Varovanci Hannuja Järvenpääe si na četrti polfinalni tekmi razširjenega avstrijskega prvenstva proti najmočnejši ekipi rednega dela niso smeli privoščiti poraza.
Ljubljančani so na krilih izjemne publike v polnem Tivoliju pokazali pravi obraz in gostom uspeli zadati prvi poraz v polfinalni seriji. Linz je sicer povedel, za sladek preobrat pa sta poskrbela Jamie Fraser in Boštjan Goličič.
Attacks on 2 Afghan government offices kill 15
KABUL, Afghanistan — Suicide bombers struck two government offices in southern and western Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 15 people as militants step up attacks across the country with the arrival of spring temperatures, authorities said.
Four policemen were killed at the local police office in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province in the south. Another three policemen and eight civilians died in a large blast in Herat province in western Afghanistan.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks in telephone messages to the media.
Militants have been targeting Afghan and NATO security forces as they fight to assert their power and undermine U.S. efforts to try to build up Afghan forces. Afghanistan's police and army are increasingly shouldering the job of providing security with the planned exit of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
In Helmand, three suicide attackers wearing vests laden with explosives parked their car outside the police office and walked toward the entrance, said Daud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman.
Police fired at the attackers, killing one. Two others blew themselves up inside the compound, Ahmadi said. He initially reported that eight policemen died but later revised the toll, saying that four policemen were killed and five, including the district commander, were wounded.
Earlier in the day, a group of suicide bombers blew up their truck outside the Guzara district office in Herat province.
Two men and a woman wearing a burqa were found dead inside the vehicle that exploded at the gate of the district building where people were waiting to go inside to see government officials about various business matters.
Raouf Ahmedi, a spokesman for the police commander of the western region of Afghanistan, said police in the area had received a tip that the black four-wheel-drive vehicle was loaded with explosives.
"They were chasing the car and tried to stop it," Ahmedi said. "The vehicle then turned toward the district headquarters building and tried to pass the checkpoint, but police stopped them to be searched and asked where they were going."
Moments later the vehicle exploded, causing a loud boom that could be heard a few miles away.
"The explosion was so strong — there are casualties among police and civilians," said Nasar Ahmad Popul, the chief of the province's Guzara district who was inside the headquarters at the time of the blast.
Ahmedi said 11 people were killed — three policemen who were guarding the district building and seven civilians.
Twenty-two others were wounded, including children, he said.
Barriers at the blast site were blackened and investigators examined charred remains of what was left of the vehicle. Several of the wounded were loaded into the back of police pickup trucks and taken to a hospital. Rescue workers wrapped those killed in white sheets and carried them from the site.
Herat province, as well as most of western Afghanistan, is relatively calm as insurgents have concentrated their attacks in the country's south and east. The responsibility for nearly all of Herat province has been transferred, or is in the process of being transferred, from NATO troops to Afghan forces.
Tuesday's attack occurred between Herat city, the provincial capital, and the main airport in the area, which is located in Guzara district.
Dutch police arrest seven suspected of planning attack
AMSTERDAM (AP) -- Police in the Netherlands say they've broken up what may have been a terrorist plot to attack stores in Amsterdam, including an Ikea.
Among the seven people arrested in the case is a relative of one of the terrorists who died in the 2004 bombings in Madrid.
Amsterdam's mayor says an anonymous tip to police warned that terrorists planned to set off explosives in shops to cause casualties in busy places.
The tip last night came through an unregistered cell phone and identified a suspect and locations for police to search.
Earlier today, authorities in Amsterdam shut down a major shopping street near a soccer stadium, sealed off an Ikea and canceled a concert by the American group, "The Killers."
The suspects are identified as six men and one woman. All are Dutch nationals of Moroccan ancestry.
Dr. Deepak Srivastava
discussing stem cell work with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday at the
Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. Related Times Topics: Stem Cells
Guidelines proposed by the National Institutes of Health to carry out an
order made last month by President Obama would allow research with
federal financing only on stem cells derived from surplus embryos at
fertility clinics. The money would still be prohibited for stem cell
lines created solely for research purposes and for embryos created
through a technique known as therapeutic cloning. During the campaign
last year, President Obama said he supported "therapeutic cloning of
stem cells," a policy his administration rejected Friday. A White House
spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said the president "directed N.I.H. to
formulate the best method for moving forward with stem cell research,
both ethically and scientifically," in an independent process. Many
scientists praised the new guidelines as an expected compromise. "I
think it's a big step forward," said Richard O. Hynes, a cancer
researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "although there
are aspects of stem cell research that will still be outside federal
funding." Others called the proposed rules a sellout. "I'm
disappointed," said Dr. Irving Weissman, the director of the Stem Cell
Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute at Stanford University. Dr.
Weissman accused the health institutes of "putting this ideological
barrier in the way" of treating disease. Abortion opponents predicted
that the administration would soon embrace less restrictive stem cell
policies. "This is clearly part of an incremental strategy to
desensitize the public to the concept of killing human embryos for
research purposes," said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life
Committee. The acting director of the health institutes, Dr. Raynard S.
Kington, said that in writing the guidelines, officials had taken into
account ethical considerations and "broad public support" for the use of
discarded embryos from fertility clinics. "As science changes," Dr.
Kington said, "we will take note of that and, when appropriate,
reconsider the guidelines." Sitting on more than $10 billion in stimulus
money, health institute officials have been eager to expand financing
for stem cell research. Under restrictions put in place by President
George W. Bush, just 21 stem cell lines have been eligible for federal
financing. But researchers using private money have created more than
700 stem cell lines, some with specific diseases or mutations, many of
which may now be eligible for federal financing. Some scientists said
new rules requiring that donors be informed of all options could render
too many new cell lines ineligible. And the rules could make ineligible
for future federal financing even some cell lines approved by Mr. Bush.
Dr. George Q. Daley, the director of the stem cell transplantation
program at Children's Hospital Boston, said his team had used private
financing to create 15 stem cell lines from poor-quality embryos that
clinicians had told couples they should discard. Not all couples may
have been told that they could donate the weakened embryos to other
couples, a requirement under the new guidelines. "My major concern," Dr.
Daley said, "is grandfathering all those medically important lines" made
under less stringent consent policies, including some approved by Mr.
Bush. The announcement on Friday is likely to kick off a rush of
applications from scientists eager for federal support for stem cell
research. The health institutes has approved 20 such proposals for
financing, although the projects have been delayed until the stem cell
guideline is finalized. In fiscal year 2008, the health institutes
financed 260 research projects, at a cost of $88 million, that involved
stem cell lines approved by Mr. Bush. "In a relatively short period of
time, we're likely to greatly increase the number of stem cell lines
eligible for federal funding," Dr. Kington said. "Ultimately, this will
have a significant impact on human health and disease." The new
guidelines will be published next week in the Federal Register, and the
health institutes then will accept comments for 30 days. The rules are
to be final by July 7. Some in Congress have promised to introduce
legislation that would allow financing of more stem cell lines.
Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said in a statement
that the proposed legislation would "promote all forms of ethical stem
cell research." A statement from Representative Michael N. Castle,
Republican of Delaware, said there was "opportunity for more expansive
guidelines." Staff members for both lawmakers said they could not
describe details of the legislation or whether it would seek to legalize
federal financing of research using embryos created by therapeutic
cloning. Mr. Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said the
DeGette and Castle legislation would almost certainly undermine the few
restrictions left in place by Mr. Obama. Many scientists believe that
the development of matched organs for transplantation would be possible
only with therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer, a
process by which genetic material from a patient is placed in the
nucleus of an egg to produce embryonic stem cells that are an identical
genetic match. "You can't even apply for funding now if you have a cell
line derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer that faithfully
reproduces, say, juvenile diabetes," Dr. Weissman said. But Dr. Kington
said this cell transfer process had never been successfully carried out
in human cells. And other scientists have suggested that if scientists
create 1,000 or more genetically distinct stem cell lines, organs could
be grown that would be a close enough genetic match to avoid rejection
by patients' immune systems.
WASHINGTON - President
Obama presented a far-reaching set of proposals on Monday that are aimed
at the tax benefits enjoyed by companies and wealthy individuals
harboring cash in offshore accounts. These steps, he said, would be the
first in a much broader effort to fix a "broken tax system." Mr. Obama
made the announcement in the Grand Foyer of the White House, standing
alongside Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the Internal
Revenue Service commissioner, Douglas Shulman. His remarks echoed the
sentiment he voiced again and again during the presidential campaign
when he pledged to crack down on overseas tax evaders. The proposed tax
overhaul, which will be detailed later this week when the White House
presents its formal budget, could help raise $210 billion in revenue
over 10 years, the administration estimates. While most Americans pay
their fair share of taxes, Mr. Obama said, "there are others who are
shirking theirs, and many are aided and abetted by a broken tax system."
Multinational corporations, he said, paid an average tax rate of just 2
percent on their foreign revenue. And some wealthy individuals hide
their fortunes in foreign tax havens. The president thus set up a
frontal clash with big business over the tax advantages enjoyed by
companies with extensive overseas operations. Large multinational
companies like Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco Systems have been
bracing for such an initiative from the Obama administration. Critics of
the approach say that it could lead not to the administration's
hoped-for repatriation of taxes but rather to job losses or higher
prices as companies try to compensate for a greater tax burden. Martin
Regalia, chief economist of the United States Chamber of Commerce,
challenged the administration's reasoning. "The United States is the
only major industrialized country which double-taxes the overseas
earnings of our companies," he said in a statement. By limiting
companies' ability to defer tax payments, he said, "you limit the
ability of U.S. companies to compete, you impede growth in the U.S.
economy, and you cause the loss of jobs - both at the companies directly
impacted and companies in their supply chains." Senator Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he supported tax reform and
efforts to crack down on tax evaders. But, he added, "I cannot endorse a
plan that gives preferential treatment to foreign companies at the
expense of U.S. companies." He called the plan "a significant tax
increase on companies representing 44 percent of total U.S. private
employment" and said that in the depths of recession, it seemed
"particularly harmful to our shared goal of creating more American jobs
rather than driving them overseas." President Obama addressed some of
the concerns Monday, saying that "I want to see our companies remain the
most competitive in the world" but that the way to do that was "not to
reward companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits"
abroad. One proposed change would restrict companies from deferring the
payment of taxes on profit earned overseas. Administration officials
said the plan would keep businesses from taking deductions against their
taxes by inflating the amount of foreign taxes they paid. Mr. Obama
raised the idea frequently during his presidential campaign. In his
remarks to Congress in February, as he outlined his priorities for the
year, he pledged to make the tax code more equitable by "finally ending
the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas." The White
House said that Mr. Obama is seeking to shut down overseas tax havens in
an attempt to "close the international tax gap." Mr. Geithner noted that
the Group of 20 industrial countries had agreed this year to act against
tax havens like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Monaco. Amid
such rising pressure, 10 countries have agreed to adopt new
international standards, he said. "For years, we've talked about
shutting down overseas tax havens," Mr. Obama said. "That's what our
budget will finally do." The president said he hopes to remove the
competitive advantage for companies that invest and create jobs
overseas, working to replace their tax advantages with incentives to
produce jobs in the United States. American multinational corporations
paid only $16 billion in taxes to the United States on $700 billion in
foreign earnings - an effective tax rate of 2.3 percent - in 2004, the
most recent year for which data are available, according to the White
House. It distributed a statement that said that nearly one-third of all
foreign profit reported by such corporations in 2003 came from three
small low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland. About 200
companies and trade associations have signed a letter stating that the
proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals.
Cisco Systems, which sells Internet products and services, said in a
statement that a change in the tax deferral measure "would adversely
impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the U.S." and
place the company at a disadvantage against foreign competitors not
subject to American taxes. Among other companies, Google, the giant
Internet search company, said it was monitoring the situation. "At this
point it is too early to evaluate the potential effect on Google's
operations as there will likely be multiple proposals considered,"
Google said in a statement. In his presidential campaign last year, Mr.
Obama often criticized provisions in the tax code that allowed American
companies with overseas operations to defer paying taxes on corporate
profits, providing that they placed the money back into their foreign
subsidiaries. In his remarks on Monday, the president called for an end
to that practice, as well as the closure of loopholes that allow
companies and individuals to legally avoid paying billions in taxes
through hidden accounts. The White House said the administration would
raise $103.1 billion over 10 years by removing a rule that allows
companies to take immediate deductions for overseas expenses while
deferring tax payments on profit there, and eliminating loopholes that
permit businesses to claim inflated credit against American taxes for
foreign taxes paid. Of this, $74.5 billion would go to "make permanent a
tax credit for investment in research and innovation within the United
States," the White House statement said. The administration also said it
would raise $95.2 billion over 10 years by tightening requirements on
income shifted from one foreign subsidiary to another in a lower-tax
country, making it more difficult for financial institutions and
individuals to hide money in offshore accounts, and hiring 800 new
I.R.S. staff to tighten international enforcement. Many of the tax
proposals will require Congressional approval and, if passed, none would
take force before 2011.
The youngest son of
the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has begun an apprenticeship
in the country's most powerful governing agency, a South Korean news
report said. Kim Jong-un, in his mid-20s and lately considered by many
analysts in Seoul as a likely successor to his father, was recently
given a low-ranking job at the National Defense Commission, according to
Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, quoting anonymous sources in its
report. Yonhap saw the move as an indication that an active grooming of
the son as the next leader has begun. His father was similarly prepared
decades ago by assuming low-level jobs with the ruling Workers Party of
Korea. Mr. Kim took over the North Korean helm when his father,
President Kim Il-sung, died in 1994. Like most news about the inner
workings of the Kim family, the latest report could not be independently
confirmed. South Korean media often carry conflicting reports about the
Kim family. Yonhap had earlier reported that Kim Jong-un would be
elected to the rubber-stamp Parliament in March as a way to speed up his
apprenticeship. That didn't happen. Media reports about Mr. Kim's three
known sons, especially about Jung-un, have spiked in recent weeks. Mr.
Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke in August, is said to be focusing
now on securing a succession of power for one of his sons. Earlier this
month, the Parliament re-elected Mr. Kim as chairman of the powerful
National Defense Commission. Two of his most trusted aides - Oh
Geung-nyeol, a general, and Jang Seong-taek, Mr. Kim's brother-in-law -
also were elected to the commission. The appointments of Mr. Oh and Mr.
Jang have led to reports about their possible roles in choosing Mr.
Kim's successor, or in one of them becoming the leader himself in the
post-Kim era. But those reports, too, were based mostly on conjecture by
outside analysts. Experts often vary widely in their theories about Mr.
Kim's motives. Only a few years ago, many analysts, as well as news
outlets in South Korea, had dismissed Mr. Jang, believing him to be
persona non grata in the regime because he had suddenly disappeared from
the public scene. But about a year ago, he returned to politics.
Meanwhile, little is known about Mr. Kim's youngest son. Officials and
analysts believe he was born in late 1983 or early 1984. He reportedly
liked basketball and looked and acted like his father. As a teenager, he
studied at the International School of Berne in Switzerland. Mr. Kim has
three known sons by two women. The oldest, Kim Jong-nam, 37, was once
considered the undisputed successor. But he reportedly fell out of his
father's favor when he was caught sneaking into Japan on a fake
Dominican Republic passport in 2001. He told Japanese authorities that
he had planned to visit Tokyo's Disney resort. After Kim Jung-nam's
apparent disgrace, the middle son, Kim Jong-chol, 27, was cited as a
favorite candidate for several years. Mr. Kim's former Japanese sushi
chef, Kenji Fujimoto, said in his memoir that the leader considers his
second son "girlish." And recent South Korean and Japanese news reports
have said that he is chronically ill.
THE BASICS Blending the
styles of an art installation with a boutique hotel, the Rough Luxe has
distressed walls, contemporary art and reclaimed furniture alongside
crisp linens and slick bathrooms. Set in a row of Georgian town houses
minutes from St. Pancras International Station, the nine-room hotel was
salvaged from the remains of one of the area's many nondescript
guesthouses. Last year, during a renovation, layers of wallpaper and
paint were peeled away, leaving in their wake an organic collage of
original handpainted mosaic wallpaper and plaster. The designer, Rabih
Hage, decided to stop there. The effect is almost industrial, like the
interior of a guerrilla warehouse art gallery. The hotel's small
reception area, the only public space other than the breakfast room,
sets the tone with a giant photograph of Gilbert and George, a
contemporary art duo based in England, hovering over a 1970s built-in
cabinet. THE LOCATION King's Cross is a chaotic transportation hub where
five major roads intersect beside a tangle of rail and subway routes.
The immediate surrounds, riddled with budget food chains and dingy
hotels, thrives on the transient population of commuters and tourists.
But the arrival of the Eurostar at St. Pancras International in 2007 -
central London's gateway to Europe, with Paris just over two hours away
- is helping to transform the area. Set among the back streets of Grays
Inn Road and Swinton Street are a smattering of destination restaurants.
Acorn House (69 Swinton Street; 44-207-812-1842;
www.acornhouserestaurant.com), where painstakingly sourced local
ingredients are whipped together by trainee chefs, is very popular.
Despite pockets of gentrification, the area still has enough edge to
stave off the well-dressed specter of predictability. Scala (275
Pentonville Road; 44-207-833-2022; www.scala-london.co.uk), a trendy
music and dance spot, hosts regular late-night parties. THE ROOMS At the
Rough Luxe, no two rooms are alike, each having been individually styled
by Mr. Hage, the hotel's designer. Arranged around my comfortable bed,
amply coated in fine linens, the artwork - by Aki Kuroda, a Japanese
painter - provided flashes of bright red against the scabrous wall. Much
of the antique furniture found throughout the hotel was purchased at an
auction of the Savoy Hotel's throwaways. Several rooms have photographs
of palatial interiors by Massimo Listri, which creates an enlarging
effect, similar to a mirror, to what are comfortably-sized doubles, but
definitely on the small side. THE BATHROOM Three rooms come with a
private bathroom, including mine (Room 5), and it had a giant photograph
of an eccentrically dressed Philippe Starck posing against a bright
orange wall. Most of the bathrooms have a luxurious feel with
glass-encased showers and rainfall shower heads, and chrome faucets over
marble basins. Room 8's en-suite bathroom has a spectacular freestanding
copper bathtub. AMENITIES In a hotel that deliberately forgoes substance
in favor of style, there are few added extras. Indeed, the television
sets in each room are retro 1980s collectors' items, with a penchant for
static. But Leo Rabelo, the affable general manager, was on permanent
call for dinner recommendations and sightseeing advice. A Continental
breakfast, included in the price of the room, was a treat delivered from
Ottolenghi, a popular international deli and restaurant in Islington,
and served on a table made of salvaged wood from Brighton Pier. THE
BOTTOM LINE Many hotels claim to be original, but Rough Luxe actually
is. Those wanting to be pampered need not apply. The emphasis here is on
experience rather than indulgence. And the location is certainly one to
watch - King's Cross may not be as vibrant as Shoreditch or Soho, but
there's every chance that it will be. The rates, starting at GBP155 a
night, or $232.50 at $1.50 to the pound, seem a little more luxe than
rough, but if the hotel were set in a more salubrious corner of London,
no one would balk at being charged double. Rough Luxe Hotel, 1
Birkenhead Street, London WC1; 44-207-837-5338; www.roughluxe.co.uk.
ON a rainy day in the
late 17th century, an enterprising agent of the British East India
Company named Job Charnock sailed along the Hooghly River, a tributary
of the Ganges that flows from high in the Himalayas into the Bay of
Bengal, and pitched a tent on its swampy banks. The company bought three
riverside villages. Soon they would become a port - flowing with opium,
muslin and jute - and then, as the capital of British India until 1912,
draw conquerors, dreamers and hungry folk from all over the world.
Calcutta, India's first modern city, was born. Over the years, it
acquired many names: City of Palaces, Black Hole, Graveyard of the
British Empire. In 2001, it was christened Kolkata - slower, rounder,
ostensibly more Bengali-sounding. To me, it has always been the city of
green shutters. They are a singular fixture of old Calcutta houses. They
glow in the steamy heat of the afternoon. Trees sometimes sprout from
moldy ledges. I left Calcutta when I was small and promptly forgot what
I knew, such is the thick velvet curtain the immigrant child draws over
memory. Every few summers, when my family returned for holidays, I would
be escorted from one relative's house to another, scolded for being too
thin, and force-fed heaps of sweets. On Park Street, I would be
invariably accosted by a hungry, barefoot child. The only thing more
confounding than going to Calcutta was coming home to suburban Southern
California; how do you explain the city of dreadful night (Rudyard
Kipling's phrase, not mine) to friends who had spent the summer
listening to Olivia Newton-John? In the last four years, over several
reporting trips there, the city has revealed itself to me slowly,
opening one sleepy eye at a time. Calcutta today is as parochial as it
is modern. It lives in the past as much as it lets its past decay.
India's first global city, it is littered with the remains of many
worlds: the rickshaws that the Chinese brought; an Armenian cemetery;
dollops of jazz left by Americans in the war years. It is as much a
walker's city as a talker's: It has great eavesdropping potential, even
if you understand only English, and it is perfectly acceptable to start
up a conversation with strangers, whether about the rain or Shakespeare.
Best of all, in Calcutta, you can eat the world. The royal chefs who
decamped here from the Mughal court of north India brought a
cardamom-laced mutton rezala stew. The British Raj offered a canape of
cheese and pineapple. From Baghdad, David Nahoum's Jewish forefathers
brought the cheese-filled sambusa to Calcutta's New Market. FOR the
traveler with limited time, the best way to explore Calcutta is roughly
to trace the route of the Hooghly, meandering on and off the main
thoroughfares by foot, tram and subway, known here as the Metro. This is
not a luxury destination. It is more a journey through the grimy layers
of time. History is inscribed on every lane, like tattoos on an aging
diva. Calcutta was once quite a diva. You could start by boarding a tram
at the Esplanade, just north of the Oberoi Grand Hotel, and head north
on College Street, now renamed Bidhan Sarani. The last time I tried, the
tram crawled through traffic and then stopped crawling entirely. The
power had gone out. If you get out near College Street, as I did, make
your way through the dense alleys of books (mostly used textbooks, but a
careful hunt on Calcutta's streets can turn up jewels, such as a Chinese
Communist children's book of manners, translated into English, which I
once procured) to the Indian Coffee House. Built in the late 1800s as
the Albert Hall to commemorate a visit of the prince consort, it
eventually became the city's most venerable institution of revolutionary
chatter and flirt. There is still plenty of flirt. The waiters don't
chatter. They scowl under their white caps, thick black dirt in the
stiff creases. They complain that no one orders anything. A cashier told
me last summer that the cafe had been posting losses for more than 25
years. I guiltily ordered the fritter-like vegetable pakoras. Calcutta
from the start has confronted some of the most acute debates of
modernity. Over three centuries, the folly and ingenuity of global
capitalism have left their mark on my city, and then, too, so have the
Communists, who have been elected to power for an uninterrupted 31
years. Now New India pokes its finger into Calcutta's languid belly. The
old houses are making way for tall glass and steel, their Calcutta Deco
details tossed away like fish-heads. Flury's, once a classic European
patisserie, serves American-style lasagna instead of the white bread
cucumber sandwiches of my childhood. The hammer and sickle remains the
refrain of Calcutta graffiti, interrupted now by posters for English
classes, the hammer and sickle, you might say, of Indian aspiration
today. "Great cities get old and somehow renew themselves," said Mani
Sankar Mukherji, whose remarkable 1962 novel, "Chowringhee," chronicled
life inside a roaring midcentury Calcutta hotel. Calcutta, he confessed,
cannot be called a great city. Pradip Kakkar, who, with his wife,
Bonani, leads a citizens' lobby called Public, short for People United
for Better Living in Calcutta, was somewhat more generous. "Calcutta is
newing itself," he said. Public has campaigned to remove billboards that
obscure heritage buildings and save the wetlands that naturally drain
and clean Calcutta's waste. Calcutta has no sewage treatment plant. The
wetlands, Mrs. Kakkar said, are like the city's kidney. They are also a
sanctuary of cormorants and wagtails, where fishermen and farmers grow
food on a patchwork of ponds and fields. Around the corner from the
Coffee House on College Street stands Presidency College, founded by
Indian philanthropists in 1817 as a center for the teaching of European
thought. Around the College Square water tank are three buildings
testifying to Calcutta's melting pot heritage: the Baptist Mission, in
the so-called Indo-Saracenic architectural style; the Mahabodi Buddhist
temple, founded by a Sri Lankan monk; and the Bengal Theosophical
Society, one of the world's first esoteric East-meets-West religious
movements. A short tram ride north along College Street takes you to
Bethune College, created in 1849 as the city's first school for girls, a
remarkable feat, considering that most privileged Indians secluded their
women in purdah at the time. My own grandmother, a lawyer's daughter,
could study only until the age of 13. On the south side of the college
is the family-owned Girish Chandra Dey and Nakur Chandra Nandy, makers
of nothing else but the celebrated Bengali shondesh. To its detractors,
including me, the shondesh, made of sweetened slow-stirred cheese,
resembles cement. To its fans, it is proof of divine love, eaten at any
time of day, and always when there is something to celebrate. Pranab
Nandy, 46, a fifth-generation confectioner, sat cross-legged in a dhoti
and ribbed white undershirt on an unseasonably warm day in January. He
seemed not the least worried about New Indian tastes cutting into his
business. "Demand remains. It will always remain," he said. "Whenever
there is happiness, there must be shondesh." In winter the shondesh is
sweetened with palm syrup, and it had arrived from the countryside this
afternoon in terra-cotta pitchers. Mr. Nandy, without stirring from his
perch, ordered his latest creations to be fetched - one stuffed with
coconut and nuts, another with a truffle-like injection of palm syrup, a
third dunked in syrup. The Nandy workshop's green walls were plastered
with Hindu goddess posters. Men sat on the floor, crafting each shondesh
from wooden molds. Not that the Nandys have eschewed New India. They now
have an outlet inside an air-conditioned supermarket. From Mr. Nandy's
shop, the walker (unless burdened with sacks of shondesh, as I was)
could head north and then west into the heart of the erstwhile Black
Town, where Indians rich and poor were concentrated in the starkly
segregated days of the empire. There is no evident city planning. The
roads are so narrow it is difficult for cars to navigate; they flooded
then and still do. Chitpur Road was the nerve center of Black Town. The
mansions on and off this boulevard, now called Rabindra Sarani, are a
whimsical mixture of West and East - introverted toward courtyards
according to Indian architectural tradition and boasting fabulous
Western facades with Corinthian pillars and nymphs on the pediments.
Black Town was built by those whom Krishna Dutta, in her book "Calcutta:
A Literary and Cultural History," calls the Bengali compradors, who
"patronized Indian classical music and the European arts, held lavish
feasts and paid court to the British." They are lyrically skewered in
Amitav Ghosh's novel "Sea of Poppies." The mansions are in varying
stages of ruin. The height of kitsch is the Marble Palace, open to the
public with a pass from the government tourism office and stuffed with
crystal chandeliers and stone lions. Geoffrey Moorhouse, in his book,
"Calcutta: The City Revealed," says it looks "as if they had been
scavenged from job lots on the Portobello Road on a series of damp
Saturday afternoons." The family home of Rabindranath Tagore is on
Dwarkanath Tagore Lane. The unsung mansions sit on the smaller lanes,
occupied by fragments of families. Old saris hang out to dry on the
balconies and dogs snooze at the feet of faux-Venus statues. Off Chitpur
Road, a lane takes you to the potters' colony, Kumartoli (ask directions
to find your way), a unique open-air workshop where gods and goddesses
are molded by hand, traditionally using dust from the thresholds of
nearby brothels. The city's powerful prostitutes union objects to this
practice now. Kumartoli is busiest in fall, in the run-up to the Hindu
festival season. A variety of artisans hang on along Chitpur Road:
makers of traditional perfumes, embroidered tunic sellers, purveyors of
wigs, a row of musical instrument shops (at N. N. Mondal's, Yehudi
Menuhin got his violin repaired in 1952) and Chinese shoemakers. These
lanes were also where the city savaged itself in the summer of 1946,
just as the British were preparing to leave and India was about to be
partitioned. Hindus cut Muslim throats; Muslims cut Hindu throats;
Gandhi rushed to the city and launched a hunger strike. Every family,
mine included, bore witness to the carnage, or took part in it. Behind
the green shutters, there are stories. A good place to stop and ponder
the past is the ground-floor bar of the Broadway Hotel, on Ganesh
Chandra Avenue. The afternoon light pours in golden soft through the
shutters. Across the street, above a gas station, is a hidden gem,
called Eau Chew, where Joseph and Josephine Huang serve a fabulous fish
in black bean sauce. WHITE Town, or the center of British business and
government, emerged around its own drinking-water tank and became known
as Dalhousie Square. It has since been christened B.B.D. Bag, for the
three young gunmen - Binoy, Badal and Dinesh - who stormed the British
administrative office, the Writers Building, in 1930 and shot dead the
British inspector of prisons. A black statue of the trio faces the
Writers Building, now the headquarters of the Communist government of
West Bengal state. Modernity continues to be debated. Protests erupted
here against a plan to build the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, in
a factory on the city outskirts. Peasants revolted, and the Nano is
being built elsewhere. Calcutta has another guerrilla hero: Subhas
Chandra Bose, who broke away from Gandhi's nonviolent movement to raise
an army against the British. The central narrative of his erstwhile
family mansion on Elgin Road, now a museum of Bose memorabilia, is his
"great escape" from house arrest. Red footsteps on the balcony mark how
he tiptoed out on a January night in 1941. The gray Wanderer in which he
was driven away sits in the driveway. In one gallery is an extraordinary
collection of photographs, including Netaji - "respected leader" as he
is known - shaking hands with Hitler in 1942; apparently, he took help
where he could get it. Every guidebook will opine on the sights of
Dalhousie Square, which the World Monuments Fund lists on its 100 most
endangered heritage sites. I recommend a visit to the General Post
Office and the adjacent Postal Museum, for their collection of old
stamps and the brass buckles of the "dak" runners, or postmen, who
carried letters on foot. Calcutta's first foreigners often died young,
sometimes before they received mail from across the ocean. The Returned
Letter Office housed the letters to the dead. It stands on the southeast
corner of the square. Park Street Cemetery, a short taxi ride from
Dalhousie Square, offers more proof of the pestilence that hovered over
the imperialists. The museum inside the Victoria Memorial is an archive
of imperial ambition. Across the river is another kind of archive: the
Indian Botanic Garden, said to house trees from five continents but its
collection is poorly marked, the benches are broken and it seems better
suited for canoodlers than botanists. Much of White Town is in sad
shape. A mysterious fire claimed a significant portion of the
headquarters of MacKinnon Mackenzie, a prominent managing agent for
British industry in Calcutta. Bow Barracks, a red-brick row of onetime
army barracks and home now to Chinese and biracials known here as
Anglo-Indians, is due to be demolished. Groups like Public are goading
the city to start saving its past. St. Andrew's Church, built by Scots
in 1818, has been illuminated as a means of drawing investment and
tourists to the heart of the city. "No longer is there an anxiety that
we have to be anticolonial," the city's municipal commissioner, Alapan
Bandyopadhyay, gamely said. South Calcutta has two attractions, and they
are worth exploring by Metro. The Kalighat Temple is a tableau of faith,
blood and hustle. Devotees prostrate themselves before the dark goddess,
goats meet their death and touts, some in holy men's garb, home in on
tourists. The poor squat on the street at lunchtime, for a bowl of rice.
It is hard to imagine a worse fate than to be poor in Calcutta. Hunger
still stalks the city. The Tollygunge Club is farther south. Built as a
private Raj-era mansion, it housed the family of Tipu Sultan, another
deposed Indian king from southern Mysore, and then became a whites-only
club in 1895, with a racecourse as its main attraction. Indians broke
the color bar in 1964 but soon came to be seen as class enemies. A
Maoist guerrilla shot dead the club director in 1971. He was sitting in
his second-floor office at the time, the windows of the Palladian
mansion facing south, to catch the breeze. Today, it is primarily a golf
club. Jackals have built their dens here. They seem to like to watch
golf. What the newing of Calcutta, as Mr. Kakkar puts it, will do to the
soul of Calcutta is a matter of argument. Aveek Sen, a photography
critic at The Telegraph, a Calcutta-based daily, was glum. "All the
things that Calcutta is known for are on an irreversible - "he stopped
to find the word, and then made a downward motion of the hand. Bengali
theater is long past its glory days, he said. So too the Academy of Fine
Arts, once a proud icon of Calcutta modernism, though several private
galleries have opened in the last couple of years. The city's biggest
cultural event is an annual book fair, but new foreign books and
journals, easily available in Delhi, are hard to come by here. Mr. Sen
often spirits away to Delhi. He said the cultural life of Calcutta was
"stifling." "In Calcutta, people get used to deprivation and turn it
into a virtue," he concluded. Then he paused, offering a peephole into
the soul of Calcutta. "I'm saying all these dreadful things about my
city. But I love living here."
Slovenia's dramatic win
over Russia Wednesday, and to a lesser extent Ireland's narrow loss to
France, capped off a grueling two-year qualifying period that saw some
of the smallest countries in the world kick some of soccer's biggest
names in the teeth. After a century of near domination from the likes of
Brazil, Italy and Germany, international soccer is entering the era of
the Cinderella. It may not happen this time around, but given the
increasing flow of talent, training and information across borders, it's
almost certain that a small upstart nation blessed with good athletes
and better luck will make a legitimate run at the world's most coveted
trophy. Russia's Yuri Zhirkov, right, fights for the ball with
Slovenia's Valter Birsa Wednesday. Wednesday near Paris, Ireland nearly
pulled off the greatest win in its soccer history. As retired French
star Zinedine Zidane watched in the crowd, the Irish exerted intense
pressure on the 2006 finalists, missing four point-blank chances, one
from two yards off the left foot of John O'Shea, the Manchester United
defender. Striker Robbie Keane also missed from close range in the 73rd
and 90th minutes. The misses would prove crucial in extra time, as
French star Thierry Henry controlled a free kick from near midfield,
tapping it twice with his hand before flicking a cross to the goal line
that William Gallas headed into the net. Despite intense protests from
Irish goalkeeper Shay Given, Swedish referee Martin Hansson allowed the
score, giving France its one-goal edge. Russia wasn't so fortunate,
losing 1-0 to tiny Slovenia. Greece, the European Champion just five
years ago, barely got by Ukraine 1-0 after the first leg of their match
ended in a scoreless tie. Portugal, without the world's top player,
Cristiano Ronaldo, beat Bosnia-Herzegovina. The increasingly global
nature of the professional game has reshaped the soccer world, which,
like the rest of the globe, is significantly flatter than it was a
generation ago. Every player on the pitch for Slovenia Wednesday plays
outside the country professionally. Likewise, Uruguay, which has just
five players on its roster playing in the domestic league, advanced to
South Africa with a win over Costa Rica. The Ukraine has Andriy
Shevchenko, formerly of Chelsea, the top team in the English Premier
League, and Dmytro Chygrynskiy, who plays for Barcelona. Bosnia's Edin
Dzeko, Sejad Salihovic and Vedad Ibisevic play in the German Bundesliga,
while Miralem Pjanic plays in France's Ligue 1. Come June, Chelsea's
Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou will make the Ivory Coast a formidable
opponent in South Africa. Internazionale's Samuel Eto'o, who played for
Barcelona last year, should do the same for Cameroon's Indomitable
Lions. And no one will have a pleasant afternoon facing Ghana, led by
Chelsea's Michael Essien and Fulham's John Pantsil. "The playing field
is so much more level because all these players now know how to train,"
says Tommy Smyth, the soccer analyst. "You don't have to be a coach
anymore to bring back home the advantages and the knowledge of the top
leagues. It's like the kid going and then coming back from the big
cities to the country and telling everyone what it's all about and how
they do things there." France's William Gallas celebrates the win over
Ireland. Players' increased international fluidity has grown along with
the growing influence of money in soccer. The English Premier League's
best teams, for example, now have just a few players from the U.K.,
leading some to call for FIFA, soccer's international governing body, to
enact rules limiting the number of international players each pro team
can have. A player can only switch World Cup teams if he is a
citizen—naturalized or by birth—of his new country and has never played
a top-level international match for his previous country. Warren Barton,
a former English national team player, said he and his teammates in the
mid-1990s would feel confident going into a game against a country like
Nigeria, even if they expected a physical test. "The concentration
wouldn't be there" on the lesser teams, said Mr. Barton, now an analyst
on the Fox Soccer Channel. "But there's no game that is a given now. We
learned that the hard way in England, believing we had some divine right
to play but sitting on the sidelines of some major tournaments."
England, which failed to qualify for the 2008 European championship, has
punched its ticket for South Africa. But plenty of other teams and stars
once widely considered potential favorites to play in South Africa won't
be there. Sweden's Zlatan Ibrahimovic is perhaps the biggest star on the
sidelines, after his team fell one point short of getting to a final
qualifying match. The Czech Republic, led by Chelsea goalkeeper Petr
Cech, also won't be making the trip. Alexi Lalas, the former star of the
American national team, said the absence of former stalwarts like Sweden
and the Czech Republic emphasizes how European teams are at a
disadvantage because the continent's 53 teams, many with rich soccer
traditions, have to battle for 13 of the 32 spots in the World Cup.
"There is so much quality, so you see so many good teams on the brink,"
Mr. Lalas said. "It's not surprising, but it is a little disappointing.
It's the World Cup, so you want all the best teams and the best players
competing for the biggest prize." But the depth now extends beyond
Europe. Argentina, coached by the iconoclastic and unpredictable Diego
Maradona and featuring some of the world's greatest players, such as
Lionel Messi and Carlos Tévez, is a two-time world champion and usually
one of the favorites. But Argentina barely made the cut, losing four of
five qualifying matches at one point, including a stunning 1-0 defeat to
Paraguay, before squeaking out one-goal victories over Peru and Uruguay
in October. John Skipper, executive vice president of content at ESPN,
which will broadcast the World Cup in the U.S., said he was pulling for
Portugal and Mr. Ronaldo to make it to South Africa but that a theme of
the South African telecasts would be international soccer's new-found
unpredictability. "Our one-sentence pitch is 'One Game Changes
Everything,' " Mr. Skipper says. "That encompasses both the the
importance of the event and the importance of every game. It's always
possible that the team no one expects to get beat gets beat."
Jakov Fak svetovni prvak na 20 km!
Slovenski biatlon se veseli zgodovinskega uspeha. Jakov Fak je na svetovnem prvenstvu v Ruhpoldingu osvojil zlato medaljo na 20 kilometrov.
24-letni Fak je zgrešil en strel, a z odličnim tekom za sedem sekund prehitel Francoza Simona Fourcada, ki je prav tako pustil eno tarčo nepokrito. Tretje mesto je pripadlo Čehu Jaroslavu Soukupu. Popoln slovenski dan v Ruhpoldingu je s petim mestom dopolnil Klemen Bauer.
Fak: Treba je ostati zbran in miren
"Super občutek, ko prideš na cilj kot prvi. Na dveh streliščih sem bil nekoliko zadaj, na koncu sem 'borbal' do zadnjega metra in mi je uspelo. Zahvalil bi se vsem, ki so mi pomagali. Treba je bilo ostati zbran in miren," je takoj po zmagi za Radio Slovenija dejal Fak.
Fak je tako znova dokazal, da je mož za velike tekme. Bronoma s svetovnega prvenstva v Pjeongčangu (2009) in z olimpijskih iger v Vancouvru (2010) ter srebru iz Ruhpoldingu je dodal še najžlahtnejše odličje.
Everyone knows the grim
news - unemployment in the United States has jumped to 8.5 percent, a
25-year high, and is racing toward double digits. Since November, the
nation has lost more than three million jobs. But not everyone knows the
brighter side to the equation: deep in the maw of the deepest recession
since the Great Depression, millions are still being hired. So, while
4.8 million workers were laid off or chose to leave their jobs in
February, employers across the country hired 4.3 million workers that
month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "The best thing you
can say about these numbers is it speaks to the dynamism of the U.S.
economy, and the net negative number that we all traffic in masks that,"
said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, a research and trading
firm. "Ninety out of 100 people who know the number - 650,000 were lost
in February - think that means no one was hired and 650,000 were fired."
In February - before the economy started to show the first faint signs
of a possible recovery - there were three million job openings
nationwide. And despite large new job losses likely to be announced
Friday, there are still millions of job openings. Who is hiring?
Hospitals, colleges, discount stores, restaurants and municipal public
works departments. I.B.M. is hiring more than 700 people for its new
technical services center in Dubuque, Iowa, while the Cleveland Clinic
has 500 job openings, not just for nurses but also for pharmacy aides
and physical therapists. And after President Obama's stimulus package
kicks into gear, state, local governments and road-building contractors
are expected to hire more. Zachary Schaefer has hired 72 people since
February for the Culver's hamburger and frozen custard restaurant that
he and several partners just opened in Surprise, Ariz. "The amount of
applicants who are qualified is definitely up," he said. "Whereas before
we were counting on a lot of high school applicants, now there are a lot
more middle-age people applying." Eddie Hamm, a former construction
worker, was unemployed for five months when he drove by the site where
the Culver's was under construction. Mr. Hamm, 29, applied for a job
there, and now he's a "fry guy." "I'm just happy I got hired - I didn't
want to stay home, not doing anything," he said, hardly complaining that
he is earning half the $15 an hour he made in construction. "I don't
look at it like I'm making $7.50. I look at it - I'm having a job in a
down time, and it's a job where I can move up." Economists and job
counselors advise the unemployed that there are definitely jobs to be
had, even if there aren't nearly enough to go around. With 13.2 million
people out of work, there are 4 1/3 unemployed Americans for every job
opening. "You're facing more competition for every job you apply for,
but the reality is there is a lot of hiring going on," said Andrew M.
Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern
University. "You're never going to find anything unless you apply." Even
industries that have taken a beating are doing plenty of hiring.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction companies
hired 366,000 workers in February, and manufacturers hired 249,000.
Retailers hired 536,000 workers in February, but that was down 25
percent from the previous February. Some job openings are to replace
retirees, some to replace employees who left for other jobs, but many
openings result from expansion. Companies that are still growing are
blessed with talented applicants. "It's easier to hire in a recession -
we have about five applications for every position," said Howard
Glickberg, principal owner of Fairway Market, the well-known grocery
company based in Manhattan. Fairway just hired 350 people for its
month-old store in Paramus, N.J., the first Fairway outside of New York
State. The company plans to add 1,200 more workers over the next two
years by opening stores in Queens; Pelham Manor, N.Y.; and Stamford,
Conn. "What you have to be afraid of is hiring someone who can't find
something better at the time, and when they find something better they
leave you," Mr. Glickberg said. "I want to hire someone who will make a
career of it." The nation's largest private-sector employer, Wal-Mart
Stores, is also hiring aplenty. Wal-Mart, with 1.4 million workers
nationwide, hires several hundred thousand workers each year because of
employee turnover, and expects to increase its domestic work force by
nearly 50,000 this year, thanks to plans to open 150 new stores.
Shawnalyn Conner is running a hiring center for a Wal-Mart store that
will open on June 17 in Weaverville, N.C., near Asheville. She plans to
hire 350 workers. "The biggest comment that we get from people is that
they're looking for a company that's growing, and Wal-Mart offers that,"
said Ms. Conner, who, as the top manager of the new store, has hired 77
people so far. Gisel Ruiz, senior vice president for the people division
of Wal-Mart U.S., said the company had a hiring program for former
junior military officers, often for jobs as assistant store managers.
With many veterans having a hard time landing jobs, Wal-Mart hired 150
former officers last year. The health care industry has held its own in
hiring. The University of Miami medical school, which runs three
hospitals, has 250 openings and is hiring about 35 people a month,
compared with 100 a month in good times. Cleveland Clinic has 500 job
openings, compared with 2,000 during better times. "We have a hiring
freeze on, but even when there's a hiring freeze, we need to maintain
our head count," said Joe Patrnchak , Cleveland Clinic's chief human
resources officer. "We have 40,000 people, and you're going to have some
openings." He is encountering an unusual snag in hiring people. "A
challenge we have now is people from other areas are having problems
selling their homes," Mr. Patrnchak said. "People aren't quite as mobile
nowadays." The University of Miami medical school is also facing an
unexpected problem. "There's a flood of applicants, but even so, it's
harder to find really good, experienced people," said Paul Hudgins, its
associate vice president for medical human resources. "We're seeing
people hunkering down and saying they're going to stay where they are."
The recession has encouraged people to cling to their jobs. Just 1.5
percent of workers voluntarily quit their jobs in February, the lowest
level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting those
numbers eight years ago. Like many educational institutions, Washington
University in St. Louis continues to hire. It has 175 job openings in
admissions, residential life and other areas. There is a flood of job
applicants, and Ann Prenatt, vice chancellor for human resources, said
that has pros and cons, the advantage being that the university does not
have to offer large premiums as often to draw coveted applicants.