Mother Jones has published a video of Mitt Romney at a private fund-raiser making incendiary remarks about Obama voters – and, well, about half of the electorate.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will votefor the president no matter what,” Mr. Romney said. “Thereare 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they arevictims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they areentitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it, that that’s an entitlement. And thegovernment should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.”
“These are people who pay no income tax,” he added.
I’ll address just that last part in this post.
Mr. Romney is absolutely correct that about half of American households do not pay federal income tax. (He is also tapping into a now long-running vein of conservative anger at those households.) But he is missing some crucial context on why they do not pay federal income tax.
The nonpartisan andhighly respected Tax Policy Center derivedthe 47 percent number – it is actually 46 percent, as of 2011 – and published an excellent analysis of it last summer .
It found that about half of the households that do not pay federal income tax do not pay it because they are simply too poor. The Tax Policy Centergives as an example a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 a year: The household would pay no federal income tax because its standard deduction and other exemptions would simply erase its liability.
The other half, the Tax Policy Center found, consists of households taking advantage of tax credits and other provisions, mostly support for senior citizens and low-income workingfamilies.
Put bluntly, these are not households shirking their tax liabilities. The pool consists mostly of the poor, of relatively low-income workingfamilies and of old people. The tax codeis specifically designed to reduce the burden on them.
Indeed, the recession and its aftermath have left tens of millions of workers out of a job or underemployed, removing more households from payment of federal income taxes. Moreover, the Bush tax cuts – the signature Republicaneconomic policy of the 2000s, which doubled the child taxcredit, increased a number of other deductions and exemptions, and lowered marginal tax rates – erased millions of families ’ federal income tax liabilities.
It is also worth noting that though tens of millions of families do not pay federal income taxes, there are virtually no families that do not pay any taxes – between payroll taxes, sales taxes, state and localtaxes, and on and on.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) — More than 130 inmates escaped through a tunnel from a prison in northern Mexico on Monday, setting off a massive search by police and soldiers in an area close to the U.S. border.
Authorities in Coahuila state said the 132 inmates fled the prison in Piedras Negras, a city across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, through a tunnel that was 21 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, then cut their way through a chain link barrier and escaped onto a neighboring property.
Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos Gloria said the director and twoother employees of the state prison havebeen detained for aninvestigation into the escape and are being questioned about possible involvement by authorities at the penitentiary. The prison houses about 730 inmates and the escape represented almost a fifth of its population.
The tunnel "was not made today. It had been there for months," Ramos toldthe Milenio TV station. "The prison was not overcrowded, none of our prisons are. We have 132 inmates escaping through a tunnel, and it doesn't make sense."
Authorities say they also found ropes andelectric cables they believe were used inthe break.
Federal police units and Mexican troops were deployed to search for the inmates and authorities in Coahuila state offered rewards of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrests of eachprisoner.
Ramos said 70 members of an elite military special forces unit had been sent to search for the prison along with federal police.
The U.S. Customs andBorder Protection said it was aware of the prison break andofficials are in communication withMexican law enforcement, according to an e-mailed statement.
Ramos said in a press conference that police are investigating a shootout 160 miles south of Piedras Negras after the prison break to determine if any of the four people killed were fugitives.
He said that 86 of the escaped inmates were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, such as drug trafficking , and the rest faced state charges.
Other Mexican stateshave said in the pastthat they are not prepared to handle highly dangerous federal prisoners.
It was one of the larger prison breaks to hit Mexico's troubled penitentiary system in recent years.
In December 2010, 153 inmates escapedfrom a prison in the northern city of Nuevo Laredo, right across Laredo, Texas.Authorities charged 41 guards with aiding the inmates in that escape. Mexico's drug gangs frequently try to break their membersout of prison.
Coahuila, where Monday's prison break took place, has seen a wave of violence tied to the brutal Zetas cartel's battles with the Sinaloa cartel, allies of the now weakened Gulf Cartel.
Authorities in Coahuila did not say which gang was believed to be behind the escape.
Last week, Gulf cartelleader Jorge EduardoCostilla Sanchez was arrested, leading experts to anticipatean increase in violence in parts of northern Mexico as the Zetas Cartel attempted to take over turf.
In Piedras Negras, family members had gathered outside theprison to hear word of their loved ones.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Batman is running foroffice in the Braziliancity of Uberlândia. Not one but two James Bonds are seeking city council seats, in Ponta Grossaand Birigui. Elsewhere in Brazil, voters are being urged to cast ballots for candidates with names like Daniel theCuckold and Elvis Didn’t Die .
Gerson Januário de Almeida, a candidate running as Obama BH.
Brazil has nurtured one of the world’s most vibrant democracies since its military dictatorship ended in 1985. As campaigning for municipal elections in October intensifies, this vitality is evident on the ballots, which reflect Brazil’s remarkably loose restrictions on what candidates can call themselves.
Ballots are filled withsuperhero names (five Batmans are running this year), mangled versions of American television characters (like the Macgaiver running in Espírito Santo State, inspired by the “ MacGyver “ secret-agent series), and an array of raunchy nicknames.
“It’s a marketing strategy, a political program, because if I said Geraldo Custódio, no one wasgoing to recognize me,” said Geraldo Custódio, 38, a teacher of driver’s education who is running for city council with the name Geraldo Wolverine in Piracicaba, an industrial city in São Paulo State.
Mr. Custódio said he had gotten the nickname of Wolverine, after the Marvel comics character , when he tried out for the reality television show “Big Brother Brazil.” He did not make it on the show, but the sideburns he adopted, along with his big build, made the nickname stick. He now campaigns with long metal talons. One of his ads says, “Vote for the guy who has claws!”
Creatively named candidates with talons might raise eyebrows elsewhere, but this is Brazil, a proudly relaxed country when it comes to the names of its politicians.
Consider the president, Dilma Rousseff, almost universally referred to by her first name. Her immediate predecessor incorporated his childhood nickname, Lula (“squid”), into his full name, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Calling him Mr. da Silva here raises hackles. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the president from 1995 through 2002, iscommonly referred to as Fernando Henrique or by his initials, F.H.C., but rarely by his last name.
Some candidates in local elections jump on the bandwagon ofa well-known politician, explaining,perhaps, why dozens of candidates across Brazil named Luiz or Luis have incorporated “Lula” into their own campaign names. Then there are the hat tips to overseas personages, reflectedin the 16 Obamas running in Brazil this year. Popular culture and religion also inspire: Ladi Gaga (sic) is running in Santo André, in the São Paulo area, whileChrist of Jerusalem (a k a Omedino Pantoja da Silva) lost a municipal election in Porto Velho, an Amazonian city, in 2008.
“I think Barack Obama is more than a politician; he is an icon,” said Gerson Januário de Almeida, 44, an administrativeassistant in the public health system who is running for city council with the name “Obama BH” in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities.
Mr. de Almeida said he had come by his nickname when American tourists riding the cable car to Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro remarked that he bore a striking resemblance to the American president. Since then,Mr. de Almeida said, he has earned additional income doing freelance gigs posing as Mr. Obama’s doppelgänger at promotional events.
There are some limitsto the names Brazilians can choose when running for office. The law stipulates that the names chosen shouldcorrespond to the candidates’ nicknames or how they are commonly referred to.
Judges in some cities have had enough of some especially bizarre or vulgar-sounding election names, issuing injunctions to keep them off ballots. And electoral courts have tried to prevent candidates from using the names of state-controlled companies and other bureaucratic entities.
This has not stopped some candidates from trying. Israel Soares, a candidate in São Paulo State, is running as National Institute of Social Security’s Defender of the People.
Such names may attract attention in a complex political system with more than 20 parties of various ideological stripes, but seasoned electoral strategists say they seem to offer little more than a sideshow in many races.
“I don’t know if I would advise my clients to do it,” said Justino Pereira, a political consultant inSão Paulo who has advised numerous candidates in municipal elections, including one named Palhaço Zig Zag (Zig Zag Clown), who lost.
Mr. Pereira said candidates were particularly inspired after another clown popular on televisionunder the stage name Tiririca, which roughly translates as “Grumpy,” won a seat in Congress. (Relatively few people know his real name, Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva.) “Using nicknames is an easy way to draw attention,” Mr. Pereira said, “but doesn’t necessarily make a lasting effect.”
Of course, some candidates in a country with such a whimsical approach to names have no need to resort to wild nicknames. These aspirants for office already have colorful names bestowed by their parents, reflecting the attention paid in the past in Brazil to some foreign political figures.
Jimmi Carter Santarém Barroso is running in AmazonasState; John Kennedy Abreu Sousa is running in Maranhão,in Brazil’s northeast; and Chiang Kai XequeBraga Barroso — whose first name evokes Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese rival in the mid-20th century to Mao Zedong — is seeking to be elected in Tocantins State.
Taylor Barnes and Lis Horta Moriconi contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 17, 2012, on page A 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Daniel the Cuckold and Zig Zag Clown Viefor Office.

Man Is Accused of Jihadist Plot to Bomb Chicago Bar.
An 18-year-old suburban Chicago man, who the authorities say was enamored with Osama bin Laden andintent on killing Americans, has been arrested after attempting to detonate what he thought was a car bomb outside a Chicago bar, officials said Saturday.
There was never any danger that the suspect, Adel Daoud, would actually detonate a bomb. The plot, which ended with Mr. Daoud’s arrest on Friday, was proposedby undercover F.B.I. agents posing as extremists, accordingto a statement released by the United States attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois.

At the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, rat hearts and lungs are washed of living cells to reveal the extracellular structure.
Two and a half yearsago doctors in Iceland, where Mr. Beyene was studyingto be an engineer, discovered a golf-ball-size tumor growing into his windpipe. Despite surgery and radiation, it kept growing. In the spring of 2011, whenMr. Beyene came to Sweden to see another doctor, he was practically out of options. “I was almost dead,” he said. “There was suffering. A lot of suffering.”
But the doctor, PaoloMacchiarini, at the Karolinska Institute here, had a radical idea. He wanted to make Mr. Beyene a new windpipe, out of plastic and his own cells.
Implanting such a “bioartificial” organ would be a first-of-its-kind procedurefor the field of regenerative medicine, which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs — livers, kidneys, even hearts — built in the laboratory.
For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building organs witha different approach,using the body’s cellsand letting the body itself do most of the work.
“The human body is so beautiful, I’m convinced we must use it in the most proper way,” said Dr.Macchiarini, a surgeon who runs a laboratory that is a leader in the field , also called tissue engineering.
So far, only a few organs have been made and transplanted, and they are relatively simple, hollow ones — like bladders and Mr. Beyene’s windpipe, which was implanted in June 2011. But scientists around theworld are using similar techniques with the goal of building more complex organs. At Wake Forest University in North Carolina, for example, where the bladders were developed , researchers are working on kidneys, livers and more. Labsin China and the Netherlands are among many working on blood vessels.
The work of these new body builders isfar different from the efforts that produced artificial hearts decades ago. Those devices, whichare still used temporarily by somepatients awaiting transplants, are sophisticated machines, but in the end they are only that: machines.
Tissue engineers aimto produce something that is more human. They want to make organs with the cells, blood vessels and nerves to become a living, functioning part of the body. Some, like Dr. Macchiarini, wantto go even further —to harness the body’s repair mechanisms so that it can remake a damaged organ on its own.
Researchers are making use of advances in knowledge of stem cells , basic cells that can be transformed into types that are specific to tissues like liver or lung. They are learning more about what they call scaffolds, compounds that act like mortar to hold cells in their proper place and that also play a major role in how cells are recruited for tissue repair.
Tissue engineers caution that the work they are doing is experimental and costly, and that the creation of complex organs is still a long way off. But they areincreasingly optimistic about the possibilities.
“Over 27 years, I’ve become more convinced that this isdoable,” said Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti , a director of the Laboratory for TissueEngineering and Organ Fabrication at Massachusetts General Hospital anda pioneer in the field.
In Mr. Beyene’s case, an exact copy of his windpipe was made from a porous, fibrous plastic, whichwas then seeded with stem cells harvested from his bone marrow. After just a day and a half in a bioreactor — a kind of incubator in which the windpipe was spun, rotisserie-style, in a nutrient solution — the implant was stitchedinto Mr. Beyene, replacing his cancerous windpipe.
It was such a seemingly wild scheme that Mr. Beyene had his doubts when Dr. Macchiarini first proposed it.
“I told him, I prefer to live three years and then die,” he said. “I almost refused. It had only been done in pigs. But he convinced mein a very scientific way.”
Now, 15 months after the operation, Mr. Beyene, 39, who is from Eritrea, is tumor-free and breathing normally. He is back in Iceland with his wife and two small children, including a 1-year-old boy whom he had thought he would never get to know. In Stockholm earlier this year for afollow-up visit, he showed the long vertical scar on his chest and spoke quietly in English, the raspiness of his voice a leftover fromradiation therapy.
His strength was improving every day,he said, and he couldeven run a little.
“Things are good,” Mr. Beyene said. “Life is much better.”
Imitating Nature
To make an organ, ithelps to know how nature does it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/health/research/scientists-make-progress-in-tailor-made-organs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&gwh=95B528E82F669198EEBC9D693EF1521D

Dirar Abu Sisi, the 43-year-old deputy engineer of the only power plant in the Gaza Strip, went on aone-day hunger strike Thursday to protest against beingheld in solitary confinement by Israel. His fast marks the latest episode in a mysterious story of abduction and torture.
Dirar Abu Sisi (image by Abu Pessoptimist)
In February 2011, Abu Sisi traveled to Ukraine, his wife Veronika’s native country, to seek citizenship after Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s winter 2008-09 attack on the Gaza Strip, made him fear for the safety of their six children. On 18 February, he boardedan overnight train from Kharkiv to Kiev, hoping to meet his brother Yousef, a resident of the Netherlands, for the first time in 15 years.
But he never reachedKiev. During the night, three men, two of them wearingUkrainian military uniforms, boarded his compartment, flashed a badge fromthe Security Service of Ukraine, and demanded that Abu Sisi leave with them. At around 1am, they forced him off the train.
“My last contact with Dirar was immediately before his disappearance, the night of 18 February 2011 at about 10:30 in Palestine,” Veronika told The Electronic Intifada. “The next day, my brother-in-law later told me that Dirar’s phone was ringing, but there was no answer,and we should inform the Ukrainian authorities and the Palestinian embassy that he was missing. I immediately flew toKiev to look for him.”
Her plane may have passed her husband’sin the air. By the end of 19 February, Abu Sisi was held in the isolation unit of an Israeli jail near Petah Tikva, 76 kilometers from Gaza and more than 2,000 from Kiev.
Veronika didn’t learn his whereabouts for more than a week. “On 27 February, I was preparing a letter to [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas about Dirar’s disappearance when I got a call from Dirar,” she said. “He told me that he had been kidnapped by the Mossad [Israel’s external intelligence agency] and was detained in Israel.”
Forced into coffin
An Israeli court’s gag order and tight security controls prevented neither Abu Sisi nor his attorney from sharing the details ofhis abduction. But in the coming weeks, they would emerge through his conversations with a lawyer from the Palestinian Centre forHuman Rights (“Detainee Abu Sisi discloses detail of his kidnapping in Ukraine to PCHR lawyer,” 21 March 2011).
A fellow detainee also later spoke about Abu Sisi’s treatment to the Gaza-based al-Aqsa TV (“‘Rendered’ in a coffin: The untold story of Dirar Abu Sisi,” Yousef M. Aljamal, 31 May 2012).
Abu Sisi, according tothese conversations, had been handcuffed, hooded and taken by car to a Kiev apartment, where six men introduced themselves as agentsof Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. After interrogating him, they forced him into a coffin, then flew him to Israel, with one unknown stopover along the way.
“All I know is what I’ve heard from his lawyer, that his treatment was horrendous,” Veronika said of her husband’s reception by the Israeli Prison Service. “They chained his hands to his bed for eight hours a day, and didn’t let him sleep for seven or eight days straight.”
Abu Sisi’s Israeli attorney, Tal Linoy, told the Kyiv Post lastyear that his client had been tortured.
“Illegal methods of investigation were applied to my client,”he told the Ukrainiannewspaper, adding that the gag order, which prevents him from disclosing details of Abu Sisi’s interrogation, also prejudices his case: “They [the prosecutors] just lynch my client by publishing against him only the data they want to publish” (“Lawyer: Abu Sisi was forced to “admit” guilt,” 19 August 2011).
That data, presumably, was a redacted transcript — spanning more than 21 pages — of Abu Sisi’s interrogation released by the Beersheba District Court eight days earlier. He offered hiscaptors a litany of confessions, from “improving rocket range” for Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, to heading the “administrative program” at “Hamas’ new military academy” (“Interrogation of Dirar Abu Sisi: Excerpts ‘cleared for publication’ by the Beersheeba District Court, Israel,” BBC, 11 August 2011 [PDF]).
Abu Sisi was indicted in April 2011 and “charged with membership in a terrorist organization, conspiracy to commita crime, the production of illegal weaponry, assistanceto an illegal organization, and a variety of other crimes” (“Shin Bet files indictment against ‘rocket godfather,’” The Jerusalem Post, 4 April 2011).
“Not a single word oftruth”
According to the record, Abu Sisi also confessed that one ofhis professors, Konstantin Petrovich Vlasov, had arranged for him to study at a military engineering academy in Kharkov.
“This is all lies, there isn’t a single word of truth in it,” Vlasov had said two months earlier. “I have never lectured at any military academy andnever had anything to do with anything military. I have only seen missiles on TV” (“Ukraine professors defend Palestinian engineer alleged to have conspired with Hamas,” Haaretz, 6 June 2011).
The Haaretz article also noted that “no such school exists.”
“It was the Mossad, with the help of some Ukrainians,” Veronika said of Abu Sisi’s abduction. “I still haven’t blamed the Ukrainian government for this, although Ukrainians were clearly involved.
“Yesterday, I met the Ukrainian ambassador to Palestine in Gaza for the first time. He hadn’t heard about the kidnapping before, but promised to look into it and get back to me. He said it would be difficult, because my husband didn’t yet have Ukrainian citizenship. I told himthat Dirar is my husband, and I’m a Ukrainian. And he was a legal resident of Ukraine, giving him the same rights as a citizen under theconstitution,” she added.
Why would Mossad have kidnapped Abu Sisi? “Because of his brain,” Veronika quickly replied. “He knows everything about electricity and its generation. After Israel destroyed the power plant in 2006, he reconfigured it to run on regular diesel fuel from Egypt, instead of high-gradediesel bought from Israel. This threatened Israel’s control over the GazaStrip.”
Israel breaks isolation pledge
Perhaps to obscure the details of his case, Abu Sisi remains one of two detainees in isolation, despite how Israel has undertaken twice over the past 12 months to end its solitary confinement of Palestinians in response to hunger strikes by prisoners.
“Of the 19 prisoners held in long-term isolation before the hunger strike, one, Dirar Abu Sisi, has still not been removed from isolation,” a spokesperson for Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, confirmed. “An additional prisoner, Awad Saidi, was also placed in isolation under a six-month order in April.”
“Israel has already violated the 14 May agreement that ended Palestinian prisoners’ mass hunger strike in almost every single way,” the spokesperson said, adding that “at least 30 renewals of administrative detention orders andthree new orders were issued” since 14May. Administrative detention is a practice whereby prisoners are held indefinitely without charge or trial.
On Thursday, 13 September, Abu Sisi joined hundreds of other detainees in a mass hunger strike protesting these violations, according to Doaa Abu Amer, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees’and Ex-detainees’ Affairs in Gaza.
For Abu Sisi, these violations have come at a high personal cost. “Since his first day of detention, he’s been held in solitary confinement,” Veronika said. “Whenhe was first detained,he weighed 98 kilograms [216 pounds]. Now, he’s down to 62 [136 pounds]. The humidity has given him asthma. Every prisoner is entitled toa medical examination every six months, but they’ve only let a doctor see Dirar once,in May 2011. He also has stomach and kidney problems, andhis health is deteriorating quickly because of his solitary confinement.”
Neither Israel’s nor Ukraine’s ministries of foreign affairs, justice, public security or internal affairs responded to requests for comments on Abu Sisi’s case.
“He still hasn’t been tried or found guilty,” Veronika saidof her husband. “Israeli intelligence now claims that he must be an Islamist terrorist because he has a beard. This is the only thing they’ve been able to find against him.”
Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He works with the Centre for Political and Development Studies(CPDS) and other Palestinian groups and international solidarity networks, particularly in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions and prisoners’ movements.
http://www.imemc.org/article/64249

One of the men behind the anti-Muslim film trailer on YouTube that has set off violent protests at Western embassies across the Middle East was taken in forquestioning by federal probation officers early Saturday morning, law enforcement officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/world/middleeast/man-linked-to-film-in-protests-is-questioned.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

PHILADELPHIA — Thescheduled execution of a convicted murderer has prompted pleas for clemency from thousands of people who argue that he should be spared because he had beensexually abused by his victim.
The inmate, Terrance Williams, 46, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Oct. 3 for killing a man after what his supporters say was years of being abused by the victim, as well as by a teacher and an older boy who first raped him when he was 6.
Mr. Williams was 18 in June 1984 when he beat to death Amos Norwood, 56.
Mr. Williams was also found guilty in aseparate trial of third-degree murder, which does not carry the death penalty, for the killing in January 1984 of Herbert Hamilton, 50, who had made sexual advances toward him, according to court testimony. Mr. Hamilton was stabbed and beaten to death.
If the execution is carried out, Mr. Williams would be the first convict put to death involuntarily in Pennsylvania since 1962. Since reinstating capital punishment in 1978, Pennsylvania has executed only three people, all of whom asked for death afterhaving exhausted their appeals.
A petition urging Gov. Tom Corbett and the state’s Board of Pardons to commute Mr. Williams’s sentence to life without parole has been signed, his lawyers said, by about 286,000 supporters, including former judges, religious leaders, mental health professionals and 35 advocates forchildren, who say hiscrimes resulted from a long history of abuse.
“Terry’s acts of violence have, alas, an explanation of the worst sort,” the advocates for children said in a joint letter in support of clemency.“Terry lashed out and killed two of themen who sexually abused him and caused him so much pain.”
The scheduled execution is opposedby the Roman Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, whose 1.5-million-member archdiocesehas been shaken in recent years by evidence that some of its priests abused children.
The archbishop wrote in a weekly column on the archdiocese Web sitethat Mr. Williams deserved punishment but did not deserve to die because a judicial execution would perpetuate the “wrongheaded lesson of violence ‘fixing’ the violent among us.”
Mr. Norwood’s widow, Mamie, has also asked for clemency for Mr. Williams. Ms. Norwood, 75, wrote that she had been “angry and resentful” toward Mr. Williams for many years but later concluded that the only way to have a “peaceful and happy” life was to forgive him.
“I do not wish to seeTerry Williams executed,” Ms. Norwood said in a signed declaration filed with the court, the prosecutor’s office and the Board of Pardons. “His execution would go against my Christian faith and my belief system.”
Pressure on Governor Corbett, a Republican, has also come from the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment, a bipartisan group that includes state lawmakers. On Thursday, the panel asked the governor to postpone plannedexecutions until it completes a study of the death penalty and announces its findings in December 2013.
The case continues a recent focus on the sexual abuse of children in Pennsylvania after Jerry Sandusky, a former Pennsylvania State University football coach, was convicted of abusingyoung boys, and Msgr. William J. Lynn,a former senior official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, was convicted of child endangerment for failing to stop abuse by priests under his supervision.
Mr. Williams’s historyas a victim of abuse was unknown to thejurors who sentenced him to death in 1986, according to affidavits signed by five of them who said they would have voted instead for life in prison without parole if they had known all the facts.
“I was not aware that the victim in that case had been having sex with Terrance and other teenage boys,” wrote one juror, whose name is redacted in a court document notarized in July. “If I had known those circumstances at that time — what had led him down that path — that definitely would have been a factor and my decision would have been different from the death sentence.”
Pennsylvania does not require judges to instruct jurors in first- and second-degree murder casesthat a life sentence means there is no possibility of parole.
All five of the jurors who signed affidavits said they were unaware that if they voted for a life sentence, Mr. Williams would actually be incarcerated for the rest of his life.
“If I had known that a life sentence meant life without parole, I personally would have voted for a life sentence, and I think other people probably would have voted for life, too,” one juror wrote.
Tasha Jamerson, a spokeswoman for District Attorney R. Seth Williams of Philadelphia, said jurors should have been in no doubt about the options before them. “In the case of a capital murder charge like this one, the law is very clear: either death or life in prison without the possibility of parole,” she wrote inan e-mail.
On Friday, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina of Philadelphia Common Pleas Court agreed to hear defense arguments that the killing of Mr.Norwood was motivated not by robbery — as stated by Marc Draper, a co-defendant at Mr. Williams’s trial — but by Mr. Norwood’s sexual abuse of Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams’s lawyers, who are seeking a stay of execution, say the evidence of sexual abuse, to be presented at another hearing on Thursday, was improperly suppressed by the prosecution at trial.
After Friday’s hearing, the district attorney rejected the arguments that the killing had been motivated by sexual abuse and said they had been dismissed by various courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
On Monday, Mr. Williams’s case will be heard by the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. A unanimous vote of the five-member body is required for a recommendation to overturn the death penalty, and itis expected to announce its decision the same day. But the board’s decision is not binding on Mr. Corbett, who signed a death warrant for Mr. Williams on Aug. 9.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/us/a-push-for-clemency-in-pennsylvania-as-an-execution-nears.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

WASHINGTON — Army operations andmaintenance would lose nearly $7 billion next year, and the Navy more than $4 billion under a looming series of automatic cuts in federal spending. Educational achievement and special-education programs would be shaved by $2.3 billion. Medicare payments to hospitals would fall by $5.6 billion.
And, particularly relevant at a moment when worldattention is focused on the continuing attacks on United States embassies and consulates abroad, diplomatic programs and embassy security would lose $1.2 billion.
These are among thefindings in a new 394-page report by the White House that was delivered Friday to Congress, detailing line by line what will happen next year if Washington fails to act to head off about$100 billion in military and domestic spending cuts scheduled to begin Jan. 2. The Obama administration had been reluctant to specify the impact ofsequestration, as theautomatic, across-the-board spending reduction is called. But once forced to do so by Congress, the White House budget office did notscrimp on the details.
“As the administration has made clear, no amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts,” the report states. “Sequestration is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction.”
The Budget Control Act of July 2011 established automatic cuts as the bludgeon that was supposed to force a special bipartisan committee to reach an agreement on deficit reduction of at least $1 trillion over the next decade. The committee failed , with Republicans refusing to meet Democrats’ demandsto raise taxes in exchange for cuts to domestic programs and entitlements like Social Security and Medicare .
Lawmakers still hopethat Congress and the White House can come up with a way to avoid the cuts, but nothing will happen before the November elections, whose outcome will have some effect on what any future agreement would look like.
For now, the two parties remain at odds, with each seeking to blame theother for the automatic cuts about to come.
Under the terms of those cuts, most military programs face a 9.4 percent reduction, while most domestic programs would be sliced by 8.2 percent.Medicare would be trimmed by 2 percent, while other social programs — excluding Social Security — would besliced by as much as 10 percent.
White House officialssaid cuts to Medicarewould fall on health care providers, not beneficiaries. But the impact on healthcare professionals could affect the elderly if deep cuts prompt doctors and hospitals to shun Medicare patients. Total payments to hospitals through Medicare would be cut by more than$5.8 billion next year, while prescription drug benefits would be trimmed by $591 million.
The White House report details how$108 billion in cuts would be meted out next year, the start of what would be a decade’s worth of cuts on that scale.
Congressional Republicans were the first to demand adetailed accounting this summer, focusing on the planned Pentagon cuts. The White House resisted. ThenDemocrats joined in, pushing to see the impact on domestic programs as well and ultimately passing legislation almost unanimously demanding a written report.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the White House reluctance on Friday.The reason, he said, was the fear that “lots of energy and time would go to reporting and planning as opposedto avoiding the sequester.”
As late as Friday, Congressional aides were skeptical that the White House would produce the details lawmakers had wanted. And theWhite House did not get to the level of precision sought by some lawmakers, down to the effect on individual weapons programs or military bases.
But the report does detail the potential toll on more than 1,200 agencies and programs, like the $4million the Library ofCongress stands to lose for its books for the blind and handicapped.
The first items on the ledger are cuts to the legislative branch. Inquiries and investigations, amainstay of the Republican House, would lose $11 million. Salaries and expenses in the House of Representatives would drop by $101 million. However, under the terms of the budget law, salaries for lawmakers would beexempt.
“Hopefully this will move the Republicans toward compromise,” said another administration official, who briefed reporters under the condition, set by the White House, that henot be identified.
“But without compromise, the report gives us a window into what our future might be like.”
Big cuts would hit the military. DefenseDepartment operations and maintenance would lose $3.9 billion next year alone. Air Force and Navy aircraft procurement would be sliced by more than $4.2 billion. Andmoney to strengthenAfghanistan’s security force the year before the United States plans to withdraw its own forces would fall by$1.3 billion.
Pain would be spread widely. The National Institutes of Health would lose$2.5 billion. Rental assistance for the poor would fall by$2.3 billion; nutritionprograms for women, infants and children would lose$543 million.
Domestic priorities more associated with Republicans would also take a hit. The Customs andBorder Patrol budgetwould fall by $823 million, and the budget for the border fence would drop $33 million.
Under the terms of last year’s budget act, veterans programs were exempted from the cuts. Mr. Obama usedthe latitude granted by the law to also shield military personnel. But that would only deepen the remaining military cuts.
Chances that the report would move the parties to the negotiating table before the election seemed remote, judging from the reaction on Friday.
“It’s the American people who will pay the price for Republican intransigence,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.
“It is time for the president and Senate Democrats tofollow the example of the House and present a plan to remedy these unbalanced and dangerous defense cuts,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama.

The 73-year-old woman who was raped in Central Park said Friday that when she encountered a man masturbating in the wooded Ramble area two weeks ago,she not only took hisphotograph, but alsoreported what she saw to a park ranger
“Some of the newspapers mentioned that afterI saw the guy masturbating, I didn’t report it. I did.I reported it,” the woman said in an interview outside her apartment on the Upper West Side.“There was a park ranger who came by,and I stopped him immediately and showed him the picture. And I said: ‘Look at this picture. This guy is in the Ramble.’ And the ranger said, ‘Oh, O.K.,I’ll look out for him.’”
The rangers, who work for the New York City parks department, are not law-enforcement officers, but assist park visitors in various ways. The ranger walked toward the Ramble, and the woman believed she had done all she was supposed to.
“I felt that was enough,” she said.
Vickie Karp, a spokeswoman for the parks department, referred questions about whether the victim approached a ranger and what rangers’ responsibilities in such situations are to the Police Department.
Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, did not return an e-mail asking if the department was aware that the woman, according toher, had alerted a park ranger after shespotted the man masturbating. Mr. Browne said earlier this week that the situation had not been reported to thepolice.
The man whom the woman photographed is accused of raping and beating her in a brazen daylight attack near Strawberry Fields, south and west of the Ramble, on Wednesday. The assault was preceded, the police said, by a question from the attacker: “Do you remember me?”
The suspect, David Albert Mitchell, a 42-year-old drifter with a history of violence against women, was charged with rape. He was also accused of stealing the woman’s camera and other photo equipment.
A camera is something that the woman said she always carried in herhand while in the park.
She has been an avidbird watcher for years, drawn to the Ramble, as are so many others, by the variety and quantity of birds found there.
But she also was not afraid to train her camera on people she regarded to be breaking park rules, often snapping photographs of those who let their dogs run off-leash, bicyclists riding on park paths designated for pedestrians, and children in rowboatswithout parental supervision or life jackets, she said.
“No photographer walks around with a camera in a bag,” said the woman, who is an unofficial guardian of the parkshe cherishes. “It’s like a gun. You pick it up and shoot.”
She keeps a photography blog, which primarily chronicles her bird sightings.
But she sometimes uses her blog as a kind of wall of shame. She posted a photo of a man who let his dog run unleashed and wrote: “All around the park, there are signs, ‘Dogs must be on leashes at all times.’ Try and tell this owner. Rules don’t apply to him.”
The woman scoffed at a description of her in an article this week in The New York Times in which a park maintenance worker said he thought he knew her, describing her as “a nice old lady” who always sits on abench.
She described herselfinstead as an active person who is always on the move in the park.
The woman saw an ophthalmologist on Friday. She has a fractured eye socket as well as a broken finger on her right hand. Both of her eyes were bloodshotand ringed with purplish and blue bruises on Friday, and she wore large sunglasses. She said she felt nauseated by anti-H.I.V. medication that doctors prescribed, aroutine course of treatment for rape victims.
As for Mr. Mitchell, the man accused of assaulting her, his life has long been filled with violence, dating to when he was a teenager growing up in southern West Virginia. He has spent much of his adult life in prison.
In 1989, he was charged with raping and murdering an 87-year-old woman, Annie Parks, in his hometown, Jenkinjones, W.Va., but was found not guilty. Several months later, he wascharged with raping and robbing a 70-year-old woman in a nearby town. Hepleaded guilty and served 10 years in prison.
Mr. Mitchell was also described by investigators as a person of interest in the murder of a woman in West Virginia in 2002, according to the West Virginia State Police, but there wasnot enough evidenceto charge him.
Mr. Mitchell was one of about a dozen siblings, and his father was a coal miner, said Rebecca Lewis, 46, who grew up near the Mitchellsand whose sister married one of Mr. Mitchell’s brothers. When Mr. Mitchell was in Jenkinjones during his short stints out of prison, Ms. Lewis said, he lived on disability payments and would“tell everybody he got a ‘crazy check.’ ”

Officials say no bombs have been found.

Аgreed.

University police told CNN that “it was a general bomb threat on campus.”

Romney Aides DetailForeign Policy Differences.
If Mitt Romney were in the Oval Office duringthis week of turmoil in the Middle East, hisforeign policy advisers said on Thursday, he would have already told Iran that he would not allow it to get close to building a bomb, setting a “red line” in a far differentplace from President Obama ’s.
He would tell the Egyptians that if theywanted $1 billion in debt forgiveness — as promised by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this month —they would have to put far more effort into protecting American interests in the country, starting with the United States Embassy.
And he would provide far more aid to elements of the Syrian opposition, including, according to one adviser, “facilitating” the provision of lethal arms from other Arabstates. But, like President Obama, he would stop short of arming them directly.
And the United Stateswould have been far more involved in the formation of a new Libya, the advisers insisted, though theyconceded it was not clear that could have stopped the attack that killed the American ambassador there and three other American officers.
Those contrasts weredescribed on Thursday by two of Mr. Romney’s most senior foreign policy advisers, Eliot Cohen and Richard Williamson, in response to a requestfor a description of how Mr. Romney would have handled an enormously challenging week in the Middle East. The specificity was far greater than what Mr. Romney himself has been offering up on the campaign trail, where he speaks in broad strokes about his foreign policy plans.
Over the past few days, he has stuck largely to accusationsthat Mr. Obama has “apologized” for America and projected weakness, suggesting that was the root cause of this week’s protests in Cairo and the lethal violence in Libya.
Even on Thursday, as the turmoil in Egypt and Libya seemed to bleed into other areas of the region, Mr. Romney largely chose to bypass discussion of the challenges in dealing with the two countries, instead offering a more general critique of the president. “As wewatch the world today, sometimes it seems that we’re at the mercy of events, instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events,” Mr. Romney said, speaking to a modest-size crowd inFairfax, Va., just outside Washington.
And in an interview with ABC News, Mr. Romney declined to respond to Mr. Obama’s charge that he has a tendency to shoot first and aim later. “Well, this is politics,” he said. “I’m not going to worry about the campaign.”
The sharpest foreign policy difference, described by Mr. Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior official in the State Department under President George W. Bush, came in response to questions about howMr. Romney would handle Iran.
President Obama has said he would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but has so far refused calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to set a “redline” sooner, one that would put Iran on notice that it would be subject to military attack if it continued to developthe capability to build such a weapon. Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu continuedthat debate in an hourlong phone call on Tuesday night, hours after the Israelileader suggested the United States had no “moral authority” to restrain Israel from attacking Iran if it was unwilling to set clear limits for the Iranians.
Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Romney “would not be content with an Iran one screwdriver’s turn away from a nuclear weapon.” But he stopped short of saying exactly where,in the development of nuclear capability, Mr. Romney would draw the line. It could be in a different place than Mr. Netanyahu drawsit, he said.
That vagueness is crucial because by some definitions, Iran already has the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, though it might take several months or years to realize.
“Once they get a weapon, or on the verge of getting it, it’s too late,” Mr. Cohen said.
Mr. Romney has said he would never allowIran to enrich uranium, suggesting he would enforce a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran “suspend” its production of all nuclear fuel. But Iran was in violation of that demand throughmost of Mr. Bush’s second term, and suffered fewer economic consequences than it has under Mr. Obama,who has imposed thefirst sanctions against Iran’s oil revenues.
Both Mr. Cohen and Mr. Williamson said the president had been far too cautiousin supporting opposition forces in Syria, describing him as too risk-averse in the Middle East. “It’s playing out in Syria,” said Mr. Williamson, aformer ambassador who has served a series of Republican presidents. “We are not better off in letting things drift. We have 20,000 dead, and the more itgoes on the fewer choices we have.”
Mr. Cohen suggested that the only way to separate out “the good guys and the bad guys among the opposition” was to engage them. “If we don’t help, these guys they will turn towhoever can help.”
But both men stopped short of saying that the United States should provide lethal arms. A senior Obama administration official said that “sounds a lot like they are endorsing our position.”
On Egypt, Mr. Cohen suggested that the administration had failed to make clear that American aid was contingent on the protection of American interests. In fact, Mr. Obama’s aides, in trips to Cairo, have been careful not to threaten pulling that aid, but they have warned the Egyptian authorities that Congressional approval could be enormously difficult unless the country’s leaders reaffirmed the peace treaty withIsrael.
Mr. Williamson continued the Romney campaign’s attack on a statement issued by the American Embassy in Cairo hours before protestsbegan there, saying “you don’t issue a conciliatory statement that says we don’t support freedom of speech.” The statement did condemn a virulent anti-Muslim video that set off the violence, but it also included references to both the importance of free speech and religious tolerance.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Ashley Parker from Fairfax, Va.

protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas.
In Lebanon, one person was killed and 25 injured as protesters attacked restaurants, while in Sudandemonstrations flared outside of the German and British embassies. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq. Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, and held protests in the West Bank and Gaza.
State media in Egypt said that more than 220 people had beeninjured in the clashes since Tuesday.
In Yemen, baton-wielding security forces backed by water cannons blocked streets near the American Embassy a day after protesters breached the outer security perimeter there and officials said two people were killed inclashes with the police. Still, a group of several dozen protesters gathered near the diplomatic post, carrying placards and shouting slogans.
In Lebanon, hundreds of protesters set alight a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant inthe northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, witnesses said, chanting against thepope’s visit to the country and shouting anti-American slogans, according toa Reuters report.
Germany’s Foreign Minister, ***** Westerwelle, said in a statement Friday that the country’s embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, was “the target of attacks by demonstrators capable of violence.”According to Mr. Westerwelle, embassy employees were in safety. German missions in Muslim countries had already strengthened security measures in the wake of the recent unrest.
In Sudan, the police fired tear-gas to stopabout 5,000 demonstrators storming the German and British embassies in Khartoum to protest against the video, a Reuters witness said in a report by the news agency.
In Iraq, where the heavily-fortified American embassy sits on the banks of the Tigris inside the Green Zone and is out of reach to ordinary Iraqis, thousands protestedafter Friday prayers, in Sunni and Shiite cities alike.
Raising banners withIslamic slogans and denouncing the United States and Israel, Iraqis called for the expulsion of American diplomats from the country and demanded that the American government apologize for the incendiary film and take legal action against it0s creators.
"We want the U.S. government to prove that there is justice by stopping this movie and punishing the director and his staff," said Sheik Ahmad al-A’ani, a preacher at a mosque in Baghdad.
In Hilla, in the Shiite-dominated south, a witness reported theburning of American and Israeli flags. In Kufa, another Shiite town in the south, a mosque preacher declared his belief that the four Americans killed in the attack in Libya actually died at the hands of the American government to create a pretext for the United States to seek revenge and extend its presence in the region. And in Samarra, a Sunni citynorth of Baghdad that is near Saddam Hussein’s hometownof Tikrit, preachers at local mosques demanded that Iraqis boycott American goods.
Hundreds of Palestinian worshippers clashed with Israeli security forces after Friday prayers in Jerusalem’s Old City. Police officers blocked the protesters at the Damascus Gate exit from the Old City, thwarting their plans to march to the United States Consulate General in West Jerusalem, according to a policespokesman. Demonstrators then threw stones and bottles at the police who responded withstun grenades.
There were scattered demonstrations in the Palestinian citiesof the West Bank where preachers in the mosques devoted their sermons to defending the Prophet Muhammad and decrying American policies in the region.

****ing Paparazi...

LONDON — In a dispute evoking the furor that swirled around press coverage of Princess Diana, Britain’s royalhousehold on Friday issued a powerful rebuke to a French magazine that published paparazzi photographs of Kate Middleton, the wife of Diana’s elder son William, sunbathing topless at a secludedand upscale villa in the lavender fields ofProvence.
Coming after the publication of photographs last month of Prince Harry, Diana’s younger son, cavorting naked at a party in Las Vegas, the appearance of the images of Ms. Middleton in the French edition of Closer magazine raised profound questions about the limits of royal privacy and threatened to revive old strains with the press.
Before his marriage to Ms. Middleton last year, Prince William had repeatedly indicated that he wished to shield her from what the royal family depicted as the hounding of Diana before, throughout and after her doomed marriage to his father, Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne.
At the moment of her death in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, photographers were in pursuit of Diana to the last.
In a statement on Friday, aides to the royal couple called the publication of photographs of Ms. Middleton “grotesque and totally unjustifiable,”comparing the images with “the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during thelife of Diana, Princessof Wales, and all the more upsetting to the duke and duchess for being so.”
Since their marriage,the Kate and Williamhave been anointed as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The images of Ms. Middleton were not, initially at least, published in Britain, where newspaper standards and practices have come under an unaccustomed and fierce spotlight following the phone hacking scandal that has focused primarily on Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers.
A Web version of thecover of Closer magazine hid its content behind a thick, black bar.
Referring to the Duke and Duchess, their office said Friday that “their royal highnesses have been hugely saddened to learn that a French publication and a photographer have invaded their privacyin such a grotesque and unjustifiable manner.”
“Their royal highnesses had every expectation of privacy in the remote house. It is unthinkable that anyone should take such photographs, let alone publish them. Officials actingon behalf of their royal highnesses are consulting with lawyers to consider what options may be available to the Duke and Duchess.”
The images emergedas the couple traveled in the Far East as part of a tour to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s 60-year rule. The photographs were taken before the official tour while the couple vacationed in Provence, in southern France, lastweek at what Britishmedia reports described as a chateau owned by Lord Linley, the Queen’s nephew.
Prime Minister DavidCameron joined broad condemnationof the publication of the photographs, saying, “We echo theanger and sadness ofthe palace. They are entitled to their privacy.”
Princess Diana’s friend Rosa Monckton said in a message on Twitter: “I’m on a rant and very angry having seen at first hand the emotional price paid for press intrusion. My last word on this: leave Kate alone.”
According to The Evening Standard newspaper, photographers, including local cameramen not linked to international paparazzi, said the couple were visible from a nearby road as they relaxed on a terrace beside a pool. Prince William appeared to be reading an iPad as Kate rubbed sun cream into his back, the newspaper said.
Closer magazine insisted there had been no breach of safety or security, according to The Evening Standard. “Iftwo public figures chose to strip off in full view of a public road then they can expect to be pictured, and they were,” an unidentified person at Closer magazine was quoted as saying.
The Daily Mirror tabloid quoted the editor of Closer magazine in France, Laurence Pieau, as defending the decision to publish the pictures. “These photos are not in theleast shocking,” he said. “They show a young woman sunbathing topless, like the millions of women you see on beaches.”
Since the couple married, the British press has generally fallen in with informal requests by their office for privacy.
But overseas outlets have been less cooperative with thehousehold, publishing photographs of the couple and their puppy despite efforts by royal officials to discourage coverage of the dog.
According to British media, there have been Internet photographs of the couple walking the dog on a beach in Anglesey, near a Royal Air Force base where Prince William is a search and rescue helicopter pilot. An Australian magazine has also printed picture of the coupleon their honeymoon in the Seychelles.

Pope Benedict XVI started a visit to Lebanon onFriday, arriving in a region transformed by popular uprisings and war since his last trip to the Middle East in 2009. The visit coincided with a moment of fresh religious turmoil, marked by spreading protests against an incendiary anti-Muslim video.
Even before protests against the video erupted in half a dozen countries this week, leaving at least nine people dead, the upheaval in the region, including the war in Syria, had complicated the pope’s trip, which hehas called a “peace pilgrimage.”

The New York City Board of Health voted on Thursday toapprove Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's measureto limit the sale of large sugary drinks.
Seeking to reduce runaway obesity rates, the New York City Board of Health on Thursday approved a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, street carts and movie theaters, the first restriction of its kind in the country.
The measure, championed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg , is certainto intensify a growing national debate about soft drinks and obesity, and it could spur other cities to follow suit, even as many New Yorkers say theyremain uneasy aboutthe plan.
“This is the single biggest step any city, I think, has ever taken to curb obesity,” Mr. Bloomberg said shortly after the vote.“It’s certainly not the last step that lots of cities are going to take, and we believe that it will help save lives.”
The measure, which bars the sale of manysweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, is to take effect on March 12, unless it is blocked by a judge. The vote by the Board of Health was the only regulatory approval needed to make the ban binding in the city, but the American soft-drink industry has campaigned strongly against the measure and vowed this week to fight it through other means, possibly in the courts.
“This is not the end,” Eliot Hoff, a spokesman for New Yorkers for Beverage Choices , a group financed by the soft-drink industry, which opposes the restrictions, said in an e-mail moments after the vote.
“By imposing this ban, the board has shown no regard for public opinion or the consequences to businesses in the city,” Mr. Hoff wrote, noting a recent poll that showed 60 percent of New Yorkers believed the plan was a bad idea.
Mr. Bloomberg is known for introducing ambitious — and, some say, overreaching — public health policies,like bans on smokingin bars and city parksand the posting of calorie counts on menus in chain restaurants; they often catch on around the country.
Curbing obesity has been the latest goal of the mayor, who has been concerned about high rates of diabetes and weight-related health issues. More than half of adult New Yorkers are obese or overweight, according to the city’s health department, which said it believed 5,000 New Yorkers died every year as a result of health problems related to obesity.
Critics of the mayor’s proposal — includingsome City Council members and a mayoral contender, the former city comptroller, William C. Thompson — said the measure could lead to small businesses losing money on sales. An advertising campaignby the soda industry, which has so far cost more than $1 million,stressed that the policy would restrict consumers’ freedom to buy beverages as they see fit.
But those positions were rejected on Thursday by the board, which voted 8 to 0, with one abstention, to approve the measure. (The board has 11 members, all appointed by Mr. Bloomberg. One was absent from Thursday’s hearing and another retired from the board this summer and has not yet been replaced.)
“I can’t imagine the board not acting on another problem thatis killing 5,000 peopleper year,” said Dr. Joel A. Forman, a board member and professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, before voting in favor of theproposal. “The evidence strongly supports a relationship betweensweet drinks and obesity.”
Dr. Deepthiman K. Gowda, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and a member of the Board of Health, said he recognized that the public had concerns about the plan. But, he said, he had seen firsthand the deadly effect of obesity on patients he has treated in the city.
“The same way that we’ve become acclimatized and normalized to sodas that are 32 ounces, we’ve started to become acclimatized to the prevalence of obesity in our society,” Dr. Gowda said. “The reality is, we are in a crisis, andI think we have to act on this.”
The member who abstained, Sixto R. Caro, is a former president of the Spanish American Medical Dental Society of New York who was appointed by Mr. Bloomberg in 2002. He expressed concern that the plandid not do enough tolower obesity rates, and said the city should take a more holistic approach.
Only establishments that receive inspection grades from the health department, including movie theaters and stadiumconcession stands, will be subject to the rules. Convenience stores, including 7-Eleven and its king-size Big Gulp drinks, would be exempt, along with vending machines and some newsstands.
The restrictions would not affect fruitjuices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; no-calorie diet sodas would not be affected, but establishments with self-service drink fountains, like many fast-food restaurants,would not be allowed to stock cupslarger than 16 ounces.
At a news conferenceon Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the Barclays Center, the new basketball arenain Brooklyn that is to open next week, would immediately begin complying with the new rules and offer sugary drinks only in containers of 16 ounces or less.
Asked about the sodaindustry’s well-financed campaign against hisplan, Mr. Bloomberg responded with an amused look.
“I just spent roughly$600 million of my own money to try to stop the scourge of tobacco,” the mayor said, as a round of laughter began to rise in the room. “I’mlooking for another cause. How much were they spending again?”