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via Renowned Writer Paul Theroux Critiques Philanthropy in Africa – Barrons.com by Paul Theroux
Renowned author Paul Theroux discusses why the philanthropy of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bono, and Jeffrey Sachs largely fails. Here's what works.
The desire of distant outsiders to fix Africa may be heartfelt, but it is also age-old and even quaint. Curiously repetitive in nature, renewed and revised every decade or so, it is an impulse Charles Dickens described, in a wickedly accurate phrase, as "telescopic philanthropy." That is, a focus from afar to uplift the continent: New York squinting compassionately at Nairobi.
Never have so many people, so many agencies, so many stratagems, so much money been deployed to improve Africa — and yet the majority of the movers are part-timers, merely dropping in, setting up a scheme in the much-mocked "the-safari-that-does-good" manner, then returning to their real lives, as hard-charging businessmen, Hollywood actors, benevolent billionaires, atoning ex-politicians, MacArthur geniuses, or rock stars in funny hats. It's not hard to imagine the future tombstones of the Clintons and Bono and Gates, and many others bitten by the eleemosynary itch, chiseled with the words, Telescopic Philanthropist. The farther away the donors are, the shorter their visits ("Chelsea Clinton took time out of her 10-day humanitarian trip in Africa to meet some of the kids that her AIDS work is benefiting…"), and the more passionate their feelings.
Never mind that Africa receives roughly $50 billion in aid annually from foreign governments, and perhaps $13 billion more from private philanthropic institutions, according to Penta's estimate. Never mind that Angola's oil revenues are around $72 billion, and Nigeria's $95 billion; that Africa boasts at least 55 verified and somewhat detached billionaires. I can testify that Africa is much worse off than when I first went there 50 years ago to teach English: poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed. It seems that much of the aid has made things worse.
I am not alone observing this fact. In his new book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, economist Angus Deaton questions the usefulness of all aid, and describes how the greater proportion of the world's poor are found not in Africa but in the booming, yet radically unequal, economies of China and India. Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo calls aid a "debilitating drug," arguing that "real per-capita income [in Africa] today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population — over 350 million people — live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades." The Kenyan economist James Shikwati takes this same line on aid, famously telling the German magazine Der Spiegel, "For God's sake, please stop."
There have, of course, been a few successes. For all his faults, Bill Clinton's strong-arming of pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of one-a-day AIDS medications, to less than a dollar per pill, has delivered real relief to Africa's most vulnerable. But we also need to be honest about such grandiose ambitions: Most fail. (For lessons on what to avoid and what to do in order to execute effective philanthropy in Africa, see the box at end of story.)
The most recent example of a Westerner running amok in Africa appears to be the celebrity-economist Jeffrey Sachs and his $120 million effort to end extreme poverty there. Nina Munk documents in her book The Idealist (see Penta Sept. 12) how, among other things, Sachs' Millennium Villages Project poured $2.5 million over three years into a sparsely populated community of nomadic camel herders in Dertu, Kenya, and trumpeted its success.
In actual fact, the charity's paid-for latrines became clogged and overflowing, the dormitories it erected quickly fell into disrepair, and the livestock market it built ignored local nomadic customs and was closed within a few months. An incensed Dertu citizen filed a 15-point written complaint against Sachs's operation, claiming it "created dependence" and that "the project is supposed to be bottom top approached but it is visa [sic] versa."
With such glaring examples of failure, the nature of African assistance is heading in a different direction. Today, there is a new push from wealthy Americans to jump-start self-help capitalism in Africa, rather than feed a bottomless pit of philanthropic aid, and in this group sit the likes of Howard G. Buffett, the philanthropist-farmer investing $100 million in the Great Lakes region of Africa (see Penta, Oct. 25); Ron Cordes, the co-chairman of Genworth Financial Wealth Management and a proponent of impact investing; and John Coors, the brewery scion and founder of CoorsTek, hoping to convince like-minded families to invest in a start-up African fund.
But are these efforts really so new? When Coors spoke to me of his One Thousand & One Voices (1K1V) mission — currently a 15-family effort to raise a $300 million Africa fund — he said, "We need to create jobs that people are proud of, and the best mechanism for creating jobs is business." I smiled in recognition. Coors was echoing the sentiments of one of the progenitors of the telescopic breed of Africanophiles, the English baronet Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845) — who was also made wealthy through his brewery and wished to fix Africa with family connections and beer profits.
ABOLITIONIST AND SOCIAL REFORMER Thomas Buxton urged in his book The African Slave Trade and its Remedy (1839) that a delegation sail to Africa to conclude treaties with African chiefs and kings, and convince them that, instead of capturing and exporting slaves, they could make a steadier (and more virtuous) profit in manufacture, and the selling of their produce. Through honest commerce, they could buy the guns, beads, cloth, and trinkets they desired. Buxton emphasized the then-novel view that the missionary impulse in Africa was not enough; trade was the key to improving the material side of the continent; business was salvation, at least here on earth.
Buxton's book inspired the Niger Expedition, an early version of the Clinton Global Initiative, which sailed to West Africa in 1841, but it failed, from death, disease, disillusionment and fever; and no treaties or business opportunities resulted. Yet a year earlier, a lecture by Buxton in London energized David Livingstone, who was in the audience. Livingstone set off that same year for Africa, his head filled with Buxtonian dreams of commerce on the Zambezi River, in his eyes a potential thoroughfare of prosperity. It is significant that in 33 years of travel Livingstone outlined many plans for commerce in Africa (white settlement, cotton growing, colonialism), but was a distracted messenger of the Lord's word. He managed to convert only one African to Christianity, according to Tim Jeal's exhaustive biography Livingstone (newly republished by Yale University Press), and the man later lapsed from the faith.
Buxton also inspired Charles Dickens, who was in his early thirties as a novelist at the time Buxton was preaching his message of legitimate trade. But this Dickensian inspiration was fictional. All potential telescopic philanthropists ought to read Bleak House, in which Dickens satirizes Buxton's effort in the minor but resonant character Mrs. Jellyby. She is a familiar figure and from her passions and predilections she might be one of our own contemporaries, paging through Barron's, studying the markets, seeking opportunities in mining and agri-business in Africa. "She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if… they could see nothing nearer than Africa!"
The idea of aiding the continent by bringing Western trade and commerce was first advocated by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and David Livingstone in the 19th century, and drolly skewered, even back then, by Charles Dickens. History continuously repeats itself in Africa. The grand philanthropic ambitions of Cecil Rhodes are found these days in the energetic works of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dickens knew the humiliations of poverty; his improvident father languished for months in Marshalsea Debtors' Prison. He is well-known for his depictions of the London poor in his novels, and he was familiar with benefactors (Great Expectations is, among other things, a study in money and patronage). The idea that Mrs. Jellyby — mother of numerous scattered children — ignores her family and spends her time in an effort to fix Africa, Dickens finds a subject ripe for satire. Like Buxton, she ignores the squalor and the culture of paupers in London that pained Dickens and informed his fiction, and as a fundraiser she seeks redemption through her colonists on the Niger River.
It is the most modern of paradoxes. When Mrs. Jellyby says, "We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger," she is echoing not only Buxton, but the mission statement of many modern NGOs and family foundations today. And Mrs. Jellyby's "coffee colonists" will have a further duty: "to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade."
I am not criticizing the humane desire to help. My modest point is that, for all the talk of "reinvention," aid to Africa has been discussed in exactly the same terms for 173 years. "Microfinance is the way forward," Ron Cordes, head of the Cordes Foundation, assured me. "We financed an initiative in Uganda. A small fund to provide loans for the village of Buyobo. The work we're doing is influenced by the business I had — business services, banking the unbanked, assisting people in going up the ladder."
That too is Buxtonism, and it's not wrong, it might even work in a small way; it's just nothing new. And as a matter of fact the tiny village of Buyobo is not a benighted clearing in the Impenetrable Forest; it is a short drive from the prosperous Ugandan town of Mbale, with its 17 banks and three universities. I know this to be so. Working in adult education at Uganda's Makerere University, I supervised programs for extra-mural students from Mbale (and Buyobo), and economics was part of the curriculum.
That was 40 years ago — see what I mean by repetition?
MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF AFRICA began at the end of the colonial period, in 1963, in Nyasaland, later Malawi. During the 50 years since, I have listened to the rubious generalities of telescopic philanthropists; I have been one myself — perhaps I still am. I remain in touch with my fellow teachers and some former students; I watch developments in Africa, have written two travel books about traipsing through the continent, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (2003), and The Last Train to Zona Verde: Overland from Cape Town to Angola (2013). I give money to help fund an orphanage in Malawi. Out of a population of 15 million people, one million Malawians are orphans, mainly AIDS orphans, the relief of whom is a difficult task for all concerned, but in fact not many Malawians are concerned, another paradox, if not disillusionment, for the aid-givers.
The lamentable fact of so many orphans is something the new investment-minded donors, scornful of check-writing philanthropy, seem to overlook. Unless an orphanage is turned into a Dickensian workhouse, with manual labor as its primary purpose, there is no way for such an institution to turn a profit; and so such places depend on cash handouts, nearly all from telescopic philanthropists, and meanwhile the orphans, like the ones in Malawi Children's Village, try to be self-sufficient by tending vegetable gardens, doing household chores, helping with the upkeep and at the same time studying at local schools.
For two years in Malawi, I worked at a secondary school attached to teacher-training Soche Hill College outside the southern highlands town of Limbe. Our mission was to educate younger students, who would then join the college, become teachers and replace the American volunteers. When I returned to my hilltop school and college almost 40 years later, I was dismayed to find that foreign teachers were still the mainstay of the faculty. There remained a dire shortage of Malawi teachers; this is still the case.
This suggests a reason why Africa can't move forward. Training teachers has been a priority of the post-colonial African government of independent Malawi; education was equated with economic salvation. Now, 50 years later, the education system in Malawi is still faltering. Why? Because teaching as a profession in Malawi, and many parts of Africa, is undervalued, if not despised, and poorly paid. Besides, you can always find a foreign teacher willing to do the work: American, British, Japanese, Australian.
"Americans like working in the bush," my African friends used to tell me, and they were probably right. Jiving a little they would add, "We prefer city life." With an almost unlimited supply of foreign teachers sponsored by their own governments, what incentive is there for any African ministry of education to improve conditions? I thought I was part of the solution in Malawi, and the experience changed my life in profound ways — as a man, as a writer, as a traveler; but I see I was part of the problem. The obvious conclusion is that an unlimited supply of foreign teachers funded from the outside makes it possible for Africans to avoid having to spend their lives in a classroom in the bush. What is never commented upon is that the spirit of volunteerism that vitalizes foreign teachers in Africa has not created a similar enthusiasm among enough Africans themselves to take on these tasks.
When I voiced these experiences and apparent contradiction to John Coors, he said he was not deterred. On one of his visits to Kenya, he had an epiphany, he said. Driven to do good and unrelated to the profit motive, he flew a team of dentists and doctors to a village and let it be known that a clinic would be open to treat anyone in the immediate area. In the event, thousands of afflicted people showed up, and over the course of three days many hundreds of people received tooth extractions, root canals, and fillings, and medical needs were met.
The American medical team returned home after three days, "and thousands of people who had been waiting were left untreated," Coors said to me, in tones of genuine concern. He has repeated this story in other interviews, speaking of his "catalyzing moment" and his subsequent move to impact investing. But wait, I said. There is an institution in Kenya called The University of Nairobi School of Dental Sciences. It started as the Department (in the Medical School) of Dental Surgery in 1974 with 18 students, and it has grown, with German government aid, to a university dental school.
The catalyzing moment for me is not that Kenya has no dentists in that village, but the obvious fact that Kenya has been training dentists since 1974, almost 40 years, perhaps thousands of them. And yet there are none in sight — none for those many upcountry with toothaches, witnessed by John Coors. If Kenyan dentists are not willing to travel a few hundred miles into the highlands or the bush to see to the needs of their fellow citizens, why should American dentists travel 10,000 miles to do so? That question also contains the answer: because American telescopic philanthropists provide health care for Kenya and many other African countries, there is little incentive for local doctors to engage in philanthropy.
Uganda, just a short distance up the road, has had a medical school for much longer than Kenya. Makerere University Medical School (as it is known now) has been in existence since 1924 — my eldest son was born in Mulago Hospital, the teaching hospital in Kampala, where I lived, as a member of the faculty of Makerere, for four years after leaving Malawi. There are similar medical schools all over Africa, even in Zambia and Malawi now, places where — another paradox — doctors, dentists, and nurses are in short supply and are eagerly provided by the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, to name just two of the active billion-dollar philanthropies.
My experience with the teachers in Malawi might explain this paradox. With so many outsiders willing to travel upcountry to improve the state of health care, African doctors tend to stay in better-paying jobs in urban areas, or simply leave the country altogether for places where doctors are held in high esteem and amply rewarded. And the well-funded work on AIDS and antiretroviral drug therapy, known as ART, for HIV/AIDS patients, means that many local doctors are lured into these areas. Foreign donors guarantee better salaries and incentives, allowing them to bypass the crucial work of day-to-day doctoring.
Another ominous trend in Africa is the phenomenal pace of urbanization — people flocking to cities, looking for work and finding none, and creating another circle of Hell in the shantytowns of Nairobi, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, and Luanda. Three-quarters of the four million people in the shantytowns of Dar es Salaam have no plumbing, according to my local doctor friend. A lack of facilities is no discouragement: African cities are growing so fast it is estimated that by 2030 half of all Africans will live in them.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I got used to the shocked reaction of newcomers to my district, who believed, faced with mud huts, thatched roofs, and barefoot villagers, that they were seeing destitution. A mud hut and thatched roof is, in fact, renewed every few years; the cement structures and tin roofs built by well-meaning NGOs create maintenance problems. A permanent structure often turns into an unfixable ruin.
Underlying all of Africa's problems are the infernalities of bad government. Rhodesia did not become independent Zimbabwe until 1980, when Robert Mugabe assumed power. Thirty-three years later, aged 89, with a young shopaholic second wife, he is still president. Mugabe's policy of violently taking over the white-owned farms has turned Zimbabwe from a well-fed exporter of food to a hungry republic, dependent on handouts from the UN World Food Program and the aid of foreign charities, such as the International Rescue Committee. In October this year, in the country where I help support the orphanage, Malawian President Joyce Banda sacked her entire cabinet for their wholesale thievery of public funds.
I raised the question of government corruption with a number of the new donors, and one surprised me by saying, "It is possible to run successful businesses even in a country where the government is corrupt."
In my experience, a corrupt government, in Africa and elsewhere, always a blighting force, expects a share of profits from successful businesses, just as the Mafia preys on commercial success, in the form of protection rackets. While I lived in Malawi, Indian shopkeepers were routinely shaken down for contributions — both money and merchandise — by hacks from the ruling Malawi Congress Party. In Kenya, as the serving Indian ambassador told me with a sigh, President Jomo Kenyatta demanded the personal gift of Indian-made tractors for his family farm.
These are trifling examples of what is a general tendency; the thefts by one politician in Zambia, as revealed in court in 2007, ran to over $50 million, and as I described in detail in my last book of African travels, oil-rich Angola is rife with corruption. A western diplomat in West Africa told me recently how China has become the new briber and enabler in the continent.
Consider the cautionary tale of Mo Ibrahim. To encourage good governance, Ibrahim, the Sudanese telecom billionaire, established a multimillion-dollar prize "to reward democratically elected African leaders who retire voluntarily at the conclusion of their mandated terms after displaying strong qualities of governance and leadership."
In seven years, it has been awarded only three times, and this year it has again gone unclaimed.
It is provable that the most corrupt and oppressive governments in Africa are the wealthiest — the oil economies of Nigeria and Angola being prime examples of this malaise — while the more transparent governments — Ghana, Cape Verde, Botswana and South Africa — are better for business.
When I began teaching in Malawi, in the first years of an independent government, my students spoke dreamily of wishing to build the nation. No one talked about emigrating. But on my trips through Africa in the past dozen years, all I hear in classrooms, in markets, on buses and trains, is the desire to flee. They emigrate and they shine. That's the universal human drive when corruption has quashed all hope: The most ambitious go where they stand a fighting chance to prosper quietly and safely and raise a family in peace.
My students made me aware that, to see a foreign donor or dignitary hob-nobbing with the hated head of state, is to be severely undermined. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni was visited in 1998 by U.S. President Bill Clinton, who described him as "the head of a new breed of African leaders." Then Museveni invaded and tried to overthrow the governments of the Congo and Rwanda, rigged elections, and disdained gays; he no longer seemed like a new breed.
In its naked reality, Africa, the greenest continent, is still the most beautiful, the least developed, the wildest on earth. Vast plains, big animals, hospitable people, who have been enslaved, sidelined, colonized, and converted willy-nilly either to Christianity or Islam. This receptive amphitheater of goodwill and big game, inspires megalomania among its foreign visitors who strut upon it — it has always done so, for those who seek the singularity of a little excitement and glory. I sometimes think that if the poorer counties of America's Deep South had rhinos and elephants, instead of raccoons and possums, the philanthropists might direct their attentions to those parts, too.
A rich white donor in black Africa is a study in high contrast that puts one in mind of the gallery of role models: Tarzan, Mr. Kurtz, King Leopold, Cecil Rhodes, Livingstone, Mrs. Jellyby, Albert Schweitzer, Hemingway, Henderson the Rain King: the overlords, the opportunists, the exploiters, the visionaries, the hunters, the care-givers, the baptizers, the saviors, all of them preaching the gospel of reform and seeking a kingdom of their own, if not an empire.
Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century American author, believed that all such outgoing people had something discreditable in their past that through giving they aimed to expiate.
And all are characterized by the rather touching innocence of a billionaire faced with the brutal truth that the relative simplicity of acquiring wealth is nothing compared to the extreme difficulty of giving money away, for the common good.
The real helpers are not the schemers and grandstanders of the eponymous family foundations or charities; they are nameless ill-paid volunteers who spend years in the bush, learning the language and helping in small-scale manageable projects, digging wells, training mid-wives, teaching villagers that unprotected sex spreads HIV; and among these stalwarts are the long-serving teachers who have liberated Africans by simply teaching them English, and are still doing so, even as they make the local governments lazier.
The so-called White Fathers (the Society of Missionaries of Africa) I met in Malawi who ran upcountry clinics used to say, "I guess I'll be buried here."
No one ever says that now, and significantly none of the people I spoke with for this piece ever expressed a wish to spend any serious length of time in Africa. None speaks an African language. To the detriment of their aims, they are on better terms with the African politicians than the common ruck of African people.
Years living simply on the ground in Africa convinced me that there was more for me to learn from Africans than to teach. I saw there were many satisfactions in the lives of people who were apparently poor; many deficits in the lives of the very wealthy. I saw that African families were large and complex and interdependent; that old age was revered, that Africa's link to the distant past — to the dawn of the world — was something marvelous and still intact in many places.
Most of all, I was impressed by the self-sufficiency of ordinary people. Without much in the way of outside help, the people in the countries I knew managed to endure, usually through the simplest traditional means, and finally to prevail. Africa has the schools, the money and the resources to fix its own problems; it's appalling to think of donors telling them otherwise, of the whole continent terminally indebted and living on handouts.
African Philanthropy Done Right
Foundation Source is the philanthropic advisor and partner to over 1,100 family foundations. Penta asked the organization's chief philanthropic officer, Page Snow, to provide some basic guidelines on how to successfully execute philanthropic projects in Africa. Her advice:
Beware the panacea. Millions of dollars are wasted on overly ambitious projects claiming to be a 'killer app." Projects that employ tried-and-true interventions, narrower in scope, usually have far greater impact.
Demand responsible management. Ask tough questions if money is flowing into a charity, but isn't flowing out to charitable causes.
Avoid duplication. Be aware of other efforts already on the ground and make sure that your program isn't a wasteful repeat but, preferably, leverages off what's there.
Support local, sustainable solutions. Avoid short term fixes by always seeking input from locals; plan for them to run the project on their own in the long-run.
Beware of poor infrastructure projects. Make sure wells are dug where they're actually needed, that the bridges and roads are integrated into existing plans by government or other NGOs.
Use technology intelligently. Over 90% of households across sub-Saharan Africa don't have access to electricity for their everyday needs, let alone power for laptops. Make sure locals have the skills, resources, and necessary tools to keep tech-dependent elements of your philanthropic project running.
Be prepared to face corruption. Even when a project has been granted governmental approvals, there's no guarantee of official cooperation; corruption and regional conflicts pose considerable challenges.
Be culturally appropriate. Put on your anthropologist's hat. Africans have their own process for dealing with grief and loss; Western-style grief counselors following a natural disaster or war aren't appropriate.
For more lessons on how to conduct effective philanthropy in Africa, please see this list of five charities that have been successful on the ground — and why precisely. The list will surprise you.


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Above is the new island bench we had made for the Kitchen with a white carrara marble benchtop.
I had this large bookcase custom built to cover the entire wall at the end of our new room so that it could house my large collection of magazines, books and pieces. I had to let my husband have one thing in this entire renovation and that was having the t.v. in this bookcase. I'm usually not a fan of t.v.'s on show but I gave in!!
I wanted to use wallpaper somewhere in the house and as I have alot of artwork I didn't want the house to look too cluttered with wallpaper as well so I decided to use this Manuel Canovas paper in the W.C. to add some interest and fun to a usually not so interesting room!!
Hello again. I know you've all been waiting so patiently for this........
We still have a few more things to do which include building a new garage pavillion which will also have a little room to house our treadmill, renovating the other bathroom in the house, doing some new cabinetry in the kitchen, planting some garden beds and skim coating the exterior brickwork of the house which we plan to paint white...but all in good time and anyway I think would get bored if I didn't have a little project or two going on!! I hope you enjoy sneaking a peak inside our home. Thanks for dropping by!


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WASHINGTON (AP) — Government agencies are already taking steps to comply with automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect Friday.
—Defense Department
One of the Navy's premiere warships, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, sits pier-side in Norfolk, Va., its tour of duty delayed.
The carrier and its 5,000-person crew were to leave for the Persian Gulf on Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg.
—Department of Homeland Security
Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been freed from jail across the country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they had reviewed several hundred cases of immigrants and decided to put them on an "appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release" in a moved started Tuesday.
Other impacts that are in the offing.
— The economy
President Barack Obama says the sequester will cause a "tumble downward" for the economy. He acknowledges many people may not immediately notice the full impact of the so-called sequester cuts if they take effect Friday. But he says yanking $85 billion from the economy this year would be a "big hit" on a nation still trying to fully recover from a recession.
—Congressional trips
Congressional trips overseas likely will take a hit. House Speaker John Boehner told Republican members in a closed-door meeting that he's suspending the use of military aircraft for official trips by House members. Lawmakers typically travel on military planes for fact-finding trips to Afghanistan or Pakistan, or other congressional excursions to foreign locales.
—Military Intelligence
Pentagon investments in countering cyber threats and nuclear proliferation will be at risk, says Michael Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. And the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, says the agency could be hit hard because it depends heavily on military and civilian personnel to accomplish its mission.
—U.S. Coast Guard
Coast Guard rescue aircraft will fly fewer hours and cutters will patrol the seas for fewer hours, says the service's Commandant Adm. Robert J. Papp.
Emergencies will be a priority and interdictions of illegal immigrants, drugs and illegal fishing could decline.
—Health Care
Hospitals, doctors and other Medicare providers will see a 2 percent cut in government reimbursements because once cutback takes effect, Medicare will reimburse them at 98 cents on the dollar.
But they aren't complaining because the pain could be a lot worse if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans actually did reach a sweeping agreement to reduce federal deficits. Automatic cuts taking effect Friday would reduce Medicare spending by about $100 billion over a decade. But Obama had put on the table $400 billion in health care cuts, mainly from Medicare. And Republicans wanted more.
—Transportation Department
The nation's busiest airports could be forced to close some of their runways, causing widespread flight delays and cancellations.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood predicts flights to cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco could have delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours because fewer controllers will be on duty.
Though the spending cuts are scheduled to go into effect on Friday, furloughs of controllers won't kick in until April because the Federal Aviation Administration is required by law to give its employees advance notice. In addition to furloughs, the FAA is planning to eliminate midnight shifts for air traffic controllers at 60 airport towers, close over 100 control towers at smaller airports and reduce preventative maintenance of equipment.
—Federal workers
More than half of the nation's 2.1 million government workers may be required to take furloughs if agencies are forced to trim budgets.
At the Pentagon alone that could mean 800,000 civilian workers would be off for 22 days each, spread across more than five months — and lose 20 percent of their pay over that period.
Other federal agencies are likely to furlough several hundred thousand more workers.
Some 70,000 students currently enrolled in pre-kindergarten Head Start would be cut from the program and 14,000 teachers would lose their jobs. For students with special needs, the cuts would eliminate some 7,200 teachers and aides. Up to 29 million student loan borrowers and some lenders may have to lay off staff or even close; some of the 15 million college students who receive grants or work-study assignments at some 6,000 colleges would also see changes.
—National parks
Visiting hours at all 398 national parks are likely to be cut and sensitive areas would be blocked off to the public. Thousands of seasonal workers looking for jobs would not be hired, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Salazar and National Park Service director Jon Jarvis said visitors would encounter fewer rangers, locked restrooms and trashcans emptied less frequently.
—Food and Drug Adminstration Food and Drug Administration
Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says the lack of a new 2013 budget from Congress and the upcoming across-the-board spending cuts will mean fewer food safety inspections and an increased risk to consumers.
The cuts could delay a new food safety law that requires the agency to boost inspections and directs farms and food facilities to ensure their food is safe.
The FDA has said the across-the-board cuts due Friday mean 2,100 fewer food safety inspections this year, though Hamburg said in an interview with The Associated Press that the number is an estimate. She said most of the effects wouldn't be felt for a while, and the agency won't have to furlough workers.


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Background: Current prognostic gene signatures for breast cancer mainly reflect proliferation status and have limited value in triple-negative (TNBC) cancers. The identification of prognostic signatures from TNBC cohorts was limited in the past due to small sample sizes.
Methodology/Principal Findings: We assembled all currently publically available TNBC gene expression datasets generated on Affymetrix gene chips. Inter-laboratory variation was minimized by filtering methods for both samples and genes. Supervised analysis was performed to identify prognostic signatures from 394 cases which were subsequently tested on an independent validation cohort (n = 261 cases).
Conclusions/Significance: Using two distinct false discovery rate thresholds, 25% and <3.5%, a larger (n = 264 probesets) and a smaller (n = 26 probesets) prognostic gene sets were identified and used as prognostic predictors. Most of these genes were positively associated with poor prognosis and correlated to metagenes for inflammation and angiogenesis. No correlation to other previously published prognostic signatures (recurrence score, genomic grade index, 70-gene signature, wound response signature, 7-gene immune response module, stroma derived prognostic predictor, and a medullary like signature) was observed. In multivariate analyses in the validation cohort the two signatures showed hazard ratios of 4.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.71–9.48; P = 0.001) and 4.08 (95% CI 1.79–9.28; P = 0.001), respectively. The 10-year event-free survival was 70% for the good risk and 20% for the high risk group. The 26-gene signatures had modest predictive value (AUC = 0.588) to predict response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, however, the combination of a B-cell metagene with the prognostic signatures increased its response predictive value. We identified a 264-gene prognostic signature for TNBC which is unrelated to previously known prognostic signatures.
Introduction: Current prognostic gene expression profiles for breast cancer mainly reflect proliferation status and are most useful in ER-positive cancers. Triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) are clinically heterogeneous and prognostic markers and biology-based therapies are needed to better treat this disease.
Methods: We assembled Affymetrix gene expression data for 579 TNBC and performed unsupervised analysis to define metagenes that distinguish molecular subsets within TNBC. We used n = 394 cases for discovery and n = 185 cases for validation. Sixteen metagenes emerged that identified basal-like, apocrine and claudin-low molecular subtypes, or reflected various non-neoplastic cell populations, including immune cells, blood, adipocytes, stroma, angiogenesis and inflammation within the cancer. The expressions of these metagenes were correlated with survival and multivariate analysis was performed, including routine clinical and pathological variables.
Results: Seventy-three percent of TNBC displayed basal-like molecular subtype that correlated with high histological grade and younger age. Survival of basal-like TNBC was not different from non basal-like TNBC. High expression of immune cell metagenes was associated with good and high expression of inflammation and angiogenesis-related metagenes were associated with poor prognosis. A ratio of high B-cell and low IL-8 metagenes identified 32% of TNBC with good prognosis (hazard ratio (HR) 0.37, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.61; P < 0.001) and was the only significant predictor in multivariate analysis including routine clinicopathological variables.
Conclusions: We describe a ratio of high B-cell presence and low IL-8 activity as a powerful new prognostic marker for TNBC. Inhibition of the IL-8 pathway also represents an attractive novel therapeutic target for this disease.


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Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Lesson #19: How to Identify your Competition
Posted By: George Deeb - 4/19/2011Webster's Dictionary defines a competitor as "one buying and selling goods or services in the same market as another." Pretty self explanatory at the high level. But, I can't tell you how many times executives do not properly assess their full competitive set. The goal of this post is to teach you how best to not miss any competitor that could get between you and your goals.
I typically start with high level industry research. Find the major trade association in your industry and see who they are talking about as key players in your space. Then do Google searches with the same keywords that will be important for your business, to see who is advertising around those keywords. If those keywords are important to those advertisers, they are most likely directly competitive with you for all, or at least a part, of their businesses. That should pick up the launched businesses. But, you should also look in the venture capital funding records at sites like Crunch Base and Venture Beat, as well as as searching patent registrations at the USPTO to see if anything new is in the works, that directly overlaps with your business.
Once the high level research is done, you need to start digging even deeper. This will include asking prospective customers of your business, if they are aware of any similar businesses in the market. And, similar businesses could also include tangential businesses that could easily pivot into your space if you are successful. For example, if you are launching an online restaurant reservation software, competition could easily pop up from tangential players like point of sale register manufacturers (e.g., Micros, Radiant) or other large online businesses in the restaurant space (e.g., Restaurant.com, OpenTable.com, Zagat.com).
Another example includes making sure you think about all players that are aggressively going after the same target audience, even if in very different businesses. Let's say you are building a fishing website. In addition to all the fishing websites, you are also competing with magazines like Field & Stream, cable networks likes Sportsman Channel, retailers like Cabela's, fishing gear manufacturers like Daredevil lures and online portals like Yahoo (that may have a fishing content section). All of these businesses will be putting a lot of consumer marketing muscle to work to own the online fishing space, so prepare for a lot of competition from many different businesses all looking for the same fisherman eyeballs.
Once you fully assess who your current or potential competitors are, then you have to assess their strengths (e.g., customer base, revenue base, cash resources, product offering) and weaknesses to see if you can build a better "mouse trap" within your budget. Some companies decide not to move forward at this point, because it is simply too much of an uphill battle to win the space, or will require much more monies than are available to spend. But, if you are confident you can offer a better product, better pricing, better marketing tactics or bigger budgets than your competitors, then "bring it on!"
For future posts, please follow me at: www.twitter.com/georgedeeb


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KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An out-of-control natural gas well off the Louisiana coast has caught fire, hours after a blowout that prompted the evacuation of 44 workers.
Meanwhile, officials stressed that Tuesday's blowout wouldn't be close to as damaging as the 2010 BP oil spill, in which an oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers and eventually spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
No injuries were reported as a result of Tuesday night's fire, Eileen Angelico, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, told The Associated Press.
She said it wasn't known what caused the gas to ignite. It also wasn't clear early Wednesday how and when crews would attempt to extinguish the blaze. BSEE said earlier Tuesday that a firefighting vessel with water and foam capabilities had been dispatched to the scene.
Wild Well Control Inc. was hired to try to bring the well under control. Angelico said Wild Well personnel approached the well earlier Tuesday night, before the fire, but they determined it was unsafe to get closer when they were about 200 feet away from it.
The gas blowout was reported Tuesday morning.
The Coast Guard kept nautical traffic out of an area within 500 meters of the site throughout the day. The Federal Aviation Administration restricted aircraft up to 2,000 feet above the area.
BSEE said inspectors flying over the site soon after the blowout saw a light sheen covering an area about a half-mile by 50 feet. However, it was dissipating quickly.
Earlier this month, a gas well off the Louisiana coast flowed for several days before being sealed.
Chris Roberts, a member of the Jefferson Parish Council in south Louisiana, said the travel restrictions might pose an inconvenience for participants in an upcoming deep sea fishing tournament.
"It could change some plans as to where some people plan to fish," he said.
Tuesday's blowout occurred near an unmanned offshore gas platform that was not currently producing natural gas, said Angelico. The workers were aboard a portable drilling rig known as a jackup rig, owned by Hercules Offshore Inc., which was a contractor for exploration and production company Walter Oil & Gas Corp.
Walter Oil & Gas reported to the BSEE that the rig was completing a "sidetrack well" — a means of re-entering the original well bore, Angelico said.
The purpose of the sidetrack well in this instance was not immediately clear. A spokesman for the corporation did not have the information Tuesday night. Industry websites say sidetrack wells are sometimes drilled to remedy a problem with the existing well bore.
"It's a way to overcome an engineering problem with the original well," Ken Medlock, an energy expert at Rice University's Baker Institute said. "They're not drilled all the time, but it's not new."
Associated Press writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston contributed to this story.


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Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in Children
What is non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL)?
NHL is cancer in the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is part of the immune system and functions to fight disease and infections.
The lymphatic system includes the following:
Lymph fluid. Fluid containing lymphocyte cells.
Lymph vessels. Thin tubes that carry lymph fluid throughout the body.
Lymphocytes. Specific white blood cells that fight infections and disease.
Lymph nodes. Bean-sized organs, found in the underarm, groin, neck, chest, abdomen, and other parts of the body, that act as filters for the lymph fluid as it circulates through the body.
NHL causes the cells in the lymphatic system to abnormally reproduce, eventually causing tumors to grow. The cells can also spread to other organs and tissues in the body.
Lymphomas (including both Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas) are the third most common childhood cancer in the U.S. About 800 cases of NHL are diagnosed in children and teens in the U.S. each year. They can occur at any age from infancy to adulthood.
NHL affects males more often than females, and is more common among white children than among African-American children and children of other races.
Staging and classification of non-Hodgkin lymphoma is based on the extent of the disease and the specific cells involved.
What are the different types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma?
NHL in children is almost always one of three types:
Lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin lymphoma accounts for about 30 percent of the cases, usually involves the T-cells (T-lymphocytes), and typically presents with a mass in the chest, swollen lymph node(s), with or without bone marrow and central nervous system involvement.
Burkitt's and non-Burkitt's lymphoma. Burkitt's and non-Burkitt's lymphoma are fast-growing lymphomas in which the cells are undifferentiated and diffuse. This has also been referred to as small noncleaved cells. Burkitt's and non-Burkitt's lymphoma accounts for about 40 percent of the cases. They are usually characterized by a large abdominal tumor and may have bone marrow and central nervous system involvement.
Large cell or diffuse histiocytic non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Large cell or diffuse histiocytic non-Hodgkin involves the B-cells or T-cells and accounts for about 25 percent of the cases. Children with this type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma usually have lymphatic system involvement, as well as a nonlymph structure (such as lung, jaw, skin, and bone) involvement. Anaplastic large cell lymphoma is a type of large cell lymphoma in children. Large cell lymphomas usually do not grow as quickly as other lymphomas in children.
How is non-Hodgkin lymphoma staged?
Staging is the process of determining whether cancer has spread and, if so, how far. There are various staging symptoms that are used for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Always consult your child's doctor for information on staging. One method of staging non-Hodgkin lymphoma is the following:
Stage I. The lymphoma is at one site, either nodal or elsewhere in the body, but not in the chest or abdomen.
Stage II. The lymphoma is at two or more sites on the same side of the body (above or below the diaphragm), but not in the chest.
Stage III. The lymphoma is in the chest or spine, or it has spread widely in the abdomen, or it is both above and below the diaphragm, but it does not involve bone marrow or the central nervous system.
Stage IV. Any lymphoma that has bone marrow and/or central nervous system involvement when it is first found.
What causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma?
The specific cause of non-Hodgkin lymphoma is unclear. It is possible that genetics and exposure to viral infections may increase the risk for developing this malignancy. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma has also been linked to chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Non-Hodgkin may be a second malignancy as a result of the treatment for certain cancers.
There has been much investigation into the association of the Epstein-Barr virus that causes the mononucleosis infection, as well as HIV, which causes AIDS. Both of these infectious viruses have been linked to the development of Burkitt's lymphoma.
Children and adults with certain hereditary immune system abnormalities have an increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including patients with ataxia telangiectasia, X-linked lymphoproliferative disease, or Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome. People who have had organ transplants and need to take medicines to suppress their immune systems are also at increased risk.
What are the symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma?
In many cases, non-Hodgkin lymphoma in children may not cause symptoms until it has grown or spread. Most children have stage III or IV disease at the time of diagnosis because of the sudden onset of symptoms and the fact that these lymphomas tend to grow very quickly. The disease can sometimes progress quickly from a few days to a few weeks. A child can go from otherwise healthy to having multisystem involvement in a short time period.
Some children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma have symptoms of an abdominal mass and have complaints of abdominal pain, fever, constipation, and decreased appetite due to the pressure and obstruction a large tumor in this area can cause.
Some children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma have symptoms of a mass in their chest and have complaints of respiratory problems, pain with deep breaths (dyspnea), cough, and/or wheezing. Lymphomas in the chest can also press on a main blood vessel (the superior vena cava), which can cause swelling and a bluish coloration in the head and arms. If left unchecked, it can also affect the brain and may even be life-threatening.
The following are the most common symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, each child may experience the symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
Painless swelling of the lymph nodes in neck, chest, abdomen, underarm, or groin
Sore throat
Fullness in groin area from node involvement
Bone and joint pain
Night sweats
Tiring easily (fatigue)
Weight loss/decreased appetite
Itching of the skin
Recurring infections
The symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma may resemble other blood disorders or medical problems. Always consult your child's doctor for a diagnosis.
How is non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosed?
In addition to a complete medical history and physical examination, diagnostic procedures for non-Hodgkin lymphoma may include:
Blood and urine tests
Lymph node biopsy. A sample of tissue is removed from the lymph node and examined under a microscope. This test is needed to confirm a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
X-rays of the chest. The use of invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs onto film. This test is sometimes done to see if the lymphoma has spread to lymph nodes in the chest.
Computed tomography scan of the abdomen, chest, and pelvis (also called a CT or CAT scan). A diagnostic imaging procedure that uses a combination of X-rays and computer technology to produce images (often called slices) of the body. A CT scan shows detailed images of any part of the body, including the bones, muscles, fat, and organs. CT scans are more detailed than general X-rays.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scan. Radioactive-tagged glucose (sugar) is injected into the bloodstream. Tissues that use the glucose more than normal tissues (such as tumors) can be detected by a scanning machine. The images from a PET scan are not finely detailed like a CT or a MRI scan, but they can show areas of increased cellular activity anywhere in the body, even if they don't show up on other tests. PET scans can be used to find small tumors or to check if treatment for a known tumor is working. Many medical centers now have machines that combine PET and CT scans (PET/CT scanners), which let doctors compare the information from the PET scan with the detailed image of the CT scan.
Magnetic resonance imaging (also called an MRI scan). MRIs use radio waves and magnets. The energy from the radio waves creates patterns formed by different types of tissue and diseases. This produces detailed cross-sectional pictures that look like slices of the body. This test is helpful in examining the brain and spinal cord. Or it may be used if the results of an X-ray or CT scan aren't entirely clear.
Ultrasound (also called sonography). A diagnostic imaging technique that uses high-frequency sound waves and a computer to create images of blood vessels, tissues, and organs. Ultrasounds are used to view internal organs as they function, and to assess blood flow through various vessels.
Bone marrow aspiration and/or biopsy. A procedure that involves taking a small amount of bone marrow fluid (aspiration) and/or solid bone marrow tissue (called a core biopsy), usually from the hip bones, to be examined for the number, size, and maturity of blood cells and/or abnormal cells. This test is done to see if the lymphoma has reached the bone marrow.
Lumbar puncture. A special needle is placed into the lower back, into the spinal canal (the area around the spinal cord). This is done to evaluate central nervous system disease for cancer cells. A small amount of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) can be removed and sent for testing. CSF is the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord.
Removal of fluids from the chest or abdomen
Treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Specific treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma will be determined by your child's doctor based on:
Your child's age, overall health, and medical history
The type, location, and extent of the disease
Your child's tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies
The expectations for the course of the disease
Your opinion or preference
Treatment may include (alone or in combination):
Radiation therapy
Monoclonal antibodies
High-dose chemotherapy with a stem cell transplant
Antibiotics to prevent or treat infections
Supportive care for side effects of treatment
Long-term follow-up care to determine response to treatment, detect recurrent disease, and manage late effects of treatment
Long-term outlook for a child with non-Hodgkin lymphoma
With modern treatments, most children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma can be cured. But the prognosis greatly depends on:
The type of lymphoma
The extent of the disease
The presence or absence of metastasis
The response to therapy
Age and overall health of the child
Your child's tolerance of specific medications, procedures, or therapies
New developments in treatment
As with any cancer, prognosis and long-term survival can vary greatly from child to child. Every child is unique and treatment and prognosis is structured around the child. Prompt medical attention and aggressive therapy are important for the best prognosis. Continuous follow-up care is essential for the child diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Side effects of radiation and chemotherapy, as well as second malignancies, can occur in survivors of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. New methods are continually being discovered to improve treatment and to decrease side effects.
Online Medical Reviewer:
Date Last Reviewed: 2/2/2014
© 2000-2020 The StayWell Company, LLC. 800 Township Line Road, Yardley, PA 19067. All rights reserved. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. Always follow your healthcare professional's instructions.


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By Candace Gibson
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
As we saw in the elections, political pundits were somehow shocked that Latino voters came out to support Democratic candidates.
Many think that the Latino community is by nature conservative, but this is far from reality. Who can forget that 75% of Latinos swept President Obama to victory and that 77% voted for the Democratic House candidates? And you can hardly say that all Latinas are conservative: they supported Obama with 77% of their votes.
So it comes to no surprise to us that the Mexican Supreme Court paved the path for same-sex marriage in all 31 states of Mexico last week. In a unanimous ruling, they struck down a same-sex marriage ban in Oaxaca, building off of a 2010 decision that held that same-sex marriages in Mexico City must be recognized nationwide.
Mexico isn't the only Latin American country where marriage equality is becoming the norm. Just recently, a same-sex marriage bill passed the first round of Senate votes in Colombia. In Uruguay, their legislature is on the cusp of legalizing same-sex marriage, extending the right to all individuals regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.
Although the Mexican Supreme Court ruling strengthens the legal arguments for same-sex marriage in both the United States and in other parts of Latin America, this decision is exciting because it contradicts the unconsciously accepted idea that all Latinos are conservative.
And it's not that Latinos are socially liberal just on same-sex marriage (55% percent of Latinos support it), but that we support a wide range of social justice issues.
In Maryland, Latinos voted for both marriage equality and for their state's DREAM Act. In Florida, with our awesome partners, Mi Lola, we defeated Amendment 6 which would have further restricted insurance coverage for abortions.
In fact, we knew that we would defeat legislation like Amendment 6 because of a study we conducted a few years ago. In partnership with Lake Research Partners and Reproductive Health Technologies Project, we found that 74% of Latino registered voters agree that a woman has a right to make her own personal decisions about abortion without political interference and that 67% would support close friends and family members who choose to have one.
When it comes down to it, we not only want immigration reform, but we also demand marriage equality, reproductive freedom, economic justice and fair and just solutions to the other social problems our communities face.
Politicians know that they can no longer divide us but that they have to represent all of us.
Candace Gibson is a Reproductive Justice Fellow and Policy Analyst with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health based in Washington, DC.


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From 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each weekday, Josue Lajeunesse is one of Princeton University's 220 Building Services janitors. But off campus, Lajeunesse is a taxi driver, a father, a philanthropist, a community organizer and now the subject of a documentary film.
A native of Haiti who has worked at Princeton for 15 years, Lajeunesse is featured in the documentary "The Philosopher Kings," which tells the stories of eight janitors at universities across the country. "In search of wisdom in unlikely places," the film highlights the everyday triumphs and tragedies of staff whose hard work is often done when no one is looking.
The cameras follow Lajeunesse's work as a lead janitor in Whitman College and other dormitories, and his travels to Haiti as he helps bring clean drinking water to his family's village. The documentary will be shown at 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9, in McCosh 10, with director Patrick Shen, producer Greg Bennick and Lajeunesse speaking afterward and taking questions from the audience.
The Princeton screenings are free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis, but community groups of more than 10 are encouraged to contact organizers in advance by e-mailing Sherry Moore or calling (609) 258-8682.
The first screening of "The Philosopher Kings" with the filmmakers and Lajeunesse will be held at 9 a.m. Dec. 9 in the Frist Film Theater for Building Services staff members. The events at Princeton are part of a nationwide tour of the documentary on college campuses and at film festivals.
"Some people close their eyes to what's going on in front of them," Lajeunesse said of the poverty in his homeland. "But if God gave me the knowledge and the view to see these things, then I need to go back and help those people who cannot help themselves."
Lajeunesse was born in Haiti as the youngest of four children. His mother passed away when he was a young boy and he grew up close to his father, a farmer. Lajeunesse served in the military in Haiti and moved to the United States in 1989, ultimately settling in the Princeton area because a friend from Haiti was living here.
Through the documentary, Lajeunesse puts a face to the work ethic, passion and perseverance shared by many of the University's janitorial staff, said Building Services director Jon Baer. Baer noted janitors such as Natasha Bowman, who has worked at the University for 21 years and has been a surrogate parent to some of the students living in the dorms she cleans, or Mohamed Flites, an amateur photographer and historian who immigrated to the United States to escape civil war in Algeria.
"Having managed janitorial and service staff for the past 25 years, I find so many of their life stories compelling. There's a depth to Josue, as there is to so many of our janitors, that transcends what they do as an occupation," Baer said. "Josue is an excellent ambassador for Princeton and for the staff we have here."
Helping his home in Haiti
Passionate yet unassuming, Lajeunesse drives a taxi until the early morning hours after finishing his duties at Princeton to support his five children, who now all live with him in New Jersey, and his extended family in Haiti. Even with his intense schedule, he finds time to help students in the dormitories where he works and has completed two human resources learning and development programs.
"Working at Princeton, you have opportunities to move up to another level and improve yourself economically and socially," he said. "Anyone who comes here to work, they take you in with two hands and arms open."
Through his hard work, Lajeunesse has been able to send money and supplies to bring purified water to his hometown of Lasource, where villagers once traveled to a nearby mountain for clean water.
"When I was a little boy, I asked my dad how can we do better and get clean water for our town," Lajeunesse said. "Since then, this idea has always been in my mind."
While in the military in Haiti, Lajeunesse said he was able to get the government to commit to bring water to his village, but the project never happened because of political unrest in the country. In addition to providing support to his family in Haiti since moving to the United States, Lajeunesse began sending funds to his brother in 2003 so the two could take on the water project themselves.
They have brought a clean water source closer to the village and are now raising money to build cisterns so that each house can have water all the time. The film shows Lajeunesse during a trip to Lasource in summer 2008 breaking down in tears as he speaks of the responsibilities that rest on his shoulders.
"Now where they have water, the town is green -- there is life," he said. "But the job is not finished."
His connection to Haiti is why Shen said he and Bennick selected Lajeunesse for the documentary. The filmmakers contacted the University about researching possible candidates for the film, and Lajeunesse was one of a handful of janitors recommended by Baer.
"In speaking with Josue we instantly knew we had a very compelling individual on our hand. When we went with him to Haiti, we were blown away by the poor living conditions there but also so impressed with his water project," said Shen, adding that the film is now helping raise money for the project through a partnership with the nonprofit organization Generosity Water.
Still striving to do more for his home, Lajeunesse is now seeking help from doctors in Haiti and New Jersey to create a health clinic in the remote area of Lasource. Lajeunesse said he also hopes to raise funds to buy computers for the local school and to build solar panels to power the machines because the village does not have electricity.
Pride in her work
As a janitor in Blair and Buyers halls, Bowman expects the student residents to treat the buildings with as much respect and care as she does.
"If I come in to work and clean the building, when I come back the next day I expect that you have tried to keep it clean. I tell the kids that if they want a maid, they have to pay for a maid," Bowman said with a laugh. "I'm the same way at home with my family."
Bowman grew up in Lawrence Township with her seven sisters and a brother, and she has two daughters, three sons and six grandchildren. Princeton runs in her family, with one sister also working in Building Services and two other sisters working in Dining Services.
"Natasha is someone who tells it to you straight and will speak her mind," Baer said. "She possesses a wisdom about life that I think is needed in this world."
After cleaning academic buildings for a number of years, Bowman said she enjoys the relationships she's developed with students who live in the dorms.
"I have a lot of foreign students in my dorms, and I enjoy seeing the students from different backgrounds and nationalities," she said. "There also have been a few special kids who I've looked after while they were here."
Bowman recalled a particular student from the class of 2008 who she "got a feeling" about when seeing him around the building while she cleaned. The student admitted he was having trouble getting to an early morning class, so Bowman knocked on his door at 7 a.m. twice a week to make sure he woke up.
"I took a liking to him, and I told him 'Your parents sent you here to go to class, so I'm going to make sure you do,'" Bowman said.
She and the student remained friendly, and he included her name in the dedications for his senior thesis, according to Bowman.
As a fellow dormitory janitor, Bowman said she's known Lajeunesse for many years but had no idea about his work in Haiti until "The Philosopher Kings" movie.
"I'm really proud of Josue for what he's doing for his country," Bowman said. "The janitors that work in the dorms all know each other, but we don't sit down often and talk about our personal lives."
Love of learning
Also an immigrant to the United States, Flites shares with Lajeunesse the experience of adjusting to life in a new country on his own. He's worked at the University for about seven years, cleaning academic and administrative buildings from 4 p.m. to midnight.
"We try to create the best working environment for the people who work and study in the buildings," Flites said. "The way I look at it, we all want Princeton to be the best university. If we as janitors can contribute a little bit, I think that's great."
Flites was pursuing his master's degree in literature in Algeria when civil war jettisoned his studies. After leaving the country in 1996, he worked as a building supervisor and mechanic in Philadelphia and also met his wife, who is a teacher and native of New Jersey.
Whether it's traveling to U.S. Civil War battlefields or listening to books on tape while he cleans, Flites is constantly soaking up knowledge.
"I would consider Mohamed an expert on the Civil War. He is always teaching me new things," Baer said.
On campus, Flites said he usually keeps a small camera in his pocket to document the inspiring architecture and scenery or the interesting people he meets.
Although it was once his dream, Flites said he is no longer interested in finishing his graduate degree.
"My friends, my family, the people I've met at Princeton, that's the best education for me," he said. "Being a janitor is just a title. It's what I get from my experiences every day that matters."


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3DR Teases 'Numerous' Duke Nukem Games, 'Looking to Bring Duke into Casual Gaming'
"The next few years should see a strong resurgence in Duke," Miller states in the first printed issue of Gamesauce. "There are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year. We are definitely looking to bring Duke into casual gaming spaces, plus there are other major Duke games in production."
"Almost all of these [projects] are unannounced," he added.
Likely among those projects are the two remaining Duke iPhone games previously promised by Miller, the handheld Duke Nukem Trilogy coming to Nintendo DS and PSP via Frontline Studios, and the rumored Xbox Live Arcade port of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. Furthermore, the Duke himself recently began teasing something called "D-Day" with a mysterious image, vowing that he "doesn't stay down for long."
In addition, Borderlands and Brothers in Arms developer Gearbox was working on an all-new entry dubbed "Duke Begins," though it had "been halted" as of July 2009.
As for the long-coming Duke Nukem Forever, Miller stressed that "we've never said that Duke Nukem Forever has ceased development," explaining "yes, we released the internal team, but that doesn't correlate to the demise of the project." Back in June, 3D Realms claimed it was still working on "the development of" Duke Nukem Forever, despite having "released the majority of its employees working on the development."
The outspoken executive also touched upon the upcoming movie ("the Duke film is making steady progress...we're developing a much more complete storyverse for Duke, filling out all of the details we've left to the imagination in the games") as well as explained how 3D Realms survived for so long without any major releases:
Duke Nukem 3D was made for $300,000, and we made back 25 times our investment--not to mention all of the third-party Duke console games that sold well. Plus, we made a killing with Wolfenstein 3D. And we made the biggest killing on Max Payne! We made $30 million in royalties on that game (off of a $2.5 million investment), plus another $48 million selling the IP to our publisher. Oh, and we were also part owners of Gathering of Developers when that was sold to Take2. And finally, we have been pretty lucky with other investments, both in the stock market and in other studios.
And though 3D Realms now describes itself as "a much smaller studio" that will "continue to license and co-create games based upon the Duke Nukem franchise," Miller believes that newfound focus on external efforts should have come years ago.
"I think I would have abandoned internal development six or seven years ago," he replied when asked what he would have done differently. "I much prefer to work with external studios to develop games, as we did with [Remedy Entertainment on] Max Payne and [Human Head Studios on] Prey. Radar [Group] is following this very model, with no internal development...it's much more cost effective for us, with lower risk."
Zero respect for Duke and 3drealms, if I and many others can pass up COD then I think we can also skip any Duke game that comes out. I will never buy any Duke game. They had their chance at my $50 dollars years ago.
Xbox live games? Casual games, iphone games? Garbage ... it's a last ditch money grab for a dead hero.


text: Space | 13. October 2010 Initial reports of success from the control room We are off again; the team at the German Space Operation Center (GSOC) and their colleagues from EADS Astrium gathered two days ago in the control room to manage the transition to close formation flight. We began the first manoeuvre on Monday, 11 October 2010; this is referred to as the 'drift start' manoeuvre, which gives the TanDEM X satellite (TDX) the necessary momentum to close to a distance of one kilometre behind TerraSAR X (TSX) within a few days. Beginning on Wednesday morning, we have resumed working in shifts and are monitoring the status of the two satellites with more than 15 contacts per day per satellite – that is, we have at least one contact per orbit with each satellite, in order to be able to intervene (almost) immediately in the event of trouble. We were able to enjoy our first success before the beginning of this morning's shift at 09:00 local time – the 'inter-satellite link', which sends status data from TSX to TDX and makes it possible for TDX to react to problems, had already transferred its first data earlier in the day. Meanwhile, the satellites have already closed to a separation of two kilometres, and we look forward to implementing the 'drift stop' manoeuvre with which we complete the approach phase. From this point, only a few small manoeuvres will be necessary to arrive precisely in the required formation. Until then – that is, until Friday morning – we will be carefully monitoring every contact with the satellites from the control room. Once we can confirm that close formation flight has been achieved, we hope to return to normal working hours. But we will, of course, continue to keep a careful eye on TSX and TDX as the radar satellites continue their 'dance' together.


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"You're standing in the cage and you've got two options – you can quit or you can continue going, and I'm not a quitter."
If you lined Rich Franklin up with some of the more physically or visually imposing figures in the UFC, guys like Brock Lesnar, Wanderlei Silva, "Rampage" Jackson, or his opponent this Saturday night, Forrest Griffin, the former middleweight champion would probably be the last one you would peg as a professional prizefighter. But when it comes to toughness, Franklin has few peers.
There are plenty of examples you can look at over the course of his 11 year career, but the most recent may be the most telling, as he survived a broken left arm inflicted on him by Chuck Liddell last June only to knock "The Iceman" out with his good right hand moments later. Ask Franklin about it, and he's almost matter of fact about it, as if it's something all fighters would do.
Anytime that you're injured, it's not really a layoff even though physically you're taking the time off, perhaps mentally you didn't need it so there's that part of you that's always thinking, yeah, my arm is broken but I really need to get back on the wagon and do the things that I need to be doing here. So it's never the same kind of layoff as if you purposely take a layoff.
"You're standing in the cage and you've got two options – you can quit or you can continue going, and I'm not a quitter," said Franklin, who also fought through a broken hand and foot over a five round bout with David Loiseau in 2006. "At the end of the day, if I had turned around and looked at the ref and said my 'arm is broken, I can't continue', I think I really would have been kicking myself for something like that in the long run. So basically, you keep going and keep going until you can't go anymore."
"In every human there's the fight or flight syndrome, and you come to a crossroads often in life where you have to make a choice as to whether or not you're going to continue pushing through something or if you're going to fold the cards," he continues. "Some people fold more easily than others, and that's a situation where I know that even though my arm was in some pain, I had the adrenaline going and all that stuff, so it's a manageable pain. And when you're in the moment, all you're thinking about is that I need to win this fight. And you say well, my arm's already broken, so what more can possibly be done."
There are fighters and then there are fighters like Franklin. Everyone who walks up those four steps is courageous, but then Franklin goes and takes that courage to the next level and then shrugs it off as if it's part of the job. But what the fans and media don't see is the aftermath, the time spent rehabbing injuries, healing and waiting for another chance to compete. For Franklin, the nearly nine month break between his 2009 bout against Vitor Belfort and the Liddell fight was a good thing, an opportunity to recharge his batteries and live life as a civilian for a while. The three months waiting to heal his broken arm was far from ideal.
"A lot of my leisure time, I'll do different physical things, maybe something like snowboarding or whatever, or I'll sit at my house and play the drums here," he said. "With a cast on, I had nearly three months of not being able to play my drums, so there's this part of you that sits there almost convincing yourself that it's wasted time, that you can't even do a lot of the things that you want to do."
Injury-induced layoffs can also give you plenty of time to think, to wonder whether the fleeting moments of glory are worth the pain afterward, especially after going through such ordeals several times. Franklin admits to such thoughts, but not after his broken arm. Instead, he refers back to his razor-thin decision loss to Dan Henderson in 2009, when an inadvertent eye poke made him question whether he wanted to continue.
"I had that conversation after the Henderson fight when I got poked in the eye," he said. "You break a bone, you break a nose, these things heal. You lose a tooth, you get poked in the eye, these are not pieces of your body that can just miraculously jump back if the injury is bad enough. And when I got poked in the eye, there was a period of time there when I thought my vision was going to be permanently affected. And it was scary because I was one of those people that had perfect vision, my eyes don't get irritated, it bothers me to have to put eyedrops in my eye and all that kinda stuff, so when something like that happens, you start thinking 'man, all this and I have a possibly messed up eye.' And you really start to evaluate things. So I've had those talks with myself before."
Such thoughts rapidly disappear though, especially with Franklin's career still going strong over four years after he lost his title to Anderson Silva in October of 2006. While some former champions fall by the wayside and lose their way, Franklin has retained his popularity and has stayed focused, with every fight since 2009 being a fight fan's dream fight. The names Henderson, Wanderlei Silva, Belfort, Liddell, and now Griffin all dotting his record simply don't lie. It's something you don't see in boxing anymore, a fact not lost on Franklin.
"I remember watching boxing growing up and you have these champions and they would fight a big fight and then after that they would get a couple tomato cans," he said. "And in boxing, a lot of these guys are only fighting once or maybe twice a year. In MMA, when you get to the top of the heap, you're consistently fighting the top contenders. There is no 'let's give him a newbie or a nobody'. In MMA, people wouldn't even watch a fight like that. So it's been that way for me since before I fought Shamrock. My first fight in the UFC was Evan Tanner."
But fighting killer after killer can wear you down mentally, and Franklin admits as much. Yet at the same time, he likes the idea of having to be "on" every night, and he wouldn't change a thing, especially since this is what he signed on for.
"In football you have a 16 game season and you can't afford to lose a lot of games," he said. "And every game every week is important. Whereas in baseball, you're playing a 162 game season and if you come out of the season with 60 losses, you're still having a pretty successful year. So there are certain games that you could probably brush off mentally, or if you lose a game, it's no big deal – it's Monday night, we play again Wednesday, we'll win that game. It makes a big difference and in each fight, you really have to pick yourself up for that fight. And it wears on you mentally, but all in all, this is what I love doing, and what pretty much all the guys who do what I do love doing too, so it comes with the territory."
And suddenly, Franklin – who has wins over Liddell and Wanderlei Silva sandwiching his loss to Belfort – may put himself in the title picture with a win Saturday night. Just don't tell him that.
"I keep things in perspective and first of all, I have to beat Forrest to put myself close enough to even start thinking about a title shot and that's going to be a difficult task within itself," he said. "Forrest is definitely not a pushover opponent here, so I don't want to put the carriage before the horse, and secondly, I'm still not ranked in the top ten. So as far as that kinda stuff goes, I'm patient. All I have to worry about is winning, and as long as I continue to win, then I'll put myself in the position I need to be in in order for another title shot."
This time around, Franklin has stayed home in Cincinnati with his usual crew of standouts, passing on trips to Washington to work with Matt Hume as he has in most of his recent fights. But there was no acrimony involved in this decision; "Ace" just wanted to stay home.
"It gets difficult to travel all the time," he said. "It's a wear and tear on you to be constantly out of town and I had a good setup for this camp. I had good training partners here that would mimic Forrest and that had the same body type and that kind of stuff. And what it boils down to is that there have been fights where I didn't have the training partners to mimic certain fighters and I was stepping outside the box with different coaching, and Hume is a great coach, so this has nothing to do with that, but with the travel, it gets to the point that for me to be gone for four-plus weeks for a camp, sometimes I'm not sure I want to be gone for that long before a fight."
With his arm healed, a solid training camp behind him, and the knowledge that an improbable trip back to a world title is within his grasp, the 36-year old Franklin looks to have all his ducks in a row heading into the Mandalay Bay Events Center this Saturday night. All he needs to do now is perform in a fight fans have been talking about for weeks now. Pressure? Come on, this is Rich Franklin.
"I don't really feel that kind of pressure anymore in my career because time and time again I've delivered good fights and it's really not difficult for me to put on a good fight," he said. "Win or lose, at least you can say my fights are exciting, and that's for sure. That's the way that I fight, and pretty much Forrest fights the same way, so I would imagine that the two of us won't have a problem putting on an exciting fight for the fans."
UFC Performance Institute
Dana White On The Opening Of UFC PI Mexico


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For some people, few things say "Ronald Reagan" like Jelly Belly candy, apparently. Which explains why Rick Santorum will be holding a rally at the California headquarters of the candy maker Thursday.
Santorum is scheduled to attend a "Rally for Rick" event at the Jelly Belly Candy Co. facility in Fairfield, Calif.
As many people over a certain age will recall, the 40th president had a thing for jelly beans. He kept them in jars in the Oval Office and elsewhere in the West Wing and used them as an ice breaker for people who might be intimidated by the awe-inspiring trappings of presidential power.
Most of the Republican presidential candidates have tried to link themselves in some way to Reagan, a hero of American conservatives and Santorum has used Reagan repeatedly as a touchstone as part of his argument that he is a truer heir to Reagan than Mitt Romney.
The Washington Post reports that Santorum is expected to speak about foreign policy at Jelly Belly, which led to this absurdly sweet headline: "Santorum to deliver foreign policy address at Jelly Belly headquarters."
On the same day that Santorum would be covering himself, figuratively, in Reagan's jelly beans, Romney was scheduled to announce his receipt of the endorsement of the pork-rind lover in chief, George H. W. Bush, the man who was Reagan's vice president and who became the 41st president.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Online tool that helps depositors determine how the insurance rules and limits apply to a specific group of deposit accounts — what's insured and what portion (if any) exceeds coverage limits at that bank.
Learn if your bank is insured, view locations, track history, and more.
The secure Internet channel for FDIC-insured institutions to conduct business and exchange information with the FDIC.
The inventory of other assets for sale -- including office furniture, fixtures, and equipment.
Distribution: FDIC-Supervised Banks (Commercial and Savings)
Suggested Routing: Chief Executive Officer BSA Compliance Officer
Related Topics: Office of Foreign Assets Control
Attachment: New Entries List
Contact: Review Examiner Eric S. Walker at email@example.com or (202) 898-3673
Printable Format: FIL-60-2008 - PDF (PDF Help)
Note: FDIC Financial Institution Letters (FILs) may be accessed from the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2008/index.html.
To receive FILs electronically, please visit http://www.fdic.gov/about/subscriptions/fil.html.
Paper copies of FDIC FILs may be obtained through the FDIC's Public Information Center, 3501 N. Fairfax Drive, Room E 1002, Arlington, VA 22226 (1-877-275-3342 or 703-562-2200).


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At a press conference in Tulsa, Okla., following the targeted shootings of five African-Americans last week, the optics were as important as the substance of the news.
The mayor and police chief pleaded for the public's help in capturing the suspects, while behind those two white men stood a pair of Tulsa's most influential black leaders — the lone African-American member of the City Council and the president of the local NAACP.
The united front, seen live by a national television audience, came in response to racial hostilities that whipped up overnight after the shootings, which left three people dead and two injured. Some African-Americans promised vengeance.
"The African-American leadership of this city was saying, 'Give the police a chance. We have confidence that they are going to solve this issue and, you (blacks), be quiet, settle down,' " says the Rev. Warren Blakney, president of the Tulsa branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "I was trying to send a clear message."
In Tulsa, with its tortured racial history, old wounds can reopen easily.
The race riot of 1921, arguably the worst in U.S. history, occurred in Tulsa and destroyed one of the South's most prosperous black neighborhoods, later known as Black Wall Street. Tulsans, black and white, refused to speak of that bloody chapter for decades, keeping it out of history books and personal family histories. The worst of the violence occurred not far from the shootings in north Tulsa last week.
Two suspects were arrested on Sunday. Jake England, 19, who has been identified as Native American, and Alvin Watts, 32, who is white, have confessed to driving into predominantly black north Tulsa neighborhoods and gunning down the five victims, according to Tulsa police.
Some have speculated that England was seeking vengeance because his father was killed by a black man in 2010. Before the shootings, England referenced the two-year anniversary of his father's death on his Facebook page, where he used a racial epithet to describe his father's killer.
Tulsa prosecutors said Monday that Pernell Jefferson shot England's father in self-defense during a fight. Prosecutors didn't charge Jefferson for the shooting but did charge him with attempted burglary and felony possession of a firearm.
While investigators determine whether last week's shootings were racially motivated, which could lead to hate crime charges, the crucible of race in Tulsa has resurfaced.
'We've Come a Long Way'
Residents say much has changed since 1921, the subsequent years of Jim Crow laws and the integration of public schools. Many blacks and whites say they have built working relationships with each over the years that have helped ease tensions and foster greater cooperation between disparate communities.
Some say race relations in Tulsa now aren't any worse than in any other city of similar size and makeup. (Tulsa's population of more than 391,000 is 58 percent non-Hispanic white, 16 percent black, 5 percent Native American, and 14 percent Hispanic of any race.)
If you look at the progress we've made in race relations, we've come a long way. But we're not where we need to be.
"If you look at the progress we've made in race relations, we've come a long way," says Eddie Evans, a former local NAACP president. "But we're not where we need to be. If anybody tells you we are, they are lying to you."
"Whenever there's a problem, we will address it head-on," says Evans, who is also a co-founder of the youth mentoring group 100 Black Men of Tulsa. "But it's not something we've got to fight every day."
Others insist the vestiges of the past remain front and center, including racially self-segregated neighborhoods that few whites and blacks care to challenge, as well as yawning mistrust between police and blacks. A recent police scandal, regarded as the worst in Tulsa history and resulting in the convictions of several officers, has deepened the enmity.
Dividing Line
Separating north and south Tulsa is Admiral Boulevard. Blacks have been permitted to live south of Admiral since the 1960s and a number of them now do, but the majority remain heavily concentrated in the north, where few whites still tread.
"Admiral continues today to be a psychological barrier. A number of my white friends who want to do [volunteer work] really don't want to go across Admiral Boulevard except to go to the airport or the zoo. They are uncomfortable up there," says Herb Beatty, who is white and lives in the mostly white Midtown neighborhood.
Beatty, who moved from upstate New York in 1974, has spent the past two decades volunteering at north Tulsa schools and advocating alongside the NAACP on a range of issues.
Beatty, Evans and most every other civic activist of any stripe in Tulsa say the most significant advancement for blacks in recent memory was a ballot referendum that changed the city's form of government in the early 1990s. But it took the threat of a lawsuit by the NAACP.
Blacks complained that the old system violated the Voting Rights Act because it required each City Council member to run for election citywide, preventing north Tulsa from electing its own representatives. Voters approved a proposal to replace the at-large seats with nine council districts. The first district, which encompasses north Tulsa, has been represented by an African-American since then.
"I don't want to paint a broad brush and say the majority of people have racist tendencies, but it's clear there's an apathy or lack of concern about north Tulsa," says Joe Williams, who held the District 1 council seat for 10 years.
Battling Stereotypes
Williams, another former local NAACP president who joined community leaders calling for calm, says it's still common for real estate agents to steer newcomers away from homes in north Tulsa. And the neighborhood's stereotypes are reinforced in news coverage.
"If it's a crime that takes place in this community, particularly if it's violent, they will immediately mention that it took place in north Tulsa," Williams says. "And whether they have any evidence or not, they will say it may be gang-related. They don't report crimes in other neighborhoods the same way."
But some point to the upcoming relocation of a prominent church as another sign of Tulsa's progress. All Souls Unitarian, which has a predominantly white congregation, decided to relocate downtown from Midtown to accommodate its black members who have expressed concern about entering a mostly white neighborhood to worship.
At Easter service at All Souls, the Rev. Marvin Lavanhar, who is white, scrapped his prepared sermon and instead addressed the shootings, only hours after the two suspects had been arrested.
"It was a scary time when Jesus was killed. The disciples didn't know if they'd be next, kind of like some people waking around Tulsa, Okla., the last couple of days," Lavanhar said, receiving 'Amens' from the audience. "The disciples lived in fear, looking over their shoulders, scared to walk outside. Sound familiar?"
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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So Soft!
Our Organic Lamb Fleece Cradle Topper gives you a soft sheepskin feel without using actual sheepskin. Instead, the soft Merino wool is weaved into an organic cotton backing. This mattress topper is designed to give your baby a restful night's sleep in the safest of sleep environments. Wool is a natural thermo-regulating fiber which helps regulate the temperature around baby and allows for air circulation for all seasons. The great part is that the topper can be easily taken along with you when away from home.


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Boston Officials: Sparks From Welding Work Caused Fatal Fire
Sparks from a welding project for which no one had obtained a permit caused the wind-driven fire that tore through a Boston brownstone last week, killing two firefighters and injuring 13, officials said Friday.
Police Commissioner William Evans said investigators are confident the fire in the city's Back Bay neighborhood was unintentional, but they have not decided whether anyone will face charges.
Boston Fire Commissioner John Hasson said it did not appear anyone had obtained a permit for the work on an iron railing in back of an apartment building next to the one that burned. The sparks somehow got into the building and the fire, fanned by strong winds, spread quickly. One senior fire official previously said that in 30 years he had never seen a fire spread so fast and cause so much damage.
Officials declined to discuss specifics of the case, including the scope of the welding work, what firm the welders worked for, whether they called 911 to report the fire or whether they are cooperating with investigators.
Permits are required for all welding projects in Massachusetts and most also must have someone from the fire department watching to make sure they are being done safely. Hasson said no such fire detail was assigned to the project at the Beacon Street building.
Oliver Realty Limited Partnership, the company that owned the adjacent building where the wielding took place, said in a statement that it hired an unnamed third party to install the railing and thought it was going to be built offsite. The company would not comment any further.
Edward Zabin, a Suffolk County prosecutor, said human error in fatal fires does not always lead to criminal charges. He noted that Massachusetts, unlike many states, does not have a negligent homicide statute; the only way someone can be charged with that type of crime is in certain motor vehicle accidents.
Firefighter Michael Kennedy, 33, and Lt. Edward Walsh, 43, died after they were trapped in the basement of the burning building. Both were laid to rest this week in emotional funerals attended by thousands of firefighters from across the state and nation.
"It's been a tough week for the firefighters," Evans said.
Related Coverage:
This article was originally published on April 04, 2014.