Militants Battle Malian and French Troops in Liberated Town

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DAKAR, Senegal — Gunfire rang out in the streets of the strategic city of Gao in northern Mali on Sunday, two weeks after French troops appeared to have chased radical Islamists out of the city, which is at the edge of the desert and is the largest population center in the north.




The gun battle between Islamist militants and a force of Malian and French troops, which continued for much of Sunday afternoon, suggested that the quick French campaign against the local Al Qaeda affiliate and its allies was not over but had entered a new phase of guerrilla warfare.


Sunday’s attack by the Islamist fighters was the most serious escalation in the fighting since the French ended over six months of brutal Islamist occupation in Gao at the end of January. That victory came after a quick French bombing campaign and with barely a shot fired.


Continuous bursts of gunfire were heard around the police station, in the city’s center and in southern districts as French helicopters hovered overhead. Malian soldiers fought back against Islamists armed with AK-47 rifles as the streets cleared of residents. French troops were also patrolling the city, which has a population of about 86,000, including its surrounding areas.


By late Sunday afternoon, the Islamist fighters had been encircled by French troops, according to Gao’s municipal councilor, Abdheramane Oumarou, who said the situation was under control.


The attack appeared to have begun with an attempted suicide bombing late Saturday night, when an Islamist militant on foot blew himself up at a Malian Army checkpoint outside of town, in the second such episode in two days. The bomber’s attack, which wounded a Malian soldier, was merely a ruse to allow an Islamist commando unit to enter the city, Mr. Oumarou said.


“The Malian soldiers panicked; that’s how the MUJAO got into town,” Mr. Oumaro said, referring to the Islamist group, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda and controlled Gao from May to January. Mr. Oumarou said that the fighters who penetrated Gao were aided by local sympathizers, and that caches of armaments had been discovered by the local authorities.


A Malian Army spokesman said that the bomber was part of a commando team of about 20 Islamist fighters who assaulted a bridge in marshland linking Gao to neighboring villages.


The spokesman, Capt. Daouda Diarra, said the bomber appeared to be of Arab ancestry. He tried to penetrate the army checkpoint, the captain said, setting off his explosives as he did so.


“It’s pretty hot in the town right now,” said the mayor, Sadou H. Diallo, who was reached by phone on Sunday afternoon. “I can’t talk now.”


Though the French appeared to be leading the fight on Sunday, primary responsibility for patrols had been handed back to the Malian Army, still shaky after the defeats of last month that led the French to intervene, and which is still plagued by the internecine squabbles that led to a gun battle at a barracks in the capital, Bamako, on Friday.


Embarrassed by the recent events, Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, apologized to the country’s foreign partners in a statement to the state news media. Mali is dependent on large-scale military assistance and other aid from overseas.


The explosion on Saturday night rocked the neighborhood. “We were very scared,” said a resident, Halimatou Touré. “There are lots of mujahedeen who come from this area,” she said. The bomber’s remains were later removed in a wheelbarrow, and French armored vehicles took up positions at the checkpoint.


While Sunday’s clashes showed that the northern cities are still vulnerable to attacks from Islamists, the bulk of their force is thought to have taken refuge in the Adrar des Ifoghas, a remote mountain range near Algeria and hundreds of miles to the north of Gao. Troops from France and Chad, supported by French aircraft, are pursuing the Islamists in this redoubt as well.


Adam Nossiter reported from Dakar, and Peter Tinti from Gao, Mali.



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Paternos issue report, challenge Freeh's findings

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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — A report commissioned by Joe Paterno's family says the late coach did nothing wrong in his handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal and portrays Paterno as the victim of a "rush to injustice" created by former FBI director Louis Freeh's investigation of the case for Penn State.


The family's critique, released Sunday, argues that the findings of the Freeh report published last July were unsupported by the facts.


Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, one of the experts assembled by the family's lawyer to review Freeh's report last year to Penn State, called the document fundamentally flawed and incomplete.


Freeh's report reached "inaccurate and unfounded findings related to Mr. Paterno and its numerous process-oriented deficiencies was a rush to injustice and calls into question" the investigation's credibility, Thornburgh was quoted as saying.


In a statement released Sunday through a spokesman, Freeh defended his work.


"I stand by our conclusion that four of the most powerful people at Penn State failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade," he said.


Paterno's family released what it billed as an exhaustive response to Freeh's work, based on independent analyses, on the website paterno.com.


"We conclude that the observations as to Joe Paterno in the Freeh report are unfounded, and have done a disservice not only to Joe Paterno and the university community," the family's report said, "but also to the victims of Jerry Sandusky and the critical mission of educating the public on the dangers of child sexual victimization."


Freeh's findings also implicated former administrators in university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and retired vice president Gary Schultz. Less than two weeks after the Freeh report was released in July, the NCAA acted with uncharacteristic speed in levying massive sanctions against the football program for the scandal.


"Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University — Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse" from authorities, trustees and the university community, Freeh wrote in releasing the report.


The former administrators have vehemently denied the allegations. So, too, has Paterno's family, though it reserved more extensive comment until its own report was complete.


The counter-offensive began in earnest this weekend. The family's findings said that Paterno:


— Never asked or told anyone not to investigate an allegation made against Sandusky 12 years ago, Saturday, Feb. 9, 2001.


— Never asked or told former administrators not to report the 2001 allegation.


— And never asked or told anyone not to discuss or hide information reported by graduate assistant Mike McQueary about the 2001 allegation.


"Paterno reported the information to his superior(s) pursuant to his understanding of university protocol and relied upon them to investigate and report as appropriate," the family's analysis said.


Paterno's widow, Sue, broke her silence Friday in a letter to hundreds of former players informing them of the report's impending release. "The Freeh report failed and if it is not challenged and corrected, nothing worthwhile will have come from these tragic events," she wrote.


"I had expected to find Louis Freeh had done his usual thorough and professional job," Thornburgh said in a video posted on paterno.com. "I found the report to be inaccurate in some respects, speculative and unsupported to the record compiled ... in short, fundamentally flawed as to the determinations made to the role — if any — Mr. Paterno played in any of this."


Freeh was brought in to conduct an independent investigation of the school's response to allegations and find any shortcomings in governance and compliance to make sure failures don't happen again, Penn State said in a statement Sunday. Freeh made 119 recommendations to strengthen policies, and the majority have been implemented, according to the school.


University trustees and leaders have been criticized by some dissatisfied alumni, ex-players and community residents for their handling of Paterno's dismissal, the Freeh report and the sanctions.


"It is understandable and appreciated that people will draw their own conclusions and opinions from the facts uncovered in the Freeh report," the school said.


Freeh, in his report, said his team conducted 430 interviews and analyzed over 3.5 million emails and documents. The former federal judge said evidence showed Paterno was involved in an "active agreement to conceal" and his report cited email exchanges, which referenced Paterno, between administrators about allegations against Sandusky in 1998 and 2001.


According to Thornburgh's findings, Freeh's report relied on about 30 documents, including three notes authored by Paterno, and 17 emails. Four emails referenced Paterno — none sent by the octogenarian coach who notoriously shunned modern electronic technology.


Sandusky, 69, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison in October after being convicted last summer of 45 criminal counts. Prosecutors said assaults occurred off and on campus, including the football building.


His arrest in November 2011 triggered the turmoil that led to Paterno's firing days later. Under pressure, Spanier left as president the same day. Curley was placed on administrative leave, while Schultz retired.


Spanier, Curley and Schultz are awaiting trial on obstruction and conspiracy, among other charges. They have maintained their innocence.


Critics have said that Freeh's team didn't speak with key figures including Curley, Schultz and Paterno, who died in January 2012 at age 85. The authors of the emails referenced in Freeh's report, which included Curley and Schultz, were not interviewed by Freeh, the family's analysis said.


Spanier spoke to Freeh six days before the report was released July 12.


"They missed so many key people. They didn't interview most of the key players, with the exception of President Spanier, who at the last minute we brought in and interviewed at a time when frankly the report ... was pretty well all prepared," Thornburgh said on the video.


Freeh said he respected the family's right to conduct a campaign to "shape the legacy of Joe Paterno," but called the critique self-serving. Paterno's attorney was contacted for an interview with the coach, he said, and Paterno spoke with a reporter and biographer before his death but not Freeh's team.


Curley and Schultz also declined numerous requests for interviews, Freeh said. They have been facing criminal charges since November 2011.


Freeh on Sunday cited grand jury testimony by Paterno in 2011 in which Paterno said a graduate assistant relayed to him the 2001 allegation against Sandusky of a "sexual nature" with a child.


He referred to a key point in the July report in which he said Spanier, Schultz and Curley drew up a plan that called for reporting Sandusky to the state Department of Public Welfare in 2001. But Curley later said in an email that he changed his mind "after giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe," according to Freeh's findings.


Said Freeh on Sunday: "These men exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not even attempting to determine the identity of the child" in the 2001 allegation.


The Paterno family report said Freeh chose not to "present alternative, more plausible, conclusions" about Paterno's actions. Their attorney, Wick Sollers, responded Sunday that Freeh didn't take the time to read the family's critique, or address accusations of procedural shortcomings.


"A failure to consider the facts carefully is exactly the problem our expert analysis highlights," Sollers said. "Everyone, including Mr. Freeh, should take the time to study this report."


Sue Paterno had directed Sollers, to review Freeh's report and her husband's actions. Sollers brought in Thornburgh, as well as former FBI profiler and special agent Jim Clemente, described as a child molestation and behavioral expert.


Also brought in was Dr. Fred Berlin, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine whose profile lists him as the founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic.


The analysis included interviews, including of Paterno before his death, as well as a review of documents and testimony and "information from our access to the lawyers for other Penn State administrators."


The Paterno family's analysis said Freeh's report turned into a platform for scapegoating Paterno rather than seizing on an opportunity to educate about identifying child sex abuse victims, and ignored "decades of expert research and behavioral analysis regarding the appropriate way to understand and investigate a child victimization case."


It said expert analysis showed Sandusky "fooled qualified child welfare professionals and law enforcement, as well as laymen inexperienced and untrained in child sexual victimization like Joe Paterno." The coach respected Sandusky as an assistant, but knew little about Sandusky's personal life, the analysis said, though Freeh's report "missed that they disliked each other personally, had very little in common outside work, and did not interact much if at all socially."


Actions by entities outside of Penn State were not a focus for Freeh's review. "This was an internal investigation into Penn State's response ... and that is how the University has utilized the report," the school said.


Penn State removed a bronze statue of Paterno outside Beaver Stadium on July 22. The next day, the NCAA in levying sanctions said Freeh's report revealed "an unprecedented failure of institutional integrity leading to a culture in which a football program was held in higher esteem."


The NCAA improperly relied on that report and never identified a rules infraction "based on Sandusky's crimes, much less an infraction by Penn State that implicated the NCAA's jurisdiction and core mission of ensuring competitive balance," the Paterno family report said.


An NCAA spokeswoman said the organization stood by its previous statements and declined comment Sunday.


A four-year bowl ban and steep scholarship cuts were included among the sanctions, while 111 wins between 1998 and 2011 under Paterno were vacated. It meant Paterno no longer holds the record for most wins by a major college coach.


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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

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When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?




Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.


In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.


“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”


That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”


Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.


One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.


“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”


On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.


“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”


Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”


Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.


One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.


“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”


Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”


“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”


“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”


“No, I didn’t compare you.”


“Then what did you say?”


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Israeli Says Syria Twisted Comments by Rebel Supporter

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria’s main exile opposition group.




The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had “nothing to fear” from a rebel-led Syrian government. Moreover, the reports said, the opposition was working with other countries to keep Syria’s chemical weapons away from Hezbollah, which he called a “son of the devil.”


But the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, never said any of that, according to the article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and its author, a prominent Israeli defense expert, Ronen Bergman.


Sheik Khatib was quoted in the article reiterating the opposition’s promise to keep Syria’s chemical arsenal out of “the hands of unauthorized elements,” and it was the international community, he said, not Israel, that had “nothing to fear.”


When Sheik Khatib realized that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli — after glancing at his business card — he abruptly ended the conversation, Mr. Bergman said in a Skype interview, repeating what he had written.


The original article was published only in Hebrew — and only in print — so it was the Arabic and English versions put out by the Syrian government and Hezbollah that raced around the Internet on Saturday, provoking outrage from government supporters and opponents at Sheik Khatib, who posted a message on his Facebook page denying that he had given the interview.


Yet the episode appeared to have been more than a simple misunderstanding. Syria’s conflict is not only a shooting war but also a propaganda war. Pro-government media apparently could not resist the chance to bolster their contention that the rebellion had been promoted by Israel and the West to punish Syria and its president, President Bashar al-Assad, for taking uncompromising positions against Israel.


“Unfortunately, the original text was less exciting,” Mr. Bergman said. “I would be happy if he would say something like, ‘Yes, we will make peace with Israel’ — then I would get the front page.” As it was, the article elicited little reaction in Israel.


But misrepresentation of the article suggested that it hit a nerve on one issue. An unnamed opposition member, not Sheik Khatib, called Hezbollah “sons of the devil,” according to Mr. Bergman, and said the rebel coalition was working with other countries to ensure that “not one piece of military equipment, not chemical weapons and not any other item, will pass into their hands.”


Syria is Hezbollah’s main conduit for arms, and Hezbollah has backed Mr. Assad’s bloody crackdown at great cost to its popularity in the wider Arab world.


Although Mr. Bergman said the opposition member was offering his own opinion and not presenting official policy, his comments bolstered the widely held view that a rebel-led government might halt the shipment of Iranian arms through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group and political party, is also concerned about the rise within the rebel movement of extremist Sunni jihadists who view Shiites as apostates.


The misleading reports appeared to be an attempt to further divide the opposition. Sheik Khatib found himself fending off critics from within the anti-Assad movement who objected to his even speaking with an Israeli reporter, though by all accounts he did not initially realize that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli.


It was the second time in a month that Sheik Khatib found himself on the defensive. He recently proposed talks with members of Mr. Assad’s government, but had not built political support for the proposal.


On Friday, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, gave the first official response to the proposal, saying that the government would negotiate with any opposition members who agreed to lay down their arms.


On Saturday, Mr. Assad named new cabinet ministers for oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture, as Syria faces growing economic problems and shortages of electricity, fuel and bread.


Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.



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Russia Detains 271 in St. Petersburg Security Raid

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MOSCOW — Russian police and security officials in St. Petersburg detained 271 people, mostly migrants from Central Asia and the North Caucasus region, during a raid on Friday on Muslim prayer rooms at a central market. They said the raid was carried out to check residency permits and to eliminate networks of religious extremists planning terrorist attacks.




A statement published Friday night by the regional investigative committee said the authorities were verifying the documents of the detainees, who include citizens of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as an Egyptian and an Afghan.


The federal migration service began deportation procedures on Saturday for 10 of the detainees, and about 30 were found to be in violation of Russian migration laws, an official told the news agency RIA Novosti.


The police said one man from southern Russia, Murat Sarbashev, was suspected of distributing extremist literature and video clips showing terrorist acts in 2010 and 2011.


Video broadcast on Russian television showed heavily armed riot police officers pulling men out of the market and pushing them into waiting buses.


Security officials in St. Petersburg say an extremist group is operating in the city and has been planning terrorist attacks. The raid was intended to uncover “extremist literature, weapons, objects and documents relevant to criminal cases, and people who have carried out such crimes,” the statement said. The authorities have opened a case and are searching for evidence pointing to the incitement of terrorism and hatred; a conviction on that charge carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.


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Northeast storm disrupts travel for sports teams

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Several professional and college sports teams were forced to rearrange their travel plans as a massive storm swept through the Northeast, dumping a few feet of snow in some areas.


The NBA's New York Knicks were stuck in Minnesota after playing the Timberwolves on Friday night, hoping to try to fly home sometime Saturday. The San Antonio Spurs were also staying overnight in Detroit after seeing their 11-game winning streak fall to the Pistons, awaiting word on when they might be able to fly to New York for their game Sunday night at Brooklyn.


"We can't get there tonight — we know that," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "So we're going to stay here tonight and try to get there (Saturday). Hopefully, we will be able to get there, but at this point, we don't know."


Airlines canceled more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport closed.


The Brooklyn Nets planned to take a train home instead of flying from Washington D.C. after losing to the Wizards on Friday night.


Knicks coach Mike Woodson said before a 100-94 victory that his team initially planned to fly home after the game, but the flight had already been postponed. New York is scheduled to play the Los Angeles Clippers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.


The NHL's Boston Bruins pushed back the start of Saturday's game against the Tampa Bay Lightning by six hours because of the blizzard. The game originally slated for 1 p.m. was rescheduled for 7 p.m., but Boston was expected to be one of the cities hit hardest by the storm.


The storm had dumped more than 2 feet of snow on New England by early Saturday and knocked out power to 650,000 customers. The National Weather Service said up to 3 feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches.


The Bruins and Lightning each already had road games scheduled for Sunday night.


The New Jersey Devils were still scheduled to host the Pittsburgh Penguins at 1 p.m., while the New York Islanders were slated to play at home against the Buffalo Sabres at 7 p.m.


Two Ivy League men's college basketball games that were scheduled for Saturday night were moved back to Sunday because of treacherous travel conditions.


Dartmouth will play at Cornell at noon on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y., and Harvard will visit Columbia at 2 p.m. Sunday in New York. Dartmouth played at Columbia on Friday night, and Harvard played at Cornell. Two other Ivy League games were still scheduled to be played Saturday night, with Yale visiting Princeton and Brown playing at Pennsylvania.


Aqueduct also called off Saturday's card because of the storm. The track and Belmont Park were expected to remain open for wagering on out-of-town races, with racing scheduled to resume Sunday.


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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

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At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.




The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.


Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.


A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.


Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.


No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.


Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.


Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.


While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.


Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.


Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”


In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.


Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.


“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.


About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.


Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.


Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”


Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”


Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.



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Strategies: At Dell, a Gamble on a Legacy

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IN 1984 — the year Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook creator, was born — Michael S. Dell started a tech company in his dorm room, dropped out of college and changed the world.




By making personal computers that were powerful, reliable and inexpensive, and by selling directly to buyers who customized their PC features, Mr. Dell revolutionized his industry.


“The original PC industry was long on people with great technical ideas but short on people who were able to turn those ideas into opportunities — into products that people really wanted,” said Timothy Bresnahan, a Stanford economist. Along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, as well as Scott Cook of Intuit, Mr. Dell was one of those few great innovators, he said. “These people are very rare.”


Mr. Dell’s early achievements were formidable, but unless his latest effort to turn around his company is successful, the Dell legacy today is very much in doubt. Last week, along with Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, he made a $24.4 billion buyout offer for his company — an apparent bet that, without the scrutiny of public shareholders, he can get Dell back on track.


Dell, the company, has been losing ground for years as the industry it once dominated has undergone upheavals that its founder failed to foresee. “The very nature of technology is that it changes a lot,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “And Michael has conceded publicly that he has missed some big changes — he failed to foresee smartphones or tablets — and both of these shifts have been highly detrimental to the PC world.”


He has lagged in a crucial area of corporate strategy as well, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee in San Francisco. While Mr. Dell has always been attuned to the needs of corporate clients, he is 20 years behind I.B.M. in embracing a strategic shift to enterprise software and services, Mr. Wu said: “That’s a higher-margin business that Dell would like to go after, but I.B.M. and others have got tremendous leads. It will be very difficult for him to catch up.”


If Dell shareholders accept an offer price of $13.65 a share, Mr. Dell, who is contributing his stake of more than 14 percent in the company plus hundreds of millions more, would end up with more than 50 percent of the new company’s equity, Mr. Sacconaghi estimated. Mr. Dell, who declined to comment for this article, would control the company without being subject to the day-to-day pressures of the stock market, which has pummeled Dell shares because its earnings have weakened.


While Dell reports that 50 percent of its revenue is directly related to PCs, Mr. Wu says the figure is 70 to 80 percent when indirect revenue, like that for computer monitors, printers and services, is included. “The company has made big investments in other areas, but it’s still mainly a PC company,” he said.


That’s a big problem for several reasons. Once considered the low-cost provider in the field, Dell now faces lean Asian competitors like Lenovo, Asus and Acer that make PCs more cheaply and accept lower profit margins. Yet these companies, particularly Lenovo, have also garnered praise for making excellent computers, not merely well-priced ones. At the same time, Dell’s vaunted reputation for quality and service has waned.


Lenovo, which makes the ThinkPad line of notebook computers formerly sold by I.B.M., “has been picking up corporate customers from Dell,” Mr. Wu said.


THEN there is a deeper issue: the entire PC industry is stagnant at best. Worldwide PC shipments declined 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter, versus the year-earlier period, according to Gartner, a market research firm. Consumer preferences are shifting. With the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets — segments where Dell is absent or very weak — consumers aren’t replacing PCs as often.


“We don’t expect people to abandon PCs, but they won’t rely on them as much in the future,” said Mikako Kitagawa, a Gartner analyst. Dell’s share of this no-growth market has been shrinking, to 10.2 percent worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, from 12.2 percent the previous year, Gartner said.


Facing such headwinds, Mr. Sacconaghi said, Dell hopes to “hold PC profits flat or, worst case, down 5 percent a year, while they grow the rest of the business to more than offset that.” But the market is skeptical. Dell’s shares fell 30 percent in the 12 months before Jan. 14, when reports of an imminent buyout appeared.


The leveraged buyout will layer $15 billion of new debt on the company. Microsoft, with which Dell has had close ties, is providing $2 billion. Because interest rates are extraordinarily low, servicing all that debt should be manageable, assuming that Dell maintains its current cash flow, Mr. Sacconaghi said.


It’s not clear how much the debt load will constrain Dell’s investments in research and development. Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business School professor, said a study for which he was a co-author found that after leveraged buyouts, most companies maintained their ability to innovate, largely by focusing research in “their core competencies.”


In other words, he said, “Dell might be able to prosper after a buyout; it would depend on how Michael Dell manages the company.”


Is the price being offered for the company fair? It’s often unwise to bet against company insiders, especially founders like Mr. Dell, who may be presumed to know their companies’ value better than outside investors.


Consider John W. Kluge, who took Metromedia private in 1984 in a $1.1 billion leveraged buyout. Mr. Kluge, Metromedia’s founder, promptly liquidated it, selling television stations (to Rupert Murdoch) and sundry assets like the Harlem Globetrotters and the Ice Capades. In the end, Mr. Kluge tripled his take — to the chagrin of many former shareholders.


Mr. Kluge, who died in 2010, wasn’t interested in preserving his company or revolutionizing an industry, however. He merely wanted to make money. “When we buy an asset, we look at it as a return on the investment,” he said in 1980.


For Mr. Dell, whose name is on the door, other factors may be in play. “Another chapter is still to be written,” Mr. Bresnahan said. Money will be part of it. So will the Dell legacy.


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The Lede: Social Media Images From Tunisia, as an Opposition Leader Is Buried

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Video from the Tunisian news site Jadal showed clashes on Friday in Tunis during the funeral of an opposition leader.

Activists, bloggers and journalists in Tunisia posted a stream of images on social networks Friday, showing thousands of mourners packed into the largest cemetery in the capital, Tunis, for the funeral of Chokri Belaid, a leading opposition figure whose assassination two days ago triggered a wave of street protests against the Islamist ruling party.

Among those uploading images of the funeral — which took place as the police fired tear gas at protesters and cars were set on fire during clashes outside the graveyard — were my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Tara Todras-Whitehill, Thierry Brésillon of the French news site Rue 89, and Tunisian activists including Selim Kharrat of the rights organization Al Bawsala.

In video streamed live during the funeral by the activist blogger Slim Amamou, the 2011 revolutionary chant calling for the downfall of the regime could be heard echoing around the graveyard.

A photograph in a set uploaded to Facebook by the blogger Mon Massir appeared to show that even the late opposition leader’s young daughter was forced to shield her face from the tear gas fired by the police.

After the funeral, as photographs uploaded by Mr. Amamou and the rights activist Amira Yahyaoui showed, the security forces enforced a ban on gathering on the main Avenue Habib Bourguiba in central Tunis.

Emna Chebâane, who also works with the rights organization Al Bawsala, posted video on Facebook showing how the police moved in to clear a small number of protesters from the avenue.

It was not hard to imagine what the kind of protest the authorities were concerned about might look like. Two days earlier, when an ambulance carrying Mr. Belaid’s body to the morgue had passed through the same street, thousands of protesters swarmed around the vehicle. Video posted on YouTube late Wednesday by Jadal, a Tunisian news site, showed that scene.

Video recorded on Wednesday in Tunis as protesters gathered around an ambulance carrying the body of Chokri Belaid, a murdered opposition leader.

There were reports of protests in other parts of Tunisia on Friday, as many workers observed calls for a nationwide strike.

Video uploaded to YouTube by a blogger who said he was in the town of Sousse appeared to show the security forces, and officers in plain clothes, firing tear gas and dragging protesters away from a traffic circle pictured in a Wikipedia entry on the old town.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Friday, said to show the police cracking down on protesters in the Tunisian town of Sousse.

Earlier, the same blogger uploaded video of a loud march calling for the imposition of Islamic Shariah law.

Video of a march in favor of Islamic Shariah law, said to have been recorded in the Tunisian city of Sousse on Friday.

Video shot by bloggers for the independent news site Nawaat showed what they described as a demonstration in the city of Bizerte in honor of Mr. Belaid, outside the local headquarters of Ennahda, the Islamist party that now rules Tunisia. According to a description on Nawaat’s French-language live blog, the video shows an Islamist calling for calm and telling the demonstrators that the nation’s secularists have lost the struggle for power.

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AP Source: Hernandez on verge of new deal with M's

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SEATTLE (AP) — Felix Hernandez and the Seattle Mariners are working on a $175 million, seven-year contract that would make him the highest-paid pitcher in baseball, according to a person with knowledge of the deal's details.


The person spoke to The Associated Press Thursday on condition of anonymity because the agreement has not been completed. USA Today first reported the deal.


Seattle would add $134.5 million of guaranteed money over five years to the contract of the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner, whose current agreement calls for him to receive $40.5 million over the next two seasons.


Hernandez's total dollars would top CC Sabathia's original $161 million, seven-year contract with the New York Yankees and his $25 million average would surpass Zack Greinke's $24.5 million under his new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers and tie him for the second-highest in baseball with Josh Hamilton and Ryan Howard behind Alex Rodriguez ($27.5 million). Hernandez's new money would average $26.9 million over five years.


Hernandez agreed to a $78 million, five-year contract in January 2010 and has earned an additional $2.5 million in escalators and $300,000 in bonuses. He is due $20 million this year and $20.5 million in 2014, which would be superseded by the new deal.


Seattle general manager Jack Zduriencik said he could not comment when reached on Thursday, and Hernandez's representatives didn't immediately return messages.


If the deal is finalized, it would leave Detroit's Justin Verlander and the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw as the most attractive pitchers eligible for free agency after the 2014 season. Tampa Bay's David Price is eligible after the 2015 season.


Hernandez has become the face of Seattle's struggling franchise, transforming from a curly haired 19-year-old who wore his hat crooked to one of the most dominant and exciting pitchers in baseball. Known as "King Felix," he became the first Seattle pitcher to throw a perfect game in a 1-0 win over Tampa Bay last August.


His fiery enthusiasm on the mound and his willingness to first sign a long-term deal in 2010 have endeared him to fans in the Pacific Northwest who have gone more than a decade without seeing postseason baseball.


Hernandez, who will turn 27 on April 8, is 98-76 with a 3.22 ERA in eight seasons with the Mariners. He won a career-high 19 games in 2009 when he finished second in the Cy Young voting then won the award a year later when he went just 13-12 but had a 2.27 ERA and 232 strikeouts.


Hernandez appeared to be making another Cy Young push last year before going 0-4 in his last six starts, which left him at 13-9 with 223 strikeouts.


His career record would be even better if he didn't play with one of baseball's worst offenses. Seattle had the lowest batting average in the major leagues in each of the last three seasons. Hernandez has taken 10 losses during that span when he's given up two earned runs or less.


For his career, Hernandez has allowed two earned runs or less in 141 of 238 starts, but the team is only 99-42 in those games due to the offensive problems.


Locking up Hernandez long-term won't solve all of the problems that have left Seattle looking up at Texas, Oakland and the Los Angeles Angles in the AL West for most of the last 10 years. The Mariners have tried to address some of those issues this offseason by trading for Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse to provide more punch to go along with young prospects Dustin Ackley, Kyle Seager and Jesus Montero, who have all shown flashes early in their careers.


But should the deal be finalized, the Mariners at least have the security of knowing who'll be at the top of their rotation for most of this decade.


___


AP Sports Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.


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