Briefly: Turkish University to Offer Armenian Language Course

Turkish university to offer Armenian language course

Using a $23,500 grant from the German Marshall Fund’s Black Sea Trust, Kadir Has University in Istanbul plans to begin offering Armenian language lessons this month.

Serdar Dinler, director of the university’s Center for Lifelong Learning, said by telephone that the course would be taught by a doctoral candidate from Armenia as part of a cultural exchange between countries whose ties have been fraught for a century.

“Turkey is becoming an energy-transit corridor and a center for diplomacy in the region,” Mr. Dinler said. “Also the Turkish government has a new ‘zero problems’ policy with its neighbors, so we believe that the new generation in Turkey needs to have more dialogue with neighboring countries, including Armenia, Russia, Iran, Greece, etc. Knowing the language can only help.”

Kadir Has is a private university established along the Golden Horn in 1997 and named after its founder, a Turkish automotive magnate.

— SUSANNE FOWLER

Students not ready to adopt Kindle for notes and reading

Just seven months after adopting an e-reading device, the Kindle DX, for university-level reading and note-taking, some 60 percent of students had put it aside in favor of traditional learning material, according to a new study presented at a conference on human-computer interaction by the Association for Computing Machinery in Vancouver, British Columbia, last week.

The study’s authors are investigating the impact of electronic reading devices on higher learning. “We are still trying to understand what we lose or gain by the adoption of e-reading technology,” said Alex Thayer, the primary co-author of the study and a doctoral student in human centered design and engineering at the University of Washington.

Students found it difficult to adapt traditional reading, scanning and note-taking methods to the platform. The study’s authors found that the e-reader disrupted students’ ability to remember the physical location of passages and notes in book.

However, the study also found that the e-reader, owing to its size and portability, was more likely to replace paper-based learning than computer-based learning. Students are more likely to use a Kindle than a computer on public transit, for example, Mr. Thayer explained.

The study is based on the learning habits of 39 first-year graduate students at the University of Washington’s department of computer science and engineering. Despite a relatively small sample size, the study represents one of the first to look at long term academic learning habits of students using electronic readers, according to the study’s authors.

“E-readers are not where they need to be in order to support academic reading,” Professor Charlotte Lee, who led the study, said in a statement.

— CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

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Union considers BA dispute offer

。 11 May 2011 Last updated at 21:11 ET  The bitter dispute between the Unite union and British Airways has been continuing since 2009 Union members are meeting later to consider an offer which could end the long-running dispute between British Airways and some cabin crew.

The BBC has learned Unite union leaders are said to be "content" with what has been negotiated during talks with BA.

If those at the Heathrow meeting back the offer, a formal ballot of union members could be held within weeks.

This dispute began in 2009 over cost cutting but became bogged down over the loss of travel perks to striking staff.

Staffing levels

It has resulted in travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of passengers with the bill for the disruption caused to BA estimated to be ￡150m.

Continue reading the main story John Moylan Industry correspondent, BBC News

This has been one of the most bitter and prolonged industrial disputes of recent years.

It involved four strike ballots, led to 22 days of strike action and disrupted the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. It cost BA about ￡150m.

But a change of personnel at the top of both BA and the Unite union gave fresh impetus to resolving the row. Talks got under way in March, away from the glare of publicity.

The new deal will cover disciplinary action that some staff suffered during the strike and the issue of the removal of travel perks to those that went on strike.

It should also lift the threat of any further disruption to BA flights this summer.

However, after 22 days of strikes over the past 18 months, hopes have been raised that an end to the row is in sight.

Negotiations between the two sides resumed in March, when cabin crew voted in favour of a further round of industrial action, and have been going on for weeks.

The union held back from announcing strike dates pending the talks.

A spokesman for the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association - a branch of Unite - confirmed that "talks have now concluded to the satisfaction of both parties".

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who has held talks with BA chief executive Keith Williams, will address a mass meeting of union members and the union leadership is expected to recommend they accept the offer.

If they do, a formal ballot will be held, with the result expected in July. This raises the prospect of BA flights being free from disruption through summer.

The dispute started in November 2009 as a row about staffing levels on some long-haul flights. BA reduced the number of cabin crew on long-haul flights from 15 to 14 and introduced a two-year pay freeze from 2010.

Unite said this would hit passenger service and affect the earnings and career prospects of cabin crew.

But the union's demands shifted to the reinstatement of some workers sacked during industrial action and the decision, affecting about 7,000 Unite members, to take away travel perks from striking staff.

Leadership changes

Progress is thought to have been made on those two issues, which were the main sticking points, and reports suggest the proposed deal would also cover union representation and pay.

Former British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh became the focus of the anger of many union members during the dispute.

Mr Walsh has since moved on to head the company formed by the merger of BA and the Spanish carrier Iberia, International Airlines Group, and was succeeded by Mr Williams.

Mr McCluskey was elected in Novemebr 2010 to succeed former joint general secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson.

Delta Will Offer Buyouts As It Cuts Flights and Staff

Delta has been planning to cut its schedule by 4 percent starting in September. In a hotline message to employees on Friday, Richard Anderson, the chief executive, said Delta needed to reduce the costs that went with those flights, too.

“In order for our business to thrive we must think of the current high fuel prices as a permanent reality of our business,” Mr. Anderson said.

He said Delta workers whose age plus 10 years of service equaled 55 would be eligible for early retirement. Buyouts will be available for workers who don’t meet the requirements for early retirement but have at least five years with Delta. Both are voluntary.

In October, Delta said it would add 1,000 flight attendants, including recalling 425 who had been on a voluntary furlough. A Delta spokeswoman, Keyra Johnson, said that hiring was mostly finished and was not affected by the new voluntary offers.

Airlines have been raising fares to cope with higher fuel prices, and many have been scrapping growth plans they had for this year. Delta is adding flights during the first half of the year. Airlines generally reduce flights in the fall because leisure travel drops off. Delta’s reduction beginning after Labor Day will be 4 percent below its service levels at the same time last year. Delta said last month it would park 140 planes over the next year and a half, 20 more than it originally planned. The planes coming out of its fleet will include some of its largest jets, used for international flights.

Stock in Delta, which is based in Atlanta, fell a penny, to $11.21 a share.

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Pandora Internet Radio Service to Offer Large Archive of Comedy Clips

On Wednesday Pandora will add 10,000 clips by more than 700 comedians to its archive, and allow users to sort through them in the same way they do the site’s music: by picking a starting place — a comedian, type of comedy or even a specific joke — and then letting Pandora send a stream of similar material chosen by analyzing his or her taste.

“This is a logical step under the umbrella of personalized radio,” said Tim Westergren, the founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora Media, the company behind the service.

The comedy offerings stretch back to the days of Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, and include most of the greats, past and present: Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Joan Rivers, and Cheech & Chong. For more specialized tastes, there are routines by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Minnie Pearl and Yakov Smirnoff.

As with music, Pandora has developed a system to predict what its listeners will like. With the help of professional comedians, the company identified more than 100 traits common in jokes, from basic themes (ethnicity, family) and styles of delivery (dry, self-deprecating) to broader categorizations of how comedians toy with logic and language (spoonerisms, juxtaposition, misdirection).

Put together, these traits make a “genomic” composite of a joke or routine, and can be strung together to follow unexpected themes. For example, a listener who begins with Chris Rock may end up listening to Bill Hicks because of his similar “male perspectives, subject explorations, sarcastic delivery and slow delivery,” as the service explains.

For Pandora, comedy is one piece in a broad expansion that has made the company one of the biggest players in digital music. For most of its history it struggled to stay alive and raise money, but now, largely thanks to its popularity on smartphones, it has 82 million registered users and is preparing to raise $100 million in an initial public offering.

The company is still reporting losses, but they are getting smaller. According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Pandora Media lost $1.7 million for the year that ended Jan. 31, compared with $16.8 million the year before; advertising revenue, its main source of income, was $119.3 million in fiscal 2011, compared with $50.1 million in 2010.

Comedians and their record companies are hoping that Pandora will be a boon. Comedy videos may be hugely popular online, but aside from the occasional hit — like Dane Cook’s “Retaliation,” for example, which has sold 1.4 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan — most comedy albums have minuscule sales. The most popular current comedy album is Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk With Me Live,” whose 3,400 sales were not enough for it to make Billboard’s standard Top 200 album chart.

“One of our biggest challenges is that of discovery,” said Jack Vaughn, vice president of Mr. Birbiglia’s label, Comedy Central Records. “How do we get people who like a certain comic to find out about another comic they might like? This seems like the next phase of what the Internet can do for comedy.”

Each comedy track on Pandora is about three to six minutes, with some made up of multiple bits by the same artist. As with music, the comedy service is offered in a free version supported by advertising, and paid, ad-free version. For its introduction, the free comedy streams will be supported by two Unilever brands with a penchant for comedic advertising: Klondike bars and Axe male grooming products.

Axe favors a bawdy, locker-room style of humor, said Rob Candelino, the brand’s marketing director. Since Pandora’s user registration includes demographic information like age and sex, Axe will show its 15-second ad spots only to men aged 18 to 24.

“We thought it was a sensational opportunity to reach our guy,” Mr. Candelino said.

Since it entered the market in 2005, Pandora has collected a mountain of data to help it parse what music people like and why. But some of the people involved in the comedy service are just waiting to see exactly how Pandora’s comedic algorithms will work.

“It’ll be interesting when I find out who I’m paired up with,” said the comedian Adam Carolla, whose material will be included in the service. “I’m sure at some point someone will be insulted. There may be a lot of unintended comedy.”

 

The Texas Tribune: State’s Top Universities Offer New Opportunity

It laid the groundwork for a new option for high school students eager to head to college before their graduation. If students demonstrate sufficient competency in English, math, science, a social science and a foreign language on tests like the Advanced Placement exam, they can receive a certificate that can be traded for a diploma at any time.

The kinks in this new system are currently being worked out in 16 districts and the KIPP charter schools, but it is expected to become available statewide this fall.

“Kids who are ready to move on — a lot of times, unfortunately, in the current system, those kids get bored,” said Reece Blincoe, superintendent of the Brownwood I.S.D. “They are bored out of their mind. Sometimes that can even lead them going the wrong direction instead of the right direction.”

What’s striking about this new initiative is the willingness of administrators at Texas’ top public universities to work together. The criteria used to evaluate students who want to leave high school early are controlled by the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. An early departing student may earn a certificate, which does not guarantee admission to either university, but it verifies that the recipient has met the standards for a top-tier research university.

Despite shrinking budgets, and a propensity of many flagship universities across the country to separate themselves from the demands of other educational institutions in their state, administrators at U.T. and A&M say they are actively involved in all aspects of the state’s education problems. But their efforts to engage in and even drive fundamental changes — like the new certificate program — are often overlooked in the state’s ongoing debate about higher education reforms.

“We collaborate with U.T. and others on these sorts of efforts regularly,” said R. Bowen Loftin, president of Texas A&M.

Representative Mike Villarreal, Democrat of San Antonio, who in the last legislative session added the amendment to the bill by Representative Rob Eissler, Republican of The Woodlands, said the involvement of U.T. and A&M was an important piece of the plan.

“That really sets the tone for the program,” Mr. Villarreal said. “It’s not about rushing students through high school. It’s really about excellence in education.”

Harrison Keller, the vice provost for higher education policy at U.T., who has quietly steered the new certificate initiative, said it was the first program of its kind in the country. “What you don’t have anywhere else is that it’s not just aligned with but it’s governed by the expectations of your two flagship universities,” Mr. Keller said.

Three weeks ago, at a meeting of the Association of American Universities, an elite group of research universities, William Powers Jr., president of the University of Texas, met with a handful of other presidents to discuss how higher-education leaders around the country could initiate similar efforts to address the faltering education pipeline.

“Education is in the news all the time,” Mr. Powers said later. “Leading institutions of higher education — A.A.U.-type universities — ought to be part of the solutions.”

In Austin, the Texas higher-education community has been locked in a debate over how to go about reforming higher education. The focus has largely centered around the reluctance of the U.T. system to embrace certain changes in higher education tied to accountability and productivity that have been championed by Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research organization.

Mr. Powers said that the perception that his institution is in a defensive position when it comes to change, “is inaccurate and I’d even say ironic.”

He does take some of the responsibility for that erroneous impression. “If you take it in the aggregate,” Mr. Powers said, “the flagship universities have not been successful in projecting that innovation in higher education is taking place at these major public flagship universities.”

David Guenthner, a spokesman for the public-policy group, said he has recently been encouraged by comments from Mr. Powers and Mr. Loftin that signal an agreement about the need for reform in higher education.

“We just need to have a discussion about what exactly that looks like and what the objectives ought to be and the path to get there,” Mr. Guenthner said.

Many of the concerns of Mr. Guenthner and the policy foundation focus more on accountability and transparency than on college readiness in secondary education, although Mr. Guenthner said he supported efforts to speed the time to get a degree. Currently, 53 percent of U.T. freshmen get a degree in four years; the figure at A&M is slightly above 50 percent.

“My view is that ‘we’ve got to thoughtfully change’ has been a hallmark of my administration,” Mr. Powers said.

Mr. Powers noted that college readiness efforts increased productivity because the university could do its job at less cost when it had better-prepared students.

U.T. and A&M are also collaborating with high schools and community colleges to develop curriculum for secondary education that will pair with the new flagship-approved certificate. “We’re saying that if you want to make dramatic progress, we need to work on these issues before the kids get to us,” Mr. Keller said.

Mr. Blincoe, the Brownwood superintendent, said he is excited about the potential of the early readiness program.

“If it catches on, I think it would have far-reaching repercussions,” he said. “You could see us in 10 years moving more toward a competency-based model instead of seat-time.”

Its potential, Mr. Blincoe said, is enhanced by the participation of the flagship universities. Still, even though the initiative is barely off the ground, it is feeling the sting of the state’s fiscal woes. As part of the Legislature’s efforts to close the state’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, financing for an existing scholarship for students who graduate from high school early through traditional means has been zeroed out for at least the next two years.

A bill by Mr. Villarreal to create a similar financial incentive for students who take advantage of the new “Doogie Howser” program — financed by the money school districts save by no longer having to take care of them for a full four years — also appears stymied by concern over the budget.

Such problems have a way of bringing about new solutions, Mr. Villarreal said. “We are experiencing very tight times,” he said, “and so we’re having to question assumptions about how we do business.”

 

Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees

 

WASHINGTON — A trove of more than 700 classified military documents provides new and detailed accounts of the men who have done time at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, and offers new insight into the evidence against the 172 men still locked up there.

The American prison at Guantánamo Bay still holds 172 detainees, most rated “high risk.”

These articles are based on a huge trove of secret documents leaked last year to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times by another source on the condition of anonymity.

Editors and reporters who worked on these articles will be answering select questions about the coverage of the material.

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.  A detainee at the Guantánamo Bay prison prayed outside his cell in 2007, in an area for the most compliant detainees.

Military intelligence officials, in assessments of detainees written between February 2002 and January 2009, evaluated their histories and provided glimpses of the tensions between captors and captives. What began as a jury-rigged experiment after the 2001 terrorist attacks now seems like an enduring American institution, and the leaked files show why, by laying bare the patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a military tribunal.

The documents meticulously record the detainees’ “pocket litter” when they were captured: a bus ticket to Kabul, a fake passport and forged student ID, a restaurant receipt, even a poem. They list the prisoners’ illnesses — hepatitis, gout, tuberculosis, depression. They note their serial interrogations, enumerating — even after six or more years of relentless questioning — remaining “areas of potential exploitation.” They describe inmates’ infractions — punching guards, tearing apart shower shoes, shouting across cellblocks. And, as analysts try to bolster the case for continued incarceration, they record years of detainees’ comments about one another.

The secret documents, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, reveal that most of the 172 remaining prisoners have been rated as a “high risk” of posing a threat to the United States and its allies if released without adequate rehabilitation and supervision. But they also show that an even larger number of the prisoners who have left Cuba — about a third of the 600 already transferred to other countries — were also designated “high risk” before they were freed or passed to the custody of other governments.

The documents are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantánamo — including sleep deprivation, shackling in stress positions and prolonged exposure to cold temperatures — that drew global condemnation. Several prisoners, though, are portrayed as making up false stories about being subjected to abuse.

The government’s basic allegations against many detainees have long been public, and have often been challenged by prisoners and their lawyers. But the dossiers, prepared under the Bush administration, provide a deeper look at the frightening, if flawed, intelligence that has persuaded the Obama administration, too, that the prison cannot readily be closed.

Prisoners who especially worried counterterrorism officials included some accused of being assassins for Al Qaeda, operatives for a canceled suicide mission and detainees who vowed to their interrogators that they would wreak revenge against America.

The military analysts’ files provide new details about the most infamous of their prisoners, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Sometime around March 2002, he ordered a former Baltimore resident to don a suicide bomb vest and carry out a “martyrdom” attack against Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s president, according to the documents. But when the man, Majid Khan, got to the Pakistani mosque that he had been told Mr. Musharraf would visit, the assignment turned out to be just a test of his “willingness to die for the cause.”

The dossiers also show the seat-of-the-pants intelligence gathering in war zones that led to the incarcerations of innocent men for years in cases of mistaken identity or simple misfortune. In May 2003, for example, Afghan forces captured Prisoner 1051, an Afghan named Sharbat, near the scene of a roadside bomb explosion, the documents show. He denied any involvement, saying he was a shepherd. Guantánamo debriefers and analysts agreed, citing his consistent story, his knowledge of herding animals and his ignorance of “simple military and political concepts,” according to his assessment. Yet a military tribunal declared him an “enemy combatant” anyway, and he was not sent home until 2006.

Obama administration officials condemned the publication of the classified documents, which were obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks last year but provided to The Times by another source. The officials pointed out that an administration task force set up in January 2009 reviewed the information in the prisoner assessments, and in some cases came to different conclusions. Thus, they said, the documents published by The Times may not represent the government’s current view of detainees at Guantánamo.

Among the findings in the files:

?The 20th hijacker: The best-documented case of an abusive interrogation at Guantánamo was the coercive questioning, in late 2002 and early 2003, of Mohammed Qahtani. A Saudi believed to have been an intended participant in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Qahtani was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself. His file says, “Although publicly released records allege detainee was subject to harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention,” his confessions “appear to be true and are corroborated in reporting from other sources.” But claims that he is said to have made about at least 16 other prisoners — mostly in April and May 2003 — are cited in their files without any caveat.

Charlie Savage reported from Washington, and William Glaberson and Andrew W. Lehren from New York. Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Benjamin Weiser and Andrei Scheinkman from New York.

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Opposition in Yemen Divided Over Offer From President

Mr. Saleh’s offer, which was mediated by his Arab neighbors, has accentuated the divisions within his opposition. The opposition coalition, known as the J.M.P., which includes seven political parties, said Sunday that it welcomed the initiative, but only if a national unity government was formed after Mr. Saleh stepped down, not immediately as the current proposal put together by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes six member nations, calls for. The coalition parties do not want to be part of a government with Mr. Saleh.

The protesters are taking a harder line, and say that the J.M.P. is out of touch with the demands of what are known as the “independent” youth not affiliated with standing political parties. Leaders of some of the tens of thousands of street protesters — originally young people but now Yemenis from all segments of society who have set up permanent protests camps in cities throughout the country — said they suspected that Mr. Saleh could wiggle out of the deal at a later date, and try to extend his 33-year rule.

Many said they were inspired by the youthful protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which forced autocrats in those countries out relatively quickly and without conditions. They said they wanted a similar outcome here.

Ataif Alwazir, one organizer in Sana, said she and many others in the streets were against agreeing to Mr. Saleh’s offer.

“It’s just another game,” she said. “Let the J.M.P. do what they have to do politically, negotiate, and the youth will do what they have to do and stay in the streets.”

Ms. Alwazir said the idea of immunity for Mr. Saleh and his sons had divided many as well.

Protesters have repeatedly voiced their rejection of the offer of immunity for the president, though on Sunday there was some chatter via social networking Web sites arguing for a more pragmatic approach if it meant ushering Mr. Saleh to exit.

Other protesters feel that Mr. Saleh’s acceptance of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s proposal was typical of his political cunning and a move to put the opposition in a bad light and make it seem as if he were the one working to stop the country from falling into chaos.

“This initiative is for the sake of the regime,” said Tawfiq al-Shaoubi, a protest leader in the central city of Taiz, home to Yemen’s largest demonstration. “We will keep protesting,” he said. “This is regime must go so we can a build a new modern society in Yemen.”

In Sana, protesters who have camped out for weeks appeared to have no intention of moving and continued with their demonstrations on Sunday, chanting, “No negotiation, no dialogue — resign or flee,” according to Reuters.

In an interview with BBC Arabic television on Sunday, Mr. Saleh said he would not hand over power to what he termed “insurrectionists.”

“Who shall I hand it over to?” he told the BBC. “Those who are trying to make a coup? No. We will do it through ballot boxes and referendums. We’ll invite international observers to monitor. Any coup is rejected because we are committed to the constitutional legitimacy and don’t accept chaos.”

Mr. Saleh also said that Al Qaeda, which is known to have a presence in the country, had infiltrated protest camps. “Al Qaeda are moving inside the camps, and this is very dangerous,” he said. “Why is the West not looking at this destructive work and its dangerous implications for the future?”

His call to use the ballot box added to the distrust among his opponents. “The G.C.C. announced that he agrees to leave after 30 days, and he says he’s only leaving through the ballot box,” said Ms. Alwazir, the youth leader. “There’s not trust,” she said. “Especially since he’s contradicting himself right now.”

An independent Yemeni diplomat, who did not want to be identified, said that Mr. Saleh seemed confused and reluctant to step aside, but that he had drawn his own lessons from the experience of Egypt and knew he should take advantage of this offer of immunity. Mr. Saleh also fears that no immunity deal would be ironclad, the diplomat said.

He said that some in the opposition understood Yemen’s delicate state, with violence in outlying provinces increasing and the economy floundering, which is why they were willing to compromise slightly.

“Some J.M.P. leaders understand the current state of the Yemeni scene,” the diplomat said. “They realize that Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and might face a civil war.” But others, he said, chiefly Islamists from the Islah Party, want to keep pushing until they seize power, signaling a split not just between protesters and the formal political parties but also within the coalition itself.

 

Opposition in Yemen Divided Over Offer From President

Mr. Saleh’s offer, which was mediated by his Arab neighbors, has accentuated the divisions within his opposition. The opposition coalition, known as the J.M.P., which includes seven political parties, said Sunday that it welcomed the initiative, but only if a national unity government was formed after Mr. Saleh stepped down, not immediately as the current proposal put together by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes six member nations, calls for. The coalition parties do not want to be part of a government with Mr. Saleh.

The protesters are taking a harder line, and say that the J.M.P. is out of touch with the demands of what are known as the “independent” youth not affiliated with standing political parties. Leaders of some of the tens of thousands of street protesters — originally young people but now Yemenis from all segments of society who have set up permanent protests camps in cities throughout the country — said they suspected that Mr. Saleh could wiggle out of the deal at a later date, and try to extend his 33-year rule.

Many said they were inspired by the youthful protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which forced autocrats in those countries out relatively quickly and without conditions. They said they wanted a similar outcome here.

Ataif Alwazir, one organizer in Sana, said she and many others in the streets were against agreeing to Mr. Saleh’s offer.

“It’s just another game,” she said. “Let the J.M.P. do what they have to do politically, negotiate, and the youth will do what they have to do and stay in the streets.”

Ms. Alwazir said the idea of immunity for Mr. Saleh and his sons had divided many as well.

Protesters have repeatedly voiced their rejection of the offer of immunity for the president, though on Sunday there was some chatter via social networking Web sites arguing for a more pragmatic approach if it meant ushering Mr. Saleh to exit.

Other protesters feel that Mr. Saleh’s acceptance of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s proposal was typical of his political cunning and a move to put the opposition in a bad light and make it seem as if he were the one working to stop the country from falling into chaos.

“This initiative is for the sake of the regime,” said Tawfiq al-Shaoubi, a protest leader in the central city of Taiz, home to Yemen’s largest demonstration. “We will keep protesting,” he said. “This is regime must go so we can a build a new modern society in Yemen.”

In Sana, protesters who have camped out for weeks appeared to have no intention of moving and continued with their demonstrations on Sunday, chanting, “No negotiation, no dialogue — resign or flee,” according to Reuters.

In an interview with BBC Arabic television on Sunday, Mr. Saleh said he would not hand over power to what he termed “insurrectionists.”

“Who shall I hand it over to?” he told the BBC. “Those who are trying to make a coup? No. We will do it through ballot boxes and referendums. We’ll invite international observers to monitor. Any coup is rejected because we are committed to the constitutional legitimacy and don’t accept chaos.”

Mr. Saleh also said that Al Qaeda, which is known to have a presence in the country, had infiltrated protest camps. “Al Qaeda are moving inside the camps, and this is very dangerous,” he said. “Why is the West not looking at this destructive work and its dangerous implications for the future?”

His call to use the ballot box added to the distrust among his opponents. “The G.C.C. announced that he agrees to leave after 30 days, and he says he’s only leaving through the ballot box,” said Ms. Alwazir, the youth leader. “There’s not trust,” she said. “Especially since he’s contradicting himself right now.”

An independent Yemeni diplomat, who did not want to be identified, said that Mr. Saleh seemed confused and reluctant to step aside, but that he had drawn his own lessons from the experience of Egypt and knew he should take advantage of this offer of immunity. Mr. Saleh also fears that no immunity deal would be ironclad, the diplomat said.

He said that some in the opposition understood Yemen’s delicate state, with violence in outlying provinces increasing and the economy floundering, which is why they were willing to compromise slightly.

“Some J.M.P. leaders understand the current state of the Yemeni scene,” the diplomat said. “They realize that Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and might face a civil war.” But others, he said, chiefly Islamists from the Islah Party, want to keep pushing until they seize power, signaling a split not just between protesters and the formal political parties but also within the coalition itself.

 

RV parks offer EV owners respite from the road (and their range anxiety, too)

 By Michael Gorman posted Apr 10th 2011 2:37AM EVs are pretty great for getting around major metropolitan areas, but many still feel some range anxiety when it comes time to leave the city limits. True, purpose-built charging stations are few and far between at the moment, but there's another charging option for those who enjoy going green and crave the open road: campgrounds. Turns out the 50-amp, 240-volt RV hookups found in such places can do double duty as juice dispensers for the depleted batteries in your Volt, Leaf, or Tesla. All electric powered roadwarriors need is an adapter to plug in, a few bucks to pay for current, and a few hours of free time. It's not as fast as fueling up the old fashioned way, but RV parks provide plenty of perks (swimming pools, lakes, and seniors who love poker, for example) not found at your average filling station. So, who's up for an eco-friendly road trip?

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