Mets 4, Nationals 3

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Mets Rally to Remain Perfect

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Daniel Murphy (28), with David Wright (5) and other teammates after driving in the winning run in the ninth with a single.

By ANDREW KEH

Published: April 9, 2012

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The giddiness of perfection will live on in Queens for another day.

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Shortstop Ruben Tejada recording an out of the Nationals' Ian Desmond at second base to end the top of the ninth.

With their season-opening winning streak on the line, the Mets rallied Monday night to beat the Washington Nationals, 4-3 , and improve their flawless run to four.

Tense murmurs at Citi Field turned to wild cheers in the bottom of the ninth. Pinch-hitter Mike Baxter walked to start the inning and moved to third when reliever Henry Rodriguez flung Ruben Tejada's sacrifice bunt attempt into foul territory. Daniel Murphy, who made a diving play to help end a Nationals rally in the eighth, then lined a single to right to score Baxter.

The Mets rushed onto the field, their unlikely start to the season still untarnished.

Meanwhile, the reckoning of starter Mike Pelfrey, the strapping sinkerballer returning from a season of stark regression, continues. The performance he produced against the Nationals was hopeful at times and uneven at others, and, in the end, altogether inconclusive.

He gave up three runs over five and two-thirds innings. He allowed 10 hits, many of them solidly struck. But he also fanned eight batters, matching a career high. After hearing boos from the crowd of 23,970 as early as the third inning, Pelfrey walked off the mound in the sixth to a polite round of applause.

After opening the game with a strikeout, Pelfrey allowed three straight line-drive singles, which put the Mets at a 1-0 disadvantage and drew the pitching coach Dan Warthen to the mound for an early chat.

The first boos from the crowd came during a Nationals rally in the top of the third. Pelfrey allowed a leadoff single to Ian Desmond, who came around to score on Ryan Zimmerman's double to right. Zimmerman, in turn, came home when Adam LaRoche lined a single to left. Pelfrey escaped without further damage, but heard more boos as he lumbered off the field.

Pelfrey helped turn the tide of opinion in his favor in the third using his bat and legs. He smacked a double to left field, then scampered to third on Tejada's deep out to center, punctuating his sprint with an aggressive feet-first slide. One out later, David Wright pulled a slider from Edwin Jackson, the Nationals' starter, into left field to make the score 3-1.

The Mets evened the score one inning later, punishing some slack pitching from Jackson. With two outs, Josh Thole reached base on a four-pitch walk. Then Kirk Nieuwenhuis, playing in his third major league game, belted a hanging slider from Jackson deep to right field. The ball clanged off the Modell's sign there — which was in play last year — and dropped into the new seating area for a two-run game-tying homer.

The Mets' bullpen, as it has through the team's flawless start, shut down the opponent, leaving the door open for the late-game heroics.

INSIDE PITCH

Ike Davis, who is 0 for 15 to start the season, was scheduled to have Tuesday night off against left-hander Ross Detwiler, as the Mets continued to be cautious about overexerting him. Davis was believed to have contracted valley fever, a fungal infection of the lungs, during the off-season, and though he had showed no obvious symptoms, Manager Terry Collins said he would rather play it safe and give Davis some days off now to have him fresh for the summer.

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Observatory

giao duc | educator |

Tending a Sick Comrade Has Benefits for Ants

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Published: April 9, 2012

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When one ant in a colony has an infection, the others don't avoid their sick comrade. Instead, they approach the infected ant and lick it to remove pathogens.

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Matthias Konrad, IST Austria

A group of healthy garden ants grooming a fungus-exposed ant, which was marked red.

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Now, a new study reports that this works in the benefit of the licking ant as well. By grooming a diseased ant, the helper ant gets a low-level infection that seems to induce the expression of a set of immune genes that help the ants fight off the pathogen.

"At these low levels, their immune system is rather stimulated," said an author of the study, Sylvia Cremer, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Science and Technology in Austria.

She and her team published their findings in the journal PLoS Biology.

The researchers found that only about 2 percent of an infected ant's nestmates died from the pathogen after licking the diseased one, while more than 60 percent had the benefit of a stimulated immune system.

The ants were gathered from colonies of European garden ants. The researchers applied special fluorescent fungal spores to some ants, and studied their interaction with their nestmates over two days.

The ants' behavior resembles an old pattern among humans in Africa, in which the scabs of a smallpox victim were rubbed into an open cut on a healthy person as a form of immunization . (Today, vaccines use dead or inactive strains of a virus.) Although the recipient had a 2 percent chance of dying, smallpox mortality fell to about 25 percent.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Corrections April 27

LyHuongPham.Name.vn | medical school interview questions |

An article on Monday about an announcement by Egypt's state-owned natural gas company that it was ending a deal to ship gas to Israel because of a payment dispute misstated the year the two countries signed the Camp David peace accords. It was 1978, not 1979. (The Camp David peace treaty was signed in 1979.) The error was repeated in some copies on Tuesday in a report about Egypt in the World Briefing column and again in later editions when that report was expanded to an article.

Published: April 27, 2012

INTERNATIONAL

NATIONAL

An article on April 1 about concerns over radioactivity levels around former uranium mines on Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico referred imprecisely to Bob Darr, a public relations specialist who said that the federal government cannot afford to clean up all the mines. While he works for S.M. Stoller, a consulting firm that provides public affairs support to the Department of Energy under contract, he is not a spokesman for the department.

•

An article last Friday about Anthony Loverde, the second person reinstated to the military (with the same rank, pay and job that he held when he was deployed to Iraq) since the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was repealed last September misspelled the surname of the legal director for the Service members Legal Defense Network. He is David McKean, not David McCain.

NEW YORK

An article on Wednesday about an effort to bring food from the region's midsize farms to the Hunts Point wholesale produce market in the South Bronx misstated the number of states from which produce is brought to the market. The produce comes from New York, New Jersey and 47 other states — not from New York, New Jersey and 49 states, as stated in some editions, or from 47 states, as noted in other editions.

BUSINESS DAY

An interview on the DealBook page on Thursday with Michael H. Trotter, an author of two books about the economics and management of law firms, omitted two words in an answer by Mr. Trotter to a question about a practice of recruiting lawyers by offering them guaranteed contracts. Mr. Trotter said: "That's a very risky strategy. For one thing, people don't always produce what they promise; often not all the clients that they currently have move with them, so to give anyone a guaranteed contract based on their past success is basically a mistake." (The words "not all" were omitted.)

•

Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about the filing of a criminal complaint in connection with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig misstated the date in 2010 of the blast. It was on April 20, not on April 10.

METROPOLITAN

A listing in the Long Island calendar of events in some editions on Sunday misstated the day and the time for a performance by the North Shore Symphony Orchestra. It is scheduled for Sunday at 7:30 p.m., not Saturday at 8 p.m.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Thursday about the chemist George Cowan, who helped build the first atomic bomb, misstated the name of the university from which he received a doctorate after World War II. It was the Carnegie Institute of Technology — not Carnegie Mellon University, which was established in 1967 when the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute.

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Social Media Drives Publicity in Trayvon Martin Case

Diem thi 24h | educator |

The shooting death in Florida earlier this year of an unarmed African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a white, Hispanic neighborhood crime watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, sparked demonstrations across the United States, particularly within the black community.  Much of the attention the case has received has been driven by social media.

Across the United States, African Americans mobilized in memory of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and in protest over the fact that the man who shot him had initially avoided criminal charges.

Early on, African-Americans using social media kept the story alive, rather than the popular press.

"The minute you get a message out there that has engagement that gets people's imaginations fired up or gets their emotions or passions stoked, it's going to go beyond your network because you may have your 130 Facebook followers but each one of them has 130 of their own so the message can spread like wild fire," said Michael Stricker, director of social media with the Internet marketing firm Webimax.

During one week, more than a million people signed an online petition and numerous messages appeared on social media sites calling for the arrest of George Zimmerman,  the neighborhood crime watch volunteer who told police he shot Martin in self defense.

Even on college campuses, like Howard University in Washington, students used Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets to communicate and even organize demonstrations.

"It hit close to home for a lot of students here because they are not much older than Trayvon Martin when he was killed. So they [the students] wanted everybody to know about this story and how they felt it was simply an injustice to a young black man," said Ingrid Sturgis is an assistant professor of journalism at Howard University. She says young African-Americans often use social media to draw attention to social causes.

"I think it is one of the best tools today to help people get out the messages that they want to get out depending whether it is racial injustice or whether it is to support a cause," Sturgis said.

A Pew Research study says blacks use mobile phones and other devices to gain access to social media sites in larger numbers than Americans overall.

"These conversations have always happened, but they have been in the barber shop or they have been in the drug store or they have been on the street corner. I think what is happening now is social media allows us all to see that conversation and how it has manifested in a more tangible way and it increases our awareness," said David Johnson, a journalism professor at American University in Washington.

Social media have been used to publicize other cases involving race. And Sturgis sees the trend continuing.

"Today, you don't have to be a part of an organization to get your voice out there. I think that social media is going to increase in the number of ways that people can get their message out and how much attention and whether or not you can make change. And I think it is going to take a greater role in doing that," Sturgis said.

Other analysts predict social media use among African-Americans will spike again when George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, goes on trial.

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Black Mans Killing in Georgia Eludes Spotlight

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LYONS, Ga. — Norman Neesmith was sleeping in his home on a rural farm road here in onion country when a noise woke him up.

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Sha'von Patterson with a photograph of him and his brother, Justin, who was shot and killed by Norman Neesmith on Jan. 29, 2011.

By KIM SEVERSON

Published: April 25, 2012

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Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Mr. Neesmith's home in Lyons, Ga., where the shooting took place. He fired four shots, and Justin Patterson died in his yard.

He grabbed the .22-caliber pistol he kept next to his bed and went to investigate. He found two young brothers who had been secretly invited to party with an 18-year-old relative he had raised like a daughter and her younger friend. The young people were paired up in separate bedrooms. There was marijuana and sex.

Over the course of the next confusing minutes on a January morning in 2011, there would be a struggle. The young men would make a terrified run for the door. Mr. Neesmith, who is 62 and white, fired four shots. One of them hit Justin Patterson, who was 22 and black.

The bullet pierced his side, and he died in Mr. Neesmith's yard. His younger brother, Sha'von, then 18, ran through the onion fields in the dark, frantically trying to call his mother.

On that day, Jan. 29, 2011, Mr. Neesmith was arrested. The district attorney brought seven charges against him, among them murder, false imprisonment and aggravated assault. On Thursday, Mr. Neesmith is expected to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct, which might bring a year in a special detention program that requires no time behind bars.

Over the past several weeks, the men's parents, Deede and Julius Patterson, watched news of Trayvon Martin's death in Florida and focused on the similarities. In both cases, an unarmed young black man died at the hands of someone of a different race.

And they began to wonder why no one was marching for their son, why people like the Rev. Al Sharpton had not booked a ticket to Toombs County. The local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. has not even gotten involved, although Mr. Patterson's father approached them.

"We are looking into the case," said Michael Dennard, the president of the chapter, after a reporter called more than a year after the crime. He would not say more.

Why some cases with perceived racial implications catch the national consciousness and others do not is as much about the combined power of social and traditional media as it is about happenstance, said Ta-Nehisi Coates , a senior editor at The Atlantic who writes about racial issues.

Several events coalesced to push the Martin case forward: an apparently incomplete police investigation, no immediate arrest and Florida's expansive self-defense law.

"These stories happen all the time," Mr. Coates said. "It's heartbreaking and tragic, but there's not much news coverage unless the circumstances are truly, truly unusual."

"Stories like the south Georgia killing don't have the same particulars," he said. "One of the great tragedies is that people get shot under questionable circumstances in this country all the time."

Although the facts surrounding the case in Florida and the case in Georgia are quite different, both involve a claim of legally sanctioned self-defense, a dead young black man and, for the Pattersons and the Martins, deep concern that race played a role in the deaths of their sons.

"I definitely believe racism is why he was shot," said Mrs. Patterson, who recently left her job as director of operations at a uniform company and moved to another small Georgia town. "And for him to get nothing but a slap on the wrist? There is something wrong here."

That race played a significant part is not hard to imagine here in a county that was named after Robert Toombs, a general and one of the organizers of the Confederate government. A black woman has never been named Miss Vidalia Onion in the annual festival that begins Thursday. And until last year in neighboring Montgomery County, there were two proms — one for whites and one for blacks.

Still, like so many other crimes where race might be a factor, this one is not so clear-cut. Mr. Neesmith says he felt threatened. He says he aches for the parents but believes none of this would have happened if the young men had not been in his house when they should not have been.

"I think about it every day. It's the worst thing I've ever been through," Mr. Neesmith said as he stood in the doorway of his home. "In two minutes it just went bad. If you ain't never shot nobody, you don't want to do it, I'm telling you."

In the backyard, a pool was ready for neighborhood kids — both black and white — who he said loved to come over after school for a swim. Mr. Neesmith, a former school bus driver, and his late wife had been foster parents to dozens of children.

They took in a great-niece, who has a black parent, when she was a baby. She is now 19 and admitted to investigators that she invited Justin Patterson to their trailer home that night, timing it so Mr. Neesmith would be asleep. The two had been flirting on Facebook and in texts.

When Mr. Neesmith pulled the young men out of the bedrooms, he threatened to call the younger girl's grandfather, according to court documents and interviews. He asked the two, who both have young daughters, why they were not home with their children. He ranted and waved the gun around.

So the brothers made a run for it. By all accounts, while the younger one struggled to unlock a side door, the older one shoved Mr. Neesmith.

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Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta, and Gillian Laub from Lyons.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about the shooting death of an unarmed young black man in Georgia gave an unofficial height from the Toombs County Sherriff's Office for Norman Neesmith, who killed the young man. While the authorities said Mr. Neesmith is 6-foot-2, that was the height he gave them. As a height chart in an accompanying picture taken during his booking showed, he is closer to 5-foot-11.

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Researchers Develop Promising Drug to Treat Autism Behaviors

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Scientists say they have used an experimental compound to reverse two autism-like behaviors in mice.  Experts say there"s no guarantee the drug would work to help children with autism, a neural developmental brain disorder marked by communication and social impairments beginning in early childhood. But they say it"s a step in the right direction.

Photo: MuYang, J. Crawley, NIMH

Mouse pays a social visit to a novel animal.

Researchers with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and the Pfizer pharmaceutical company tested the drug called GRN-529 in mice that normally display autistic-like activities - in particular, social isolation and repetitive behaviors.  NIMH co-investigator Jill Silverman says that after being injected with the experimental compound, the mice reduced two of their repetitive behaviors - obsessive grooming and jumping - and the normally asocial rodents engaged more with other mice.

Researchers say the experimental compound dampens the activity of the brain chemical glutamate by modifying one of its chemical receptors. That could target a number of autistic behaviors linked to a defect in connections between brain cells or neurons.

But they don't know for sure. Silverman says the biochemical mechanism of GRN-529 is not completely understood, though she's not surprised that adjusting the biological activity of glutamate, which helps stimulate neurons throughout the brain, might reverse some of autism's core symptoms.

"It's crucially involved in every connection in the brain, basically," said Silverman. "So, modulating its effects by acting at one receptor seems to be a very promising target."

Robert Ring was involved in the GRN-529 study at Pfizer and is now vice president of translational research with Autism Speaks, an non-profit scientific funding and advocacy group.

Ring says the possibility of a drug that could treat the symptoms of autism, even if it's not a cure, could improve the quality of life for autistic individuals by making behavioral interventions more effective.

"Individuals living with autism don't just encounter struggles with the core symptoms that have been defined for autism," said Ring. "But they have a whole host of associated psychiatric and neurological syptoms that also reduce the quality of life for them.  And any agent that has the potential to reduce these may bring significant benefit to this population."

The experimental compound is currently in clinical trials for individuals with a disorder called fragile x syndrome, which is caused by a single mutated gene.  Fragile x is the most commonly inherited form of intellectual impairment, often with autistic symptoms.

Because the mice are born with the autistism-like tendencies, researchers know that GRN-529 might not work in children with autism.  But then again, it might.

An article on GRN-529 in mice is published in Science Translational Medicine.

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Ex-F.B.I. Agent Gets Prison for Denials About Lover

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A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent convicted of making false statements about a confidential source with whom he had an intimate relationship was sentenced on Monday in Manhattan to a year and a day in prison.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 9, 2012

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The agent, Adrian Busby, 38, of El Paso, was convicted in November of four counts of making false statements.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for him to serve roughly two years in prison, but Judge Harold Baer Jr. of Federal District Court chose half of that, citing Mr. Busby's responsibility as the primary caregiver for three sons — ages 4, 6 and 9 — after his marriage ended.

"Your life is pretty much ruined in terms of any law enforcement job," the judge said.

Before the sentence was handed down, Mr. Busby expressed regret.

Officials said Mr. Busby had a sexual relationship in 2008 and 2009 with a woman who served as a confidential source before she was convicted of identity theft and related charges in December 2009.

Prosecutors said he had divulged confidential law enforcement reports, including grand jury materials, to the woman's defense lawyer and then claimed falsely that he had accidentally left the reports with the lawyer.

The charges of false statements also stemmed from government allegations that Mr. Busby denied knowing the woman was under investigation when he signed her up as a confidential source.

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The Appraisal

Kinh Doanh, Be Trap | google education |

Lofty Perches Whose Only Luxury Was the View

Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

Arlene Simon in a room originally intended as servants' quarters in her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

Published: April 2, 2012

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The building at 907 Fifth Avenue is heavy with opulence. On the seventh floor, an immense five-bedroom apartment with thick marble fireplaces and straight-on views of Central Park is listed for $25 million. Two floors up, a three-bedroom duplex with a graceful wooden staircase is for sale for $4.5 million. It is also the building where the copper heiress Huguette Clark owned three apartments , which are now on the market for a combined $55 million.

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Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

Servants' quarters, seen here from the roof of the building, are now often used for storage.

But if you take the elevator just a little bit higher, get out on the top floor and walk up one flight of stairs, you will find something decidedly more modest: a long hallway, only about three feet wide, with more than a dozen black doors packed into neat rows like shiny toy soldiers. Behind these doors are tiny rooms, built on a roof overlooking Central Park, which were intended for servants.

Despite their grand location, they were built without embellishment, or even private bathrooms. Today, staff quarters like these are mostly gone, gutted and collapsed into penthouses or large apartments. But at 907 Fifth Avenue and a handful of other buildings around the city, these sparse, monastic spaces are still intact at the buildings' highest point, even though today that loftiness generally makes for the swankiest location.

It's all very upstairs, downstairs — except that it's upside down.

"It would be unthinkable today to put them on the highest floor," John Burger, a managing director at Brown Harris Stevens, said of staff rooms.

"Today," he continued, speaking of a recent penthouse sale at 15 Central Park West, "that's the position of the $88 million apartment."

Until penthouse living became popular in the 1920s, extra staff rooms were often found at a building's highest reaches. Explanations from historians include a reluctance to put wealthy buyers next to rooftop laundry facilities and a distaste for views of puffing chimneys and water towers.

But many of those staff rooms had views of other things, too. Like Central Park.

At the Dakota, on 72nd Street and Central Park West, for example, the windows are much smaller on the top two floors, which were built for the staff.

But even through those relatively small windows, the long and wide views of Central Park can take the air out of your lungs.

Of the several dozen staff rooms originally built at the Dakota, only a fraction remain. The rest have been combined to make larger apartments, as has happened with most servants' quarters around the city.

These composite apartments can have great views, but the spaces tend to lack the flourish and grandeur of apartments on lower floors, because the raw ingredients were so very bare.

Staff rooms were built only a few feet across, with just enough space for a single bed against the wall and a tiny sink in the corner.

They had no kitchens — their occupants would presumably have eaten in the boss's apartment with the other staff members, said Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia University's historic preservation program. The bathrooms, often shared by occupants of a dozen rooms, were down the hall.

In most cases, they were accessible only by riding the freight elevator or hoofing it up the stairs.

Today, the few new buildings that offer staff accommodations go about it a little differently.

At 15 Central Park West, which opened in 2008, there are two dozen "staff suites," as they are called in broker parlance. They are on low floors at the back of the building, and though they do not have park views, they lack for little else.

"Anywhere else, they would be luxury studios," Mr. Burger said.

Brokers estimate that less than 10 percent of the separate servants' quarters that remain in old buildings are still used as housing — perhaps a nanny here, a child home from college there. Instead, they can be offices, guest rooms or private gyms.

Most often, however, they are elaborate storage closets, where junky old skis and off-season sweaters are bathed in sunlight.

"I don't think I've been up here in maybe two years," Arlene Simon said, standing in her rooftop staff room at 27 West 67th Street, surrounded by cardboard boxes and an old air-conditioner.

She added, however, that her children, now of middle age, used to go up there quite a bit.

"When they wanted to escape from us, this is where they would go," she said.

In Ms. Simon's building, most apartments come with rooftop staff rooms. (When Ms. Simon — who is the president of the preservation group Landmark West! — moved to the building with her husband in 1969, their rent was $600 a month. Similar apartments in the building now routinely sell for over $4 million.)

In general, however, staff quarters are available for purchase or rent, but only by people who own an apartment in the building.

That restriction means the rooms do not appreciate as quickly as they would on the open market — brokers estimate that the bare-bones spaces cost $150,000 to $200,000 — but most residents prefer to limit the rooms to other residents, so they do not have strangers wandering the halls.

"There is a whole process of getting into a co-op; it isn't like joining a gym," said Kathryn Steinberg, a managing director at the Edward Lee Cave Division of Brown Harris Stevens. "They don't want to be somebody's storage facility."

In Ms. Steinberg's apartment building on East 66th Street, there are separate staff rooms scattered on different floors, on narrow little hallways. Servants' quarters like these, especially those on low floors with views of interior courtyards, are much more likely than their top-floor counterparts to have survived into old age. But that does not mean they are any less lonely.

Kirk Henckels, director of private brokerage at Stribling and Associates, owns a staff room on the second floor of his apartment building, at 775 Park Avenue, and that space, though slender, is set up as a nice little office.

Alas, Mr. Henckels said, standing in the room last week, he almost never pays it a visit. Indeed, he said, he had last stopped by about two months before, when a building staff member called to see if he still had the room key.

Mr. Henckels said yes, he did, but asked why the key was needed. "It was because the room was on fire," he recounted cheerfully.

It was a small fire, Mr. Henckels said, probably from a power surge. Then he shrugged, smiled and left the room, locking the door. It seemed unlikely he would return anytime soon.

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PM boosts rubber industry

tin cong nghe | world education |

The Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) should further invest in the rubber processing industry and science and technology, and develop infrastructure projects.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung made the statement at a ceremony to honour the group with the Gold Star Order for its contributions to the industry in Ho Chi Minh City on April 8.

PM Dung highly valued the group and the domestic rubber industry for their achievements, contributing to the country's development.

He said the VRG had developed 300,000ha of rubber plantations in Viet Nam and more than 200,000ha overseas, compared to just 40,000ha after the war.

The group's production has continued to increase despite the global economic downturn with an average annual increase of 6% in area and 10% in productivity from 2001-2010.

Export turnover has increased by more than 30% per year, and hit nearly US$3 billion last year.

The PM asked the industry to strive to expand the country's rubber area to 1 million ha by 2015 of which the group would account for nearly half.

He urged the VRG to improve the quality of Vietnamese rubber, promote exports and expand its markets.

The group's general director Tran Ngoc Thuan said they would focus on restructuring to improve effectiveness and develop its scale to 500,000ha to provide jobs for 175,000 workers.

( VNS )

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2 Families Tangle Over Diamonds

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In the mezzanine gallery of the Natural History Museum in London are some of its cherished treasures: the 1,384-carat Devonshire Emerald; a replica of Queen Victoria's Koh-i-noor diamond; and the Aurora Pyramid of Hope, a rare collection of 295 naturally colored diamonds.

Frank A. Bolz III Esq.

The Aurora Pyramid of Hope, a rare collection of 295 naturally colored diamonds.

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: March 30, 2012

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Courtesy Michael Dowd

Harry Rodman, left, and Alan Bronstein put together diamond collections including the Aurora Pyramid of Hope.

The emerald was once the property of a 19th-century Brazilian emperor, and the original Koh-i-noor, under guard in the Tower of London, is one of the crown jewels. The Aurora collection has somewhat humbler roots.

It was put together in the 1980s and '90s by two men, Harry Rodman, a veteran gold refiner from the Bronx, and Alan Bronstein, a diamond dealer from New Jersey. Together they assembled the world's most comprehensive grouping of colored diamonds and exhibited them at prestigious museums like the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

But these days the fate of that collection and other gems is being decided on the fourth floor of Surrogate's Court in the Bronx, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium.

Mr. Rodman died in 2008 at 99, and now his family is battling Mr. Bronstein over who is rightfully entitled to Mr. Rodman's half-share of their collections, valued by one appraisal at more than $14 million.

The question is complicated by the fact that Mr. Rodman made seven wills in the last decade of his life and by the intermingling of family and business ties.

In addition to being Mr. Bronstein's partner, Mr. Rodman in 2001, at 92, married Mr. Bronstein's 81-year-old mother, Jeanette, his longtime friend and neighbor.

"Harry became my best friend, my mentor and my stepfather," Mr. Bronstein said in an interview before a court hearing this week.

Mr. Rodman came from a family of jewelers. His father was a craftsman who supposedly made jewels for the czar in his native Russia, his nephew Gerald Gould said. He immigrated to the United States in 1903, crowding into a Lower East Side tenement to escape the pogroms that were terrorizing Jews in his hometown near Kiev. Mr. Rodman followed his father into the business, but made his name and his money in gold, Mr. Gould said, becoming a well-known figure in the diamond district in Midtown Manhattan.

"Walking down 47th Street with Harry Rodman was like walking down the street with the mayor," Mr. Gould said. "Everybody knew him."

In 1986, after 50 years in business, Mr. Rodman retired and sold his gold refining firm. By that point, he had already met Alan Bronstein, a young, ambitious dealer, whose mother, Jeanette, was a bookkeeper at the Diamond Dealers Club. Now considered one of the foremost experts on colored diamonds, Mr. Bronstein had what he once described in an article as a "burning passion" for the stones that was first piqued in 1979, when he saw "a fabulous canary yellow diamond that glowed with the hue of the sun."

Colored diamonds were not particularly popular at the time, and little was known about them. Mr. Bronstein set about changing that.

"Colored diamonds are as varied as the faces of people," Mr. Bronstein said at the courthouse.

About one in 10,000 diamonds is colored. Other elements in addition to carbon or a hiccup in the structure of the crystal is what gives a stone its particular hue. Colored and colorless diamonds are often found in the same mine.

Mr. Bronstein's enthusiasm soon rubbed off on Mr. Rodman, and "collecting became our obsession," Mr. Bronstein recounted in an article printed in a trade publication. Mr. Rodman put up the money and Mr. Bronstein did the research.

"Most of our time was spent running from place to place, trying to be the first to see a new stone that may have come off the cutting wheel, been imported from another country, or just been removed from an antique piece," Mr. Bronstein wrote. They founded Aurora Gems, and split the business down the middle. The name came from Mr. Rodman, who frequently traveled with his first wife, Adele, and found that the varieties of color reminded him of the aurora borealis.

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Modern Love

gia dinh | medical school interview questions |

Getting to That Safe Place

Brian Rea

By ELISABETH FAIRFIELD STOKES

Published: March 29, 2012

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I MET him at the coffee place where I was working after I’d dropped out of graduate school out West, many states and several states of mind away from the New England college town to which I’d returned. I was floating between Gen X jobs, living in the aftermath of an emotionally and physically abusive relationship that had left me dazed and shaky, still absently rubbing my arms where bruises had marbled them, unable to look much in mirrors because I felt exposed, vulnerable.

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I dated here and there because it seemed like something people did. I would follow along like an observer of my own life, watching myself at the movies, ordering a Scotch at a bar afterward, being dropped off at my car, giving a long look and a quick kiss.

He was a regular, lingering at the counter after I gave him his coffee, smiling and trying to hold my gaze. He bought board games and left them at the bar along the window, an excuse, he said later, to hang around and watch me. One Tuesday I hurried past his table on my way outside, not breaking stride, answering him with a "Hey, how are you?" And pretty soon he was blocking the early spring sun I had lifted my closed eyes to.

I don’t remember much between opening them resentfully, sighing, and sleeping with him a few days later. I had no money, no place to be, and he took my weariness, my lack of interest, as a challenge. We were almost instantly inseparable, delighting in how much we had in common, as all new lovers do until they don’t. A stranger paid for our meal in a pizza joint because we looked, according to the waitress, "so happy and in love."

He had a trust fund and spent it heedlessly on toys and clothes and eating out. I accepted his gifts and ate the meals and stayed constantly at his side, even quitting the coffee job so we could be together.

He was affectionate, tender; told me I was beautiful, that he loved me. I was broken, exhausted, lost, and I let him take care of me, but the long goodbye began when the tough-girl facade he found so irresistible inevitably slipped. The fragility it had masked was more than he was interested in dealing with, after the rush of rescuing me from the rage of something he didn’t understand.

Dinners at his favorite restaurant became opportunities for him to explain how "it" was, how I was wrong about feminism and affirmative action, how men, especially white men, are discriminated against, how he thought he got bad service in restaurants because people assumed he wouldn’t tip well because he was young. He especially seemed to hate this Catch-22 he imagined for himself: Should he tip well for bad service to prove that he knew how to tip well?

I picked at my food, nodding that, yes, I liked the wine, and, yes, I understood it was hard to select a wine that would complement our different meals and I’m sorry I wouldn’t order the veal but I just couldn’t and I thought the wine was fine with my pasta and vegetables and julienne of hot peppers, and, yes, it did seem possible that we might be the most attractive couple there.

Finally, over yet another nice dinner at which he mocked my food choices again, apparently feeling he could do so because he was paying for them, I said I thought we shouldn’t sleep together anymore, seeing as there was a "visible terminus" (the kind of phrasing he was partial to) to our relationship. He was leaving for New York at the end of the summer, dropping out of his own graduate program and heading to Wall Street. He was furious, angrier than I’d seen him, and I realized that control was not something he liked losing. That was our last meal together.

It didn’t quite end there, however. I slowly extracted myself; it was hard for me to accept that it had mostly been about sex for him, that and some damsel-in-distress fantasy I seemed to have dispelled, because I think it’s possible that he did care for me at some point. I didn’t understand then that I had used him, too, to learn how to get from Point A to Point B again, and, let’s be honest, to simply eat at times.

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Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes works and writes in Maine.

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For Lindsey Vonn, Professional Triumph and Personal Turmoil

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VAIL, Colo. — Skiing in the mountains above the Vail resort last week, Lindsey Vonn slowed to a stop at the top of a trail named in her honor after she won the 2010 women's Olympic downhill.

By BILL PENNINGTON

Published: April 8, 2012

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Lindsey Vonn, right, with students in her new Ski Girls Rock training program in Vail, Colo.

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Lindsey Vonn with the student Michaela Landry, 7. Over the winter, Vonn became the first American to win four World Cup overall titles.

The trail called Lindsey's is a challenge: changeable and bumpy.

Vonn gazed at the trail but skied past it, and within minutes had ditched her ski gear and propped her stocking feet on a stool in a slopeside condominium.

"The 2010 Olympics seem far away now," she said. "So much has happened. So much has changed. So many sleepless nights and dark days. The ups and downs — it has been really difficult. And I wouldn't have predicted that."

Last month, Vonn completed a record-setting race season, the greatest by a woman in the history of the World Cup. But her best year came amid personal turmoil as Vonn dealt with a thorny divorce.

Last November, after four years of marriage, Vonn split with her husband, Thomas, who had also acted as her coach, manager and equipment guru. Asked to characterize the divorce negotiations, Vonn last week sighed deeply and said, "I would say they're a mess."

The couple did not sign a prenuptial agreement, she said, and have not spoken in two months since they tried to settle many details of their breakup themselves.

"That didn't work out," she said.

The Vonns are worth millions of dollars, with Lindsey buffeted not only by her competition prize money but by multiple lucrative long-term contracts with sponsors like Rolex, Red Bull, Vail Resorts, Under Armour, and most recently, Kohl's department stores.

"There are a lot of moving parts; it's going to take a while," she said of the divorce, adding with a rueful smile, "Calling it a mess might not be strong enough."

Thomas Vonn, who is living in one of the couple's dwellings, a condo in Park City, Utah, did not dispute Lindsey's portrayal.

"The whole process has been difficult," he said in a telephone interview. "The whole situation saddens you."

The Vonns' divorce unexpectedly altered what had been a winsome story line of a skiing star with rare, crossover mainstream popularity. The strengths of their partnership had been celebrated after her victories, and Thomas Vonn was a continual presence at her side. The divorce proceedings clashed with the projected, orderly public image, and they also spawned an Internet buzz that had Vonn dating any number of A-list celebrities, most notably the quarterback sensation Tim Tebow , then playing for the Denver Broncos.

With all this on her plate last fall — and after failing in 2010 to win the World Cup overall title for the first time since 2007 — Vonn traveled to Europe, ostensibly alone for the first time in 11 years. But Vonn was not exactly unaccompanied. In Europe, where she is a top-tier athletic luminary, she was stalked by reporters watching her every move on and off the mountain.

At the hub of the isolation and the adulation, Vonn found unprecedented success, becoming the first American to win four World Cup overall titles. And, she reclaimed some of the essential purpose of her chosen, highly individual sport.

"I realized for the first time in my life I was skiing for myself," she said. "I had always had a lot of people helping me — my dad when I was younger, then Thomas, and my sponsors. And sometimes, I think I skied for those other people.

"This year, I realized that I'm the only one in the start gate and I'm the only one deciding what line to ski and how fast. That was really empowering. It was kind of like being a kid again, skiing for yourself and having fun with it."

The result was a breakout season, if there is such a thing for an Olympic champion. Vonn was on the top of the podium in events like the giant slalom that she had never won before, and she became even more dominant in her featured events, like the downhill. She increased her career World Cup victory total to 53, in easy reach of the women's career mark of 62 wins and conceivably in range of Ingemar Stenmark's record 86 career victories. Vonn, 27, says she expects to race for at least three more years, if not longer.

"We'll see; it's up to me," she said. "I am now responsible for everything in my life."

Not that the added responsibility is entirely comforting. She described a January night in St. Moritz, Switzerland, when she might usually have been celebrating victories in two of three races over a weekend. Instead, in her hotel room, she spent four hours going over legal papers related to her divorce.

Vonn said last week that she had been contemplating a divorce for "months, years, quite a few months."

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Clean water and sanitation programme 2012-15 approved

oto | harvard summer school 2011 |

The Prime Minister has approved targets for the National Programme for Rural Water Supplies and Sanitation during the 2012-15 period.

The programme aims to ensure that 65 percent of the rural population have hygienic sanitation, 45 percent of farming households have hygienic breeding facilities and that 100 percent of schools, nursery schools and medial centres in rural areas have access to clean water and sewerage facilities.

The total investment for the programme is estimated at almost VND27.6 trillion (USD1.32 million).

Of this amount, almost VND19.8 trillion will be spent on the project to ensure rural water supplies, nearly VND6 trillion will be spent on the rural environment sanitation project and about VND1.9 trillion on other associated works.

The 2006-2010 National Programme for Rural Water Supplies and Sanitation achieved its set targets, resulting in more than 52 million people having access to clean water by the end of 2010, 13.2 million people more than in late 2005.

Theo en.baomoi.com

Carbon credits to benefit farmers

loa | harvard summer school 2011 |

Improved farming practices, especially in rice cultivation, would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and provide economic benefits for rural farmers in Viet Nam through participation in a carbon-credit programme, according to international experts.

A farmer harvests winter-spring rice in the southern province of Hau Giang. A carbon credit programme with improved farming practices would provide economic benefits for farmers. — VNA/VNS Photo Duy Khuong

HA NOI —

Although Viet Nam's greenhouse-gas emissions are relatively low, emissions would triple by 2030 unless significant emissions-mitigation options are undertaken, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute and International Fund for Agricultural Development.

In addition, if the country did not adapt to climate change, farmers' living conditions and production capacity would be adversely affected, they said.

As Viet Nam is a country based heavily in agriculture and with many of the poorest people living in rural areas, linking poor farmers to voluntary carbon markets could provide significant economic benefits from activities that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The farming community could earn millions of dollars a year of income from carbon credits, according to experts who spoke during a seminar held recently in Ha Noi.

At the seminar, experts also discussed emissions-mitigation options and governmental policy.

With more than 60 per cent of the population in Viet Nam active in the agricultural sector, there is significant mitigation potential through improved agricultural practices.

"There is significant potential for climate change mitigation in Viet Nam, but careful assessment regarding yield, production and environmental aspects is needed," said Claudia Ringler, senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute.

According to the institute, mitigation potential in Viet Nam is largest with rice and in rural areas where approximately 7 million ha of paddy crop are harvested annually, and where the majority of the country's poor live.

"One of the challenges of carbon-market entry for developing countries is the small size of farms and the lack of institutions that can organise these farmers and include them in carbon markets," said Dao The Anh, director of the Centre for Agrarian Systems Research and Development.

Last year, the Government affirmed its commitment to reducing agricultural emissions while enhancing economic growth and reducing poverty. It targets increasing agricultural production by 20 per cent and reducing emissions and the poverty rate by 20 per cent by 2020.

The institute along with the International Fund for Agricultural Development have launched a strategic programme to advance innovative policies designed to help the poor benefit from climate-change mitigation and improved market access.

Viet Nam remains a country heavily grounded in agriculture. In 2010, approximately 63 per cent of the working population were active in agriculture. By 2020, the share is expected to be 59 per cent.

At the same time, the country has enjoyed very rapid growth across all major sectors over the last decade. As a result, greenhouse-gas emissions per capita have increased exponentially.

According to experts, the country accounts for a significant share of greenhouse-gas mitigation potential through improved agricultural practices as well as improvements in other sectors.

In rice farming, a major greenhouse gas emitted is methane, which is produced by anaerobic decomposition of rice straw in flooded fields.

Most farmers in the country do not have expertise on how to cut emissions during farming procedures.

In addition, many of them lack sufficient knowledge about land reparation, water management, seed preparation, harvesting and fertiliser application. — VNS

Theo en.baomoi.com

President Obama Extends Easter, Passover Greetings

Interboy.net | harvard summer school 2011 |

U.S. President Barack Obama devoted his weekly address Saturday to the recognition of Easter and Passover.

The president said whether it is Jews gathering for a second Seder Saturday, retelling the story of Exodus, or Christians celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, both holidays give people strength to face the future through faith.

Obama, a Christian, says elements of Jesus' story of triumph over despair can resonate with everyone.

In the Republican address, Governor Mary Fallin of the central state of Oklahoma chastised President Obama for not fully supporting a pipeline to transport oil from Canada into the U.S.

She says the Obama administration has ignored energy infrastructure projects that could create new jobs and boost revenues to states.

_{Watch weekly Republican address:}

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National Briefing | Northwest

LyHuongPham.Name.vn | harvard summer school 2011 |

Alaska: 2 Dead at Coast Guard Station

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 13, 2012

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Two Coast Guard members were fatally shot Thursday at a communications station on Kodiak Island in what officials said appeared to be a double homicide. The roughly 60 enlisted personnel members and civilians working at the station had been accounted for, a spokeswoman said, and the base and an adjacent school were on lockdown. Officials called on the 6,300 or so local residents to remain vigilant.

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World Health Day Focuses on Older People

may chu gia tot | harvard summer school 2011 |

The World Health Organization is calling for urgent action to make sure all people reach old age in the best possible health.  To mark this year's World Health Day , WHO says good health is essential for maintaining a good quality of life as people get older in this rapidly aging world.

Photo: Reuters

People take part in a mass exercise session in the central square of Russia's southern city of Stavropol, April 6, 2012, to celebrate World Health Day.

The pulsating beat of the music does not just get the hearts of young people pumping with joy.  Older people too get caught up in the rhythmic beat.  This video produced for World Health Day presents a montage of  elderly people throughout the world engaged in activities that would exhaust many a younger person.  Particularly impressive is the image of a 100-year-old man finishing a marathon.

"We really need to change our thinking about people in the over-60 age group in radical ways," said Director-General of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan.  She says so many people now are living to an advanced age that a birth date alone is no longer a measure of old age.

"Within the next five years, for the first time in history, the population of people aged 65 and older will outnumber children under the age of five.  In other words, being in the older age group is becoming the new normal for the world's population and I am very proud to be qualified for the new normal," she said.

Contrary to common perceptions, the WHO reports by 2050, 80 percent of the world's older people will be living in low-and middle-income countries - not in the wealthier nations. And, a new analysis shows the key reasons for ill health in older people are from non-communicable diseases.

The U.N. health agency says even in the poorest countries, elderly people are not dying from infectious diseases or gastroenteritis.  Rather, they are dying from heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease.

Director of the WHO Aging and Life Course, John Beard, says adopting healthy behaviors can significantly reduce the risk of developing all non-communicable diseases.  He says being physically active, eating a healthy diet, avoiding the harmful use of alcohol and not smoking can better the chances of enjoying a healthy old age.

He says it is also important for society to change its attitude toward aging.  He says it is wrong to focus on aging as a problem.  It is wrong to regard older people as a burden.

"At WHO, we see it somewhat differently," said Beard.  "We see older people as a resource.  We see them as a resource for their family, for their community, for society as a whole.  And the key to liberating that resource is good health and it is something which we have neglected in the past and we need to make sure that the older populations which we are going to share this planet within the future and which all of us will be part of - that as far as possible, we enjoy the best possible health because that makes everything possible."

The World Health Organization recommends several key actions to strengthen healthy and active aging.  It urges governments to promote good healthy behaviors throughout life and to provide basic primary health care to detect chronic diseases early so they can be treated.

WHO says physical and social environments should be created in which old people can thrive.  And it calls on governments to change social attitudes toward the elderly so they are respected and valued.

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