Testing: 4月 2013

2013年4月30日星期二

Cyprus Narrowly Backs Bailout

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The al Qaeda Franchise Threat

Seven weeks after Osama bin Laden‘s death in 2011, President Obama declared al Qaeda was “on a path to defeat.” He has redeployed the phrase often to justify leaving Afghanistan and slashing defense. Al Qaeda, meanwhile, mocks predictions of its imminent defeat.

Even as the U.S. has “decimated” (the President’s word) al Qaeda’s senior leadership—killing or capturing 13 of the top 20 most wanted terrorists—it pops up in new locales and forms. In recent months, al Qaeda has revived or started terrorist franchises in Iraq and Syria, across northern Africa and in Nigeria. It lost a haven in Afghanistan but set up bases in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It has nimbly exploited opportunities and is more active and in more places, points out Rand analyst Bruce Hoffman, than on September 11, 2001.

Al Qaeda’s tactics have changed by necessity. American special forces and drones drove what’s left of the old “core” leadership underground. Administration officials discount the threat from the newer affiliates, saying Somalia’s al Shabaab or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb aren’t actively plotting attacks on the U.S.

EPA

Al-Qaeda militants behind bars in Sana’a, Yemen, in March.

Perhaps not now, but for how long? The older Yemen affiliate turned into a more imminent threat than bin Laden in Pakistan. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sent the Christmas 2009 “underwear bomber.” Everywhere it is active, al Qaeda seeks a sanctuary to plot the overthrow of pro-Western Muslim governments and attacks on the U.S.

Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev may not have had direct links with al Qaeda’s offshoot in Chechnya, the Islamic Emirate in the Caucasus. But investigators are looking into it, including a Russian press report that last year in Dagestan he tried to join and was seen with known militants. Tsarnaev was certainly influenced by Russian-language websites inspired by the movement.

At various times, Bush Administration officials also predicted al Qaeda’s demise. “The end of the global threat al Qaeda poses is now as visible as it is foreseeable,” Deputy National Security AdviserJuan Zarate told London’s Daily Telegraph in May 2008 after the Iraq success. The predictions never held.

The current resurgence has also been assisted by the Arab Spring. Starting in Tunisia, a wave of popular protests brought down secular authoritarian leaders. But instead of political freedom and prosperity, the fruits of the Arab Spring have so far been weak states (Libya, Tunisia, Yemen), prolonged political turmoil (Egypt), civil war (Syria) and empowered Islamists (all of the above). Al Qaeda’s extremist message isn’t drawing many recruits, but its operatives exploit the absence of state power.

Fred Kagan and Katie Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project have tracked al Qaeda’s franchises. Their map nearby shows a changed, more decentralized movement. They identify five full-fledged affiliates, recognized as such by the al Qaeda core in Pakistan. The most recent is al Shabaab in Somalia, which was certified, so to speak, in February last year when its leader released a video with al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Some analysts and Administration officials have claimed that the Afghan Taliban and Boko Haram, which fights for an Islamist Nigeria, don’t coordinate with al Qaeda. Lots of intelligence suggests otherwise. The leaders of Boko Haram were in contact with bin Laden in the last 18 months of his life, according to documents found at his Abbottabad compound that the Guardian reported on last year. As far back as 2003, the former al Qaeda leader started to talk about putting down roots in western Africa, says Mr. Hoffman.

Each of the affiliates is different, though all usually have leaders who served or trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Growing out of Algeria’s Islamist militancy, al Qaeda in the Maghreb was for years dismissed by Western intelligence as a criminal organization, focused on lucrative smuggling and hostage-taking more than jihad. As a result, notes Mr. Kagan, it is al Qaeda’s most financially stable outfit.

Yet with arms spilling from Libya’s civil conflict and following a coup in Mali, al Qaeda in the Maghreb last year saw an opportunity to take over Mali. It was on the verge of overrunning the capital, Bamako, before a French military intervention in January. It has been pushed back but not defeated. Recent reports say the fighters have moved north into Algeria and Libya.

The franchises work more closely together than the U.S. likes to admit. Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants have trained in Mali. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which grew from a merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches in 2009, shares fighters and know-how with al Shabaab across the Red Sea. The Somali Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was the conduit between the groups and pushed al Shabaab to strike Western targets outside Somalia. The U.S. Navy captured him in 2011 and he was indicted in New York on terrorism charges.

The Yemeni branch has tried to open an Egyptian subsidiary. According to a Journal story last October, the Egyptian militant Muhammed Jamal Abu Ahmad last year secured Yemeni financing and asked for al Qaeda recognition. Egypt’s new authorities freed him in 2011 as part of an amnesty for political prisoners. He then took part in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is believed to be in Libya. Egypt’s poorly policed Sinai could be another terror haven in the making.

Perhaps the biggest current prize for al Qaeda is the Levant. After America’s complete withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, many al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) militants defeated in the surge were released from jail and reunited. Without a U.S. military presence, they killed more Iraqi civilians in violent attacks last year than in 2011.

Meanwhile in Syria, Jabhat al Nusra (“Front for the Victory”), one of the armed groups fighting to depose Bashar Assad, is indistinguishable from al Qaeda in Iraq, Administration officials say. Al Nusra’s troops are the best-trained and best-armed in the Syrian opposition. As the U.S. sits on the sidelines, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks have financed and armed al Nusra. The Journal reported in April that the CIA has ramped up its support to Baghdad to stop the al Qaeda fighters moving from Syria, but look for more bombings and sectarian strife. Bin Laden always dreamed of a foothold in the Levant.

***

These al Qaeda gains are reversible, and not every case will require Western military intervention. Close security relationships, good intelligence and America’s peerless special forces are strong weapons.

The U.S. can also do more to help weak governments in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere get a grip on their states. But all of this requires continuing vigilance and a willingness to keep on offense overseas, rather than make premature declarations of victory.

President Obama has preferred disengagement from the Middle East and South Asia to focus on “nation-building at home.” One result is Middle East instability and the al Qaeda resurgence. To address these emerging problems, the Administration first needs to acknowledge them. The tide of war, to correct President Obama’s other favorite line, isn’t receding. It’s rising.

Willem-Alexander Becomes Dutch King

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BY VANESSA MOCK AND FRANCES ROBINSON
King Willem-Alexander became the Netherlands’ first male monarch in more than a century during an emotional and pomp-filled ceremony Tuesday in which his mother Queen Beatrix formally abdicated after a 33-year reign.
Willem-Alexander squeezed his mother’s hand after they both signed the abdication papers at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. Around 20,000 royal fans cheered outside and millions more watched the historic events at home.
The popular departing queen, 75, looked close to tears when she later emerged on the royal balcony to wave at a sea of orange-clad well-wishers, surrounded by her son, his wife Máxima and their three …
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U.S. Aims to Fix Rift Among Mideast Allies

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Blast Rocks Syrian Capital

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Photos of the Day: April 28

SMOKE BOMBS: Spartak soccer fans set off smoke bombs at a Russian Premier League match between Spartak and Anzhi Makhachkala at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow Sunday. Spartak won the game 2-0.
SMOKE BOMBS: Spartak soccer fans set off smoke bombs at a Russian Premier League match between Spartak and Anzhi Makhachkala at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow Sunday. Spartak won the game 2-0.
Continued

IN CHARACTER: Science-fiction enthusiast John Burdis, dressed as a character from the film ‘Judge Dredd’ posed for a photo at the 12th annual Sci-Fi London festival on Sunday.
IN CHARACTER: Science-fiction enthusiast John Burdis, dressed as a character from the film ‘Judge Dredd’ posed for a photo at the 12th annual Sci-Fi London festival on Sunday.
Continued

DETAINED: Police arrested Luigi Preiti, an unemployed bricklayer, for allegedly injuring two police officers in a shooting outside Rome’s Chigi Palace Sunday; a pregnant bystander was also hurt. Italy’s new coalition government was being sworn in at the time. Authorities said Mr.…
DETAINED: Police arrested Luigi Preiti, an unemployed bricklayer, for allegedly injuring two police officers in a shooting outside Rome’s Chigi Palace Sunday; a pregnant bystander was also hurt. Italy’s new coalition government was being sworn in at the time. Authorities said Mr. Preiti shot at police when he couldn’t find any politicians to shoot at.
Continued

PEEKABOO: Palestinian refugee children played in a poverty-stricken area of Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, Sunday.
PEEKABOO: Palestinian refugee children played in a poverty-stricken area of Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, Sunday.
Continued

INJURED: Rescue workers assisted a colleague who was injured at the rubble of the collapsed Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh, Sunday. Sohel Rana, the owner of the illegally constructed building that collapsed last week, killing more than 300 people, was captured as he tried to flee…
INJURED: Rescue workers assisted a colleague who was injured at the rubble of the collapsed Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh, Sunday. Sohel Rana, the owner of the illegally constructed building that collapsed last week, killing more than 300 people, was captured as he tried to flee Sunday.
Continued

BRIDGE DISASTER: People and rescue workers gathered where a suspension bridge collapsed in Ayutthaya, Thailand, Sunday. At least four people were killed when the bridge gave way and several vehicles fell into the Pa Sak River, according to authorities.
BRIDGE DISASTER: People and rescue workers gathered where a suspension bridge collapsed in Ayutthaya, Thailand, Sunday. At least four people were killed when the bridge gave way and several vehicles fell into the Pa Sak River, according to authorities.
Continued

PROCESSION: Theophilos III, Greek patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, led a Palm Sunday procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
PROCESSION: Theophilos III, Greek patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, led a Palm Sunday procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Continued

DOWNTIME: A Free Syrian Army fighter inspected his weapon at a safe house in Khan al-Assal, Syria, Saturday. Free Syrian fighters and government forces are fighting each other for control of the area.
DOWNTIME: A Free Syrian Army fighter inspected his weapon at a safe house in Khan al-Assal, Syria, Saturday. Free Syrian fighters and government forces are fighting each other for control of the area.
Continued

ALL IN: A woman gave a thumbs-up as she prepared to swim during St. Anthony’s Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Fla., Sunday. Biking and running were also included in the triathlon.
ALL IN: A woman gave a thumbs-up as she prepared to swim during St. Anthony’s Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Fla., Sunday. Biking and running were also included in the triathlon.
Continued

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American Team Reigns in This Devout League

By JOSHUA ROBINSON
ROME—The 15 priests and priests-to-be stood in a circle in the seminary lobby for their morning prayer. Led by a deacon in a Minnesota Wild hockey T-shirt, they worked through a hymn and then on to the book of Romans, their clear voices echoing through the room. A few wore the traditional black shirt and collar. Most went with shorts and flip-flops.

Rorandelli Rocco for The Wall Street Journal
The North American Martyrs share a prayer after a game this month.

The one who arrived late, the one they barely noticed, was wearing a Captain America costume.

The Clericus Cup is the soccer tournament of Rome’s sixteen Catholic seminaries. The players may be men of the cloth, but they’re demons on the field. WSJ’s Joshua Robinson reports.

This is how game day starts for the soccer team at the Pontifical North American College, a 153-year-old American seminary here. It is the solemn ritual before the priests go off to ruin other priests’ Saturdays in the Clericus Cup, a tournament that pits squads from 16 seminaries against each other in a battle for the city’s Catholic sports bragging rights—with the utmost humility, of course.

The Clericus Cup
Photos

Rocco Rorandelli / TerraProject
Redemptoris Mater versus Pontificio Seminario Gallico during the quarter finals of the Clericus Cup.

And these days, in a competition full of South Americans and Europeans, those bragging rights belong to PNAC students, known as the North American Martyrs, making this one of the few levels of soccer the U.S. can claim to dominate.
“They don’t look like seminarians,” said Felice Alborghetti of the tournament’s organizing body, the Centro Sportivo Italiano. “They look like Marines.”
The seminary has had a team since at least the 1980s, when its rector, the Rev. Msgr. James Checchio, was still a student there. And the way he remembers it, the team was just awful. “That’s where we got the name Martyrs from back then. We lost every game,” he said. “But now, we’re winners, as the martyrs are.”
The tournament, now in its seventh year, unfolds on two fields just beyond the edge of the Vatican, where the world’s most famous fan of Argentine club San Lorenzo is now pope. The dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica rises behind the dugouts.
The Martyrs, who are mostly former high school and Division III athletes, are the reigning champions here and will continue their title defense next month.
They beat the Brazilian seminary, 3-1, earlier this month in the quarterfinals. The victory could have been even more emphatic had the Martyrs not hit the goal frame four times, much to the dismay of their fans in superhero costumes. Besides Captain America, the college’s supporters included seminarians dressed as Batman, Luigi from the Super Mario videogames and a chicken.

“The idea behind the tournament is to promote brotherhood, to show that a different image is possible for soccer—brotherhood, love, forgiveness,” said the Rev. Maturin Sadio, a 32-year-old priest from Senegal who plays with the French team.
But brotherhood, love and forgiveness are more easily preached than practiced on the soccer field.
For two hours on a Saturday, their only day off in an intense week of study, the priests’ philosophy of “Love thy fellow man” seems to come with an addendum: “As long as he’s on your team.”
“Sometimes the soccer player side takes over, so you have to be careful,” said Alexandre Robineau, a 33-year-old seminarian from France. “It’s fun, as long as we keep it in the right spirit and pray together in the end.”
He paused for a moment. The French team’s game was over—overshadowed by a contentious decision by the referee—but he hadn’t gone back into priest mode just yet. “Now, this time, there was a call that wasn’t entirely justified at the end, so it was a little frustrating,” he added. “But that’s sports.”
Many of his fellow priests, wearing cassocks in the stands, weren’t as calm. During the game, they shouted for players to be ejected. They called out opponents, other men of the cloth, for cheating and faking injury. Then they loudly accused the referee of being bribed.
Later, the Martyrs’ fans would be even more coordinated in their criticism of the officials. They sang in unison, “If you had one more eye, you’d be a Cyclops.”

Where they draw the line is foul language. But for a few, the old habits are harder to shake.
Before Mark Paver, the Martyrs’ player-coach, entered the seminary, he had a semiprofessional career in England’s gritty lower leagues. In a recent game, he held his tongue after some clumsy tackles, but when a defender brought him down with something between a bear hug and a rugby tackle, Mr. Paver couldn’t turn the other cheek.
The usual pushing and shoving ensued, with a few colorful words hurled in the referee’s direction.
“I played an awful lot of soccer growing up, in parks and pub teams, and you’ve got to protect yourself a lot more than you do in this environment,” said Mr. Paver, who plays with the Americans because his diocese is in New York.
“Generally, you’re respected, everyone’s got the same attitude,” he said. “But once in a while, you wonder, ‘How does this reconcile to Christian life?’”
The answer, the players will tell you, is that it always ends with a handshake and a prayer.
“I’ve never seen people throw down or get into a fight,” said the Rev. David Santos, who grew up playing soccer in New Jersey before serving with the National Guard in Iraq and later entering the priesthood. “I think that that would be real scandalous.”
After the final whistle, the fans in their superhero outfits went quiet for the first time all morning while both teams gathered in the center circle, eyes closed and heads bowed. Father Santos led them in prayer.
“It’s not only in the confessional or at the altar that you have to be a priest,” Father Santos said.
Perhaps more simply, it boils down to this: Don’t do anything on the field, he joked, that “you’re going to have to confess later.”
A version of this article appeared April 29, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: American Team Reigns In This Devout Soccer League.

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Prague Blast

Firefighters and police officers searched the scene of an explosion in downtown Prague in the Czech Republic on Monday. The explosion injured around 40 people and others were believed to be trapped in a building damaged by the blast. The area around the explosion in Divadelni Street…
Firefighters and police officers searched the scene of an explosion in downtown Prague in the Czech Republic on Monday. The explosion injured around 40 people and others were believed to be trapped in a building damaged by the blast. The area around the explosion in Divadelni Street was sealed off by police and authorities.
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Injured people sat on a sidewalk after the explosion in Prague.
Injured people sat on a sidewalk after the explosion in Prague.
Continued
Men injured by the powerful gas blast stood on the sidewalk. Rescuers said it was possible that some people were buried in the rubble. The police sealed off the area, which is popular with tourists, and evacuated people from several houses.
Men injured by the powerful gas blast stood on the sidewalk. Rescuers said it was possible that some people were buried in the rubble. The police sealed off the area, which is popular with tourists, and evacuated people from several houses.
Continued
A man carried a young woman injured by the blast.
A man carried a young woman injured by the blast.
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Rescue workers took care of an injured woman.
Rescue workers took care of an injured woman.
Continued
Injured people stood on the street near the site of the powerful gas blast.
Injured people stood on the street near the site of the powerful gas blast.
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Injured people received treatment after the explosion.
Injured people received treatment after the explosion.
Continued
Firefighters arrived at the scene after the explosion.
Firefighters arrived at the scene after the explosion.
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IMF Says Asia Recovery Will Be Gradual

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Progress and Problems for Greece

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EU to Restrict 'Bee-Harming' Pesticides

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Cargo Plane Crashes in Afghanistan, Killing 7

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Euro-Zone Firms Lose Confidence

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Shanghai Bishop Jin Luxian Dies at 96

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Evacuation Stalls at Korean Facility

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Indonesian Tycoon Stakes Out Election Position

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2013年4月29日星期一

France Plans Tax Changes to Woo Firms

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Sudan Asks Rebels to Give Talks a Chance

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Olympic Bailouts for Russian Moguls

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OECD, EBRD Chiefs Back Austerity

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Italy Premier Lays Out Ambitious Agenda

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Japan, Russia Agree to Talks on Disputed Islands

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Iraq Car Bombs Kill 36

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U.S. Weighs Next Steps in Syria

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BY ADAM ENTOUS AND JULIAN E. BARNES
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers pressed the Obama administration to intervene in Syria’s civil war, citing the regime’s alleged chemical-weapons use, as the White House weighed its response against a sobering fact: Damascus has developed a world class air-defense system.
That system, built, installed and maintained—largely in secret—by Russia’s military complex, presents a formidable deterrent as the White House draws up options for responding to a U.S. intelligence report released last week concluding that Damascus likely used chemical weapons on the battlefield.
Leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Sunday said they didn’t believe the U.S. should send American troops into Syria. They and the …
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Daniel Kessler: The Coming ObamaCare Shock

By DANIEL P. KESSLER

In recent weeks, there have been increasing expressions of concern from surprising quarters about the implementation of ObamaCare. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, called it a “train wreck.” A Democratic colleague, West Virginia’s Sen. Jay Rockefeller, described the massive Affordable Care Act as “beyond comprehension.” Henry Chao, the government’s chief technical officer in charge of putting in place the insurance exchanges mandated by the law, was quoted in the Congressional Quarterly as saying “I’m pretty nervous . . . Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.”

These individuals are worried for good reason. The unpopular health-care law’s rollout is going to be rough. It will also administer several price (and other) shocks to tens of millions of Americans.

Start with people who have individual and small-group health insurance. These policies are most affected by ObamaCare’s community-rating regulations, which require insurers to accept everyone but limit or ban them from varying premiums based on age or health. The law also mandates “essential” benefits that are far more generous than those currently offered.

According to consultants from Oliver Wyman (who wrote on the issue in the January issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries), around six million of the 19 million people with individual health policies are going to have to pay more—and this even after accounting for the government subsidies offered under the law. For example, single adults age 21-29 earning 300% to 400% of the federal poverty level will be hit with an increase of 46% even after premium assistance from tax credits.

Determining the number of individuals who will be harmed by changes to the small-group insurance market is harder. According to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, around 30 million Americans work in firms with fewer than 50 employees, and so are potentially affected by the small-group “reforms” imposed by ObamaCare.

Corbis

Around nine million of these people, plus six million family members, are covered by employers who do not self-insure. The premium increases for this group will be less on average than those for people in the individual market but will still be substantial. According to analyses conducted by the insurer WellPoint for 11 states, small-group premiums are expected to increase by 13%-23% on average.

This average masks big differences. While some firms (primarily those that employ older or sicker workers) will see premium decreases due to community rating, firms with younger, healthier workers will see very large increases: 89% in Missouri, 91% in Indiana and 101% in Nevada.

Because the government subsidies to purchasers of health insurance in the small-group market are significantly smaller than those in the individual market, I estimate that another 10 million people, the approximately two-thirds of the market that is low- or average-risk, will see higher insurance bills for 2014.

Higher premiums are just the beginning, because virtually all existing policies in the individual market and the vast majority in the small-group market do not cover all of the “essential” benefits mandated by the law. Policies without premium increases will have to change, probably by shifting to more restrictive networks of doctors and hospitals. Even if only one third of these policies are affected, this amounts to more than five million people.

In addition, according to Congressional Budget Office projections in July and September 2012, three million people will lose their insurance altogether in 2014 due to the law, and six million will have to pay the individual-mandate tax penalty in 2016 because they don’t want or won’t be able to afford coverage, even with the subsidies.

None of this counts the people whose employment opportunities will suffer because of disincentives under ObamaCare. Some, whose employers have to pay a tax penalty because their policies do not carry sufficiently generous insurance, will see their wages fall. Others will lose their jobs or see their hours reduced.

Anecdotal evidence already suggests that these disincentives will really matter in the job market, as full-time jobs are converted to part time. Why would employers do this? Because they aren’t subject to a tax penalty for employees who work less than 30 hours per week.

There is some debate over how large these effects will be, and how long they will take to manifest. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on a category of workers who will almost surely be involuntarily underemployed as a result of health reform: the 10 million part-timers who now work 30-34 hours per week.

These workers are particularly vulnerable. Reducing their hours to 29 avoids the employer tax penalty, with relatively little disruption to the workplace. Fewer than one million of them, according to calculations based on the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, get covered by ObamaCare-compliant insurance from their employer.

In total, it appears that there will be 30 million to 40 million people damaged in some fashion by the Affordable Care Act—more than one in 10 Americans. When that reality becomes clearer, the law is going to start losing its friends in the media, who are inclined to support the president and his initiatives. We’ll hear about innocent victims who saw their premiums skyrocket, who were barred from seeing their usual doctor, who had their hours cut or lost their insurance entirely—all thanks to the faceless bureaucracy administering a federal law.

The allure of the David-versus-Goliath narrative is likely to prove irresistible to the media, raising the pressure on Washington to repeal or dramatically modify the law. With the implementation of ObamaCare beginning to take full force at the end of the year, there will be plenty of time before the 2014 midterm elections for Congress to consider its options.

For those like Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who told a gathering a few weeks ago at the Harvard School of Public Health that she has been “surprised” by the political wrangling caused so far by ObamaCare, there are likely to be plenty of surprises ahead.

Mr. Kessler is a professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

About 35 Hurt in Prague Gas Blast

Article Excerpt

BY LEOS ROUSEK AND SEAN CARNEY
PRAGUE—A powerful explosion in the historic center of the Czech capital city was the result of a leaky gas pipe, not a terrorist attack, and there were no deaths from the accident, the city’s mayor said Monday.
“It was a gas explosion and from all available information it was not a terrorist explosion,” Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda said at a news conference.
Mr. Svoboda scaled back the number of injured to 35 from earlier estimates of …
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Karzai Confirms Receiving CIA Cash

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2013年4月28日星期日

Bill McNabb: Uncertainty Is the Enemy of Recovery

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2013年4月27日星期六

Photos of the Day: April 26

BRONZING: Vladimir Samsonov, a member of a winter swimmers club, sunbathed on an ice floe on the Yenisei River in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Friday.
BRONZING: Vladimir Samsonov, a member of a winter swimmers club, sunbathed on an ice floe on the Yenisei River in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Friday.
Continued

ROUGH WEEK? A giant panda rested on a tree inside Bifengxia giant panda base in Ya’an, China, Friday.
ROUGH WEEK? A giant panda rested on a tree inside Bifengxia giant panda base in Ya’an, China, Friday.
Continued

MISSED IT: Scotland’s Graeome Dott buried his head after playing a shot during the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, England, Friday.
MISSED IT: Scotland’s Graeome Dott buried his head after playing a shot during the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, England, Friday.
Continued

DAILY CATCH: An Indian fisherman pulled in his net from a skiff over the Yamuna River in Allahabad, India, Friday.
DAILY CATCH: An Indian fisherman pulled in his net from a skiff over the Yamuna River in Allahabad, India, Friday.
Continued

PROTEST ITEMS: An Egyptian protester held a cross and a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in Tahrir Square during a protest to support judicial independence in Cairo on Friday.
PROTEST ITEMS: An Egyptian protester held a cross and a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in Tahrir Square during a protest to support judicial independence in Cairo on Friday.
Continued

STILL AT SEA: A full moon rose Thursday behind a roller coaster left stranded in the ocean in Seaside Heights, N.J., after Casino Pier was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy last fall.
STILL AT SEA: A full moon rose Thursday behind a roller coaster left stranded in the ocean in Seaside Heights, N.J., after Casino Pier was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy last fall.
Continued

RAPID REACTION: People ran after they heard someone shouting that a building was collapsing during a rescue operation in Savar, Bangladesh, Friday. The search for survivors from Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident stretched into a third day on Friday.
RAPID REACTION: People ran after they heard someone shouting that a building was collapsing during a rescue operation in Savar, Bangladesh, Friday. The search for survivors from Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident stretched into a third day on Friday.
Continued

WEEKEND! Rep. Paul Ryan, center, and other members of the House of Representatives and their staffers left the U.S. Capitol, adjourning after their final vote of the day in Washington on Friday.
WEEKEND! Rep. Paul Ryan, center, and other members of the House of Representatives and their staffers left the U.S. Capitol, adjourning after their final vote of the day in Washington on Friday.
Continued

STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE: An injured man was rescued after a section of a hospital collapsed in Bhopal, India, Friday. Part of a wing of the decades-old government hospital collapsed with many feared trapped under the debris, according to news reports.
STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE: An injured man was rescued after a section of a hospital collapsed in Bhopal, India, Friday. Part of a wing of the decades-old government hospital collapsed with many feared trapped under the debris, according to news reports.
Continued

LOST IN A BLAZE: A Russian emergency service worker sprayed water at the site of a fire at a psychiatric hospital in the village of Ramensky, Russia, Friday. The fire killed two staff members and 36 patients, most of whom were in their beds, officials said.
LOST IN A BLAZE: A Russian emergency service worker sprayed water at the site of a fire at a psychiatric hospital in the village of Ramensky, Russia, Friday. The fire killed two staff members and 36 patients, most of whom were in their beds, officials said.
Continued

SORTING IT OUT: A rescue robot worked on destroyed houses after last Saturday’s earthquake in Ya’an, China, Thursday. The earthquake has left 196 dead, 21 missing and 11,470 injured, according to Xinhua News Agency.
SORTING IT OUT: A rescue robot worked on destroyed houses after last Saturday’s earthquake in Ya’an, China, Thursday. The earthquake has left 196 dead, 21 missing and 11,470 injured, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Continued

CONSTANT AID: Rescuers unloaded relief supplies Ya’an, China, Wednesday. Tens of thousands of homeless survivors of China’s devastating quake are living in makeshift tents or on the streets, facing shortages of food and supplies as well as an uncertain future.
CONSTANT AID: Rescuers unloaded relief supplies Ya’an, China, Wednesday. Tens of thousands of homeless survivors of China’s devastating quake are living in makeshift tents or on the streets, facing shortages of food and supplies as well as an uncertain future.
Continued

FIRE IN THE SKY: The sun set behind the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, Friday.
FIRE IN THE SKY: The sun set behind the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, Friday.
Continued

LIFE SIZED: A boy played with a giant chess set in Yerevan, Armenia, Friday.
LIFE SIZED: A boy played with a giant chess set in Yerevan, Armenia, Friday.
Continued

PATRONUS: Prince Harry, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, raised their wands on the set used to depict Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films during the inauguration of Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden on Friday in London.
PATRONUS: Prince Harry, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, raised their wands on the set used to depict Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films during the inauguration of Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden on Friday in London.
Continued

See the rest here: Photos of the Day: April 26

New Dishes Make Waves at Seafood Showdown

By FRANCES ROBINSON
Big Prawn Co.
Alcoholic jelly shots were among the fishy contenders last year.

BRUSSELS—Amid images of ocean waves, Craig Harrison assessed his rivals in a tough maritime competition that he has lost for the past seven years. This time, contenders for the coveted Prix d’Elite included spreadable algae, toastable salmon-waffles and mussel-stew ice cream.

“It’s not about winning,” said Mr. Harrison, sales manager at Britain’s Big Prawn Co. “But we’re always the bridesmaid…”

Big Prawn was aiming to reel in an award at the European Seafood Exposition, a three-day trade show that floods local hotels and calls itself “the world’s largest and most prestigious seafood event.”
Many attendees at this Davy Jones’s food locker were just trawling for wholesale buyers of their aquatic fare. But a bold few tested new culinary waters, trying to net the multibillion-dollar industry’s top innovation award.

European Seafood Exposition
Winners of the Seafood Prix d’Elite gather onstage in Brussels this week.

“These are the seafood Oscars,” said Pierrick Clement, general manager of French food company Britexa SARL, which was betting on a promiscuous sea snail to win the top prize.
But something fishy marked this year’s contest: a lack of fish. Finalists included the sea snails, several seaweed products and a range of other dishes that never had fins or scales.
The maritime innovations highlighted tension bubbling up at the show. With demand for seafood rising as fish stocks ebb, chefs world-wide are searching for new ways to satisfy diners’ hunger for things aquatic.

Some exotic new ingredients, though, still need to be mashed into fishcakes or wrapped in artichoke to please landlubbers’ palates.
Big Prawn this year went with squid-ink-and-apple black pudding—a twist on the traditional sausage but made without the pork blood that normally gives the British specialty its flavor and color. The company is pitching it as part of ready-to-eat refrigerated meal, accompanied by scallops and mint pea purée.
Big Prawn Co. !
Alcoholic jelly seafood shots, including crayfish margarita and king prawn mojito.

“It’s like a concept car at a motor show,” said Mr. Harrison. “It’s about showcasing your capabilities.”
Last year he thought he would be shooting fish in a barrel by entering alcoholic seafood jelly shots—a sort of shrimp cocktail meets cocktail hour. Inspired by the worms in the Mexican liquor mescal, the concoction featured a jumbo shrimp floating in mojito jelly, based on the Cuban drink. Mr. Harrison claims that British nightclubbers fell for the drink hook, line and sinker. “Unfortunately it didn’t sway the judges,” he says.
Some of the 42 finalists displayed an Ahab-like drive. “We deserve to win because we’ve invented a whole new process,” boasted Mr. Clement of Britexa.
After five years of deep research, the company has cooked up a method to serve the common slipper shell—an invasive, fast-breeding sea snail that is ruining maritime habitats. Britexa’s breakthrough: shucking the mollusk while chilled.

Black pudding with squid ink

“If it’s shelled hot, it turns into chewing gum, with sand in it,” Mr. Clement said, offering a tempura-style specimen on a dainty silver fork. But extracted cold, “it has the attention of Michelin-star chefs.” Britexa markets the snail as “a shellfish with a new identity and virtually infinite potential.” It is the magic ingredient in upmarket potato cakes.

Other contestants had the drive of a beach bum. The Prix d’Elite is free to enter, unlike many food-industry competitions, meaning that you don’t have to be a big fish to afford to participate.
James Power had almost forgotten that his Canadian employer, Raspberry Point Oyster Co., had signed up. Then the nomination notice arrived for his Prince Edward Island oysters, which are new to Europe.
“I’m a little bit surprised—it’s a very simple product,” he said, comparing it to high-tech rivals. “We just pick it out the sea and put it in a box.”
European Seafood Exposition
Fruit-art Passion Pearls in Cool Mint Vodka, made by Denmark’s Jens Moeller Products.

Poking an oyster’s muscle with a shucking knife, he explained that the variety works harder than its European cousins. Living near arctic waters, its bivalves clam up for four-to-six months each year, making the oyster’s muscles bigger and meat sweeter.
Oceanic greenery was also buoyant at the show.
“Seaweed doesn’t sound so good—we should call it sea-veg,” said Christine Le Tennier, who has devoted three decades to promoting gourmet algae. After seeing health-food stores hawk pricey dried Japanese leaves when French beaches were strewn with it, she created a French company, Globe Export SAS, to harvest and sell it.
“The pickers are unionized, they’re professional,” she said. Ms. Le Tennier also persuaded 27 Michelin-starred French chefs to create a seaweed cookbook.
Globe Export hooked nominations for two products: varietal wild seaweed in brine and “sliceable vinegar”-seaweed extract infused with balsamic vinegar for slicing onto raw oysters.
Jens Moeller Products of Denmark challenged the ancient mariner’s lament at lacking “any drop to drink,” by entering the competition with a small, clear canister. It contained green minty vodka with bright yellow seaweed-extract passionfruit “flavor pearls.” Mr. Moeller already markets Cavi-Art, a patented fake roe made from seaweed, and is now branching out.

“It’s very sustainable,” said Mr. Moeller of his libation. “And the feedback is great here…although free alcohol is always popular.”
European Seafood Exposition
Globe Export hauled in the top food-service prize for its entrant, Fresh Seaweed in Sea Water.

Not everyone’s appetite was whetted by the weedy innovations.
“Blech,” said Lia Jones with a shudder. Stirring a pot of mussels at the Welsh seafood stand, she held up one of Mr. Moeller’s vodka tubes.
“I’d need to have a few vodkas before I drank something like that,” she said.
At the end of the expo’s first day, participants gathered nervously for the awards ceremony in a small auditorium next to the coat check. The judges, a panel of supermarket seafood buyers and top chefs, quickly showed their taste for sustainability.
Globe Export hauled in the top food-service prize for its entrant, Fresh Seaweed in Sea Water.
“It’s funny,” Ms. Le Tennier said. “We won an innovation prize with the oldest plant on planet Earth.”
Mr. Moeller won for originality with his vodka shot. And Big Prawn was finally the Big Kahuna, bagging top prize—”Best New Retail Product”—for its squid-ink sausage dish.

“It’s fantastic,” said Mr. Harrison, showing off the engraved crystal trophy he had netted. “It’s about taking seafood forward.”
Write to Frances Robinson at frances.robinson@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared April 27, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: New Dishes Make Waves At Belgium’s Seafood Showdown.

See the original post here: New Dishes Make Waves at Seafood Showdown

Suspects' Mother Was on Watch List

By ALAN CULLISON and PERVAIZ SHALLWANI
MAKHACHKALA, Russia—The mother of the two young men alleged to have plotted and carried out the Boston Marathon bombing was placed on the same classified watch list as her elder son, according to U.S. officials, raising further questions about her role in his apparent radicalization.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her son Tamerlan were placed at the same time in late 2011 on the Terror Identities Datamart Environment database, a low-level watch list that contains the names of more than 500,000 people flagged by multiple U.S. security agencies. It wasn’t clear why she was placed on the list.

Boston bombings suspects’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mentions that she regrets moving her family to the U.S. and disagrees with reports on her sons. (Video: AP/Photo: AP)

Her presence on the list is one more thing Ms. Tsarnaeva shared with Tamerlan, who is believed to have masterminded the marathon bombing.
Earlier in the week, after insisting in a two-hour interview with The Wall Street Journal that Tamerlan had been framed, Ms. Tsarnaeva said strife in her family had arisen from its ultimately unsuccessful attempt to adjust to American life. “We never should have come to America,” she said. “We tried, but I wouldn’t do it again.”
Ms. Tsarnaeva said in the interview she often surfed many of the same Internet sites as her son, as the two exchanged ideas on religion and adopted more orthodox Islamic practices. She denied that she or her son adopted any extremist ideologies, however.

Now back in Russia living with her husband, Anzor, she said she doesn’t know when she will be able come to the U.S. to see her remaining son, Dzhokhar, who was moved Friday from a Boston hospital to a prison medical facility. While the Tsarnaevs had talked about traveling this week to Boston, Ms. Tsarnaeva now says that U.S. officials who came to see them in Makhachkala said they would not for now have the opportunity to see Dzhokhar. She also says she would like to stay closer to relatives. Mr. Tsarnaev has said he will go to the U.S., but he hasn’t said when.
Ms. Tsarnaeva also faces a warrant for her arrest in the U.S. after failing to show up for an October court appearance on charges she shoplifted seven dresses at a suburban Boston department store, according to court records. Ms. Tsarnaeva is charged with one count of larceny and two counts of vandalizing property because several of the dresses were damaged in the alleged June 30, 2012, incident at a Lord & Taylor in Natick, Mass., according to court records.
Authorities are still pursuing the case and would arrest her if given the opportunity, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Associated Press
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, walks near her home in Makhachkala, southern Russia, this past week.

Ms. Tsarnaeva said in the interview that her shoplifting charge was simply the result of a misunderstanding. She had been suffering from a bout of depression, she said, and when she was feeling bad she would try to give her children a lot of gifts “so that they had everything.”
She said she had bought a lot of clothes for her daughters online. She went to Lord & Taylor to return some of the items, but had no receipt. She said she had had another shoplifting incident, and the case was resolved when she agreed to see a psychologist. Daniel J. Cappetta, Ms. Tsarnaeva’s attorney, decline to comment on the case.
A female crime-prevention officer at the Natick Lord & Taylor told police that she had seen Ms. Tsarnaeva through a drape over the fitting room door using scissors to remove security tags from the dresses and stuff the dresses into a bag she had been carrying, according to court records.
The security guard told police she also saw Ms. Tsarnaeva cut small holes into two other items of clothing and attached security tags she had removed onto the damaged clothing, before returning them to a clothing rack in the store, court records said.
According to the guard, Ms. Tsarnaeva then walked past cash registers and out of the store without paying for seven dresses she had concealed in her bag, court records said. Department-store security officers detained her outside, the records said. The stolen dresses were valued at $1,624; five valued at $1,016 were damaged as a result of Ms. Tsarnaeva removing the tags, the records said.
Ms. Tsarnaeva was released on $200 bail. She made three court appearances, but failed to show up for her last appearance on Oct. 25, 2012.
Ms. Tsarnaeva and her husband split about two years ago, but are back together now, fixing up the first-floor apartment they acquired a few years ago.
Both Tsarnaevs said they were struggling with bouts of depression. A neighbor said that Zubeidat’s depression appeared especially tragic because “she was a typical woman from a Muslim family who was powerless and struggling to keep her family together.”
Religion was a bond that Zubeidat thought could hold the family together, and keep her son from going astray. She said that around 2007 or 2008 Tamerlan was partying and drinking and smoking marijuana. She could tell, she said, because in the evening he used to come in at night and kiss her on the lips. But that changed, and she said he would instead go straight to the bathroom to brush his teeth. “I would ask him ‘why don’t you kiss me? Are you afraid of something?’,” she said.
Neighbors say that Tamerlan’s death seems only to have accentuated Ms. Tsarnaeva’s devotion to Tamerlan. She continually speaks of him as “my Tamerlan,” they said. In the interview, she talked far less about Dzhokhar.
“He was really nice,” she said of Tamerlan at a press conference earlier this week. “He never rejected anyone American just because they are Americans.”
—Evan Perez and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.
Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 27, 2013, on page A5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Suspects’ Mother Was Placed on Watch List.

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U.S. Lawmakers Cautious on Syria

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Ex-Pakistan Leader Arrested for Murder

Celebrity Publicist Charged in U.K. Sex-Abuse Case

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Dengue Fever on the Rise in Singapore

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China-India Border Tensions Rise

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As Mandelas Mind Their Businesses, Brows Furrow

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A Somali Business Plan Like No Other

By CHRISTOPHER S. STEWART

Michael Stock is pursuing an extreme version of that basic investor's principle: Get in early. He's just finished building a resort on the coast of war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. WSJ's Christopher S. Stewart reports. (Photo: Dominic Nahr/WSJ)

MOGADISHU, Somalia—Michael Stock sees things that others don’t. “Imagine this,” he says one recent afternoon, standing on the sunny second-floor deck of his new oceanside hotel in Somalia’s war-battered capital. “There are banana trees where there’s desert now, and there’s this view.”

The banana trees haven’t grown in yet, but International Campus, as he calls the complex, is the closest thing to a Ritz for many miles. A fortified compound sprawled across 11 acres of rocky white beach, it offers 212 rooms including $500-a-night villas, several dining rooms, coffee and snack shops, and a curving slate-colored pool where sun-seekers can loll away Somali afternoons.

“It’s going to be ridiculous!” Mr. Stock said, just weeks before residents began arriving for April’s opening.

A few hours later, the jittery sound of gunfire split the warm February air not far from his new hotel—a reminder that the country is still muddling through a decades-old conflict and that there are still bullets flying, bombs detonating.

Bananas in the Desert
Most Western countries have avoided Somalia, leaving a void to be filled by contractors like Michael Stock’s Bancroft Global Development. He envisions ‘banana trees where there is desert.’

Dominic Nahr/Magnum Photos for The Wall Street Journal
Here, Mr. Stock, left, outside Mogadishu, Somalia’s war-battered capital, with an employee, Richard Rouget.

Mr. Stock isn’t just anyone gambling on a far-fetched idea in a conflict zone. In an unusual twist of the war business, the 36-year-old American is deeply involved in the conflict itself. In addition to being a real estate developer, his company also helps train Somalis in modern military techniques.

His security company, Bancroft Global Development, has supported African troops since 2008 as they fought al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamic group tied to al Qaeda, which the U.S. views as a terrorist threat. The United Nations and the African Union, with U.S. State Department money, pay Bancroft to support soldiers in everything from counterinsurgency tactics to bomb disposal, sniper training, road building and, as Mr. Stock puts it, “bandaging shot-off thumbs.”

Security companies have, of course, been rushing into war zones forever, sometimes controversially. A recent congressional study on wartime contracting estimated that the U.S. spent some $206 billion on outside contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2011.

Most Western countries have stayed out of Somalia. Contractors like Bancroft partly fill that void. The U.S., which pulled its troops after American soldiers died in the 1993 Black Hawk Down tragedy, has spent more than $650 million since 2006 on supporting the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as Amisom, and its more than 17,000 soldiers.

Unlike many security contractors, Mr. Stock’s company, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit not primarily concerned with making money on military support services. In fact, it actually sustains stretches of multimillion-dollar losses, Mr. Stock says. Meanwhile its sister company, Bancroft Global Investment, chases profits by pouring money into war-zone real estate.
Dominic Nahr/Magnum Photos for The Wall Street Journal
Michael Stock develops real estate in Somalia and Afghanistan.

Mr. Stock’s gamble: The security outfit will help guide the country toward peace, turning his investments into big money. “It’s like getting in at the bottom of the stock market,” says Mr. Stock. His unusual war operation is making him into a kind of ultimate gentrifier, a mini mogul of Mogadishu, perhaps.

His first properties went up in Afghanistan. But Somalia represents his latest push. Along with the new place, Mr. Stock says he has invested more than $25 million in various for-profit ventures, including a “trailer park” hotel built out of shipping containers at the airport, a compound of prefabricated buildings fronting the city’s old port and a cement factory.

Bancroft is the only contractor supplying military training to Amisom soldiers in the country. Mr. Stock estimates that his team of 100 or so people in Somalia works with roughly a third of the 17,000 Amisom forces at any given time.

After more than two decades of violence in Somalia, there are glimmers of hope. African troops, with Bancroft’s support, have pushed the insurgents to more rural areas. In January, the U.S. recognized the Somali government for the first time since 1991 and last month a U.S. Agency for International Development official urged at a news conference, “Get in on the ground floor.”

A new president leads Somalia. Expats are returning to rebuild and there are even people on the beaches. “We swim here all the time,” said a Russian helicopter operator, as a friend floated on an inner tube along a bullet-littered stretch of ocean near the airport. “The water’s good!”

With dwindling war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, other American contractors are moving in, too. A Virginia company, Atlantean, is setting up an airport hotel in the south. Among its board members, according to its website, is former Maj. Gen. William Garrison, who led the mission associated with Black Hawk Down. In the movie version, he was played by Sam Shepard. Maj. Gen. Garrison couldn’t be reached for comment.

"’Will we get shot at the first day?’ a colleague asked as they flew into Somalia. ‘Probably,’ Mr. Stock laughed."

“There are infinite possibilities in a country that has to be literally built from the ground up,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. These possibilities, however, also include the worst: a return to a hell-ripped Somalia. That reality loomed only weeks ago when militants bombed the capital’s main courthouse, killing more than two dozen people.

Contracting out security has its perils. An investigation by the U.N.’s Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea last summer found companies “operating in an arguably paramilitary fashion.” The investigation found a “growing number” of foreign private security companies working in Somalia with diplomatic missions, international companies and individuals.

According to one person familiar with the confidential part of the report and unaffiliated with Bancroft, the report found that Bancroft was “very transparent about the way they operated,” whereas some other companies were “more deceptive.”

Mr. Stock has attracted some big-name attention. In November, he flew in Warren Buffett’s son Howard to look at potential agricultural projects—part of Mr. Stock’s interest in creating a farming operation to service his hotels, among other things.

“He was the only one who would bring me into the country,” said Mr. Buffett, who has been involved in philanthropy around the Horn of Africa.

Almost monthly, Mr. Stock commutes here from Washington, D.C. This time his “fast plane,” a 10-seat jet, was in the shop so he borrowed a five-seater Cessna in Kenya from a friend.

Accompanying him was a new Bancroft recruit. He had been a part of an Army Delta Force squad that chased al Qaeda in Iraq.

“Will we get shot at the first day?” the former soldier asked at one point.

“Probably,” Mr. Stock said, laughing. “I promised you some spice!”

Bancroft says it employs about 200 men around the world. About half work in Somalia. Some have roots in elite military forces including the Navy SEALs, French Foreign Legion and British Special Air Service, the employees say. “It’s like an extreme sport,” says one, Richard Rouget, a South African resident and former French soldier.

The idea for the business came during a summer job in 1998 with the U.S. embassy in Morocco, where Mr. Stock visited a refugee camp in the Sahara ringed by land mines. “Why hasn’t someone shown them how to remove the mines?” he recalls thinking.

A year later, after graduating from Princeton, he started a mine-removal company. “Like a dot-com,” is how Mr. Stock describes the early days. He had no full-time staffers and spent months meeting people in the field. There was only sporadic mine-removal work, for little money, in some of the world’s most unstable places: Mali, Chad, and Iraq.

His family’s wealth helped. His great-grandfather, Lewis Strauss, made tens of millions as partner at the investment firm Kuhn, Loeb & Co. In time, Mr. Stock borrowed some $8 million from different banks and invested about $2 million of his own money.

As the U.S. military went after the Taliban in 2002, Mr. Stock’s company landed in Afghanistan and offered services through a local partner, Mine Pro. He invested in the company and built a group to train bomb-detecting dogs and do anything from plumbing to car repair.

But his company operated at a loss, he says. It didn’t make money for about two years, the time it took to get his local Afghan partner up to speed and wait for it to win contracts.

A more profit-minded security contractor might have called it quits. Mr. Stock, however, had another idea. “My thinking was that you could lose money on security to bet on development,” he says.

Afghanistan certainly lacked decent, secure accommodation. Initially he built an eight-bedroom compound in Kabul and another, bigger residence in Herat, the country’s third-largest city. He started a car rental service, too.

Eventually, security began paying off, Mr. Stock says. He started receiving a share of his partner company’s contracts, with that revenue peaking at about $1.8 million in 2005.

But the bigger money was in his properties. Today, the original two have been expanded into protected city blocks of multiple buildings. They house tenants associated with the World Bank and the International Development Law Organization, among others.

Over the past eight years, the real estate and other commercial services like car rental in Afghanistan have brought in about $32 million in net revenue, according to financial documents provided by Bancroft. Much of that money is now being invested in Somalia.

“It was like Stalingrad in 1942,” Mr. Stock says of the day in late 2007 when he flew into Mogadishu. The city was a smoky battlefield of bomb explosions and firefights between the Shabaab and the African troops, who had arrived earlier in the year.

But that was the point, he says. “We wanted get in at the worst time, when it’s really bad.”

The Shabaab, Arabic for “The Youth,” had taken over much of the capital. They built power over years, though the bloodshed had begun long before, in 1991, when armed clans forced out Somalia’s military-run government.

His team set up tents at the airport and struck a deal with the African troops, he says. “We said we’ll help you, if you keep us from getting killed.”

Some worry that contractors like Bancroft face little scrutiny—an issue of “accountability,” as one Western intelligence analyst put it. “Who works for them?” he said. “What are they doing?”

“The pro side,” he said, “is that they were here when no one else would come.”

A person familiar with the U.S. State Department’s policy on Somalia said that the company had helped create an “effective fighting force.” A U.N. official, meanwhile, noted that Bancroft’s training in roadside bombs had reduced deaths among African soldiers.

Mr. Stock winces at the terms “mercenary” and “hired guns,” which he considers inaccurate. He calls his men “mentors” who train people rather than fight.

Even though they don’t carry weapons, working closely with soldiers, medics and others means that they are in the line of fire. “If the African forces are overrun, we’re all dead,” he says.

Dressed in body armor and a helmet one morning, Mr. Stock says he had never considered joining the military himself. “I don’t take orders well,” he joked, riding along in a convoy of armored carriers in downtown Mogadishu, gunners manning the roof hatches. It was part of a sweep Burundi and Somali soldiers for insurgents.

The streets alternated between bombed-out buildings and stretches of fresh paint. Soon, a sniper was spotted. Later, a gunfight broke out. Then, an exploded roadside bomb brought the convoy to a halt. By the end, six suspected militants were detained and Bancroft took the bomb for analysis.

“Danger comes and goes quickly here,” says Mr. Stock. “It’s like lightning. If it hits, it hits.”

It was nearly three years of free security training in Somalia, and $6 million out of pocket, according to financial filings, before he landed his first contract with the U.N. Various U.N. agencies have paid the company some $15 million since then and the African Union, with the U.S. State Department money, will have paid Bancroft a total of about $25 million by the end of the year.

All along, though, he expanded into real estate. In 2011, he created the for-profit side of the company, Bancroft Global Investment. That year, he sold an 18% stake, just under $1 million, in the Somali properties to a Washington, D.C., developer, Michael Darby.

“When you hear Somalia, you think of the most dangerous place on earth,” says Mr. Darby. “But I’m prone to take more risks than others.”

Making real-estate deals in Somalia wasn’t easy, Mr. Stock says. It took “dozens” of meetings with government officials, clan leaders and neighbors of the properties. “You have to spend a lot of time figuring out who is who,” he says. There is no formal contract for the land, but rather “consensus building,” he says, that results in a verbal go-ahead from the collective parties.

Mr. Stock made a similar land deal, a public-private partnership with the Somali government for some beach property near the port, but didn’t work out as well.

After constructing a facility there and managing it as a residence for the United Arab Emirates, the U.A.E. opened talks with the Somali government about a renewed diplomatic relationship—and sought direct control over the property.

Bancroft ceded its rights to the property to the U.A.E., according to a letter describing the handover and making it official. While Mr. Stock recovered most of his roughly $6 million in construction costs, the deal didn’t exactly work out to his financial advantage, he says. “There’s no magic formula.”

International Campus, which he says cost more than $6 million, is now open for business and mostly booked. Beyond the pool and the ocean views, there is a bunker, a trauma hospital and something akin to Mad Max’s version of an auto body shop, where specialized gear heads will fix “the ballistic glass on your armored vehicle,” as Mr. Stock puts it.

He expects the new place to break even next year. The trailer park, he says, is grossing about $2 million a year. When his cement-making business opens up, there is an entire city to patch and restore.

Still, his work in Somalia is far from assured. The Shabaab remains unpredictable. Weeks ago, militants exploded a car bomb near the presidential palace and before that they struck a beachside restaurant.

But Mr. Stock says he’s in for the long haul. “We’re betting on peace,” he says. He is betting on hotels and perhaps houses in the future.
“Picture this,” he says later, standing near an expanse of mostly empty beach, stretching as far as the eye can see. “You could have a development based around a town center, like the golf resorts in the Midwest.”
Write to Christopher S. Stewart at christopher.stewart@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 27, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Bet on Peace for War-Torn Somalia.

Read more here: A Somali Business Plan Like No Other

2013年4月26日星期五

Photos of the Day: April 25

IN ATTENDANCE: From left, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former South Korean first lady Yoon-ok Kim attended the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas Thursday.
IN ATTENDANCE: From left, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former South Korean first lady Yoon-ok Kim attended the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas Thursday.
Continued

DANGLING: A boy sat on a diving board at Annabad Pool in Hannover, Germany, Thursday.
DANGLING: A boy sat on a diving board at Annabad Pool in Hannover, Germany, Thursday.
Continued

FIRE! Australian and New Zealand Army Corps Day, better known as Anzac Day, was marked with a volley of fire in Gold Coast, Australia, Thursday. The military memorial day is held on the anniversary of the World War I landing of Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli…
FIRE! Australian and New Zealand Army Corps Day, better known as Anzac Day, was marked with a volley of fire in Gold Coast, Australia, Thursday. The military memorial day is held on the anniversary of the World War I landing of Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli Peninsula.
Continued

SIFTING THROUGH: People used a flashlight to search for survivors Thursday amid rubble left after activists said the Syrian regime carried out a missile attack in Raqqa province, Syria.
SIFTING THROUGH: People used a flashlight to search for survivors Thursday amid rubble left after activists said the Syrian regime carried out a missile attack in Raqqa province, Syria.
Continued

RED-FACED: A Hindu dressed as a monkey participated in a procession outside the Hanuman temple in New Delhi Thursday, on the birthday of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman.
RED-FACED: A Hindu dressed as a monkey participated in a procession outside the Hanuman temple in New Delhi Thursday, on the birthday of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman.
Continued

OPPOSING SIDES: A Romanian Gypsy boy looked at police as his neighbor’s shack was demolished in the outskirts of Madrid Thursday. A handful of shacks were torn down under the order of the city’s planning board, which considers the dwellings to be illegal.
OPPOSING SIDES: A Romanian Gypsy boy looked at police as his neighbor’s shack was demolished in the outskirts of Madrid Thursday. A handful of shacks were torn down under the order of the city’s planning board, which considers the dwellings to be illegal.
Continued

MOURNING: A relative mourned near the body of a garment worker, one of the more than 230 people killed when a factory collapsed Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh. Rescuers freed at least 31 people on Thursday from the rubble of the eight-story building.
MOURNING: A relative mourned near the body of a garment worker, one of the more than 230 people killed when a factory collapsed Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh. Rescuers freed at least 31 people on Thursday from the rubble of the eight-story building.
Continued

OUCH! Real Madrid’s Sergio Ramos was accidentally kicked by Borussia Dortmund’s Neven Subotic during a UEFA Champions League semifinal match in Dortmund, Germany, Wednesday. Dortmund won, 4-1.
OUCH! Real Madrid’s Sergio Ramos was accidentally kicked by Borussia Dortmund’s Neven Subotic during a UEFA Champions League semifinal match in Dortmund, Germany, Wednesday. Dortmund won, 4-1.
Continued

A CHANGE OF SCENERY: A worker peeked out from behind a barrier wall decorated with a picturesque scene outside of a Beijing office building Thursday.
A CHANGE OF SCENERY: A worker peeked out from behind a barrier wall decorated with a picturesque scene outside of a Beijing office building Thursday.
Continued

NATIONAL PRIDE: Baguettes were lined up on tables at the best Paris baguette competition Thursday. Hundreds of French bakers entered the contest; dozens were disqualified for failing to meet size and weight standards. The winner gets to bake bread for the French president.
NATIONAL PRIDE: Baguettes were lined up on tables at the best Paris baguette competition Thursday. Hundreds of French bakers entered the contest; dozens were disqualified for failing to meet size and weight standards. The winner gets to bake bread for the French president.
Continued

STACKED UP: A worker navigated a pile of ballot boxes stored at a warehouse in Manila, Philippines, Thursday. Millions of Filipinos will cast votes in May 13 elections using an electronic-voting system, the election commission said.
STACKED UP: A worker navigated a pile of ballot boxes stored at a warehouse in Manila, Philippines, Thursday. Millions of Filipinos will cast votes in May 13 elections using an electronic-voting system, the election commission said.
Continued

FLURRY OF ACTIVITY: Busy Murree Road was reflected in mirrors displayed for sale at an automotive-accessories shop in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday.
FLURRY OF ACTIVITY: Busy Murree Road was reflected in mirrors displayed for sale at an automotive-accessories shop in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday.
Continued

HEALING WATERS: A Hindu woman splashed water on herself at the Balaju Baise Dhara during the Lhuti Purnima festival in Katmandu, Nepal, Thursday. Some people believe that bathing here on auspicious days will cure pain and diseases.
HEALING WATERS: A Hindu woman splashed water on herself at the Balaju Baise Dhara during the Lhuti Purnima festival in Katmandu, Nepal, Thursday. Some people believe that bathing here on auspicious days will cure pain and diseases.
Continued

WATCHING: Female inmates and staff at a prison hospital ward in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, watched a live broadcast of President Vladimir Putin’s nationwide phone-in Thursday. He said the Boston Marathon bombings should spur stronger security cooperation between Moscow and Washington.
WATCHING: Female inmates and staff at a prison hospital ward in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, watched a live broadcast of President Vladimir Putin’s nationwide phone-in Thursday. He said the Boston Marathon bombings should spur stronger security cooperation between Moscow and Washington.
Continued

DESPAIR: Maria Del Pilar Ruiz, 70 years old, cried as she waited to be evicted from her Madrid home Thursday. The breast-cancer survivor, who lives with her unemployed 24-year-old grandson, survives on a monthly pension.
DESPAIR: Maria Del Pilar Ruiz, 70 years old, cried as she waited to be evicted from her Madrid home Thursday. The breast-cancer survivor, who lives with her unemployed 24-year-old grandson, survives on a monthly pension.
Continued

HONORABLE ANIMAL: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals inspector Ashok Joshi displayed a cobra after it was caught in a house near Amritsar, India, Thursday. Snakes are venerated in India as religious symbols worn by lord Shiva.
HONORABLE ANIMAL: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals inspector Ashok Joshi displayed a cobra after it was caught in a house near Amritsar, India, Thursday. Snakes are venerated in India as religious symbols worn by lord Shiva.
Continued

RIVER SCENE: A man filled up a water bottle in the River Ganges as a boat rowed nearby at sunset in Allahabad, India, Thursday.
RIVER SCENE: A man filled up a water bottle in the River Ganges as a boat rowed nearby at sunset in Allahabad, India, Thursday.
Continued

Philanthropist Who Backed International Studies

By STEPHEN MILLER
Davis Family
Kathryn Wasserman Davis was Wellesley College’s biggest donor.

Kathryn Wasserman Davis was one of the nation’s leading funders of international studies, and a woman whose 106 years could barely contain her travels and diverse interests.
Ms. Davis, who died Tuesday at her home in Hobe Sound, Fla., provided substantial funding for Harvard University’s Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Princeton University’s International Center, and was Wellesley College’s biggest donor.
In 1947, she invested a chunk of her inheritance with the banking firm started by her husband, Shelby Cullom Davis—money he parlayed into a fortune worth $848 million at death in 1994, good enough for No. 102 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans.
A native of Philadelphia, Kathryn Wasserman was the daughter of a carpet mogul and a suffragette; one of her first memories was waving a flag in a voting-rights parade. Growing up amid sumptuous antiques the family bought while in Europe, she seemed always to have had a yen for travel.
After graduating from Wellesley, she was introduced to the Soviet Union in 1929 by joining a group riding horseback in the Caucasus Mountains under the leadership of anthropologist Leslie White.
“We ate wild berries for breakfast and spit-roasted mountain goat for dinner,” she told the Moscow Times in 2002. “I couldn’t have been happier.” She would travel back to Russia and the Soviet Union more than 30 times.
After earning a master’s degree in international relations at Columbia University, Mrs. Davis returned to Europe to complete her Ph.D. at the University of Geneva.
Her thesis, “The Soviets at Geneva,” predicted that the Soviet Union would join the League of Nations, a controversial view at the time. Its publication in 1934 coincided with the U.S.S.R. joining the League; she said the book was briefly a best-seller in Geneva, either because of the timing or “because of its bright red cover.”
While in Europe, she met Mr. Davis, a fellow doctoral student who became an adviser to New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. Mr. Davis was appointed a New York state insurance superintendent before becoming a banker specializing in insurance securities.
Mrs. Davis raised a family and led the Westchester Children’s Association. She was also president of the National Council of Household Employment, which among other issues tackled a pre-World War II shortage of housemaids.
In the Nixon and Ford administrations, Mr. Davis served as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, an experience Mrs. Davis recalled with relish, in part due to the caviar the post afforded. On her 95th birthday, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev toasted her at her home.
Over many years, Mrs. Davis gave Wellesley $50 million. As she grew older, her philanthropic interests redoubled. To mark her hundredth birthday she sponsored the Davis Projects for Peace, a competition to fund student projects focused on international cooperation.
She was also a sponsor of the American Soviet Youth Orchestra. One of its early violinists, Joshua Bell, serenaded her on her 106th birthday this year.
One of her grandchildren recently asked her what her favorite day was. “Tomorrow,” Mrs. Davis replied.
—Email remembrances@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 26, 2013, on page A8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Well-Traveled Benefactor.

Excerpt from: Philanthropist Who Backed International Studies

New Record for Human-Powered Copter?

By DAVID GEORGE-COSH
TORONTO—Ever since the Wright brothers took flight in 1903, feats of aviation have come fast and furious—from Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight in 1927 to the first, round-the-world, nonstop balloon voyage in 1999.
But there is at least one big milestone still out there: In 1980, the American Helicopter Society International created a $25,000 prize for the first aviator to stay airborne for 60 seconds, reach an altitude of more than 10 feet, and hover without drifting more than 1,076 square feet—all in a machine powered by nothing other than the human body.

Who will win the grand prize for the longest, highest, human-powered helicopter flight? This weekend the University of Maryland’s Gamera II XR is taking on the challenge. WSJ’s David George-Cosh reports. (Photo: Earl Zubkoff)

The prize grew to $250,000 after Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., a helicopter division of United Technologies Corp., took it under its corporate wings. Now, two teams, one American and one Canadian, are getting tantalizingly close, after battling it out for years.
This weekend, engineering students from the University of Maryland will conduct flight trials for their Gamera II XR aircraft—a contraption with four giant blades that twirl just below a recumbent-style pedal bike. In past sessions, it hovered airborne for 65.5 seconds. But it got only about 9 feet off the ground, falling short of the prize.
Meanwhile, archrivals in Canada—a pair of former engineering students from the University of Toronto—are nipping at the Americans’ heels. They have built their own machine, the “Atlas,” that has made it as high as about 10 feet and stayed airborne 47 seconds.

A History of Helicopters
The idea of vertical flight can be traced back to China in approximately 400 B.C., when feathers attached to the end of a stick were rapidly spun between hands and cast into the air. See how much has changed since then.

A series of recent crashes have them sidelined for the next month. But they believe the Maryland team’s bird has reached its physical limits. Their own device, they say, has engineering advantages that will eventually get it into the record books.
The Canadian inventors built their pedal system more like a conventional bike, which a pilot can pedal standing up, for more power. They are also counting on another advantage: their pilot currently holds a land-speed title for biking.
The Maryland team points to its own engineering innovation to boost power. It built in a crank that the pilot spins by hand, as he pedals furiously with his feet.
“Maryland says their secret weapon is the hand crank, but the math that we’ve done finds that doesn’t overcome the advantage of an upright bike,” says Cameron Robertson, vice president of structural design for Aerovelo Inc., the company he and his partner, Todd Reichert, set up to win the prize. The two have recruited 25 family, friends and interns to build the copter.
Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci first suggested human-powered helicopter flight with his doodles of an “aerial screw” in 1483.
Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the American Helicopter Society, a nonprofit group aimed at advancing vertical flight technology, said the organization was inspired by the Kremer Prize, promised to the first human-powered airplane that could navigate a figure eight between two markers a half-mile apart. Paul MacCready, an inventor from New Haven, Conn., won that in 1977 with a 70-pound craft put together with Mylar, piano wire, aluminum tubing and lots of tape.

“It’s sort of like climbing Mount Everest,” says Mr. Hirschberg. “It’s to prove it can be done.”
The Sikorsky Prize has drawn inventors from Brazil to Nigeria over the years, with more than 30 known attempts. Most didn’t get off the ground because of design issues, fabrication problems or a lack of funding.
The first team to make real progress was a group of students from California Polytechnic State University, whose “Da Vinci III” whirlybird flew for about eight seconds in December 1989. Shortly afterward, the “Yuri I,” constructed by students at Nihon University in Japan, made a crucial discovery: They found they could stay aloft for longer if the helicopter’s blades were as close to the ground as possible. They managed to fly for nearly 20 seconds in December 1993, a world record that stood for years.
Without a further breakthrough, the Sikorsky Prize started to look unwinnable. That was until a University of Maryland professor challenged his engineering students to work out whether winning the prize was even theoretically possible.

They determined that it was and began to kick around the idea of actually building a copter to prove it. The university ponied up funding, and the group grew to about 50 undergrads and graduate students over the years. They recruit pilots on campus, at one point with a flier that asked, “Are you small but mighty?”
The team has built a few versions of their helicopter, named after the Gamera, a fire-breathing flying turtle and monster contemporary of Godzilla. It is also a nod to the school’s mascot, the Terrapin.
Gamera I’s first flight in May 2011 lifted off the ground for about four seconds. Two months later, it was flying 11 seconds. Last July, the Gamera II smashed the Yuri I’s record for a human-powered helicopter—staying airborne for nearly 50 seconds.
“Someone bought us a round of drinks during happy hour at the bar that day,” says Will Staruk, a graduate student and the team’s project manager.
When Messrs. Robertson and Reichert, classmates at the University of Toronto, first heard about the Gamera’s initial attempts back in 2011, they decided they would give the Sikorsky Prize a shot as well.

As part of a graduate project a year earlier, the two built the world’s first human-powered ornithopter—a plane that flaps its wings—and flew it nearly 500 feet. The pair raised enough money to fund their own rapid successes, nearly matching the Gamera’s flights inside an indoor soccer field near Toronto, Mr. Robertson says. The team believes its pedal system—essentially a modified road bike—and its speedy pilot give it an advantage.
One of the biggest challenges is the requirement to keep from drifting more than 1,076 square feet. Both sides are keeping secret the technology they say will help them do that.
Toronto’s team isn’t allowing outsiders to watch test flights. The University of Maryland, however, is inviting the public to watch its latest attempt this weekend. They have been testing the Gamera II XR—its rotors are slightly bigger than its predecessor—for weeks in a sports complex in Landover, Md.
“The Toronto team is very impressive,” said Mr. Staruk. “But we’ll see who crosses the finish line first.”
Write to David George-Cosh at david.george-cosh@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared April 26, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Flight of Fancy: The Sky’s the Limit For Team That Rises to the Occasion.

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