Bad news doesn't bring down Sox

　　

　　

　　AP Photo/Paul BeatySox catcher A.J. Pierzynski watches his three-run home run against the Royals in the eighth inning. For the second time this week, the White Sox simply brushed off potentially grim news as if they were swiping a gnat from their ever broadening shoulders.

　　With games like the Mark Buehrle- and A.J. Pierzynski-inspired 8-2 victory over the pesky Kansas City Royals, the White Sox just keep getting stronger. They have now won six consecutive games, 19 of their last 23, and 23 of their last 28.

　　When Jake Peavy went down with a serious injury Tuesday, the White Sox kept on winning. The most recent solid play came Friday shortly after a double-dose of information that could have left them reeling once again.

　　At about the same time Friday afternoon that Peavy confirmed that he would be lost for the year, the clubhouse television offered the news about Cliff Lee’s trade to the playoff-contending Texas Rangers.

　　Nobody was in mourning, including an upbeat Peavy, who said he will remain with the team for the remainder of the season while he recovers from surgery next week.

　　Even without Peavy, the White Sox aren’t afraid of Lee. In fact, bring him on, they say. “If we face Lee this season, that will be a good thing,” pitching coach Don Cooper said.

　　His point is that the White Sox don’t have any regular-season games remaining with the Rangers so the only way they could meet would be in the playoffs. Cooper’s staff will gladly take its chances at that point.

　　More good news from the Lee deal is that the Rangers still have seven games remaining with the third-place Minnesota Twins and five more against the first-place Detroit Tigers. The White Sox’ victory Friday kept them a half game behind the Tigers and put them three ahead of the Twins.

　　“With that lineup they have, they’re very dangerous,” Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said of the Rangers. “I think that’s going to help those guys and put them over the top in that division. I was glad because off the top, I thought it was New York and Minnesota [who would land Lee], and we still have to play against them. So I’m glad Texas got him.”

　　Nobody is as dangerous as the White Sox these days and pitching has been a big reason why. Since June 9, the White Sox are a baseball-best 23-5, posting a 2.38 ERA (66 earned runs/250 innings) over that stretch.

　　While John Danks’ two-hit shutout Thursday came against a struggling Angels offense, the eight innings of zeroes posted by Buehrle and Sergio Santos were against a Royals team that entered with the best team batting average in baseball at .283. The Royals also entered batting .313 with runners in scoring position over their last 13 games, going 10-3 over that span.

　　When Yuniesky Betancourt hit a two-run home run in the ninth inning off Jeff Marquez, it snapped the White Sox’s 17-inning scoreless streak.

　　Target practice

　　Six pitches into Friday’s game, the White Sox received a scare when Buehrle took a line drive from the Royals’ Scott Podsednik off his right wrist.

　　Buehrle said he was in serious pain for about a half inning with some of his fingers even going numb at one point.

　　He even yelled at his former teammate, but not because of the comebacker. He told Podsednik to steal second base already so he wouldn’t have to throw over to first base so much.

　　“It got me pretty good, but they didn’t even take X-rays after they looked at it,” Buehrle said. “It feels totally fine.”

　　He went on to beat the Royals for the first time in three tries this season and the 21st time in his career, second most to his 24 victories over the Twins.

　　Double dose

　　For just the third time in his career, Pierzynski hit two home runs in a game as he emerged from a dry spell with a vengeance. Pierzynski had just one hit in his last 17 at-bats before Friday’s game when he hit a solo shot against Bruce Chen in the fourth inning and three-run homer against Victor Marte in the eighth.

　　“A.J has been struggling for the last couple of weeks,” Guillen said. “Now he’s starting to swing the bat better.”

　　Quote of the day

　　“I kind of thought about [400], but I think it was a changeup and I top-spinned it a little more rather than hitting through it,” -- Andruw Jones, on his fly ball to deep left field in the eighth inning that kept him at 399 career home runs. He ended up tying a season-high with three hits after entering with two hits in his previous 23 at-bats.

　　Looking ahead

　　Red-hot Gavin Floyd (4-7, 4.43 ERA) has been as good as anybody over his last six starts, going 2-1 with an American League-best 1.27 ERA over that stretch. He also has 37 strikeouts during that run. He is just 1-2 with a 6.16 ERA against the Royals, who he will face at home Saturday. He will be opposed by the Royals’ Brian Bannister

World Cup post-game: Spain 1, Paraguay 0

　　

　　

　　Spain's David Villa, left, celebrates with teammate Cesc Fabregas after he scores his side's only goal during their quarter-final against Paraguay in Johannesburg. (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

　　David Villa scored in the 83rd minute to lift Spain to its first-ever FIFA World Cup semifinal appearance after dispatching Paraguay 1-0 Saturday in Johannesburg.

　　To watch the match highlights, CLICK HERE. To watch the full game, CLICK HERE.

　　Main storyline

　　For a game with everything on the line, it was a dreary affair for much of the match.

　　Paraguay manager Gerardo Martino elected to make six changes to his starting 11 for this game, benching his three scoreless strikers (Roque Santa Cruz, Edgar Benitez and Lucas Barrios) and switching from his usual 4-3-3 formation to a more defensive 4-4-2 system in an attempt to stop the talented Spaniards.

　　The tactic worked for much of the game. Paraguay clogged their defensive third, containing Spain's skilled players like Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Xabi Alonso, giving them very little time on the ball to create scoring chances.

　　Spain finally broke through in the latter stages of the match, with Villa burying his fifth goal of the tournament to secure the victory.

　　Of course, the outcome could have been much different had Nelson Valdez's goal counted in the 41st minute (he was ruled offside). With the defensive game plan Martino's squad was employing, a one-goal lead might have held up.

　　For Spain, the quarter-final win was a positive step in shedding its label as "chokers" on the world stage. Though it's ranked No. 2 in the world, is the reigning European champion and has only lost three of its last 55 games, Spain still has that stigma of not winning soccer's biggest prize.

　　To get a chance at that elusive crown, it will have to get through Germany, the same team Spain defeated 1-0 to capture Euro 2008.

　　What this result means

　　Spain advances to the semifinals next Wednesday where it will meet Germany, 4-0 winners over Argentina in the other quarter-final earlier Saturday.

　　It's the first time La Roja have reached the semifinals of the World Cup (they finished fourth in 1950, when the title was decided by a four-team final).

　　The turning point

　　It was an uninspiring fixture until the 57th minute when, within a span of two minutes, both teams were awarded penalty shots.

　　First, on a Paraguayan corner kick, Spain defender Gerard Pique was yellow-carded for yanking down Oscar Cardozo with both hands. On the ensuing penalty kick by Cardozo, goalkeeper Iker Casillas dove the right way and made the save.

　　Just a minute later in the other end, Paraguayan fullback Antolin Alcaraz banged into David Villa in the penalty area and a spot kick was awarded. Xabi Alonso stepped up and clinically finished the penalty, but the referee ordered a re-kick because Spain's players entered the box before the ball was kicked.

　　On the re-do, Paraguay keeper Justo Villa stopped Alonso's strike, keeping the game locked 0-0.

　　From then on, the pace of the match picked up.

　　The winning goal

　　Iniesta worked his magic just outside the 18-yard box, dribbling through two Paraguayan defenders before passing the ball off with the outside of his foot to Pedro streaking down the right side. Pedro's strike rang off the right post, but Villa was there to gobble up the rebound, cracking a shot that went off both posts and in for his tournament-leading fifth goal of the World Cup.

　　Man of the match

　　Spain goalkeeper Casillas wasn't very busy in this match, but he came up big when he was called upon. In the 57th minute, he stopped a penalty shot by Oscar Cardozo and in the final minute of the game, he preserved the win for his team, stopping Roque Santa Cruz's point-blank shot.

Can Poland's new president deliver political stability?

 

 

　　

　　Mr Komorowski is expected to work closely with the government Bronislaw Komorowski's election as Polish president sets up a rare period of calm and cohesiveness on the country's political scene and will be welcomed in Berlin and Brussels.

　　In the tightest presidential contest in 15 years the results swung back and forth overnight between Mr Komorowski and his rival, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the identical twin of the late president, Lech, who was killed in a plane crash in Russia in April.

　　Mr Komorowski, 58, who has aristocratic roots and was interned for his opposition activities by the communist authorities in the 1980s, is widely regarded as a moderate.

　　He represents stability because he is the candidate of the governing Civic Platform Party.

　　He is expected to work closely with the government on its programme of free market reforms and closer engagement with the country's European Union partners and Russia.

　　In Poland the presidency is a largely ceremonial role, but the president can block legislation through the power of veto, something Lech Kaczynski used regularly.

　　"This will be a more stable, predictable cohesive period for the country, one we have never had before," Pawel Swieboda, head of the demosEUROPA think-tank, told the BBC.

　　"He will be a supportive president with the government in the driver's seat and he being more of a helping hand. He will focus on representative functions, social dialogue and discussing future challenges," he said.

　　Without the presidential veto as an excuse the government will now be under pressure to present a clear plan to tackle the budget deficit, structural reforms and reduce bureaucracy in business.

　　"It will force Civic Platform to come out with its own set of ideas. They will have no excuses and will have to start acting.

　　"It will be a very different period to anything we've seen so far and an opportunity for long-term planning," Mr Swieboda said.

　　However, with parliamentary elections looming in just over a year, Poland's cautious Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, may be reluctant to damage his government's chances of being re-elected, something no other administration has achieved since communism ended in 1989.

　　Attitude change

　　Those elections will feature the 61-year-old Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

　　He may not be president but his remarkable result provides a platform for his socially conservative and state interventionist opposition Law and Justice Party to challenge for power.

　　Bearing in mind that Poles voted Mr Kaczynski, a combative former prime minister out of office three years ago, his result crowned a superbly-fought campaign.

　　"I think he ran a smart campaign. He has moved to the centre ground and combined newly-found moderate views with assertiveness which appeals to people," Mr Swieboda said.

　　When you offer a twist of social inclusiveness in domestic policy, it's an appealing message," he added.

　　

　　Jaroslaw Kaczynski revitalised his image in the election campaign Mr Kaczynski was also helped by the sympathy Poles felt for the families of the victims of April's plane crash.

　　Before the tragedy, Jaroslaw Kaczynski was regularly voted one of the country's least-trusted politicians.

　　His divisive and antagonistic stance as prime minister, during which he seemed bent on leading what some described as a witch-hunt against former communist officials, was still fresh in people's memories.

　　Mr Kaczynski's political views are shaped largely by his belief that the communists merely swapped political power for economic influence during the negotiated transition to democracy.

　　During the campaign he dropped the anti-communist slogans and even called the former party chief, Edward Gierek, a patriot.

　　He also changed his attitude towards Poland's neighbours and old foes, Russia and Germany.

　　Together with his brother, he once irritated German officials with a proposal that the EU take into account Poland's six million World War II victims when allocating voting rights.

　　During the campaign he made positive noises about Germany and recorded a moving broadcast to Russians for their help in assisting the families of the plane crash.

　　His repeated insistence, however, that Poland take over the crash investigation did imply criticism of Russia's handling of the affair.

　　He has clearly benefited from his more moderate approach and will probably not want to be seen as being a largely destructive force in the run-up to next year's ballot.

　　The other winner from these elections has been the former communists, now re-branded as social democrats.

　　Voted out of office five years ago following numerous sleaze scandals, the left-wing's young personable leader, Grzegorz Napieralski, won a reasonable third place in the first round, signalling a return to influence.

Working to Help a Haven for Afghan Women Blossom

 

　　

　　KABUL, Afghanistan — There was in the city an old garden, and in that garden there were trees, and under the trees there were women.

　　And there were no scarves on the heads of the women who sat under the trees in the old Kabul Women’s Garden.

　　That was all something remarkable once upon a time, as it is even now. Screened from male scrutiny by the leafy canopies of almond or apricot trees, women could go outside as they pleased, dare to wriggle naked toes in fountain water or just gossip without the veil.

　　Now this oasis of freedom for women, surrounded by the misogynist desert of the capital city, is undergoing a rebirth.

　　As with so much happening today in Afghanistan, the midwives are foreigners, the gestation is troubled and the parents are hopeful.

　　Some say this fabled eight-acre enclosure in the Shahrara neighborhood of Kabul goes back to the days of Babur the Conqueror, in the 1500s. More reliably it is dated to the 1940s or ’50s, when King Zahir Shah was said to have bequeathed it to the state.

　　Karima Salik tells the story of the Kabul Women’s Garden she remembers as a girl in the 1970s, a halcyon age for Afghanistan and its women, before the present 32 years of unbroken war began.

　　“The trees covered everything,” she recalled. “There was laughter and chatter and music.”

　　For the past three years, Ms. Salik has managed the garden, which is now in the midst of a $500,000 face-lift supported by the United States Agency for International Development and CARE International. Most of the money pays laborers who are landscaping, planting trees, rebuilding footpaths and raising the walls still higher. Women on construction projects are almost unheard of in Afghanistan, but the United States Agency for International Development program requires that at least 25 percent of the work force be female. Here they are 50 percent of it.

　　Ms. Salik’s childhood witnessed one of the most liberated periods for women in Afghan history, when the communist government took over in 1978 and enforced equality, banned the burqa and mandated education for girls.

　　The revolt of the mujahedeen, led by conservative, rural warlords, wiped that all out in a few years’ time.

　　People desperate for fuel felled the garden’s trees for firewood. Militiamen held cockfights within the walls. Women dared not go near the place.

　　In the Taliban era, the city was more peaceful but women were confined to their homes. The northeast end of the garden was appropriated by the mosque next door. A warlord who came over to the Taliban was rewarded with the southwest corner for a construction project. The rest, renamed the Springtime Garden, became a public dump.

　　When Ms. Salik and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs took over three years ago, “We hauled 45 truckloads of trash out.”

　　Now male police officers outside the tall steel gates open them only for women, or for male children if they are under 9. Inside the gates are those rarest of public employees: female police officers, two of them. They are reinforced by five female intelligence officers, whose main job is to look for suicide bombers who might hide explosives under the capaciousness of the burqa.

　　Mostly the burqas come off once inside the gate, and there are dressing rooms where many of the women change into normal clothes, putting on makeup and high heels.

　　Then, unheard-of things happen here. The women themselves have raised funds for a tiny mosque, with religious instruction given by a woman — one of only a handful of such places in a city where at least 1.5 million female Muslims live.

　　A consortium of European Union aid groups built a spacious gym, and women in tights take fitness classes there or play badminton. The Italians started the Always Spring Restaurant, featuring something else unknown in Kabul, female pizza chefs.

　　Between the compound’s outer and inner walls, a shopping arcade of little, female-run businesses grew up, many of them financed with microgrants: hairdressing, embroidery, children’s clothing, ladies lingerie.

　　There are other such businesses in Kabul, but none are run by women, to whom the busy bazaars are off limits not by law but by hard custom.

　　Some come here for opportunity, many for refuge of one sort or another. Fairly often, women who have run away from abusive husbands, or from fathers who threaten to commit a so-called honor killing, wind up here, and the staff members find them a place in one of the city’s secret women’s shelters.

　　Arezo Ghafori, 22, has a talent for hairdressing and a family of eight for whom she is the sole breadwinner, but the men in the family refused to allow her to work, even if they starved, until she started a salon inside the garden.

　　Leila Husseini, Afghanistan’s 25-year-old Asian tae kwon do champion in the women’s under-95-pound class, came here to train and also to lead courses for other women.

　　All of this did not happen without a fight. Ms. Salik called in the police over the mosque’s encroachment, and the mullah led a noisy demonstration of male neighbors in protest. “I used religious arguments against him,” she said, “and pointed out it was a sin to use stolen land for prayers.”

　　They compromised on a new wall, but the mullah, Abdul Rahim, is still seething. He says that a police officer was caught inside the garden in an improper assignation with a woman, but that the incident was hushed up.

　　“I don’t care what the hell they do,” he said. “But inside the garden they get all dressed up and do their makeup and they have other intentions.”

　　A politically well-connected former warlord named Amanullah Guzar had gained control of the Taliban warlord’s old building site, and a 13-story building began rising there, overlooking their walls and, worse, providing vantage points into the gym’s windows. Construction workers leered and jeered, and Ms. Salik went to court to stop the building, which she claims is actually on land belonging to the garden.

　　“Women need to have privacy here or it does not work,” she said.

　　Efforts to reach Mr. Guzar for comment were unsuccessful.

　　“It is women against men,” she said afterward, uncharacteristically discouraged. “Our action will never succeed.”

　　A few weeks later, she was hopeful again. She had found powerful allies who promised to intercede. In the meantime, work on the building was suspended and the aerobics classes resumed.

　　The face-lift is due to finish July 5. Every 40 days a new crew of female laborers is brought in, giving new people an opportunity to earn money and learn skills.

　　Some are jobless poor, like Zehia and Hassina, two 19-year-olds pushing wheelbarrows, who had baseball caps on over their headscarves and black veils across their faces — more out of shame than modesty.

　　“We are like men here,” Zehia said. “It is an embarrassment for educated girls like us to work like this.”

　　Both are English-speaking high school graduates who have rejected all offers of marriage, hoping to get into a university.

　　“What would I do with a husband, especially an uneducated husband?” Zehia asked. “A job is much better.”

　　In a broad sense, the success of the Kabul Women’s Garden is an admission of failure. Women simply cannot go to other parks in Kabul unless chaperoned by male relatives, and often not even then; most parks, like most public spaces, are overwhelmingly male.

　　“You can’t change people’s ideas overnight,” Ms. Salik said. “So we need to address the immediate needs.”

　　Ms. Salik has other projects in mind for the Kabul Women’s Garden.

　　There is an unused parking lot beside the garden where women could learn how to drive, something almost unheard of here — not because it is illegal, just because it is not done.

　　Most of all, Ms. Salik would like to see a program that would take women on brief trips to other countries, perhaps for job training, but really, she said, just to see how women live in lands where there are no women’s gardens.

Obama’s Twist of BP’s Arm Stirs Debate on Common Tactic

　　

　　WASHINGTON — First there was General Motors, whose chief executive was summarily dismissed by the White House shortly before the government became the company’s majority shareholder. Chrysler was forced into a merger. At the banks that received government bailouts, executive pay was curbed; at insurance companies seeking to jack up premiums, scathing criticism led to rollbacks.

　　But President Obama’s successful move to force BP to establish a $20 billion compensation fund that the company will have no voice in allocating — just a down payment, the president insisted — may have been the most vivid example of what he recently called his determination to step in and do “what individuals couldn’t do and corporations wouldn’t do.”

　　With that display of raw arm-twisting, Mr. Obama reinvigorated a debate about the renewed reach of government power, or, alternatively, the power of government overreach. It is an argument that has come to define Mr. Obama’s first 18 months in office, and one that Mr. Obama clearly hopes to make a central issue in November’s midterm elections.

　　To Mr. Obama, this is all about rebalancing the books after two decades in which multinationals sometimes acted like mini-states beyond government reach, abetted by a faith in markets that, as Mr. Obama put it at Carnegie Mellon University a few weeks ago, “gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.” When Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican, opened hearings Thursday about the gulf oil gusher by accusing Mr. Obama of an unconstitutional “shakedown” of BP to create a “slush fund,” he was giving voice to an alternative narrative, a bubbling certainty in corporate suites that Mr. Obama, whenever faced with crisis that involves private-sector players, reveals himself to be viscerally antibusiness.

　　The reality, not surprisingly, is more complex.

　　Mr. Obama clearly sees his presidency as far more than a bully pulpit — he has cast himself as a last line of defense against market excesses that take many different forms. “In the past, corporate America was not only at the table, they owned the table and the chairs around it,” Mr. Obama’s combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said in an interview Thursday. “Obama doesn’t start off confrontational, but he will be confrontational if there is resistance to the notion that there are other equities.”

　　But at the same moment, as his critics on the left have pointed out, Mr. Obama has been warding off calls for far more stringent regulations of the banks, hoping to win at least a modicum of business support — and to defuse the notion that he is at war with American-style capitalism.

　　Each of his confrontations with corporate executives had its own rationale. G.M. had become so uncompetitive, Mr. Obama argued, that its imminent collapse was threatening the jobs of millions of workers; the only way to save the company from its own worst instincts was to become its temporary owner and bring new blood into the boardroom. (It will take years to determine if that worked, but on Thursday, though it was overshadowed by the grilling of BP’s chief executive on Capitol Hill, G.M. announced it was forgoing its usual summer shutdown of most of its plants so it could meet renewed demand.)

　　The Wall Street executives who needed the government to prop them up, but still thought their services were worth millions a year, were cast by Mr. Obama as a shameless privileged class. Toyota was described as seeking profits over safety; Wellpoint, the insurance giant, was castigated for seeking to insulate itself from the new health care legislation by taking actions that the law will soon prohibit.

　　Against that backdrop, forcing BP to take a $20 billion bath — even before the inevitable lawsuits are filed — seemed an easy decision. Mr. Obama had no legal basis for the demand, but concluded he did not need one. “He had a power other presidents have used — you call it jawboning,” Mr. Emanuel said.

　　The question is whether the cumulative effects of these actions create an impression that, over the long run, may make it harder to persuade both American and foreign corporations to cooperate with Mr. Obama’s program to reinvest and reinvigorate the American economy.

　　“He’s walking a very fine line here,” said Jeffrey Garten, a professor of trade and international finance at the Yale School of Management and a former top official in the Clinton administration’s Commerce Department. “He is taking each case on the merits as he sees it, but he runs the risk of sowing a level of mistrust about all big companies. And it’s those companies — not small businesses — that he will need to invest and innovate for the kind of recovery he wants.”

　　Mr. Obama is betting that Republicans are also walking a fine line. That became evident Thursday as Republican leaders distanced themselves from Representative Barton’s outburst, which included the charge that Mr. Obama was acting illegally by applying “some sort of political pressure that in my words amounts to a shakedown.”

　　Mr. Obama’s aides clearly relished the idea of a Texas Republican dependent on donors from the energy industry who was actually apologizing to BP. As a political strategy, they appear to be adapting the course taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who seized on a mood of distrust when, in the closing days of the 1936 campaign, he said: ”I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.” When the applause subsided, he added: “I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”

　　It is in the “master” role, however, that Mr. Obama and his advisers know he is on dangerous ground. He has responded to his critics by making the case that every time American business predicted ruin from government intervention — that “Social Security would lead to socialism, and that Medicare was a government takeover” — American capitalism survived.

　　It did. But just as Mr. Obama’s fortunes last year depended on a G.M. turnaround, his fortunes this year depend on demonstrating that the health care legislation that he pushed through both reduces costs for the consumers and saves taxpayers money.

　　And his fortunes over the next two years depend, in part, on showing that he can both turn off the spigot of oil in the gulf and turn on the spigot of aid — out of the coffers of BP’s shareholders. Along the way, he will have to avoid painting with such a broad brush that foreign and domestic investors come to view the United States as a too risky place to do business, a country where big mistakes can lead to vilification and, perhaps, bankruptcy.

Children Carry Guns for a U.S. Ally, Somalia

　　

　　

　　MOGADISHU, Somalia — Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.

　　But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.

　　“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.

　　“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”

　　The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.

　　It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa.

　　According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.

　　Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army.

　　Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.

　　United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.

　　Several American officials also said that they were concerned about the use of child soldiers and that they were pushing their Somali counterparts to be more careful. But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

　　According to Unicef, only two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than 15: the United States and Somalia.

　　Many human rights groups find this unacceptable, and President Obama himself, when this issue was raised during his campaign, did not disagree.

　　“It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” he said.

　　All across this lawless land, smooth, hairless faces peek out from behind enormous guns. In blown-out buildings, children chamber bullets twice the size of their fingers. In neighborhoods by the sea, they run checkpoints and face down four-by-four trucks, though they can barely see over the hood.

　　Somali government officials admit that in the rush to build a standing army, they did not discriminate.

　　“I’ll be honest,” said a Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, “we were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.”

　　Awil struggles to carry his. It weighs about 10 pounds. The strap digs into his bony shoulders, and he is constantly shifting it from one side to the other with a grimace.

　　Sometimes he gets a helping hand from his comrade Ahmed Hassan, who is 15. Ahmed said he was sent to Uganda more than two years ago for army training, when he was 12, though his claim could not be independently verified. American military advisers have been helping oversee the training of Somali government soldiers in Uganda.

　　“One of the things I learned,” Ahmed explained eagerly, “is how to kill with a knife.”

　　Children do not have many options in Somalia. After the government collapsed in 1991, an entire generation was let loose on the streets. Most children have never sat in a classroom or played in a park. Their bones have been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.

　　“What do I enjoy?” Awil asked. “I enjoy the gun.”

　　Like many other children here, the war has left him hard beyond his years. He loves cigarettes and is addicted to qat, a bitter leaf that, for the few hours he chews it each day, makes grim reality fade away.

　　Awil gobbles down greasy rice with unwashed hands because he does not know where his next meal is coming from. He is paid about $1.50 a day, but only every now and then, like most soldiers. His bed is a fly-covered mattress that he shares with two other child soldiers, Ali Deeq, 10, and Abdulaziz, 13.

　　“He should be in school,” said Awil’s commander, Abdisalam Abdillahi. “But there is no school.”

　　Ali Sheikh Yassin, vice-chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, said that about 20 percent of government troops (thought to number 5,000 to 10,000) were children and that about 80 percent of the rebels were. The leading insurgent group, which has drawn increasingly close to Al Qaeda, is called the Shabab, which means youth in Arabic.

　　“These kids can be so easily brainwashed,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t even have to be paid.”

　　One of the myriad dangers Awil faces is constant gunfire between his squad and another group of government soldiers from a different clan. The Somali government is racked by divisions from the prime minister’s office down to the street.

　　“I’ve lost hope,” said Sheik Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a defense minister who abruptly quit in the past week, like several other ministers. “All this international training, it’s just training soldiers for the Shabab,” he added, saying defections had increased.

　　“Go ask the president what he’s accomplished in the past year,” Sheik Yusuf said, laughing. “Absolutely nothing.”

　　Advisers to President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed say they have fine-tuned their plans for a coming offensive, making it more of a gradual military operation to slowly take the city back from the insurgents.

　　Awil is eager for action. His commanders say he has already proven himself fighting against the Shabab, who used to bully him in the market.

　　“That made me want to join the T.F.G.,” he said. “With them, I feel like I am amongst my brothers.”

NATO Has High Hopes for Afghan Peace Council

　　

　　By ALISSA J. RUBIN

　　Published: May 30, 2010

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　　KABUL, Afghanistan — Western leaders are banking on a national peace council set to begin here on Wednesday to start a new chapter in Afghanistan’s political life, bringing the country together and strengthening President Hamid Karzai, even as security deteriorated on Sunday in several areas of the country.

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　　Ahmad Masood/Reuters

　　

　　Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.

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　　Times Topics: Afghanistan | North Atlantic Treaty Organization

　　In a joint news conference, the NATO commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and the senior civilian representative, Mark Sedwill, emphasized that the West supported the peace council, called a jirga, even as many Afghans questioned whether those attending would truly represent the many factions in the country.

　　“This is a big week for Afghanistan,” said Mr. Sedwill, who described the conference as “the first of a series of major political events that are going to set the agenda of 2010.”

　　The jirga will be followed by the Kabul Conference on economic development in July and parliamentary elections in September.

　　“This is a critical moment for this country to bring together all of the people of Afghanistan, their representatives, in an opportunity to set the direction forward and create a national consensus behind the overall approach to security, to development, to reconciliation,” Mr. Sedwill said.

　　The Electoral Complaints Commission announced Sunday that 85 candidates had been preliminarily barred from participating in the parliamentary elections because they are members of illegal armed groups. They will have the right to appeal. Still, the number is far more than that in the first round of parliamentary elections in 2005, when just 17 people were disqualified for the same reason, according to a former E.C.C. commissioner, Fahim Hakim.

　　The increase suggests that a more rigorous review system is now in place, analysts say.

　　Even as the peace efforts proceed in the capital, Kabul, security appeared to be deteriorating in districts in the east and south of the country and on the western border, where Afghan insurgents trained in Iran are returning to fight and smuggling in weapons, General McChrystal said.

　　“There is clear evidence of Iranian activities, in some cases supplying weaponry and training to the Taliban that is inappropriate,” he said.

　　In Nuristan Province, on the country’s eastern border, hundreds of local and Pakistani Taliban have taken control of a remote district near the Pakistan border, Barg-e-Matal. The number of fighters who have crossed the border from Pakistan swelled through the week and now has reached 1,000 to 1,500, said Gen. Zaman Mamozai, the commander of the Afghan Border Police for the eastern region of Afghanistan.

　　They are “mostly from Pakistan and are conducting collective attacks,” he said.

　　It appears that many of the Taliban from Pakistan had come to Nuristan in search of a new haven after having come under attack from the Pakistani Army in Pakistan. There are few Afghan security troops in Nuristan’s rugged mountains and only a small number of American troops in the province.

　　NATO leaders say that they cannot control the entire country with the number of troops they have and had to rely on Afghan forces in remote areas. But because not enough Afghans have been trained, NATO officials say they may have to live with some insurgent havens.

　　“As we execute our strategy and our capacity to secure areas, we must prioritize the order in which we do those, and how we deploy our forces and our assets,” General McChrystal said when asked whether Barg-e-Matal was being allowed to become a sanctuary.

　　“The Taliban can still muster strength in places and there are a lot of unknowns there,” added a senior NATO officer, speaking about Nuristan on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter.

　　“If there are Taliban there, so what?” he said, adding that the district was far from any population center. He acknowledged that the situation would become more complicated if the Taliban filter out of remote mountain redoubts and into populated areas.

　　There was violence as well in the southeastern province of Khost, where a barely completed high school, built with international aid, was blown up late Saturday night by men using rocket-propelled grenades and bombs.

　　The school, which cost $220,000 to build, would have provided classrooms for 1,300 students, said Musa Majrooh, the spokesman for the Khost Education Department. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that the Taliban were involved in the blast.

　　Also in Khost, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle at the entrance to the police battalion that patrols suburban areas. Nine police officers were wounded, two of them seriously.

　　In Nangahar Province, in the east, which until recently was relatively calm, two bombings killed five members of the Afghan security forces, and in Badakhshan Province in the far northeast, six counternarcotics officers were killed when their patrol vehicle was blown up by a homemade bomb.

　　They were on a mission to eradicate poppy, and the province’s governor, Baz Mohammed, accused narcotics traffickers and the Taliban of setting the bomb.

　　Sharifullah Sahak and Waheed Abdul Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Khost.

Fisherman files restraining order against BP

　　

　　

　　New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- A fisherman who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf of Mexico has filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against oil company BP.

　　John Wutsell Jr., is asking BP to give the workers masks and not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.

　　Wutstell, a shrimper, said he was paid by BP to use his boat, Ramie's Wish, to clean up oil that has been gushing into the Gulf since an oil rig sank about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, gushing an estimated 19,000 barrels (798, 000 gallons) of crude a day.

　　In an affidavit, Wustell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches.

　　On Friday, Wutstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday.

　　Eight other workers were brought to the hospital this week and were all released.

　　"We need to start protecting these guys," said Jim Klick, Wutstell's lawyer.

　　In his affadavit, Wutstell described his experience at the hospital.

　　"At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wutstell sais. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

　　The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill.

　　Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, said he could not comment on the restraining order, or on allegations that BP confiscated clothing.

　　

　　

　　

　　Video: BP protesters swarm New Orleans

　　

　　

　　

　　Video: Oil spill cleanup for show?

　　

　　

　　

　　Video: BP CEO: 'Relief well ultimate solution'

　　He denied accusations from Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, that BP has been threatening workers who speak out about health concerns.

　　Fishermen contacted by CNN have declined to speak publicly.

　　Some, who are making as much as $3,000 a day cleaning up the oil, have said they fear losing their jobs with BP.

　　"The BP oil spill wiped out their professions and their jobs this year and possibly years down the road," Klick said. "The only work they can get right now is with BP."

　　The BP spokesman said there have been no threats against workers for speaking out.

　　"If they have any concerns, they should raise them with their supervisors," MacEwen said. "They can also call the joint information center and make complaints anonymously."

　　Wutstell is one of nine clean-up workers who were sent to the hospital with symptoms such as shortness of breath, nose and throat irritation, headaches, and dizziness.

　　The restraining order requests that BP stop using dispersants without providing "appropriate personal protective equipment" to workers.

　　Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air.

　　BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.

　　"We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

　　He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them.

　　According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks.

　　"Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

　　Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP, offered another explanation for the fishermen's illness: spoiled food.

　　"Food poisoning is clearly a big issue," Hayward said Sunday. "It's something we've got to be very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of keeping the Army operating. You know, the Army marches on their stomachs."

　　An expert on foodborne illness cast doubt on Hayward's theory.

　　"Headaches, shortness of breath, nosebleeds -- there's nothing there that suggests foodborne illness," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "I don't know what these people have, but it sounds more like a respiratory illness."

 

World Cup 2010: FA to meet Fabio Capello over contract

　　

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　　Fabio 'focused only on World Cup'

　　Fabio Capello will meet the Football Association on Monday for talks that are expected to lead to him committing his future to England as manager.

　　The Italian has been heavily linked with a summer move to Inter Milan.

　　And though his England deal runs until 2012, it contains a clause that allows Capello to quit after the World Cup.

　　But having made a verbal agreement with ex-Football Association chairman Lord Triesman to stay on beyond Euro 2012, Capello is keen to end speculation.

　　He will speak to Sir David Richards, chairman of the newly formed Club England board, and a resolution should be known at some point in the next 48 hours.

　　"I always say the same things," said Capello in response to questions about his future following England's 2-1 friendly win over Japan in Graz.

　　"My name is always in the newspapers. My name has been on the radio but I can't say anything about it. I have not spoken with anyone from Inter Milan.

　　"I spoke with the first chairman [Lord Triesman]. Now I wait to speak to the other one. I need to speak with the new chairman of Club England, Sir David Richards."

　　

　　Triesman was forced to resign earlier this month after what he referred to as his "entrapment" by the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

　　But just prior to Lord Triesman's departure, Capello was widely believed to be ready to rip up a clause in his current deal that allows either the Italian or the Football Association to end the contract early this summer.

　　Triesman's departure therefore threw Capello's position into confusion and opened the door to reports that the 63-year-old could head to Inter after the World Cup as a replacement for Real Madrid-bound Jose Mourinho.

　　However, with the appointment of Richards, plus that of communications chief Adrian Bevington, who has been confirmed as Club England's new managing director with immediate effect, some clarity has been brought to the situation.

　　Capello now hopes his own future can be confirmed before his team depart for their World Cup adventure on Wednesday evening.

　　"The situation will be clear in two days when I will have spoken with Sir David Richards," added Capello. "I shook the hand of Lord Triesman but I have not written anything."

　　In any conversation about his contract, Capello always qualifies it with the claim that should England fail to match expectations in the finals in South Africa, which start on 11 June, he could easily find himself surplus to requirements.

　　Such is the improvement that has been made since he succeeded Steve McClaren in December 2007, though, such a scenario is unlikely to unfold.

　　And Bevington has confirmed that is the FA's position.

　　"We will be speaking with Fabio tomorrow [Monday] morning and going over the previous conversations that his advisers had with Lord Triesman about us wanting Fabio to stay until after Euro 2012," stated Bevington.

　　"That is still our position. We have not changed on that whatsoever."

How Computers Know What We Want — Before We Do

　　

　　

　　Here's an experiment: try thinking of a song not as a song but as a collection of distinct musical attributes. Maybe the song has political lyrics. That would be an attribute. Maybe it has a police siren in it, or a prominent banjo part, or paired vocal harmony, or punk roots. Any one of those would be an attribute. A song can have as many as 400 attributes — those are just a few of the ones filed under p.

　　This curious idea originated with Tim Westergren, one of the founders of an Internet radio service based in Oakland, Calif., called Pandora. Every time a new song comes out, someone on Pandora's staff — a specially trained musician or musicologist — goes through a list of possible attributes and assigns the song a numerical rating for each one. Analyzing a song takes about 20 minutes.

　　The people at Pandora — no relation to the alien planet — analyze 10,000 songs a month. They've been doing it for 10 years now, and so far they've amassed a database containing detailed profiles of 740,000 different songs. Westergren calls this database the Music Genome Project. (See the world's most influential people in the 2010 TIME 100.)

　　There is a point to all this, apart from settling bar bets about which song has the most prominent banjo part ever. The purpose of the Music Genome Project is to make predictions about what kind of music you're going to like next. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to power what's known in the business as a recommendation engine: one of those pieces of software that gives you advice about what you might enjoy listening to or watching or reading next, based on what you just listened to or watched or read. Tell Pandora you like Spoon and it'll play you Modest Mouse. Tell it you like Cajun accordion virtuoso Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin and it'll try you out on some Iry LeJeune. Enough people like telling Pandora what they like that the service adds 2.5 million new users a month. (See the 100 best albums of all time.)

　　Over the past decade, recommendation engines have become quietly ubiquitous. At the appropriate moment — generally when you're about to consummate a retail purchase — they appear at your shoulder, whispering suggestively in your ear. Amazon was the pioneer of automated recommendations, but Netflix, Apple, YouTube and TiVo have them too. In the music space alone, Pandora has dozens of competitors. A good recommendation engine is worth a lot of money. According to a report by industry analyst Forrester, one-third of customers who notice recommendations on an e-commerce site wind up buying something based on them. (Watch TIME's video "The Brains Behind Pandora Radio.")

　　The trouble with recommendation engines is that they're really hard to build. They look simple on the outside — if you liked X, you'll love Y! — but they're actually doing something fiendishly complex. They're processing astounding quantities of data and doing so with seriously high-level math. That's because they're attempting to second-guess a mysterious, perverse and profoundly human form of behavior: the personal response to a work of art. They're trying to reverse-engineer the soul.

　　They're also changing the way our culture works. We used to learn about new works of art from friends and critics and video-store clerks — from people, in other words. Now we learn about them from software. There's a new class of tastemakers, and they're not human.

　　Learning to Love Dolph Lundgren

　　Pandora makes recommendations the same way people do, more or less: by knowing something about the music it's recommending and something about your musical taste. But that's actually pretty unusual. It's a very labor-intensive approach. Most recommendation engines work backward instead, using information that comes not from the art but from its audience. (See the 50 best websites of 2009.)

　　It's a technique called collaborative filtering, and it works on the principle that the behavior of a lot of people can be used to make educated guesses about the behavior of a single individual. Here's the idea: if, statistically speaking, most people who liked the first Sex and the City movie also like Mamma Mia!, then if we know that a particular individual liked Sex and the City, we can make an educated guess that that individual will also like Mamma Mia!

　　It sounds simple enough, but the closer you look, the weirder and more complicated it gets. Take Netflix's recommendation engine, which it has dubbed Cinematch. The algorithmic guts of a recommendation engine are usually a fiercely guarded trade secret, but in 2006 Netflix decided it wasn't completely happy with Cinematch, and it took an unusual approach to solving the problem. The company made public a portion of its database of movie ratings — around 100 million of them — and offered a prize of $1 million to anybody who could improve its engine by 10%.

　　The Netflix competition opened a window onto a world that's usually locked away deep in the bowels of corporate R&D departments. The eventual winner — which clinched the prize last fall — was a seven-man, four-country consortium called BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, which included Bob Bell and Chris Volinsky, two members of AT&T's research division. Talking to them, you start to see how difficult it is to make a piece of software understand the vagaries of human taste. You also see how, oddly, software understands things about our taste in movies that a human video clerk never could.

　　The key point to grasp about collaborative-filtering software is that it knows absolutely nothing about movies. It has no preconceptions; it works entirely on the basis of the audience's reaction. So if a large enough group of people claim to have enjoyed, say, both Saw V and On Golden Pond, the software would be forced to infer that those two movies share some common quality that the viewers enjoyed. Crazy? Or crazy genius? (See the 100 best movies of all time.)

　　In such a case, the software would have discovered an aesthetic property that we might not even be aware of or have a name for but which in a mathematical sense must be said to exist. Even Bell and Volinsky don't always know what the properties are. "We might be able to describe them, or we might not be able to," Bell says. "They might be subtleties like 'action movies that don't have a lot of blood, don't have a lot of profanity but have a strong female lead.' Things like that, which you would never think to categorize on your own." As Volinsky puts it, "A lot of times, we don't come up with explanations that are explainable."

　　That makes recommendation engines sound practically psychic, but everyday experience tells us that they're actually pretty fallible. Everybody has felt the outrage that comes when a recommendation engine accuses one of a secret desire to watch Rocky IV, the one with Dolph Lundgren in it. In 2006, Walmart was charged with racism when its recommendation engine paired Planet of the Apes with a documentary about Martin Luther King. But generally speaking, the weak link in a recommendation engine isn't the software; it's us. Collaborative filtering works only as well as the data it has available, and humans produce noisy, low-quality data.

　　The problem is consistency: we're just not good at expressing our desires in rating form. We rate things differently after a bad day at work than we would if we were on vacation. Some people are naturally stingy with their stars; others are generous. We rate movies differently depending on whether we rate them right after watching them or if we wait a week, and differently again depending on whether we saw a lousy movie or a good movie in that intervening week. We even rate differently depending on whether we rate a whole batch of movies together or one at a time. (See the 50 best inventions of 2009.)

　　All this means that there's a ceiling to how accurate collaborative filtering can get. "There's a lot of randomness involved," Volinsky admits. "There's some intrinsic level of error associated with trying to predict human behavior."

　　The Great Choice Epidemic

　　Recommendation engines are a response to the strange new world of online retail. It's a world characterized by a surplus of something we usually can't get enough of: choice.

　　We're drowning in it. As Sheena Iyengar points out in her book The Art of Choosing, in 1994 there were 500,000 different consumer goods for sale in the U.S. Now Amazon alone offers 24 million. When faced with such an oversupply of choice, our little lizard brains go straight to vapor lock. "We think the profusion of possibilities must make it that much easier to find that perfect gift for a friend's birthday," Iyengar writes, "only to find ourselves paralyzed in the face of row upon row of potential presents." We're living through an epidemic of choice. We require an informational prosthesis to navigate it. The recommendation engine is that prosthesis: it winnows the millions of options down to a manageable handful.

　　But there's a trade-off involved. Recommendation engines introduce a new voice into the cultural conversation, one that speaks to us when we're at our most vulnerable, which is to say at the point of purchase. What is that voice saying? Recommendation engines aren't designed to give us what we want. They're designed to give us what they think we want, based on what we and other people like us have wanted in the past.

　　Which means they don't surprise us. They don't take us out of our comfort zone. A recommendation engine isn't the spouse who drags you to an art film you wouldn't have been caught dead at but then unexpectedly love. It won't force you to read the 18th century canon. It's no substitute for stumbling onto a great CD just because it has cool cover art. Recommendation engines are the enemy of serendipity and Great Books and the avant-garde. A 19th century recommendation engine would never have said, If you liked Monet, you'll love Van Gogh! Impressionism would have lasted forever.

　　The risk you run with recommendation engines is that they'll keep you in a rut. They do that because ruts are comfy places — though often they're deeper than they look. "By definition, we keep you in the same musical neighborhood you start in," says Westergren of the Music Genome Project, "so you could say that's limiting. But even within a neighborhood, there is a ton of room for discovery. Forty-five percent of the people who use Pandora buy more music after they start, and only 1% buy less." And not being based solely on data from its audience, Pandora isn't as vulnerable to peer pressure as most recommendation engines are. It doesn't follow the crowd.

　　Pandora is unusual, though. The general effect of recommendation engines on shopping behavior is a hot topic among econometricians, if that's not an oxymoron, but the consensus is this: they introduce us to new things, which is good, but those new things tend to be a lot like the old things, and they tend to be drawn from the shallow pool of things other people have already liked. As a result, they create a blockbuster culture in which the same few runaway hits get recommended over and over again. It's the backlash against the "long tail," the idea that shopping online is all about near infinite selection and cultural diversity. It has a bad habit of eating its own tail and leaving you back where you started. (See the latest geek culture stories at Techland.com.)

　　But this isn't just about retail. The Web has transformed how we shop. Now it's transforming our social lives too, and recommendation engines are coming along for the ride. Just as Netflix reverse-engineers our response to art, dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony and OKCupid use algorithms to make predictions about that equally ineffable human phenomenon, love; or, failing that, lust. The idea is the same: they break down human behavior into data, then look for patterns in the data that they can use to pair up the humans.

　　Even if you're not into online dating, you're probably on Facebook, currently the second most visited site on the Web. Facebook gives users the option of switching between a straight feed, which shows all their friends' news in chronological order, and an algorithmically curated selection of the updates Facebook's recommendation engine thinks they'd most like to see. And in the right-hand column, Facebook uses a different set of algorithms to recommend new friends. If you loved Jason, why not try Jordan?! (See pictures of Facebook headquarters.)

　　And as for the first most trafficked site on the Web, if you cock your head only slightly to one side, Google is, effectively, a massive recommendation engine, advising us on what we should read and watch and ultimately know. It used to return the same generic results to everyone, but in December it put a service called Personalized Search into wide release. Personalized Search studies the previous 180 days of your searching behavior and skews its results accordingly, based on its best guess as to what you're looking for and how you look for it.

　　The principle is almost endlessly generalizable. Anywhere the specter of unconstrained choice confronts us, we're meeting it by outsourcing elements of the selection process to software. Largely unconsciously, we radiate information about ourselves and our personal preferences all day long, and more and more recommendation engines of all shapes and sizes are hoovering up that data and feeding it back to us, reshaping our reality into a form that they fondly hope will be more to our liking — in an endless feedback loop. The effect is to create a customized world for each of us, one that is ever so slightly childproofed, the sharp edges sanded off, and ever so slightly stifling, like recirculated air. (See 25 websites you can't live without.)

　　How far will it go? Will we eventually surf a Web that displays only blogs that conform to our political leanings? A social network in which we see only people of our race and religion? Our horizons, cultural and social, would narrow to a cozy, contented, claustrophobic little dot of total personalization.

　　Let's hope not. People weren't built to play it safe all the time. We were meant to be bored and disappointed and offended once in a while. It's good for us. That's what forces us to evolve. Even if it means watching Rocky IV, with Dolph Lundgren. Who knows? You might even like it.

 

Sophie Howard - Bedridden

　　Sophie Howard - Bedridden

　　

　　Back to browse more 100 Sexiest Women

　　I love my bed – both for sleeping and having sex.

　　A few things to know about Miss Howard: 1. She's been in the Salvation army in her time. 2. She once worked as a stripper. 3. She has ten tattoos – the biggest being the three stars on her back, and these are often removed using the magic of photoshop before she hits your magazine rack. 4. She is a 34G. Honestly. 5. She's from Southport and supports Liverpool. 6. She was once a marketing student. So there. Aside from that, she's stunning. Which is the most important thing, frankly.

 

Pop up denim bar from My ourshoesbox.com

　　

　　

　　Expert denim advice available for all comers on Carnaby Street

　　What is it?

　　Designer retail website mywardrobe.com have dipped their toes into the world of actual shopping with the launch of their denim bar on London's Carnaby Street.

　　What's good about it?

　　Mywardrobe.com have an excellent selection of denim brands including Nudie, PRPS, Acne, Stone Island and Levis but shopping on line for denim can be tricky. The pop up denim bar then is the perfect opportunity to come down and actually try things on. You'll also find the guys who buy the denim in for Mywardrobe.com on hand to give advice on brands, fits and styles. Trust us when we say that denim buyers know their stuff, so it's worth picking their brains.

　　What's bad about it?

　　When we say it's the ideal opportunity to actually try jeans on, we realise that this only applies if you live in and around the M25. Otherwise it's a bit of a trek. Hopefully Mywardrobe will roll the denim bar concept out nationwide.

　　Gimme:

　　Launching tonight and open for two days (Thursday the 27th and Friday the 28th) The denim bar is at number 38 Carnaby street, London W1F 7DS. Alternatively check out www.ourshoesbox.com now where the site is themed around the denim bar concept.

 

Cox: Cup final remains unsolved mystery

　　Cox: Cup final remains unsolved mystery

　　

　　Chicago's Jonathan Toews and goalie Antti Niemi celebrate Game 1 victory.

　　JOHN GRESS/REUTERS

　　CHICAGO

　　Every series has to start someplace, and where it starts doesn’t necessarily describe where it’s headed.

　　So don’t read too much into Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final, an altogether wacky result.

　　It was fun — a “ping pong” game, according to Chicago captain Jonathan Toews. Lots of people watched in the U.S. and in Canada. There were lots of goals, lots of errors, not many saves and multiple lead changes until the Blackhawks prevailed 6-5 to take a 1-0 series advantage.

　　Game 1 mostly provided compelling evidence that pretty much every pre-series story that attempted to suggest the way in which this Flyers-Hawks final would be contested was off base.

　　Didn’t hear anybody writing or broadcasting that Tomas Kopecky and Troy Brouwer were the Chicago shooters worth watching, or that Toews would need to do a good job checking Daniel Briere or the Philly offence might run wild.

　　And what about all that chatter about how the very affordable goalies playing for both teams — not including Cristobal Huet, officially on Joel Quenneville’s persona non grata list — was evidence of a new reality in the NHL and how high-profile, high-salaried goalies were no longer necessary to win a Cup?

　　When it comes to this series, rather than anticipating what is going to happen, we may just have to watch it happen and then try to explain it. There’s a lot of youth on both sides, many players thrust into this sporting petri dish for the first time, and their reactions might not be consistent with how they perform in ordinary circumstances.

　　“You try to treat it as a normal game,” said Toews, “but it’s tough not to get excited about it. Both teams maybe realized that too much (in Game 1).

　　“You score six goals, you better be winning hockey games. You sure don’t want to be in a situation where you’re scoring six goals and just winning by one.”

　　Toews went into the series opener as a leading candidate for the Conn Smythe Trophy, then delivered one of his worst games of the playoffs: no points, minus-3. He and linemate Patrick Kane didn’t display that mutual understanding they’d shown earlier in the post-season, possibly because they were spending so much time checking — or not checking — Briere and his linemates, Scott Hartnell and Ville Leino.

　　“I haven’t had a game like that in a long time,” said Toews, who was an excellent 18-6 on faceoffs. “I’m very thankful that as a team we found a way to win.”

　　So much is expected of the 22-year-old Toews, the NHL’s leading scorer in these playoffs, and his sidekick Kane, 21, that it may take them a while to get the feel of playing in a Cup final.

　　“This is the big show,” said Toews. “You want to play your best hockey every shift.”

　　Two other Hawk centres, Patrick Sharp and David Bolland, didn’t seem to have the same difficulties on opening night. Sharp scored a pretty goal and was plus 2, Bolland got the assignment, on three-quarters of his shifts, of playing against Flyers captain Mike Richards and ended up with a goal, an assist on Kopecky’s winner and a plus 3.

　　Bolland tried, without success, to begin the process of getting under the skin of Richards right at the opening faceoff.

　　“I tried staring at him,” smiled Bolland. “He didn’t say much, though.”

　　Sharp smiled when he heard Toews was beating himself up over his Game 1 performance.

　　“I’m sure he’ll be watching the game over and over again,” said Sharp. “He’s 22 years old and it seems like he’s 32 years old, the way he carries himself. I know he wants to be a big part of this team the way he has been all year long.

　　“I thought the week off, talking about every story in the series, weighed on the teams a little bit.”

　　There’s an expectation that Game 2 will be more buttoned-down for both clubs, and maybe that will be true. Flyer coach Peter Laviolette said earlier in the playoffs that momentum doesn’t usually decide games but rather desperation, or the team most in need of a victory.

　　That will be Philly Monday night, although we’re far away from a must-win situation even though history says a 2-0 series lead in a Stanley Cup final is all but insurmountable.

　　What happens in the second game, it’s fair to say, is much more likely to foreshadow what will occur the rest of the way.

 

So You Think You Can Dance Canada alumna turns to disco

　　

　　Romina D’Ugo stars in the CTV movie Turn the Beat Around

　　

　　Romina D'Ugo stars in the CTV disco movie Turn the Beat Around.

　　HANDOUT

　　Romina D’Ugo knows a thing or two about following your heart.

　　The 24-year-old had to make a tough choice right after high school: study sciences in preparation for a stable career as a chiropractor or pursue her passion for the arts.

　　She chose the latter, which explains why you might recognize the Torontonian from the TV or movie screen.

　　She’s been in a bunch of productions since she graduated from the Sheridan College musical theatre program almost four years ago: she had a recurring role in Degrassi: The Next Generation (Nina); a role in the recent Syfy miniseries Riverworld; small parts in movies like Hairspray and How She Move; and she made top 20 on Season 1 of So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

　　There was a lot to like about her latest role, as lead character Zoe Benjamin in the CTV move Turn the Beat Around, airing Sunday at 8 p.m. (it repeats next Friday at 7 and 11 p.m. on MuchMusic).

　　For one thing, D’Ugo could relate to Zoe’s dilemma in the film.

　　“She’s essentially a struggling young dancer in L.A.,” D’Ugo said. “She’s fighting between what her parents want her to do, what everyone in her life wants her to do, vs. what she knows in her heart she’s destined for.”

　　And then there’s the fact that D’Ugo got to combine two of her passions: dancing and acting. And not just any dancing: disco.

　　Obviously, she’s far too young to have experienced the style in its mid-70s heyday, but when D’Ugo was a teenager — she started dance lessons at 8 —her dance studio did Saturday Night Fever as its recital one year.

　　And just before she started shooting Turn the Beat Around, she made another disco-themed movie in Montreal, Funkytown, which is expected to be released in December (she had one day off in between the two, her birthday).

　　“For Funkytown we kept it really to the era, whereas in Turn the Beat Around we incorporated funky hip hop and salsa, and we modernized it and contemporized it.”

　　She added that she’s now a huge fan of disco: “My iPod is just filled with disco.”

　　The person who choreographed all those moves for Turn the Beat Around was a familiar face to D’Ugo: So You Think You Can Dance Canada judge Tre Armstrong.

　　Besides the reality TV show, Armstrong and D’Ugo worked together on How She Move, which starred Armstrong, and the movie Honey, which starred Jessica Alba.

　　“By the time Turn the Beat Around came to be, Tre and I had a really solid work ethic and we had a solid way of communicating. . . . Working with her is always just a real pleasure.

　　“Working with the other dancers from So You Think You Can Dance was great as well.”

　　Joining D’Ugo in the cast are SYTYCDC Season 1 finalists Natalli Reznik and Miles Faber, and Top 20 dancers Tamina Pollack-Paris, Caroline Torti and Bre Wong.

　　The movie, which was shot over 18 days in Toronto, also features Brooklyn Sudano, the daughter of disco queen Donna Summer, and a performance by pop star Jason Derulo.

　　“I think a lot of people can relate to (Zoe’s) struggle to follow her dreams,” said D’Ugo.

　　“It’s definitely a feel good movie, you can be sure of that. I’d say it’s an inspirational story as well.”

Topshop tests Toronto market with Ossington Ave. shop

　　

　　Trendy British retailer sells selection at ultra-cool boutique Jonathan + Olivia

　　

　　Collaborations with designers, including one by model Kate Moss in 2007, help rais Topshop's international profile.

　　TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS FILE PHOTO

　　Topshop, the ultra-trendy British chain store, has finally arrived in Canada.

　　But its arrival looks more like a taste test of the Canadian market than a full fledged assault on the retail scene here in Toronto.

　　Topshop, which has 300 stores in the UK and 100 internationally, opens its shop-in-a-shop at Jonathan + Olivia on June 19.

　　The store at Ossington Ave. and Queen St. W. is growing an extra 800 square feet to house the Topshop collection, which will include the retailer’s well-priced main line and Unique Boutique, its designer collaboration label. Footwear and makeup round out the selection with menswear to follow at a later date.

　　“They contacted us about four to five months ago, says Jonathan + Olivia owner Jackie O’Brien-Jones. “They liked what we were doing and it felt like a good fit for both of us.”

　　Since opening two years ago, the ultra-cool Jonathan + Olivia has developed a following for its stock of such fashion-insider labels as Alexander Wang, Isabel Marant and Surface To Air.

　　But will offering cheap fast fashion in the same store affect the sales of pricier designer merchandise?

　　O’Brien-Jones doesn’t think so.

　　“That’s the way women shop now, mixing a $20 t-shirt with a designer handbag or shoes,” she says. “It’s a one-stop shop for women.”

　　For the past few years, there has been much speculation about when Topshop would open in Canada. Philip Green, the chain’s billionaire owner, told the Star in 2009 that Topshop would launch within nine months.

　　Since then, rumors circulated that Topshop would be sold at the Bay.

　　Selling a sampling of their collection in Jonathan + Olivia follows a tactic the UK retailer employed before entering the American market.

　　Before opening its splashy, multi-leveled store in Manhattan in 2009, Topshop gave New Yorkers a taste of its cheap-and-chic merch by selling a portion of its vast collections in Opening Ceremony — a hipster store in Soho, not unlike Jonathan + Olivia.

The ‘Abortion Caravan’ succeeded. Or did it?

　　

　　

　　In this 1970 photo, a group of women stands with fists upraised in front of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa after their protest forced the House of Commons to adjourn for a half-hour.

　　Errol Young/Star file photo

　　The coat hanger was its graphic symbol of death, outrage and ultimately, a woman’s right to control her own body.

　　The “Abortion Caravan” rolled into Ottawa on Mother’s Day weekend in 1970, a convoy of young women — coat hangers and a black coffin in tow — who drew hundreds of supporters during their drive from Vancouver to make an unprecedented demand: unrestricted access to legal abortions.

　　“The adrenaline was flowing, we had a cause, we were strong,” says Yvonne Demalpas, who 40 years ago hopped on a bus in Toronto to join the caravaners in Ottawa.

　　“We felt we could make a difference.”

　　They did, shutting down Parliament for 30 minutes and laying the groundwork to strike abortion completely from the Criminal Code in 1988.

　　Now, decades later, those pioneering women fear their hard-fought gains might be jeopardized as the abortion debate reignites at home and abroad.

　　“I was appalled,” said Demalpas, referring to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to fund aid groups that might help provide abortions in developing countries.

　　“So many of us have fought for so long to keep abortion accessible. But I think when people haven’t had to face bad times, perhaps you slowly rest a little bit and you don’t keep fighting.”

　　In 1970, the Abortion Caravan planned a daring plot to push the issue from shameful silence into the national consciousness. The Vancouver trekkers held public meetings during stopovers en route to Ottawa, giving women a supportive forum in which to speak publicly for the first time.

　　Though it was known the caravan was coming to Ottawa, Canadians were shocked at the protestors’ bold action.

　　Hundreds of women rallied for two days at Parliament and some 50 disrupted the sitting House of Commons, chaining themselves to seats and chanting “free abortions on demand.” The Toronto Star reported on May 12, 1970 that one woman hurled a water bomb at the government benches before being rushed by security officers and marched from the building. Others had their chains removed by bolt-cutting guards and were heckled by onlookers as they were escorted from House.

　　At 24 Sussex Drive, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was burned in effigy. Demalpas was with the group who dumped the coffin at Trudeau’s door. The coffin represented pregnant women who’d died from back-alley procedures or their own horrific attempts with knitting needles or coat hangers.

　　The Star reported in 1970 that 2,000 Canadian women died annually from the 100,000 illegal abortions performed each year, and about 20,000 had to be hospitalized with post-abortion complications. As of 1969, limited legal abortions were performed only if a medical panel determined the mother’s health was at risk.

　　Jackie Larkin was a budding, 25-year-old Ottawa feminist who slipped her chain around a parliamentary chair leg with her sister protesters. She recalls that the late 1960s and early ’70s were an “opening up about all kinds of ways about thinking about the world.” The rise of feminism, she adds, was a catalyst for Canadian women to wrest control of their reproductive rights from the government.

　　“The abortion issue was important because it had been suppressed as an issue,” says Larkin, now a 65-year-old labour and health educator in Victoria. “It was something you didn’t talk about.

　　“But there was also the fundamental question of: Do you even have the right to control your own body?”

　　The pioneers now fear that decades of pushing for change may be eroded. Hospital cutbacks, hospital closures, little progress in making abortions available in rural areas and the pro-life push on governments by right-wing conservative groups worry Larkin.

　　“It pisses me off,” she says, referring to Harper for imposing his “political agenda” on foreign aid.

　　“It’s clear in the context of the world in which there’s a rising Christian fundamentalism, (and I think) the Harper government is extremely influenced by that.”

　　Demalpas is concerned that women in their 20s and 30s take their freedoms for granted. She wonders if Canadians are aware of the great discrepancies in access to abortion in every province and the difficulties for those in rural areas, where enormous travel times and cost make it prohibitive.

　　“So many women’s groups have been shut down by non-funding (by government), I just see a slow reversal back to the bad old days for women,” says the retired union consultant.

　　“I’m not sure that young women know how bad it was or what went on or are aware of what they might lose.”

Canada's top soldier in Afghanistan ousted

　　

　　Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard relieved of mission command over allegations of ‘inappropriate' relationship with female soldier

　　

　　Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, commander of Canada's Task Force Afghanistan, stands by a light armoured vehicle in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan. (Jan. 30, 2010)

　　KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/AP FILE PHOTO

　　The top Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard, has been relieved of duty and ordered home immediately, accused of having an inappropriate personal relationship with a female soldier.

　　An investigation has been launched into the conduct of Ménard, who is married. Until next week, the forces in Afghanistan will be commanded by Col. Simon Hetherington, the deputy-commander of Canada's 2,800 soldiers in the country.

　　An official in Defence Minister Peter MacKay's office said the allegations against Ménard involve a member of his staff.

　　Hetherington told reporters at Kandahar Airfield that Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard, commander of Canadian military stationed overseas, decided to relieve Ménard of his duties after he lost confidence in his capacity to command.Hetherington declined to comment on specifics of the allegations.

　　“As soon as Lt.-Gen. Lessard was made aware of the allegations, which was the 29th of May, he did the proper assessment and made the decision to have him relieved,” Hetherington said.

　　Ménard received the news Sunday morning in Afghanistan.

　　The military has a strict non-fraternization policy for deployed troops, forbidding personal relationships of an emotional, romantic or sexual nature.

　　National Defence spokesperson Lt.-Col. Chris Lemay told the Star by phone from Ottawa Saturday night that the female soldier might also face reprimand after an investigation is complete. “Measures will be taken,” he said.

　　The news came only days after Ménard faced a court martial in Canada, where he pleaded guilty to accidentally firing his weapon twice at the Kandahar airbase in March.

　　The incident occurred as Ménard walked with Canada's chief of defence staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, on his way to a helicopter.

　　His fine, imposed by a military judge in Gatineau, Que., was $3,500 — the stiffest fine handed down for mishandling a weapon.

　　Brig.-Gen. John Vance will take over the mission.

　　While Ménard's sudden removal will have no impact on the service of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, a defence expert said, it could permanently damage Ménard's career.

　　“For all intents and purposes, it's a career stopper,” said Stuart Hendin of the University of Ottawa.

　　To show there is no double standard in terms of intimate relationships, Ménard would most likely face a “harsher penalty” than a rank-and-file soldier, Hendin noted.

　　“There might be a feeling of ‘If the top can act like this, why can't we do it at the bottom?'” he said.

　　Hendin stressed that the allegations against Ménard have not been proven.

　　Hendin doesn't' believe the dismissal will affect the Afghan mission as a whole.

　　“Operations don't rest on one person,” he said.

　　“It will probably cause him to be the subject of substantial ridicule within the ranks, but what effect it will have on the actual operating ability of Task Force Afghanistan is probably minimal. They're entering the fighting season, the plan is already in place.”

　　Ménard is the second high-ranking Canadian military officer to be relieved of his command in recent months.

　　Col. Russell Williams, former commander of CFB Trenton, faces charges in the deaths of two women, the sexual assault of two others and dozens of break-ins.

 

BP documents show earlier worries for rig's safety

　　

　　

　　Crews on ships work on skimming and collecting oil near the source site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster May 29, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.

　　Win McNamee/Getty Images

　　WASHINGTON—Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those described by the company to Congress last week.

　　The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the rig.

　　The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, the company was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

　　On June 22, 2009, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal well casing that the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

　　“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

　　The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because the casing violated the company's own safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception to its guidelines.

　　Meanwhile, a BP executive said Saturday that a risky procedure to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico has yet to show much success, and BP is considering scrapping it in favour of a different method to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

　　The comments from chief operating officer Doug Suttles came amid increasing skepticism that the “top kill” operation — which involves pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 1,500 metres underwater — would halt the leak.

　　The top kill began Wednesday and “to date it hasn't yet stopped the flow,” Suttles said Saturday at Port Fourchon, La. “What I don't know is whether it ultimately will or not.”

　　The oil well blew out on April 20, killing 11 offshore rig workers, and inquiries since then have been looking at the well casing used.

　　The BP documents released last week to The New York Times revealed company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.

　　Though his report indicates the company was aware of certain risks and it made the exception, Hafle, testifying before a panel on Friday in Louisiana about the cause of the rig disaster, rejected the notion the company had taken risks.

　　“Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue,” Hafle told a six-member panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials.

　　“All the risks had been addressed, all the concerns had been addressed, and we had a model that suggested if executed properly we would have a successful job,” he said.

　　BP's concerns about the casing did not go away after Hafle's 2009 report.

　　In April of this year, BP engineers concluded the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.

　　The document also says the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill MMS regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service.

　　A second version of the same document says “it is possible to obtain a successful cement job” and “it is possible to fulfill MMS regulations.”

　　Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said the second document was produced after further testing had been done.

　　Last Tuesday, Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP's internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.

　　A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP's internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.

　　In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear.

　　Federal drilling records and well reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and BP's internal documents, including more than 50,000 pages of company e-mail messages, inspection reports, engineering studies and other company records obtained by The Times from congressional investigators, shed new light on the extent and timing of problems with the blowout preventer and the casing long before the explosion.

　　Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, declined to answer questions about the casings, the blowout preventer and regulators' oversight of the rig because those matters are part of a continuing investigation.

　　The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.”

　　On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

 

Sex abuse victims say church is still tenaciously fighting claims

　　

　　Even after convictions, some lawsuits have dragged on for more than a decade; church official blames complexities of judicial system

　　John Caruso thought his trauma within the Roman Catholic Church began and ended with Rev. James Kneale.

　　The St. Catharines-area priest was convicted of sexually abusing the former altar boy 11 years ago. Caruso and his Fort Erie family sued Kneale, the Diocese of St. Catharines and former bishops for $8.6 million, claiming, among other things, that church officials knew or should have known the priest was a sexual predator.

　　The response was an unexpected legal thunderbolt: Kneale and the diocese countersued Caruso’s mother and father. They claimed the parents were negligent in failing to get counselling and medical help for their teenaged son and that Caruso’s father regularly beat him, compounding his psychological troubles.

　　The legal hardball shattered the once-devout family.

　　Caruso’s parents had to hire their own lawyers. Family relationships were strained. Caruso attempted suicide several times. And it got worse: His mother Claire died March 22, 2009, while the legal war still raged — a full decade after Kneale’s conviction, and 25 years after the priest performed a sex act on him during a rectory sleepover.

　　“She took it to her grave thinking she was part of the problem,’’ said a sobbing 40-year-old Caruso, the only time he broke down and cried during a phone interview from his Chatham home.

　　“She kept saying, ‘I feel like it’s my fault John.’ I kept telling her ‘No, it’s not your fault.’ ”

　　St. Catharines lawyer Peter A. Mahoney, who represented the diocese, declined to comment on the legal tactics behind the counter-claim because “my sense is that the (news)papers don’t want to be accurate (and) they misquote (people).”

　　Phone and email messages left with Wayne Kirkpatrick, the monsignor currently running the diocese, were not returned.

　　Four months after burying his mother, Caruso accepted the diocese’s undisclosed financial offer.

　　“Why do you think I took the settlement?’’ he asked, angrily. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to kill myself.”

　　The pressure Caruso experienced in battling the Catholic Church is not unusual, say those suing Catholic dioceses, priests and nuns over abuse. Despite the church’s pledge to handle victims with compassion — a position repeated this month by Pope Benedict — it too often plays a game of courtroom chicken with stall tactics, hostile discovery sessions and intrusive psychological probes that unnerve vulnerable clients, say victims and their lawyers.

　　“They don’t want to pay out the money,’’ said Jack Lavers, a Newfoundland lawyer who has worked both sides of the liturgical legal landscape. “There are (cases) that do start and never seem to finish.”

　　Seemingly relentless legal campaigns — especially against victims like Caruso, whose abuser had been convicted — appear to clash with church reforms adopted two decades ago after the Mount Cashel orphanage sex scandal. Pastoral outreach for victims of clergy abuse was among the recommendations in the 1992 “From Pain to Hope” report commissioned by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops. Counselling and empathy for the abused were again recommended in a 2007 CCCB task force.

　　The CCCB declined to provide a spokesperson to address allegations of legal bullying and stalling, and instead suggested contacting church representatives from Cornwall or London.

　　London’s vicar general, Rev. John Sharp, has worked on nearly 60 lawsuits involving victims of the late Charles Sylvestre, convicted of abusing 47 women as minors. Nearly 40 more women came forward after the priest was jailed in 2006.

　　Sharp said each victim’s circumstances are unique and claims of harsh treatment “may very well be” in some cases. But London-area victims are “immediately” offered counselling with a professional of their choice as soon as they report abuse.

　　“In our diocese we are committed to keep these things moving as quickly and fully as we possibly can,” said Sharp, who estimates he still has 20 active Sylvestre cases.

　　“I would do it every day to keep at it but there’s a whole process that’s involved in (litigation): lawyers’ schedules, availability, all that stuff. I can appreciate (cases) taking so long; I wish this had been over a long time ago.”

　　Lavers said courtroom reality is that plaintiffs often get worn down and agree to accept smaller sums or drop their cases completely.

　　The St. John’s lawyer, who defended the Mount Cashel superintendent in criminal and civil court, now represents victims. He’s settled about 30 cases against the Catholic Church, taking “10 and 12 years to bring some of them to closure.”

　　Cases drag on while medical, education and work history information is gathered and studied for discovery and mediation sessions. Insurance company lawyers — insurers pay plaintiffs if the church has coverage — add another layer of scrutiny.

　　One London-area woman, who asked not to be named, said the defence cancelled its own psychological exam of her in Toronto 36 hours before it was scheduled — and after she’d booked that day off work and hired babysitters for her children. The new date was several months later.

　　Sometimes empathy is evident. Chatham’s Lou Ann Soontiens, for instance, recalls professional, courteous attention from Sharp’s London team.

　　Soontiens was a Sylvestre victim. She’d been assaulted for years and had an abortion arranged by him — a procedure that was botched — after the priest raped her as a teenager.

　　Soontiens sued the London archdiocese and settled for a reported $1.75 million, the largest known church award for a sexual assault victim in Canadian history.

　　“I had other girls tell me they went through hell but I can’t say that,” said the 54-year-old, who wrote about her abuse in Breach of Faith, Breach of Trust which was launched earlier this month in Chatham. She also had kind words for “compassionate” Bishop Ronald Fabbro, who was supportive throughout the three-year litigation.

　　Similar support was not there for Judi Evans.

　　The 65-year-old native of St. John’s, Nfld., is among a group claiming physical and emotional abuse at the Belvedere Orphanage — a female counterpart of Mount Cashel. More than 30 women are suing the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy and the province of Newfoundland. Her case is now 13 years old and has only a faint pulse.

　　Evans, a singer who entertained Toronto crowds for three decades at nightspots like the El Mocambo, the Silver Dollar and the Royal York, said the legal limbo frustrates her and her five sisters who were all “tortured” by the nuns in the 1940s and ’50s.

　　Evans said she was beaten with belts and fists, locked in a dark tower without food for hours and, as a kindergarten student, was placed in a bathtub of scalding water and scrubbed with a hard brush between her legs when she peed her pants. One of Evans’ sisters had two fingers sliced off while operating a bread machine in an unsupervised kitchen while another sister needed stitches after a nun hit her in the head with the schoolyard bell.

　　“I had a business, I had a successful career,” said Evans, whose singing days ended when she began addressing childhood memories in the mid-1990s and had a breakdown.

　　She’s also battled alcoholism (she’s sober now), depression and now requires regular psychotherapy.

　　“(Other orphans) ended up drug addicts, prostitutes, suicides or emotionally abused . . . or drunks, because I was there too,” said Evans, who lives in Toronto with her husband of 34 years, Joe. She asked that her married surname not be used.

　　“I would give the world to see this come to closure of some sort.”

　　But the Belvedere case has little traction.

　　Nuns have died, memories are fading, time limits on physical assault allegations ran out decades ago, no criminal charges were laid and the potential financial compensation may not, ultimately, be worth the trauma of putting the women on the stand, says Evans’ lawyer, Richard Rogers. That’s one of the reasons he has not formally filed a statement of claim. Rogers, who represented Mount Cashel and residential school victims, hopes to negotiate a group settlement for clients, most of whom needed extensive therapy as adults. Some women claimed they were also sexually assaulted by nuns.

　　Thomas O’Reilly represents the Sisters of Mercy and described Evans’ case as being in a state of “inertia,” citing the lack of a statement of claim.

　　The province responded to the Star in an email, stating “liability is being contested and the claims are being actively defended.”

　　Lavers understands why Rogers wants to avoid a trial. He witnessed two Belvedere women crack during discovery sessions a decade ago.

　　“The ladies would have breakdowns (and) and would end up in the (psychiatric) hospital,” said Lavers, who then represented two Sisters of Mercy nuns who were being sued as individuals.

　　“My heart went out to a couple of them because it appeared to be a re-victimization of the whole thing. I think it became so difficult for them to face it, they just walked away. It just wasn’t worth it to them.”

　　Cecilia McLauchlin felt she was in a game of “survivor” when she sued the London archdiocese in 2007. She was abused by Sylvestre when she was about 4 until she was 6.

　　The 32-year-old settled with the church last September — five days before her trial was to start. Prior to that, she had a 9-hour psychological assessment in Toronto for the defence that she said “haunted” her and caused regression in her therapy. The defence is entitled to conduct independent medical assessments.

　　McLauchlin was alone with a male doctor who asked graphic, explicit questions about her abuse and her adult sex life. She was also asked to describe the priest’s penis — even though Sylvestre was dead. McLauchlin said she was given a written assignment with hundreds of questions, such as: Do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?

　　Another Sylvestre victim — the woman who’d had her psychiatric exam in Toronto cancelled — is in her fifth year of litigation. The woman said she’s seen the priest’s victims crumble after years on “an emotional roller coaster.”

　　“They couldn’t eat, sleep, work, they couldn’t carry on in their personal relationships,” said the woman, whose trial date is in 2011.

　　“There was so much anger in their lives and frustration. They just said ‘I want this done. I don’t care if I get $10, I just want this done.’ ”

　　Swifter resolutions would be more humane for victims, said Connie Coatsworth, a counsellor who has treated between 15 and 20 adults sexually assaulted as children by Catholic clergy.

　　“The longer (litigation) goes on, the harder it is for (patients) to heal,’’ said the Chatham therapist, who sees clients suffer under stresses related to lawsuits. “If (the church) truly wants healing for them, they need to expedite this process.”

　　Caruso called the church’s conduct hypocritical because it boasts of pastoral outreach to victims yet treated him “like sh--.”

　　“Their only concern is to piss you off and get you going and do everything they possibly can to deter you from suing them.”

　　Caruso said it would be more helpful to victims — and probably cheaper — for the church to provide counselling to ease their pain instead angering them into court action.

　　“I did not want to sue,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the poster child for this kind of bull.”