking about their invisible wounds," said Tim Embree, legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The issues are different with every individual, so what I think matters is that the individual understands what's going on as well as the employer."

To help employers better accommodate the mental health issues veterans face, the Department of Labor has set up a web site, America's Heroes at Work .

Many veterans find civilian work with the U.S. government, which is one of the largest employers of former military personnel; they make up a quarter of the federal workforce. About 40% of the staff at VA medical call centers in Northern California are disabled veterans, many of them with PTSD or brain injuries, according to Project Hired, the nonprofit contracted to run them. Los Angeles Habilitation House is training 18 veterans with invisible wounds to provide contract management services to the government.

They include Ronta Foster, a 49-year-old father of two who has cycled between the Army and low-paying civilian jobs for years.

He was diagnosed with PTSD and traumatic brain injury after deploying to Iraq in 2003 but traces the symptoms back to a beating he received outside a German nightclub in 1982.

"The opportunities have been far and few for me," Foster said. "This here is going to give me an opportunity to start another career and take care of me and my family. That's all I have been wanting to do for 30 years."

Some companies also seek out veterans. Joshua Stout is one of 80 people recruited through Northrop Grumman's hiring program for severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. A former Marine who served in both wars, he now works as a project manager at a plant in San Diego that is developing an unmanned surveillance plane for the Navy.

The company consulted occupational nurses on how to help the 27-year-old manage PTSD and a brain injury. They showed him how to set reminders on his computer and arranged his cubicle so co-workers could not come up from behind and startle him.

Stout said he struggled to learn how to manage databases, but his supervisor worked with him until he could remember the steps.

"I get a lot of self pride out of working for this company," he said. "I'm still supporting the troops and I'm still defending freedom."

Although accommodations have to be made, Karen Stang, who manages the hiring program, said managers appreciate what veterans like Stout bring to the company.

"They bring loyalty, a great work ethic, commitment," she said. "It's been a real win-win."

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-veterans-invisible-wounds-20100920,0,3055144,print.story

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Sarah Shourd feels only 'one-third free' after Iran prison release

In comments after returning to the U.S., she expresses gratitude to Iranian leaders but notes that her fiance, Shane Bauer, and their friend, Josh Fattal, remain imprisoned.

By Tina Susman and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

September 20, 2010

Reporting from New York and Washington

An American woman who spent 410 days imprisoned in Iran praised its leaders Sunday for the "humanitarian gesture" of freeing her but expressed frustration at the continued detention of two companions, while Iran's president suggested the hikers could be bargaining chips in his tempestuous relationship with Washington.

Sarah Shourd, 32, mixed political niceties with firm denials of guilt in her first extensive public comments since leaving Iran's Evin Prison on Sept. 14. She appeared alongside her mother, Nora, who held her daughter's hand as they walked into a conference room in a Manhattan hotel after flying to the United States. Shourd had shed the headscarf she used in Iran and wore a crisp white shirt and black pants, with a black stone pendant around her neck.

As Shourd and her mother delivered statements, the mothers of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who remain in Evin accused of espionage, stood nearby, clutching large color photographs of their 28-year-old sons. Later, Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey, said they had requested a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his stay in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, which opens Monday.

Shourd, careful to be diplomatic while her friends remain imprisoned, began by thanking Ahmadinejad and Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by name. She said she hoped their "compassionate release" of her would not go unrecognized, but expressed unbridled frustration at the trio's arrest, which she blamed on a "huge misunderstanding."

Iranian officials detained the three in July 2009 after they went hiking in northern Iraq, near the Iranian border. Iran said they crossed the frontier on a spying mission. Shourd said the border near the popular hiking spot was "entirely unmarked and physically indistinguishable" and that the three had no intention of entering Iran.

"We committed no crime and we are not spies," said Shourd, her voice firm but occasionally shaking slightly with emotion as she described the anguish of leaving Bauer — her fiance — and Fattal. "This is not the time to celebrate," she said, describing herself as "only one-third free" until her companions are released.

The Shourds did not take questions, but Hickey and Fattal's mother, Laura, did, saying they hoped to meet with Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York on Sunday. Asked if they were worried about their sons' becoming bargaining chips, they said they were in no position to discuss politics.

"Our pleas are as mothers. We don't get mixed up in the politics of this," Hickey said.

"We are not politicians," Laura Fattal added.

But Ahmadinejad made clear in an interview on ABC's "This Week" that he expected something in return for Shourd's freedom, raising the question of whether the two American men would become caught in a political tug of war.

"I believe it would not be misplaced to ask that the U.S. government should make a humanitarian gesture and release the Iranians who were illegally arrested and detained here in the United States," he said, referring to Iranians arrested over the years for violating U.S. laws banning economic and military cooperation with Iran or for supporting terrorism.

When ABC interviewer Christiane Amanpour suggested that Iran was holding the remaining Americans as hostages for the Iranians, Ahmadinejad countered: "How would you know those Iranians are criminals? Are you a judge?"

Several Iranians have been arrested by U.S. authorities and by other governments at the request of the United States for alleged violations of the U.S. embargo on sales to Iran or for supporting terrorism. They include alleged arms smuggler Amir Hossein Ardebili, who was arrested in a sting operation in the Republic of Georgia.

A senior State Department official acknowledged that several Iranians are in custody for such charges, but said he did not know if the number was eight, as Ahmadinejad has said.

The Shourds and the families of Bauer and Fattal timed their New York visit in hopes of meeting with Ahmadinejad and highlighting their cause. Ahmadinejad will use the U.N. podium to defend Iran against U.S. allegations that it is pursuing an illegal nuclear program. Continued attention on the detained Americans could prove a distraction for him.

Iran's human rights record also has come under scrutiny recently over the case of a 43-year-old Iranian mother of two who has been jailed since 2006 on charges of adultery. In July, after an international campaign by human rights groups, the Iranian government said the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, would not be stoned to death for her alleged crime, a grave offense under Islamic law. But officials have yet to clarify her fate.

During the ABC interview, Ahmadinejad said that the woman had never faced the death penalty and that the case had been used as propaganda against his country. He also questioned why American officials would be interested in what happened to "one lady in a village in Iran."

In a separate interview with the Associated Press on Sunday, Ahmadinejad said he was glad Shourd had been freed. "And we hope that the other two will soon be able to prove and provide evidence to the court that they had no ill intention in crossing the border, so that their release can also be secured."

Laura Fattal and Hickey, though, said they hoped their sons would be freed on humanitarian grounds like Shourd, who had complained of medical concerns in prison. On Sunday, Shourd said those concerns had been unfounded and that doctors in the country of Oman had declared her "physically well."

"We are encouraged that perhaps the humanitarianism will be continued," Laura Fattal said.

She and Hickey said they had not had time to speak at length with Shourd and had not discussed the prison conditions. Both admitted to mixed emotions when Shourd was freed.

Hickey described it as a "very bittersweet moment."

"The cold, hard truth is that Shane and Josh are still in prison," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0920-iran-hiker-20100920,0,7840131,print.story

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Religious group found safe after 22-hour search near Palmdale

Twelve members of a Christian group reported missing Saturday afternoon have been taken to an L.A. County sheriff's station, and the leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, is undergoing psychological tests.

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

September 19, 2010

The group left behind farewell letters, personal documents and cash and took off into the night on a mysterious religious trip. After relatives reported them missing, authorities began a 22-hour search using horses, helicopters and patrols to comb the sprawling desert terrain around Palmdale as satellite trucks from national news outlets moved in.

Two scenarios loomed large, one unthinkable: a suicide pact that included eight children, inspired by the belief that the biblical "rapture" was upon them.

But relief set in Sunday as the second scenario prevailed: authorities found all 13 gathered comfortably at a manicured park less than 10 miles from a Los Angeles County sheriff's station.

Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, a Salvadoran immigrant identified as the group's leader, offered up little to deputies Sunday, and initially gave authorities a different name when approached at Jackie Robinson County Park, east of Palmdale.

The other 12 members of the group, among them Chicas' two children and six other minors, agreed to be taken to the Palmdale sheriff's station, department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

County child-welfare authorities have been brought into the case, and Chicas was being held Sunday for a 72-hour involuntary mental health evaluation, an official said.

The search began when concerned relatives contacted the Sheriff's Department about 2 p.m. Saturday, saying they feared for their family members' safety. Whitmore said the letters left by the group read like "a will and testament." They were addressed to parents and other loved ones and included phrases like "Please take care of," "Don't worry," "Here's some cash," he said. Letters written by two of the 14-year-olds were identical, which Whitmore said could indicate they were coached.

The group was found around noon, sitting on blankets laid out in the shade of a pine tree. A resident who had seen news reports on the missing group spotted them and called the Sheriff's Department about 11:30 a.m.

Chicas was playing with some of the children on the swings, while the others sat on blankets praying, said sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker. "They seemed shocked," Parker said. "They said, 'We are Christians, and we would never harm ourselves.' "

When deputies told them that notes and personal belongings they left behind had made relatives suspect otherwise, they responded by saying, "It's sinful to have [worldly possessions] when you're praying because they bring evil," Parker said.

Far from spending the night in the dry, windy desert around Palmdale, as suspected, the group had slept at the home of Chicas' friend, he said.

Authorities from multiple agencies devoted a massive amount of resources and time in the search effort, using helicopters, patrol cars and volunteer groups on horseback. "Could these people benefit from better communication with their family? Certainly." Parker said.

The group drew the attention of one deputy well before they were reported missing. The patrol officer came across three cars occupied by several women and children, parked outside a Palmdale high school about 3 a.m. Saturday. When he asked what they were doing at the school at that hour, they said they were praying to end school violence and sexual immorality.

The group was known for previous forays into desert and mountain areas, apparently related to a belief in an imminent biblical "rapture," in which believers would be transported to heaven. When found, group members, including children, called Chicas "their leader" and "an inspiration."

The Palmdale area is home to several predominantly Latino churches, where it's not uncommon for congregants to break off into separate prayer groups practicing nontraditional beliefs.

Although none of the 13, including Chicas, are facing criminal charges, Whitmore promised extensive follow-up on the case.

Ricardo Giron, a former neighbor of Chicas, said he was relieved, and not very surprised, to hear the group was safe.

"She's always very careful with her kids," he said. "I couldn't believe she would hurt them."

Chicas used to baby-sit Giron's children, and their families vacationed together, he said. She had recently severed social ties with him as she grew increasingly religious, spending more time at a local church, he added. Giron said Chicas had left school after the fifth grade.

Whitmore said the Sheriff's Department response, which included helicopters and volunteers on horseback, was warranted given the presence of children in the group.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-suicide-cult-20100920,0,5905308,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Haitians Cry in Letters: ‘Please — Do Something!'

CORAIL-CESSELESSE, Haiti — It was after midnight in a remote annex of this isolated tent camp on a windswept gravel plain. Marjorie Saint Hilaire's three boys were fast asleep, but her mind was racing.

The camp leader had proposed writing letters to the nongovernment authorities, and she had so much to say. She lighted a candle and summoned a gracious sentiment with which to begin.

“To all the members of concerned organizations, I thank you first for feeling our pain,” she wrote slowly in pencil on what became an eraser-smudged page. “I note that you have taken on almost all our problems and some of our greatest needs.”

Ms. Saint Hilaire, 33, then succinctly explained that she had lost her husband and her livelihood to the Jan. 12 earthquake and now found herself hungry, stressed and stranded in a camp annex without a school, a health clinic, a marketplace or any activity at all.

“Please — do something!” she wrote from Tent J2, Block 7, Sector 3, her new address. “We don't want to die of hunger and also we want to send our children to school. I give glory to God that I am still alive — but I would like to stay that way!”

In the last couple of weeks, thousands of displaced Haitians have similarly vented their concerns, depositing impassioned pleas for help in new suggestion boxes at a hundred camps throughout the disaster zone. Taken together, the letters form a collective cri de coeur from a population that has felt increasingly impotent and ignored.

With 1.3 million displaced people in 1,300 camps, homelessness is the new normal here. Two recent protest marches have sought to make the homeless a central issue in the coming presidential campaign. But the tent camp residents, miserable, weary and in many cases fighting eviction, do not seem to have the energy to become a vocal force.

When the International Organization for Migration added suggestion boxes to its information kiosks in scores of camps, it did not expect to tap directly into a well of pent-up emotions. “I anticipated maybe a few cranky letters,” said Leonard Doyle, who handles communications for the organization in Haiti . “But to my absolute, blow-me-down surprise, we got 700 letters in three days from our first boxes — real individualized expressions of suffering that give a human face to this ongoing tragedy.”

In some cases, the letters contain a breathless litany of miseries, a chain of woes strung together by commas: “I feel discouraged, I don't sleep comfortably, I gave birth six months ago, the baby died, I have six other children, they don't have a father, I don't have work, my tarp is torn, the rain panics me, my house was crushed, I don't have money to feed my family, I would really love it if you would help me,” wrote Marie Jean Jean.

In others, despair is expressed formally, with remarkable restraint: “Living under a tent is not favorable neither to me nor to my children” or “We would appreciate your assistance in obtaining a future as one does not appear to be on our horizon.”

Several writers sent terse wish lists on self-designed forms: “Name: Paul Wilbert. Camp: Boulos. Need: House. Demand: $1,250. Project: Build house. Thank you.”

And some tweaked the truth. Ketteline Lebon, who lives in a camp in the slum area called Cité Soleil, cannot read or write. She dictated a letter to her cousin, who decided to alter Ms. Lebon's story to say that her husband had died in the earthquake whereas he had really died in a car accident. “What does it matter?” Ms. Lebon said, shrugging. “I'm still a widow in a tent with four kids I cannot afford to send to school.”

At this camp's annex, Corail 3, Sandra Felicien, a regal woman whose black-and-white sundress looks as crisp as if it hangs in a closet, has become the epistolary queen. An earthquake widow whose husband was crushed to death in the school where he taught adult education courses, Ms. Felicien said she wrote letters almost daily because doing so made her feel as if she were taking action. “We are so powerless,” she said. “It is like we are bobbing along on the waves of the ocean, waiting to be saved.”

Like the hundreds of families around her in Corail 3, Ms. Felicien and her small son lived first in Camp Fleuriot, a mosquito-infested, flood-prone marsh where many were feverish with malaria or racked by diarrhea. In July, they were bused here to the outskirts of this planned settlement, which is supposed to become a new town someday.

Transitional shelters are being built in this remote spot, and a hundred or so are completed and stand empty. For the moment, though, the one-room houses, like the tents beside them, exist in a sun-scorched vacuum beneath deforested hills. They are surrounded only by latrines, showers and the information kiosk, with its blackboard, bulletin board and suggestion box.

One afternoon last week, Ms. Felicien settled onto the tarp-covered rocks in front of her tent — “my porch” — and used a covered bucket for a writing desk. She was feeling robust, she said, because a neighbor had just treated her to what amounted to brunch — a pack of cookies that she had shared with her son.

She started to recopy the rough draft of a letter that she had written that morning. She was writing in Creole, although her French is impeccable, because “only a Haitian could really understand,” she said.

While she wrote, with a reporter by her side and a photographer taking her picture, a boisterous crowd from the camp gathered, concerned that she was getting special attention from foreigners. Their complaints grew so deafening that she rose to address them, explaining that, in fact, the particular letter she was writing was not personal but on behalf of all her neighbors.

Raising her voice to be heard, she read aloud the letter: “Sept. 14. Today we feel fed up with the bad treatment in Block 7. Have you forgotten about us out here in the desert?” The crowd quieted. She continued reading: “You don't understand us. You don't know that an empty bag can't stand. A hungry dog can't play.” Other tent camps have health clinics or schools or at least something to do, she read. “Why don't we have such things? Aren't we people, too?”

Heads nodded. The tension dissipated. The crowd dispersed. Ms. Felicien walked her letter to the kiosk to post it. “I don't know why I keep writing,” she said. “To this point they have not responded. It's like screaming into the wind.”

Mr. Doyle said that all the letters are read, some aloud on Radio Guinen, which broadcasts daily from tent camps as part of an International Organization for Migration communication program. But the $400,000 program was intended to give voice to the voiceless and not food to the hungry or money to the destitute. So unless the writers express a need for protection, as from rape or abuse by camp leaders, their individual requests are not likely to be answered.

Told this, Ms. Felicien said, “Ay yi yi” and shook her head. And then she posted her letter all the same.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/world/americas/20haiti.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession .

After other recent downturns, older people who lost jobs fretted about how long it would take to return to the work force and worried that they might never recover their former incomes. But today, because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy's recent pace, many of these older people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes.

For Ms. Reid, it has been four years of hunting — without a single job offer. She buzzes energetically as she describes the countless applications she has lobbed through the Internet, as well as the online courses she is taking to burnish her software skills.

Still, when she is pressed, her can-do spirit falters.

“There are these fears in the background, and they are suppressed,” said Ms. Reid, who is now selling some of her jewelry and clothes online and is late on some credit card payments. “I have had nightmares about becoming a bag lady,” she said. “It could happen to anyone. So many people are so close to it, and they don't even realize it.”

Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills — as well as some technical skills sought by employers — are rusty after years of working for the same company.

Many had in fact anticipated working past conventional retirement ages to gird themselves financially for longer life spans, expensive health care and reduced pension guarantees.

The most recent recession has increased the need to extend working life. Home values, often a family's most important asset, have been battered. Stock portfolios are only now starting to recover. According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.

Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. “That's what we should be worrying about,” said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University , “what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable part of their career and their life.”

Forced early retirement imposes an intense financial strain, particularly for those at lower incomes. The recession and its aftermath have already pushed down some older workers. In figures released last week by the Census Bureau , the poverty rate among those 55 to 64 increased to 9.4 percent in 2009, from 8.6 percent in 2007.

But even middle-class people who might skate by on savings or a spouse's income are jarred by an abrupt end to working life and to a secure retirement.

“That's what I spent my whole life in pursuit of, was security,” Ms. Reid said. “Until the last few years, I felt very secure in my job.”

As an auditor, Ms. Reid loved figuring out the kinks in a manufacturing or parts delivery process. But after more than 20 years of commuting across Puget Sound to Boeing, Ms. Reid was exhausted when she was let go from her $80,000-a-year job.

Stunned and depressed, she sent out résumés, but figured she had a little time to recover. So she took vacations to Turkey and Thailand with her husband, who is a home repairman. She sought chiropractic treatments for a neck injury and helped nurse a priest dying of cancer.

Most of her days now are spent in front of a laptop, holed up in a lighthouse garret atop the house that her husband, Denny Mielock, built in the 1990s on a breathtaking piece of property overlooking the sound.

As she browses the job listings that clog her e-mail in-box, she refuses to give in to her fears. “If I let myself think like that all the time,” she said, “I could not even bear getting out of bed in the morning.”

With her husband's home repair business pummeled by the housing downturn, the bills are mounting. Although the couple do not have a mortgage on their 3,000-square-foot house, they pay close to $7,000 a year in property taxes. The roof is leaking. Their utility bills can be $300 a month in the winter, even though they often keep the thermostat turned down to 50 degrees.

They could try to sell their home, but given the depressed housing market, they are reluctant.

“We are circling the drain here, and I am bailing like hell,” said Ms. Reid, emitting an incongruous cackle, as if laughter is the only response to her plight. “But the boat is still sinking.”

It is not just the finances that have destabilized her life.

Her husband worries that she isolates herself and that she does not socialize enough. “We've both been hard workers our whole lives,” said Mr. Mielock, 59. Ms. Reid sometimes rose just after 3 a.m. to make the hourlong commute to Boeing's data center in Bellevue and attended night school to earn a master's in management information systems.

“A job is more than a job, you know,” Mr. Mielock said. “It's where you fit in society.”

Here in the greater Seattle area, a fifth of those claiming extended unemployment benefits are 55 and older.

To help seniors polish their job-seeking skills, WorkSource, a local consortium of government and nonprofit groups, recently began offering seminars. On a recent morning, 14 people gathered in a windowless conference room at a local community college to get tips on how to age-proof their résumés and deflect questions about being overqualified.

Motivational posters hung on one wall, bearing slogans like “Failure is the path of least persistence.”

Using PowerPoint slides, Liz Howland, the chipper but no-nonsense session leader, projected some common myths about older job-seekers on a screen: “Older workers are less capable of evaluating information, making decisions and problem-solving” or “Older workers are rigid and inflexible and have trouble adapting to change.”

Ms. Howland, 61, ticked off the reasons those statements were inaccurate. But a clear undercurrent of anxiety ran through the room. “Is it really true that if you have the energy and the passion that they will overlook the age factor?” asked a 61-year-old man who had been laid off from a furniture maker last October.

Gallows humor reigned. As Ms. Howland — who suggested that applicants remove any dates older than 15 years from their résumé — advised the group on how to finesse interview questions like “When did you have the job that helped you develop that skill?” one out-of-work journalist deadpanned: “How about ‘during the 20th century?' ”

During a break, Anne Richard, who declined to give her age, confessed she was afraid she would not be able to work again after losing her contract as a house director at a University of Washington sorority in June. Although she had 20 years of experience as an office clerk in Chattanooga, Tenn., she feared her technology skills had fallen behind.

“I don't feel like I can compete with kids who have been on computers all their lives,” said Ms. Richard, who was sleeping on the couch of a couple she had met at church and contemplating imminent homelessness.

Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

At this year's pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.

Advocates for the elderly worry that younger people are more likely to fill the new jobs as well.

“I do think the longer someone is out of work, the more employers are going to question why it is that someone hasn't been able to find work,” said Sara Rix, senior strategic policy adviser at AARP , the lobbying group for seniors. “Their skills have atrophied for one thing, and technology changes so rapidly that even if nothing happened to the skills that you have, they may become increasingly less relevant to the jobs that are becoming available.”

In four years of job hunting, Ms. Reid has discovered that she is no longer technologically proficient. In one of a handful of interviews she has secured, for an auditing position at the Port of Seattle, she learned that the job required skills in PeopleSoft, financial software she had never used. She assumes that deficiency cost her the job.

Ms. Reid is still five years away from being eligible for Social Security . But even then, she would be drawing early, which reduces monthly payments. Taking Social Security at 62 means a retiree would receive a 25 percent lower monthly payout than if she worked until 66.

Ms. Reid is in some ways luckier than others. Boeing paid her a six-month severance, and she has health care benefits that cover her and her husband for $40 a month.

And she admits some regrets: she had a $180,000 balance in her 401(k) account, and paid $80,000 in penalties and taxes when she cashed it out early. She did not rein in her expenses right away. And now, her $500-a-week unemployment benefits have been exhausted.

She has since cut back, forgoing Nordstrom shopping sprees and theater subscriptions, but also cutting out red meat at home and putting off home repairs.

In order to qualify for accounting posts, she is taking an online training course in QuickBooks, a popular accounting software used by small businesses. She recently signed up for a tax course at an H&R Block tax preparation office in Seattle.

And she is plugging ahead with her current plan: to send out 600 applications to accounting firms in the area, offering her services for the next tax season. Eventually, she wants to open her own business.

With odd jobs and her husband's — albeit shriveled — earnings, she could stagger along. For now, she stitches together an income by gardening for neighbors, helping fellow church members with their computers, and participating in Internet surveys for as little as $5 apiece.

“You don't necessarily have to go through the door,” Ms. Reid said. “You can go around it and go under it. I can be very creative. I think that I will eventually manage to pull this together.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/economy/20older.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Can You Steal a Whole Building? Thieves Cart Off St. Louis Bricks

The city's bricks are prized by developers throughout the South for their quality and craftsmanship.

Mr. Feemster, who gets around on an electric scooter, had to be carried out of the burning building, but today he considers himself lucky that the damage was contained to just two rooms.

“My neighbor's house was completely destroyed,” said Mr. Feemster, 58. “I guess it was one of the crackheads in that vacant house.”

Perhaps. But the blaze, one of 391 fires at vacant buildings in the city over the past two years, may have had a more sinister cause. Law enforcement officials, politicians and historic preservationists here have concluded that brick thieves are often to blame, deliberately torching buildings to quicken their harvest of St. Louis brick, prized by developers throughout the South for its distinctive character.

“The firemen come and hose them down and shoot all that mortar off with the high-pressure hose,” said Alderman Samuel Moore, whose predominantly black Fourth Ward has been hit particularly hard by brick thieves. When a thief goes to pick up the bricks after a fire, “They're just laying there nice and clean.”

It is a crime that has increased with the recession. Where thieves in many cities harvest copper, aluminum and other materials from vacant buildings, brick rustling has emerged more recently as a sort of scrapper's endgame, exploited once the rest of a building's architectural elements have been exhausted. “Cleveland is suffering from this,” said Royce Yeater, Midwest director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation . “I've also heard of it happening in Detroit.”

After the fire that devastated much of St. Louis in 1849, city leaders passed an ordinance requiring all new buildings to be made of noncombustible material. That law, along with the rich clays of eastern Missouri, led to a flourishing brick industry here. Historians say that at the industry's height, around 1900, the city had more than 100 manufacturing plants, and St. Louis became known for the quality, craftsmanship and abundance of its brick.

“They love it in New Orleans and the South — wherever they're rebuilding, they want it because it's beautiful brick,” said Barbara Buck, who owns Century Used Brick. “It really gives the building a dimension, a fingerprint.”

Mr. Moore, who is drafting a bill that would increase the penalties for brick theft, said that while many thieves still used cables and picks to collapse a wall, arson had become the tool of choice. Thieves even set fire to wood-frame homes to create a diversion. Firefighters often knock down walls, making it easier for thieves to harvest the bricks.

“The whole block is gone — they stole the whole block,” Mr. Moore marveled as he drove his white Dodge Magnum through his ward's motley collection of dilapidated homes and vacant lots. “They're stealing entire buildings, buildings that belong to the city. Where else in the world do you steal an entire city building?”

There are more than 8,000 vacant buildings in St. Louis, and more than 11,000 vacant lots.

The maximum penalty for brick theft here is a $500 fine or 90 days in jail or both. The city police said there were 34 brick-related thefts in the last year.

“You see these guys with mortar dust all over them, and they're stacking on a palette, and they'll say, ‘I'm just a day laborer working for that guy over there — whoa, where did he go?' ” said Maribeth McMahon, a lawyer with the city counselor's office. “So this poor stiff, who's just trying to earn an hourly wage, gets a summons.”

Ms. Buck, who said thieves often arrived at her brickyard with “bricks in the trunk of a Lexus,” said she followed city ordinance and required brick vendors to produce a demolition permit to sell their bricks. A palette of 500 goes for roughly $100, she said, but other less scrupulous buyers do not require permits.

Ms. Buck estimates that as many as eight tractor-trailer loads of stolen bricks leave the city each week for Florida, Louisiana or Texas, because “St. Louis brick is in such high demand.”

The toll on the city's struggling north side has been particularly heavy. During a hard-luck tour of his ward last week, Mr. Moore pointed out several piles of rubble where houses once stood.

Mature trees grew from the foundations of some, while others were missing entire walls, laying bare unsupported second floors, dangling electrical outlets and the remnants of those who once lived there — their wallpaper, posters, toilets, clothing and curtains.

Rounding one fallen-down building, Mr. Moore encountered a lone thief as he piled bricks into the back of an S.U.V. Pushing the rear seats forward, the man had nearly filled his vehicle when Mr. Moore approached on foot.

“Put them all back, and I won't lock you up,” Mr. Moore yelled as the man, dressed in a filthy T-shirt and ragged pajama bottoms, stopped in his tracks.

Apologizing, the man, who declined to give his name, said that he had been “messing with bricks” for only a week, and that he had never been asked for identification when selling his harvest.

“I don't even know the man,” he said. “You just pull up there and sell him your bricks.”

As the man drove off, Mr. Moore turned to head back to his office.

“He been doing bricks longer than a week,” Mr. Moore groused. “Those bricks will be gone tomorrow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20brick.html?ref=us

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Texts From the Lifeguard Chair Are Raising Concerns Over Safety

The summer of 2010 will be remembered for its record heat. But it has provided a different memory for Bernard J. Fisher II, the director of health and safety at the American Lifeguard Association.

This was the year he heard a sharp rise in complaints about lifeguards who were texting on the job.

“This issue has really come out for us this year,” Mr. Fisher said, adding that he had heard several dozen complaints about the practice this summer, compared with none in 2008. “Lives are being endangered, if not already lost, because of text messaging .”

The threat is not hypothetical. At a public pool this summer in Duncan, Ariz., a child panicked in the water and was rescued by an adult visitor. Others at the pool said the lifeguard had been texting, and he was fired, said John Basteen Jr., the town manager.

Last summer, a 45-year-old Illinois man drowned at a beach where the guard was texting, according to witnesses deposed in a civil suit against the residential community where the drowning happened.

And two years ago in Ireland, a 10-year-old boy drowned in a pool that was guarded by a young man who had been texting. The guard admitted at a public hearing to texting before the drowning.

The explanations seem clear. Lifeguarding positions are commonly filled by college students who may not want to feel disconnected from their gadgets, even if their job is to devote full attention to watching for signs of trouble.

Mr. Fisher of the lifeguard association said pools and waterfront associations often could not afford to hire well-qualified guards or to supervise guards as closely as they might have in past years.

Organizations have cut lifeguard wages, he said, to the point where many earn minimum wage and pay for their own training and certification, which can cost hundreds of dollars.

“Because of the lack of pay, you can't pick and choose the caliber of guard you need,” Mr. Fisher said. “Plus, the current generation is a generation of texting.”

Paul Atchley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas who has extensively researched the technology habits of teenagers and young adults, said such behavior was not surprising, even among lifeguards.

“It kind of takes my breath away, but younger people have the capacity and the expectation to be able to communicate all the time,” he said. “When they are excluded from texting networks, their self-esteem declines. I don't think it's compulsion to multitask as much as it is a compulsion to belong.”

Even texting in short bursts breaks standard rules for lifeguarding. They are trained to scan their areas in 10-second cycles, because a person can drown in as little as 20 seconds.

Many pools and waterfronts have procedures to prevent guards from using cellphones while on duty. Mary O'Donaghue, the aquatic specialist for the Y.M.C.A. of Greater New York, said the organization's roughly 200 guards cannot bring electronic devices onto the chair.

In past years, Ms. O'Donaghue said, if guards were caught with cellphones while on duty, they were immediately removed from duty and given another round of training. “Sometimes they continued working with us, sometimes not,” she said.

Starting last year, the organization placed greater emphasis on the issue in its monthly training sessions where lifeguards must acknowledge in writing that they can be fired for carrying electronic devices. Since then, no guards have been found violating the policy.

Clemente Rivera, of Rockaway Beach, Queens, who has been a lifeguard and waterfront supervisor in the New York City area since 1989, said that he often sees guards using their phones. “It's just rampant,” he said.

Mr. Rivera said he tried an unconventional approach to solving the problem. In 2008, as a regional pool manager for a chain of sports clubs, he saw a lifeguard texting while people were swimming. “I was annoyed,” he said.

The guard quickly slipped the phone in his pocket when he spotted Mr. Rivera, who walked to the edge of the pool. He then called the guard over, asked him to look at something in the water and then gave the guard “a little shove.”

Mr. Rivera's managers asked him to explain his actions, but he was not reprimanded, and the pool's guards were never seen texting again.

“Even if the pool's empty, it's unconscionable,” Mr. Rivera said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20lifeguard.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Dream Time

OPINION

Congress may soon have a chance to repair, in a powerful way, the shambles it has made of immigration. It can pass an amendment to the defense authorization bill due to come before the Senate on Tuesday. The amendment is the Dream Act, an inspired bit of carving from the hugely ambitious, chronically unsuccessful comprehensive immigration reform.

The Dream Act opens the door to military service and higher education for young people whose parents brought them to this country as children without proper documentation. If they finish high school, show good moral character and serve at least two years in the military or earn a college degree, they can earn citizenship.

In a poisoned climate for legislation of any kind, and with the immigration debate more wretched than ever, the Dream Act's chances are uncertain. That is a shame, because the act was written for exactly the kind of people America should be embracing: young soldiers, scholars, strivers, future leaders.

Those who might qualify — roughly 800,000 of the 11 million people living here without authorization — are blameless for their illegal status and helpless to make it right. Most cannot leave their families to return to countries they do not know. They cannot legally work, qualify for scholarships or loans to pay for college, or serve in the military. They live in limbo, vulnerable to arrest, their dreams deferred, their hopes squandered.

The Defense Department, at least, understands their value. Passage of the Dream Act is one of its official goals for helping to maintain “a mission-ready, all-volunteer force.” The educators and others who also support the act recognize how much better it is to encourage the aspirations of young people, not to consign them to lives of under-the-table jobs and unmet potential.

For years the Dream Act was shackled to larger immigration bills as a sweetener to help forge one big compromise. Now that comprehensive reform is dead in this Congress, and perhaps in the next, the Dream Act is the best hope for legalizing any significant number of Americans-in-waiting.

The president and Congress and dejected supporters of comprehensive reform have an obligation to make the Dream Act come true. Republican senators who have shelved their commitment to reform should help make it happen: people like Orrin Hatch, an original Dream Act sponsor, now a sour voice for border control. Sam Brownback, another former supporter. And the formerly bipartisan Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

The Dream Act alone won't achieve the large-scale reform the country needs. But it will be a desperately needed affirmation that fixing immigration is not all about border fear and lockdowns. It's about welcoming the hopeful.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/opinion/20mon2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Shortchanging America's Women

OPINION

Annual earnings data released last Thursday by the Census Bureau confirm a troubling discrepancy facing women workers and their families. Full-time women employees still make, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men — a lingering gender gap that depresses women's pay by thousands of dollars.

This latest confirmation of disparate compensation poses an immediate challenge for the Senate, where important legislation aimed at combating gender-based wage discrimination now hangs in the balance.

The measure, the Paycheck Fairness Act , would accomplish a much-needed updating and strengthening of the nation's 47-year-old Equal Pay Act.

Key provisions would enhance the remedies available for victims of gender-based discrimination, protect employees from retaliation for sharing salary information with co-workers, and require employers to show that wage differences are job-related, not sex-based, and driven by business necessity.

The clock is ticking. The bill, which has strong backing from the Obama White House, has already passed the House by a wide margin. With scant time remaining in the Congressional session, the Senate must act quickly to pass the bill or it will die.

The fact that the Senate bill has no Republican co-sponsors speaks volumes about the prevailing partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill.

But four G.O.P. senators — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — supported another measure targeting wage discrimination just last year. By standing up again for America's women when the Paycheck Fairness Act finally reaches the Senate floor, they would advance the cause significantly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/opinion/20mon3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Tragic consequences of distracted driving

After mother is killed, Oak Park woman pushes for crackdown on ALL cell-phone use in car

September 20, 2010

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI

Driving while talking on a cell phone is as unsafe as driving while drunk, and it doesn't matter whether the phone is handheld or hands free, research shows.

Let's repeat that last part, because few people seem to get it -- IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S HANDS FREE.

The answer is the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Walter Brzeski of Chicago was the first with the right answer.

"It's not about where your hands are, it's where your head is," said Jennifer Smith, president of FocusDriven, a group that advocates cell-free driving.

"There is no study out there that shows hands free is safer. There are crashes where people were talking on hands-free devices and they killed people."

Smith, 36, of Oak Park, became an anti-cell phone crusader because of the death of her mother Linda Doyle in 2008.

Doyle was driving through an Oklahoma intersection when a young man, distracted by his cell phone, ran a red light and broadsided Doyle's car. Doyle, 61, died within hours.

At the time, Smith was a real estate agent and regularly used her cell phone, with a headset, while driving. After her mother's accident, she got on the Internet, and was shocked by how much research proved the dangers of distracted driving.

"I was just amazed," said Smith. "How did this happen in this country, and how had nobody done anything?"

Smith got in contact with Judy and David Teater, whose 12-year-old son, Joseph, had been killed in 2004 by a driver distracted by a cell phone. Together, they started collecting names of victims and families to start a national organization, modeled on Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"I researched MADD and what they did," said Smith. "We met with [U.S. Department of Transportation] Secretary Ray LaHood and he said, 'There needs to be a group like MADD' and we said 'We're working on it.' "

Members of the group appeared on Oprah Winfrey's program about distracted driving. Smith will be in Washington, D.C., Tuesday for DOT's National Distracted Driving Summit.

Smith said that although many people now agree that driving while on a cell phone can be dangerous, they think the rules should apply to those other drivers -- not themselves. A University of Utah study found that 97.5 percent of the population does not have the ability to multitask in the manner required to talk on the phone and drive safely. The rare group who can might make good fighter pilots.

"The big problem is that people think they're in that 2.5 percent," said Smith. "Unless you're 'Top Gun,' you can't do it."

The problem is not caused by holding a phone -- people don't drive less safely because they have a stick shift, Smith noted. The problem is a phenomenon called "inattention blindness," which means you can be looking straight out the windshield and not see what's in front of you because your brain is elsewhere. Many drivers who have been in cell-phone related crashes said they didn't see that the light was red, Smith said.

"Their brain is task-switching, instead of multi-tasking," said Smith. Drivers using cell phones look but fail to see up to half the information in their driving environment, according to Dave Strayer, an author of the Utah study. Talking with a passenger is different, because a passenger can point out hazards and stop talking if driving conditions change.

The city of Chicago, all state laws, and many employer policies allow hands-free phone use. But not only are hands-free devices not safe, they may lead people to talk longer, Smith said.

Although she's not happy that laws allow hands-free devices, Smith admits that in trying to pass laws, you can't go for too much at once because then you get nothing. She said laws and enforcement help, but so does education. Another answer could be new technology, already being used by some company fleet managers, which disables wireless devices while a car is in motion.

Smith said that even after her mother's death, the phone habit was hard to break -- she had to keep it in her purse and out of reach while she drove. But it's worth the effort, because you can save a life, she said.

"When are people going to wake up?" Smith said. "Nothing you're talking about is that important."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2727106,CST-NWS-ride20.article

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Used car seat could put your child at risk

September 20, 2010

Everyone loves a garage sale bargain, especially when it comes to kid stuff that's only used for a few years.

But buying a used car seat can be risky, because it could have been in a crash, it could be too old, or parts could be missing, said Sgt. Jim Jenkner, safety education officer for the Illinois State Police.

"We've found where people buy a seat at a garage sale and it's missing pieces -- they [prior owners] took the screws out or the padding," said Jenkner, who checks car seat installations for a State Police/Illinois Tollway program. He sees similar issues when a seat is handed down over several years, or parents buy it online.

In Illinois, 80 percent of car seats are installed incorrectly, according to the state's Transportation Department. Sept. 25 is National Seat Check Saturday, so State Police will do free car seat checks at Illinois Tollway headquarters at 2700 Ogden Ave. in Downers Grove.

Jenkner finds that parents and grandparents often don't tighten the seat into the car properly. He also sees the chest harness clip sitting too low -- it should be over the child's sternum, not the tummy.

Jennifer Pondel, managing director of Learning Curve, parent of car seat manufacturer The First Years, recommends that parents make sure they buy a car seat that will fit properly in the car -- some seats don't fit all vehicles. She suggests consulting both the car seat instruction manual and the car owner's manual for help.

Pondel also recommends getting help from a knowledgeable salesperson at the baby store, and taking a seat out to the car to see how it installs before you buy it.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2727104,CST-NWS-rideside20.article

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