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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Next up for New Orleans' recovery: fighting blight (Reuters)
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) ? A city policy involving demolitions, inspections, community meetings and Saturday morning elbow grease is reviving New Orleans neighborhoods at a faster rate than most expected after Hurricane Katrina put 80 percent of the city underwater six years ago.
"This is a total groundbreaker for the city," said Allison Plyer, chief demographer of the nonprofit Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
"There's never been this intensive an effort previously to combat blight."
Even before the levees broke, New Orleans struggled with many of the classic elements that produce vacant homes and empty lots: systematic population loss, a troubled economy and crime.
Then Katrina accelerated blight. Some 110,000 New Orleans residents did not return to their homes in the five years since the storm, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In October 2010, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, then just six months in office, launched a blight initiative he said was designed to turn around 10,000 properties by 2014.
By the end of this year, city officials say, nearly 4,000 properties will fit that bill, lowering the city's total number of blighted properties to less than 42,000, according to data from the United States Postal Service, which tracks such figures as vacant homes where mail is not collected.
"What happened is we got better at what we're supposed to be doing and that, by getting more aggressive, property owners know we're coming and know we mean consequences so they start to self-correct," Landrieu told Reuters.
FEDERAL BILLIONS
In the early post-Katrina years, billions of federal recovery dollars helped the city buy abandoned properties and either demolish them or sell them to neighbors, as well as encourage residents to return and rehabilitate their homes.
Then came Jeff Hebert, the city's inaugural director of blight policy and neighborhood revitalization.
He has sped up property inspections, held regular community meetings and implemented little changes like redirecting workers in a jobs program to mowing overgrown lots in devastated neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward, which hadn't seen a lawnmower blade in years.
Herbert also helped the city steer away from tax sales of foreclosed properties, which can drag on for three years, to sheriff's sales, which award new property owners a clear title immediately upon purchase.
"That may be our single biggest policy shift," Hebert told Reuters. "Our goal is not necessarily to demolish houses but the end goal is to get houses back into commerce."
Landrieu said the new measures are designed to address his administration's three priorities: crime, jobs and schools.
"Blight is the thread that depends on whether or not we have success in those areas," he said. "It's a major threat to public safety and quality of life."
Despite the city's efforts, about 25 percent of New Orleans housing remained vacant in 2010, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
Title issues, contractor fraud and rebuilding costs are saddling recovery, and some residents say the city isn't acting fast enough to prevent neighborhoods from falling behind.
EIGHT FEET OF WATER
Take Rose Johnson. Her neat, two-story home in the city's Broadmoor neighborhood took nearly 8 feet of water and she spent $130,000 to return it back to its original splendor.
Her neighbor did not. In the years that passed since the storm, the vacant Italianate home next to Johnson's receded, as if reclaimed by the earth.
Pink exterior plaster is crumbled at the ground and this month, the stairs caved in. Johnson, 65, took it upon herself to mow the grass and hired an exterminator to set baits around her house so the rats next door wouldn't infest her own.
She said she called the city several times but has seen no progress. "It's a mess. I want them to tear it down," she said of city officials. "It's not fit to live in."
Demolition creates its own challenges. Some community organizers complain the city leaves the foundation behind on houses it demolishes, preventing lots from reverting to green space and creating another version of blight. The city has demolished over 2,100 blighted properties so far this year.
"Demolitions are a mixed bag," Plyer said. "If you do a lot of demolition then you have a dumping problem. People come and dump tires and debris and trash."
Population recovery is one reason New Orleans appears to be advancing on blight. Even though the New Orleans population is 21 percent less than before the storm, the population more than doubled between 2006 and 2010, to 343,800.
Katrina helped mobilize the city's public-private web of civic and neighborhood organizations and city departments, says Margery Austin Turner, vice president for research of the Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy analysis group based in Washington, D.C.
"I don't think you would have seen that kind of capacity in New Orleans prior to Katrina," she told Reuters.
Evidence of that is a section of Broadmoor where a development corporation set up by the neighborhood association in 2006 is rehabbing homes it purchased with $5 million from the Clinton Global Initiative. On one Friday in late November, 200 volunteers built a new playground for the nearby school.
"Our residents have skin in this game," said David Winkler-Schmit, communications director for the association. "We know what we need."
(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Jerry Norton)
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
Hitch-10
8. Along similar lines, he wasn?t in it for the money.? After?God Is Not Great?became a No. 1 best-seller, he could have received larger advances from other publishers, or written another commercially successful polemic. Instead, he chose to write a memoir because that?s what felt right to him.
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Russia's Mars probe will crash to Earth in January
In this Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011 file photo, the Zenit-2SB rocket with Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Ground) blasts off from its launch pad at the Cosmodrome Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Russia's space agency says a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit will plummet down to Earth next month.The agency said Friday Dec. 16, 2011 the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe that got stranded after its Nov. 9 launch will come crashing down between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19. (AP Photo/Oleg Urusov, pool)
In this Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011 file photo, the Zenit-2SB rocket with Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Ground) blasts off from its launch pad at the Cosmodrome Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Russia's space agency says a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit will plummet down to Earth next month.The agency said Friday Dec. 16, 2011 the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe that got stranded after its Nov. 9 launch will come crashing down between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19. (AP Photo/Oleg Urusov, pool)
FILE In this Nov.2, 2011 file photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency shows technicians working on the Phobos-Ground probe . Russia's space agency says the Phobos-Ground probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit will plummet down to Earth next month. Russia space agency said Friday Dec. 16, 2011 that the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe that got stranded after its Nov. 9 launch will come crashing down between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19.(AP photo/ Russian Roscosmos space agency, HO) EDITORIAL USE ONLY
MOSCOW (AP) ? A Russian spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars and stuck in Earth's orbit will come crashing back next month, but its toxic fuel and radioactive material on board will pose no danger of contamination, the Russian space agency said Friday.
Between 20 and 30 fragments of the probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the fiery plunge and shower the Earth's surface, Roscosmos warned in a statement.
The agency said the unmanned Phobos-Ground spacecraft will plummet to Earth between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19, and the rough area of where the fragments could fall could only be calculated a few days ahead of its plunge.
As of now, it said only that the probe's fragments could rain down anywhere along a broad swath between 51.4 degrees north to 51.4 degrees south, which would include most of land surface.
While the agency had lost contact with the probe following its launch on Nov. 9, this was the first time acknowledged that the $170-million craft has been lost and will come crashing down.
Since its November launch the engineers in Russia and at the European Space Agency have attempted unsuccessfully to propel it away from Earths orbit and toward its target.
Phobos-Ground weighs 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), which includes 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic fuel. Experts had warned that if the fuel has frozen, some could survive entry into Earth and pose a serious threat if it falls over populated areas.
But Roscosmos said it is sure that all fuel will burn on re-entry some 100 kilometers (330,000 feet) above the ground and pose no danger. It said that 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of Cobalt-57, a radioactive metal contained in one of the craft's instruments, will not pose a threat of radioactive contamination.
The Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the latest spacecraft aimed to take ground samples on Phobos.
It was one of the most challenging unmanned interplanetary mission ever. Scientists had hoped that studies of Phobos' surface could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe the crater-dented moon is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's a piece of debris from when Mars collided with another celestial object.
The failed mission was the latest in a series of recent Russian launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country's space industries. Officials have blamed the failures on obsolete equipment and an aging workforce.
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Friday, December 16, 2011
Corzine amends comments about MF fund transfers (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Former MF Global chief Jon Corzine corrected his earlier statements about the hundreds of millions of dollars in missing customer money, telling lawmakers on Tuesday there was no way to confuse anything he said as an authorization to raid those funds.
He also conceded there were "break the glass" contingency plans at the now-bankrupt futures brokerage, but under questioning denied that tapping customer funds was recommended.
The Senate Agriculture Committee held on Tuesday the second hearing in under a week to feature Corzine, who has said he does not know what happened to the money.
Corzine told lawmakers last week that he "never intended" to break rules about keeping customer funds segregated from firm money, but said that an employee may have misinterpreted instructions to try to save the firm.
"Someone could misinterpret 'You gotta fix it,' which I said the evening of October 30th,'" Corzine said on December 8.
On Tuesday, Corzine said, "I want to be clear - I never gave any instructions to misuse customer funds, I never intended anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds."
The futures brokerage filed for bankruptcy on October 31, after it was forced to reveal it bet $6.3 billion on European sovereign debt. That disclosure caused ratings downgrades and saw nervous investors and customers begin to flee the firm.
Corzine resigned as chief executive days after the bankruptcy filing.
The search for the missing customer funds has sent reverberations through the farm belt and trading floors, and has attracted the attention of the FBI and federal prosecutors. They are trying to determine whether customer funds were diverted to firm accounts, a major violation of industry rules.
In the meantime, thousands of customers have had their money frozen, although some has been returned as the trustee in the bankruptcy sorts through MF Global's records.
Corzine, dressed in a somber dark suit with his lawyer seated behind him, reiterated on Tuesday that he does not know where the money is.
He was joined by two top-ranking Mf Global executives, Chief Operating Officer Bradley Abelow and Chief Financial Officer Henri Steenkamp, who also said they lacked answers about the money.
Senator Pat Roberts, the top Republican on the committee, asked the executives and Corzine whether MF Global leadership asked for and received "an actual plan that would break the glass and tap into your customers' segregated accounts, perhaps described as a loan."
Corzine admitted there were contingency plans that "fall under the rubric" that Roberts was talking about, but he said it did not involving raiding customer money.
"To my knowledge and understanding of that report it was not ever the intent to recommend tapping into segregated customer funds."
Abelow said he had not reviewed the specific document.
JPMORGAN FLAGGED OVERDRAFTS
Corzine on Tuesday was willing to speculate more on why some money is not accounted for.
He said in the final days of MF Global, he directed the sale of $1.3 billion in commercial paper, hundreds of millions of dollars in MF Global proprietary assets, and $4.5 billion in government agency bonds.
"As I sit here, I didn't, do not know whether all of these and many other transactions were properly recorded and effectuated, or whether banks and other counterparties involved in such transactions properly credited the right accounts for these sales," Corzine told lawmakers.
He also revealed more about when problems with segregated funds were brought to his attention.
Corzine remained firm that he did not know there was a misuse of customer funds until Sunday, October 30.
But he said on Tuesday that on October 28 JPMorgan Chase contacted him and other MF Global employees about "certain overdrafts" and asked whether funds had been transferred in compliance with Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules.
Corzine said he had no personal knowledge about the issue, so he asked senior people in MF Global's back office in Chicago and in the firm's legal department to become directly involved.
"So even in the midst of the chaotic last days of business, I had confidence in our people and systems," Corzine said.
'DARK AGES'
Senators were frustrated by the testimony, frequently asking the executives and Corzine "Where's the money?" and "What happened?"
"It's now been a month a half since the firm collapsed and customer money is still nowhere to be found," Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow said.
"This isn't the Dark Ages. MF Global didn't keep their books with feather quills and dusty ledgers. The rules about keeping customer money segregated are pretty straightforward."
Senators repeatedly asked the executives point blank if they authorized the transfer of customer money into firm coffers.
Steenkamp said, "I did not authorize approval, no, of any transfers of customer funds."
Abelow said, "To the best of my recollection, I do not recall participating in any conversation about the use of customer funds, customer segregated funds and assets...for any purpose other than what they were intended to be used for."
'CALLED STEALING BACK ON MAIN STREET'
Farmers who became collateral damage from the collapse of MF Global got a chance to air their frustrations, telling lawmakers on Tuesday that their confidence in the markets has been shaken.
Dean Tofteland, a corn and soybean farmer from Minnesota, said when he heard news that MF Global was having problems, he talked to his broker, who told him, "No customer has ever lost a penny in customer segregated accounts."
But three days later his $253,000 account was frozen and he could not adjust his short positions.
Tofteland's positions were transferred to a new broker with only 15 percent of the required collateral, and he was forced to liquidate the hedges, he said. Since then, prices dropped and he lost another $100,000 without having the hedge.
Tofteland said he has not returned to the futures market.
"What they call 'unlawful comingling' on Wall Street is called 'stealing' back on Main Street," he told lawmakers.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper, Aruna Viswanatha and Christopher Doering; Writing by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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US halts $700 million in aid to Pakistan
By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services
Story updated 8:35 a.m. ET:
A senior Pakistani official told NBC News the United States' decision to cut aid to Pakistan would only contribute to the growing sense of anti-Americanism within the population.
He said the cut would deepen the perception within Pakistan that U.S. interests extend so far as its own foreign policy goals and would "strengthen our resolve to formalize and renegotiate our terms of engagement with USA."
Following the NATO crossborder strike on November 26 that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, military and government officials in Pakistan have called for a reassessment of the relationship with the U.S.
The Army Chief issued new rules of engagement for his ground troops and commanders, granting them "full liberty" to respond with force if ever under attack, without any form of higher clearance.
Story published 5:35 a.m. ET:
ISLAMABAD - The United States has frozen $700 million in aid to Pakistan until it gets assurances that Islamabad is helping fight the spread of homemade bombs, a move likely to further strain ties between the countries.
A Congressional panel halted the payment to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, late on Monday as part of a wider review of defense spending.
Calls are growing in the U.S. to penalize Islamabad for failing to act against militant groups and, at worst, helping them, after the secret U.S. raid on a Pakistan garrison town in which al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in May.
At least two dozen Pakistani troops along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were killed by NATO aircraft, straining already tense relations between the U.S. and Pakistan. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.
Homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), are among militants' most effective weapons against U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan as they struggle to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency.
Many are made using ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer smuggled across the border from Pakistan.
The freeze on U.S. aid was agreed as part of a defense bill that is expected to be passed this week.
The U.S. wants "assurances that Pakistan is countering improvised explosive devices in their country that are targeting our coalition forces," Representative Howard McKeon, a House Republican, told reporters.
The U.S. has allocated some $20 billion in security and economic aid to Pakistan since 2001, much of it in the form of reimbursements for assistance in fighting militants.
Although the frozen $700 million is only a small portion of aid to Pakistan, it could presage even greater cuts.
Harm to Pakistan-US relations
Salim Saifullah, chairman of Pakistan's Senate foreign relations committee, warned that relations, which are already at a low point, could worsen further following the decision, by the U.S. House-Senate panel.
"I don't think this is a wise move. It could hurt ties. There should instead be efforts to increase cooperation. I don't see any good coming out of this," Saifullah told Reuters.
There have been many proposals to make U.S. aid to Pakistan conditional on more cooperation in fighting militants such as the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, which Washington believes operates out of Pakistan and battles U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The White House is being careful in its response in part because officials don't have all the facts. NBC's Kristen Welker talks to NBC's Lester Holt about the balancing act.
But Pakistan's civilian leaders have in the past warned against aid cuts, saying it would only harden public opinion against the U.S.
Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban and has lost thousands of soldiers since it joined the U.S.-led war in 2001, some of them at the hands of coalition troops.
Islamabad has accused NATO of deliberately killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in an air strike near the Afghan border last month and shut down supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan in anger.
The decision to freeze aid could prompt Pakistan to harden its stance toward Washington.
"I think the Pakistan side will understand the type of signal that is coming, which shows it's not only a question of aid," said former general and security analyst Talat Masood.
"The whole attitude of the U.S. and the relationship will be affected by these measures because they know Pakistan will not be in a position to control the smuggling."
Two fertilizer factories
U.S. lawmakers said many Afghan bombs are made with fertilizer smuggled by militants across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
"The vast majority of the material used to make improvised explosive devices used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan originates from two fertilizer factories inside Pakistan," Republican Senator John McCain said in the Senate last week.
A Congressional Research Service report in October said the Pakistani factories, owned by one of the country's biggest companies, Pakarab, have been producing over 300,000 metric tons of ammonium nitrate per year since 2004.
The United States has urged Pakistan to regulate the distribution of ammonium nitrate to Afghanistan strictly. So far, Pakistan has only produced draft legislation on the issue.
Pakistan's fragile economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, so cutting down on fertilizer output would hurt the sector.
The provision freezing $700 million in aid was agreed upon by leaders of the armed services committees from both parties in the House and Senate, including McCain. It is part of compromise legislation authorizing U.S. defense programs expected to be approved this week, McKeon said.
The bill would also require the Pentagon to deliver a strategy for improving the effectiveness of U.S. aid to Pakistan, he said.
NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Swapping Germs
STRAIGHT POOP: Bacteria shed from the intestine (some of which are colored purple here) make up much of human feces.
Image: Tony Brain/Photo Researchers, Inc.
Marion Browning of North Providence, R.I., was at her wit?s end. The 79-year-old retired nurse had suffered from chronic diarrhea for almost a year. It began after doctors prescribed antibiotics to treat her diverticulitis, a painful infection of small pouches in the wall of the colon. The regimen also killed friendly bacteria that lived in Browning?s intestines, allowing a toxin-producing organism known as Clostridium difficile to take over and begin eating away at the entire lining of her gut.
For months Browning was in and out of her doctor?s office, getting big-gun antibiotics to suppress the C. difficile infection. Each time a course of treatment ended she would feel better for a while. But her strain of C. difficile was stubborn: a few of the destructive bacteria always survived. Within a few days they would begin multiplying, and the racking diarrhea would recur. After four rounds of antibiotics, her gastroenterologist told her that he had done all he could think of. He recommended that she see Colleen Kelly, a clinical faculty member at Brown University?s medical school, who was trying something new.
Kelly proposed a treatment that sounded both logical and strangely unmedical. Normally, she told Browning, the friendly bacteria that reside in the human intestine maintain a seesawing balance that keeps pathogenic bacteria in check. That equilibrium can be temporarily disrupted?as with standard antibiotic treatment?but it nearly always returns to stability. Browning?s own bacterial community had lost that ability, probably for good. Still, there was a way to restore normality, Kelly said. She could replace Browning?s bacteria completely, by inserting into her colon a diluted sample of stool from someone whose intestinal health was good. If the good bacteria in the donated stool took hold and recolonized her intestine, the C. difficile would be crowded out, and she would be cured.
Browning had never heard of such a procedure?variously called fecal transplant, fecal bacteriotherapy or fecal flora reconstitution?but she was ready to try anything. Kelly asked her to recruit a healthy donor. Browning chose her 49-year-old son. In the fall of 2009 Browning performed the bowel-cleansing routine that precedes a colonoscopy, while her son took an overnight laxative. Kelly diluted the donation, then used colonoscopy instruments to squirt the solution high up in Browning?s large intestine. The diarrhea resolved in two days and has never recurred.
?I can?t understand why more doctors aren?t doing this,? says Browning, now 80. Yet a complex combination of federal regulations and research rules?along with just plain squeamishness?could keep the procedure from helping potentially thousands of people who might benefit.
A Growing Threat
Browning is not alone in being a success story. In medical journals, about a dozen clinicians in the U.S., Europe and Australia have described performing fecal transplants on about 300 C. difficile patients so far. More than 90 percent of those patients recovered completely, an unheard-of proportion. ?There is no drug, for anything, that gets to 95 percent,? Kelly says. Plus, ?it is cheap and it is safe,? says Lawrence Brandt, a professor of medicine and surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who has been performing the procedure since 1999.
So far, though, fecal transplants remain a niche therapy, practiced only by gastroenterologists who work for broad-minded institutions and who have overcome the ick factor. To become widely accepted, recommended by professional societies and reimbursed by insurers, the transplants will need to be rigorously studied in a randomized clinical trial, in which people taking a treatment are assessed alongside people who are not. Kelly and several others have drafted a trial design to submit to the National Institutes of Health for grant funding. Yet an unexpected obstacle stands in their way: before the NIH approves any trial, the substance being studied must be granted ?investigational? status by the Food and Drug Administration. The main categories under which the FDA considers things to be investigated are drugs, devices, and biological products such as vaccines and tissues. Feces simply do not fit into any of those categories.
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