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THEMEMORIES
ANDMOMENTS
THATMADE THE
YEAR IN SPORTS
INSIDE
|
SPECIAL REPORT
A SHARP EYE
CAN STILL SPOT
MASTERPIECES
AT A BARGAIN
PAGE 17
|
WEEKEND ARTS
WEEKEND
DRIVINGAWAY
WITHA PIECE OF
WAR HISTORY
PAGE 12
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BUSINESS
THE QUEST FOR
THE PERFECT
ANCHOVY
BACK PAGE
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TRAVEL
ON THE PROWL
FOR A BOOKISH
NIGHT LIFE
PAGE 16
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WEEKEND ARTS
....
THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15-16, 2012
GLOBAL.NYTIMES.COM
Gunman
opens fire in
Connecticut
grade school
U.S. orders
missiles and
their crews
to Turkey
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, TURKEY
NEW YORK
18 children among dead
in one of the worst mass
killings in U.S. history
Patriot batteries are part
of NATO effort to guard
against fallout from Syria
BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
ANDWILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
A gunman killed 26 people, including 18
children, in a shooting on Friday at an
elementary school in Connecticut, a law
enforcement official said.
The gunman, who was believed to be
in his 20s, walked into a classroom at
SandyHook Elementary School inNew-
town, Connecticut, about 65miles, or 105
kilometers, north of New York City,
where hismotherwas a teacher. He shot
and killed her and then shot 18 students
in the classroom. He also shot seven
other adults. The gunman then killed
himself inside the school. The shooting
ranks among the worst in recent United
States history.
A 9-year-old boy who is a student at
the school said he was in the gym when
the shooting erupted.
‘‘We were in the gym, and I heard
really loud bangs,’’ said the boy, as he
stood shivering and weeping outside
the school. ‘‘We thought that someone
was knocking something over. And we
heard yelling, and we heard gunshots.
We heard lots of gunshots. We heard
someone say, ‘Put your hands up.’ I
heard, ‘Don’t shoot.’
‘‘We had to go into the closet in the
gym,’’ he continued. ‘‘Then someone
came and told us to run down the hall-
way. There were police at every door.
There were lots of people crying and
screaming.’’
Another student at the school told an
NBC affiliate in Connecticut: ‘‘I was in
the gym and I heard like seven loud
booms, and the gym teachers told us to
go in the corner and we huddled. We all
heard these booming noises, and we
started crying. So the gym teachers told
us to go into the office where no one
could find us. Then a police officer told
us to run outside.’’
State police said the Newtown police
called them shortly after 9:30 a.m., ac-
cording to Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Con-
necticut State Police. ‘‘On- and off-duty
troopers responded to the school, and
with Newtown police immediately upon
arrival entered the school and began an
active shooter
BY THOM SHANKER, ERIC SCHMITT
ANDMICHAEL R. GORDON
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta
signed a deployment order on Friday to
send 400 American military personnel
and two Patriot air defense batteries to
Turkey, in the most direct U.S. military
action so far to help contain the Syrian
conflict andminimize the risk it will spill
across the border with Turkey.
The American batteries will be part of
a broader push to strengthen Turkey’s
defenses that will include the deploy-
ment of four other Patriot batteries, two
from Germany and two from the Neth-
erlands. Each battery contains multiple
rounds of guidedmissiles that can inter-
cept and destroy other missiles and hos-
tile aircraft flying at high speeds.
Mr. Panetta’s deployment order is the
result of NATO discussions last week.
Turkey, a member of the military alli-
ance, is housing more than 100,000 Syr-
ian refugees and providing aid to the
Syrian rebels trying to oust President
Bashar al-Assad.
Tensions between Turkey and Syria
have escalated in recent months as Syr-
ian forces have bombed rebel positions
along the border and occasionally
lobbed artillery rounds into Turkish ter-
ritory. The Turks have also grown in-
creasingly alarmed that Mr. Assad’s
forces could fire missiles into Turkey.
News of the Patriot deployment order
came as antigovernment activists in-
MARCO LONGARI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Egypt votes
A supporter of President MohamedMorsi at a rally in Cairo on Friday ahead of a hotly contested referendumSaturday on a draft constitution.
For Cairo’s
poor, a revolution that failed
CAIRO
BY KAREEM FAHIM
A faded poster of Hosni Mubarak hangs
on a wall in a crumbling neighborhood
here, reminding residents of an empty
pledge to find jobs for young people.
Down the street, a campaign banner for
his successor, Mohamed Morsi, hangs
across the road, a reminder of more re-
cent promises unkept.
In the neighborhood, called Boulaq,
so long neglected that houses regularly
collapse, there was little expectation
that Mr. Mubarak, the former president,
would provide. But Mr. Morsi’s disreg-
ard has been much harder to take.
‘‘We had high hopes in God, that
things would improve,’’ Fathi Hussein
said as he built a desk of dark wood for
one of his clients, whose numbers are
dwindling. ‘‘I elected a president to be
good for the country. I did not elect him
to impose his opinions on me.’’
Away from the protests and violence
that have marked the painful struggle
over Egypt’s identity before a referen-
dum Saturday on a draft constitution,
residents of Boulaq have their own rea-
sons to be consumedwith the crisis. The
chants of the protesters, for bread and
freedom, resonate in Boulaq’s alley-
ways. In many of its industrial work-
shops —passed from struggling fathers
to penniless sons — disappointment
with the president and his Muslim
Brotherhood supporters, as well as the
leaders of the opposition, grows daily.
SYRIA, PAGE 6
EGYPT,PAGE6
Plunging into
São Paulo’s murky depths
SÃO PAULO
more than 20 years. Hired largely to un-
clog drainage gates, he scours the
murky depths of the Tietê and Pinheir-
os, which have symbolized the Brazilian
city’s environmental degradation for
decades, bringing to the surface a list of
items that are eerie and bizarre.
Over the years, his takings, which he is
required to hand over to the authorities,
as a contractor for public utility compa-
nies, have included a suitcasewith $2,000
inside, handguns, knives, appliances like
stoves and refrigerators, countless auto-
mobile tires, and, in another suitcase, the
decomposing remains of a woman who
had been dismembered.
‘‘I stopped looking for suitcases after
that,’’ saidMr. dos Santos, 48.
He readily admits that jumping into
rivers that rank among theworld’smost
polluted is not for everyone. But for Mr.
dos Santos, a surfer who got into diving
to finance his wave-catching habit, his
job has brought him an unusual level of
admiration fromPaulistanos, as the res-
idents of this hard-bitten megacity are
called.
Some stop their automobiles, taking
pictures from their smartphones when
they see him preparing to dive (traffic-
clogged highways run along the banks
of both the Tietê and Pinheiros). Talk-
show hosts marvel at his courage. One
newspaper here, describing Mr. dos
Santos in his futuristic diving garb, com-
pared him to a ‘‘Japanese superhero.’’
Part of the fascination with Mr. dos
Hired to unclog drains,
diver finds cash, weapons
and a corpse in a suitcase
BY SIMON ROMERO
The Tietê and Pinheiros rivers, which cut
through thismetropolis of 20million, flow
well enough in some parts. But in certain
stretches, they ooze. Their waters are
best described, perhaps, as ashen gray.
Their aroma, reminiscent of rotten eggs,
is known to induce nausea in passers-by.
José Leonídio Rosendo dos Santos
has been diving into both rivers for
search,’’ Lieutenant
Vance said.
Meredith Artley, the managing editor
of CNN.com, said that someone who
works at the school told her the shooting
happened in the hallway. ‘‘She de-
scribed it as a ‘pop, pop, pop,’ ’’ Ms.
Artley said.
‘‘She said three people went out into
LALODE ALMEIDA FOR THE NEWYORK TIMES
José Leonídio Rosendo dos Santos says he never goes into one of São Paulo’s rivers with-
out an extra-thick protective suit. His vision is severely impaired once under the water.
SHOOTING, PAGE 4
BRAZIL, PAGE 5
WORLDNEWS
In Japan, return of old guard
After a brief switch, Japanese voters
appear ready to hand power back to the
Liberal Democratic Party.
PAGE 7
BUSINESS
American drama for the Net
Exiting a global treaty conference on
telecommunications in a huff, U.S.
negotiators showed their refusal to
acknowledge even symbolic global
oversight of the Internet. The episode
left many at the Dubai talks puzzled:
The word Internet was not mentioned
anywhere in the document.
PAGE 12
A new toughness in UBS case
As they near a potential settlement
with the Swiss banking giant UBS,
authorities in the United States, Britain
and Switzerland are on the verge of
something rare in the recent history of
financial investigations: an admission
of criminal wrongdoing.
PAGE 12
E.U. defers new budget steps
E.U. leaders pledged Friday at a
summit meeting in Brussels to take
further steps to set up common banking
rules for the bloc. But they delayed
plans for a shared budget for the euro
zone nations, amid signs that pressure
was easing on the currency.
PAGE 12
VIEWS
The other U.S. Constitution
A national debate about Japan’s war-
renouncing Constitution should remind
the Japanese never to take their peace
and their democracy for granted,
writes Nassrine Azimi.
PAGE 8
The challenge of Muslim youth
Growing numbers of Muslim youth are
an untapped resource. Economic and
political reformwill give young people
a future defined by opportunity, writes
Najib Razak.
PAGE 8
Berlin tries again to ban party
The upper house of Parliament voted for
a new effort to have a far-right political
party deemed unconstitutional.
PAGE 4
ONLINE
Rattling sabers in China
Xi Jinping, the new leader of the
Communist Party in China, is moving
quickly to make strengthening the
country’s armed forces a centerpiece of
what he calls the ‘‘Chinese dream’’ of
national rejuvenation. His stance is
certain to raise questions abroad over
the degree to which a military buildup
would be a pillar of a nationalist
platform.
global.nytimes.com/asia
ANDREWHARRER/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Fiscal freeze
The House speaker, John A. Boehner, after meeting President
Barack Obama this week. Prospects have dimmed that they will reach a deal.
PAGE 5
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2
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SATURDAY-SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15-16, 2012
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
page two
Starting over
on what
work means
tion — and hugely lifttheir trajectories.
The college pulls on many levers to
achieve that goal — requiring students
to be full-timers; limiting courses of
study to six fields withprovenjobpros-
pects;offering abundant counseling.
But the most intriguing ideamaybe a
mandatory first-year class called ‘‘Eth-
nographies of Work.’ ’
The course grew out of findings that
students who attend communitycol-
leges—who in New York come over-
whelmingly fromlow-incomeor minor-
ity backgrounds —often harbor
negative associations with work, said
Nancy Hoffman, an education scholar
who has advised the new college. In
these students’ communities,work may
be primarily experiencedassoul-crush-
ing or exploitative or elusive orillegal.
‘‘Mostly in my community, it’sjustto
survive,’’ said Jesus A. Paredes, 18, an-
other first-year student atthe New
CommunityCollege. ‘‘Nobody really
followed their passion.Orifthey did
follow their passion, it didn’t go right.’’
And so, for their ethnography class
this autumn, students fanned out
across New York to investigate work.
Theysat in offices and recorded obser-
vations (how workers dressed,their
mood, how authority was expressed).
Theyinterviewedlawyers, social work-
ers,techies. Theykept journals about
their ownattitudes. The purposewas
to reach a deeper understanding of
whatwork is (thetopic of their final pa-
per), and how — as Ms.Mendoza was
seeking to do—toreconcilethe im-
pulsetosurvive with one’s passions.
‘‘Work is something people do and
get paid for,’ ’ one studentwrote in her
final paper. ‘‘Work is the foundation of
purpose,’’ said another.
ForJeslyn Ruiz, 18,the class gave
her the couragetotell her grandmoth-
er that, no, shewon’t be anurse; she
wants to be a lighting directorforcon-
certs. Her grandmother,who cameto
theUnitedStatesfrom Puerto Rico,
laughedinher face. ‘‘Oh, no, you’ll be a
nurse,’’ she said, not commanding, just
mournfully predicting.
Sherine Smith, 21, cametothe course
with the notion that ‘‘I have to make
the most moneypossible’’ doing the
least possiblework. Meeting real-life
workers had convincedher that money
may not leave you better off and was
forcing her to reconsider.
Out of nine students who gathered to
meet withareporter, six said they
emergedfrom the class persuaded that
job and passionmust align. DerekNor-
man, a22-year-old musician whowants
to join the Fire Department and con-
fine his music to after-hours gigs,
spoke for the keep-them-separate
camp: ‘‘I don’t feel that you need to
takethe two of them and mend them
together.’ ’
Someof the studentsseemedless
sureof their ultimate directionbut were
still savoring a strange and stirring
semester. For Mr.Paredes, adenizen of
this mostvertical ofcities whomfate
has kept closetothe ground floor,the
homework to interview asuccessful
lawyerdelivered onalong-deferred
dream: ‘‘I’ve neverbeen to a52nd
f
loor,’ ’ he said. He quite likeditup there.
Join an online conversation at
http://anand.ly; Follow on
Twitter.com/anandwrites
Anand
Giridharadas
ANDREA BRUCE FOR THE NEWYORK TIMES
A smuggling tunnel connecting Egypt to the city of Rafa in southern Gaza. Hamas sub-
jects smuggled goods to numerous taxes and licensing fees to support the government.
WISSAMNASSAR FOR THE NEWYORK TIMES
Members of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, holding back the crowd in
Gaza City during a recent visit by the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal.
CURRENTS
NEW YORK
‘‘I was raisedinto believing
that moneyiseverything,’ ’ said Maire
Mendoza, 19, crying at her own tale.
Her parentsare near-invisiblesin
this city thatthey’ve heard calledacity
ofdreams. TheyleftMexico before
Mairewas born and have toiledanony-
mously ever since—hermothera
baby sitter these days, herfatherares-
taurantworker.
They raised their girls as pragmatic
survivors. So itwas startling when
Maire cametothemnot long agowith
an epiphany: ‘‘I now know that Idon’t
wanttowork formoney,’ ’ she said,to
bafflement. But herfather, sensing his
limitations, deferred. ‘‘You’re probably
right,’’ she remembers him saying,
‘‘and it’sbecause you gotoschool and
you know things thatwedon’t know.’’
Ms.Mendoza’sself-discovery was no
accident. Such discoveriesarethe goal
ofanaudacious experiment in New
York that seeks to improve the fortunes
ofcommunitycollege studentsbyde-
molishing and rebuilding their percep-
tions about work.
Communitycollegesarethe bedrock
of American higher education. They of-
ten take all comers — clever teenagers,
25-year-old ex-drifters, middle-aged
downsizeesinneed ofretraining — and
let themstudy as needed: a class at a
timeorafull load, foradegree orfor
fun. In a nation whose mythology de-
claims that all whotry can make it,
communitycollegesare among the last
hopes ofproving the mythology true.
But their anything-goes approach has
comeunderfire in recent years, in part
becauseof dismal graduationrates,
which can hoverinthe twenties, teens
or even single digitsinsome cases.
‘‘The job the country needs communi-
tycolleges to do now (bettersuccess) is
different from the jobneededfrom them
(broaderaccess)when the community
college movement began,’ ’ said Allan C.
Golston, presidentof theU.S. program of
the Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation,
which has pressedfor majorreforms.
Thanks in parttothe reformers’ pres-
sure, the New CommunityCollege
openedherethis autumn,with Ms.Men-
dozainthe inaugural class. It is an ex-
perimental institution within the City
University ofNew York,with a mission
to takethe students whomcommunity
colleges usually fail —they’re still taken
first-come, first-serve, not by applica-
TYLER HICKS/THE NEWYORK TIMES
Residents among the rubble after Israeli forces invaded Gaza last month. Hamas’s ability to strike in Israel makes many Gazans proud, but poverty still weighs on daily life.
Popula
r, but poor, in Gaza
GAZA CITY
from visitors, forafee, and searches
luggagetoensurethat noone imports
any alcohol. Evenmore striking, Hamas
has set upits ownlavish civil adminis-
trationinGaza that issues papers, li-
censes, insurance and numerous other
permissions — and always foratax ora
fee.
Gazans recognize thatthere is more
orderhere, more construction and less
garbage. But many resenttheeconomic
burden of financing Hamas and, impli-
citly, its military.
Ziad Ashour, 43, abutcher, said that
‘‘sincethe first intifada,’ ’ meaning the
Palestinian uprising in 1987, ‘‘things
have steadily declinedinGaza.’ ’ But in
the last year, he said,theyhave gotten
considerably worseeconomically.
Anothermerchant in the Beach Camp
market said that Hamas,which tightly
controls tunnel traffic on the Egyptian
border, had raised taxes on basic items,
including cannedgoods and building
materials. There is a tax ofabout 2.5
shekels,orabout 70 cents,on every pack
of cigarettes, and around 67 cents on
every liter,or$2.50 per gallon,ofgasol-
ineordiesel, fixed evenifthe final price
is roughly half thatof Israeli gasoline.
People pay to apply foridentification
cards, driver’s licenses, building per-
mits — ‘‘there are feesfor everything,’ ’
the merchant said.
Largerbusinessesareespecially tar-
getedfor high taxes. ‘‘Now business-
menknow the difference betweenFatah
and Hamas,’ ’ anothermerchant said.
Adham Badawi, 22, bought an Egyp-
tian-assembled, hree-wheel Chinese
motorcycle cart for his family textile
shopfor theequivalentof$1,500, ‘‘im-
ported’’ through thetunnels. He had to
pay theequivalentof $395 in tax, plusre-
gistration, insurance and a driver’sli-
cense. He says the contraptionisbetter
than a donkeybecause iteats onlywhen
in use and doesnot need to be looked
after. But the feesareexpensive, he
said, and he is nervousabout renewing
his license, registration and insurance.
Hamas needs moneynot only for sal-
aries, government and its charitable ac-
tivities, but also for theQassam Bri-
gades,which someexperts estimate to
include 20,000 men — mostof them on
display for Mr.Meshal’s visit, in uni-
forms withgoodboots and black
balaclavas covering their faces, and
armed withautomatic rifles and other
equipment, someofit smuggledfrom
Libya.
The budget for Qassam is not re-
vealed, and its main task is to protect
Hamas. But it has also beenatthe fore-
frontof military relations withIranand
Syria, in rocket importation and devel-
opment and evendrone development
with Iranian aid, Israeli officials say.
The longer-range rocket and drone de-
velopmentwas a particularly important
target for Israelintheeight-day conflict
last month,theysay.
But the brigade has also beenactive
in the building ofsecret underground
fortifications,which require many men
and large amounts ofbuilding supplies
like steel and cement. Inaspeech last
Saturday,PrimeMinister Ismail Han-
iya praised Qassam for ts under-
ground work,’ ’ saying for the firsttime
that 40to50 men had died laboring un-
derground,which he said previously
had beendescribed simply as killedin
‘‘jihadi missions.’ ’
During the fighting with Israel,there
were few Hamas fighters orleaders to
be seen: They were all somewhereun-
derground or in hiding in what Israel
considers to be an intricate system of
public, and theyare moretoleranton
the beaches. Feweryoung menare ar-
restedforcontactwithyoung women
who are not their fiancées. Hamasmem-
bers have stoppedsetting firetoInter-
net cafesinthe nameofpornography
prevention.
But the media is still heavily moni-
tored and controlled, Fatah members
arewatched, and the sheer visibility of
armed Hamas police and militia forces
is intimidating.Afterhaving confronted
and disarmed significant Fatah-sup-
porting hamullas,or clans, Hamas has a
near monopoly on arms insidethe Gaza
Strip.
Fornow, Hamas has theupper hand
in dealings withFatah, and no immedi-
ate worriesabout losing the allegiance
of Palestinian Gazans. But popularity
can be fleeting in a period of economic
despair,whennongovernment jobs are
scarce and evenconstruction workers,
who 20 years agoearned theequivalent
of $65 to $80 adayinIsrael, now earn
around $13 a day.
Yusra Jabar, 50, is a childless widow
who helps her sisterfeedherfour chil-
dren with aid from theUnitedNations.
Shewas buying radishesrecently to
pickle becausetheyare cheap—about 8
kilograms,or18pounds, for$2.65. They
rarely eat meat. ‘‘It is a lifeofdepres-
sion and deprivation,’ ’ she said.
In a commoncomplaint, she said:
‘‘We wish to live likeotherpeople in the
world outside. Wewanttohave thetaste
of life.’’
Ms. Jabar is nonetheless proud of
Hamas and its ability to hit Israel, and
her opinionfornow is widespread.
‘‘Hamas feels definitely in the lead
overFatah,’ ’ saidMkhaimar Abusada, a
political science professoratAl Azhar
UniversityinGazaCity. ‘‘Meshal now
says that he’snot afraid ofnewPalestin-
ian elections because Hamas is now
much more popular becauseof thewar.
But how long will it last?’’
He remembered a similar burstof
Hamas popularityinOctober2011, after
the releaseof the Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit, whom Hamas held forfive years
and exchangedformorethan 1,000 Pal-
estinian prisoners. ‘‘But amonthlater,
thePalestinians wokeup to the same
problems: poverty, mismanagement,
siege, unemployment, little freedom of
movement,’’ Mr.Abusada said. ‘‘If it
can’t deal with these same issues,
Hamas will find itself in the same posi-
tionasitwas beforethewar.’ ’
Hamas is riding high,
but money problems
could erode its standing
ONLINE:
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Gay marriage fight intensifies in Europe
‘‘With 45 percent of U.S. adults still saying that the earth is less than 10,000
years old and that evolution didn’t happen (per 8 separate Gallup polls over
the last 30 years) national enlightenment is still a few years away. Progress is
glacial and as with other civil rights, it shouldn’t be so slow.’’
DUNCAN LENNOX—CANADA
ihtrendezvous.com
BY STEVEN ERLANGER
Hamas has been riding high oflate,
afteritsprofessed victory in the recent
conflictwith Israel and the overthrow
last year of the Egyptian president,
Hosni Mubarak, an avowed enemy.
Nevertheless, it is facing seriousfi-
nancial troublesstemming from the re-
volt in Syria and its expanding military
ambitions, and its increasing demands
on the impoverishedpopulation of the
GazaStrip are stirring resentments. In
response, and with an anxious eye to-
ward theArab Spring revolts, some Ga-
zaresidentssay, it has eased up slightly
in itsreligiousrestrictions onpeople’s
lives.
The governmentof President Bashar
al-Assad in Syria had beenastalwart
ally and a conduit for Iranian money,
weapons andmilitary expertise. But the
Assads are members of theAlawite
sect, an offshoot of Shiism, and are fight-
ingmostly Sunni rebels, forcing Hamas,
which is Sunni,tochoose sides. Hamas
decided to shut itspolitical bureau in
Damascus inMarch and send itspolitic-
al chairman, Khaled Meshal, shuttling
between Qatar and Egypt.
The breakwith Syria has alsomeant a
sharp cut in the financing Hamas re-
ceivedfromIran,which is also facing
economic problems becauseof Western
sanctions overitsnuclear-enrichment
program, sanctions that have cut the
value of the Iranian rial in half in a year.
In responsetothis gathering financial
crisis, Hamas has sought new support
fromSunni governments likeQatar and
theUnited Arab Emirates. But it has
also raised taxes and feesconsiderably,
prompting complaintsfromGazans.
Mr.Meshal’s first, triumphal visitto
GazaC ty lastweekend displayed
Hamas’spower and organization. In the
five years since it drove its Palestinian
rival, Fatah, out of the GazaStrip in a
briefcivil war, after winning elections in
2006, Hamas has establishedarepress-
ive ministate withastrong Islamist cast
that it clearly has no intention of
abandoning.
Hamas now requires‘‘entry visas’’
IN OUR PAGES
✴
100, 75, 50 YEARS AGO
1912 Christmas Crowds Start for U.S.
LONDON
The Cunard steamship Lusit-
ania,which left Liverpoolyesterday
[Dec. 14] forNew York,with every berth
occupied,was almostthe lastof the big
steamers carrying Americans across the
Atlantic in timetopass Christmas in the
UnitedStates. There remain only the
Amerika,which leavesSouthampton
and Cherbourg to-day, and theMajestic,
onWednesday,which will have to make
arush for theother sidetobe in time.
Therewas quite a Christmas air about
the platform at Eustonstationyesterday
beforethethree boattrains left forLiv-
erpool, and therewas an immense
crowdseeing friends off.
1937 Keller’s Secretary Now a Citizen
NEWYORK
Mary AgnesThomson, secre-
tary of Miss HelenKeller, has been admit-
ted to citizenship in theUnitedStatesbe-
fore Justice JamesT. Hallinan in Supreme
Court, Queens, afterMiss Keller had ap-
pearedashersponsor.Miss Keller,taking
the stand,was askedbythe court clerk:
‘‘Do you, Miss Keller, knowMiss Thom-
son, and can you vouch forher charac-
ter?’’ Miss Keller was accompaniedbyan
interpreter, Edward A. Richards, former
Municipal Court justice, an old friend,
whotransmitted the questionbymoving
his fingers overhermouth. She answered
in a similar manner andMr. Richards said
‘‘yes.’ ’ In admitting her to citizenship
Justice Hallinan saidMiss Thomson ‘‘is
very fortunate in having a woman ofsuch
integrity and high standing in the com-
munityasMiss Keller to vouch forher.’ ’
1962 Urging for More NATO Forces
PARIS
Defense Secretary Robert S.Mc-
Namara today [Dec. 14] put beforethe
North Atlantic Treaty Organizationa
massive case—military, political and
economic—toshow how and why
NATO could and should improve itscon-
ventional military forces.Mr.Mc-
Namara and Secretary ofState Dean
Rusk,who also spoketoday on the polit-
ical aspects ofdefense policy, bothreit-
erated briefly the standing UnitedStates
offer to discuss withanyinterested
NATO partners the formation ofaNATO
multinational nuclear force. But there
were notakers attoday’smeeting and
the mattergot little morethanamen-
tion. The D
efense Secretary said itwas
of majorinteresttotheUnitedStates to
try to meet the legitimate securityin-
terests of the NATO partners in the field
ofnuclear cooperation.
‘‘We wish to live like other
people in the world outside.
We want to have the taste
of life.’’
tunnels and bunkers modeled on those
builtwith Iranian guidance by Hezbol-
lah in southern Lebanon.
Hamas nonetheless sees tself as
closetothe people and sensitive to pub-
lic attitudes. The revolts of theArab
Spring were a kind of warning, said one
analyst closetoHamas who agreed to
speak on the condition that his name not
beused. The Islamization of the Gaza
Strip is ‘‘a process,’ ’ the analyst said,
‘‘and it can move stepbystepintune
with events.’ ’
In response, Hamas has eased up on
itsinterference in personal life in the
nameofreligiouspurity. It is still build-
ing massive and lavish mosques every-
where(with ortified basements or
Hamas members to hide during air-
strikes, residentssay), but the Hamas
police have mostly stopped harassing
womenfornot wearing head scarves,
stopped insisting that all high school
girls wear head scarves (though a vast
majoritydo) and stoppedpreventing
womenfromsmoking water pipesin
 ....
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15-16, 2012
|
3
THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
....
4
|
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15-16, 2012
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Wor
ld News
europe americas
BRIEFLY
Europe
BRIEFLY
Americas
MOSCOW
Opposition leader faces
investigation on fraud charge
Russia has opened a criminal investi-
gation against the opposition leader
Aleksei Navalny on suspicion of fraud
and money laundering, the federal in-
vestigative committee said Friday.
Mr. Navalny, an anti-corruption blog-
ger who has organized demonstrations
in the past 12 months against President
Vladimir V. Putin, already faces
charges of theft that he says are politi-
cally motivated and part of a Kremlin
clampdown on dissent.
The federal investigative committee
saidMr. Navalny and his brother were
being investigated over the alleged theft
of 55 million rubles, or $1.79 million, by a
trading company they have ties to. It an-
nounced the investigation one day be-
fore the opposition planned a newmarch
against Mr. Putin inMoscow.
(REUTERS)
BERLIN
Sports bag at train station
said to hold bomb materials
German officials said Friday that a
sports bag found at Bonn’s main train
station containing a metal pipe and ex-
plosive chemicals may have been inten-
ded for use in an attack by a group they
believe could be tied to Islamic radicals.
Federal prosecutors said they had
‘‘sufficient, clear indications’’ that the
incident constituted ‘‘an attempted ex-
plosive attack by a terror organization
influenced by Islamic extremists.’’ The
bag, foundMonday, held a 40-centi-
meter, or 16-inch, pipe, ammonium ni-
trate, and an alarm clock and batteries
that prosecutors believe were supposed
to act as a detonator.
The police detained two suspects, but
released them due to lack of evidence.
They are now searching for two others.
LONDON
British prosecutors choose
not to try computer hacker
The British authorities said Friday they
would not charge a computer hacker
who waged a decade-long struggle to
avoid trial in the United States for
breaking into military computers.
GaryMcKinnon, who has been diag-
nosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, was
accused of one of the largest-ever
breaches of military networks, carried
out soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. of-
ficials have saidMr. McKinnon’s hacking
shut down the U.S. Army district respon-
sible for protectingWashington, and
caused about $900,000 worth of damage.
British prosecutors had to decide
whether Mr. McKinnon, 46, should be
tried at home over the alleged breaches
of U.S. networks, after he avoided extra-
dition to the United States. Extradition
would put him at risk of suicide if he was
extradited, medical experts said.
(AP)
MOSCOW
Vodka used to save elephants
from freezing after Siberia fire
A Russian circus trainer fed a cocktail
of warmwater and vodka to two ele-
phants stranded in the blistering Siberi-
an cold, and credits it with saving their
lives, state media reported Friday.
A trailer carrying the Indian elephants
caught fire on a highway in Novosibirsk
region on Thursday. Emergency work-
ers scrambled to get the animals into a
nearby garage, and the animals suffered
nothing more serious than frostbite to
their ears, a veterinarian said.
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
Premier of Cayman Islands
rejects calls for resignation
The leader of the Cayman Islands gov-
ernment has rejected calls for his resig-
nation over his arrest on suspicion of
corruption, calling the investigation a
plot by political enemies who are try-
ing to smear his reputation.
The leader, Premier McKeeva Bush,
shrugged off the allegations during a
visit to the Jamaican capital on Thurs-
day, two days after he was arrested by
the British Caribbean territory’s police.
The Royal Cayman Islands Police
Service said it was looking into allega-
tions that Mr. Bush misused his govern-
ment credit card and abused his office
by importing explosive devices without
permits. No charges have been filed.
(AP)
OTTAWA
Justices unanimously uphold
broad anti-terrorism law
The Canadian Supreme Court on Fri-
day upheld an anti-terrorism law en-
acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
on the United States, ruling unani-
mously that those who choose to en-
gage in terrorismmust ‘‘pay a very
heavy price.’’
The law’s constitutionality was chal-
lenged byMuhammadMomin
Khawaja, convicted in Canada of terror-
ism for involvement with a British
group that had plotted unsuccessfully
to set off bombs in London. Mr.
Khawaja, the first to be convicted under
the anti-terrorism law, was sentenced
in 2008 to 10› years in prison, and his
sentence was then extended to life after
an appeal by the government.
The lawwas also challenged by two
men accused of terrorism by the United
States for trying to buy missiles or
weapons technology for the Sri Lankan
Tamil Tigers. The court rejected argu-
ments that the law’s definition of ter-
rorismwas overly broad. It also upheld
Mr. Khawaja’s life sentence and con-
firmed the orders to extradite the other
two to the United States.
(REUTERS)
MADRID
Spaniard imprisoned in Cuba
to serve out termback home
A Spaniard sentenced in Cuba to prison
for the death of a prominent dissident
will fly back to Spain to serve the rest
of his four-year term, the authorities in
both countries said Friday.
Ángel Carromero Barrios, a Spanish
regional political youth leader, was
driving a car July 22 that lost control
and crashed, killing Oswaldo Payá, a
passenger and well-known opponent of
the Cuban government. A court sen-
tenced him to jail in October for the
equivalent of vehicular manslaughter.
On Friday, Deputy Prime Minister
Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría of Spain
saidMr. Carromero would be repatri-
ated. Cuba also confirmed the decision
after negotiations Thursday between
the two countries’ justice ministries.
Neither gave a date for the transfer.
(AP)
CARACAS
Complications in Chávez’s surgery
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela
experienced complications related to
his cancer surgery, resulting in bleed-
ing that required ‘‘corrective mea-
sures,’’ but his vital signs were return-
ing to normal and he was showing
signs of recovery, a government official
said. The surgery was performed in
Havana on Tuesday.
EVGENY FELDMAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The other side of justice
DmitryPavlyuchenkov, a former police officer, at aMoscowcourt onFriday. Hewas sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined threemillion rubles
f
or his part in the 2006 murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Prosecutors said he helped to trackMs. Politkovskaya’s movements and provided the killer a gun.
Germany tries again to ban party
banks. A leading member of the N.P.D.
has confessed to having contacts with
the neo-Nazi trio — a statement seized
upon by opponents as further proof of
the need to ban the party.
‘‘These murders confronted us with a
new level of far-right extremism,’’
Christine Lieberknecht, governor of the
eastern state of Thuringia, told the up-
per house, the Bundesrat, on Friday.
‘‘Out of far-right extremism grew far-
right terror.’’
Germany’s 16 state governors sat on a
committee given responsibility by the
Bundesrat for reviewing documents, in-
terviews and observations fromsecurity
services about the N.P.D. Fifteen of the
16 backed the petition to ban the party.
Ms. Lieberknecht said the governors
felt confident that there was sufficient
proof of the threat the party posed to
Germany’s democratic principles.
‘‘We are convinced that the N.P.D. vi-
olates the Constitution,’’ Ms.
Lieberknecht said. ‘‘The N.P.D.’s atti-
tude is anti-Semitic, racist and xeno-
phobic. Its goals, behavior and actions
are similar in character to those of the
Nazis.’’
In a statement, the N.P.D. leadership
called the latest attempt to ban the
party ‘‘a foolhardy and stupid en-
deavor,’’ while insisting they viewed it
with ‘‘necessary seriousness, but com-
mensurate calmness.’’
The Bundesrat’s decision is only an
initial step in what could be a very long
process. The greatest legal uncertainty
is beyond German control, as the Euro-
pean Court of Justice may have a say in
whether the party can be banned.
The previous attempt to outlaw the
party collapsed in 2003 when it emerged
that several of the government-paid in-
formants keeping tabs on the party had
simultaneously held high-ranking posi-
tions in it. The legal debacle — and the
moral implications in a country with a
long history of two-faced Nazi and Com-
munist informants — proved an embar-
rassment for the then center-left Social
Democrat government of Gerhard
Schröder, which had initiated the ban.
So far, Ms. Merkel’s government has
appeared reluctant to join the gov-
ernors’ effort. After meeting them earli-
er this month, she expressed ‘‘under-
standing’’ for their position, but said her
in Germany, to draw public financing,
which particularly galls those who con-
sider it an extremist group.
Germans widely agree with banning
the party, recent surveys show. A poll re-
leased Thursday indicated that 67 per-
cent of Germans supported a ban, and 21
percent opposed it, Emnid pollsters said.
Not all politicians believe that the ef-
fort to ban will succeed, and if it fails
again, the move may even strengthen
the party. Norbert Lammert, president
of the lower house of Parliament, the
Bundestag, expressed concern that the
motion could give the N.P.D. what he
called ‘‘an instrument of propaganda’’
for the national campaign next year.
‘‘I consider the political risks that
could result from such a motion far
greater than the hoped-for advant-
ages,’’ Mr. Lammert said in an inter-
view Friday with German public radio
Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
Even without support from the gov-
ernment and the lower house, the con-
stitutional court must still act on the
Bundesrat petition. The country’s Con-
stitution sets high hurdles for censuring
political parties and only two have been
banned in postwar Germany: the suc-
cessor to the Nazi Party, in 1952, and the
Communist Party, in 1956.
StanislawTillich, the governor of Sax-
ony, has had to grapple with N.P.D. rep-
resentatives seeking to disrupt the re-
gional legislature by calling Israel a
‘‘Jewish terror state,’’ or showing up in
clothing by a well known neo-Nazi de-
signer. He acknowledged the challenges
the petition may face.
‘‘Yes, we are taking a risk,’’ Mr. Tillich
said. ‘‘But this is a risk worth taking.’’
BERLIN
Parliament opens effort
to have far-right group
deemed unconstitutional
BY MELISSA EDDY
Nearly a decade after the German gov-
ernment embarrassingly failed in an at-
tempt to ban the country’s leading ex-
treme-right political party, the upper
house of Parliament on Friday voted
overwhelmingly to launch a new effort
to have the National Democratic Party
deemed unconstitutional.
The decision to ask the country’s
highest court to open proceedings
against the party, known by its German
initials N.P.D., just before campaigning
heats up for a parliamentary election
next year raises the political stakes of a
move that was already divisive.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking
a third term in office at a time when her
center-right government has been criti-
cized by its opposition rivals, the center-
left Social Democrats, for mishandling
the investigation into a murderous neo-
Nazi trio that terrorized Germany’s
minority population for the better part
of the past decade. Ms. Merkel cannot
afford to be viewed as weak in fighting
against far-right extremists.
Lawmakers are still struggling to un-
tangle how that trio, which called itself
the National Socialist Underground,
was able to terrorize minorities from
2000 to 2007, murdering 10 people, set-
ting off two bombs and robbing 15
The N.P.D.’s ‘‘goals,
behavior and actions are
similar in character to
those of the Nazis.’’
government would examine the ‘‘risks
and chances’’ of the case before decid-
ing on a position early next year.
Steffen Seibert, Ms. Merkel’s spokes-
man, said recently that there was un-
derstanding for the states’ move be-
cause the N.P.D. holds seats in some
state legislatures ‘‘where they develop
their politically unpleasant behavior,
which should be rejected.’’
The N.P.D. had 6,300 members last
year, according to government figures.
It is not represented at the national
level, but remains a force in the east, es-
pecially Saxony and Mecklenburg-
Western Pomerania, where its repre-
sentatives sit in regional legislatures. It
also is allowed, like all political parties
Obama’s trust
wasn’t enough to save Rice appointment
18 children killed in rampage
at grade school in Connecticut
SHOOTING, FROMPAGE 1
common style,’’ said Madeleine K. Al-
bright, the former secretary of state,
who has knownMs. Rice since she was 4
years old and a schoolmate of Ms. Al-
bright’s children. ‘‘She is incredibly
bright, but lots of people in Washington
are bright,’’ Ms. Albright said. ‘‘What
separates people out here is that some
are loyal.’’
White House aides said that it is loy-
alty that led Ms. Rice to conclude that a
confirmation battle would be long and
harmful to both her and the president.
Pundits will argue about whether she
was pushed into her decision or jumped.
But it is clear that for Mr. Obama, giving
up on Ms. Rice’s appointment was far
different than accepting the resignation
of David H. Petraeus, his C.I.A. director,
or firing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal,
his commander in Afghanistan.
She began advising Mr. Obama after
he was elected to the Senate. When he
started his run for president in 2007, she
took a significant career risk for awoman
who had served in the Clinton adminis-
tration as an assistant secretary of state
and was presumed by her friends to be a
supporter ofMrs. Clinton’s candidacy. In-
stead, she left the fold, backing an upstart
candidate and substituting her own for-
eign policy experience for his lack of it.
Mark Alexander, an early campaign
adviser, remembers Mr. Obama saying
back then, ‘‘I have SusanRice, and she’s
going to be getting her networks going
and making sure I have top-notch for-
ging conventions, whether it was about
Iraq or diplomacy with Iran,’’ Benjamin
J. Rhodes, a deputy White House nation-
al security adviser and Mr. Obama’s na-
tional security speechwriter, said Thurs-
day.
Mr. Obama rarely lets his annoyance
with foreign leaders show in public; Ms.
Rice rarely hides hers. There are mo-
ments, one of Ms. Rice’s longtime
friends said, ‘‘where she says what he’s
thinking, but can’t say.’’
Many foreign service officers found
Ms. Rice’s approach unnecessarily con-
tentious. They said her blunt style might
be a good quality for a presidential alter-
ego, but not for the nation’s top diplomat.
Her life story is a familiar one in the
president’s circles of friends and close
advisers: the granddaughter of Jamaic-
an immigrants who sent five children to
college on a janitor’s salary. Ms. Rice be-
came a super-achiever, rising to the top
of her class at elite schools.
Ms. Rice’s career is hardly over; she
remains the permanent representative
to the United Nations and is considered
a likely national security adviser at
some point. But the current occupant of
that job, Thomas E. Donilon, appears in
no hurry to move on. For now, Ms. Rice
will continue her commuting life, going
to meetings in a State Department that,
just a few months ago, many in Wash-
i
ngton thought she would be running.
Jodi Kantor reported fromNew York.
WASHINGTON
BY DAVID E. SANGER
AND JODI KANTOR
For President Barack Obama, the de-
cision to forgo the fight to make Susan E.
Rice his secretary of state was a deeply
painful one. It required publicly abandon-
ing one of his most loyal aides, who had
broken with the Democratic foreign
policy establishment early to side with
his improbable candidacy, and whose
blunt-speaking style—which helped cost
her the job — had always been, for Mr.
Obama, a part of her appeal.
Typically, just hours before she called
Mr. Obama to tell him she had decided
to withdraw from contention as Hillary
Rodham Clinton’s successor, she re-
buked her Chinese counterpart in an in-
formal meeting of the United Nations
Security Council, telling him his views
excusing a North Korean missile
launching this week were ‘‘ridiculous.’’
He shot back, according to witnesses,
that she ‘‘better watch’’ her ‘‘language.’’
It was the latest example of why Ms.
Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, has so often been criticized as
being an unusually undiplomatic diplo-
mat, direct to the point of rudeness. But
friends and former White House aides
say that Ms. Rice’s style is a reflection of
Mr. Obama’s own: impatient with
niceties, focused solely on results.
‘‘They share a common vision and a
The school’s principal, Dawn Hochs-
prung, was reportedly one of those shot.
But at the home of her daughter Cristina
Hassinger, in Oakville, Connecticut, the
family was still awaiting any news of
her fate.
‘‘We’re looking for any hope,’’ said
Ryan Hassinger, the son-in-law of the
principal. ‘‘If she’s in the hospital, any
chance is better.’’
He said that his wife, Cristina, 28, and
‘‘her sister are there now,’’ with Con-
necticut state troopers, and that he and
other relatives were awaiting word on
any news.
‘‘I looked on Twitter and it says that
she is passed,’’ said Mr. Hassinger. But,
he added, the family was, ‘‘just waiting.’’
A photograph published by a local
newspaper, TheNewtownBee, showed a
line of children being escorted out of the
school with some of the children crying.
Next door to the school in front of a se-
nior center, a 20-year-old woman was
with her 4-year-old sister, who was in
the school at the time of the shooting.
The older woman came to pick up her
younger sister along with their mother.
The 4-year-old girl had her arms and
legs wrapped around her older sister.
When a reporter asked the 20-year-
old woman what the little girl knew of
what had happened, the woman said,
‘‘Absolutely nothing, and we don’t plan
to tell her anything.’’
the hall and only one person came back,
the vice principal, she said, who was
shot in the leg or the foot, who came
crawling back. She cowered under the
table and called 911. She never saw the
shooting. There must have been a hun-
dred rounds.’’
President Barack Obama was briefed
on the shooting at 10:30 a.m., the White
House said.
Danbury Hospital said it was treating
three patients from the shooting scene,
according to its Facebook page. The hos-
pital, which is not far from the element-
ary school, said it was on lockdown.
At the hospital, personnel in white
coats looked shaken as they gathered in
small groups talking about the shooting.
In a corner near the gift shop, one wom-
an comforted a weeping colleague.
Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Con-
necticut arrived at the scene of the
shooting on Friday afternoon.
The school, located among wooded
hills and suburban tracts in Fairfield
County, 12 miles east of Danbury, serves
about 700 students in kindergarten
through fourth grade.
‘‘It’s just a little country school,’’ said
Robert Place, 65, as he stood near the
scene. ‘‘The look is very ’50s or ’60s.
One floor. It’s always had a good reputa-
tion. People come to Newtown for the
schools.’’
MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS
Susan E. Rice, left, the U.S. ambassador
to the U.N., with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
eign policy people.’’
For two years, she spent untold hours
advising Mr. Obama without pay, ap-
pearing on television and counseling a
candidate who often found himself on
the defensive. They jointly developed
the argument that the United States
should quickly end its involvement in
Iraq, bolster the American presence in
Afghanistan and focus on a ‘‘light foot-
print’’ strategy elsewhere.
Together they contended that there
was no reason to avoid negotiating with
Iranian or North Korean dictators, tak-
ing on, among others, Mrs. Clinton, then
Mr. Obama’s chief Democratic rival for
the presidential nomination.
‘‘Throughout the campaign, Susan
was making an argument about challen-
 ....
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15-16, 2012
|
5
THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
americas
world news
Diving into São Paulo’s murky depths
BRAZIL, FROMPAGE 1
Santos has to do with how Paulistanos
view their rivers. As the historian Janes
Jorge recounts in his book on the city’s
largest river, the Tietê, it was adored by
residents as recently as the middle of the
last century, when they fished, swamand
held rowing competitions in its waters.
Then São Paulomushroomed into one
of the world’s largest cities, its residents
moving into high-rises, gated enclaves
and sprawling slums. Factories depos-
ited their waste in the rivers. Sprawling
districts in São Paulo’s metropolitan
area expanded without basic sanitation
systems, discharging sewage directly
into the Tietê and Pinheiros.
The rivers now persist in Brazil’s pop-
ular culture as dystopian objects of deri-
sion. Rock bands like Skank composed
songs about the seemingly impossible
dream of depolluting the Tietê. The car-
toonist Laerte Coutinho created an en-
tire strip, ‘‘Pirates of the Tietê,’’ in
which marauders set forth from the
malodorous river on raiding expedi-
tions across contemporary São Paulo.
Mr. dos Santos, soft-spoken and be-
spectacled, insists that he has never
seen any pirates navigating the Tietê or
its tributaries. But he has glimpsed oth-
er living beings. Herons tiptoe along
some riverbanks. He said that capy-
baras, the world’s largest rodents, roll
in the mud along some stretches of the
Tietê and Pinheiros. Alligators have
been known to emerge from the rivers,
weary but resilient.
One of the most astonishing sights of
all, Mr. dos Santos said, was a man in
São Miguel Paulista, a gritty district on
São Paulo’s eastern fringe, who went by
the name Pezão and dived without any
gear at all into the Tietê in search of
metal to sell to recyclers. ‘‘If there’s
anyone who deserves recognition it’s
that guy, not me,’’ saidMr. dos Santos.
Still, he said he held out hope that the
stubborn presence of life along São
Paulo’s rivers might reflect the latest
phase in their existence: the attempts to
resurrect them. Since 1992, the authorit-
ies have been advancing with a
painstakingly slow project to depollute
the Tietê and Pinheiros.
Political leaders here contend that the
cleanup effort, financed with loans from
the Inter-American Development Bank,
is going swimmingly. Governor Geraldo
Alckmin even said this year that by 2015
boats could start taking tourists down
the Tietê for glimpses of São Paulo’s
wonders. (‘‘The problem is removing
Republicans
and Obama
appear stuck
in fiscal talks
WASHINGTON
BY JONATHANWEISMAN
AND JACKIE CALMES
The prospects dimmed this week that
President Barack Obama and his Re-
publican opposition would reach a deal
on taxes and spending to avert hun-
dreds of millions of dollars of automatic
cuts, raising uncertainty and alarm
about the potential impact on a still-ten-
tative recovery of the U.S. economy.
Before Mr. Obama and the leader of
the House Republicans, Speaker John
A. Boehner, met Thursday evening, a
senior administration official struck a
downbeat note, saying ‘‘we are in the
same place’’ — effectively deadlock.
The fact that the two men, who were
joined by Treasury Secretary Timothy
F. Geithner, met for less than an hour
did little to fan hopes for a deal.
Indeed, just two weeks before their
year-end deadline, neither Mr. Obama
nor Mr. Boehner, has budged from his
core demands.
The president continues to insist on an
immediate increase in the top two in-
come tax rates as a condition for further
negotiations on spending and changes to
social entitlement programs, like Medi-
care. If the speaker insists on further
spending cuts, WhiteHouse officials say,
he must lay out his specific demands.
Mr. Boehner has so far declined to do
so. He has offered to raise his opening
bid of $800 billion in increased tax rev-
enue over 10 years, but only if the presi-
dent makes a significant commitment to
overhaul the tax code, as well as entitle-
ment programs and slow their growth.
Many Republicans say it is now possi-
ble that the government will plunge into
the fiscal unknown. Representative
Patrick McHenry, Republican of North
Carolina, said Mr. Boehner had given
Republicans no indication ‘‘that he’s go-
ing to budge.’’
‘‘He’s not going to raise rates in any
way, shape or form,’’ he said. ‘‘That has
not changed.’’
Even before the meeting Thursday,
Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the
Federal Reserve Board, said the econo-
mywas already suffering because of the
uncertainty over whether Congress and
the White House can resolve their
standoff.
Consumer and business confidence,
spending and investment, and hiring are
all softer today than they would be with-
out the looming deadline and the continu-
al pronouncements of impasse, he said at
a news conference on Wednesday, when
the Fed took the extraordinary step of
saying that it planned to keep interest
rates near zero as long as the unemploy-
ment rate remained above 6.5 percent.
As the inventor of the shorthand term
‘‘fiscal cliff’’ — which implies that the
economy would suffer serious harm if
large, automatic cuts in federal spend-
ing and increases in taxes are abruptly
imposed on Jan.1—Mr.Bernankemade
plain he believed the most dire warn-
ings were valid.
In Keynesian terms, a contractionary
fiscal policy would be one in which both
taxes are increased and federal spend-
ing is cut, acting as a kind of vice grip on
a fragile economy. Most economists
think a recession would result. Mr.
Bernanke plainly agrees.
‘‘We cannot offset the full impact of
the fiscal cliff,’’ he said of the Fed.
Washington now faces three potential
outcomes to the fiscal impasse, law-
makers from both parties say. A broad
deal could be reached in which some
taxes go up immediately and some cuts
are secured to stop the broader tax in-
creases and halt the across-the-board
LALODE ALMEIDA FOR THE NEWYORK TIMES
The Pinheiros River. ‘‘After every dive I have a glass of Montilla Carta Ouro rum,’’ Mr. dos Santos said. ‘‘It helps me feel clean.’’ He said he fears a tear and cut that could lead to infection.
the smell,’’ he acknowledged.)
Brazilian scientists point to preced-
ents of depolluting vital waterways, as
Paris has done with the Seine or London
with the Thames, allowing salmon to
thrive there decades after they had dis-
appeared.
Cleaning the Tietê and its tributaries,
however, offers complications that are in
a league of their own; paramount among
them is access to sewage treatment.
This deficiency plagues Brazil’s only
truly global city, in which financiers in-
habit hulking skyscrapers, well-heeled
consumers stream into luxury shopping
malls and immigrants are as likely to
speak Castilian Spanish as Quechua.
At the same time, four million people
—about 20 percent of SãoPaulo’smetro-
politan population— still lack basic san-
itation, according to Monica Porto, an
expert on water reservoir management
at the University of São Paulo. One area
in metropolitan São Paulo, Guarulhos,
with a population of 1.2million and home
to the international airport, treated al-
most none of its sewage before 2011.
Progress is slowly beingmade to hook
up more homes to the sewage system.
But São Paulo’s hilly geography and its
patchwork of squatter settlements,
which persist in areas close to the rivers,
make this a forbidding task. So thewaste
of millions, along with some industrial
byproducts of dubious origin, still flows
into the waterways once treasured by
Paulistanos. ‘‘We need to adjust our ex-
pectations,’’ said Ms. Porto, the water
treatment expert, who cautioned
against projections that the rivers could
soon have recuperated ecosystems. ‘‘By
2030, we could have rivers we shouldn’t
be ashamed of,’’ she said. About Mr. dos
Santos and his unusual vocation, she
had just one thing to say: ‘‘Poor thing.’’
Still, Mr. dos Santos considers himself
al, which could lead to infection, or com-
ing across carcasses. ‘‘After every dive I
have a glass of Montilla Carta Ouro
rum,’’ he said. ‘‘It helps me feel clean.’’
But Mr. dos Santos says there is also
something special about his job, if only
because so few people can do what he
does. By his own reckoning, the city’s
rivers are a bit cleaner than they once
were. He comes across fewer cadavers
than in years past and the Tietê, he said,
now smells somewhat better than the
Pinheiros, where he now does most of
his diving.
His dives also give him a rare per-
spective on this intimidating city. ‘‘This
sounds crazy, but the rivers are the
most peaceful place in São Paulo,’’ he
said. ‘‘When I drop to their depths, it be-
comes absolutely quiet,’’ he added. ‘‘It’s
like I’m in space, pondering a civiliza-
tion which has pushed itself to the edge
of destruction.’’
‘‘I stopped looking for
suitcases’’ after finding the
one that contained a body.
anything but unfortunate. The money is
not great for diving in São Paulo’s
rivers, with a salary of about 4,500 reais,
or $2,200, a month, but the job has en-
abled him to raise a family and buy a
home. He proudly owns his own Kirby
Morgan diving helmet, and he never
touches the water without being fully
shod in protective plastic gear that is
thicker than a normal wet suit and re-
quires assistance to put on.
He says that stress is part of each
dive. His vision is severely impaired
once under the water of the murky
rivers. The stench, he acknowledged,
can overwhelm. Then there is the fear of
tearing his diving suit on a piece of met-
N. JosephWoodland, 91,
mind behind
the bar code
BY MARGALIT FOX
N. Joseph Woodland, who six decades
ago drew a set of lines in the sand and in
the process conceived the modern bar
code, died on Sunday at his home in
Edgewater, New Jersey. He was 91.
His daughter Susan Woodland con-
firmed the death.
A retired mechanical engineer, Mr.
To represent information visually, he
realized, he would need a code. The only
code he knew was the one he had
learned in the Boy Scouts.
What would happen, Mr. Woodland
wondered one day, if Morse code, with
its elegant simplicity and limitless com-
binatorial potential, were adapted
graphically? He began trailing his fin-
gers idly through the sand.
‘‘What I’mgoing to tell you sounds like
a fairy tale,’’ Mr. Woodland told Smithso-
nian magazine in 1999. ‘‘I poked my four
fingers into the sand and for whatever
reason — I didn’t know — I pulled my
hand toward me and drew four lines. I
said: ‘Golly! Now I have four lines, and
they could bewide lines and narrow lines
instead of dots and dashes.’ ’’
That transformative sweep was
merely the beginning. ‘‘Only seconds
later,’’ Mr. Woodland continued, ‘‘I took
my four fingers — they were still in the
sand — and I swept them around into a
full circle.’’
Mr. Woodland favored the circular
pattern for its omnidirectionality: A
checkout clerk, he reasoned, could scan
a product without regard for its orienta-
tion.
On Oct. 7, 1952, Mr. Woodland and Mr.
Silver were awarded U.S. patent
2,612,994 for their invention—avarie-
gated bull’s-eye of wide and narrow
bands — on which they had bestowed
the unromantic name ‘‘Classifying Ap-
paratus andMethod.’’
But that method, which depended on
an immense scanner equipped with a
500-watt light, was expensive and un-
wieldy, and it languished for years.
The two men eventually sold their
patent to Philco for $15,000 — all they
ever made from their invention.
By the time the patent expired at the
end of the 1960s, Mr. Woodland was on
the staff of I.B.M., where he worked
from 1951 until his retirement in 1987.
Over time, laser scanning technology
and the advent of the microprocessor
made the bar code viable. In the early
1970s, an I.B.M. colleague, George J.
Laurer, designed the familiar black-
and-white rectangle, based on the
Woodland-Silver model and drawing on
Mr. Woodland’s considerable input.
Thanks largely to the work of Alan
Haberman, a supermarket executive
who helped select and popularize the
rectangular bar code and who died in
2011, it was adopted as the industry
standard in 1973.
Today, the bar code graces nearly
every surface of contemporary life— in-
cluding groceries, wayward luggage
and, if you are a traditionalist, the news-
paper you are holding — all because a
young man, his mind ablaze with dots
and dashes, one day raked his fingers
through the sand.
OBITUARY
Woodland was a graduate student when
he and a classmate, Bernard Silver, cre-
ated a technology — based on a printed
series of wide and narrow striations —
that encoded consumer-product infor-
mation for optical scanning.
Their idea, developed in the late 1940s
and patented 60 years ago this autumn,
turned out to be ahead of its time. But it
would ultimately give rise to the univer-
sal product code, or U.P.C., as the stag-
geringly prevalent rectangular bar code
is officially known.
The code now adorns tens of millions
of different items, scanned in retail es-
tablishments around the world at the
rate of more than five billion a day.
Norman JosephWoodland was born in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Sept. 6, 1921.
As a Boy Scout he learned Morse code,
the spark that would ignite his invention.
After spending World War II on the
Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge Na-
tional Laboratory, in Tennessee, Mr.
Woodland resumed his studies at the
Drexel Institute of Technology in Phil-
adelphia (it is now Drexel University),
earning a bachelor’s degree in 1947.
As an undergraduate, Mr. Woodland
perfected a system for delivering elev-
ator music efficiently.
He planned to pursue the project com-
mercially, but his father forbade it: El-
evator music, he said, was controlled by
the mob, and no son of his was going to
come within spitting distance.
The younger Mr. Woodland returned
to Drexel for a master’s degree. In 1948,
a local supermarket executive visited
the campus, where he implored a dean
to develop an efficient means of encod-
ing product data.
The dean demurred, but Mr. Silver, a
fellow graduate student who overheard
their conversation, was intrigued. He
conscriptedMr. Woodland.
An early idea of theirs, which involved
printing product information in fluores-
cent ink and reading it with ultraviolet
light, proved unworkable.
But Mr. Woodland, convinced that a
solution was close at hand, quit gradu-
ate school to devote himself to the prob-
lem. He holed up at his grandparents’
home in Miami Beach, where he spent
the winter of 1948-49 in a chair in the
sand, thinking.
‘‘We cannot offset the full
impact of the fiscal cliff.’’
tax cuts — and to lock in targets for en-
titlement savings and revenue pro-
duced by changes in tax policy revenue
to be worked out next year.
If no deal is reached, Republicans are
increasingly talking about a more hostile
outcome in which the House passes leg-
islation that extends tax cuts for the
middle class, sets relatively low tax rates
on dividends, capital gains and inherited
estates, and cancels the across-the-board
defense cuts, but leaves in place across-
the-board domestic cuts.
Then House Republicans would en-
gage in what Mr. Boehner, in a private
meeting last week, called ‘‘trench war-
fare,’’ a running battlewith the president
on spending, first as the government ap-
proaches its statutory borrowing limit
early next year, then in lateMarch, when
a stopgap government spending bill
runs out. But such legislation might not
be able to pass the Senate, leaving the
country no closer to a resolution.
Republicans who have advocated giv-
ing in on rate increases now say their
party appears to be preparing for the
worst. Representative Charlie Bass, a
NewHampshireRepublicanwhowas de-
feated for re-election last month, said the
pain for Republicans would not be imme-
diate. But ‘‘by the third or fourth week of
January, their life will be so miserable,’’
he said, ‘‘their life will be so unbearable,
they’ll just want to get done with it.’’
John H. Cushman Jr. contributed report-
ing.
BALENCIAGA.COM
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