Private sector 'faces NHS fight'

。 15 May 2011 Last updated at 19:07 ET By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News  The NHS reforms are on hold The private sector will still remain a small player in NHS hospital care for at least a decade even if government plans go-ahead, health firms say.

The NHS Partners Network, which represents health firms, said it was a myth that the NHS was to be privatised.

Just 3.5% of NHS operations are done by private firms currently - and the network said that was unlikely to even double over the next decade.

But unions said the reforms could still destabilise the NHS in England.

Opening up the health service to greater competition has become one of the most controversial aspects of the government's changes.

Last month ministers were forced to put the plans on hold amid mounting criticisms to carry out a "listening exercise".

There are now suggestions the duty of the regulator to promote competition may be dropped.

'Myth'

But David Worskett, director of the NHS Partners Network, which includes private firms already doing NHS work, said the fears were unfounded.

"All this talk of privatisation is so obviously inaccurate. It is just a myth. The NHS is very cautious and contracts for work are not that easy to come by so I can't see that changing even with these reforms."

He said the 3.5% figure, which covers non-emergency treatment such as knee and hip replacements and cataract operations, would probably not even double over the next 10 years.

Although he said if the NHS did not start innovating that could change in the long-term - something which would be "desirable" anyway to improve patient care.

Continue reading the main story

The scenario that everyone is worried about is that there will be huge radical change, but that is unlikely to happen”

End Quote Nigel Edwards NHS Confederation Nigel Edwards, of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS managers, agreed.

"The scenario that everyone is worried about is that there will be huge radical change, but that is unlikely to happen. If you look at the telecommunications industry, even after 10 years BT still dominated the residential market."

Sir Stephen Bubb, who is leading the competition arm of the government's listening exercise, said it was hard to predict exactly what would happen, but added there was a lot of "misinformation" about the private sector.

But Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA, said the changes as they stood would lead to a "move away from an ethos of co-operation to one of competition".

"The current proposals would actively enforce conditions in which all providers - NHS hospitals, profit-making companies and charities - would be pitted against each other. This seriously risks creating a more fragmented system, and destabilising NHS hospitals, due to 'profitable' parts of their work being cherry-picked by others."

MoD faces new cuts in cost review

16 May 2011 Last updated at 01:02 GMT  The Army is facing the loss of 7,000 posts by 2015 under the earlier plans The Ministry of Defence is seeking to find more savings from the armed forces in the next financial year.

A three-month study, reporting in July, will consider which personnel and equipment programmes could be cut.

Last October's strategic defence and security review saw HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier fleet scrapped and the loss of 41,000 forces and civilian jobs.

The MoD said it was assessing whether spending assumptions made in the past were still affordable.

The strategic defence and security review unveiled in October 2010 outlined the future shape and size of Britain's armed forces.

Under the plans, defence spending is to fall by 8% over four years.

The RAF and navy will lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the MoD 25,000 civilian staff. Among the other cuts was the scrapping of the new Nimrod surveillance plane.

Continue reading the main story Harrier jump jet retiredNimrod spy plane cancelled5,000 RAF personnel axed over five years5,000 Navy personnel cut7,000 army personnel cut25,000 civilian MoD staff axedTrident replaced but ￡750m savings from fewer warheadsTwo aircraft carriers saved, but one will not enter serviceThe MoD says the strategic defence and security review is not being re-opened.

But after completing the planning round for its budget for the financial year ending in March 2012, its work for next year has already started.

The MoD says the new study is part of work being done to ensure it matches its planning assumptions with its spending settlement, and closes the gap between the two.

BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said more still needs to be done to balance the books.

Potential targets could include HMS Illustrious, the UK's last surviving aircraft carrier, which is due back from a refit next year, as well as plans for a new fleet of armoured vehicles, our correspondent added.

News of the study come as Defence Secretary Liam Fox prepares to address Parliament later on amendments to the Armed Forces Bill that will see principles of the military covenant - the nation's duty of care to personnel - written into law for the first time.

It is understood that measures to improve soldiers' welfare in areas such as health, housing and education for forces' children will also be revealed.

Singapore Faces Life Without Lee

 

SINGAPORE — For most Singaporeans, it is inconceivable that the government does not have Lee Kuan Yew at the helm or very near it.

That break with the past came sooner than expected on Saturday with the announcement that Mr. Lee, 87, had relinquished the reverential title of “minister mentor” and stepped down from active politics after more than half a century at the very top.

Mr. Lee remains a member of Parliament and his son is prime minister, but he said over the weekend that he and Goh Chok Tong, another former prime minister, were stepping down from the cabinet to allow “a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation.”

“A younger generation, besides having a noncorrupt and meritocratic government and a high standard of living, wants to be more engaged in the decisions which affect them,” the statement said.

Mr. Lee has been the pre-eminent leader of Singapore, as flag-bearer of independence, as prime minister of the republic for 25 years and later another 21 years in the cabinet as senior minister and then as minister mentor.

No one is predicting that Mr. Lee’s exit will bring a shake-up of the tightly managed political system that helped turn Singapore from an economic backwater at independence in 1965 and fueled its transformation into a modern financial hub.

Rather, there was a sense that the blunt-speaking Mr. Lee, with his impatience of dissent — he once told The Straits Times, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think” — was out of touch with the mood and expectations of the people of Singapore, and it was time to move on.

That was underlined the month in the general election, which the governing People’s Action Party won but with smallest share of the vote since independence in 1965.

“The old way of doing things was increasingly being seen as anachronistic, and being out of touch or even being seen as dictatorial,” said Eugene Tan, assistant professor at the Singapore Management University. “And so I think it is a break from the past.”

Some of Mr. Lee’s comments may have cost the People’s Action Party votes at the election, other commentators have said. Mr. Lee said during the campaign that if a constituency voted for the opposition the voters would have “five years to repent.” Mr. Lee was unopposed in his constituency in the May 7 general election, but the People’s Action Party returned to power with only about 60 percent of the popular vote.

His son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said after the election: “Many wish for the government to adopt a different style and approach. It marks a distinct shift in our political landscape.”

He has not made a decision on the resignations of Mr. Goh and his father, but was expected to finalize the new cabinet early this week.

The Straits Times, the city-state’s main newspaper, said in an analysis on Sunday that when Lee Kuan Yew took over, the nation “had yet to learn to read and write, far less to create jobs.”

“Close engagement of the mass citizenry was not only unnecessary but would have been a nonstarter.”

Now, the newspaper said, “there is not only an implicit acknowledgement that their styles may no longer be in sync with the expectations of a younger generation, but that they may also no longer have an instinctive sense of the ground.”

Still, there is no question that Mr. Lee’s policies, which have brought surging economic growth, will continue to guide Singapore for decades, analysts said. Any changes are likely to be only at the margins.

“In terms of policy substance, strategic directions, I don’t think there will be change,” said Mr. Tan. “I think we will see change in the form of government in terms of how policies are packaged, how they are presented, how they are communicated, implemented, how people are consulted.”

And while there will be political inclusiveness, there is unlikely to be complete tolerance of dissent, he added.

“We can certainly expect the government to be a lot more responsive, to pay more attention, to get more buy-in rather than trying to dictate to the people,” Mr. Tan said. “I

Singapore Faces Life Without Lee

 

SINGAPORE — For most Singaporeans, it is inconceivable that the government does not have Lee Kuan Yew at the helm or very near it.

That break with the past came sooner than expected on Saturday with the announcement that Mr. Lee, 87, had relinquished the reverential title of “minister mentor” and stepped down from active politics after more than half a century at the very top.

Mr. Lee remains a member of Parliament and his son is prime minister, but he said over the weekend that he and Goh Chok Tong, another former prime minister, were stepping down from the cabinet to allow “a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation.”

“A younger generation, besides having a noncorrupt and meritocratic government and a high standard of living, wants to be more engaged in the decisions which affect them,” the statement said.

Mr. Lee has been the pre-eminent leader of Singapore, as flag-bearer of independence, as prime minister of the republic for 25 years and later another 21 years in the cabinet as senior minister and then as minister mentor.

No one is predicting that Mr. Lee’s exit will bring a shake-up of the tightly managed political system that helped turn Singapore from an economic backwater at independence in 1965 and fueled its transformation into a modern financial hub.

Rather, there was a sense that the blunt-speaking Mr. Lee, with his impatience of dissent — he once told The Straits Times, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think” — was out of touch with the mood and expectations of the people of Singapore, and it was time to move on.

That was underlined the month in the general election, which the governing People’s Action Party won but with smallest share of the vote since independence in 1965.

“The old way of doing things was increasingly being seen as anachronistic, and being out of touch or even being seen as dictatorial,” said Eugene Tan, assistant professor at the Singapore Management University. “And so I think it is a break from the past.”

Some of Mr. Lee’s comments may have cost the People’s Action Party votes at the election, other commentators have said. Mr. Lee said during the campaign that if a constituency voted for the opposition the voters would have “five years to repent.” Mr. Lee was unopposed in his constituency in the May 7 general election, but the People’s Action Party returned to power with only about 60 percent of the popular vote.

His son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said after the election: “Many wish for the government to adopt a different style and approach. It marks a distinct shift in our political landscape.”

He has not made a decision on the resignations of Mr. Goh and his father, but was expected to finalize the new cabinet early this week.

The Straits Times, the city-state’s main newspaper, said in an analysis on Sunday that when Lee Kuan Yew took over, the nation “had yet to learn to read and write, far less to create jobs.”

“Close engagement of the mass citizenry was not only unnecessary but would have been a nonstarter.”

Now, the newspaper said, “there is not only an implicit acknowledgement that their styles may no longer be in sync with the expectations of a younger generation, but that they may also no longer have an instinctive sense of the ground.”

Still, there is no question that Mr. Lee’s policies, which have brought surging economic growth, will continue to guide Singapore for decades, analysts said. Any changes are likely to be only at the margins.

“In terms of policy substance, strategic directions, I don’t think there will be change,” said Mr. Tan. “I think we will see change in the form of government in terms of how policies are packaged, how they are presented, how they are communicated, implemented, how people are consulted.”

And while there will be political inclusiveness, there is unlikely to be complete tolerance of dissent, he added.

“We can certainly expect the government to be a lot more responsive, to pay more attention, to get more buy-in rather than trying to dictate to the people,” Mr. Tan said. “I

Pakistani Army, Shaken by Raid, Faces New Scrutiny

 

That American helicopters could fly into Pakistan, carrying a team to kill the world’s most wanted terrorist and then fly out undetected has produced a stunned silence from the military and its intelligence service that some interpret as embarrassment, even humiliation.

There is no doubt that the raid has provoked a crisis of confidence for what was long seen as the one institution that held together a nation dangerously beset by militancy and chronically weak civilian governments.

The aftermath has left Pakistanis to challenge their leadership, and the United States to further question an already frequently distrusted partner.

By Wednesday, members of Parliament, newspaper editorials and Pakistan’s raucous political talk shows were calling for an explanation and challenging the military and intelligence establishment, institutions previously immune to public reproach.

Some were calling for an independent inquiry, focused less on the fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist was discovered in their midst than on whether the military could defend Pakistan’s borders and its nuclear arsenal from being snatched or attacked by the United States or India.

“If these people are found to be incompetent, heads should roll,” said Zafar Hilaly, a prominent newspaper columnist.

Different questions were coming from Pakistan’s neighbors and Western allies, including the United States. In Congress, powerful lawmakers in charge of foreign military assistance delivered scathing assessments of the Pakistani Army as either incompetent or duplicitous, saying that renewed financial support was hardly guaranteed.

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament it was unbelievable that the Pakistani authorities did not know that Bin Laden was hiding not far from the capital.

But the most urgent question of all is what to do about it, and whether the United States should continue to invest in a Pakistani military whose assurances that it does not work with terrorists carry less weight than ever.

Pakistani officials, who feel betrayed by the United States for not informing them in advance about the raid, are responding more defensively by the day.

The biggest question for Pakistan is whether the event prompts a reconsideration of its security strategy, which has long depended on militant proxies, including groups entwined with Al Qaeda.

American officials are certain to use the fact that Bin Laden had taken shelter in Pakistan to press the country for a clearer break from its past. Both sides have an interest in preserving some form of the status quo. Pakistan would like to keep the billions of dollars in aid that flow from the United States. The United States would like to prevent this nuclear-armed Muslim nation from turning more hostile, hosting terrorist networks and complicating efforts to end the war in Afghanistan. But the challenges ahead were revealed in how the outrage over the Bin Laden raid has cut differently in Pakistan and the United States.

For the United States, it has raised the issue of whether any assurance provided by the Pakistani military can be trusted, including the security of its nuclear arsenal. The army has insisted it is adequately protected from extremists, but has resisted security assistance from the United States that it considers too invasive. “We can press Pakistan until the cows come home on its nuclear program,” said Michael Krepon, a co-founder of the Stimson Center in Washington, which works on programs to reduce nuclear weapons. “But they are not going to do the things that we would like them to do that they don’t want to do.”

In Pakistan, commentators who consider the nuclear weapons the country’s most valued asset have raised another concern: In light of the American operation, are the weapons safe from a raid by the United States, or even India?

Meanwhile, the chief of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, have remained silent about what they knew or did not know about Bin Laden’s presence.

They have both met with President Asif Ali Zardari since the American raid, but no mention has been made in public of those discussions. Civilian politicians have been virtually absent.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani left for France on Tuesday, but said Wednesday that he would cut short his trip and return home. Senior ministers in the cabinet failed to turn up in Parliament to offer any explanations on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Instead, the Foreign Office and the information minister, apparently on orders from the military, issued statements intended to explain the shortcomings.

In Parliament on Wednesday, Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said the American helicopters had evaded detection by radar “due to hilly terrain” and use of “nap of the earth” flying techniques, an account that failed to comfort almost anyone.

The Foreign Office defended the fact that Bin Laden was not detected because the high security walls at his house in Abbottabad were in line with a culture of privacy. These scant explanations fueled more speculation.

One of the military’s biggest advocates, Kamran Khan, a journalist whose nightly television show garners big audiences, led the chorus: “We had the belief that our defense was impenetrable, but look what has happened. Such a massive intrusion and it went undetected.”

Mr. Khan posed the question on many Pakistani minds: “What is the guarantee that our strategic assets and security installations are safe?”

In some Pakistani quarters, the failure of the army and intelligence agencies to detect Bin Laden, or to do anything about him if indeed his presence was known, prompted calls for an overhaul of the nation’s strategic policies.

“Instead of making more India-specific nuclear-capable missiles, the funds and the energy should be directed to eliminating the terrorists,” said an editorial in the newspaper Pakistan Today.

The editor, Arif Nizami, said the American raid made a mockery of the Pakistani military’s bravura that its fighter jets could shoot down American drones. “You talk of taking out drones, and you can’t even take out helicopters,” Mr. Nizami said.

Some Pakistanis said they were more concerned about the fact that known terrorists were living in their midst than the violation of sovereignty by the Americans.

“The terrorists’ being on our soil is the biggest violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” said Athar Minallah, a prominent lawyer. “If Osama bin Laden lives in Abbottabad, there could be a terrorist in my neighborhood.”

View the original article here

U.S. Faces a Challenge in Trying to Punish Syria

“We’re talking about a country whose economy is about the size of Pittsburgh’s,” said one administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the continuing debate within the administration about the next steps. “There are things you can do to amp up the volume” of sanctions, the official said, “but the financial impact is slim.”

The problem the Obama administration faces with Syria is similar to those involving North Korea and Myanmar, which have long been under sanctions. In Syria’s case, the United States already, in 2006, banned transactions with the Commercial Bank of Syria. In early 2007, it accused four government-related research organizations of working on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and banned transactions with them.

But later that year, when Israel found a nuclear reactor under construction in the Syrian desert and destroyed it in an airstrike, the United States took no further action, in part because the Bush administration could not think of any truly effective sanctions. Now the Obama administration is looking for specific sanctions against individual leaders, though most of their money is probably in Europe or Lebanon.

So far, President Obama has stopped well short of calling on Mr. Assad to step down, or of declaring, as he did of Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, that Mr. Assad had lost the moral authority to lead his country. Nor, apparently, has the administration been working behind the scenes to ease Mr. Assad out of office, as in the case of Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Asked how the administration justified treating Mr. Assad so differently, Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, said Monday that it was “up to the people of Syria to decide who its leaders should be.” He tried to differentiate Syria in other ways as well.

“Libya was, again, a unique situation,” Mr. Carney said. “We had large portions of the country that were out of the control of Muammar Qaddafi.? We had a Qaddafi regime that was moving against its own people in a coordinated military fashion and was about to assault a very large city on the promise that it would show” what Colonel Qaddafi himself called “no mercy.” And, Mr. Carney continued, “we had the support of the Arab League.”

Administration officials say that while they lack many effective economic tools, they believe Mr. Assad is sensitive to portrayals of his regime as brutal and backward. “He sees himself as a Westernized leader,” one senior administration official said, “and we think he’ll react if he believes he is being lumped in with brutal dictators.”

Recently, the White House stepped up its denunciations of the Syrian government, and of Mr. Assad himself. “Over the course of two months since protests in Syria began,” Mr. Obama said in a statement on Friday, “the United States has repeatedly encouraged President Assad and the Syrian government to implement meaningful reforms, but they refuse to respect the rights of the Syrian people or be responsive to their aspirations.”

He accused Mr. Assad of putting “personal interests ahead of the interests of the Syrian people, and resorting to the use of force and outrageous human rights abuses.”

 

Mubarak Faces More Questioning on Gas Deal With Israel

The announcement, carried by the government-run Middle East News Agency, came after the agency reported that the former oil minister, Samih Fahmy, and five other top officials had been imprisoned pending an investigation of the deal.

Adel el-Saeed, the prosecutor’s spokesman, issued a statement saying that among other issues, Mr. Mubarak was being questioned about gas exports to Israel at a low price that amounted to “hurting the country’s interests.” Egypt lost more than $714 million in the deal, the prosecutor said in a statement quoted by wire services a day earlier.

Selling gas to Israel was deeply unpopular in Egypt from the time the pipeline opened in 2008, given the sour public mood toward its neighbor, and it was a rallying point for the Tahrir Square protest movement since its start in January. But the deal was protected at the highest levels as long as Mr. Mubarak was in power. The key shareholder in the private company that brokered the deal was the president’s longtime friend, Hussein K. Salem, and a senior Egyptian official said the intelligence service also owned a slice of the deal.

Now that the protection has been removed, however, the deal has emerged as a kind of public litmus test toward how relations with Israel will be handled in the post-Mubarak era.

“Hosni Mubarak would always be completely responsive to what Israel wanted with zero regard for what the man in the street wanted,” said Mansour Abdel Wahab Mansour, a Hebrew language professor and political analyst of Arab-Israeli relations at Ain Shams University. “That is not going to change 180 degrees, but the new government or the new system will have to give somewhat more consideration to public opinion.”

Egyptian gas exports, not yet fully restored since an explosion rocked the pipeline in the Sinai in February, used to supply 40 percent of Israeli needs.

There were questions from the moment the deal was signed, particularly since it was handed to Mr. Salem and an Israeli partner, Yosef Meiman, whose East Mediterranean Gas Company acted as a middleman between Egypt and the Israel Electric Corporation and other clients.

The basic accusation was that the partners obtained the gas at a preferential rate from the government of Egypt, which cut supplies to local consumers in order to fill the Israeli deal, and then sold the gas at a significant markup, pocketing the profits.

The details of the full deal have never been released publicly. But former Egyptian government officials who have seen it, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the price renegotiated around 2008 was raised to about $4 per million BTUs, up from the previous cap of $1.25 per million BTUs. East Mediterranean Gas could then negotiate its own terms with Israeli buyers.

There is no global benchmark global price for natural gas, noted Nikos Tsafos, an analyst at PFC Energy in Washington. But Mr. Tsafos said that in comparable deals in the region, Turkey, Greece and Italy were paying $7 to $10 per million BTUs.

Mr. Meiman, who controls about one-quarter of East Mediterranean Gas, could not be reached for comment. But the general attitude of the Israeli government toward the arrangement has been that it can accept a re-examination of the deal as long as it is only about price. A senior Israeli official said, however, that if the investigation becomes a pretext for halting the deal for domestic political reasons, Israel would have reason for genuine concern.

In 2007, Mr. Salem sold off separate stakes in the company to a Thai firm and to a partnership headed by Sam Zell, the American real estate tycoon. Mr. Zell’s spokeswoman, Terry Holt, did not respond to requests for a comment on Friday.

Permission for the sale came from the presidency and the intelligence agency, which had a small stake in the deal along with the government-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company, said the senior Egyptian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Ministers outside the petroleum ministry were not consulted and the government ignored a court order to show publicly that the deal was not diverting gas needed domestically.

“That was a big question mark,” the official said. “We never understood why it was sold — and it would have made sense to allow local companies to buy it. From a national security point of view it did not end up with the most sensible arrangement.”

For the Egyptian business community, the answer came down to Mr. Salem, an intelligence agent turned tycoon who fled Egypt after the uprising and is being sought by prosecutors.

Ethan Bronner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

 

Roommate Faces Hate-Crime Charges in Rutgers Case

The roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another student were initially charged with invasion of privacy. In accusing Mr. Ravi of acting with antigay motives, the indictment exposes him to a potential sentence of at least 5 to 10 years in prison if convicted, as opposed to the probation that would probably have resulted if Mr. Ravi were convicted only on the earlier counts.

The grand jury also charged Mr. Ravi, 19, with a cover-up. The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office said he had deleted a Twitter post that alerted others to watch a second encounter Mr. Clementi planned with the man — identified in the indictment only as “M.B.” — and replaced it with a post “intended to mislead the investigation.” Prosecutors said Mr. Ravi had also tried to persuade witnesses not to testify.

The investigation that led to the 15-count indictment proceeded quietly over several months, as Mr. Clementi’s suicide focused national attention on the victimization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. Public figures including Ellen DeGeneres and President Obama spoke out about the tragedy; New Jersey legislators enacted the nation’s toughest law against bullying; and there were calls from many quarters for prosecutors to bring the bias charges.

Legal scholars said the case would be closely watched and could have ripple effects. “Charging this as a bias crime may send a message to prosecutors who are dealing with similar cases in other states about the particularly damaging consequences of this kind of crime,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, director of the Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

After discovering that his roommate had spied on him, the authorities said, Mr. Clementi, an aspiring violinist from Ridgewood, N.J., jumped from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that the events that led to the bias-intimidation charges dated from Aug. 6, the day Mr. Ravi learned the name of his future roommate — identified in the indictment as “T.C.,” since invasion of privacy is designated a sexual offense. Later that month, Mr. Ravi used his Twitter account to announce he had found out his roommate was gay.

“The grand jury charged that the invasion of privacy and attempt to invade the privacy of T.C. and M.B. were intended to intimidate them because of their sexual orientation,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Mr. Ravi’s co-defendant, Molly Wei, who lived in the same dormitory and was also charged with invasion of privacy, was not indicted. The prosecutor, Bruce J. Kaplan, said in a statement that the case against her remained active but would not be presented to a grand jury “at this time,” suggesting that she could testify against Mr. Ravi.

Prosecutors say Mr. Ravi live-streamed the encounter on Sept. 19.

A Twitter message that day from Mr. Ravi summed up the sequence of events: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Mr. Ravi was also charged with additional counts of attempted invasion of privacy for trying to carry out a similar live transmission two days later. That attempt was thwarted after Mr. Clementi found the camera aimed at his bed.

The prosecutor’s office said Mr. Ravi, who remains free on $25,000 bail, would be arraigned in coming days, but no date had been set. Mr. Ravi and Ms. Wei withdrew from Rutgers last fall; their lawyers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Mr. Clementi’s parents, Joseph and Jane Clementi, who said last month in a statement that they were not seeking “harsh punishment” for the defendants, responded to the new charges with their most forceful words to date.

“The grand jury indictment spells out cold and calculated acts against our son Tyler by his former college roommate,” they said in a new statement. “If these facts are true, as they appear to be, then it is important for our criminal justice system to establish clear accountability under the law.”

Their lawyer, Paul Mainardi, emphasized that the charges did not relate to the death. “The point is that it shouldn’t take a suicide for charges like this to be brought,” Mr. Mainardi said.

New Jersey’s attorney general, Paula T. Dow, called the indictment “an important step in this heartbreaking case.” Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay-rights advocacy group, said “potential bullies will now think harder before demolishing another student’s life.”

On the Busch campus at Rutgers, where Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi had lived, students offered differing views of the bias charges. “There was no sex tape; it was more like he just peeked into the room,” Enrico Cabreto, 19, a freshman, said. “He’s only being indicted because of all the publicity.”

Daniel Granda, 18, also a freshman, disagreed. “He didn’t make him jump, but by doing what he did, he set the stage for what happened next,” he said.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

 

In Singapore, the Party in Power Offers New Faces

 

SINGAPORE — After a painstaking search involving hundreds of man-hours and very likely thousands of cups of tea, Singapore’s overpowering political machine, the People’s Action Party, has presented to the public its carefully vetted crop of next-generation candidates for an election it is virtually certain to dominate again.

The party, which has never been out of power since Singapore became a self-governing state in 1959, now holds 82 of the 84 elected seats in Parliament and is expected to come close to that number again in the next election. It has introduced 24 new candidates over the past month, in a regular generational cycle that party leaders say is more significant than usual this year because the new slate probably includes the next prime minister.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has not yet announced the date of the election, which must be held by February 2012. But the People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., introduced its election manifesto on Monday and is already on the campaign trail, as are several smaller parties.

While Singapore has a multiparty system, opposition parties are hindered by a lack of funds, by the reluctance of potential candidates to challenge the government, by a configuration of districts that favors the governing party and by the sheer organizational power of the P.A.P. All 84 elected seats are being contested; the Constitution provides for the appointment of a small number of nonelected members.

But given the dominance of the P.A.P., the party’s search process — involving background checks, psychological tests and rounds of what are known as “tea session” get-togethers — has become, for all practical purposes, the system by which Singapore chooses its government and leaders.

“The people we’re bringing in now are not ready to be prime minister today,” Mr. Lee said this month. “But somebody amongst them or amongst the next batch — but I hope amongst the earlier ones — one day I hope will be prime minister.”

There are issues in this campaign — rising prices and rising immigration chief among them — but the elections are not so much about policy as about the people who will make the policies, mostly behind closed doors.

All of this is in line with the P.A.P.’s style of single-party governance: long-term decisions made by an inner circle, without the distractions of a substantial opposition or the time pressures of electoral deadlines. Public debate can make issues “harder to solve,” the prime minister said this month.

“I would say that our concerns about adversarial politics is why we feel that it’s good for us to have the P.A.P. as a broad-based party representing many views and having some of these trade-offs and tensions resolved within the party rather than between parties,” he said.

Asked whether there were not 20 people equally qualified to run against the P.A.P., Matthias Yao, who is retiring as a member of Parliament after four terms in office, said, “If we did have 40 good people, why not put them in one team, not two teams, when the other half by definition must oppose what the first team is doing?”

In the five years since the last election, the governing party has had “tea sessions” with more than 260 prospects, sometimes traveling abroad if these individuals had overseas jobs, Education Minister Ng Eng Heng, a senior party member, said in a recent forum.

“We didn’t always tell them why we were talking to them,” he said. “There were some tea participants whom we saw through changes in jobs. Some got married, pregnant, delivered. We saw them in various forms, antepartum and postpartum.”

As part of the process, Mr. Ng said, “We shortlisted some for intense, eight-hour psychological profiling.” Each prospect attended at least five tea sessions with members of a six-person interview panel, and the fittest of them were sent to a final session with the prime minister, said a member of the panel, K. Shanmugam.