Varied Views of a Border

In some spots along the Mexican-American border, a well-fortified fence extends as far as the eye can see, while in others a wall ends abruptly in the ocean. Beyond these images of the United States’ southern border, we are interested in your photos.

An aerial view of the border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, where it meets the Pacific Ocean.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of a Border Patrol vehicle along a section of the border wall south of Mission, Tex., near the Rio Grande. In this case engineers built the wall along an existing levee in the floodplain just north of the river.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of the Rio Grande, which snakes its way through the Rio Grande Valley. Many do not understand the difficulty of building fences or monitoring thick brushland along the river. It is also complicated to block American farmers from accessing the river, which irrigates crops in this agricultural region.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The rusted old border wall separates Tijuana, Mexico, right, and a Border Patrol-controlled buffer zone, left. Once high volumes of drug trafficking in this impoverished area have diminished significantly.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The Border Patrol installed an iron fence to keep drug smugglers from using their roads to move drugs. This is an area south of Mission, Tex., where the river is quite narrow and easy to cross or float drugs across.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A border fence ends in the rugged terrain in East Tijuana. This photograph was taken in the mountains east of San Diego.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

Migrants hoping to arrive in California by boat are traveling more and more northward to elude border patrol. Torrey Pines State Beach (pictured) is more than 30 miles from the border but was once a popular location because of its proximity to the road.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A woman makes her way back to Mexico at the Nogales Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times.

Read More..

Kate Middleton 'Careful In Heels' at Weekend Wedding

By Simon Perry

03/02/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Splash News Online

The Duchess of Cambridge arrived at a wedding in a different kind of carriage Saturday – a bus.

She and brother-in-law Prince Harry were spotted with a group of friends as they hopped off the coach for nuptials in the Swiss mountains.

They were there for the wedding of close friend and polo player Mark Tomlinson, who married Olympic equestrian Laura Bechtolsheimer in the town of Arosa.

Dressed in a pale coat accentuated with brown fur trim, a familiar James Lock hat and a Max Mara dress she's wore previously underneath, an expectant Kate was seen walking "gingerly up the steps to the church," an onlooker tells PEOPLE. "She was being very careful in her heels."

Her husband William – in traditional tailcoat – had previously arrived due to his role as an usher at the ceremony.

As guests arrived, police cordoned off an area so locals could catch a glimpse. "There was a big crowd there, and the police closed the street," the onlooker adds.

The couple are among 250 guests, including the royals' close friends James Meade and fiancée Laura Marsham, Guy Pelly and Olivia Hunt.

The Princes often spend summer afternoons playing polo with groom Tomlinson, who attended Marlborough College with Kate. The bride was part of the London 2012 Olympics team that also included William and Harry's cousin Zara Phillips.

The family made a weekend of the trip – while William and Harry hit the slopes on Friday, Kate, who's due in July, was spotted strolling with a sled in her hands rather than ski poles.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Candidates for mayor take different tacks on education

Los Angeles city government faces a litany of problems, from yawning pension liabilities to poorly paved roads. But few threaten long-term prosperity as much as education, and the ability of the city's public schools to produce an educated, taxpaying workforce.

Though the mayor plays no official role in running the schools, voters frequently name education as their top priority in picking the city's chief executive. And Los Angeles' top elected official in recent years has increasingly tried to exert influence, with mixed results. Education advocates say the future of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where more than one in five students drop out, is dependent on the mayor playing a significant and singular role.

But some say the candidates vying to become Los Angeles' next mayor are just now beginning to do more than pay lip service to the matter.

"I don't think there's been a broad enough or deep enough conversation about education reform, or a kids-first agenda," said Ben Austin, executive director of the Parents Revolution, who is heartened by the fact that the discussions now taking place would have been unheard of four years ago. "Candidates have answered bits and pieces, but the fundamental question is, are you going to make every decision about LAUSD policy through the lens you would make that same decision if it affected your own child?"

Some are more blunt, saying that the candidates are merely focusing on buzz words rather than substance.

"It's about power and politics rather than curriculum and instruction. It's about getting elected, not kids learning," said former school board member David Tokofsky. The candidates' education platforms are "about polling and being safe rather than a city and nation at risk."

Former Mayor Richard Riordan is credited as the first to truly try to leave a mark on the city's schools, and current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa launched an aggressive drive to remake the district. His efforts were bold and controversial, but his bid to take over the district failed. Since then, he has used political capital to shape the school board, and his nonprofit organization took control of 13 campuses and opened two more.

Of the top contenders in the race to replace the termed-out Villaraigosa, none would follow his exact path.

The two candidates believed to be the most likely to make the runoff — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — share many positions on education. Both pledge to advocate for increased funding for the classroom, and support school choice, the use of students' test scores in evaluating teachers — although they decline to specify how much weight they should carry — and the ability of charter-school teachers to organize. They, like all of the mayoral candidates, support the retention of Supt. John Deasy, who has sought to change the way teachers are evaluated and fired, even though it has frequently put him at odds with the district's powerful teachers' union.

But there are shades of difference in rhetoric and priorities.

At a time when there are marked battles over what role bargaining groups should have in shaping school policy, Garcetti, who is backed by United Teachers Los Angeles as well as the California Federation of Teachers, has kept a more conciliatory tone about the matter. He has repeatedly spoken out against the "bullying" of teachers and the need to focus on what unites teachers' unions and reform advocates rather than the few issues that divide them. But his refusal to fully back the parent-trigger law, which allows parents to petition to overhaul a failing school, has led some to question whether his position was swayed by his union supporters.

Garcetti sought to push back at that portrayal during a United Way mayoral forum on education Wednesday, taking positions that are likely to irk union leadership, such as calling for teachers who excel to receive merit pay, while also taking positions supported by the union, such as backing school board member Steve Zimmer in his reelection bid.

"The teachers union … they're not going anywhere. I've disagreed with UTLA on plenty of things, on [laying off teachers based on] seniority, on parent trigger, on other things that are important," Garcetti said. "But at the same time, I want to be a bridge back, because if we don't have teachers and quote-unquote reformers working together, we aren't going to succeed."

Garcetti and City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is also running for mayor, prioritize the importance of making schools community centers with services not only for children but for their families. Perry said she has seen the benefits — both to student achievement and parental participation — in the new schools that have opened in South Los Angeles.

"Now you see parents walking children to and from school, staying after school, participating in after-school activities," she said. "This is one way to pull test scores upward and build the community from the ground up."

That is in contrast to Greuel, who is heavily focused on local decision-making and frequently cites her experiences at the affiliated charter school her son attends, where a panel of parents and teachers make decisions about leadership, curriculum and priorities along with the district.

"There's a lot of talk of everything around schools," she said. "I'll tell you the most important thing … is what's happening in the schools and those classrooms and with the principals."

Greuel accused Garcetti of changing his positions on education because of mounting pressure.

"He waits and waits and waits, and gets pushed in a corner and makes a decision," Greuel said, adding that Garcetti had hardened his stance on parent trigger and on school board President Monica Garcia. "When we're talking about education for the future of Los Angeles, we need someone who stands up and says this is the direction we're going in."

The candidates who are trying to get into the runoff have made some of the more aggressive proposals. Perry would seek to create a non-voting seat on the school board, a legislative endeavor that could take years. Republican Kevin James is the most skeptical of Deasy and the district, and would set up a clearinghouse in the mayor's office for parents who are having problems with the district but are afraid to speak out because of fear of retribution.

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Muslims Seek Dialogue With Next Pope

LONDON — As the Catholic Church’s cardinal electors gather at the Vatican to choose a new pope, Muslim leaders are urging a revival of the often troubled dialogue between the two faiths.

During the papacy of Benedict XVI, relations between the world’s two largest religions were overshadowed by remarks he made in 2006 that were widely condemned as an attack on Islam.

In a speech at Regensburg University in his native Germany, Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

In the face of protests from the Muslim world, the Vatican said the pope’s remarks had been misinterpreted and that he “deeply regretted” that the speech “sounded offensive to the sensibility of Muslim believers.”

For many in the Muslim world, however, the damage was done and the perception persisted that Benedict was hostile to Islam.

Juan Cole, a U.S. commentator on the Middle East, has suggested that although the pope backed down on some of his positions, “Pope Benedict roiled those relationships with needlessly provocative and sometimes offensive statements about Islam and Muslims.”

Despite the Vatican’s efforts to renew the interfaith dialogue by hosting a meeting with Muslim scholars, hostilities resumed in 2011 when the pope condemned alleged discrimination against Egypt’s Coptic Christians in the wake of a church bombing in Alexandria.

Al Azhar University in Cairo, the center of Islamic learning, froze relations with the Vatican in protest.

Following the pope’s decision to step down, Mahmud Azab, an adviser on interfaith dialogue to the head of Al Azhar, said, “The resumption of ties with the Vatican hinges on the new atmosphere created by the new pope. The initiative is now in the Vatican’s hands.”

Mahmoud Ashour, a senior Al Azhar cleric, insisted that “the new pope must not attack Islam,” according to remarks quoted by Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, and said the two religions should “complete one another, rather than compete.”

A French Muslim leader, meanwhile, has called for a fresh start in the dialogue with a new pope.

In an interview with Der Spiegel of Germany this week, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, said of Benedict, “He was not able to understand Muslims. He had no direct experience with Islam, and he found nothing positive to say about our beliefs.”

Reem Nasr, writing at the policy debate Web site, Policymic, this week offered Benedict’s successor a five-point program to bridge the Catholic and Muslim worlds.

These included mutual respect, more papal contacts with Muslim leaders and a greater focus on what the religions had in common.

“There has been a long history of mistrust that can be overcome,” she wrote. “No one should give up just yet.”

Read More..

David Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic

By Chuck Arnold

03/01/2013 at 08:40 PM EST

Ten years after his last album, David Bowie is back – and so is his swagger.

Forget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."

It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.

Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.

On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."

It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Chinatown landmark named for pioneering jurist

He was the first Chinese American graduate of Stanford Law School and the first Chinese American judge to be appointed to the bench in the continental United States.

On Friday, he became the first Chinese American to have a Los Angeles landmark named after him: Judge Delbert E. Wong Square, which encompasses the intersection of Hill and Ord streets at the western edge of Chinatown.

Councilman Ed Reyes hopes that someday the stretch of Hill Street that runs in front of the Chinatown public library will be named after Wong, who died in 2006 at age 85. Wong and his wife, Dolores, were instrumental in getting the library built, so the location would be fitting.

"The square is a starting point," said Reyes, who presided over the dedication.

A street in Little Tokyo bears the name of Judge John Aiso, the nation's first Japanese American judge.

Wong was born in the Central Valley town of Hanford in 1920, the son of a grocer from China's Guangdong province. The family later moved to Bakersfield, where Chinese and other minorities were restricted to the balconies of movie theaters and could only use the public swimming pool on Fridays, according to an oral history by Wong's son, Marshall Wong.

Wong graduated from UC Berkeley and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. As a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress, he completed 30 bombing missions in Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals.

When he returned home, Wong decided to attend law school. His parents disapproved, fearing that racial prejudice would prevent him from finding work.

After graduating from Stanford, Wong found that his job options were indeed limited. The few Chinese American attorneys in California practiced immigration law. Wong gravitated to the public sector, working as a deputy legislative counsel and then as a deputy state attorney general.

In 1959, Wong became the first Chinese American judge in the continental United States when then-Gov. Pat Brown appointed him to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court. He later joined the Superior Court, serving for more than two decades. He continued to make headlines in retirement, leading a probe into racial discrimination at the Los Angeles Airport Police Bureau and working as a special master in the O.J. Simpson case.

Wong and his wife were among the founding benefactors of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Chinatown Service Center. They were also pioneers in another arena: housing. After a real estate agent told them that Chinese could not buy in Silver Lake, they sought out the property's owner, who was happy to sell to them.

Wong's widow and three of his four children attended Friday's dedication.

California now has more than 90 Asian American trial judges. Four of seven state Supreme Court justices are Asian American, including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But young people passing through Judge Delbert E. Wong Square should remember those who paved the way, perhaps even drawing inspiration from them, Marshall Wong said.

"The children who grow up in this neighborhood will pass by and wonder, 'Who was Judge Wong?' Hopefully, they'll learn something about his story and his work and think, 'Maybe I should go to law school and be a judge someday.'"

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: March 1

NEWS As the sun set on Rome and on his turbulent eight-year papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, a shy theologian who never seemed entirely at home in the limelight, was whisked by helicopter into retirement on Thursday. Rachel Donadio reports from Vatican City.

As President Obama and Congressional Democrats have tried to force U.S. House Speaker John Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. Ashley Parker reports from Washington.

Local councils in rebel-held towns are trying to set up courts, police forces and social services, amounting to Syria’s first experiments in self-government after years under the Assads. David Kirkpatrick reports from Tilalyan, Syria.

In South Africa, where violent crime, vigilante attacks and police brutality are daily fare, a cellphone video of a man being dragged behind a police truck has incited outrage for its brazen and outsize cruelty. Lydia Polgreen reports from Johannesburg.

A U.S. soldier, Pfc. Bradley Manning, on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he released the information to help enlighten the public about “what happens and why it happens” and to “spark a debate about foreign policy.” Charlie Savage reports from Fort Meade, Maryland.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former dictator known as Baby Doc, walked into a muggy, packed Haitian courtroom on Thursday, sat down next to shocked victims and for the first time answered questions in a court of law about his brutal 15-year reign. Isabeau Doucet reports from Port-au-Prince, and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City.

The European Union took a big step Thursday toward putting strict limits on the bonuses paid to bankers, hoping to discourage the risk-taking behavior that set off the financial crisis. But the proposal to cap bankers’ bonuses must still be approved by a majority of the E.U.’s members. James Kanter reports from Brussels and David Jolly from Paris.

FASHION Alexander Wang’s debut collection for Balenciaga was a promising start. Suzy Menkes reviews from Paris.

ARTS Historians will soon release a report on the Vienna Philharmonic’s links to Nazi activity in the 1930s and ’40s. James R. Oestreich reports.

SPORTS Somluck Kamsing became a muay Thai star 20 years ago. Now, at age 40, he’s back at his home ring and trying to bring artistry back to the sport. Joseph Hincks reports from Bangkok.

Under the owner Roman Abramovich, no manager of Chelsea can expect to last long, but Rafael Benítez took exception at being labeled “interim” from day one. Rob Hughes reports from London.

Read More..

American Idol Reveals Its Top 20

By Steve Helling

02/28/2013 at 11:20 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban

Michael Becker/FOX

American Idol has been on the air for 12 seasons. From the early days of Kelly Clarkson, the judges continually hounded the contestants on song choice. Simon Cowell (remember him?) would criticize contestants for being "cabaret," "old-fashioned" and, worst of all, "boring." Some of this season's contestants have been watching Idol since they were in elementary school, which makes it all the more inexplicable that they still choose to sing songs like Peggy Lee's "Fever," which is 57 years old.

The show began with the 10 contestants rising from the floor, Hunger Games-style. Five of them will continue, while five of them met their end. Find out who made it through to the next round …
Spoiler Alert! The final picks for the Top 20 follow:

Cortez Shaw: His ballad arrangement of David Guetta's "Titanium" was excellent – and it was a nice change to hear a song that was current and relevant. "Your range surprised me today," judge Randy Jackson said. "When you hit those big notes, I was shocked."

Burnell Taylor: He's lost 40 lbs. since auditioning, and singing John Legend's "This Time," he brought down the house – despite oddly exaggerated hand movements. "I would pay to hear you sing," said Nicki Minaj, sharing the best compliment of the night. Mariah Carey was also pleased, simply saying, "This was fantastic."

Lazaro Arbos: After delivering an emotional performance of Keith Urban's "Tonight I Want to Cry," the 21-year-old singer from Naples, Fla., was unanimously sent through to the next round. The Cuban-born Arbos has arguably the season's most poignant backstory, with a severe stutter that vanishes when he sings. Minaj remains a big fan, telling him: "You feel it. You stay in it. Don't change nothing."

Nick Boddington: The New York City bartender performed "Say Something Now" by James Morrison and did a passable – if unremarkable – job. "I kept waiting for the feeling of being connected to you as a person," said Urban. Carey agreed, saying, "I needed to feel you more connected to the song."

Vincent Powell: Singing Lenny Williams's "'Cause I Love You," he effortlessly broke into a falsetto that elicited cheers from the audience. After calling him a "sexy old-fashioned" singer, Minaj added, "I could envision a whole bunch of 50-year-olds throwing their panties at you." Powell, who works his day job as a church worship leader, laughed nervously.

And yes, it was guys' night, but finalist Zoanette Johnson made a cameo when she stood up and cheered Powell's performance, prompting host Ryan Seacrest to run over with a microphone. (For a brief moment, It felt like a '90s-era episode of Ricki Lake, which is actually a very good thing.) "Get it, Papa Smurf," Johnson screamed. "You go get it."

Leave it to Zoanette to steal the show on guy's night.

Tonight's finalists will join Charlie Askew, Curtis Finch Jr., Paul Jolley, Elijah Liu and Devin Velez – and 10 female finalists – to sing for America's votes next week.

Who are you rooting for?

Read More..