NYT > Home Page: Official Refuses Court Order to Arrest Pakistan Prime Minister

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Official Refuses Court Order to Arrest Pakistan Prime Minister
Jan 17th 2013, 06:13

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's anti-corruption chief refused an order by the country's top court to arrest the prime minister in a graft case on Thursday, saying he did not have sufficient evidence.

The government and the Supreme Court have repeatedly clashed over the last year, and the chief justice's demand on Tuesday that Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf be arrested set the stage for a new round of political crisis in Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic militants and efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

Fasih Bokhari, chief of the National Accountability Bureau, told the Supreme Court that the initial investigation into the case was flawed and that he needed more time to determine whether the prime minister should be arrested.

The case involves kickbacks that Ashraf allegedly took during his time as minister of water and power that were related to private power stations built to provide electricity to energy-starved Pakistan. The prime minister has denied the allegations.

The investigating officers "were not able to bring incriminating evidence but relied on oral statements which are not warranted in the court of law," said Bokhari.

One of the judges, Sheikh Azmat Saeed, chided Bokhari, saying he was acting more like a defense lawyer than a government prosecutor.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry questioned why the anti-corruption chief needed more time since the case against the prime minister has been pending for about a year. He ordered Bokhari to bring the case files back to the judges later in the day so they can determine whether there is incriminating evidence.

"There may be some who consider themselves above the law, but let me make it clear there is no one above the law," said the chief justice.

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NYT > Home Page: Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds
Jan 17th 2013, 03:54

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

"This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications," said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. "I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word 'recover,' it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it's rare."

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

"They no longer qualified for the diagnosis," said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. "I want to stress to parents that it's a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don't get this outcome."

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. "These people did not just grow out of their autism," she said. "I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work."

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

"Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal," said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2013, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Overcome Symptoms, Study Finds.

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NYT > Home Page: Arizona Sheriff Adds School Patrols to Posse’s Duties

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Arizona Sheriff Adds School Patrols to Posse's Duties
Jan 17th 2013, 02:09

Laura Segall/Reuters

Anthony Monaco, 22, a volunteer, patrolled a high school in Anthem, Ariz. Sheriff Arpaio added school duties to his volunteer group's responsibilities shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings last month in Connecticut.

GILA BEND, Ariz. — Dennis Donowick is a retired truck driver who refused to spend the rest of his days "drinking beer and doing nothing," as he put it. Four years ago, he packed his guns and his urge "to give back to the community" and joined Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer posse, a group best known for its supporting role in the sheriff's immigration raids.

Dennis Donowick, 58, patrols schools as a volunteer for Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County.

The posse began patrolling 59 schools in unincorporated communities in Maricopa County last week.

Last week, the posse, now 3,000 strong, added the task of safeguarding dozens of public schools to its portfolio.

Putting more armed guards in schools has been proposed by the National Rifle Association and others as a way to crack down on school shootings. Sheriff Arpaio put his own twist on it by simply ordering his posse to keep an eye on school grounds.

He rolled out the program less than a month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where a gunman carrying pistols and semiautomatic rifles killed 26 people, 20 of them children. The program was, he explained, "to protect our schools from the same type of violence," though some people are questioning the risks of placing this responsibility in the hands of armed volunteers when it is taxpayers who would foot the bill for their mistakes.

State Representative Chad Campbell, the Democratic minority leader in the House, said the idea of arming volunteers to patrol the schools was "ludicrous." In a column on Tuesday, E. J. Montini of The Arizona Republic wrote that the posse patrols were a feel-good program that did not do any good.

But Sheriff Arpaio said: "There's a lot of talking out there. This sheriff does not talk. I take action."

If a school finds itself under threat, the job of the volunteer posse is to "eliminate the target," said Mr. Donowick, 58, using the military language for shoot to kill.

Every morning, the volunteers go out in cars and uniforms just like those used by the Maricopa County deputies under Sheriff Arpaio's command; there is no way to tell them apart. They roll by, scrutinize the people around the schools, looking for someone they feel does not belong, like "a guy in trench coat in the middle of summer" or a driver sitting in a parked car too long, Mr. Donowick said.

On patrol one morning, he carried a 9-millimeter Glock in his holster. In the trunk of his marked Chevy Caprice, he had an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle similar to the one used in Connecticut. Posse members bring their own weapons and buy their uniforms. They receive nine months of training before hitting the streets, and those who are armed — Sheriff Arpaio said there were about 500 of them — must be recertified every year.

"I'm prepared," Mr. Donowick said.

As he pulled outside Kiser Elementary School here, across from alfalfa fields and next to Interstate 8, he smiled and waved to a teacher and her students as they made their way to class. He talked about the "halo effect" of a marked sheriff's car, which can deter some criminal mischief simply by its presence. "Prevention," he said as he drove off, heading west to another school.

Sheriff Arpaio created the posse in 1993 to patrol malls during the holiday season, when thefts in parking lots are common. Since then, the volunteers have gone on to take detainees to the county's jails, escort dignitaries and help deputies serve warrants and support them during raids. It has retirees, including former police officers and military veterans, like Mr. Donowick, who served in Vietnam. An investigation by a local CBS affiliate, KPHO-TV, revealed that several of them also have criminal records — for assault, drug possession, disorderly conduct and other offenses.

Sheriff Arpaio said that they are "disciplined accordingly" and that he has "faith in them, faith in the posse."

It began patrolling 59 schools in unincorporated communities in Maricopa County last week. They are mostly small, rural places where the sheriff's office was already providing policing services, so he did not need to seek additional permission to add the school visits to his posse's agenda. He did not contact the schools ahead of time and he did not need money to finance the program because the members of the posse do not get paid for their work.

They are, however, insured by Maricopa County while on the job. Mr. Campbell, who has his own plan to protect schools and toughen the state's gun laws, said of the posses that he was "not sure how effective" their officers would be by simply driving around the schools without being on school grounds or interacting with teachers and administrators.

On Monday, in her State of the State speech, Gov. Jan Brewer proposed adding more financing to a program that puts armed police officers inside schools, an idea that has strong support among Republicans and Democrats but still needs legislative approval. She also expressed opposition to arming teachers, a suggestion by the state's attorney general, Tom Horne, in the days after the shootings at Sandy Hook.

In an interview on Tuesday, Timothy Ogle, executive director of the Arizona School Boards Association, said, in a nod to the punishing rounds of state budget cuts school districts have had to endure for several years, that "politicians are talking about more money for school resource officers, but they have yet to fund the basic needs of our children." He added that he would rather see the districts work with local police departments to figure out the best way to protect their schools.

Mr. Donowick, a lieutenant commander in the posse who coordinates the patrols in 24 schools, steered clear of the politics of school safety, saying he was "out here being constructive." His job, he went on, is an antidote of sorts.

"I'm the good guy who is armed looking for the bad guy who is armed," he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2013, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: An Added Mission for Arizona Sheriff's Immigration Posse: School Patrols.
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NYT > Home Page: The Education Revolution: China’s Ambitious Goal for Boom in College Graduates

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The Education Revolution: China's Ambitious Goal for Boom in College Graduates
Jan 17th 2013, 03:09

Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

Between classes at Sanya University. China has doubled its number of universities over the past 10 years and wants to produce 195 million college graduates by 2020.

SANYA, China — Zhang Xiaoping's mother dropped out of school after sixth grade. Her father, one of 10 children, never attended.

Graphic

But Ms. Zhang, 20, is part of a new generation of Chinese taking advantage of a national effort to produce college graduates in numbers the world has never seen before.

A pony-tailed junior at a new university here in southern China, Ms. Zhang has a major in English. But her unofficial minor is American pop culture, which she absorbs by watching episodes of television shows like "The Vampire Diaries" and "America's Next Top Model" on the Internet.

It is all part of her highly specific ambition: to work some day for a Chinese automaker and provide the cultural insights and English fluency the company needs to supply the next generation of fuel-efficient taxis that New York City plans to choose in 2021. "It is my dream," she said, "and I will devote myself wholeheartedly to it."

Even if her dream is only dorm-room reverie, China has tens of millions of Ms. Zhangs — bright young people whose aspirations and sheer numbers could become potent economic competition for the West in decades to come.

China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using the G.I. Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of millions of young people as they move from farms to cities.

The aim is to change the current system, in which a tiny, highly educated elite oversees vast armies of semi-trained factory workers and rural laborers. China wants to move up the development curve by fostering a much more broadly educated public, one that more closely resembles the multifaceted labor forces of the United States and Europe.

It is too early to know how well the effort will pay off.

While potentially enhancing China's future as a global industrial power, an increasingly educated population poses daunting challenges for its leaders. With the Chinese economy downshifting in the past year to a slower growth rate, the country faces a glut of college graduates with high expectations and limited opportunities.

Much depends on whether China's authoritarian political system can create an educational system that encourages the world-class creativity and innovation that modern economies require, and that can help generate enough quality jobs.

China also faces formidable difficulties in dealing with widespread corruption, a sclerotic political system, severe environmental damage, inefficient state-owned monopolies and other problems. But if these issues can be surmounted, a better educated labor force could help China become an ever more formidable rival to the West.

"It will move China forward in its economy, in scientific innovation and politically, but the new rising middle class will also put a lot of pressure on the government to change," said Wang Huiyao, the director general of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based research group.

To the extent that China succeeds, its educational leap forward could have profound implications in a globalized economy in which a growing share of goods and services is traded across international borders. Increasingly, college graduates all over the world compete for similar work, and the boom in higher education in China is starting to put pressure on employment opportunities for college graduates elsewhere — including in the United States.

China's current five-year plan, through 2015, focuses on seven national development priorities, many of them new industries that are in fashion among young college graduates in the West. They are alternative energy, energy efficiency, environmental protection, biotechnology, advanced information technologies, high-end equipment manufacturing and so-called new energy vehicles, like hybrid and all-electric cars.

China's goal is to invest up to 10 trillion renminbi, or $1.6 trillion, to expand those industries to represent 8 percent of economic output by 2015, up from 3 percent in 2010.

At the same time, many big universities are focusing on existing technologies in industries where China poses a growing challenge to the West.

Beijing Geely University, a private institution founded in 2000 by Li Shufu, the chairman of the automaker Geely, already has 20,000 students studying a range of subjects, but with an emphasis on engineering and science, particularly auto engineering.

Mr. Li also endowed and built Sanya University, a liberal arts institution with 20,000 students where Ms. Zhang is a student, and opened a 5,000-student vocational community college in his hometown, Taizhou, to train skilled blue-collar workers.

China's growing supply of university graduates is a talent pool that global corporations are eager to tap.

"If they went to China for brawn, now they are going to China for brains," said Denis F. Simon, one of the best-known management consultants specializing in Chinese business.

Multinationals including I.B.M., General Electric, Intel and General Motors have each hired thousands of graduates from Chinese universities.

"We're starting to see leaders coming out of China, and the talent to lead," said Kevin Taylor, the president of Asia, Mideast and Africa operations at BT, formerly British Telecom.

Sheer numbers make the educational push by China, a nation of more than 1.3 billion people, potentially breathtaking. In the last decade, China doubled the number of colleges and universities, to 2,409.

As recently as 1996, only one in six Chinese 17-year-olds graduated from high school. That was the same proportion as in the United States in 1919. Now, three in five young Chinese graduate from high school, matching the United States in the mid-1950s.

China is on track to match within seven years the United States' current high school graduation rate for 18-year-olds of 75 percent — although a higher proportion of Americans than Chinese later go back and finish high school.

By quadrupling its output of college graduates in the past decade, China now produces eight million graduates a year from universities and community colleges. That is already far ahead of the United States in number — but not as a percentage. With only about one-fourth the number of China's citizens, the United States each year produces three million college and junior college graduates.

By the end of the decade, China expects to have nearly 195 million community college and university graduates — compared with no more than 120 million in the United States then.

Volume is not the same as quality, of course. And some experts in China contend that the growth of classroom slots in higher education has outstripped the supply of qualified professors and instructors.

Xu Qingshan, the director of the Institute for Higher Education Research at Wuhan University, said that many university administrators seek the fastest possible growth in enrollments to maximize the size and revenue of their institutions, even though this may overstretch a limited number of talented professors.

China's president, Hu Jintao, in a speech in 2011 acknowledged shortfalls in the country's higher education system. "While people receive a good education," he said, "there are significant gaps compared with the advanced international level."

Giles Chance, a longtime consultant in China who is now a visiting professor at Peking University, said that many of the tens of millions of new Chinese college graduates might find jobs at manufacturers but did not have the skills to compete in big swaths of the American economy — particularly in services like health care, sales or consumer banking.

"A Chinese graduate from a second-tier university is not the equal of an American in language skills and cultural familiarity," he said.

The overarching question for China's colleges is whether they can cultivate innovation on a wide scale — vying with America's best and brightest in multimedia hardware and software applications, or outdesigning and outengineering Germans in making muscular cars and automated factory equipment.

Indeed, Japan's experience shows that having more graduates does not guarantee entrepreneurial creativity.

In the decades after World War II, Japan mounted an educational effort similar to the one in China now. Japan's version led to a huge middle class and helped turn that nation into one of the world's largest economies. But partly because of a culture where fitting in is often more prized than standing out, Japan hit an economic plateau.

If China's universities cannot help solve the innovation riddle, the country may also have a hard time moving forward once its advantages of low-cost labor and cheap capital disappear, which economists say could happen within 10 to 15 years, and possibly much sooner.

Still, with 10 times Japan's population, China has the capability to compete with white-collar Americans and Europeans in a wide range of industries.

So Far, So Fast

To see how far China has come, so fast, look no farther than Ms. Zhang's own family. For her parents, education was barely an option.

Her father, the eighth of 10 children, was born to rice farmers in 1968 in a small village near Nanchang in one of China's poorest provinces, Jiangxi, halfway between Shanghai and Hong Kong. The family survived on one meager meal a day. Most of the children, including Ms. Zhang's father, did not attend school. At age 12, he followed his brother to a construction job in neighboring Fujian Province.

Ms. Zhang's mother was born two years after her father and was the daughter of the local Communist Party official who ran the village until 1990. She belatedly started school at age 7, in 1977, a year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's longest anti-intellectual purge. She dropped out after primary school, six years later, following a pattern then common in rural areas.

Ms. Zhang's father moved back to the village and married Ms. Zhang's mother over her parents' initial objections. He started a construction business with his brothers. The enterprise has done moderately well, enabling Ms. Zhang's father to buy, six years ago, the family's first car, a black Ford Focus that was already nine years old.

Rather than pursuing material comforts, the Zhangs, like hundreds of millions of families across China, have focused their money and effort on getting their children through high school and into universities.

One of Ms. Zhang's two younger brothers — China's one-child policy is less rigorously enforced in rural areas — is a sophomore studying international trade at Tongji University, a 105-year-old institution in Shanghai considered among the top two dozen or so in China. The other brother is now a freshman at highly regarded Nanchang University, having skipped a grade in middle school and another in high school.

When Ms. Zhang did not get into a top Chinese university despite attending a magnet high school, she recalled, "my parents were very disappointed."

Nor did she initially win a government scholarship. Her parents had to pay the full annual tuition of $2,000 at Sanya University, which as a private institution does not receive subsidies as generous as those given to public universities. Room and board are an additional $1,800 a year.

At top public institutions, annual tuition is a little less than $1,000 — equal to about two months' wages for a skilled factory worker.

But as a reward for top grades, Ms. Zhang has won government scholarships for her sophomore and junior years at Sanya that cover three-quarters of the tuition.

Even as students like Ms. Zhang flock to Chinese universities, rising numbers of China's students attend foreign universities. Chinese undergraduate or graduate students at American universities reached a record high of 194,000 in the last academic year, according to the Institute of International Education in New York. That was almost triple the 67,000 five years earlier.

In part, this reflects the prestige of studying abroad, and that more Chinese families can afford the cost and are looking for ways to get their money and their children out of the country as a way to hedge their risk against internal political or economic turbulence. But it is also because a Western college education is better, and Western universities do not require the same high marks as Chinese ones do on China's famously difficult college entrance exams.

Chinese undergraduates who study in the West tend to be from wealthy families and show a wide range of academic ability, from mediocre to outstanding. But Chinese graduate students studying abroad typically have bachelor's degrees from top-tier universities either at home or in the West, and they almost always excel academically while overseas, said Doug Guthrie, a professor of Chinese business strategies who is the dean of George Washington University's School of Business.

Graduate students from China often have government scholarships to study abroad. The scholarships are a tacit acknowledgment by Beijing that a superior graduate education, particularly in fields like engineering and science, often is still to be found in the West.

Quantity, but Quality?

Walk around some of the hundreds of newly built Chinese universities these days and at first glance they look a lot like big state universities in America.

Just as China has built national grids of high-speed rail lines and superhighways in the past decade, it has built campuses full of modern classroom buildings, dormitories, libraries and administration buildings.

Peek inside the classrooms and virtually every seat is filled.

One of the biggest questions about the quality of Chinese universities involves who is teaching, and what and how. Chinese administrators struggle to find seasoned professors. Because few Chinese went to college until the last decade, much less to graduate school, most universities find themselves in hiring competitions — with one another and with companies all over China that are struggling to find middle managers and executives.

"The biggest problem is finding good professors, especially good professors of around 40 years old with good experience — they are the most sought-after teachers in China," said Nathan Jiang, the vice president of Geely University.

All but the best universities must find teachers among recent graduates, who may lack experience, or retirees, whose knowledge may be out of date.

China was producing fewer than 10,000 doctoral degrees a year until 1999, according to education ministry data. So for every person in China who received a doctorate during the 1990s and might now be in the prime of a teaching career, there are 3,000 undergraduates.

Especially in fields like engineering, the most popular undergraduate major by far in China, corporations can easily outbid universities. The basic pay of a professor is typically under $300 a month — less than an assembly line worker makes.

Professors can earn considerably more by winning promotion to university administration positions, but these posts are often based on activism within the Communist Party instead of research excellence. Those who stay as professors frequently line up multiple grants to conduct several research projects simultaneously, which almost inevitably places quantity of research ahead of quality.

Or, dissatisfied with their pay, many senior professors start companies on the side, said Weng Cuifen, a National University of Singapore researcher who studies Chinese university education. "They spend their time on second jobs, making money."

Teaching methods in China also tend to be outdated by Western standards, and seem ill suited to producing either the entrepreneurs or the socially adept managers that multinationals covet.

A few newer colleges and universities have begun experimenting with seminars and workshops. But the prevailing pattern remains for professors to lecture in large halls, with students expected to be quiet and listen.

"Some younger teachers like to communicate with the students, but older teachers just stand in front of the students and speak alone," said Long Luting, a 2010 chemical engineering graduate of Tianjin University, one of China's best schools. She just finished a two-year trainee program and has moved into management at the Beijing offices of BASF, a German chemicals multinational.

As in Japan, students in China tend to do their most strenuous studying in high school. In college, they can slow down, whether to pursue more diverse interests — or, like many students around the world, to spend a lot of time at parties.

Growing up as the only child of a municipal civil servant in Zigong, a medium-size city in western Sichuan Province, Ms. Long said that she studied practically every waking hour in high school and had little chance to socialize.

"In high school, it's a tragedy," she said, recalling her father's exhortations to succeed. "Most of my classmates were also only children; we have a lot of pressure from our parents."

But when she reached Tianjin University, Ms. Long said, she could take her classes and do all her homework during the mornings. She spent her afternoons at an English language club, honing her considerable ability to banter in the language despite never having traveled overseas.

Some Chinese universities offer as many as 1,000 clubs. They cover everything from languages to karaoke.

Many academics inside and outside China question whether the growing number of clubs is enough to foster creativity because the Chinese system still requires students to specialize from an early age. Most students choose their major before going to a university, and then enter highly focused academic programs in which they have only a handful of electives.

Chinese employers tend to look for specialized students who can fill specific roles immediately. They have shown less interest in the long-term training of other types of students, like humanities majors.

Foreign-owned corporations in China often use Chinese graduates differently, putting more emphasis on long-term career development through a variety of assignments to build a trainee's ability to understand complex issues, work in teams and lead.

Ms. Long, for example, spent her first two years as a trainee at BASF rotating through marketing, the performance management division and the business operations department, before settling in business operations, tracking sales and other reports from BASF units around China.

Graduates like Ms. Long from the country's top 20 universities are among the best in the world, but multinationals are more able to make use of them than hierarchical Chinese companies, said Joerg Wuttke, BASF's chief representative in China.

"Where does the seed land — on a rock or on fertile ground?" he said. "We benefit by being able to hire all these talented graduates."

Ready to Take On America

China already has the world's largest auto industry, producing twice as many cars and trucks last year as the United States or Japan. But it exports virtually none of those cars to the West — yet.

Chinese automakers and policy makers have been preparing for years to follow the example of Japan and South Korea. But reaching that goal will require at least four big advances: designing more attractive cars and engines, improving reliability, developing local technologies that do not depend on patents leased from foreign automakers, and understanding overseas buyers and how to market to them.

Chinese officials say that a big reason they are pouring billions of dollars into the development of electric and hybrid cars is that they hope to leapfrog the West and develop indigenous technologies before other countries do.

Progress on energy-saving and less polluting technologies could give Chinese companies an advantage, for example, when the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission decides in 2021 what model or models the city's fleets will be required to buy next. The city has been asking for improved fuel efficiency in taxis.

But while China's lavish investments on next-generation automotive technologies have drawn international attention, the country is also trying to develop the soft side of international business: marketers, advertising specialists and others who can intuit what overseas customers really want.

Mr. Li, the Geely chairman, grew up as a son of peasant farmers in east-central China. But he has become one of his country's wealthiest auto tycoons by building inexpensive cars that have just enough pizazz to be appealing. His holding company, Geely Group, bought Volvo Cars of Sweden from Ford in 2010, and he now wants to take on the West.

Geely is starting elaborate market research in Britain to determine which of its models will be popular there. That is the leading edge of what is likely to be a full-fledged assault by Chinese automakers on Western markets by 2015.

Mr. Li is also far along on another goal, training his own managers. His companies hire the best graduates from the three campuses he has founded.

Sanya University is ramping up international business education. Students there, like Ms. Zhang, try to learn as much as possible about foreign markets: their languages, cultural touchstones and more.

She is majoring in English, but her favorite courses have been in marketing. She works in her spare time as a guide for international conferences and sporting events here, to gain more exposure to native English speakers. She reads actively about automotive trends. And she brims with confidence about her ability to persuade New York City to buy Geely cars for taxis.

"The status of China is growing all the time; we've got a really important role in international markets," she said in fluent English. "We need the capability to communicate with foreigners."

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates .
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NYT > Home Page: Hawks 109, Nets 95: Hawks End Their Slump and Nets’ Winning Streak

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Hawks 109, Nets 95: Hawks End Their Slump and Nets' Winning Streak
Jan 17th 2013, 03:33

ATLANTA — The red-hot Nets, 9-1 under Coach P. J. Carlesimo and winners of seven straight games, may have figured a cakewalk was in the offing Wednesday night, with the Hawks having lost six of seven, including a 39-point beating in Chicago on Monday. Another mismatch seemed imminent after the Hawks announced the suspension of their leading scorer, forward Josh Smith, before the game, stemming from an undisclosed incident Tuesday at practice.

The Nets' Brook Lopez tried to score over the Hawks' Zaza Pachulia.

Instead, the Nets, playing their fourth game in six nights, were run off the Philips Arena floor. The final score was 109-95, and it was not that close. Atlanta led by 16 at halftime and extended the lead to 26 during a third-quarter spurt that effectively ended the competitive portion of the contest. The Nets closed to within a dozen points with 7 minutes 43 seconds to go, but Al Horford hit a free throw and a layup to snuff the threat.

Point guard Deron Williams, who played 43 minutes in the Nets' victory over Toronto on Tuesday, looked particularly worn out, as he was beaten repeatedly on the break and off the dribble by Atlanta guards Devin Harris and Jeff Teague. Teague scored 28 points and made 12 of 18 shots from the floor, most of them layups. Harris added 18 points.

The blowout ruined Joe Johnson's return to Atlanta. Johnson spent seven productive seasons with the Hawks, but a lack of performance in the postseason, combined with his enormous salary, meant that Johnson's trade to the Nets was greeted with relief that neared glee in Georgia. Johnson floated through the game, only occasionally looking for his shot as the Nets tried to exert their supposed interior advantage. Johnson's first field goal came with five minutes remaining in the first half, and he finished with 15 points.

Johnson was greeted with a mix of boos and cheers, reflecting his lukewarm relationship with Atlanta fans. A chant of "We don't miss you!" rang out as he shot a free throw in the second period.

A sequence early in the second half exemplified the difference in effort between the teams. Teague broke wide open off a screen, and moments later Harris converted an easy three-on-one as most of the Nets watched from the other side of the floor. On the next possession, Teague raced down the floor to take an outlet pass for an uncontested layup. That made the score 62-42.

Smith's replacement in the lineup, Zaza Pachulia, flirted with a triple-double, scoring 13 points to go with 11 rebounds and 8 assists, including a nifty behind-the-back pass to set up an Al Horford score that felt as if the Hawks were rubbing it in, even though it came midway through the third quarter. Horford contributed his 20th double-double of the season, with 17 points and 13 rebounds.

It was apparent early that this game would run against form, as the Hawks hit 8 of their first 11 shots. The Hawks scored more points in the first two minutes of the game than they did in the first quarter Monday night, when Atlanta was humiliated by the Bulls, 97-58..

On Wednesday against the Nets, the Hawks shot 57.7 percent — their best percentage of the season.

The teams meet again Friday night at Barclays Center, and Smith is expected back in uniform. It remains to be seen if the Nets will display more energy against a full complement of Hawks.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2013, on page B21 of the New York edition with the headline: Hawks End Their Slump and Nets' Winning Streak.
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NYT > Home Page: U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants

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U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants
Jan 17th 2013, 02:21

WASHINGTON — As Islamic militants methodically carved out a base in the desert of northern Mali over the past year, officials in Washington, Paris and African capitals struggling with military plans to drive the Islamists out of the country agreed on one principle: African troops, not European or American soldiers, would fight the battle of Mali.

But the surprise French assault last Friday to blunt the Islamists' advance upended those plans and set off a cascading series of events, culminating in a raid on Wednesday by militants on a foreign-run gas field in Algeria. That attack threatens to widen the violence in an impoverished region and drag Western governments deeper into combating an incipient insurgency.

And yet the rush of events has masked the fact that officials in Washington still have only an impressionistic understanding of the militant groups that have established a safe haven in Mali, and they are deeply divided about whether some of these groups even pose a threat to the United States.

Moreover, the hostage situation in Algeria has only heightened concerns that a Western military intervention could transform militant groups that once had only a regional focus into avowed enemies of the United States — in other words, that the backlash might end up being worse than the original threat.

Largely for these reasons, the Obama administration adopted a strategy over the past year to contain the Islamists in Mali until African troops were ready to confront them, rather than to challenge them directly with an American military campaign of drone strikes or commando raids.

During Congressional testimony in June, Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, played down the terrorist threat to the United States from Mali, saying that the Qaeda affiliate operating there "has not demonstrated the capability to threaten U.S. interests outside of West or North Africa, and it has not threatened to attack the U.S. homeland."

Some Pentagon officials have long taken a more hawkish stance, and they cite intelligence reports that fighters with ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has a loose affiliation to the remnants of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, played a role in the deadly attack in September on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. They have pushed for targeted strikes against Islamist leaders in northern Mali, arguing that killing the leadership could permanently cripple the strength of the militants.

The administration has embraced a targeted killing strategy elsewhere, notably in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, after top White House, Pentagon and C.I.A. officials determined that militants in those countries were bent on attacking the United States.

Asked if fighters from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb posed such an imminent threat, Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American commander in Africa, said, "Probably not." But, he said in an interview, "they subscribe to Al Qaeda's ideology" and have said that their intent is to attack Westerners in Europe and, "if they could, back to the United States."

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made it clear on Wednesday that he considered the group a serious danger. "This is an Al Qaeda operation," he told reporters while traveling in Italy, "and it is for that reason that we have always been concerned about their presence in Mali, because they would use it as a base of operations to do exactly what happened in Algeria."

It is too early to judge the impact of the French-led offensive in Mali, which came after an urgent plea by Mali's government for help in repelling Islamist fighters who were rapidly moving south. But on Wednesday, some American officials said that the hostage episode in Algeria could be just the beginning of a wave of attacks against foreigners in the region. And there is a chance that if the Americans taken hostage on Wednesday are killed by their captors, American officials might reconsider their pledges not to commit ground troops to the battle.

Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.

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NYT > Home Page: U.S. Military Stops Sending Some Detainees to Afghan Custody

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U.S. Military Stops Sending Some Detainees to Afghan Custody
Jan 17th 2013, 01:25

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military has suspended the transfer of detainees to some Afghan prisons out of concern over continuing human rights abuses and torture, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday in response to questions about the subject.

In addition, the American-led coalition said that it had asked the Afghan government to investigate allegations of torture by Afghan Local Police units that have been trained and advised by American Special Operations forces.

The moves were a setback on detention issues that have created tension between the countries, and on years of international efforts to promote humane treatment of prisoners. And under American law, the torture allegations could also set off significant financial aid cutoffs to parts of the Afghan security forces, which play a crucial role in plans for an American withdrawal that are based on handing over responsibility for security to the Afghans as early as this spring.

Afghan control over all detention in the country has been a primary demand of President Hamid Karzai and was a central issue of the summit talks between Mr. Karzai and President Obama in Washington just a week ago.

Though a Pentagon official said Wednesday that the new suspension would not halt detainee transfers at the main Bagram Prison, which has been the primary source of tension, it presents an added complication for American troops in the field, who now in some places will not be able to turn over detainees to local Afghan authorities.

"Afghan military forces and police that operate effectively and with respect for human rights are central to the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan," said Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman on Afghan policy.

Transfer of prisoners to Afghan control throughout the country was restored last year, after it had been cut off in response to a United Nations investigation published in October 2011 that found widespread use of torture at prisons run by Afghan police and intelligence agencies.

Now a second United Nations report on the subject is to be released, possibly as early as next week, and according to American officials the move by the security assistance force was prompted by revelations expected in that report. United Nations officials involved, however, had no comment.

Afghan officials denied there was any torture or abuse of prisoners while in Afghan custody. "I dismiss all the allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners in Afghan prisons," said Amir Mohammad Jamshidi, general director of the prisons department in the Ministry of Interior. "I have not heard anything about Americans' decision to halt or cut their support or transfer of detainees to the Afghan side," he said.

But a spokesman for the security assistance force, Jamie Graybeal, said prisoner transfers had been suspended "as a result of information I.S.A.F. has determined to be credible." He added: "In the remaining 23 months of the I.S.A.F. mission, we will continue to support the Afghan government in its efforts to improve problems identified."

There have also been a series of concerns raised about the Afghan Local Police units, which are recruited and trained by American Special Operations troops in villages in heavily contested areas. Some of those units have changed sides, and been involved in serious abuses, including rapes and murders.

"We have formally requested that the Ministry of Interior investigate allegations of torture by the A.L.P.," Mr. Graybeal said. "I.S.A.F. takes all reports of human rights violations seriously, and we are committed to the humane treatment of detainees."

Both actions by the International Security Assistance Force were apparently in anticipation of legal provisions — informally known as the Leahy law, after its champion, United States Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat — which prohibit Defense and State Department financing to foreign government agencies that practice torture or other human rights abuses and take no action to punish those responsible. At stake are billions of dollars in direct American aid that will essentially pay the salaries of every member of Afghanistan's security forces for years to come — but which would legally not be payable under the Leahy provision if torture and other abuse continues.

"It is known that the Afghan security forces have committed abuses, including extrajudicial killings of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners," said Tim Rieser, foreign policy aide to Senator Leahy. "They have not been accountable in ways Senator Leahy believes they should be."

Azam Ahmed and Habib Zahori contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Military Stops Sending Detainees to Some Afghan Prisons on Rights Fears.

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NYT > Home Page: Egypt’s Morsi Says Slurs of Jews Were Taken Out of Context

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Egypt's Morsi Says Slurs of Jews Were Taken Out of Context
Jan 16th 2013, 22:13

CAIRO — A spokesman for President Mohamed Morsi said on Wednesday that inflammatory comments that he made about Jews before taking office had been intended as criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians but had been taken out of context. The spokesman said that Mr. Morsi respected all monotheistic religions and religious freedom.

It was Mr. Morsi's first public response to news reports that as a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood he had made anti-Semitic statements about Jews and Zionists. A recently resurfaced video of a speech that Mr. Morsi gave at a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta nearly three years ago shows him urging his listeners "to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews." In another video of a television interview he gave the same year, Mr. Morsi criticized Zionists in recognizably anti-Semitic terms, as "these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs."

Both sets of comments were reported this week in The New York Times. Representatives of the White House and the State Department condemned them. And on Wednesday Mr. Morsi was confronted about the remarks by a visiting delegation of six American senators led by John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island.

Yasser Ali, the Morsi spokesman, said on Wednesday night at a news conference that Mr. Morsi had told the delegation that the comments were meant as criticism of the "racist" policies of the Israeli government, not as insults to Jews.

"President Morsi assured the delegation that the broadcast comments were taken out of an address against the Israeli aggression against Gaza," Mr. Ali said, according to The Associated Press. The spokesman said Mr. Morsi also assured senators of his respect for monotheistic religions as well as for "freedom of belief and practicing religions," The A.P. said.

At a news conference after the meeting, the senators declined to characterize Mr. Morsi's response. But they appeared to feel he had addressed the issue. The senators emphasized their support for Egypt's transition to democracy. They also said they would press Congress to provide badly needed financial aid and urge American businesses to invest in Egypt, although they also said that Mr. Morsi's inflammatory statements in 2010 made both requests tougher to sell.

"The Egyptian people are going to have to showcase your best behavior," said another senator in the delegation, Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

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