March 30, 2007

• Cheerleaders and Injury Robert Caplin For The New York Times If all goes well, the airborne cheerleader, known as the flier, is caught by other cheerleaders. But not always Robert Caplin for The New York Times The University of Maryland competing at the National Cheerleaders Association United States Championships held earlier this month at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom March 30, 2007 Pompoms, Pyramids and Peril By BILL PENNINGTON For decades, they stood by safe and smiling, a fixture on America’s sporting sidelines. But today’s young cheerleaders, who perform tricks once reserved for trapeze artists, may be in more peril than any female athletes in the country. Emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries nationwide have more than doubled since the early 1990s, and the rate of life-threatening injuries has startled researchers. Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 — head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death — more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined did not surpass cheerleading. New acrobatic maneuvers have turned cheerleaders into daredevils. And while the sport has retained its sense of glamour, at dozens of competitions around the country, knee braces and ice bags affixed to ankles and wrists have become accouterments as common as mascara. With more than 4 million participants cheering at everything from local youth football games to the limelight of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, female cheerleaders now commonly do tricks atop pyramids or are tossed 20 feet in the air to perform twists and flips. If all goes well, the airborne cheerleader, known as the flier, is caught by other cheerleaders. But not always. Jessica Smith, an 18-year-old cheerleader at Sacramento City College, broke her neck in two places five months ago when a botched stunt dropped her headfirst from a height of about 15 feet. “They make you sign a medical release when you join a cheerleading team,” Smith said in a telephone interview last week. “They ought to tell the girls that they are signing a death waiver.” She was the flier during a practice in October, when the team was attempting a new maneuver that called for her to be thrown upsidedown into a handstand, where she would be caught by a male cheerleader perched on two other cheerleaders’ thighs. After trying the stunt once, Smith said, she was uncomfortable trying it again. She relented when coaxed by her teammates. “But as I was thrown in the air, the cheerleader who was supposed to catch me lost his balance and fell back,” Smith said. “I was inverted and in the air with nothing to stop me from coming straight down on my head. I hit and heard my neck crack. I was screaming after that.” Smith fractured two vertebrae. “They tell me I missed being in a wheelchair by one millimeter,” she said. She endured two months with a halo device bolted to her skull that held her head and neck in place. Although her neck is healing and she has complete use of her arms and legs, she has dropped out of school and her movements remain highly restricted. She said she rarely sleeps at night, awakened by recurring flashbacks of the accident. “Still, I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “Some people don’t walk away from a cheerleading fall.” Smith has sued Sacramento City College for negligence. Amanda Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the college, declined to comment. Although the number of cheerleaders nationwide has grown an estimated 18 percent since 1990, researchers did not examine injury rates until recently. “Everyone thought cheerleading was jumping up and down and yelling to the crowd, which seemed pretty harmless,” said Brenda Shields, the coordinator of an injury research center at the Columbus Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Shields helped author a cheerleading safety article last year in the journal Pediatrics. “No one knew how much cheerleading had changed,” Shields said. “Once we looked at the data, the numbers were a bit of shock, and that’s when we realized the risks involved.” There were 22,900 cheerleading-related injuries treated in emergency rooms in 2002, up from 10,900 in 1990, according to the Columbus study. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, reported there were nearly six times as many emergency room visits for cheerleaders in 2004 than in 1980. Noting that many other injuries probably occur but are treated by private physicians without an emergency room visit, Dr. Frederick Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, added, “The real number of cheerleading injuries could be twice as high.” Leaders of cheerleading organizations counter that with the millions participating, cheerleading is not dangerous for an overwhelming majority. They insist that cheerleading is working hard to become safer. Jim Lord, executive director of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, did not discount researchers’ findings but said they did not reflect recent, concentrated efforts to reduce risk and increase training for coaches. “We have pushed safety to the front burner,” Lord said. The more athletic, more acrobatic era of cheerleading is widely linked to the 1980s, when hundreds of high school gymnastics teams were dropped, partly because school districts grew weary of paying off injury insurance claims for the sport. Many gifted female gymnasts gravitated toward cheerleading and, with their ability and competitive nature, they soon pushed halftime routines far beyond shaking pompoms and waving banners. Three years ago and roughly 100 miles away from Jessica Smith’s West Sacramento home, the San Jose State University cheerleader Rechelle Sneath, who was 18 at the time, fell during a practice and was paralyzed from the waist down. She now uses a wheelchair. In 2005, Ashley Burns, a 14-year-old from Medford, Mass., died after being hurled into the air and landing on her stomach, causing her spleen to rupture. And last year, the Prairie View A&M cheerleader Bethany Norwood, 24, died from complications of a paralyzing fall during a cheerleading practice in 2004. As noted by cheerleading’s advocates, the number of serious injuries is low when compared with the number of participants, who often cheer year-round. In addition, less-threatening infirmities — sprains, strains and bruises — make up more than 70 percent of all cheerleading injuries. But several organizations have made it clear that cheerleading accounts for a disproportionate number of major injuries in youth or college athletics. In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program found that 25 percent of the money spent on claims for student-athletes since 1998 resulted from cheerleading. That made it second only to football. The ratio of cheerleaders to football players is about 12 to 100. After a high-profile injury a year ago to a Southern Illinois cheerleader — her fall from a pyramid was caught on video and broadcast widely — the N.C.A.A. cracked down with new restrictions. The guidelines mandated the use of mats when cheerleaders perform more challenging stunts, and most significantly, college coaches now must take a safety certification course if they want catastrophic insurance coverage. Inadequate training of coaches is the most frequently cited cause of injuries. Inexperienced coaches will have squads try complex stunts without following accepted step-by-step progressions to acquire the skills required to safely attempt the trick. The coaches association certification, which costs $75 and is available to coaches of all levels, details proper techniques and procedures. While the association has vigorously pushed numerous safety initiatives, it has only so much influence over the unconfined cheerleading community. There are more than 75 cheerleading organizations, varying from state to state and region to region, all with their own regulations and competitions. Even in high school cheerleading, there is no uniformity of regulations nationwide and little statewide control. Many teams routinely do stunts that would be banned in the N.C.A.A. This is largely because most states do not consider cheerleading a sport, so it is not under the aegis of a powerful state athletic association. Instead, cheerleading is labeled an activity, which often means it is regulated by the same state education groups that govern the chess, debate and French clubs. “Some states don’t want to touch cheerleading with a 10-foot pole,” said Susan Loomis, the spirit coordinator of the National Federation of State High School Associations who also oversees a coaches education program. “Fifteen to 18 states actually regulate cheerleading. But many, many schools do not follow our rulebook and their coaches are not skilled — sometimes with disastrous results.” At the grassroots level, private, competitive touring cheerleading clubs, known as All-Stars, have sprung up nationwide. These cheerleaders, some as young as 5 years old, never attend games but instead enter the dozens of competitions held every weekend. With annual memberships that can cost as much as $4,000, and in the pursuit of national championship trophies, All-Stars squads are often obliged to attempt the most demanding tricks. The level of coaching knowledge and proficiency at private cheerleading gyms tends to be far higher, but so is the level of commitment from the cheerleaders. At competitions, the zest for the sport is evident in a thousand happy faces. Performances are a blur of tumbling bodies, executed to loud, pulsating music. The stunts are breathtaking, like something out of Cirque du Soleil, but there are frequent near collisions, perilous pyramids and many hard landings. At a National Cheerleaders Association United States Championships held earlier this month at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom, the participants shrugged off injuries and universally adopted a mentality that would have been at home in a pro football locker room. Valerie Smith, 18, a cheerleader for New York Cheer, an All-Star squad based on Long Island, was competing with a broken nose sustained in a practice mishap four days earlier. She wore makeup to conceal her still-blackened eyes. “I haven’t seen a doctor yet, because I was afraid he might not let me come to this competition,” Smith, of West Islip, N.Y., said with an impish smile. “But when you’ve been working 10 hours a week for something like this, I wasn’t going to let a broken nose stop me. Besides, that’s letting down the team.” She said all elite cheerleaders lived by the same motto. “The glitter, the makeup and the curls in our hair make cheerleading so deceiving,” Smith said. “We look like pretty little things. Well, most athletes throw balls around. We throw other cheerleaders around. What’s harder? What’s harder to catch?” Smith expects to continue her cheerleading in college. “I can’t imagine ever giving it up,” she said. It is not an unusual sentiment, even for those who have been seriously injured. Chelsea Kossiver, a 15-year-old high school freshman from Satellite Beach, Fla., broke her neck at the end of a cheerleading practice in January as she tumbled down a runway and landed awkwardly. She is recovering and avoided paralysis after five hours of emergency surgery that fused vertebrae with titanium screws, plates and wire. Resuming her cheerleading career would be against her doctor’s orders, but Kossiver did not rule it out. “Maybe someday,” she said. “Cheerleading is not as dangerous as people think.” Jessica Smith, meanwhile, is happy she can now leave her home without the halo device or bulky brace that had been attached to her head and neck. She appreciates the simple pleasure of walking in the neighborhood, though she must stifle the urge to break into a jog. Smith hopes to resume her college studies this summer. Going out for the cheerleading team has not entered her mind. “I can’t even watch the cheerleading I see on TV now,” she said. “I look away or leave the room. I know what can go wrong.”   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  More Than 100 Are Killed in Iraq Ibrahim Sultan/Reuters A street scene in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, where a car-bomb attack in a parking lot near a hospital killed four people and wounded 20. March 30, 2007 More Than 100 Are Killed in Iraq as a Wave of Sectarian Attacks Shows No Sign of Letting Up By KIRK SEMPLE BAGHDAD, March 29 — More than 100 people were killed Thursday in a series of attacks around Iraq that included two suicide bombings that struck crowded markets during the week’s busiest shopping hours, the authorities said. The attacks extended an extraordinary surge of sectarian violence in Iraq this week, including a series of bombings and reprisals in the northern city of Tal Afar in which more than 140 people were killed in two days. On Thursday, officials said 18 police officers in Tal Afar suspected of participating in the massacre of Sunni Arab residents in reprisal for the bombing of a Shiite neighborhood had been freed after being detained for only a few hours. At a time when the Shiite-dominated central government has been under intense pressure to rein in Shiite militias and death squads, the releases are sure to bring even more outrage from Sunni Arabs. The deadliest attacks on Thursday were aimed at predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in central Iraq and appeared to be part of a fierce campaign by Sunni Arab insurgents to undermine the latest government security plan for Baghdad. At least 60 people, mostly women and children, were killed when a man wrapped in an explosive belt walked into a crowded street market in the Shaab neighborhood of eastern Baghdad and detonated the belt, an Interior Ministry official said. At least 25 people were wounded. The attack appeared to be carefully timed, hitting just after sundown on the eve of the Muslim day of prayer, when markets are packed. Two hours earlier, a coordinated attack involving three suicide car bombers, including one driving an ambulance, killed at least 28 people, including women and children, and wounded 53 in the predominantly Shiite town of Khalis, about six miles north of Baquba in the violently contested province of Diyala, according to the Iraqi authorities. The first of those suicide car bombs was detonated at a crowded market, according to a senior Iraqi security official in Baquba. As people rushed to help victims of the first car bombing, a second such bomb went off, killing and wounding rescuers and security forces, the official said. The third suicide bomber, who was driving a stolen ambulance, apparently had engine problems about 500 yards from the central hospital, his apparent target, the security official said. When several people approached the man to help, the official said, he detonated his explosives. The attacks came on the heels of a two-day spate of sectarian bloodshed in Tal Afar, during which a double suicide bombing in a Shiite neighborhood was answered by a Shiite massacre of Sunni residents. More than 140 people have been killed there, with at least 210 people wounded, officials said. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki immediately ordered an investigation into the killings. Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told the government-run television channel Iraqiya on Wednesday that the government would “take legal action” against the 18 police officers who had been arrested and accused of involvement in the massacre, in which at least 70 people were killed. But on Thursday, officials in Nineveh Province, where the attacks occurred, said the police officers had been held only briefly by the Iraqi Army and released. Nineveh’s governor, Durad Kashmul, said at a news conference that the the army had freed the policemen “to deter strife” after a street demonstration demanding their release, Reuters reported. Husham al-Hamdani, the head of the provincial security committee, confirmed to The Associated Press that the officers had been freed but gave no reason. Repeated calls to the spokesmen for the Iraqi military command went unanswered, and an envoy from Prime Minister Maliki who visited Tal Afar said he could not confirm or deny the report that the policemen had been released. In Baghdad, a bomb placed on a popular shopping street in the Baya district killed 10 people and wounded 20, according to officials at the Interior Ministry and Yarmuk Hospital. A car bomb exploded near a hospital in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 20, the ministry official said. And a suicide car bomber detonated himself at an Iraqi Army checkpoint in the Jamiya district of western Baghdad, killing three soldiers and wounding 16. At least eight more people were killed by gunmen in Baghdad and Mosul, officials said, including a guard employed by the Shiite politician Ahmad Chalabi. At least 25 bodies were discovered around Baghdad. In the capital, Ryan C. Crocker was sworn in as the new American ambassador to Iraq. At the ceremony, in the international Green Zone, Mr. Crocker said: “Turning the tide from oppression to freedom does not come overnight. It does not come without high costs.” He added: “President Bush’s policy is the right one. There has been progress; there is also much more to be done.” Qais Mizher and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Mosul. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Today’s Papers The Gonzales Connection By Daniel Politi Posted Friday, March 30, 2007, at 5:53 A.M E.T. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lead with the revelation that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was more involved in the discussions that resulted in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys than he had previously acknowledged. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, told the Senate judiciary committee that the attorney general’s previous comments had been inaccurate. The Washington Post leads with news that President Bush invited the entire House GOP caucus to the White House for the first time in his presidency on the same day the Senate passed its $122 billion war spending bill with a 51-47 vote. The Wall Street Journal also mentions the Senate bill in the top spot of its newsbox but leads with yesterday’s bombings in and around Baghdad that killed at least 132 people in predominantly Shiite areas (the LAT is the only other paper that fronts the news). USA Today leads with word that more than 60 law enforcement agencies are seeking training from the federal government in order to have the power to arrest illegal immigrants. Many of those who want the training are from smaller cities and towns that have recently seen an increase in their illegal-immigrant population. Responding to questions during the almost seven-hour session, Sampson said he discussed the plan to remove the prosecutors with the attorney general on “at least five” occasions. Sampson also confirmed that the attorney general was present at a meeting in November when senior officials signed off on the firings. Although Sampson testified that Gonzales knew which prosecutors were being considered for the firings, he insisted the attorney general was not involved in adding or subtracting names from the list. But ultimately, “the decision-makers in this case were the attorney general and the counsel to the president,” Sampson said in reference to Harriet Miers, who was White House counsel at the time. Sampson also acknowledged that David Iglesias, the fired U.S. attorney of New Mexico, wasn’t added to the list until shortly before the November elections and after Karl Rove complained to Gonzales about him. This was right around the time when two Republican lawmakers were also expressing that they weren’t happy with Iglesias and his handling of a public corruption investigation that dealt with Democrats. Senators also raised questions about whether Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, was fired as a result of her investigation into a former Republican lawmaker. Sampson denied there was any connection and said, “the real problem at that time was her office’s prosecution of immigration cases.” But Sampson acknowledged that, as far as he knew, no one at the Justice Department had complained to Lam about this before she was fired. There was also much back-and-forth about Sampson’s proposal to include Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, in the dismissal list. Sampson insisted he came up with the idea on his own and the White House’s lawyers immediately shot it down. All of this, of course, increases the troubles for the attorney general, who is scheduled to face Congress April 17. The WSJ emphasizes this angle and says the White House might encourage Gonzales to clarify his role in the firings before he testifies. “Three weeks is a long time,” a White House spokeswoman said. (As of yesterday afternoon, Slate‘s Gonzo-Meter put the chances of Gonzales leaving at 85 percent). By standing with the Republicans as he, once again, promised to use his veto pen, Bush was attempting to show that he’s not politically isolated as he gears up for a fight with Democrats. As the Post points out, this move is right out of the Clinton playbook. On the day Clinton was impeached in 1998, he gathered the entire House Democratic caucus to show that he still had support. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders also did their best to emphasize their unity. But as the LAT notes in a Page One story, reconciling the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill may bring some conflicts to the forefront. The House includes a stricter timeline than the Senate, and some lawmakers might not approve of any compromises that could be reached. Some House members have threatened to remove their support if the final bill does not contain a strict timeline, while some in the Senate have insisted they can’t vote for a bill that includes a firm deadline. Democrats will also have to reconcile any differences in the money for domestic issues that is included in each bill. The NYT publishes a helpful chart by the president of a nonprofit group detailing “some of the most egregious earmarks” in the bills. The surge of violence in Iraq was quite the welcome for the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, who was sworn in yesterday. Crocker recognized that the road ahead would be difficult but emphasized that “if I thought it was impossible, I would not be standing here today.” Making matters worse, the complications in Iraq are not only because of bombings and assassinations, it also seems there is a resurgence of sectarian evictions, as the NYT details in a good Page One story. When the new security plan came into place, the evictions seemed to largely stop, but those on the ground say they have started back up again this month. Well, that’s a relief … The LAT‘s Joel Stein reveals that he was offered a role in a soft-core production (apparently, the show’s producer thought he was “good looking”). In a move that will be disappointing to maybe two people, Stein ultimately declined. Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.

  Thursday, March 29, 2007 Transition in European Politics Michal Cizek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images DIVISIONS A protest in Prague this month over a United States missile defense plan for the Czech Republic. March 25, 2007 For Europe, a Moment to Ponder By ROGER COHEN SEVILLE, Spain IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind. But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.” If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade. What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.” Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States. This achievement will be symbolized as leaders from the 27 member states gather in Berlin — the city that stood at the crux of violent 20th-century European division. They will sign a “Berlin Declaration” celebrating the peace, freedom, wealth and democracy that the Treaty of Rome has now helped spread among almost half a billion Europeans. But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. “The E.U. is on autopilot, in stalemate, in deep crisis,” said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister who seven years ago called for a European federation run by a true European government. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe. The bold politics nestled inside basic economics — a common market — and was thus rendered unthreatening. A common currency, the euro, emerged in 2002. Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged. Recent disputes — from Iraq to current American plans to install missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic — have shown how hard it is for Europe to speak with one voice or, as Fischer put it, “define what strategic interests it has in common.” Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot. It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship. The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote. Poland under the Kaczynski brothers is far from overcoming the painful legacy of Communist tyranny, but by 2025 — its own 21-year membership anniversary — safe to say that healing will be advanced. “The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.” That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism. Which is not to say, of course, that European capitalism is American capitalism. It is less fluid; it creates fewer jobs. It is also less harsh. Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own. But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity. The Erasmus program has helped about 1.5 million young Europeans spend a year studying in European universities outside their own countries. The movie “L’Auberge Espagnole,” or “The Spanish Inn,” captured the Erasmus experience: jumbled cultures, linguistic and amorous discovery, and the births of new identities from this mingling. Countless Eurocouples have not been the least of the union’s achievements. How this generation will deal with what is often called the question of Europe’s final destination remains unclear. The union is open geographically: It could end at the Iranian and Iraqi borders if Turkey joins. It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be? The union has been upended by Communism’s unexpected demise. The European Economic Community, as formed in 1957, did not try to liberate the continent; it tried to ensure that half of it cohered in freedom. “Europe was initially built on accepting — with more or less equanimity — to forget about half of it, including historic centers of European civilization like Prague or Budapest,” said Jonathan Eyal, a British analyst. “And the irony is that it is precisely the return of these centers that has thrown the E.U. into existential crisis today.” That crisis is partly procedural: It is not clear how you get things done in a Europe of 27. It is partly of identity: The rapidly cohering Europe with a Franco-German core is gone, and nobody quite knows what to put in its place. And it is partly political: The conception of Europe in post-Communist countries is simply different. These differences are apparent in recent tensions between Germany and Poland, whose reconciliation has been one of the European Union’s conspicuous miracles. Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear. Poland today, said Karl Kaiser, a German political analyst, “looks out and tends to see the old Germany and the old expansionist Russia; it has not taken part mentally in the long process of integration.” So Warsaw sees Moscow-Berlin plots of sinister memory when Russia and Germany agree to build a gas pipeline directly between each other, under the Baltic Sea rather than over Poland. It pushes hard, but unsuccessfully, for references to Europe’s Christian roots in the Berlin declaration. It contemplates, as does the Czech Republic, installing part of a new American missile defense system against Iran, and does so despite German unease, Russian fury and the absence of any European or NATO consensus. Of course, what Poles and Czechs see beyond Germany or Russia is the America that defeated the Soviet Union and freed them: Poles, as Mr. Michnik noted, “tend to be more pro-American than Americans.” Whatever tempering of this sentiment Iraq has brought, Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe remain more pro-American than the Europe of the Treaty of Rome. With Britain they now form a club within the club that sees Europe more as loose alignment than strategic union. “For Britain, Europe is a convenience rather than a concept,” said Karsten Voigt, a German Foreign Ministry official. This is an intractable division, and the Bush administration has accentuated the split with its ad hoc approach to European alliances. That stance was evident at the time of the Iraq invasion and again today over missile defenses. Coalitions of the willing tend to leave the unwilling bristling. At a deeper level, Homo europeus, formed over 50 years, now lies at some distance from Homo americanus. Post-heroic Europeans tend to favor procedure, talk, international institutions and incremental measures to resolve issues, where Americans tend to favor resolve backed by force. Peace is much more of an absolute value today in Europe than in the United States, as are opposition to the death penalty and commitment to reversing global warming. So what? The ties that bind the Atlantic family remain strong. But, unglued by the cold war’s end, they are not as strong as they were. Europe sees the United States today more through the prism of Baghdad than Berlin. Generations pass; memories fade; perceptions change. That is inevitable. The great achievement of the European Union has been to absorb those changes and zigzags within the broader push for unity. That push, that journey, is incomplete. But Europeans have learned, as Mr. Eyal said, that “traveling can be just as good as arriving.” Perpetual difficulty has been the union’s perpetual stimulus. A United States of Europe remains a distant, probably unreachable dream. At the same time, continent-wide war has become an unthinkable nightmare. “The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.” Time enough even, the 50-year history of the union suggests, for Turkey to become the new Poland. Roger Cohen writes the Globalist column for The International Herald Tribune. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Ex-Aide Rejects Gonzales Stand Over Dismissals Doug Mills/The New York Times In the Senate Thursday, D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, disputed Mr. Gonzales’s public account of his role in prosecutors’ firings. March 30, 2007 Ex-Aide Rejects Gonzales Stand Over Dismissals By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LIPTON WASHINGTON, March 29 — The former chief of staff to Alberto R. Gonzales testified on Thursday that he had consulted regularly with the attorney general about dismissing United States attorneys, disputing Mr. Gonzales’s public account of his role as very limited. The former aide, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned two weeks ago, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Gonzales’s statements about the prosecutors’ dismissals were inaccurate and that the attorney general had been repeatedly advised of the planning for them. The two men talked about the dismissal plans over a two-year period, Mr. Sampson said, beginning in early 2005 when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel. Mr. Sampson said he had briefed his boss at least five times before December 2006, when seven of the eight prosecutors were ousted. Asked by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, about Mr. Gonzales’s statements at a March 13 news conference that he had not participated in any discussions about the dismissals, Mr. Sampson replied, “I don’t think the attorney general’s statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate.” Mr. Sampson’s testimony was the latest blow to Mr. Gonzales, who is struggling to keep his job as lawmakers from both parties have called for his resignation and prosecutors in his agency have criticized him privately. The attorney general has promised to remain in his post, and President Bush has backed him publicly. The White House repeated that support on Thursday, while acknowledging disappointment with Mr. Gonzales’s handling of the dismissals. “The attorney general has some work to do up on Capitol Hill,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, adding that President Bush “wasn’t satisfied with incomplete or inconsistent information being provided to Capitol Hill.” Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said the attorney general had already begun to set the record straight in a television interview on Monday by saying that Mr. Sampson had occasionally updated him on the planned dismissals. In his daylong appearance on Thursday, Mr. Sampson shed no new light on why Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, first proposed the dismissals after the 2004 election. And he offered little information clarifying whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, played a central role. While denying that the Bush administration had replacement candidates in mind when the prosecutors were ousted, Mr. Sampson acknowledged that complaints from Republican lawmakers were a factor in the dismissals of two prosecutors. Mr. Sampson also acknowledged publicly for the first time that he proposed replacing Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, at a White House meeting in 2006. Mr. Fitzgerald was then prosecuting the case involving the leak of the identity of Valerie Wilson, the C.I.A. officer. That led to the conviction this month of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney‘s former chief of staff, on perjury charges. “I said Patrick Fitzgerald could be added to this list,” Mr. Sampson said, recalling a conversation with Ms. Miers and an aide. The suggestion, which he said he regretted, was immediately dropped. “They looked at me like I had said something totally inappropriate, and I had,” Mr. Sampson said. Asked whether Mr. Rove, who testified several times before Mr. Fitzgerald’s grand jury, had ever expressed an opinion about removing Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Sampson said: “To the best of my recollection, no. I don’t remember that.” As he answered sometimes skeptical questions from senators of both parties, Mr. Sampson, who sat alone at the witness table in a packed Senate hearing room, offered an apologetic and deferential account of his actions. At times, he put his hand on his chest or heart, or tapped the table before him, to emphasize his points. But he grew testy at times and more defensive as the morning hearing wore into the afternoon. Mr. Sampson, who testified voluntarily, seemed eager to explain his own actions, admit his mistakes and rebut speculation that the dismissals were intended to block or accelerate corruption inquiries. “Looking back on all of this, I wish that we could do it over again,” Mr. Sampson said, in the closing minutes of the hearing. “In hindsight, I wish the department had not gone down this road at all.” Mr. Sampson said he regretted his role in what he said had become “an ugly undignified spectacle.” He added, “This episode has been personally devastating to me and my family.” Much of the hearing focused on why prosecutors’ names were added to or dropped off the list. At regular White House meetings that included Ms. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, progress on preparing the list was discussed, Mr. Sampson said. He repeatedly rebuffed questions suggesting that any of the dismissals occurred for inappropriate political reasons. But he conceded that complaints by Republican political figures most likely played a role in ousting David C. Iglesias in New Mexico and Carol C. Lam in San Diego. Mr. Sampson acknowledged that as recently as 2005, he had considered Mr. Iglesias an “up and comer” who could be a candidate for promotion to Justice Department headquarters. But Mr. Sampson said that shortly before the November 2006 election, Mr. Rove complained to Mr. Gonzales about Mr. Iglesias and two other prosecutors — Mr. Sampson did not identify them — considered to be insufficiently aggressive in pursuing voter fraud cases. Mr. Rove was forwarding objections raised by prominent Republicans, including Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico. Mr. Domenici’s criticism played a role in adding Mr. Iglesias’s name to the ouster list, or at least keeping it there, Mr. Sampson said. “Senator Domenici won’t mind if he stays on the list,” Mr. Sampson said, recalling a comment by Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty. Mr. Sampson disputed suggestions that Ms. Lam was removed because of her office’s corruption investigation of former Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican, who was convicted in 2005. “The real problem at that time was her office’s prosecution of immigration cases,” Mr. Sampson said. But he said he did not think she was told of concerns that her office was failing to prosecute enough border smugglers before she was ousted. None of the dismissals were intended to interfere with political corruption investigations, he said. “During this process, I never associated asking the U.S. attorneys to resign with any investigation,” Mr. Sampson said. Instead, he said, he drew up the dismissal list, adding and subtracting names, based on a “not scientific” accumulation of opinions and other information from Justice Department officials. Mr. Sampson said respect for priorities set by the administration, like prosecuting large numbers of gun crimes or border smuggling cases, was a justifiable reason for including prosecutors on the ouster list. “Let me just say that in my e-mails, by referring to ‘loyal Bushies’ or ‘loyalty to the president and the attorney general,’ what I meant was loyalty to their policies and to the priorities that they had laid out for U.S. attorneys,” Mr. Sampson said. The problem, he agreed, was the way the process was handled; to outside observers, he acknowledged, it may have incorrectly appeared as if prosecutors were being replaced because of their role in pursuing politically sensitive corruption cases. “I personally did not take adequate account of the perception problem that would result,” he said. Several senators questioned how he could have drafted a letter sent to the Senate in February claiming that Mr. Rove had played no role in the appointment of J. Timothy Griffin, the interim United States attorney in Arkansas and a former Rove aide. Mr. Sampson had written an e-mail message to his colleagues acknowledging that Mr. Rove wanted Mr. Griffin to get the job. He tried to explain the contradiction by suggesting that what he knew for sure was that Mr. Rove’s staff wanted Mr. Griffin to get the job, a response that seemed to satisfy few members of the committee. Mr. Specter also pressed Mr. Sampson to explain who else in the Bush administration considered using a provision included in the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act to name United States attorneys permanently without Senate confirmation. Mr. Sampson finally acknowledged that others in the administration whom he did not name favored using that power to keep Mr. Griffin in the Arkansas post. “In hindsight, I believe that it would be an abuse of the attorney general’s appointment authority,” to have used the Patriot Act provision, Mr. Sampson said, even though he conceded that he had strongly advocated that the attorney general do just that. Many of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, including Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, made it clear that like the Democrats they remained extremely disappointed with the way the dismissals had been handled and explained. “The bottom line is we shouldn’t have conflicting statements coming from somebody who is the top law enforcement officer of the United States, or his staff,” Mr. Grassley said. “We expect them to be prepared to answer questions. Congress and the American people ought to get a consistent story, and we ought to be able to expect the truth.”   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Rove’s Role in Fate of Prosecutors Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images Karl Rove at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner Wednesday night in Washington, where he participated in an improvised rap skit. March 29, 2007 E-Mail Shows Rove’s Role in Fate of Prosecutors By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and JIM RUTENBERG WASHINGTON, March 28 — Almost every Wednesday afternoon, advisers to President Bush gather to strategize about putting his stamp on the federal courts and the United States attorneys‘ offices. The group meets in the Roosevelt Room and includes aides to the White House counsel, the chief of staff, the attorney general and Karl Rove, who also sometimes attends himself. Each of them signs off on every nomination. Mr. Rove, a top adviser to the president, takes charge of the politics. As caretaker to the administration’s conservative allies, Mr. Rove relays their concerns, according to several participants in the Wednesday meetings. And especially for appointments of United States attorneys, he manages the horse trading. “What Karl would say is, ‘Look, if this senator who has been working with the president on the following things really wants this person and we think they are acceptable, why don’t we give the senator what he wants?’ ” said one former administration official. ” ‘You know, we stiffed him on that bill back there.’ ” Mr. Rove’s role has put him in the center of a Senate inquiry into the dismissal of eight United States attorneys. Democrats and a few Republicans have raised questions about whether the prosecutors were being replaced to impede or jump-start investigations for partisan goals. Political advisers have had a hand in picking judges and prosecutors for decades, but Mr. Rove exercises unusually broad influence over political, policy and personnel decisions because of his closeness to the president, tenure in the administration and longstanding interest in turning the judiciary to the right. In Illinois, Mr. Rove once reprimanded a Republican senator for recommending the appointment of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a star prosecutor from outside the state, to investigate the state’s then-governor, a Republican. In New Jersey, Mr. Rove helped arrange the nomination of a major Bush campaign fund-raiser who had little prosecutorial experience. In Louisiana, he first supported and then helped scuttle a similar appointment. In the months before the United States attorneys in New Mexico and Washington State were ousted, Mr. Rove joined a chorus of complaints from state Republicans that the federal prosecutors had failed to press charges in Democratic voter fraud cases. While planning a June 21, 2006, White House session to discuss the prosecutors, for example, a Rove deputy arranged for top Justice Department officials to meet with an important Bush supporter who was critical of New Mexico’s federal prosecutor about voter fraud. And in Arkansas, newly released Justice Department e-mail messages show, Mr. Rove’s staff repeatedly prodded the department’s staff to install one of his protégés as a United States attorney by ousting a previous Bush appointee who was in good standing. Senate Democrats and a few Republicans have called for Mr. Rove to testify publicly about the dismissals. “There is an issue of intrigue, and for better or worse, that surrounds Karl Rove,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is in the president’s interest and the country’s interest to have it dispelled or verified, but let’s hear it from him.” The White House, however, is offering only a private interview without a sworn oath. Congressional Democrats said they were focusing on Mr. Rove in part because the administration appeared to have tried to hide his fingerprints. In a February 23 letter to Senate Democratic leaders that was approved by the White House counsel’s office, for example, the Justice Department said that no one in the White House had “lobbied” for any of the eight dismissals, and specifically denied that Mr. Rove had “any role” in the appointment of the protégé, J. Timothy Griffin, a former Bush campaign operative. But the Justice Department officials who drafted the letter had corresponded with Mr. Rove’s staff just weeks earlier about how to get the nomination done. On Wednesday night, a department official apologized for inaccuracies in the letter. White House officials said Mr. Rove was just one voice in the approval of federal prosecutors, whose selection is traditionally guided by the recommendations of senior members of the president’s party in their states. “Our job is to find qualified nominees who can win confirmation and be good public servants,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. After the United States attorneys are confirmed, she said, Mr. Rove and others at the White House show “wide deference” to the Justice Department about specific cases. Some Republicans say they always understood that Mr. Rove had a say in prosecutor appointments. “I basically felt when I was talking to Karl I was talking to the president,” said former Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald, an Illinois Republican. Early in the Bush administration, Mr. Fitzgerald said, he sought to recruit a prosecutor who could investigate Gov. George Ryan of Illinois without fear of influence by the state’s political powers. But Governor Ryan and his political ally Speaker J. Dennis Hastert argued to the White House that they should have a voice in the decision and insisted that someone from Illinois get the post. Mr. Fitzgerald, who had hired Mr. Rove as a consultant , called him to settle the question. “Peter, it is your pick,” Mr. Rove told Mr. Fitzgerald, the former senator recalled. “But we don’t want you to pick anybody from out of state. For your Chicago guy, it has to be from Chicago.” Undeterred, Mr. Fitzgerald sidestepped the White House. He made only one recommendation — Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a New York prosecutor — announced it publicly, and drew public acclaim that made it unstoppable. Some time after the appointment, the former Senator Fitzgerald said, Mr. Rove “kind of yelled at me,” telling him, “The appointment got great headlines for you but it ticked off the base”— a phrase that the senator took to refer to the state’s Republican establishment. Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Rove was simply pushing a general administration goal to appoint home-state prosecutors. Democrats have seized on a connection to Mr. Rove to attack a prosecutor’s credibility. In New Jersey, William Palatucci, a Republican political consultant and Bush supporter, boasted of selecting a United States attorney by forwarding Mr. Rove the résumé of his partner, Christopher J. Christie, a corporate lawyer and Bush fund-raiser with little prosecutorial experience. Mr. Christie has brought public corruption charges against prominent members of both parties, but his most notable investigations have stung two Democrats, former Gov. James E. McGreevey and Senator Robert Menendez. When word of the latter inquiry leaked to the press during the 2006 campaign, Mr. Menendez sought to dismiss it by tying Mr. Christie to Mr. Rove, calling the investigation “straight out of the Bush-Rove playbook.” (Mr. McGreevey resigned after admitting to having an affair with a male aide and the Menendez investigation has not been resolved.) Mr. Rove initially supported the 2002 nomination of Fred Heebe, a lawyer turned developer and a major Bush donor, for United States attorney in Louisiana. But after former romantic partners of Mr. Heebe raised accusations of abuse, which he denied, the White House backed off. Gov. Mike Foster publicly blamed Mr. Rove for the reversal. Local Republican women sent Mr. Rove’s fax machine letters supporting Mr. Heebe, to no avail. Mr. Rove acts as a conduit to the White House for complaints from Republican officials around the country, including gripes about federal prosecutors. During the tight 2004 governor’s race in Washington State, for example, Chris Vance, then chairman of the state’s Republican party, complained to a member of Mr. Rove’s staff about what he considered Democratic voter fraud. “When you are a state party chairman, the White House regional political director is just part of your life,” Mr. Vance recalled. Mr. Vance said he never complained specifically about the United States attorney John McKay, who has been dismissed. Mr. Vance said he did not know if Mr. McKay had started an investigation. But in New Mexico, Mr. Vance’s counterpart as well as the state’s senior Republican, Senator Pete V. Domenici, both complained to Mr. Rove that the United States attorney David C. Iglesias was not prosecuting Democratic voter fraud. Mr. Rove readily took up their alarms. In an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, he detailed accusations about Democratic abuses in several locations, including New Mexico and “the spectacle of Washington State.” He also relayed the complaints to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, and possibly Mr. Bush, the administration has recently acknowledged. The prosecutors in those two states, who have said they could not prove accusations of voter fraud, were among those ousted last year. In Arkansas, Representative John Boozman, the state’s highest ranking Republican in Congress, said he recommended Mr. Rove’s protégé, Mr. Griffin, for a United States attorney vacancy in 2004, in part because of his ties to Mr. Rove. A prosecutor in the Army Reserves, Mr. Griffin worked for Mr. Rove as an opposition researcher attacking Democratic presidential candidates in 2000. In between, for six months, the Justice Department had dispatched him to Arkansas to get experience as a prosecutor. “I have been in situations through the years where Tim and Karl were at,” Mr. Boozman recalled. “I could tell that Karl thought highly of him.” - Mr. Griffin dropped out of the running in 2004 when he accepted a campaign job for Mr. Rove, then became his deputy in the White House. But last summer, the department asked United States Attorney H. E. Cummins III to resign to make room and Mr. Rove’s staff began talking with department officials about how to install Mr. Griffin despite Senate opposition, internal e-mail shows. Republican defenders of the Griffin appointment said it is hardly unheard of for a prominent official like Mr. Rove to call in such a favor. Ultimately, United States attorneys know they are political appointees, said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who is close to Mr. Rove. “To suggest that these folks do not know or understand the process by which they are appointed, confirmed and retained,” Mr. Cornyn said, “is to suggest that they are naïve.”   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Your Chariot Awaits Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times The Monteleone chariot at the Met, newly reassembled with an eye toward historical accuracy March 29, 2007 A More Precise Version of Your Chariot Awaits By CAROL VOGEL For close to a century, schoolchildren have been paraded by the Monteleone chariot, one of the Metropolitan Museum’s most prized objects. Teachers explained to them how in 1902 a farmer in a remote Italian village accidentally unearthed the remains of a tomb, which held the pieces of this 2,600-year-old Etruscan chariot. But the Met’s curators long suspected that the chariot might not have been correctly assembled in 1903, the year the museum bought and reconstructed it. Among their most nagging questions was, how could the horses pulling the chariot have been harnessed to a straight pole? Their doubts were confirmed in 1989, when Adriana Emiliozzi, an Italian archaeologist and the world’s leading expert in Etruscan chariots, stopped by the Met on a visit to New York. “I left her alone with the chariot for an hour,” recalled Joan R. Mertens, a curator of Greek and Roman art. “And when I returned, she said, ‘Can I show you how it should be put together?’ Then she asked if at the time the museum bought the chariot, there weren’t ivories found with it.” “She was right,” Ms. Mertens continued. “We did have a box of ivories that were in storage.” Dr. Emiliozzi’s insights set off a five-year restoration project, whose progress she oversaw on regular trips to New York. The timing was fortunate, coinciding with a re-examination of the Greek and Roman collection in anticipation of its move to new and vastly expanded galleries. The reconstructed and restored chariot, returning to public view after a decade’s absence, now has pride of place as the centerpiece of the 30,000-square-foot new space, which opens on April 20. It is considered one of the best-preserved Etruscan objects anywhere. “Originally it looked like an easy chair on wheels,” Ms. Mertens said, though adding that “it was a pretty good early restoration.” Because no examples of complete Etruscan chariots were available in 1903, the original restorer worked solely from chariots depicted on ancient pottery and other objects. Made from bronze and wood and decorated with ivory, the Met’s chariot is richly embellished. There are depictions of the mouth of a gorgon and the belly of a panther; heads of lions, rams, felines and boars; birds of prey; winged horses; and Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War. Art historians believe it was made as a parade chariot for an important dignitary, to be used only for the grandest occasions. “Fancy cars always capture the imagination,” Ms. Mertens said, explaining the chariot’s popularity among visitors to the Met. “The Etruscans wouldn’t have made these elaborate chariots had there not been a demand for conspicuous consumption,” she said. “This is the ancient equivalent of the Beatles’ famous Rolls-Royce.” Dr. Emiliozzi pointed out some clues — in addition to the straight pole — that indicated that the original assembly was faulty. There is a visible outline where a boar’s head had once been; the 1903 version placed the head further down on a support to which the bronze panels were mounted. There were the bronze lion heads that had been used as hubcaps in 1903; the tops of the heads showed traces of little feet, which could belong only to the youths adorning each side of the chariot. Even before she saw the chariot at the Met, Dr. Emiliozzi had had a hunch things weren’t right. “I had already studied pictures of it before coming to New York,” she said by telephone from Rome. “And I was immediately surprised to see that my research was basically correct.” Dr. Emiliozzi’s suspicions came from years of studying the remains of ancient chariots; there are about 300 in the world, but only 6 are reasonably complete. The Met’s chariot, she said, is a “masterpiece of antiquity,” not simply because of its elaborate decoration but also because it is so well preserved. The two-wheeled vehicle consists of a horseshoe-shaped car made of wood and covered with panels of bronze, in which the driver and his illustrious passengers stood. Two horses, on either side of the pole, would be yoked to the chariot with leather harnesses. The Met’s conservators began the chariot’s restoration by taking X-rays. “Through the wood you could see that the nails were mostly modern,” said Kendra E. Roth, a Met conservator, referring to the 1903 construction. After studying the X-rays, the team took the entire chariot apart, carefully laying out, numbering and identifying every piece, down to the nails. Simply removing the nails took several months. The delicate task required carefully drilling around the tip of the nail so that it could be delicately pulled out with dental pliers without damaging the surface. The conservators were gratified to find that the ancient sheets of bronze had enough flexibility that they did not break during this procedure. Next the sheets were pried from their wood frame. In the process, conservators discovered decorative details that had been obscured by the misplacement of some pieces. They also found bits of Oriental paper with ink calligraphy marks — probably vestiges of the 1903 restoration — glued to the back of the panels as a sort of Band-Aid. Dr. Emiliozzi recognized that the pole needed to bend so that the harness would fit over the backs of the two horses. Making the correct bend was not a problem for the conservators, and faint traces of lashings on the front of the pole helped her to confirm that it was complete. As the conservators studied the chariot piece by piece, Dr. Emiliozzi made a life-size foam model of it to make sure all the pieces would fit. “We wanted to make a structure that fit original pieces,” she said. At some point in its life, conservators discovered, the chariot had suffered a serious accident to its right side. This had broken off the lower legs and feet of the youths on that side and had damaged the right ear of the boar. It made the entire chariot asymmetrical. To reconstruct it correctly, a new substructure was made that took into account the chariot’s lopsided features. Part of the structure was fashioned from seasoned wood, samples of which were exposed to accelerated heat and moisture to see how it would age. The rest was made from modern materials like plexiglass and foam, painted to resemble ancient wood. In 1903 the bronze surfaces had been given a coat of lacquer, which discolored over time. Conservators removed the lacquer but, Ms. Roth said, “we were careful not to take off any of the corrosion or burial soil.” With the lacquer removed, the elaborate bronze figures came to life. Clearly visible now are decorative details like the boar’s eyelashes, the fawn’s spots and the rich patterns on the dress Achilles’ mother wears. The question of how far to go in adding the original decorative flourishes to the chariot had to be addressed. The ivories were taken out of storage and carefully examined. “We did not know precisely where all the pieces go,” Ms. Mertens said. “And we didn’t want to just decorate it in a way that would take away from the wholeness of the object. So we chose to just put the tusks back on the boar’s head.” As the chariot is displayed now, it is missing the inlaid amber and other exotic materials that in ancient times would have embellished the eyes of an eagle, the boar and several mythological creatures. Asked why the museum decided not to introduce modern equivalents to replicate the chariot in all its original richness, Ms. Mertens replied: “Our aim is to show things as they are. We aren’t a pastry shop — and this don’t need tart.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  U.S. Iraq Role Is Called Illegal by Saudi King Hassan Ammar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during an Arab League meeting in Riyadh. March 29, 2007 U.S. Iraq Role Is Called Illegal by Saudi King By HASSAN M. FATTAH RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 28 — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Arab leaders on Wednesday that the American occupation of Iraq was illegal and warned that unless Arab governments settled their differences, foreign powers like the United States would continue to dictate the region’s politics. The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League meeting here, underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration as the Saudis take on a greater leadership role in the Middle East, partly at American urging. The Saudis seem to be emphasizing that they will not be beholden to the policies of their longtime ally. They brokered a deal between the two main Palestinian factions last month, but one that Israel and the United States found deeply problematic because it added to the power of the radical group Hamas rather than the more moderate Fatah. On Wednesday King Abdullah called for an end to the international boycott of the new Palestinian government. The United States and Israel want the boycott continued. In addition, Abdullah invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Riyadh earlier this month, while the Americans want him shunned. And in trying to settle the tensions in Lebanon, the Saudis have been willing to negotiate with Iran and Hezbollah. Last week the Saudi king canceled his appearance next month at a White House dinner in his honor, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The official reason given was a scheduling conflict, the paper said. Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, said the Saudis were sending Washington a message. “They are telling the U.S. they need to listen to their allies rather than imposing decisions on them and always taking Israel’s side,” Mr. Hamarneh said. In his speech, the king said, “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism.” He added: “The blame should fall on us, the leaders of the Arab nation, with our ongoing differences, our refusal to walk the path of unity. All that has made the nation lose its confidence in us.” King Abdullah has not publicly spoken so harshly about the American-led military intervention in Iraq before, and his remarks suggest that his alliance with Washington may be less harmonious than administration officials have been hoping. Since last summer the administration has asserted that a realignment is occurring in the Middle East, one that groups Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon along with Israel against Iran, Syria and the militant groups that they back: Hezbollah and Hamas. Washington has urged Saudi Arabia to take a leading role in such a realignment but is finding itself disappointed by the results. Some here said the king’s speech was a response to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice‘s call on Monday for Arab governments to “begin reaching out to Israel.” Many read Ms. Rice’s comments as suggesting that Washington was backing away from its support for an Arab initiative aimed at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel wants the Arabs to make changes in the terms, most notably the call for a right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is today Israel. The Arab League is endorsing the initiative, first introduced by Saudi Arabia in 2002, without changes. The plan calls on Israel to withdraw from all land it won in the 1967 war in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab world. It also calls for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Regarding the Palestinians, the king said Wednesday, “It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force.” With regard to Iraq, the Saudis seem to be paying some attention to internal American politics. The Senate on Tuesday signaled support for legislation calling for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq in exchange for further funding for the war. Last November, officials here realized that a Democratic upset could spell major changes for the Middle East: a possible pullout from Iraq, fueling further instability and, more important, allowing Iran to extend its influence in the region. “I don’t think that the Saudi government has decided to distance itself from Bush just yet,” said Adel alToraifi, a columnist here with close ties to the Saudi government. “But I also think that the Saudis have seen that the ball is moving into the court of the Democrats, and they want to extend their hand to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.” Turki al-Rasheed, who runs an organization promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia, said the king was “saying we may be moving on the same track, but our ends are different.” “Bush wants to make it look like he is solving the problem,” Mr. Rasheed said. “The king wants to actually solve the problems.” King Abdullah said the loss of confidence in Arab leaders had allowed American and other forces to hold significant sway in the region. “If confidence is restored it will be accompanied by credibility,” he said, “and if credibility is restored then the winds of hope will blow, and then we will never allow outside forces to define our future nor allow banners to be raised in Arab lands other than those of Arabism, brothers.” The Saudis sought to enforce discipline on the two-day meeting, reminding Arab leaders and dignitaries to stay on message and leave here with some solution in hand. “The weight of the Saudis has ensured that this will be a problem-free summit,” said Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the Jordanian daily Al Ghad. “Nobody is going to veer from the message and go against the Saudis. But that doesn’t mean the problems themselves will be solved.” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations gave a stark assessment in an address to the meeting, saying the region was “more complex, more fragile and more dangerous than it has been for a very long time.” There is a shocking daily loss of life in Iraq, he said, and Somalia is in the grip of “banditry, violence and clan rivalries.” Iran, which on Saturday had new sanctions imposed against it by the Security Council, is “forging ahead with its nuclear program heedless of regional and international concerns,” Mr. Ban added. Having spent Monday and Tuesday in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Mr. Ban urged the new Palestinian government to demonstrate a “true commitment to peace.” In return, he said, Israel must cease its settlement activity and stop building a separation barrier. He concluded, “Instability in the Arab League states is of profound significance to international peace and security.” Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Beirut, Rasheed Abou-Alsamh from Jidda and Warren Hoge from Riyadh.   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Online Users Finish More Stories Than Print Readers Surprise: Study Finds Online Users Finish More Stories Than Print Readers By Joe Strupp Published: March 28, 2007 12:10 PM ET WASHINGTON In a surprise finding, online readers finish news stories more often than those who read in print, according to the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack study released Wednesday at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here. When readers chose to read an online story, they usually read an average of 77% of the story, compared to 62% in broadsheets and 57% in tabloids. The survey, in which 600 newspaper readers from six different newspapers were studied, utilized electronic eyetracking equipment that readers wore while they read broadsheet, tabloid and online editions of newspapers. The research, conducted last year, focused on 100 readers from each newspaper. The study looked at two tabloids, the Rocky Mountain News and Philadelphia Daily News; two broadsheets, the St. Petersburg Times and The Star-Tribune of Minneapolis; and two newspaper Web sites, at the Times and Star-Tribune. Readers spent 15 minutes during each reading session over a 30-day period, according to the report. “This is a very large scale study and this is hard data,” said Sara Quinn, a Poynter researcher. “We were amazed by these numbers.” Among the findings — that more text was read online than in print. In addition, nearly two-thirds of online readers read all of the text of a particular story once they began to read it, the survey revealed. In print, 68% of tabloid readers continued reading a specific story through the jump to another page, while 59% did so in broadsheet reading. The research also found that 75% of print readers are methodical in their reading, which means they start reading a page at a particular story and work their way through each story. Just 25% of print readers are scanners, who scan the entire page first, then choose a story to read. Online, however, about half of readers are methodical, while the other half scan, the report found. The survey also revealed that large headlines and fewer, large photos attracted more eyes than smaller images in print. But online, readers were drawn more to navigation bars and teasers. Findings also revealed that news event photos received more attention than staged or studio images, while color got more interest than black and white. Research subjects also were quizzed about what they learned from a story, revealing that readers could answer more questions about a story when it included “alternative story forms,” such as Q&A’s, timelines, graphics, short sidebars, and lists. TESTING: Did you get this far in this story? For more information on the findings and visual elements of the Poynter report, go to www.poynter.org. Joe Strupp (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor

  ‘Lonelygirl15′ Ads Turning Up in ‘Lonelygirl15′ By GARY GENTILE The Associated Press Wednesday, March 28, 2007; 5:11 PM LOS ANGELES — In last week’s episode of the Web drama “Lonelygirl15,” teen pals Bree, Daniel and Jonas are on the road, running from the mysterious evil group “The Order” when Daniel spots Bree clutching a small, lime-green box. “What’s that? Daniel says. “Ice Breakers Sours Gum,” Bree replies as the camera zooms in for a close-up _ on the box. After offering it to her buddies, Bree playfully pops the last four pieces into her mouth with a giggle. The exchange is more than just a light moment in a Web drama that’s taken a dark turn. It’s a paid advertisement known in the entertainment industry as a product placement, a way for the popular teen Internet soap opera to boost its finances. The show became a Web sensation last fall after episodes were posted on YouTube. The success continued even after it was revealed that the homespun videos were actually a scripted series created by three friends and starring 19-year-old actress Jessica Lee Rose. The creators have been searching for ways to raise money to keep the production going, including adding static advertisements to the end of each episode, with the proceeds split with the Internet site that now hosts the videos. They have also been soliciting donations from fans. As short, episodic entertainment begins to flourish on the Web, other show creators are also thinking of integrating ad messages into their plots. After all, the same has been done for years in films, TV shows and even video games. Advertisers are also looking to spend more money online as their traditional TV audience begins to splinter. “The goal was to raise awareness of the brand among our target consumers,” said Kirk Saville, a spokesman for Hershey Co., which makes Ice Breakers. “It already has generated substantial interest on the LG15 site and blogs worldwide.” Hershey and the creators of “Lonelygirl15″ would not discuss the financial terms of the deal. The show’s makers had hoped from the start that advertisers would pay to have their food, clothes, cell phones or other such products used by the show’s characters. About a month ago, they were approached by Hershey’s advertising agency. It turned out the brand manager for Ice Breakers gum was a big fan of the show and felt that featuring the product in an episode would reach the desired demographic. But the show’s creators were concerned the fan base would rebel. “When we realized we were going to do it, we went on the forum and said a candy company approached us and wants to do an integration,” co-creator Greg Goodfried said. “We told them Bree and Daniel will eat it. But we also said we’re not going to do it if it pisses you off.” Of the 200 people who responded, 90 percent approved, Goodfried said. Remarks posted online after the episode aired also ran mostly in favor. Web-based shows run the dangers of alienating their young, hip audiences if product placement is done clumsily, said Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. “I think any podcast or mobisode that regularly includes product placement is likely to lose significant amounts of credibility,” Bernoff said. “The product placement on television is very subtle and that’s very hard to do.” Product placement in Web video episodes dates back to 1995 and the first Internet soap opera, “The Spot,” according to its creator Scott Zakarin. He now runs Zabberbox, a company producing several similar shows that are posted on Google Inc.‘s YouTube. He said the shows, such as “NoHo Girls” and “VanNuys Guys” will soon also include product placement. A new episodic Web series co-created by former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner will also include product placement, plus a way to purchase clothing and other items featured in the videos. Sponsors of the show “Prom Queen,” which starts next week, include Fiji water, Teleflora.com and Victoria’s Secret Pink. ___ On the Net: http://www.lonelygirl15.com http://www.zabberbox.com http://www.promqueen.tv

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