Chinese Officials Beat Activist and His Wife, Group Says

Mr. Chen was released from jail last year after serving a 51-month sentence for disturbing public order and destroying public property — charges linked to his uncovering of forced sterilizations and abortions in the eastern Chinese city of Linyi.

But since his release, he has been under “ruanjin,” or “soft detention,” a kind of house arrest increasingly being used by the authorities to silence people who have not violated the law. The authorities once celebrated Mr. Chen, a 39-year-old self-taught lawyer, as a symbol of the country’s efforts to build a legal system, but they turned against him when he used the law to protest government abuse. Earlier this year, a video was smuggled out showing the circumstances of his detention. Reporters who tried to visit him were turned away by undercover police officers who had encircled his home.

Now ChinaAid, a human rights group based in the United States, says it has evidence of increased harassment, including beatings and the confiscation of personal property. The group, which released Mr. Chen’s video, says it has obtained a letter from Mr. Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, that details the couple’s most recent travails.

Contents of the letter were confirmed by a friend of the family, He Peirong. Ms. He, who describes herself as a Nanjing-based Internet activist, said she visited Mr. Chen’s hometown in late May and spoke with people related to his family.

According to Ms. He’s account and the undated letter, Ms. Yuan said that in February and March, Communist Party officials from Shuanghou, a suburb of Linyi, stormed the couple’s home. Ms. Yuan said she was bundled into a blanket and repeatedly kicked so hard that she still cannot stand straight. She said she saw her husband being tortured by the men, who twisted his arms and neck until he passed out. The couple were denied medical aid, she said, except for one intravenous drip from a village doctor. They had to stay in bed because of their injuries, she said.

The men came back repeatedly, according to Ms. Yuan’s letter, and confiscated legal documents related to Mr. Chen’s case as well as a computer, video camera, audio recorder, flashlight and television antenna. Metal sheets were fixed over the windows, and the power was cut off. Telephone lines had already been cut.

Still later, she said, men took away their books, pictures of their daughter and calendars off the wall. The authorities installed video cameras to monitor the couple.

The house arrest extends to the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Ms. Yuan wrote, and Mr. Chen’s mother.

Local authorities did not answer phone calls seeking comment, but the use of house arrest appears to have increased in recent years as the authorities try to silence critics. Several pastors of the Beijing-based Shouwang Church, for example, have been under house arrest for months since trying to lead outdoor services after their meeting place was closed. The church refuses to place itself under government control.

The authorities seem especially nervous, with a string of political anniversaries on the horizon. On July 1, the Communist Party celebrates the 90th anniversary of its founding, and later this year is the 100th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew China’s emperor. Next year, a crucial, twice-a-decade party congress will choose the country’s leadership for the next 10 years.

View the original article here

Miami Imam Will Plead Not Guilty to Aiding Terror Group, Lawyer Says

After a hearing in Federal District Court here, Khurrum Wahid, the lawyer for the imam, Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, pleaded with the community not to prejudge his client.

Mr. Khan, the leader of the Miami Mosque in west Miami, was charged along with two of his sons and three other people with providing material assistance to the Pakistani Taliban from 2008 to 2010.

“The public may have preconceived notions,” Mr. Wahid said. “I would ask the public to keep an open mind, and remember that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in this country.”

As he sat in the jury box’s first row in Magistrate Judge Barry L. Garber’s courtroom, Mr. Khan, who has a long, snow-white beard and wears thick, black-rimmed glasses, appeared frail and confused (the proceedings were translated in Mr. Khan’s native Urdu). On at least two occasions, Mr. Khan tried to say something to court personnel and he struggled to walk to the lectern to face the judge.

He suffers from a heart condition, failing eyesight and diabetes, his lawyer said. “We’re very concerned about his health,” Mr. Wahid said.

One of Mr. Khan’s sons, Izhar Khan, 24, the imam of a mosque in Margate, Fla., sat near his father in the jury box. Both men appeared in court for the first time since their federal indictment was unsealed late last week. Neither man entered a plea.The indictment says the defendants conspired to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas, including planning to funnel at least $50,000 to the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban, which the State Department has named a terrorist organization, took responsibility for a suicide attack in Pakistan on Friday that killed more than 80 cadets from a government paramilitary force.

Of the 50 largest terrorism cases in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, about 70 percent have involved financing or other support for terrorist groups, according to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.

But in a number of high-profile cases, prosecutors have discovered that proving material support for terrorist organizations is a challenge, legal experts say.

Family and friends of the Khans have asserted that all money sent to Pakistan was intended to help poor family members and support a madrasa in northwest Pakistan.

But legal experts say the fact that cash contributions might have been intended for humanitarian purposes is no longer a defense to supporting terrorism because money is so easily transferred.

“The key difficulty in prosecuting cases under this provision is proving that the contribution was made ‘knowingly,’?” said Victor Comras, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and former State Department official who writes frequently about Al Qaeda and terrorism financing cases.

Mr. Comras said that in past cases against accused terrorism financiers, prosecutors have struggled to prove intent unless they have clear evidence like recorded statements.

According to the indictment, a tape-recorded phone conversation has Mr. Khan calling for an attack on the Pakistani Assembly similar to a suicide bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sept. 20, 2008.

Prosecutors say that in another phone conversation, Mr. Khan “declared his wish that God kill 50,000” American soldiers.

Mr. Khan’s lawyer declined to discuss the specific charges.

In recent years, prosecutors have had mixed success in terrorism-financing prosecutions.

The prosecution in Dallas of the Holy Land Foundation, accused of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas, is one example. Several defendants were acquitted in 2007 at the first trial, which ended in a mistrial for others. During a retrial in 2008, prosecutors won guilty verdicts against the Holy Land Foundation and five individuals for giving more than $12 million to Hamas, which the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.

Three of those indicted last week in Miami are still in Pakistan. The fourth is Irfan Khan, the 37-year-old son of Hafiz Khan who appeared on Monday in federal court in Los Angeles.

Since the charges were publicized on Saturday, the Miami Mosque, known as the Flagler Mosque, has received two telephone threats, said Nezar Hamze, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in Pembroke Pines, Fla. On Monday evening, a van was parked in front of the mosque bearing a sign that said it should be burned down.

“This is the type of backlash that occurs,” Mr. Hamze said. “We are telling the community to remain on alert.” The police have set up a 24-hour presence at both mosques, he added.

A pretrial detention hearing for Hafiz Khan and Izhar Khan is scheduled for May 23.

View the original article here

Chicago News Cooperative: Group Homes to Nurture At-Risk Youths

“Our neighborhood needs to take care of these kids,” said Father Wellems, who has helped hundreds of young people avoid gangs and tried to improve their family lives as the priest of Holy Cross-Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish and executive director of Boys Town Chicago, a local outpost of the nearly century-old organization dedicated to youth services.

The neighborhood has one of Chicago’s largest Latino communities, rooted in traditional Mexican values of church and family. But it is also plagued by poverty, and the pull of gangs, which offer the safety and structure that some families lack, is overwhelming.

Now Father Wellems has another way to address the problem. After years of work, including winning the support of Mayor Richard M. Daley and persuading the city to issue $2 million in bonds, Father Wellems plans to develop a cluster of five group homes intended to serve at-risk children and their parents in Back of the Yards.

With a residential layout and two live-in social workers as “parents,” each home will strive to mimic a nurturing family environment while striking a balance between education, observation and privacy.

“It gives every child a sense of pause and a way to reboot,” said Tim McCormick, who heads SOS Children’s Villages Illinois, which has two other clusters of group homes in the state. In April, SOS Villages signed on as the developer for the group homes in Back of the Yards.

The homes are part of a broader state and national effort to keep child welfare cases out of the courts by focusing on the early assessment of youths and strengthening families through counseling and outreach services.

In Illinois, a state initiative has moved children out of the family court system with adoptions, guardianships and family reunifications, in addition to reaching out to families before a domestic crisis occurs that could result in a formal investigation. The program has been remarkably successful. In 1997, more than 52,000 children were in state care. In 2011 the number is 15,625, according to a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

In managing a smaller child-welfare system, officials say, there is an opportunity to support ventures like Father Wellems’s that focus social services on each child and family and strengthen family dynamics.

Last June, Father Wellems approached Mr. Daley to ask for a small amount of land where he could build a long-term residential facility. To Father Wellems’s surprise and delight, Mr. Daley briskly circled two full blocks of city-owned land beginning at 50th and Throop Streets.

It has taken nearly a year to get this far, but if all goes as planned, Father Wellems said, he will consider the homes his lifetime achievement. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year.

“It’s like coming up to a base camp and it’s beautiful,” he said. “You can see the peaks and you have a vision of the mountain, but it still has to be climbed.”

View the original article here

Sloan Group Is Lab Partner to the Arts

Ms. Ziegler’s play, which is being staged at the World Science Festival in New York in June after other recent runs in Manhattan and in Washington, is one of many to benefit from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s efforts to use art to improve the public’s understanding of science and technology. This year alone Sloan is distributing about $5 million to commission, develop and present plays, films, television shows, books, radio programming, lectures and more. It spends another $5 million supporting public television and radio.

Sloan, for instance, is backing Alan Alda’s work in progress about Marie Curie, “Radiance,” which is having a reading at the science festival. It commissioned Matt Schatz’s play “The Tallest Building in the World,” about the engineering of the twin towers, which is enjoying its world premiere at Luna Stage in West Orange, N.J., and Itamar Moses’ “Completeness.” The story of a romance between a molecular biologist and a computer scientist, “Completeness” has its last performances at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif., this weekend and opens at Playwrights Horizons this fall.

Aside from the $5,000 grant Mr. Moses received, Sloan’s involvement helped make the play more authentic, he said. “Having it was one of the most helpful things for getting the science right,” he said.

The professional scientists who served on his selection panel vetted material for him. “They were able to tell me ‘That’s not true’ or ‘That problem she claimed to be working on has already been solved,’?” he said.

The Sloan program has coincided with — and helped to popularize — a mini-boom of science-related plays, music, films and books that began in the late ’90s. In 1998, for example, Michael Frayn’s play “Copenhagen,” about a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, made its debut in London and later won the Tony for best play in New York. That same year the director Darren Aronofsky released his first movie, the hallucinatory “Pi.” (Mr. Aronofsky, who most recently directed “Black Swan,” and the actress Rachel Weisz have signed on as producers of a film version of “Photograph 51” that Ms. Ziegler is writing.)

Among the hundreds of projects the foundation has supported in the last dozen or so years are the films “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Flash of Genius”; the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play “Proof”; and books like Dava Sobel’s “Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love,” and the forthcoming “Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius,” by Sylvia Nasar, the author of “A Beautiful Mind.”

“The real payoff may not arrive for years to come, because we’re systematically exposing an entire generation of artists to this subject matter for the first time,” said Doron Weber, who oversees the arts program, “but it’s always nice to have a few big hits, like ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ so people understand what you’re talking about.”

Most of the Sloan awards are given through partnerships with theaters like the Manhattan Theater Club and Ensemble Studio Theater, film schools that include those at New York and Carnegie-Mellon Universities, and film festivals like Tribeca and Sundance.

“When there’s money for something, it happens,” Mr. Weber said. Last week he was at a small Manhattan theater during the Tribeca Film Festival to watch readings from six screenplays that Sloan is helping to finance, including Ms. Ziegler’s.

“We’re trying to find projects that already have a producer or a writer behind them and launch them to the next level,” said Beth Janson, executive director of the Tribeca Film Institute, which uses Sloan money to hold panels, screenings, workshops and give out prizes and stipends for science-theme scripts. “There can be a bit of bias in the film world, thinking that these are going to be very niche films that might not have the potential to break out and be mainstream.”

But she noted that crossover successes like “A Beautiful Mind” and “Memento” have both reached wider audiences and adhered to “scientific truth.”

In addition to the Rosalind Franklin story, for which Ms. Ziegler received $25,000 to develop, scripts at last week’s festival dealt with the race to invent television, a mathematical algorithm that brings a basketball team to a championship, and a swarm of deadly squid.

Plays need much less money than films do to get off the ground, so grants in the theater world go a long way. The $567,000 that Sloan gave Ensemble Studio this year paid not only for the staging of “Photograph 51,” but also for a second production at Theater J in Washington; the distribution of seed grants to other theaters; and Ensemble Studio’s annual First Light festival , where new plays are workshopped and presented.

Writers, producers and theaters often develop many projects at the same time, Mr. Weber said, and offering a little money can push the science-oriented piece to the top of the pile.

That is what happened with Verne Thiessen, whose play “Lenin’s Embalmers,” about the two scientists who were ordered by Stalin to embalm Lenin after his death in 1924, was staged last year at Ensemble Studio.

Mr. Thiessen attended a Sloan orientation panel a few years ago without a particular play in mind, but after listening to scientists who attended, he suddenly realized that an idea that had been “noodling around in my head” — the embalmers story — could qualify for a grant.

“The grants encourage writers to go outside their comfort zone,” said William Carden, Ensemble Studio’s artistic director. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“If a writer ends up worrying more about the science than the story,” he explained, “then it won’t work.”

Mr. Thiessen was successful, Mr. Carden said, because the scientific subject meshed with personal stories that the playwright had heard from his parents, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union to Canada.

To get Sloan financing, Mr. Thiessen said that the script’s scientific content had to pass muster with the foundation, but that balancing the artistic and scientific demands “was by no means the play’s biggest problem; try doing a live embalming onstage.”

 

Immigration Opponent Withdraws From Group

 

But when did it happen and what does it mean?

Dr. Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist, has been a magnet for criticism since the 1980s, for writings that appear to disparage minorities and for accepting money from a foundation that promoted theories of white superiority. Hoping to discredit his broader movement, immigrant groups intensified their attacks in recent years, in what Dr. Tanton’s friends call a campaign of vilification.

Yet the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, or FAIR, the influential group he started in 1979, kept him on the board of directors. Two years ago, Dan Stein, the group’s president, hailed him as a “renaissance man.”

On April 17, The New York Times published an article examining Dr. Tanton’s racial views. Soon after, his name disappeared from the list of board members on the FAIR Web site.

Critics crowed. “FAIR needed to finally distance itself from someone who had brought such a bad reputation to the organization,” said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a long-time nemesis.

But the story may be more subtle — and revealing about immigration politics. Inside the movement, Dr. Tanton has been a giant, helping to start all three major national groups that seek to reduce immigration, legal and illegal. The others are the Center for Immigration Studies and Numbers USA.

An environmentalist and an advocate of population control, Dr. Tanton started with vows to build bridges with the left. But he attracted more support on the populist right, with warnings about the “Latin onslaught” and assertions that American society needs “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Now 77 and with Parkinson’s disease, he has been withdrawing from public life.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Stein said Dr. Tanton left the board two months before the Times article. He forwarded an e-mail from Feb. 3, in which Dr. Tanton told the board that his term was expiring and he would not seek re-election.

Yet the FAIR Web site continued to list him on the board. In an interview on March 9, Mr. Stein simply described Dr. Tanton as “relatively inactive.” After the Times article appeared, FAIR issued a long statement, but did not say Dr. Tanton had severed his ties.

The next day, Julie Kirchner, FAIR’s director, canceled a scheduled talk to a class at Princeton, saying she did not want to discuss Dr. Tanton. But she, too, did not say he had left the board, nor did Dr. Tanton himself, in a letter to The Times. Then suddenly he vanished from the roster on the Web.

Why the delicate choreography? One theory is that neither FAIR nor Dr. Tanton wanted to appear that they were reacting to what they regard as unfair attacks by unscrupulous enemies.

“I had heard for months that John was leaving the board,” said one friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid entering the dispute over Dr. Tanton’s views. “I really think it’s purely his health. He’s been such a target forever, it wouldn’t be the attacks.”

Mr. Stein said he had not called attention to Dr. Tanton’s departure because he did not find it newsworthy. “I would certainly object strenuously if you characterized this somehow as a byproduct of external pressures,” he said.

Told that Dr. Tanton had resigned in February, Ms. Beirich said she found it “mystifying” that FAIR had not announced it. “Perhaps they didn’t want to draw any more attention to him and his views,” she said.

Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.

 

Nigerian Human Rights Group: At Least 500 Killed in Post-Election Violence

。 Scott Stearns | Dakar ?April 24, 2011

A soldier searches a car in Kaduna, Nigeria, April 21, 2011

A Nigerian human rights group announced Sunday that at least 500 people were killed in violence that followed last week's election of President Goodluck Jonathan. Relief officials say more than 65,000 people have been displaced.

The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria says most of the deaths occurred in northern states where Muslim supporters of defeated presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari attacked churches, homes and police stations, sparking reprisal attacks by Christians.

Nigerian authorities are refusing to release details of the violence, fearing that it could lead to more rioting ahead of gubernatorial elections this week.

Nigeria's Emergency Management Agency says Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Adamawa, Niger and Katsina states were the hardest hit.? Director General Mohammed Sani Sidi says his agency is helping more than 21,000 displaced civilians in Kano and nearly 10,000 displaced civilians in Zaria as well as people at more than 100 camps for displaced civilians in Kaduna.

"The intervention is continuing.? We are not going to stop until we get this relief material across to all the victims that have been affected.? We are doing everything possible in collaboration with the Nigerian army who have been very, very active and supportive in providing us with security cover," he said.

Sidi says the distribution of relief supplies has been slowed by the difficulty of finding drivers who are willing to enter areas where there has been violence.

In addition to displaced civilians in the north, Sidi says there are people who are originally from the north and are now living in the south who have taken refugee with security forces following the violence. "Most especially in Anambra and Imo, we have people from northern origin who, out of panic, on their own have decided to move to either military barracks or police barracks for safety for fear of reprisal attacks.? Those people also we have been able to reach out to them and provide some kind of relief material to them," he said.

With more than 65,000 civilians displaced nationwide, Sidi says the only real answer is finishing this series of elections with peaceful state-wide voting to restore order. "What we are trying to achieve is to make sure that peace is maintained and restored in all these places so that people can go back to their various houses and the continue with their normal lives," he said.

Twenty-six of Nigeria's 36 states are scheduled to hold state-wide elections on Tuesday.? Voting in Kaduna and Bauchi has been delayed until Thursday.? Electoral commission chief Attahiru Jega says he hopes that will allow for the "further cooling of tempers and for the security situation in those states to continue to improve."

 

Civic Group Says That Concessions Are Needed From the Construction Unions

 

A prominent civic group has joined builders and real estate executives in calling for major concessions from the unions that dominate the construction industry, saying cuts are needed to allow major projects to move forward.

The group, the Regional Plan Association, is supported by corporations, including some connected to real estate, and by planning groups in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It is a respected organization known more for advocacy on transportation issues and large public works than for taking sides in labor matters.

But the association has quietly circulated a 51-page report saying that the expiration of 30 union contracts in June presents a chance to reform the $25 billion unionized construction industry by eliminating what the report calls obsolete work rules and featherbedding; by adopting a standard eight-hour day for all building trades; and by reducing benefit packages.

Members of the association are scheduled to present the report, “Construction Labor Costs in New York City — A Moment of Opportunity,” to Deputy Mayors Stephen Goldsmith and Robert K. Steel on Monday.

“Given the wrenching changes in the real estate industry since the recession,” said Robert Yaro, the president of the Regional Plan Association, “a growing number of builders have found that they can no longer support high labor costs.”

“This is not about what union workers are paid,” he added. “It’s about work rules and productivity. Those are things that should be changed.”

The labor negotiations come at a critical time for the construction industry, as a growing number of buildings in the city are being constructed with cheaper, nonunion labor.

The Building Trades Employers’ Association, a group that represents contractors, has paid for subway advertisements and a Web site directly appealing to union members to agree to concessions, angering union leadership in the process.

This month, 400 union construction workers held a noisy protest outside the Taj Pierre Hotel as Sam Zell, founder of Equity Residential Properties, arrived for a speaking engagement. Mr. Zell’s company is building an apartment building at 500 West 23rd Street with nonunion labor.

The construction unions dismissed the report, saying its authors were antagonistic to labor unions. They were referring to Julia Vitullo-Martin and Hope Cohen, former associates of the conservative Manhattan Institute who now work at the Regional Plan Association and prepared the report.

“So individuals with longstanding right-wing, anti-worker associations and views want to blame labor for our economic problems,” said Paul Fernandes, a spokesman for Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, a union umbrella group.

“This draft report is rife with factual errors and omissions that reveal its underlying ideology,” he added.

“The only thing missing from this piece of garbage is the Koch brothers and the governor of Wisconsin.”

The once cordial relationship between Mr. LaBarbera, whose group represents about 100,000 workers, and Louis J. Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, has become strained. Mr. LaBarbera “won’t sit in the same room with Coletti,” said a union lawyer who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

Real estate and construction executives said they were not trying to create a “Wisconsin,” referring to political efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere to strip union workers of bargaining rights.

“This is about saving the industry,” Mr. Yaro said. “It is by no means an attack on the unions.”

The Real Estate Board of New York, a powerful lobbying group that represents most of the city’s residential and commercial developers, the contractors’ group and now the Regional Plan Association have conducted a campaign to enlist City Hall, in the hope that the mayor would use his influence on their behalf. But the Bloomberg administration has thus far seemed unwilling to insert itself into the labor dispute.

The association’s report says developers and owners, who absorbed the higher costs of union labor during the real estate boom, are now under pressure to cut costs because of lower rents and stringent financing terms.

But the report also says that leading developers and contractors are attached to union construction work, in part because “the best union labor continues to surpass nonunion in skills and productivity,” and because the jobs provide “a key channel of upward mobility for millions of Americans.”

The report describes as archaic various provisions that unions have succeeded in keeping around, in contracts that were also signed by employers.

These include the required presence of master mechanics and oilers for heavy equipment like cranes, which have become technologically advanced enough that the mechanics and oilers have very little work to do; and rules that say steamfitters, electricians and plumbers must always be around to monitor heat, electricity and water service, which the report likened to an apartment building having a full-time plumber rather than simply calling one when a leak occurs.

The report also called for eight-hour shifts to officially begin when a worker reaches his station, not when he arrives at the ground level, an issue in tall construction sites where many men are using a few hoists to get to the floors where they are working.

“To keep union firms competitive, the ongoing labor contract negotiations — and reformed work rule practices — must bring the union-nonunion differential closer to 10 percent from the current 20-30 percent,” the report says.

“If this does not happen, nonunion labor is likely to gain an ever-increasing share of the market, forcing union developers and contractors to accept open-shop arrangements or leave the construction business.”

 

A Group of Conflict Photographers Runs Out of Luck

It was the photographer Joao Silva, lying in a hospital bed in Washington, his legs blown off in Afghanistan, who confirmed that my close friend was dead.

A Libyan rebel, photographed by Chris Hondros.

A villager in Afghanistan carrying a child wounded in an American attack, photographed by Tim Hetherington.

“I’ve got news for you, brother, and it’s not good,” he said simply, quietly. Tim?Hetherington, a British photographer and co-director of the Afghanistan war documentary “Restrepo,” was killed on Wednesday in Misurata, Libya, when he and others came under fire. Killed with him was Chris Hondros, another good friend and photographer.

They were part of an intimate, informal group of photojournalists who routinely cover war. We are mostly Europeans and Americans, primarily based in New York or Paris, typically working for a handful of magazines and newspapers or photo agencies. The group is small enough — fewer than 100 people — that we refer to each other in conversation by first names only: Yuri, Carolyn, Gary, Spencer, Franco. Of course there are many other such photographers, separated from our group by language or geography.

Though it was unspoken among us, I often mused silently on our group’s extraordinary luck. We covered nearly a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan without losing a single member (though Martin Adler, a Swedish photographer and cameraman who sometimes worked with members of our group, was killed in Somalia in 2006 when a gunman stepped out of a crowd and shot him). Somehow we were spared.

We are not thrill seekers. Each photographer judges the risks necessary to help bring news of these conflicts to the international public.

Six months ago, our group’s luck ran out. First, a land mine destroyed Joao’s legs while he was on patrol with American soldiers in Afghanistan. Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario were held captive with two other journalists and brutalized last month in Libya. And Wednesday morning in Misurata, the incoming fire claimed the lives of Tim and Chris.

Our group is devastated. But talking with other photographers, I’m struck that I have not heard anyone say, “They should not have gone.”

Tim and Chris had experienced hundreds of days of combat; they knew the risks as well as anyone. Yet their commitment was absolute. They endangered themselves so that others might see what was happening in a small port city on the coast of North Africa, a city few had heard of until they showed it to us, until it claimed their lives.

 

Head of Surgeons Group Resigns Over Article Viewed as Offensive to Women

In a statement sent by e-mail to The New York Times, the surgeon, Dr. Lazar Greenfield, said his many apologies had been ignored. “Therefore, rather than have this remain a disruptive issue, I resigned as president-elect,” he said. “I only hope that those who choose to judge me will read the article in the spirit in which it was intended.”

Dr. Greenfield, 78, was the editor in chief of Surgery News when the editorial was published but resigned that position in the wake of the controversy; the entire issue of the newspaper was withdrawn. He is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.

The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms. It speculated that compounds in semen have antidepressant effects.

“So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates,” it concluded.

The editorial outraged many women in the field, some of whom said that it reflected a macho culture in surgery that needed to change.

Dr. Barbara Bass, chairwoman of the department of surgery at Methodist Hospital in Houston and a former regent of the surgery group, the largest professional association for surgeons, said in a telephone interview Sunday that she was glad Dr. Greenfield had resigned, despite his long history of supporting women in the profession.

“Some things you can’t recover from if you’re in a leadership role,” Dr. Bass said.

She said the resignation demonstrated that the surgery association’s leadership “does understand the continued challenges women face as they join and mature in the surgical profession.”

Others said the resignation would not end the controversy.

Dr. Colleen Brophy, a professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University, submitted a letter of resignation from the surgery association during the controversy and said Sunday that she had no intention of reversing herself now that Dr. Greenfield has resigned.

“The editorial was just a symptom of a much larger problem,” Dr. Brophy said. “The way the college is set up right now is for the sake of the leadership instead of patients.”

Dr. David B. Hoyt, executive director of the American College of Surgery, said in an e-mail on Sunday that the college would have an official statement regarding Dr. Greenfield on Monday. On Thursday, Dr. Hoyt sent a statement to The Times that the college’s board of regents “is aware of the issue and has taken the matter under advisement.” On Friday, the college put a comment on The Times’s Web site stating that it “deeply regrets the offense taken to Dr. Greenfield’s editorial about Valentine’s Day.”

Dr. Marie L. Crandall, an associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University, said women were advancing slowly in the field of surgery. “It’s better than it was 20 or even 10 years ago,” she said, adding, “I think we’re making progress.”

 

Head of Surgeons Group Resigns Over Article Viewed as Offensive to Women

In a statement sent by e-mail to The New York Times, the surgeon, Dr. Lazar Greenfield, said his many apologies had been ignored. “Therefore, rather than have this remain a disruptive issue, I resigned as president-elect,” he said. “I only hope that those who choose to judge me will read the article in the spirit in which it was intended.”

Dr. Greenfield, 78, was the editor in chief of Surgery News when the editorial was published but resigned that position in the wake of the controversy; the entire issue of the newspaper was withdrawn. He is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.

The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms. It speculated that compounds in semen have antidepressant effects.

“So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates,” it concluded.

The editorial outraged many women in the field, some of whom said that it reflected a macho culture in surgery that needed to change.

Dr. Barbara Bass, chairwoman of the department of surgery at Methodist Hospital in Houston and a former regent of the surgery group, the largest professional association for surgeons, said in a telephone interview Sunday that she was glad Dr. Greenfield had resigned, despite his long history of supporting women in the profession.

“Some things you can’t recover from if you’re in a leadership role,” Dr. Bass said.

She said the resignation demonstrated that the surgery association’s leadership “does understand the continued challenges women face as they join and mature in the surgical profession.”

Others said the resignation would not end the controversy.

Dr. Colleen Brophy, a professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University, submitted a letter of resignation from the surgery association during the controversy and said Sunday that she had no intention of reversing herself now that Dr. Greenfield has resigned.

“The editorial was just a symptom of a much larger problem,” Dr. Brophy said. “The way the college is set up right now is for the sake of the leadership instead of patients.”

Dr. David B. Hoyt, executive director of the American College of Surgery, said in an e-mail on Sunday that the college would have an official statement regarding Dr. Greenfield on Monday. On Thursday, Dr. Hoyt sent a statement to The Times that the college’s board of regents “is aware of the issue and has taken the matter under advisement.” On Friday, the college put a comment on The Times’s Web site stating that it “deeply regrets the offense taken to Dr. Greenfield’s editorial about Valentine’s Day.”

Dr. Marie L. Crandall, an associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University, said women were advancing slowly in the field of surgery. “It’s better than it was 20 or even 10 years ago,” she said, adding, “I think we’re making progress.”

 

Group Faults the F.D.A. on Oversight of Devices

The Food and Drug Administration is allowing some high-risk devices like artificial hips to be sold without strenuous testing, despite promises that it would address regulatory issues affecting them, a federal watchdog group plans to testify on Wednesday.

The group, the Government Accountability Office, found that the F.D.A. has taken some recent steps to determine if certain high-risk medical devices should undergo more testing before being sold. But in the meantime, it is continuing to approve dozens of such devices annually with scant review, exposing patients to risks.

An official with the office is expected to give the testimony on Wednesday at a hearing before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The office will also present its preliminary findings of what it concluded were shortcomings in how the F.D.A. oversees recalls of troubled devices.

A spokeswoman for the F.D.A., Karen Riley, said that officials there had not seen the G.A.O. testimony and so could not respond directly to it. She added that F.D.A officials planned to testify at the hearing. The panel is also expected to hear from patient advocates and industry representatives.

Among other issues, the Senate hearing is expected to examine the approval and marketing of a now-recalled artificial hip sold by Johnson & Johnson known as the A.S.R., or Articular Surface Replacement. An article last December in The New York Times detailed how the medical products giant continued to sell the hip despite repeated reports by physicians abroad that it was faulty.

The F.D.A. permitted Johnson & Johnson to sell the artificial hip without conducting clinical trials. A few years after implant, it began disintegrating in patients, shedding metallic debris that has left some patients crippled.

According to reports by doctors in England, the device may fail prematurely in about 50 percent of the patients receiving it.

The F.D.A. has two separate procedures for approving medical devices.

For devices that pose a lower level of risk to patients, a manufacturer need only show that a new product is substantially equivalent to one already on the market. For devices that are more critical, like implanted heart defibrillators, producers have to run clinical trials to win approval.

But some categories of high-risk products like artificial hips and external defibrillators that were already on the market when the F.D.A. began to regulate devices can still enter the market through the less-rigorous pathway. Safety advocates have long urged the F.D.A. to close that loophole.

In 2009, the G.A.O. issued a report recommending that the F.D.A. reclassify such devices either into the high-risk category, the one requiring more testing, or in lower-risk categories that do not require testing. The agency has started to do so, but to date it has not made final decisions for nearly all those products.

At the start of the Obama administration, F.D.A. officials indicated that they would take an aggressive approach to the regulation of medical devices. But in more recent months, they appear to have backed away from that stance.

The F.D.A. has asked the Institute of Medicine to review its device approval process. That group is expected to issue its report later this year.

 

Advertising: A Younger Group for Feminine Products

。

The site, Kotex.com/tween, urges mothers to pick a date soon to explain menstruation, and clicking on “get the right products” takes mothers to a page promoting the brand’s newest offering: U by Kotex Tween.

In what the brand says is an industry first, the pads are designed specifically for 8- to 12-year-olds and are 18 percent shorter and narrower than other Kotex pads. Sold in glittery boxes decorated with hearts, stars and swirls (which are also printed on the pads themselves), the products would look at home on the set of “Hannah Montana,” the Disney Channel show that starred the actress Miley Cyrus.

“These pads are designed to fit smaller girls’ body size, with bold and glittery packages” that also appeal to them, said Melissa Sexton, a marketing director in the adult feminine care division at Kimberly-Clark, which owns the brand.

On the site, Dr. Lissa Rankin, a gynecologist and author of “What’s Up Down There?: Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist if She Was Your Best Friend,” is featured in a video encouraging mothers.

“A lot of moms have a hard time even talking to their own peers about this issue and have to get over their own embarrassment so they can have a candid, fun and supportive conversation with their daughters,” Dr. Rankin said in a phone interview.

On another area of the site, intended for prospective users, UbyKotex.com/HelloPeriod, visitors share videos and written accounts of their first periods. One out of three females has no idea what is happening when her first period arrives, while four out of five mothers feel ill-prepared to educate their daughters about menstruation, according to surveys commissioned by Kotex.

The sites for both mothers and their daughters are by Organic, part of the Omnicom Group.

?

Susan Kim, co-author of “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation,” was initially startled by the introduction of U by Kotex Tween.

“What punched me in the gut is that the age of menarche had dropped so precipitously,” said Ms. Kim, using the term for first menstruation. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, a period kit for an 8-year-old — eek!’?”

But she does not dispute the need for products that cater to girls that young, and lauded the brand’s approach.

“It was not that long ago that girls used to pass around the Judy Blume book, ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,’?” because it addressed stigmatized topics including menstruation, Ms. Kim said. “It was such contraband material, so I liked that on the preteen site that it very much was a place for girls to share, with firsthand testimony.”

From 1920 to 1984, the average age of menarche dropped from 13.3 to 12.4, according to a 2007 article in the Journal of Adolescent Health. A study published in Pediatrics last year found that in the United States, 15 percent of American girls begin puberty by age 7.

The U by Kotex line was introduced in 2010 with a marketing campaign aimed at women 14 to 22 that skewers feminine care companies, including Kotex itself, for the typically euphemistic tone and dainty tropes of their ads.

“The ads on TV are really helpful because they use that blue liquid,” says a woman in her early 20s in the first U by Kotex commercial, as blue liquid is poured on a pad. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s what’s supposed to happen.’?”

The commercial, by JWT, which is a part of WPP, has been viewed more than 1.2 million times on YouTube.

With the motto “Break the Cycle,” the brand uses humor to challenge the stigma around menstrual products in Web-only videos, also by Organic, including one in which a woman standing with her bike outside a drugstore asks men to go in and buy her tampons because she forgot her bike lock. While some offer to watch her bike, none will make the purchase.

Over the 52 weeks that ended March 20, the share of all Kotex products in the $634 million tampon category increased 4.1 points, for a 15.9 percent share, while in the $893 million sanitary napkins and liners segment, the brand increased 1.7 points, for a 19.4 percent share, according to Symphony/IRI Group, a market data firm whose totals do not include Wal-Mart.

U by Kotex spent $23.2 million on advertising in 2010, eclipsing the $4.1 million Kimberly-Clark spent on the older Kotex brand, according to the Kantar Media Unit of WPP. Tampax, by Procter & Gamble, which dominates the tampon segment with a 47.2 percent share, spent $49.9 million.

?

U by Kotex recently began addressing the look of feminine care products, which have traditionally been plain white, by printing various designs on pads. With what the brand calls a “limited-edition designer series,” prints like “poptimistic” and “punk glam,” will be introduced for U by Kotex products in July.

Meanwhile, an online pad design contest, Ban the Bland, began April 4 and has drawn more than 1,600 submissions. Three contestants with the most online votes will be flown in September to New York, where they will collaborate with Patricia Field, the costume designer for “Sex and the City.”

“Why should we settle for feminine care being dull and white and boring?” said Ms. Sexton about the designs on both the U by Kotex and U by Kotex Tween pads. “Every day when we get dressed, we have a choice of what we wear, and when we have our periods we should still have that choice.”