Pakistani Militant Chief Is Reported Dead

Mr. Kashmiri is considered one of the most dangerous and highly trained Pakistani militants allied with Al Qaeda. A former member of Pakistan’s special forces, the Special Services Group, Mr. Kashmiri was suspected of being behind several attacks, including the May 22 battle at the Mehran naval base in the southern port city of Karachi that deeply embarrassed Pakistani officials. He has also been implicated in the terrorist attack on Mumbai, India, in 2008, in which at least 163 people were killed, including some American citizens.

He was reported to have been killed Friday in a strike on a compound in Laman, near Wana, the main town of South Waziristan. Atifur Rehman, a senior government official in Wana, said the strike killed nine people. Mr. Rehman said there had been reports that Mr. Kashmiri had recently set up operations in Laman, and that a sharp increase in drone flights over the area had been noticed in the past few days.

A known Taliban militant in Wana contacted by telephone confirmed that Mr. Kashmiri had been killed. But an intelligence official in the capital, Islamabad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had not received any independent confirmations of the report. And American officials — who cautioned that previous reports of Mr. Kashmiri’s death had turned out to be false, including a Pakistani claim he had died in a drone strike in September 2009 — said they were trying to confirm the new reports on Saturday morning.

Mr. Kashmiri’s death would certainly be welcomed by both American and Pakistani intelligence agencies, and could go some way to alleviating the strained relations between the two countries that have developed in recent months, in particular since the May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden 75 miles from Islamabad. Pakistan has accused the United States of pursuing its own agenda in Pakistan without coordinating with Pakistani security forces, running its own intelligence agents and conducting unilateral strikes that ride roughshod over Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The United States has sent three high-level delegations to Islamabad in recent weeks, the last one led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to try to repair relations. Mrs. Clinton said the United States was looking for specific actions from Pakistan in coming days and weeks, including intelligence sharing, which had all but broken down.

Mr. Kashmiri was wanted by both countries and could have been a good target for renewed intelligence sharing. He is reported to lead a unit called the 313 brigade, and belongs to the group Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami, which is suspected of a number of high-profile attacks, including an attack against the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison city next to Islamabad.

The attack on the navy base in Karachi, conducted by half a dozen commando militants, lasted 16 hours before security forces regained control of the base.

Mr. Kashmiri, 45, has a long history of waging guerrilla operations. As a Pakistani Army trainer of Afghan mujahedeen fighters, he lost an eye battling Russian forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Later, while working with Kashmiri militants attacking India, Pakistan’s archrival, he earned renown in Pakistan after escaping from an Indian jail where he had been imprisoned for two years. But he turned against the state when President Pervez Musharraf banned his group after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was arrested four years later in connection with an attempted assassination of Mr. Musharraf in December 2003, but released because of a lack of evidence.

Mr. Kashmiri was indicted in 2009 along with two Chicago men accused of plotting an attack against a Danish newspaper that had printed a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. One of the men, David Coleman Headley, testified recently at the Chicago trial of the other man, Tahawwur Rana, that Mr. Kashmiri, angered by the American campaign of drone strikes, had asked him to research possibilities for attacking the defense contractor Lockheed Martin in retaliation.

After the Pakistani government laid siege to Islamic militants in the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007, Mr. Kashmiri moved his operations to North Waziristan and took up arms with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban there. He is listed as the fourth-most wanted man by the Interior Ministry, according to Pakistani media reports.

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Mr. Kashmiri is among the most dangerous militant leaders in Pakistan today because of his training skills, commando experience and strategic vision to carry out attacks against Western targets.

Reporting was contributed by Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

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I.M.F. Names Replacement as Chief Awaits Arraignment

Mr. Lipsky, the I.M.F.’s first deputy managing director, is a former U.S. Treasury executive and onetime banker at JP Morgan. William Murray, an I.M.F. spokesman, said that Mr. Lipsky, who has been overseeing the logistics of the bailout of the Greek economy, would meet with members of the I.M.F. board in Washington later in the day, according to Reuters.

“In line with standard I.M.F. procedures, John Lipsky, first deputy managing director, is acting managing director while the M.D. is not in D.C.,” Mr. Murray said in a statement. “Mr. Lipsky will chair the informal Board session today.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was awaiting arraignment on Sunday afternoon in Manhattan. The New York Police Department formally arrested him at 2:15 that morning “on charges of criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and an unlawful imprisonment in connection with a sexual assault on a 32-year-old chambermaid in the luxury suite of a Midtown Manhattan hotel yesterday” about 1 p.m., Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said.

Reached by telephone, Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer, said he would be representing Mr. Strauss-Kahn with William Taylor, a lawyer in Washington.

“We have not yet been able to meet with our client and we may have more to say tomorrow,” said Mr. Brafman, who said he had been contacted late Saturday night. He said Mr. Strauss-Kahn was being housed at the police department’s Special Victims?Unit.

Early Sunday morning, Mr. Brafman said that his client “will plead not guilty.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, had been expected to declare his candidacy soon, after three and a half years as the leader of the fund, which is based in Washington. He was considered by many to have done a good job in a period of intense global economic strain, when the institution itself had become vital to the smooth running of the world and the European economy.

His apprehension came at about 4:40 p.m. at Kennedy Airport, when two detectives of the Port Authority suddenly boarded Air France Flight 23, as the plane idled at the departure gate, said John P. L. Kelly, a spokesman for the agency.

“It was 10 minutes before its scheduled departure,” Mr. Kelly said. “They were just about to close the doors.”

Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was traveling alone and that he was not handcuffed during the apprehension.

“He complied with the detectives’ directions,” Mr. Kelly said.

The Port Authority officers were acting on information from the Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating the assault of a female employee of Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, near Times Square. Working quickly, the city detectives learned he had boarded a flight at Kennedy Airport to leave the country.

Though Mr. Strauss-Kahn received generally high marks for his stewardship of the fund, his reputation was tarnished in 2008 by an affair with a Hungarian economist who was a subordinate there. The fund decided to stand by him despite concluding that he had shown poor judgment in the affair. Mr. Strauss-Kahn issued an apology to I.M.F. employees and to his wife, Anne Sinclair, an American-born French journalist.

In his statement then, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said, “I am grateful that the board has confirmed that there was no abuse of authority on my part, but I accept that this incident represents a serious error of judgment.” The economist, Piroska Nagy, left the fund as part of a buyout of nearly 600 employees instituted by Mr. Strauss-Kahn to cut costs.

In the New York case, Mr. Browne said that it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied. Mr. Browne said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Mr. Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.

As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.

“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.

At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel, who called 911.” He added, “When the police arrived, he was not there.” Mr. Browne said Mr. Strauss-Kahn appeared to have left in a hurry. In the room, investigators found his cellphone, which he had left behind, and one law enforcement official said that the investigation uncovered forensic evidence that would contain DNA.

William K. Rashbaum and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

 

Amid Impasse in Peace Negotiations, America’s Chief Middle East Envoy Resigns

 

On his second day in office in January 2009, President Obama appointed Mr. Mitchell, signaling the administration’s desire to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But despite more than two years of shuttle diplomacy, the two sides appear further apart today than at any time in years.

“His deep commitment to resolving conflict and advancing democracy has contributed immeasurably to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security,” Mr. Obama said in a written statement announcing the resignation and referring to American support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The news of Mr. Mitchell’s departure, while not a surprise, broke at an awkward time. His resignation is effective next Friday, the same day Mr. Obama is to meet at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, with whom the president has had an icy, if polite, relationship. Yet the date on Mr. Mitchell’s brief resignation letter, which the White House released late Friday afternoon, is April 6, five weeks ago.

In the letter, Mr. Mitchell, 77, said he had initially agreed to do what the president called “the toughest job imaginable” for only two years. He largely abandoned his diplomatic efforts after a failed push last year to persuade Israel to freeze the construction of settlements in territories claimed by the Palestinians.

Mr. Mitchell last visited the region in December, even as divisions between the Israelis and Palestinians hardened and hostilities deepened. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed his deputy, David Hale, to take over as acting envoy.

Mr. Mitchell’s resignation comes at a time when the Middle East has been transformed by popular uprisings that have toppled aging autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt, prompted a NATO-led air war against Libya and led to harsh crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain.

The White House has announced that Mr. Obama plans to address the region in the wake of the upheaval — and the death of Osama bin Laden — in a speech on Thursday at the State Department. Coming a day before Mr. Netanyahu’s visit, it could set the stage for further disagreements. Mr. Obama was also scheduled to meet Tuesday with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

“We remain committed to peace in the Middle East and to building on George’s hard work and progress toward achieving this goal,” Mr. Obama said, though officials have said it is unlikely that the president will outline new American proposals to break the impasse, either in his speech or in his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu.

For his part, the Israeli prime minister is to visit Washington in search of support for heading off Palestinian plans to seek a vote in September at the United Nations General Assembly. The Palestinians hope for recognition of an independent Palestine with territory that includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu has made it clear that the turmoil in the region has heightened his country’s security concerns, making a negotiated peace an unacceptably risky gamble for now.

Last week, the two rival Palestinian factions, Fatah on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo, prompting a fierce denunciation from Israel, which says it cannot negotiate with Hamas, a group designated by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization.

American and European diplomats have insisted that any Palestinian government that included Hamas had to accept basic principles laid out by negotiators over the years, including renouncing violence and recognizing Israel. Mrs. Clinton, in Rome last week, did not slam the door on negotiations with the Palestinians that would include Hamas, but there seemed to be no intention by either side to resume substantive talks.

In Israel, the reaction to Mr. Mitchell’s departure mirrored the current state of the conflict, with Palestinian and Israeli officials blaming each other for his failure to broker a deal, though they joined in praising his work.

Zalman Shoval, a special envoy for Mr. Netanyahu who focuses on relations with the United States, said Mr. Mitchell had “made a major effort to try to move peace between Israel and the Palestinians” and deserved gratitude. “But at the end of the day, his efforts were undermined by the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations.”

Nabil Shaath, who heads Fatah’s foreign affairs department in the West Bank, said that it was Israeli behavior that needed to change. “The man was not given any support and he failed,” Mr. Shaath said of Mr. Mitchell in a telephone interview. “I don’t really blame him. He found himself without any initiative or ability to move ahead. He found himself doing a futile job. I liked the man. He is honest and hard-working, with lots of experience.”

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

 

Denying Links to Militants, Pakistan’s Spy Chief Denounces U.S. Before Parliament

Rather, the spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, blamed an intelligence failure for the presence of Bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, where a top military academy is located and where the leader of Al Qaeda was killed in an American raid on May 2.

General Pasha said he had offered his resignation twice to the leader of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. As his presence before Parliament made clear, it was not accepted.

The two generals were called before the extraordinary 11-hour session to answer to the failures of the military and the intelligence agency that allowed a team of American commandos to enter and leave Pakistan in a stealth helicopter operation undetected.

Unusually vibrant criticism by some politicians and the Pakistani press after the raid compelled them to try to repair the reputation of the military and the intelligence agency, which the army controls.

But after recognizing the lapse, General Pasha rallied Parliament behind him, several legislators said, with strong criticisms of the United States that elicited thumps of approval from the chamber, including leading members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the major partner in the coalition that the Obama administration supports.

At the end of the session, the leader of the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who has been one of the most severe critics of the military since the raid, closed ranks behind the military. The session was organized so that “a positive message should go out to the masses,” Mr. Khan said.

A resolution that was passed at the session said Pakistan would revisit its relationship with the United States “with the view to ensuring Pakistan’s national interests were fully respected.”

In that vein, Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, will not allow the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct operations in Pakistan without the full knowledge of the ISI, General Pasha said.

The spy chief did the talking. General Kayani attended the session, along with the heads of the air force and the navy, but did not speak, apparently to be spared the humiliation. Senior military officials, considered to be above civilian law and a power unto themselves, rarely appear before Parliament, or even its defense committees.

General Pasha told Parliament he had a “shouting match” with the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, over C.I.A. activities in Pakistan when they met recently in Washington, several lawmakers who attended the session said.

Reviewing the history of American relations with Pakistan, General Pasha declared that the United States, which has provided Pakistan with about $20 billion in aid over the last decade, had let Pakistan down at every turn since the 1960s, including imposing sanctions on the country in the 1990s.

“And now they have conducted a sting operation on us,” General Pasha said, according to one lawmaker. The intelligence chief was referring to the fact that the Obama administration had decided not to inform Pakistan in advance of the raid because of fears that the Pakistanis could not be trusted.

Before answering questions from the more than 400 members of Parliament from both chambers, the military gave a PowerPoint presentation that included photographs of Qaeda militants captured or killed by the ISI since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

General Pasha then explained that Pakistan should be given credit for dismantling Al Qaeda even before the United States killed Bin Laden, according to the accounts from lawmakers after the session.

In a direct assault on statements by American officials that the ISI supports jihadist militant groups, including the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, General Pasha said there was no such policy. “We have nothing to do with the Haqqani network,” he was quoted as saying.

American officials have long maintained suspicion that the Haqqani group, along with the Taliban, has been sheltered and sponsored by Pakistan, which uses them to push Pakistani interests in Afghanistan, where the insurgents attack NATO forces.

Some of the legislators asked for explanations of why the Pakistani Air Force did not detect the American helicopters that ferried the team of Navy Seal commandos into Abbottabad and out again.

The deputy chief of Air Staff Operations, Air Marshal Muhammad Hassan, said the American helicopters were equipped with stealth technology that enabled them to evade radar.

By the time the air force learned about the raid from ground reports at Abbottabad and launched fighter jets, the helicopters had completed their mission and flown out of Pakistan, he said.

But the air marshal, in answer to a question, said that the F-16 jet fighters provided by the United States to Pakistan were capable of shooting down the drones that the C.I.A. flies over the tribal areas to attack militants. The drone campaign has become increasingly unpopular among Pakistan’s politicians even as the Obama administration insists that it has no intention of halting the flights.

For the first time, according to one lawmaker, Air Marshal Hassan acknowledged that Pakistan allowed the United States to fly the drones out of Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan.

The Pakistani government has always maintained in public that it does not condone the drone campaign, while in private it has given permission for the flights.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.

 

Call for police chief to resign

。 10 May 2011 Last updated at 16:16 ET  Mr Maxwell received the Queen's Police Medal in 2008 The MP for Skipton and Ripon has called for the immediate resignation of North Yorkshire Police's chief constable.

Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell was given a final written warning after admitting disreputable conduct in a hearing on Tuesday.

Tory MP Julian Smith said the current situation was "not acceptable" and called for Mr Maxwell to step down.

A hearing found Mr Maxwell had assisted a relative in a police recruitment drive.

Mr Smith said: "Public life, I believe is about trust, and no more so than if you are leading a police force.

"It is looking after the interests of my constituents and thousands of other people across North Yorkshire. Having admitted that very grave issue, I believe he has to go."

'Undermined public confidence'

The police authority and Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) were involved in Mr Maxwell's hearing.

Lawyers for Mr Maxwell confirmed he had received a final written warning to remain in force for 18 months and "accepts that his conduct has been discreditable to the force and amounts to gross misconduct".

A statement issued by the legal team said he had "admitted an allegation that he had breached professional standards and thereby brought discredit upon and undermined public confidence in the police service".

The disciplinary panel met in secret, and Mr Smith has questioned why the hearing was held behind closed doors.

The police campaign hit the headlines when more than 200,000 people tried to get through to apply for 60 jobs last year.

'Set standards'

Mr Maxwell was filmed manning the phone lines himself but the volume of calls caused the phone system to crash and many potential applicants complained they could not get through.

He became North Yorkshire's chief constable in 2007, joining from South Yorkshire Police, where he had been a deputy since 2005.

He is thought to be the first chief constable to have faced gross misconduct charges in more than 30 years.

The IPCC said Mr Maxwell admitted assisting a member of his extended family and also a relative of his Deputy Chief Constable, Adam Briggs.

Mr Briggs was found at a hearing in December to have helped a relative get a job during the recruitment exercise when he received "management advice".

IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long said: "The Chief Constable and his deputy are the two most senior officers in the force and are supposed to lead by example and set the standards for others to follow."

Israeli Strike on Iran Would Be ‘Stupid,’ Ex-Spy Chief Says

The intelligence official, Meir Dagan, who retired in early January after eight years as director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, made the remarks at a conference here on Friday. His assessment contradicts the policy of the country’s political leaders, who have long argued in favor of a credible military option against Iran’s nuclear program.

The defense minister, Ehud Barak, criticized Mr. Dagan after his comments were widely publicized in the Israeli news media on Sunday.

Mr. Barak, saying that Mr. Dagan deserved credit for his contributions to state security, contended that he was “not wise to share his thoughts, legitimate as they may be,” with the general public.

“In the end of the day, these issues and decisions belong by their nature to the political echelon,” Mr. Barak said, adding that he was not sure that Mr. Dagan’s assessment was correct.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but Israeli, American and European officials believe that it is intended to produce nuclear weapons.

Independent analysts said that such a public stand by a respected figure like Mr. Dagan would complicate any plans the government might have to attack Iran.

Mr. Dagan, speaking for the first time in public since his retirement, was addressing a conference of senior public servants. His remarks were confirmed by a person who attended the conference, which was held at Belgium House, the faculty club of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Mr. Dagan is known to have long opposed military action against Iran, but he had never said so publicly. Mr. Dagan, who also said Friday that Iran must not be allowed to produce nuclear weapons, has advocated covert means of setting back the Iranian program.

Israel considers the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.

Speaking last week at a ceremony marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the world to “unequivocally condemn those who call for the obliteration of the Jewish state.”

“Iran is even arming itself with nuclear weapons to realize that goal, and until now the world has not stopped it,” he said. “The threat to our existence, to our future, is not theoretical. It cannot be swept under the carpet; it cannot be reduced. It faces us and all humanity, and it must be thwarted.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Dagan has courted controversy where Iran is concerned since he left office. In January, he told a group of Israeli reporters that he believed Iran would not be able to build a nuclear weapon before 2015, a year or more later than other Israeli estimates.

His revised assessment was based on obstacles that Iran has faced, including technical difficulties and covert actions against its nuclear program by intelligence agencies, according to Israeli news reports.

Some Israeli officials reacted furiously, worried that Mr. Dagan’s comments could reduce pressure on Iran.

But other Israelis, including two other former leaders of Mossad, said it was important for Mr. Dagan to be able to express his opinion. One official, who spoke at the time on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s delicacy, said, “It has never been about when exactly they will get the device.”

The real challenge over the next 12 to 18 months, the official said, is to prevent Iran from reaching the threshold of nuclear weapons capability. An unexpected technological breakthrough in Iran is possible, he said.

Arguing that this was a time for more diplomatic pressure, not less, the official said that Mr. Dagan’s 2015 assessment might have been partly intended to quiet the drums of war, but that it was nevertheless “really unfortunate.”

 

Media Decoder: Oprah Winfrey Network Chief Is Out

 OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network Christina Norman, left, with Oprah Winfrey and David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, celebrating the start of OWN on Jan. 1, 2011. Ms. Norman is exiting the channel.

9:17 p.m. | Updated | Dissatisfied by the first ratings report cards for OWN, Oprah Winfrey and her business partner, Discovery Communications, said on Friday that they had dismissed the four-month-old channel’s chief executive, Christina Norman.

Peter Liguori, the chief operating officer for Discovery Communications, will take over OWN through at least the end of the year. His assignment is formidable: to lure more viewers to a fledgling channel that most people cannot easily find on their cable systems and to manage the introduction for its two most anticipated programs, one featuring Ms. Winfrey and one featuring Rosie O’Donnell.

Mr. Liguori indicated in an interview that he would try to amp up the entertainment value of OWN’s programs without losing sight of Ms. Winfrey’s live-your-best-life principles. “I think you’re going to see more joy on the network,” he said. Ms. Winfrey and David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, preached patience in the months preceding the Jan. 1 introduction of OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, which is built around the supremely valuable Oprah brand. But both have been disappointed by the low ratings for the channel’s mix of feel-good reality shows, talk shows and films. On a total day basis, OWN is barely outperforming the channel it replaced, Discovery Health, despite hundreds of million of dollars of investment.

Already, Discovery has backed off its bold prediction that OWN will be profitable this year. A Discovery spokesman said profitability depended on “rating success, affiliate fees and the strength of the advertising market.”

Kevin Winter/Getty Images For AFI Oprah Winfrey and Peter Liguori, who will take over OWN, Ms. Winfrey’s fledgling channel, through at least year’s end.

Mr. Zaslav acknowledged to investors last week that the channel had a “slower start” than expected. And Ms. Winfrey said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, published Friday, that “it’s not where I want it to be.”

In part that is because Ms. Winfrey herself has not been a steady presence on the channel — a fact that Ms. Norman noted time and time again in past interviews. Ms. Winfrey is busy winding down her syndicated talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which will end on May 25, and only after that point — and a vacation — will she turn her full attention to OWN.

The highest-rated shows on OWN have been “Ask Oprah’s All Stars,” with advice from people like Dr. Mehmet Oz; “Our America With Lisa Ling”; and “The Judds.” In its first four months, OWN attracted 148,000 viewers at any given time, according to the Nielsen Company, only 7,000 more than Discovery Health did in the same time period last year. In the prime-time hours, OWN averaged 297,000 viewers, 44,000 more than Discovery Health.

The decision to oust Ms. Norman was the culmination of several recent conversations among members of the board that oversees OWN, according to two people with direct knowledge of the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their employers had not authorized them to speak.

In an e-mail message to the staff at OWN, Ms. Winfrey said that Ms. Norman’s “hard work, passion and leadership were instrumental in getting OWN on the air,” but added, “Given all that we have to do, the OWN board felt it was necessary that we have a different kind of leadership in place for the next phase of OWN’s growth.”

What the board was seeking, according to the people with direct knowledge of the decision, was a person to improve the channel’s programming voice. “Right now it’s all about the programming,” one of the people said. Mr. Liguori has programming cachet as the former president of entertainment for the Fox Broadcasting Company. He said in an interview that he would apply lessons of the last four months — for instance, that straightforward how-to shows and darker subject matter don’t work as well as shows that are more clearly entertaining. One underperforming show he cited was “Addicted to Food,” which chronicled people’s treatment for eating disorders.

“With all its good intentions, it was just hard for the audience to watch,” he said.

Mr. Liguori said that every show on OWN should be purposeful, in keeping with Ms. Winfrey’s carefully cultivated brand. “But the price of entry for that purpose — that show’s intent, its message, its takeaway — is that you are entertained,” he said.

Asked to elaborate, he said, “It’s going to be compelling characters, storytelling with stakes, and then at the end of the show, you realize you have learned either some moral or practical lesson.”

Ms. Norman did not respond to a request for comment. She was the second chief executive of OWN, having taken over in January 2009 while the channel was trying — and at times struggling — to start up. While Ms. Winfrey provided the vision for the channel, it was Ms. Norman, a former president of MTV, who executed on that vision. She said in a statement Friday, “As I move on to my next challenge, I am confident the strong foundation we have built will position the network to achieve great things.”

A day earlier, Judy McGrath departed MTV Networks, prompting speculation that Ms. McGrath could be in line for the OWN job. But Mr. Liguori called the timing “pure coincidence.”

Mr. Liguori will oversee the introduction of Ms. O’Donnell’s talk show in October, and Ms. Winfrey’s next show, “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” in January 2012. (OWN executives had hoped to start “Next Chapter” in the fall.)

Mr. Zaslav reiterated last week that Discovery was “fully committed to the brand” and reminded investors that building a channel was a “long-term play.”

For her part, Ms. Winfrey has suggested that the channel should not be judged for three years. “I feel like I have not begun to give anything to OWN,” she told Entertainment Weekly. But that will change, she said, after her syndicated show ends — and, presumably, after that vacation. “It’s going to improve exponentially with the amount of time and service I can give to it.”

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Pakistani Army Chief Warns U.S. on Another Raid

In his first public reaction to the American raid early Monday that left many Pakistanis questioning the capacities of the nation’s army, General Kayani did not appear in person, choosing instead to convey his angry message through a statement by his press office and in a closed meeting with Pakistani reporters.

The statement by the army’s press office said, “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.”

General Kayani had decided that the number of American troops in Pakistan was to be reduced “to the minimum essential,” the statement said.

He did not specify the exact number of American troops asked to leave Pakistan, and it was not clear that the level was below what Pakistan had previously demanded after a C.I.A. contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis in January.

Then, the Americans were told that the number of Special Operations soldiers involved in a training program would have to be reduced to 39 from 120, that C.I.A. contractors would no longer be allowed to stay in Pakistan, and that other American officials who appeared to be working for the C.I.A., but whose jobs were not clearly defined, would have to leave, too.

Clearly, the Bin Laden raid has compounded Pakistani anger, and further worsened relations.

Calling the American raid a “misadventure,” General Kayani told the Pakistani reporters that another, similar, raid would be responded to swiftly, a promise that seemed intended to tell the Pakistani public that the army was indeed capable of stopping the Americans’ trying to capture other senior figures from Al Qaeda.

General Kayani’s blunt warnings came after he met with his top commanders at their monthly conference at army headquarters at Rawalpindi, a gathering of the top 11 generals. The meeting was devoted to the consequences of the raid, which has severely embarrassed the Pakistani military, leaving the nation’s most prestigious institution looking poorly prepared and distrusted by its most important ally.

The official statement acknowledged “shortcomings” in developing intelligence on the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan, a reference to the fact that the Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, a midsize city that is home to a top military academy and is about two hours from Islamabad, the capital.

The C.I.A. had developed intelligence on Bin Laden with the Pakistanis in the early going when the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had provided “initial information.”

But the C.I.A. did not share further development of intelligence on the case with ISI, “contrary to the existing practice between the two services,” an account that generally conformed with what American officials said in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Pakistani officials and Western diplomats have described General Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, as seething with anger at the American go-it-alone action.

In an earlier account on Thursday, the foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, sought to dispel domestic criticism of Pakistan’s lack of response to the raid, saying that two Pakistani F-16 fighter jets were airborne as soon as the Pakistani military knew about the operation. But, by that time, he said, the American helicopters were on their way back to Afghanistan.

Mr. Bashir, speaking at a news conference, said that the Americans had used technology to evade Pakistani radar.

Alternately combative and defensive, Mr. Bashir said Washington should abandon the idea that Pakistan was complicit in helping Bin Laden hide. But he did not elaborate, saying only that the ISI had a “brilliant” record in counterterrorism.

Defending the Pakistani Army, the fifth largest in the world, Mr. Bashir said, “Pakistani security forces are neither incompetent or negligent about the sacred duty to the nation to protect Pakistan.”

But after withering criticism at home and abroad about how and why the Pakistani security forces could allow Bin Laden to be in Pakistan, the initial reaction here to Mr. Bashir’s appearance was mixed.

One of Pakistan’s best-known television journalists, Kamran Khan, who is regarded as a supporter of the military, dismissed the performance. “They have no answer,” Mr. Khan said. “We have become the biggest haven of terrorism in the world and we have failed to stop it.”

A retired ambassador and newspaper columnist, Zafar Hilaly, who has called for a public inquiry into Pakistan’s military, said that Mr. Bashir had erred in seeming to ask for the world’s sympathy by saying 30,000 Pakistani civilians and more than 3,000 soldiers had lost their lives in the fight against terrorism.

“The world wants to know whether we are effective,” Mr. Hilaly said.

Apparently in response to comments by American officials that the United States decided not to share details in advance with Pakistan because of a lack of trust, Mr. Bashir said, “All we expect is some decency and civility, especially in the public domain.”

The Pakistani authorities first learned of the operation when one of the American helicopters involved in the raid crashed at the Bin Laden compound.

“Immediately our armed forces were asked to check whether it was a Pakistani helicopter,” Mr. Bashir said. Although Abbottabad is home to a major military academy and three military regiments, he said, none of these institutions required sophisticated defenses that could have detected the impending raid.

The authorities learned that Bin Laden had been killed in the raid from surviving members of his family, he said.

Pakistan received the first official word from the United States about the covert operation when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called General Kayani about 3 a.m. Monday local time, Mr. Bashir said.

That call took some time to arrange, he said, because “secure sets” were needed. Mr. Bashir said Admiral Mullen had been the first to raise the issue of Pakistan’s sovereignty in the call, but he did not specify exactly what the admiral said. Later, President Obama telephoned the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan will endure, the foreign secretary said, because “we share strategic convergence.”

In Washington, American aid to Pakistan faced new criticism. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” about the United States providing Pakistan more than $1 billion a year in security assistance in light of the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad and other recent evidence that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies are aiding militants.

The lawmaker, Representative Howard L. Berman of California, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that “Pakistan’s continued resistance to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism bespeaks an overall regression in the relationship.”

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Pakistani Army Chief Warns U.S. on Another Raid

In his first public reaction to the American raid early Monday that left many Pakistanis questioning the capacities of the nation’s army, General Kayani did not appear in person, choosing instead to convey his angry message through a statement by his press office and in a closed meeting with Pakistani reporters.

The statement by the army’s press office said, “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.”

General Kayani had decided that the number of American troops in Pakistan was to be reduced “to the minimum essential,” the statement said.

He did not specify the exact number of American troops asked to leave Pakistan, and it was not clear that the level was below what Pakistan had previously demanded after a C.I.A. contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis in January.

Then, the Americans were told that the number of Special Operations soldiers involved in a training program would have to be reduced to 39 from 120, that C.I.A. contractors would no longer be allowed to stay in Pakistan, and that other American officials who appeared to be working for the C.I.A., but whose jobs were not clearly defined, would have to leave, too.

Clearly, the Bin Laden raid has compounded Pakistani anger, and further worsened relations.

Calling the American raid a “misadventure,” General Kayani told the Pakistani reporters that another, similar, raid would be responded to swiftly, a promise that seemed intended to tell the Pakistani public that the army was indeed capable of stopping the Americans’ trying to capture other senior figures from Al Qaeda.

General Kayani’s blunt warnings came after he met with his top commanders at their monthly conference at army headquarters at Rawalpindi, a gathering of the top 11 generals. The meeting was devoted to the consequences of the raid, which has severely embarrassed the Pakistani military, leaving the nation’s most prestigious institution looking poorly prepared and distrusted by its most important ally.

The official statement acknowledged “shortcomings” in developing intelligence on the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan, a reference to the fact that the Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, a midsize city that is home to a top military academy and is about two hours from Islamabad, the capital.

The C.I.A. had developed intelligence on Bin Laden with the Pakistanis in the early going when the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had provided “initial information.”

But the C.I.A. did not share further development of intelligence on the case with ISI, “contrary to the existing practice between the two services,” an account that generally conformed with what American officials said in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Pakistani officials and Western diplomats have described General Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, as seething with anger at the American go-it-alone action.

In an earlier account on Thursday, the foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, sought to dispel domestic criticism of Pakistan’s lack of response to the raid, saying that two Pakistani F-16 fighter jets were airborne as soon as the Pakistani military knew about the operation. But, by that time, he said, the American helicopters were on their way back to Afghanistan.

Mr. Bashir, speaking at a news conference, said that the Americans had used technology to evade Pakistani radar.

Alternately combative and defensive, Mr. Bashir said Washington should abandon the idea that Pakistan was complicit in helping Bin Laden hide. But he did not elaborate, saying only that the ISI had a “brilliant” record in counterterrorism.

Defending the Pakistani Army, the fifth largest in the world, Mr. Bashir said, “Pakistani security forces are neither incompetent or negligent about the sacred duty to the nation to protect Pakistan.”

But after withering criticism at home and abroad about how and why the Pakistani security forces could allow Bin Laden to be in Pakistan, the initial reaction here to Mr. Bashir’s appearance was mixed.

One of Pakistan’s best-known television journalists, Kamran Khan, who is regarded as a supporter of the military, dismissed the performance. “They have no answer,” Mr. Khan said. “We have become the biggest haven of terrorism in the world and we have failed to stop it.”

A retired ambassador and newspaper columnist, Zafar Hilaly, who has called for a public inquiry into Pakistan’s military, said that Mr. Bashir had erred in seeming to ask for the world’s sympathy by saying 30,000 Pakistani civilians and more than 3,000 soldiers had lost their lives in the fight against terrorism.

“The world wants to know whether we are effective,” Mr. Hilaly said.

Apparently in response to comments by American officials that the United States decided not to share details in advance with Pakistan because of a lack of trust, Mr. Bashir said, “All we expect is some decency and civility, especially in the public domain.”

The Pakistani authorities first learned of the operation when one of the American helicopters involved in the raid crashed at the Bin Laden compound.

“Immediately our armed forces were asked to check whether it was a Pakistani helicopter,” Mr. Bashir said. Although Abbottabad is home to a major military academy and three military regiments, he said, none of these institutions required sophisticated defenses that could have detected the impending raid.

The authorities learned that Bin Laden had been killed in the raid from surviving members of his family, he said.

Pakistan received the first official word from the United States about the covert operation when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called General Kayani about 3 a.m. Monday local time, Mr. Bashir said.

That call took some time to arrange, he said, because “secure sets” were needed. Mr. Bashir said Admiral Mullen had been the first to raise the issue of Pakistan’s sovereignty in the call, but he did not specify exactly what the admiral said. Later, President Obama telephoned the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan will endure, the foreign secretary said, because “we share strategic convergence.”

In Washington, American aid to Pakistan faced new criticism. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” about the United States providing Pakistan more than $1 billion a year in security assistance in light of the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad and other recent evidence that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies are aiding militants.

The lawmaker, Representative Howard L. Berman of California, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that “Pakistan’s continued resistance to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism bespeaks an overall regression in the relationship.”

View the original article here

Preoccupations: Call Her the Worrier in Chief

Drills are a huge part of this work. Many industries have preparedness exercises. Hotels and other businesses have fire drills, and airlines simulate airplane accidents.

I view people in this type of position as the ones in charge of worrying. I’m always on, 24/7. Regardless of where there’s a crisis in the world, members of my group need to be connected with one another and to see how it impacts not only our operation, but also our crew members and their families.

You never know what will happen in this field; the terrorist attacks of 2001 are a perfect example of that. When the first plane hit, I received a call from a friend working in the control tower at Kennedy Airport who told me the news and that the plane might be one of ours. I called our operations department and learned that it wasn’t. From our former headquarters, my colleagues and I saw the second plane hit the second tower.

I raced to Kennedy and found it in chaos. We were reluctant to leave our customers or crew members stranded, so we decided to treat it as an airplane accident and institute our plan for that. Normally we’d set up a family assistance center, but we set up a passenger assistance center instead and took in passengers from any carrier.

I found a group of 20 teenagers from Belgium, some with special needs, who belonged to a Michael Jackson fan club. Their flight home had been canceled, and they were having a hard time dealing with it. Their chaperones told us that they were running out of funds. When I told the club members that I had been at a Michael Jackson concert the previous night, their eyes got big and their jaws dropped. One of them said, “He sent you?” I was fine with them thinking their hero had sent me, if it helped them cope.

I went on autopilot after the planes hit, and I’ll bet that other people in emergency response did, too. I didn’t get any emotional relief until a few weeks later, when I attended my first New York Mets game after the attacks. When a line of uniformed service personnel walked onto the field with the American flag, I lost it. People nearby asked if I was O.K., and I told them I had been holding my feelings in and just had to cry.

Everyone looks to the people in emergency response as pillars of strength. You’ve got to stay strong and grounded in a crisis, but eventually you have to deal with what you’ve experienced.

You’re also never done with planning. The law dictates much of the plan for accidents, but beyond that you have to come up with your own solutions.

When swine flu hit the United States in 2009, many organizations probably weren’t ready. We ordered hand sanitizer, put extra gloves on planes and trained employees in recognizing symptoms. We also established a procedure for reporting to us and developed a plan for how we’d operate in case headquarters personnel were affected.

The minute you get comfortable, think you’re ready for anything and become overconfident, it’s an indication that you’re not in the right field. You’ve got to stay humble.

When the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, I set up a task force. We reached out to the Red Cross and to the Haitian consulate in New York. The airport in Haiti was closed, but JetBlue flies to the Dominican Republic, and we knew that it could be used as a port to enter Haiti.

About 130 of our crew members had relatives in Haiti, so we gave money to those employees from our crew member crisis fund. When some crew members traveled to Haiti, we tracked them and had them check in every day so we could make sure they were safe.

WHEN I take a vacation with my family, I like to disconnect and relax. I leave my contact information and my itinerary with people back at work, and I have three managers who are my backups and can assist during a crisis. If needed, I can provide support remotely or even leave and go back to work, but it’s important to disconnect and recharge. At times, I still struggle with leaving it behind. It’s only natural to worry, but it doesn’t consume me. But if your company isn’t 24/7, it’s probably easier to step away.

This work has carried over to my personal life. I live on Long Island. Two years ago, on a day I was at home, there was a tornado watch across the area. The sky turned black and I felt as if I was in “The Wizard of Oz.” I realized that I wasn’t prepared for such an emergency at home. I’ve since assembled safety kits in the cellar for my husband, my baby and me, and I even packed some things in a bag for the dogs. I’m always thinking. It’s just another emergency response plan.?

As told to Patricia R. Olsen. E-mail:
preoccupations@nytimes.com