Army seeks death for Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghan shooting rampage

SEATTLE -- The commanders at Joint Base Lewis-McChord have decided to refer the case against Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales for a general court-martial on charges that he murdered 16 civilians in a late-night shooting rampage outside a remote Army outpost in southern Afghanistan.

Army officials also announced they would seek the death penalty against Bales, a veteran of four combat deployments who is also charged with wounding six other civilians after a night of drinking on top of steroid use at what defense lawyers say was a dysfunctional special operations outpost.

The report from investigating officer Col. Lee Deneke was not made public, but attorneys said the commanding officer’s referral matched Deneke’s own recommendation after a weeklong preliminary hearing in November, during which a parade of witnesses testified about what happened in the early morning hours of March 11 outside Camp Belambay.

DOCUMENT: Court martial statement

Bales allegedly was seen returning to the base after the shootings with his clothing, boots and weapon covered with blood; DNA evidence provided a match between that blood and blood found at one of the shooting scenes.

Additionally, Bales’ fellow soldiers testified that the 39-year-old staff sergeant as much as admitted that he had killed people that night outside of the base, though they initially didn’t believe him.

"He said he’d just been to Al-Kozai, shot some people ... shot some military-age males. And I said, "No you didn’t,' " Sgt. Jason McLaughlin testified, adding that Bales told him he was heading to the second village where attacks occurred, Najiban, and would be back at 5 a.m.

Defense lawyers say Bales clearly wasn’t in his right mind. He had not only suffered a concussive head injury in an earlier incident, but was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from several previous emotional incidents in which he had been involved -- a colleague’s legs were blown off by a homemade bomb shortly before the shootings.

In addition, they said, Bales was called to duty at the remote special operations base and found a culture of widespread alcohol use. He had, with the encouragement of special forces troops at the base, been taking steroids, which have been linked to incidents of aggression, and was also supplied with alcohol by the special forces troops.

"I think the general's decision is understandable, but totally irresponsible. I think the Army is not taking responsibility for the soldiers in general, and ... is trying to take the focus off the considerable errors they made as far as Sgt. Bales is concerned, as far as a lot of other soldiers are concerned: It's a system failure," Bales' civilian defense lawyer, John Henry Browne, told the Los Angeles Times.

"The Army is trying to deflect criticism by not taking responsibility in my view, and it's a shame," Browne said.

Bales’ wife, Kari, said her wish from the start was for her husband to obtain a fair trial, and emphasized that he must be presumed innocent until all the evidence comes out.

“I no longer know if a fair trial for Bob is possible, but it very much is my hope, and I will have faith,” she said in a statement.

“My husband is an American soldier. He is a citizen of the USA, and he is very much loved by me and by our children,” she added. “I am so happy that my children and I can visit Bob every weekend and that for a few hours, I can see and feel the love that flows between my children and their father.”

A legal dispute has delayed an official mental health evaluation for Bales, known as a sanity board. His civilian defense team is challenging standard military legal procedures in which Army prosecutors are given access to the psychiatrists’ report, even before the defense announces any plans to assert an insanity defense.

“The military system is very unique in the way they do that. That’s not the way it’s done in the civilian world. It is extremely damaging to his due process rights, and it’s a big problem,” said Emma Scanlan, civilian co-counsel for Bales.

The defense team still has not decided whether it will attempt to have Bales found not guilty by a military jury by reason of insanity -- a verdict that is almost never returned in military cases.

Instead, they may seek to raise Bales’ mental health issues as mitigation during sentencing in order to take the death penalty off the table.

But Scanlan said it may not get that far.

“The [prosecution] team has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he acted with premeditated intent,” she said. “That’s a high burden, considering the situation here.”

Military prosecutors do not comment on ongoing cases. Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield, spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, said the next step is for Bales to be arraigned on the charges. No date has been set.

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Forget JavaScript, It's Time for Browsers to Speed Up Images

The average webpage is now 1.2 megabytes and around 60 percent of that rather large payload comes from images. That’s a lot of data, whether you’re handling images responsively or just trying to speed up a desktop site.

You might think, if images are the bulk of what your browser is downloading, that browsers would be working hard to speed up the image downloads, perhaps trying alternate, space-saving image formats, but you’d be wrong.

You might also think that, as Google’s Ilya Grigorik writes, “innovating on better image formats would be a top agenda item” for the web. But again you’d be wrong. The web is still using the same image formats it’s been using virtually since the first images appeared online.

Grigorik thinks it’s high time that changed and we agree.

In a recent post looking at what it would take to deploy new image formats on the web, he writes, “if we really want to make an impact on web performance, then image formats is the place to do it… there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t have dozens of specialized formats, each tailored for a specific case and type of image.”

Of course no web developer wants to deal with dozens of specialized image formats. Nor should they need to — that’s a job for servers. “In a world with dozens of image formats,” continues Grigorik, “the human solution does not scale — read, markup does not scale… whereas computers are fantastic at doing exactly the kind of optimization work required to solve the problem.”

Grigorik isn’t alone in calling for new image formats, nor is he the first to suggest handing these tasks off to the server. Developer and responsive images proponent Matt Wilcox has argued for a similar solution, as have others.

The basic premise of these arguments is that deciding which image to serve up to which device and browser should be a server-side problem. And in fact there’s already a way to solve this problem with HTTP headers, namely the Accepts header, which tells the server which image formats the browser supports. Based on that information the server could then “re-encode, recompress, resize, strip unnecessary metadata and deliver the optimal format.”

The problem is that web browsers (with the exception of Opera) don’t actually send useful information in the Accepts header.

Thus, the first step in creating a server-side solution for smaller images is to get other browsers to send useful Accepts headers.

The Accepts header isn’t a magic bullet by any means, but it’s a problem that’s not hard to solve provided browser makers prioritize it. But to really get server side image solutions working the web would also need new server tools (fortunately, several already exist). There are other stumbling blocks as well. Grigorik addresses half a dozen potential problems and objections that you can read through in his post.

Even if browser makers come around to the idea and do start improving Accepts headers, bringing better image formats to the web is going to be an uphill battle. But Grigorik is determined to chase the idea. “Some uphill battles are worth fighting,” he writes in a comment, “I think this a good one. Wish me luck.”

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“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” “Bully” first theatrical releases to win duPont awards

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Two documentary films were among the 14 winners of the 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, making them the first theatrical releases to be honored with the prize. USA Today also won its first duPont award.

“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” Alison Klayman‘s profile of the Chinese artist-activist, and Emmy-winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch‘s tale of schoolyard torment, “Bully,” won alongside reporting from Current TV, CBS News, NPR, PBS’s “Frontline” and USA Today.

USA Today was honored for multimedia reporting on abandoned lead factories, and NPR’s “StoryCorps” will win its first silver baton.

Five awards will go to local television and radio stations: KCET in Southern California, KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, WVUE-TV in New Orleans, Detroit’s WXYZ-TV and partnerships with WHYY and NPR.

“This exceptional group of journalists represents the best of broadcast, documentary and digital news reporting today,” Bill Wheatley, the outgoing duPont Jury chair and the former executive vice president of NBC News, said in a statement. “These groundbreaking stories set the standard for excellent reporting; journalists gained access and insight into critical issues in the public interest, and they are telling these important stories in new ways.”

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent and a global affairs anchor for ABC News will present the awards with CBS News’s Byron Pitts on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at Columbia’s Low Memorial Library.

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F.D.A. and States Meet About Regulation of Drug Compounders

Mary Calvert/Reuters

Margaret Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, testified on the fungal meningitis outbreak before Congress in November. Dr. Hamburg addressed the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies, which mix up batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge.

SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Food and Drug Administration conferred with public health officials from 50 states on Wednesday about how best to strengthen rules governing compounding pharmacies in the wake of a national meningitis outbreak caused by a tainted pain medication produced by a Massachusetts pharmacy.

It was the first public discussion of what should be done about the practice of compounding, or tailor-making medicine for individual patients, since the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, last month testified in Congress about the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies. So far, 620 people in 19 states have been sickened in the outbreak, and 39 of them have died.

Pharmacies fall primarily under state law, and the F.D.A. convened the meeting to get specifics from states on gaps in the regulatory net and how they see the federal role. Large-scale compounding has expanded dramatically since the early 1990s, driven by changes in the health care system, including the rise of hospital outsourcing.

“It is very clear that the health care system has evolved and the role of the compounding pharmacies has really shifted,” Dr. Hamburg said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. She said the laws have not kept pace. “We need legislation that reflects the current environment and the known gaps in our state and federal oversight systems.”

Under current law, compounders are not required to give the F.D.A. access to their books, and about half of all the court orders the agency obtained over the past decade were for pharmacy compounders, though compounders are only a small part of the agency’s regulatory responsibilities.

The F.D.A.'s critics argue that the agency already has all the legal authority it needs to police compounders. They say many compounders have been operating as major manufacturers, shipping to states across the country, and that the F.D.A. should be using its jurisdiction over manufacturers to regulate those companies’ activities.

“There should be one uniform federal standard that is enforced by one agency – the F.D.A.,” said Michael Carome, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a nonprofit consumer organization, who has been a critic of the agency’s approach. “They have been lax in enforcing that standard.”

But Dr. Hamburg contends that the distinction is not so simple. Lumping large compounders in with manufacturers would mean they would have to file new drug applications for every product they make, a costly and time-consuming process that is not always necessary for the products they make, which may include IV feeding tube bags. Dr. Hamburg has proposed creating a new federal oversight category for large-scale compounders, separate from manufacturers.

“What concerns me is the idea that we could assert full authority over some of these facilities as though they were manufacturers, as though there were an on-off, black-white option,” Dr. Hamburg said. “That is a heavy-handed way to regulate a set of activities that can make a huge positive difference in providing necessary health care to people.”

Large-scale compounders play an important role in the health care supply chain when they produce quality products, F.D.A. officials say. They fill gaps during shortages and supply hospitals with products that can be made more safely and cost-effectively in bulk than in individual hospitals. Officials said they wanted to make sure the products made by such suppliers were safe, but were also concerned about disrupting that supply.

Carmen Catizone, head of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, said states are not equipped to regulate the large-scale compounders and that the F.D.A. needs to find a middle path for regulating them.

“Either hospitals are not going to like the solution, or the manufacturers aren’t going to like the fact that these guys get a shorter path,” he said. “But something’s got to give.”

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State of the Art: AndroidCameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

“Android camera.” Wow, that has a weird ring, doesn’t it? You just don’t think of a camera as having an operating system. It’s like saying “Windows toaster” or “Unix jump rope.”

But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots, camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to share a fresh photo wirelessly — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, text message — is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera goodness.

That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack: optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards, removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A four-inch, featureless glass slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic instrument.)

But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious graduates of the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” school. The Nikon Coopix S800C ($300) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 from AT&T, $550 from Verizon) are fascinating hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into something entirely new — and, if these flawed 1.0 versions are any indication — very promising.

From the back, you could mistake both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, The New York Times, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them exactly the same way. (That’s right, GPS. “What’s the address, honey? I’ll plug it into my camera.”)

But the real reason you’d want an Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a real camera — and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.

And as long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also do a fine job of handling Web surfing, e-mail, YouTube videos, Facebook feeds, Skype video calls and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a phone could do, anyway.

You can even make Skype video calls, although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens has to be pointing toward you.

Both cameras get online using Wi-Fi hot spots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.

Of course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30 a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 if you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already have a Mobile Share plan.

If you have a choice, Verizon is the way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 a month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow. Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)

These cameras offer a second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.

Just beware that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize these actual cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either. Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 or $4 to download these apps.

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Philippine Congress OKs bill to offer birth control to poor women

MANILA — Ignoring the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' warning that "contraception corrupts the soul," the Philippine Congress on Monday passed a sweeping bill that would provide birth control to millions of poor women.

The historic votes, with bishops and nuns sitting glumly in the gallery, came after the Catholic hierarchy and its political supporters had thwarted the legislation's passage for more than 14 years.

The measure, which President Benigno Aquino III has pledged to sign, would override the de facto ban on contraceptives in Manila's public health clinics, make sex education mandatory in public schools and require hospitals to provide postabortion care, even though abortions will remain illegal.

Although more than 80% of Filipinos are Catholic, polls have shown the church was out of step with its followers on this issue: More than 70% of Filipinos supported the so-called Reproductive Health Bill in a nation where 39% of married women want to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern contraceptives.

"This signals that real and permanent change is afoot in the Philippines," said Jon O'Brien, the Washington-based president of Catholics for Choice. He said the Philippines, with 96 million people, has begun the same transition that occurred in his native Ireland and other developed nations, where church leaders have largely given up on trying to influence parishioners on birth control issues and politicians no longer "bend the knee" to the Catholic hierarchy.

Aquino last week certified the bill as urgent, indicating he wanted to sign it before the Christmas break. His support has inflamed the bishops' conference, whose leader once suggested that the president might be "excommunicated."

The superheated rhetoric continued Monday, with Archbishop Ramon Arguelles telling the Philippine Star newspaper that the president's endorsement would be worse than the gunman who killed 20 children in the Connecticut school shooting last week. "Our president intends to kill 20 million children with a fountain pen," Arguelles was quoted as saying.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda condemned such words as "unfair," "malicious" and "unbefitting" of the position of a bishop, who he suggested should instead be praying for the elementary school victims.

Access to birth control has become a particularly acrimonious issue in the Philippines, one of the fastest-growing nations in Asia with widespread poverty. Half of the pregnancies in the country are unintended and access to modern contraception is mostly limited to those who can afford it.

The Los Angeles Times in July ran a series, "Beyond 7 Billion," that chronicled the lives of poor women who struggled under a public health system that has either effectively banned pills, condoms and IUDs, or made them unaffordable.

Following Vatican dictates, the bishops oppose all such "artificial" measures to prevent pregnancy, equating them with abortion and saying they promote promiscuity. Instead, they sanction natural measures such as withdrawal or abstinence during a woman's fertile periods.

On Monday, each chamber of the Congress — the vote was133 to 79 in the House of Representatives and 13 to 8 in the Senate — approved its version of the bill that would make contraceptives accessible and affordable. Lawmakers must iron out minor differences in the two versions before sending the bill to Aquino for his signature.

"In the end, democracy won, our people won," said a statement issued by Aquino's Liberal Party.

Monday's votes came after months of intense floor debates, parliamentary maneuvering and efforts to kill the bill with amendments — all of which played out before packed observation galleries that included bishops and nuns. Opponents wore red while supporters wore purple and waved purple lilies. Eve Ensler, the feminist playwright of "The Vagina Monologues," was there to show her support.

One retired archbishop said the church may push for "civil disobedience" in the streets. Another bishop said the Supreme Court would overturn thelaw.

"The youth are being made to believe that sex before marriage is acceptable provided you know how to avoid pregnancy," wrote Archbishop Socrates Villegas, vice president of the bishops' conference, in a pastoral letter Sunday. "Is this moral? Those who corrupt the minds of children will invoke divine wrath on themselves."

ken.weiss@latimes.com

Weiss reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Vanzi from Manila.

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Why I Quit Instagram

I quit Instagram today. Not only that, I nuked my account. It’s gone; deleted. Can’t get it back. No more.

I signed up for Instagram a month after it launched, in November of 2010. I was hooked from the giddy-up. My first photo? A pretty boring beach scene: gone now, but you can still see it above. Photos of food and beer and nights out on the town followed – banalities and burritos and bad photography, through Valencia hues.

But Instagram also caught a lot of meaningful moments. The first photo I ever shared of my daughter? On Instagram. Likewise, I loved that it’s given me a window into my friends’ lives these past two years. I’ve seen triumphs and failures, and, sure, photos of food. Instagram is more than just a photo-sharing site – more than a social network, even. It has turned into a robust media platform, a place where we can turn to peek in at events across the globe — from the 2012 London Olympics to Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

By now you’ve likely heard Instagram changed its terms of service. There is a lot not to like, but I didn’t quit because of any single change in particular.

Why did I quit Instagram? It’s the thoughtlessness, stupid.

Instagram was built not by a team of 10 in San Francisco’s South Park – but by tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of people all over the world. With all due respect to the work that Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger put into building a wonderful app that scaled to meet unprecedented growth, Instagram succeeded because of network effects.

Which makes it remarkable that the company has shown such utter disrespect for that very network of people.

Here’s the part of their new terms of service that has so many people up in arms:

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

What does that mean? The bottom line is that Instagram is reserving the right to use your photos as it sees fit, without permission or even notification, in advertisements and promotions. It hasn’t said it owns them, or that it will do that – it just can.

Naturally, that’s caused a lot of consternation, and subsequent backlash against that consternation. There are a thousand polemics on the web today about Instagram. Some make the case that it’s evil and awful and, oh, no, Facebook! That’s overblown. Others prop up half-hearted strawmen with hand-wavy dismissals of anyone’s concern alongside the notion that of course Instagram should make money.

I think there’s a reasonable middle position. I believe Instagram should be able to make money. Facebook telegraphed that something like this was coming just last week, and my reaction at the time was “good.” I was happy that Instagram had a revenue model. It isn’t a charity. And companies that don’t make money are doomed to fail. Facebook paid a lot of damn money to buy Instagram, and it’s natural to want some return on that.

Yet I also believe it’s wrong to take people’s photos – out of context – for use in advertisements. With no way to opt out.

The issue is about more than using photos of my baby daughter, or deceased grandmother, in ads. The greater concern should be that the company would forge ahead with such a plan without offering any other option to the very users and data that built it.

There are a lot of other ways to make money. Sell an ad in the stream. Sell an ad on individual users’ pages. Sell an ad against search results, and another for tags that relate to upcoming events. Offer “pro” features — like special filters or promoted profiles. I’m no expert here, but I don’t have to be – clearly Systrom and Krieger know how to make a buck.

Sure, my photos aren’t the greatest or the prettiest or the most original. But they’re mine. And if you want to do something with them, just ask me, okay? I’m not even saying no. I’m just saying: Have enough respect to ask me and give me options. By putting terms in place that offered no way to opt out, short of deleting your account, Instagram delivered an ultimatum.

And so I quit Instagram on principle. Because I’m tired of contributing to the commodification of my own existence. I’m not a pork belly, or a barrel of oil. I’m tired of clicking on agree, when I vehemently oppose. I’m tired of saying yes, when I want to say no.

I hope Instagram rethinks its stance. One of its strongest features is how easy it is to build a network there. And so if it does walk its terms back significantly and permanently, I’ll gladly rejoin.

Anyone who says there’s going to be a mass exodus of Instagram users is naive. It will continue to grow. But the internet is whatever we make it. And sometimes, when you believe in something, you have to stand up for it.

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CBS dominates week in TV ratings

NEW YORK (AP) — CBS had little competition for dominance last week in the television ratings.

The network had 17 of the 25 most-watched programs on the air last week, according to the Nielsen company. It beat second-place NBC by an average of nearly four million viewers a night last week, and also took the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that advertisers seek.

“60 Minutes” and “NCIS” were the most popular shows on CBS last week. As is typical in the fall, NBC‘s Sunday night football matchup was the week’s most-watched show.

One end-of-year tradition, Barbara Walters‘ survey of the year’s most popular personalities, finished No. 27 in the week’s ratings with 7.6 million viewers.

On cable, Showtime’s “Dexter” and “Homeland” both hit series records for their season finale episodes on Sunday. “Dexter” had 2.8 million viewers and “Homeland” had 2.3 million. Showtime preceded each episode with a disclaimer, warning that audiences might find the shows too intense so soon after the Connecticut school killings.

CBS averaged 11.9 million viewers for the week in prime time (7.3 rating, 12 share). NBC had 7.3 million (4.5, 7), ABC had 5.1 million (3.3, 5), Fox had 4.4 million (2.7, 4), the CW had 1.7 million (1.1, 2) and ION Television had 1.3 million (0.9, 1).

Among the Spanish language networks, Univision led with an average of 3.2 million viewers (1.7, 3). Telemundo had 1.3 million (0.7, 1), TeleFutura had 850,000 (0.4, 1), Estrella had 340,000 (0.2, 0) and Azteca had 140,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC‘s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.4 million viewers (6.3, 12). ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.3 million (5.5, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.2 million viewers (4.9, 9).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Dec. 10-16, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: San Francisco at New England, NBC, 23.23 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 19.63 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 17.65 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 16.74 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 15.12 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 14.62 million; “Person of Interest,” CBS, 14.08 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 13.34 million; “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 12.33 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 12.01 million.

___

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

___

Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Rizwan Tabassum/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Pakistani mother mourned her daughter, who was killed on Tuesday in an attack on health workers participating in a drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Five Pakistani women and a man were killed on Tuesday in separate attacks on health workers participating in a national drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

The bodies of two female workers with an anti-polio drive lay in the morgue at Jinnah Hospital in Karachi on Tuesday.

Athar Hussain/Reuters

Family members mourned the death of Nasima Bibi, a female worker with an anti-polio drive campaign in Pakistan, who was shot by gunmen on Tuesday.

The attacks forced health officials to temporarily suspend a large polio vaccination drive in Karachi, the country’s most populous city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

Saghir Ahmed, the health minister for southern Sindh Province, said he had ordered the 24,000 aid workers taking part in the campaign in Karachi to immediately stop work. It was not clear when they would resume.

The shooting represented a brutal setback to polio immunization efforts in Pakistan, one of just three countries in the world where the disease remains endemic. Pakistan accounted for 198 new cases last year — the highest rate in the world, followed by Afghanistan and Nigeria.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly vowed to target anti-polio workers, accusing them of being spies.

In the tribal areas along the Afghan border, Taliban leaders have issued religious edicts declaring that the United States runs a spy network under the guise of vaccination programs.

That perception was strengthened after the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in June 2011, when it emerged that the Central Intelligence Agency had paid a Pakistani doctor to run a vaccination program in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was hiding, in a bid to obtain DNA evidence from his family.

Pakistani authorities arrested the doctor, Shakil Afridi, shortly after the American raid, and he has been sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Despite the negative perceptions, the government has pressed ahead with a large polio vaccination campaign, usually conducted in three-day spurts involving tens of thousands of health workers who administer medicine to children under 5.

The shootings on Tuesday came on the second day of the latest drive, which has now been called off in Karachi. After an attack on a United Nations doctor from Ghana in Karachi last July, officials were braced for some sort of militant resistance. But the extent and scale of the attacks Tuesday caught the government by surprise.

In the attacks in Karachi, three teams of health volunteers were targeted in poor neighborhoods: Landhi, Orangi and Baldia Town.

Two female aid workers were killed in an attack in Landhi, according to local news reports. In Orangi, unknown gunmen opened fire on a health team, killing one woman and a male volunteer. Another female worker was killed in nearby Baldia Town.

The Karachi neighborhoods where aid workers were targeted Tuesday are being used as safe havens by militants, who have escaped American drone strikes in North and South Waziristan tribal regions, according to police officials. Security forces regularly conduct search operations in these neighborhoods.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on two sisters who had volunteered to help administer polio drops, killing one.

The attacks on polio workers followed a bold Taliban assault on a major Pakistan Air Force base in Peshawar over the weekend that killed at least 15 people and a militant bomb attack in a nearby tribal village on Monday that killed another 19.

For Pakistan’s beleaguered progressives, the attack on female health workers was another sign of how the country’s extremist fringe would stoop to attack the vulnerable and minorities.

“Ahmadis, Shias, Hazaras, Christians, child activists, doctors, anti-polio workers — who’s next on the target list, Pakistan?” asked Mira Hashmi, a lecturer in film studies at the Lahore School of Economics, in a post on Twitter.

Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting from Karachi

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More Young Americans Are Homeless

SEATTLE — Duane Taylor was studying the humanities in community college and living in his own place when he lost his job in a round of layoffs. Then he found, and lost, a second job. And a third.

Now, with what he calls “lowered standards” and a tenuous new position at a Jack in the Box restaurant, Mr. Taylor, 24, does not make enough to rent an apartment or share one. He sleeps on a mat in a homeless shelter, except when his sister lets him crash on her couch.

“At any time I could lose my job, my security,” said Mr. Taylor, explaining how he was always the last hired and the first fired. “I’d like to be able to support myself. That’s my only goal.”

Across the country, tens of thousands of underemployed and jobless young people, many with college credits or work histories, are struggling to house themselves in the wake of the recession, which has left workers between the ages of 18 and 24 with the highest unemployment rate of all adults.

Those who can move back home with their parents — the so-called boomerang set — are the lucky ones. But that is not an option for those whose families have been hit hard by the economy, including Mr. Taylor, whose mother is barely scraping by while working in a laundromat. Without a stable home address, they are an elusive group that mostly couch surfs or sleeps hidden away in cars or other private places, hoping to avoid the lasting stigma of public homelessness during what they hope will be a temporary predicament.

These young adults are the new face of a national homeless population, one that poverty experts and case workers say is growing. Yet the problem is mostly invisible. Most cities and states, focusing on homeless families, have not made special efforts to identify young adults, who tend to shy away from ordinary shelters out of fear of being victimized by an older, chronically homeless population. The unemployment rate and the number of young adults who cannot afford college “point to the fact there is a dramatic increase in homelessness” in that age group, said Barbara Poppe, the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The Obama administration has begun an initiative with nine communities, most of them big cities, to seek out those between 18 and 24 who are without a consistent home address. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Boston are among the cities included in the effort.

“One of our first approaches is getting a more confident estimate,” said Ms. Poppe, whose agency is coordinating the initiative.

Those who provide services to the poor in many cities say the economic recovery has not relieved the problem. “Years ago, you didn’t see what looked like people of college age sitting and waiting to talk to a crisis worker because they are homeless on the street,” said Andrae Bailey, the executive director of the Community Food and Outreach Center, one of the largest charitable organizations in Florida. “Now that’s a normal thing.”

Los Angeles first attempted a count of young adults living on the street in 2011. It found 3,600, but the city had shelter capacity for only 17 percent of them.

“The rest are left to their own devices,” said Michael Arnold, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. “And when you start adding in those who are couch surfing and staying with friends, that number increases exponentially.”

Boston also attempted counts in 2010 and 2011. The homeless young adult population seeking shelter grew 3 percentage points to 12 percent of the 6,000 homeless people served over that period.

“It’s a significant enough jump to know that it’s also just the tip of the iceberg,” said Jim Greene, director of emergency shelters for the Boston Public Health Commission.

In Washington, D.C., Lance Fuller, a 26-year-old with a degree in journalism, spent the end of last month packing up a one-bedroom apartment he can no longer afford after being laid off. Mr. Fuller said he had been unable to keep a job for more than eight months since graduating from the University of Florida in 2010.

“Thankfully, I have a girlfriend who is willing to let me stay with her until I get back on my feet again,” said Mr. Fuller, who writes a blog, Voices of a Lost Generation. “It’s really hard for people in my generation not to feel completely defeated by this economy.”

Mr. Taylor, the fast-food worker in Seattle, said he felt lucky when he could find a coveted space at Roots, a shelter for young adults in a church basement. Such shelters are rare.

For generations, services for the homeless were directed to two groups: dependent children and older people. There was scant attention focused on what experts now call “transitional age youth” — young adults whose needs are distinct.

“I see them coming back day after day, more defeated, more tired out, wondering, ‘When will it be my turn?’ ” said Kristine Cunningham, executive director of Roots. “And it’s heartbreaking. This is the age when you want to show the world you have value.”

They need more than just clean clothes and shelter to move into a secure adulthood, experts say. “They want a way out,” said Ms. Poppe, whose agency is also gathering evidence on what kinds of programs and outreach work best. “They want an opportunity to develop skills so they are marketable in the long term.”

“A more individualized approach seems to work,” she added.

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