Corporal Punishment in U.S. Schools

By M.J. Stephey Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009

Dorling Kindersley / Getty

Impairing Education
American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch
Aug. 11, 2009
62 pages

The Gist:

It seems like a scene from Oliver Twist — a young pupil being beaten by a 300-lb man wielding an inch-thick wooden paddle — but according to a new report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, nearly a quarter of a million children were subjected to corporal punishment in public schools in the U.S. during the 2006-2007 academic year. Based on 202 interviews with parents, students, teachers and administrators, and supplemented with data from the U.S. Department of Education, the report reveals how the spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child philosophy continues to rule thousands of classrooms across America, and how students with disabilities are disproportionately affected by such draconian methods of discipline.

Highlight Reel:
1. What "corporal punishment" means: "Corporal punishment is defined under human-rights law as "any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort." There is no comprehensive definition of corporal punishment under U.S. state or federal law. The ACLU and Human Rights Watch documented cases of corporal punishment including hitting children with a belt, a ruler, a set of rulers taped together or a toy hammer; pinching, slapping or striking very young children in particular; grabbing children around the arm, the neck or elsewhere with enough force to bruise; throwing children to the floor; slamming a child into a wall; dragging children across floors; and bruising or otherwise injuring children in the course of restraint."

2. On its widespread use in classrooms, especially in punishing disabled students: "Corporal punishment is legal under domestic law in 20 states ... Texas paddles the most students in the nation, as well as the most students with disabilities ... The total number of students, with and without disabilities, who were subjected to corporal punishment in the 2006-2007 school year was 223,190. ... Nationwide, students with disabilities receive corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates. In Tennessee, for example, students with disabilities are paddled at more than twice the rate of the general student population. ... Students with autism are particularly likely to be punished for behaviors common to their condition, stemming from difficulties with appropriate social behavior. ... Anna M., whose son with autism was physically punished repeatedly when he was seven years old, noted, "The teacher felt he was doing some stuff on purpose. If you met him, you wouldn't know he was autistic straight away. People thought we were making an excuse for him.' "

3. On why corporal punishment is still condoned: "Educators, who face the difficult task of maintaining order in the classroom, may resort to corporal punishment because it is quick to administer, or because the school lacks resources and training for alternative methods of discipline. One teacher pointed out that corporal punishment can be considered 'cost-effective. It's free, basically. You don't have to be organized. All you need is a paddle.' Logistical or financial obstacles may prevent teachers from using other methods of discipline. One 18-year-old student who was critical of the use of corporal punishment in his rural school district stated that 'we couldn't have after school detention. There was no busing. Kids who got detention would have to find another way home.' "

4. On the aftermath: "The Society for Adolescent Medicine has documented serious medical consequences resulting from corporal punishment, including severe muscle injury, extensive blood-clotting (hematomas), whiplash damage and hemorrhaging. ... Corporal punishment led to deterioration in family life, as parents were forced to withdraw children from school, resort to homeschooling and give up jobs. ... Rose C.'s son was unable to tell her that he was repeatedly punished in school, but she learned of some of the abuse after watching a security video. She said, 'I don't trust my own eyes anymore.' "

The Lowdown:
As the report notes, corporal punishment is banned in most juvenile correction facilities in the U.S., and yet it continues in public schools. The legal paradox can be traced to a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that found the Eighth Amendment only protects convicted criminals from cruel and unusual punishment — not students confined to a classroom. In its plea to convince federal and state lawmakers to impose a national ban on the practice, the authors point out yet another paradox, using the words of a special-ed teacher in Mississippi: "I see these children who get in fights and then get paddled. So you're supposed to teach them not to hit by hitting them?"

The Verdict: Read

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Pay Raises Are the Worst in 33 Years

By Barbara Kiviat Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009

Photographer's Choice / Getty

Feel like your company has been particularly stingy on the raises this year? You're not imagining it. For 2009, the typical non-hourly worker will see a 1.8% bump in salary, according to a survey by the human-resources consultancy Hewitt Associates. That increase, the smallest in at least 33 years, doesn't even keep up with inflation.

Yes, it's true, we're in a recession, and nearly 1 in 10 workers is unemployed. There are plenty of people willing to work for less money. But in other recent recessions salary growth hasn't slowed this much. Going back to the early 1990s, base salaries never increased by less than 3.4% a year, according to Hewitt, which polled 1,156 large companies to get its latest data. Companies desperate to slash costs are turning to worker salaries more deliberately than they have in the past. Some 48% of companies have frozen salaries this year, compared to just 2% last year. (See 10 things to buy during the recession.)

Numbers from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) speak to the same effect for new employees. Each month the human-resources trade group surveys more than 1,000 manufacturing and service-sector companies. The number of firms reducing new-hire salaries and benefits now outstrips the number of companies increasing packages. Falling compensation for new hires is unusual too, even during a downturn, according to analysts at SHRM — smaller increases are the more typical response.

One silver lining, according to the Hewitt survey, is that performance-based compensation is on the rise. If you've got the numbers to prove you're a top worker, your earnings are somewhat insulated from the broader trend. For 2009, a full 12% of corporate payrolls have been devoted to bonuses, according to Hewitt. That's up substantially in recent years, from just 9.5% in 2004.

The other hope on the horizon is 2010. Right now, companies are anticipating raising salaries an average of 2.7% next year. Of course, if the fledgling economic recovery doesn't stick, that could change quickly. When Hewitt ran its survey in the summer of 2008, companies thought 2009 raises would come in at 3.8% — a far cry from the 1.8% we were left with.

The Hewitt numbers also highlight differences across cities and industries. For 2010, raises are expected to be the largest in Houston (3.4%), Minneapolis/St. Paul (3%), Washington, D.C., (3%) and Des Moines (2.9%), with the smallest increases to be seen in San Francisco (2.4%), Los Angeles (2.2%) and Detroit (2.1%). In terms of industries, workers are projected to fare the best in energy (3.7%) and not as well in education (2%). Minnesota-based windmill repairmen have nothing to worry about. Just don't get a job teaching in Detroit.

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Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's 'Deadly Doctor,' Strikes Back

By Michael Scherer / Washington Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, special adviser for health care at the Office of Management and Budget, speaks March 11 at the American Medical Association's annual conference in Washington

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the medical ethicist and oncologist who advises President Obama, does not own a television, and if you catch him in a typically energized moment, when his mind speeds even faster than his mouth, he is likely to blurt out something like, "I hate the Internet." So it took him several days in late July to discover he had been singled out by opponents of health-care reform as a "deadly doctor," who, according to an opinion column in the New York Post, wanted to limit medical care for "a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy." (Read an interview with Obama on health care.)

"I couldn't believe this was happening to me," says Emanuel, who in addition to spending his career opposing euthanasia and working to increase the quality of care for dying patients is the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "It is incredible how much one's reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context." (See pictures of health care for the uninsured.)

It would only get worse. Within days, the Post article, with selective and misleading quotes from Emanuel's 200 or so published academic papers, went viral. Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, a fierce opponent of Obama's reform plans, read large portions of it on the House floor. "Watch out if you are disabled!" she warned. Days later, in an online posting, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin attacked Emanuel's "Orwellian thinking," which she suggested would lead to a "downright evil" system that would employ a "death panel" to decide who gets lifesaving health care. By Aug. 10, hysteria had begun to take over in places. Mike Sola, whose son has cerebral palsy, turned up at a Michigan town-hall meeting to shout out concerns about what he regarded as Obama and Emanuel's plans to deny treatment to their family. Later, in an interview on Fox News, Sola held up the Post article. "Every American needs to read this," he declared. (Read "What Health-Care Reform Really Means.")

By this point, Emanuel, who has a sister who suffers from cerebral palsy, had arrived in northern Italy, where he planned to spend a week on vacation, hiking in the Dolomites. Instead, he found himself calling the White House, offering to book a plane home to defend his name. "As an academic, what do you have? You have the quality of your work and the integrity with which you do it," he said by phone from the Italian Alps. "If it requires canceling a week's long vacation, what's the big deal?" (Read TIME's cover story "Can Obama Find a Cure?")

The attacks on Emanuel are a reminder that there is a narrow slice of Americans who not only don't trust government, but also have come to regard it as a dark conspirator in their lives. This peculiar brand of distrust helps create the conditions for fast-moving fear-mongering, especially on complex and emotionally charged topics like the life and death of the elderly and infirm. Prairie fires of that kind are hard to douse when the Administration's own plan for health care remains vague, weeks away from being ready for a public rollout. The health-care bill that recently passed the House does not contain, as some have suggested, any provisions that would deny treatment to the elderly, infirm or disabled like Sola's son. One provision allows doctors to be reimbursed for voluntary discussions of so-called living wills with patients, but does not in any way threaten to deny treatment to dying patients against their will. The legislation anticipates saving hundreds of billions of dollars by reforming the health-care system itself, a process that would try to increase the efficiency of medical care by better connecting payments to health outcomes and discouraging doctors from unnecessary tests and procedures. The Obama Administration hopes that many of these reforms will be made in the coming years by independent panels of scientists, who will be appointed by the President and overseen by Congress. (See 10 health-care-reform players.)

This is where the criticism of Emanuel enters the picture, since he is just the sort of scientist who might be appointed to one of those panels. For decades, Emanuel has studied the ethics of medical care, especially in situations where a scarcity of resources requires hard decisions to be made. His work sometimes deals with the hardest possible decisions, like how to choose who gets a single kidney if there are three patients in need, or the reasons that doctors order tests with little medical value. Emanuel's reputation ranks him among the top members of his field. He is published often in the best journals; he has been given multiple awards for work to improve end-of-life care. At the White House, he has taken a free-floating role at the Office of Management and Budget, advising on a wide range of health issues.

But in a country where trust is in short supply, Emanuel has become a proxy for all the worst fears of government efforts to rein in costs by denying care. "The fundamental danger is that the American people are being asked to delegate all these life-influencing decisions," explains Betsy McCaughey, the conservative scholar who wrote the New York Post attack on Emanuel. "There is a lack of transparency here."

In her Post article, McCaughey paints the worst possible image of Emanuel, quoting him, for instance, endorsing age discrimination for health-care distribution, without mentioning that he was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources. She quotes him discussing the denial of care for people with dementia without revealing that Emanuel only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy. She notes that he has criticized medical culture for trying to do everything for a patient, "regardless of the cost or effects on others," without making clear that he was not speaking of lifesaving care but of treatments with little demonstrated value. "No one who has read what I have done for 25 years would come to the conclusions that have been put out there," says Emanuel. "My quotes were just being taken out of context."

For Emanuel, the entire experience has been a painful education in the sometimes brutal ways of politics, something his brother has long endured and dolled out. "I guess I have a better appreciation for what Rahm had to go through for years and years," Emanuel says. But that appreciation does not solve the question raised by the controversy. There is universal understanding that the nation's fiscal course is doomed without major changes to health care, but whom will the American people trust to carry it out?

Emanuel, for his part, plans to continue his work, which is focused on finding the most equitable and ethical way for this reform to be carried out, even if he has opted against returning from the Italian Alps. "I am an Emanuel," he says. "We are pretty thick-skinned. I am not going to change my colors. I am not going to crawl under a rock."

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Why MRIs Don't Lead to Better Cancer Survival

By Alice Park Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009

Darren Kemper / Corbis

Women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer are faced with a tough choice — either to have parts of the affected breast removed, followed by several weeks of potentially toxic radiation therapy; or opt for mastectomy, removing the entire breast and contending with the disfigurement that entails. The decision typically rests on where and how widespread the tumors are. It's no wonder, then, that more and more women are relying on high-tech MRI scans to help them examine their cancer and choose the right treatment.

But that may not be such a good idea, say researchers in a commentary appearing in CA : A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a publication of the American Cancer Society. The authors looked at studies of such pre-operative use of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which relies on magnetic waves, versus mammograms and similar tests that use radiation to take pictures of breast tissue. Researchers found that women choosing MRIs often ended up with more aggressive surgery — much of which wasn't necessary — than women who did not use the scans. What's more, employing the newer and more sensitive MRI technology did not improve a woman's chance of surviving cancer or her chances of avoiding a recurrence of tumors. (See portraits of breast cancer survivors.)

While there is no doubt that MRIs are more sensitive than mammograms, says Dr. Daniel Hayes, clinical director of breast oncology at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and a co-author of the commentary, it's not clear that the technique is more specific than mammography. Studies of each diagnostic screen have shown that compared to mammograms, MRIs can pick up additional cancer lesions 16% of the time. "But," says Hayes, "the question is whether they are biologically important."

The risk of recurrence in women treated for early stage breast cancer ranges from 5% to 10% in the 10 years after diagnosis. Three decades of studies also support the fact that lumpectomy combined with radiation therapy yields the same survival and recurrence rates as mastectomy; while more cancer may remain in a breast following lumpectomy, these lesions are generally destroyed by the radiation, which gives the two procedures the same outcomes. Yet women receiving an MRI tend to choose the more invasive approach. (Read about the benefits of post-cancer weightlifting.)

Why? Because MRI is particularly good at diagnosing small tumors — and picking up abnormalities that mammograms may miss in young women with dense breast tissue — which may cause undue anxiety. Evidence suggests that women who opt for MRIs tend to react to seeing their lesions, whether they are cancerous or not, by removing their entire breast rather than just a portion of the tissue. "I just saw two patients who both had MRIs done at an outside institution, and both came in wanting mastectomies based on the MRI findings," says Dr. Anthony Lucci, a surgical oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Neither of the MRIs showed cancer, just abnormalities, says Lucci, but more and more patients are coming in and similarly requesting MRI not as a diagnostic screening tool, but as a prognostic one. And in those situations, "they are much more likely to request a mastectomy if the MRI reveals an abnormality," he says.

According to the studies that Hayes and his co-author, Dr. Nehmat Houssami, analyzed, such mastectomies are often unnecessary; earlier studies have shown that many of the small cancers that a lumpectomy may leave behind are in the same region as the surgery site, and therefore will most likely be destroyed by the radiation treatment that follows. "Radiation is very good," says Dr. Larry Norton, a breast cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "We do know that if you don't irradiate a breast after surgery, you get local recurrence." (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z.")

Aside from increasing the rate of radical surgery, the use of MRIs may also harm patients who already have a diagnosis. Patients may take several weeks to investigate the lesions, get biopsies and wait for pathology results, delaying the actual treatment of cancer.

So why do women continue to insist on MRI? Part of it has to do with the culture of technology: we believe that newer and more is better. Part of it also can be traced to a me-too spillover from the diagnostic arena. As a diagnostic tool, MRIs can be useful in picking up what mammograms may not find — which is why the American Cancer Society, for example, recommends both screens for otherwise healthy women with a strong family history of the disease and younger women with dense breast tissue.

Hayes acknowledges that MRIs may also prove useful in detecting spread of a breast cancer from one breast to the other, but even here, he says, the data are still preliminary; MRIs may pick up about 3% to 5% of tumors that mammograms miss, but there is little evidence suggesting whether those additional tumors are malignant or benign. To find out the true benefit of MRI, he says, more research needs to be conducted. "Without randomized trials we really don't know everything," says Norton.

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Billionaire George Soros' Private Stimulus Plan

By GILBERT CRUZ Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009

Financier and philanthropist George Soros

Imaginechina / AP

Billionaire George Soros wants to show you his softer side, but his latest philanthropic initiative is a bit of a head snapper. Soros is announcing today a $35 million donation to benefit underprivileged New York State children to the tune of $200 each. Literally. His gift will help fund a program dubbed "Back to School New York" and will allow the state to access about $140 million additional dollars in stimulus funds that are available to programs that fund needy families. A one-off donation, Soros' largesse is supposed to help kids purchase back-to-school supplies, though some critics have called the gift — which they say lacks any means to ensure that families actually use the money as intended — a regressive, '80s-style welfare handout. Soros spoke to TIME about the program.

Tell me about this money you've donated.

Every kid of a family that is entitled to food stamps and public assistance gets $200, which hopefully should help them enter the school year better prepared and on a more equal level with other kids. This is for all the kids in New York State eligible for those programs — 850,000 kids — and it takes advantage of the federal stimulus package, which offers support to states with programs that qualify, like this one. I put up 20% of the cost and the state put up the rest. (Read "George Soros — Power Giver.")

Was there ever a thought of giving these families more money? $200 is a good amount of cash these days, but it's not a HUGE amount of cash.

I think $200 is significant enough. If you put in more, then you would probably have to set some conditions, because then otherwise it might be too much money. This looked like the right figure.

Why this? Why did you feel like this was the best way to direct $35 million right now?

As always, you try to figure out where you'll get the most mileage, or the most benefit, out of the donation. Focusing on children seems like the place to get the most good. Hopefully these children will have a long life ahead of them. (Read "How to Fix America's Schools.")

Now there's a bit of your own personal history that comes into the equation here, right?

Yes. I myself have received charity when I was in need. When I was a student in London, I was working as a waiter at night. When my tutor found out, she submitted my name to the Quakers, and they then sent me a check for 40 pounds, without any strings attached. I thought as a recipient of charity, that this would be a very dignified thing to do for others.

In the past decade or longer here in America, there have been great influxes of money from philanthropists into education experiments and the like. Do you think public-private partnerships can achieve results that wouldn't otherwise be possible?

Well, they're very important. I think that in many ways, private donors who give their own money, or their foundation's money, truly care about the objectives. They can actually have a beneficial influence on bureaucracies that generally try to protect their behinds from being criticized. Those bureaucracies are maybe less mission-oriented than private citizens that put up their own money. Very often, this is how we use money at our foundation, to set examples or to innovate in ways that the public authorities by themselves are unlikely to do. Generally speaking, I'm in favor of [using my money to] influence how public authorities spend their money.

Do you think there's more of an opportunity for philanthropists to make a difference now on account of the recession?

Yes. The point is that this is an exceptional time, when we are hit by a very severe recession and just when the needs are the greatest, the amount of money available from traditional sources has been decimated by the financial crisis. Therefore those who are in a better position ought to do more than they normally do. So I continue all the programs of the Open Society Institute. This is additional, and it's something I would not do unless we were in such an exceptional situation. Hopefully it won't be necessary to do it again. (Read "The Case for Bigger Government.")

Are you optimistic at all about how this financial crisis is going to play out?

I'm on the record having said this is unlike other crises, and it's the most serious crisis we've faced and it will have long-term repercussions. It's the end of an era, and there will have to be major adjustments. Those who expect that we will return to business as usual don't understand what's happening.

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Soros Shines Light on Stimulus for the Poor

By Gilbert Cruz Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009

Financier and philanthropist George Soros announces his $35 million dollar program to help New York children with their school supplies, at P.S. 208, in Harlem, New York, NY.

Alfred Giancarli / Atlaspress

On Tuesday, billionaire George Soros announced a $35 million donation to the state of New York for a "Back to School" program that — coupled with $140 million of federal stimulus funds — would give each child on public assistance and food stamps $200 to start to the school year. Over 850,000 families woke up yesterday to find an extra $200 automatically added to their public-assistance debit accounts. Not a huge windfall, but enough for impoverished students to buy pencils, notebooks, protractors, a backpack and maybe some new school clothes. (Read an interview with George Soros.)

Soros was aiming his donation at a part of President Barack Obama's stimulus package that hasn't garnered much attention until now: a four-to-one federal matching program designed to help states assist poor families. This $5 billion pot of cash was set aside as an emergency fund to supplement the 12-year-old Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, i.e., the one that Bill Clinton boasted in 1996 would end "welfare as we know it."

TANF typically provides cash-assistance to families with no jobs. But as the recession has worsened, several states have seen a rise in the number of people needing welfare and food stamps. The stimulus fund allows states to do several things with their share of the $5 billion pool as long as they — or private groups such as Soros' — pony up 20% of the overall cost. The Feds cover the remainder. States can (a) provide more cash payments to families, (b) subsidize additional jobs, or (c) set up one-time, non-repeating benefit programs. New York's Back to School initiative, which used Soros' private donation as its initial seed money, utilized the third option, appealing to the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs TANF and its emergency fund, for the additional $140 million.

Some municipalities are using the money to create jobs. In Perry County, Tennessee, for example, 300 private- and public-sector positions are being subsidized through the use of several million dollars' worth of the state's emergency fund allotment. Some of these are just temporary, a short-term pick-me-up for the laid-off. Elsewhere, officials are eyeing the emergency fund for longer-term aid. Los Angeles, for example, has plans to kick off a year-long employment program that will give subsidized jobs to up to 10,000 people. (See 10 perfect jobs for the recession — and after.)

In New York, advocates of the Back to School program responded to criticism that the plan does nothing to ensure that each child's $200 allotment will actually be spent on school supplies. "Parents will do right by their children," says Mimi Corcoran, Director of the Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation at Soros' Open Society Institute. "We really didn't have a concern about parents spending the money incorrectly. They know what's best for their children. No strings attached was important for us."

Still, Soros, who recalled a similar gift given to him when he was a poor student in postwar England, understands that one's personal philanthropy can only go so far. "$200 is significant enough," he said when asked why he chose not to give each child a higher amount. "If you put in more, then you would probably have to set some conditions."

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Major US cities hail crime reduction

By Claire Prentice BBC News, Washington

In-car computers are helping DC police reduce crime rates

It is mid-morning and, despite being several hours into his shift, Officer Frank Buentello of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department has not received a single call for assistance.

It was a different story when he started his police career in Washington DC 20 years ago.

"The city has really cleaned up. Even 10 years ago this street here was a crime hotspot," he said, pointing towards bustling Columbia Road.

The murder rate in the District of Columbia is down 22% this year, with 84 murders so far in 2009.

The district is on track to have fewer killings than in any year since 1964.

It is a remarkable turnaround for an area which, as recently as 1991, was dubbed "the murder capital of the United States".

New technology

And DC is not alone. Across America, major cities have experienced a significant drop in violent crime, a definition which includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

They include once-notorious crime hubs like New York and Los Angeles, both of which are on track for their lowest homicide rates in 40 years.

Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Minneapolis are among other cities seeing notable reductions in murders.

Mr Buentello and DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier say a return to beat policing combined with the introduction of sophisticated new crime fighting technology are responsible for slashing DC crime rates.

We are using our pooled expertise to gain a better understanding of crime and to more precisely target the perpetrators of violent crime Cecil Thomas Policing expert

Inside Mr Buentello's patrol car, a small computer, or Mobile Data Terminal, receives minute-by-minute updates of all emergency calls coming into the department along with any new information on cases under investigation or crimes taking place in the area.

Commanders also receive regular updates on their mobile phones.

On the roof of his vehicle, Mr Buentello points out a "Tag Meter" which automatically scans licence plates and identifies vehicles which are stolen or are suspected of being used in a crime.

The DC police force also uses Shot Detectors to monitor activity in parts of the city associated with gun crime.

This information is then sent electronically to officers patrolling the area.

"All of these things add up to a powerful crime fighting weapon," said Officer Buentello. "They help us solve cases and act as a powerful deterrent."

In New York, police send a mobile data unit to murder scenes, allowing police there to listen to emergency calls and search databases listing everyone in a certain building who is on parole.

Cincinnati police have in-car computers which allow them to use surveillance cameras to zoom in on everything happening within a known trouble area.

In New York, murder has dropped 8.8% over the last two years, and 77.2% since 1993.

It is a similar story in Los Angeles, where murder is down 20.8% in the last two years.

PhD policing

Some experts warn that police departments may be celebrating prematurely, however.

"I'm sceptical about the claim that violent crime is down because policing has got better," says Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and author of New York Murder Mystery.

"The truth is that not all violent crimes are down in all cities."

Baltimore, Denver and Dallas are among cities experiencing a higher number of homicides compared with last year.

According to experts factors contributing to a rise in crime include poverty, unemployment, the size of the police force, the efficiency of the local criminal justice system in identifying and locking up repeat offenders and whether there is an entrenched gang, drug and gun culture.

Despite some regional discrepancies, most observers agree, however, that the drop in violent crime in many cities is significant.

The trend also cast doubt on the widely-held view that crime increases during times of economic hardship.

Criminologists point out that crime rates were relatively low during the Great Depression compared with the Roaring Twenties, when there was more violence across America.

Policing expert and Cincinnati councilman Cecil Thomas worked for the Cincinnati police force for 27 years.

He said that a greater willingness to pool resources with criminologists, the FBI, other police departments and crime fighting bodies has led to more effective policing.

"We all used to be very territorial but what you are seeing now is 'PhD policing' - we are using our pooled expertise to gain a better understanding of crime and to more precisely target the perpetrators of violent crime," said Mr Thomas.

Chief Lanier stresses that new technology alone cannot fight crime.

She has introduced a number of initiatives aimed at building relationships with the community, including All Hands On Deck, whereby every police officer in DC goes out simultaneously on foot patrol.

The introduction of these measures has led to a greater volume of tip-offs from the public.

"We'll never kick back and relax and think we've done our work," said Chief Lanier. "We can always do better."

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How to Eat Well on $50 a Week: They're Doing It. Could You?

Fifty bucks. It could get you a single steak at a fine dining establishment. Or it could feed you—and feed you pretty darn well—for an entire week. A trio of writers from around the country is proving just that with the recent launch of their experiment and blog Fifty Bucks a Week.

Beyond the obvious monetary bonus of limiting themselves to a budget of $50 per week for food, the three writers are approaching the project as a challenge to their self-discipline and cooking creativity—and based on their often hilariously entertaining blog posts, which involve things like Pizza Emergencies, their attempts are sometimes less than successful. The writers love to eat, and to eat well, so the goal is for meals to be cheap only in the strict dollar sense. (In other words, they're supposed to do better than boxed mac 'n cheese or the other classic cheap foods recently featured in a Cheapskate Blog photo gallery.)

The experiment started a little over a month ago, and the three writer/guinea pigs who can no longer pig out as they once pleased are: Adam Pollock, who lives in Brooklyn and is working on the second season of his web cooking-dating show called The Feed Me Show; Cari Luna, a novelist and stay-at-home mom who is based in Portland, Oregon, and who also blogs at Dispatches from Utopia; and Emily Farris, a food writer from Kansas City, Missouri, whose book Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven, came out last fall.

As you'll see in the Q&A that follows, theirs is an experiment in progress, but so far they've already learned—or come to appreciate anew—about the importance of key ingredients like cayenne pepper and salt (big flavorful kosher crystals, of course), about how expensive avocados are ($2.99 apiece!), about how it now seems completely nuts to have been spending $28 a week on coffee, about how much food they'd previously been accustomed to wasting, and about how truly difficult it is to stick to their $50 weekly allotments. They've also had to deal with the occasional fantasy about robbing a cheese shop, with baguette and knife in hand.

Cheapskate: Where did the $50 a week idea come from? Did it spring somewhat out of necessity, or as pure lark or what?

Emily Farris: One day, on Twitter, Adam proposed the idea. He just threw it out there to the world. It happened to be the same day I'd spent exactly $50 at the grocery store and was telling a friend—who was shopping with me—that I could probably live on $50 a week for groceries. I replied to his Tweet and suggested we do a group blog. Within a week, he'd set it up and we were rolling. Because he was in Brooklyn and I was in Kansas City, it only made sense that we include someone from the West Coast and Cari has been a wonderful addition. Not only do we have three different regions covered, we have three different lifestyles. Adam is a Brooklyn bachelor, I'm a Midwestern blogger/cookbook author, and Cari is a vegetarian who is married with a child. While we all have different lifestyles and different tastes, we compliment each other well.

Adam Pollock: It popped into my head one night as I was leaving my desk. That was unusual. Things like this usually pop into my head in the bathroom. To an extent, it was about necessity. I had already slashed my food expenditures after the economy tanked, but I didn't know by how much, or if I was doing it well. Setting an achievable budget, and blogging about it, looked like a fun way to approach the problem, even if it wasn't a problem I'd thought much about before.

Cari Luna: When Adam invited me to join in on the project, I agreed mostly as a lark. I thought it would be a fun experiment, and I expected it would be an easy one. We're vegetarians, and I love to cook and bake. Not so hard to stick to $50 per person if you don't have to buy meat (I hear that stuff is pricey), and if you cook all your meals at home. So I joined in expecting to save a bit of money and get back my bread-making mojo and get better about cooking dinner every night, but I didn't expect to break much of a sweat doing it. However, I didn't factor in things like Pizza Emergencies. Pizza Emergencies (yes, they merit the caps) are no joke, especially when they spring up at the end of the week and there's all of three bucks left in the budget and a crisper full of dandelion greens wanting to be eaten.

CS: What are the specific ground rules? Is it $50 per week per person in your household? Any other fine print rules or restrictions in terms of what you buy or where you buy it? Does the allotment include beverages?

AP: It's $50 per adult per week. When I cook for a guest, I discount their portion, and I haven't started budgeting for my dog, even though she could show me a thing or two. The only real restriction is that the food has to be pleasurable and nutritious to eat. I'm sure you could survive on $10 of rice, groats, and mung beans a week, or get your kicks from $50 of pixie stix, but we're not that kind of blog. We're about eating *well* on a budget. We're loosey-goosey on beverages. I count coffee, but not beer and wine. I do this because it's important to learn to walk before you can run, and because running is dull.

CL: We've got a weekly budget of $125: $50 each for me and my husband, and $25 for our three-year-old son. He's hit a serious growth spurt this week, so that $25 is starting to be a bit of a challenge. Today he ate four scrambled eggs; a pb&j sandwich; a cup of almonds, pumpkin seeds and raisins; and an apple for lunch. I don't think I can eat that much. Forget this budget thing when he's a teenager.

We don't drink booze at all, so that's not an issue for us. (Buddhist. Took a vow of no intoxicants.) I live in Portland, Oregon, so coffee IS an issue. (Yes, caffeine is also an intoxicant. Shhh! I'm a complex creature.) If I brew it at home, which I do 99 percent of the time, that coffee comes out of the grocery budget. If I buy it when out and about, it counts as entertainment and comes out of my separately budgeted discretionary cash. My husband doesn't drink coffee; he's one of those freaky tea drinkers. The same rule applies to his tea.

EF: Basically we are to eat "well" and are only allowed to spend $50 a week on food. For some reason I assumed this included coffee, which stuck, and honestly it has been a real challenge for me. Because I work from home, walking ten blocks to my nearest independent coffee shop for a $4 skim latte was often the highlight of my day, at least socially. I still go about once a week but I'm really bonding with my French press lately. Alcohol, however, is not included in the $50-a-week budget. If we were to include it, I can only imagine what kind of crazy moonshine would be brewing on my back porch right now. But perhaps this conversation is better left for an AA meeting?

CS: How has the experiment changed the way you go food shopping and plan meals?

EF: One of the first things I did upon agreeing to this project was join my local CSA [community supported agriculture]. I'm lucky in that for $25 a week, I get meat, cheese, milk, eggs, bread and vegetables. I really only have to buy coffee, yogurt and cereal or granola. This has been fantastic for me because I never know what I'm going to get when I pick up my share every Monday and I'm forced to use ingredients I would never have bought at the grocery store or farmers market. For example, a few weeks ago I got a steak—something I had only attempted once before—which made me realize that next time I want a steak, I can just prepare it myself. However, when the CSA ends in September, all hell might break loose. But I'm working on a little vegetable garden out back, so hopefully I'll just be forced to be more creative in other ways.

CL: Before, I would buy whatever looked good, or whatever I was in the habit of buying, and bought way too much of it. I've found over the course of this experiment that I like abundance. I feel safer when there's a lot of food in the house—too much food. More food than we needed. A lot was going to waste. Now I plan our week's meals in advance and shop according to that plan, buying only what we need. I'm still a bit freaked out by the empty fridge at the end of each week, but I think that will get easier with time. It just means I planned well.

AP: There are sections of the local supermarket, and whole specialty grocers, that I can't even walk into anymore. Greenmarkets are hard, because they're not cheap, and everything looks so good that, before I know it, I've spent $40 on things I didn't even need. Prior planning prevents poor performance, so it would help if I thought out my meals farther ahead. I see from her entries how Cari plans her meals, and the positive effect that has on her spending. I think that's the right direction, the disciplined direction, but it chafes against my hedonistic, improvisational bent. I have to admit, it's weird for me. I think of cooking and eating as acts of love. I wouldn't want to think about budgeting hugs or sex or whatever. Then again, I don't pay for them, either.

CS: What are some of your favorite cheap ingredients or spices—you know, the little something that doesn't cost much but adds a lot to a meal?

CL: Mirin! It isn't cheap by the bottle, but a little goes a long way and it's SO good.

AP: Kosher salt is great. If you get the big crystals, you get a lot of textural control for very little money. I always have cayenne pepper and dried tarragon around; for some reason, I find them pleasing together. At around $5/jar for decent stuff, neither is dirt-cheap, but a little of each goes a long way. Lately, I'm obsessed with La Morena pickled jalapeños and carrots. They're a lot of fire for $2/can, and the brine is strong enough that you can add more vegetables to it. When I have leftover radishes, I slice them up and drop them in.

EF: For starters: salt. I know it sounds simple and you might think "Who doesn't know that you need to use salt when you cook?" But I have friends who have, when trying to cook for the first time, paid little or no attention to the "salt to taste" step in recipes. Beyond that, cayenne pepper and crushed red pepper are must haves. A secret I discovered when writing "Casserole Crazy" was that cayenne really brings out the flavor of proteins— especially cheese. Any time I cook with cheddar, I add even just a pinch of cayenne to enhance the flavor. And sometimes for dinner (or breakfast, or lunch) I'll fry up a few eggs and serve them with salt, pepper, a slice or two of tomato and a dash of cayenne pepper. Whenever I make a pasta dish—which is often—I use crushed red pepper. Not only does it add a ton of flavor, spicy food actually makes you feel more full than mild food.

CS: Have you cheated and gone over budget? Now is your chance to come clean and explain.

CL: I wouldn't call it cheating so much as real life getting in the way of the experiment from time to time. We went over budget last week because we were at a community bike fair and it got to be dinner time. We were having a great time and didn't want to leave to go eat at home, and ended up spending $17 on tofu hot dogs. We went over budget, but we hung out as a family and ate huge tofu hot dogs smothered in onions and watched tall-bike jousting on a beautiful summer evening. Totally worth it.

Oh yeah…and this week? Pizza Emergency. It was a bad one. (If ever a girl needed a pizza…) I don't know yet if it pushed us over budget, but if it doesn't it will be because we just squeaked in there.

EF: Absolutely. And we're pretty honest about it on the site. Each week we share our budget analysis. It turns out we all have our vices and mine is, without a doubt, iced coffee from my local, independent coffee shop. Before we started the project, I tried to ignore the fact that I was spending $28 a week on coffee. And even when I couldn't ignore it, I justified my coffee consumption by saying I was supporting local business—you know, stimulating the economy. Of course I was stimulating the coffee trade while neglecting parts of my life, like my health. Even though I go over budget now and then, I have managed to drastically cut back my food spending. The $112 a month I was spending on coffee alone is now going towards health insurance—something I'd been without for three-plus years. If we ever add alcohol to the mix, I might even be able to start paying off my student loans.

AP: As someone who lives in an expensive city, has expensive tastes, and never budgeted for food in his adult life, I go over budget all the time. One thing about adulthood, though, is that it leaves me with very little shame, so, when I go over on groceries, I go ahead and write about it. Restaurants are a bit different. I'll admit to having broken the rules there a few times, but I've always been able to justify it as a business or travel expense. I'm a great rationalizer that way.

CS: What has been the hardest thing to do, or to go without, since you started the experiment? What are you dying to splurge on and eat right now?

AP: Cheese. Gorgeous, gooey, stinky cheese. Pearly Nevat. Majestic Reggiano. Snowy, gray-rinded Garrotxa, crystalline aged Gouda, creamy raw-milk Camembert. Good cheese is so expensive that even a nice piece of cheddar can put me over the top in nothing flat. I get like H.I. McDunnough in "Raising Arizona," riding by cheese shops that aren't even on the way home, daydreaming of breaking in late at night with a knife and a baguette. As much as I love venison, or oysters, or lamb chops, I don't fantasize about them. Much.

CL: The hardest thing has been cooking when I'm exhausted at the end of a long day and all I want to do is order some damn Thai food. But then I go ahead and cook and after we eat we're always glad we ate at home. Also, we've cut back on the avocados a bit. $2.99 a piece right now! $2.99! We could easily go through two avocados a day in our house, and that's just not happening on this budget. Mmmm…avocados… If only they grew here in Portland. I'd plant three avocado trees in the yard.

EF: For the past couple of years, I've mostly prepared all of my meals at home, so aside from the coffee and the occasional desire to find the nearest taco truck (STAT!) I can usually satisfy my own cravings with something I have in the fridge or pantry.

CS: In the big, grand, save-the-world sense, what have you learned about yourselves, and about how people in general consume food and function as consumers, while the experiment has been going on?

CL: In the grand, save-the world sense? I don't know yet. I'm still just trying to figure out how to work pizza into the budget.

EF: I have realized, in a very short time, how much food we waste. When I took an inventory of my fridge after the first week I was appalled at how much produce had gone or was about to go bad. Stuff I'd bought because I figured I might as well spend the entire $50. Before I might have just thrown it out, but I had most everything I needed for soup, which lasted and provided meals for another week. And my disdain for packaged foods has grown exponentially. Why in the world would I pay for overpriced, overprocessed food when I can get local, fresh ingredients that cost so much less and taste so much better?

AP: The honest, if somewhat obnoxious, answer would be, ask me in a year. We're only about a month into this thing, learning how to organize the information, and staying mostly within our comfort zones. Insofar as it's a blog about being comfortable on a budget, that's fine, but I feel like we've only begun to innovate. That said, I have learned that it's possible, and maybe even not that hard, to eat well by shopping as a careful consumer on $50 a week. It brings me back to an older style of shopping, of being really choosy, of buying what's in season not for a moral reason or an ecological reason, but because it offers the most taste and nutrition for the least money. In a way, that's a relief: it's easier to be a moderate locavore for market reasons rather than for moral ones. But right now it's summer, when produce is cheap and plentiful. Things will be different come winter. I think I'd better learn to pickle.

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How to Cook Like a Gourmet—When You're Broke

Gabi Moskowitz is a food blogger known as the BrokeAss Gourmet. She's the latest frugal gastronomist to discuss with The Cheapskate Blog strategies for cooking and eating well without breaking the bank.

Once again, I'll repeat: Eating on a budget is not a contest; it's a conversation. I've asked several other bloggers who write about their low-cost food adventures to answer questions similar to those posed to the 50 Bucks a Week trio, which started the entire conversation. The responses will be posted here to keep the conversation going.

Up today is Gabi Moskowitz, a.k.a., the BrokeAss Gourmet, who will clue you in as to the brilliance of half-and-half, and why you should hit the farmers market right before it closes, among other things.

Cheapskate: How and why did you start writing about eating on a tight budget? Did it spring out of necessity, as a lark, or what?

Gabi Moskowitz: I have always had this weird ability to make tasty dishes out of a nearly empty fridge, which has served me well (pun intended) as a student and now a nonprofit employee/writer, on an extremely tight budget. I had been blogging for awhile in a personal/food blog, Out of the Pantry, and this theme often slipped into my recipes and anecdotes.When my friend Adam Metz approached me with the idea of combining forces and producing a budget-cooking blog, it seemed like the perfect way to bring my favorite money-saving tips, tricks and techniques to a bigger audience.

CS: What are your ground rules? How exactly do you define what's in your budget and what meets your standards and restrictions? Give us the fine print, including how you deal with beverages and dining out (that is, if you ever dine out).

GM: Despite my desire to save money, I am a Sonoma County native and San Francisco resident. These places have totally informed my tastes in food and my desire for high-quality, local, fresh ingredients. Basically, what BrokeAss Gourmet is about is the refusal to give these things up in order to save money.

My weekly food budget isn't set in stone, but it generally looks like about $45-50/week. I typically spend about $15-20 at Trader Joe's for things like eggs, milk, bread, or the occasional piece of meat or fish and $15-20 at my local farmer's market (which I hit up in the final hour, as vendors become eager to get rid of their goods and will often agree to bargained-down prices). That leaves $15-20 for the occasional inexpensive taqueria trip, bottle of wine, or special ingredient. The trick is to avoid prepared foods. With just a little time and effort, you really can make just about anything you see in the TJ's or Whole Foods prepared foods case--for a lot less money.

I also try to buy my groceries with cash. I find that to actually part with the money in my hand imparts a much greater effect than to just scan my credit card and be done with it. The farmers market necessitates this, because they only take cash. It's kind of like a weekly game--I take out $20 and scan the booths until I find the best prices for exactly what I am looking for.

You would think this would take tons of time, but after awhile you get to know the people working the kiosks, and you become familiar with their produce, and it feels like the friendliest, freshest grocery store around ... with live music and free samples.

As for going out to eat/drink, I try to keep it down to 1-2 times per week, though that can be tough sometimes. I try to order dishes that are heavier on vegetables than meat (healthy and generally less expensive), but I also know that my good cooking/shopping habits allow me to splurge every now and then. Plus, every time I eat something special in a restaurant, I'll write down the predominant flavors and attempt to recreate it at home—usually for a lot less money.

CS: What are some of your favorite cheap ingredients or spices -- you know, the little something that doesn't cost much but adds a lot to a meal?

GM: Condiments are key. I love Sriracha, Tapatio hot sauce, rice vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and good extra virgin olive oil. Also, sea/Kosher salt and good, freshly ground pepper can mean the difference between a mediocre meal and a quality, expensive-tasting one. I also try to always keep my pantry stocked, because I know that with just a few fresh ingredients and a well-stocked pantry, I can easily throw together something tasty.

Also, it might sound funny, but the number one ingredient that saves the day when I'm not sure what to make is half-and-half. It's a great way to richen a dish without adding as much fat as cream--but it's more special than adding milk or water. Boring old tomato sauce? Add a few tablespoons of half-and-half and a little vodka and you have homemade vodka sauce. Risotto not quite creamy enough? A little drizzle of half-and-half is all you need to make your risotto restaurant quality. Plus, it doubles as a creamer for coffee, so it makes sense to always have it around. Oh, and it's $0.99 for a pint at Trader Joe's, even in pricey San Francisco.

CS: What has been the hardest thing to do, or to go without, since you started cooking and eating on a supertight budget? What are you dying to splurge on and eat right now?

GM: I really, really love fresh cracked crab. My mom always makes fresh cracked crab, sourdough bread, and salad on special occasions, and to me, it's one of the most perfect foods. Sadly, it's really pricey and therefore not in my budget. One of my favorite things to do though, is to take my favorite flavors and find less-expensive ways to enjoy them, like in Summer Crab Risotto.

CS: When you tell people about your food budget, what sort of reactions do you get?

GM: I know plenty of people who think it's silly that I monitor my food budget so carefully, but generally I think they're impressed enough with my cooking that they keep their mouths shut! It can be tough to socialize on a budget, but I usually make it work. I have friends over for dinner all the time, which is a great, inexpensive to socialize while saving money. The truth is that in this economy, most of us are in the same boat and the combination of minimal cost and hearty, healthy, comforting food pretty much always wins.

CS: In the big, grand, save-the-world sense, what have you learned about yourself, and about how people in general consume food and function as consumers, while you've been blogging about eating on the cheap?

GM: Above all, if you want to get people excited about something, presentation is key. I have this weird schedule where I leave work before the sun sets so that I can cook and shoot my food on my back porch, just as the sun sets at the right time behind the trees in my yard--because that is when the light is best and therefore produces the prettiest picture. Nobody is going to get excited about a $12 gourmet meal for 2 people if the food looks gross--which it totally does if I shoot it at 10:30 PM in my fluorescent-lit kitchen.

I've also learned the value of really simplifying instructions. I've been cooking since I was 5, but there are plenty of people my age or older who are just now starting and who feel intimidated by complicated recipes. I find that when I post a beautiful, inexpensive, easy-to-make recipe with easily-procured ingredients I get the best response from readers.

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The Big Bang Theory Gets a Big Boost

PHYSICISTS DON'T MUCH LIKE GETTING UP EARLY, but they packed promptly into an 8:00 a.m. gathering of the American Physical Society in Washington last week. They were drawn, fittingly enough, by rumors of revelations about the very first dawn, and they were rewarded with dramatic news.

NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite -- COBE -- has found something astronomers have been seeking for nearly 30 years: an almost imperceptible pattern of warm and cool patches in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the oldest light in the cosmos. The radiation was created only 300,000 years after the Big Bang explosion that began the universe, a time when all of space was hot, dense and incandescently bright. The radiation is still around now, 15 billion years later, cooled far below zero and transformed from visible light to microwaves. Its discovery in the mid-1960s confirmed the Big Bang as the premier theory of the universe. The theory also says the temperature of this background radiation must vary from spot to spot in the sky. The variations come from areas of higher and lower density in the universe at that time; without density fluctuations then, there could be no galaxies -- and no humans -- today.

Failure to find the variations until now had understandably made scientists a little nervous. Humans and galaxies obviously exist, so if COBE didn't see them sooner or later, that meant the Big Bang theory, the foundation of modern astrophysics, could have been in serious trouble. But tiny as the variations are -- 30 millionths of a degree at most -- they are enough to keep the Big Bang alive. Says David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist: "This is great stuff."

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Election buzz in remotest Afghanistan

By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Badakhshan

Little has changed in Badakhshan province over the years

Tucked away in a remote north-east corner of Afghanistan, Badakhshan province exists in a world of its own.

It is a mass of snowy peaks and scattered valleys, with no sustainable road network and only a dirt track to connect the province with the rest of the country.

Yet it is the question of who rules in the capital, Kabul, some 600km (373 miles) south-west across treacherous valleys, that is looming large as the presidential elections draw near.

Afghanistan goes to polls on 20 August.

So too will Mohammadullah Khan, a peasant from Daraim valley, some 130km (81 miles) south of Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan.

I will certainly express my opinion, and so will my wife and two sons Mohammadullah Khan

On election day, his family members will ride their pony and two donkeys to the polling station, which a one-and-a-half hour journey from their home.

Yar Mohammad, an ironsmith from Eshakashem, 200km (124 miles) south-east of Faizabad, says he will do the same.

"All of us must vote, because if we don't, it will weaken the system," he says.

Both Yar Mohammad and Mohammadullah Khan are part of a landscape that is stunningly beautiful but whose inhabitants endure primitive lifestyles and extreme poverty.

Both men travelled for hours in slow-moving vans across bumpy dirt tracks to bring their sons - aged between five and six years old - to a Faizabad hospital to treat them for hernias.

The doctors here say hernia issues are pretty common among children. Malnutrition, whooping cough and sometimes iodine deficiency can be the cause.

The two families' problems are more or less the same as those of the vast majority of the people of Badakhshan.

Puppet government?

So, ahead of these elections, what has the present government in Kabul done for Badakhshan's population, compared with the former warlords who ruled in isolation?

[The Taliban] haven't tried anything more sinister than verbally inciting people to boycott the election Aqa Noor Kentoos Badakhshan province police chief

Many in the province say, "very little". Some even denounce the incumbent government as an American puppet, with no will of its own.

They point out that no effort has been made during the past seven years to build roads in the region and that there is no communications infrastructure.

Since the Soviet occupation ended, Badakhshan, like other parts of Afghanistan, has seen the rise of warlords who have now been co-opted by the Karzai government and who now hold various provincial offices of power.

Many have benefited immensely from Badakhshan's vast poppy crops and are still said to control its gemstone mines, as well as border trade with Tajikistan.

More recently the Taliban, who have never enjoyed a foothold in this majority ethnic Tajik region, have been showing up on the southern outskirts of the province - near the border with Pakistan - asking people not to vote in the election.

Warlord-affiliated

However, a growing number of people believe that while all of this may be true, there are signs of change on the horizon.

For the first time in Badakhshan's history, the government is building a 105km-long (65-mile) road from Faizabad to Keshem, on the border with neighbouring Takhar province.

Baz Mohammad Ahmadi, a former warlord-affiliated to Afghanistan's Jamiat-e-Islami party and current governor of Badakhshan, says the road will be completed in 2010.

If the present system doesn't work, then the warlords will be back, and that will be bad for the people Qasim Jan, local farmer

In addition, the past seven years have brought massive development funds from Western donors to boost the government's efforts to extend health facilities in the region.

Health officials say more than 70 new facilities have been built across different valleys in the area.

"A lot more needs to be done, but we have made a start," says Dr Momin Jalaly, the provincial health chief.

The Afghan government has also been successful in eradicating poppy farming in Badakhshan, which until last year was the country's second largest opium-producing region after Helmand province.

Officials say this success is partly owed to the government's policy of absorbing the warlords into its infrastructure.

"Many local warlords were given police jobs in the districts, and were told to prevent poppy cultivation in their areas if they wanted to keep their jobs," says a senior government official in Faizabad.

As for the Taliban, they are not a tangible threat, says Aqa Noor Kentoos, the provincial police chief.

As the elections approach, a growing number of people appear to realise that changes have taken place in Afghanistan and they are getting over their paranoia from the past.

"If the present system doesn't work, then the warlords will be back, and that will be bad for the people," says Qasim Jan, a local farmer.

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Russian victims challenge police

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News, Moscow

Denis Yevsyukov killed three people and seriously wounded six others

Russian police officers committed 2,500 crimes in the first six months of this year, according to the Russian interior ministry.

No, that was not a typing error; I did mean 2,500.

Here is another direct quote: "Police officers are the biggest single source of graft" in Russia.

That is from the head of the interior ministry's internal investigation department, Oleg Goncharov.

That will not come as a surprise to most Russian motorists. The fact that Russia's police are hugely corrupt is not really news.

Anyone who has driven the streets of Moscow on a Saturday morning knows only too well how much of the city's police force spend its weekends - pulling over motorists and soliciting bribes.

We approached the Interior Ministry for comment. They refused.

But a ministry official who did not want to be named said this: "The situation is really awful. Police officers are not paid properly, so we are only able to recruit the lowest calibre people.

"Some of them don't know the most basic of laws; some even consort with criminal gangs".

Bitter and angry

But can a Russian police officer get away with murder?

That is a question that has been prompted by two recent incidents in Moscow.

Ilya Gerassimenko still has a bullet fragment lodged near his heart

On 27 April a local police chief walked into a supermarket in southern Moscow.

He pulled out a gun and started walking around the shop shooting people at random, killing three and seriously wounding six others.

The evidence against the policeman is overwhelming. CCTV footage from the supermarket clearly shows what happened.

One of those who survived the attack was Ilya Gerassimenko.

Three months after the shooting, the 18-year-old still has a bullet fragment lodged near his heart. His doctors have told him he will probably not be able to play football again.

Last week, Mr Gerassimenko was told by a court that he would not get any compensation for his injuries because the policeman who shot him, Denis Yevsyukov, was off duty.

Mr Gerassimenko is bitter and angry.

"I will never trust the police again," he said. "Now every time I see a policeman I feel scared. No-one in this neighbourhood will ever trust the police again."

'No accident'

Just down the road from the supermarket, on a quiet leafy street, I meet Alexei Shumm.

He is a softly-spoken, shy man who did not wish to seek the media spotlight. But he was forced to by the death of his pregnant wife.

The police think they can get away with anything, they think they are above the law Alexei Shumm

Just two weeks after the supermarket shooting, Elena Shumm was walking home after dropping the couple's 10-year-old daughter at school.

As she was crossing the road near their home, she was hit by an off-duty policeman driving a powerful sports car.

He was speeding and on the wrong side of the road. The collision sent Mrs Shumm flying. The policeman did not even stop.

The police did nothing. Even though they have identified the car and its driver, the investigation has so far proved inconclusive.

"It was murder," said Mr Shumm. "This was not an accident. He murdered my wife. The police think they can get away with anything, they think they are above the law."

A month after the collision, and after a barrage of media coverage, the police finally moved to take the officer at the wheel of the car into custody.

But even now Mr Shumm is uncertain whether justice will be done.

"I hope so," he said. "I have to try, for the sake of my daughter. But so many people have told me it is hopeless, that you cannot win against the police."

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UK food research 'needs a boost'

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Some scientists favour a genetically modified solution

The world's food production needs to double by 2050 to feed the world's growing population.

But over this period, climate change, reduced access to water and changing land use are likely to make growing crops harder rather than easier.

Scientists are trying to find new ways of using fewer resources to produce more food.

Dr Chris Atkinson, head of science at East Malling Research in Kent, UK, said that in the next few years the UK would not be able to rely on imports of cheap food.

"A number of places where the UK sources food, like southern Spain, Greece and Italy, are going to find it very difficult in the next 50 years to continue to produce the levels of food they currently do," he said.

"That's in part due to the predictions of the scarcity of water in those parts of Europe."

The work at East Malling Research has focused on refining traditional agricultural techniques. But Dr Atkinson believes that GM technology will eventually be needed to produce enough food to feed the world.

"The concept of using tools like GM to improve water use efficiency are a reality. It is a matter of whether people want to accept that technology," he explained.

Scientists try to boost crop yield

Currently, many people refuse to accept the technology - particularly in Europe, where it is effectively banned.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), believes that food production has to be doubled over the next 50 years.

That can only be done by developing all relevant technologies - including GM.

"We need science and technology to [find] ways to double food production over the next 50 years in a way that is environmentally sound," he said.

Professor Watson said there were a number of key issues which needed to be tackled.

One of the most important was how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming, such as methane from rice production and nitrogen oxide from use of fertilisers.

He added that thought also needed to be given to how agricultural systems should be adapted to a changing climate.

The government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has set up a food strategy task force to answer these very questions.

He has also commissioned a "foresight study" into food and farming, due out later this year.

BBC News understands it will highlight concerns that the UK's agricultural research has been cut back by 70% since the 1980s. Professor Ian Crute, the former director of Rothamsted Research, is among those involved in producing the report.

"Over the last 20 years or so, we have been extremely complacent. We have really eroded our capability in research and development focused on agriculture and food," he said.

"Having wound it down over the last 20 years, we have to really begin to wind it back up again. We have to invest in skills, our research and development.

"If we are to get this increase in efficiency we just have to make these investments. I think it is quite urgent."

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Is Obama Punking Us?

By FRANK RICH
Published: August 8, 2009

“AUGUST is a challenging time to be president,” said Andrew Card, the former Bush White House chief of staff, as he offered unsolicited advice to his successors in a television interview last week. “I think you have to expect the unexpected.”

He should know. Thursday was the eighth anniversary of “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the President’s Daily Brief that his boss ignored while on vacation in Crawford. Aug. 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike on the Louisiana coast, which his boss also ignored while on vacation in Crawford.

So do have a blast in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama.

Even as we wait for some unexpected disaster to strike, Beltway omens for the current White House are grim. Obama’s poll numbers are approaching free fall, we are told. If he fails on health care, he’s toast. Indeed, many of the bloviators who spot a fatal swoon in the Obama presidency are the same doomsayers who in August 2008 were predicting his Election Day defeat because he couldn’t “close the deal” and clear the 50 percent mark in matchups with John McCain.

Here are two not very daring predictions: Obama will get some kind of health care reform done come fall. His poll numbers will not crater any time soon.

Yet there is real reason for longer-term worry in the form of a persistent, anecdotal drift toward disillusionment among some of the president’s supporters. And not merely those on the left. This concern was perhaps best articulated by an Obama voter, a real estate agent in Virginia, featured on the front page of The Washington Post last week. “Nothing’s changed for the common guy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been punked.” She cited in particular the billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks that still “act like they’re broke.”

But this mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

No president can do that alone, let alone in six months. To make Obama’s goal more quixotic, the ailment that he diagnosed is far bigger than Washington and often beyond politics’ domain. What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.

It’s a cynicism confirmed almost daily by events. Last week Brian Stelter of The Times reported that the corporate bosses of MSNBC and Fox News, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, had sanctioned their lieutenants to broker what a G.E. spokesman called a new “level of civility” between their brawling cable stars, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. A Fox spokesman later confirmed to Howard Kurtz of The Post that “there was an agreement” at least at the corporate level. Olbermann said he was a “party to no deal,” and in any event what looked like a temporary truce ended after The Times article was published. But the whole scrape only fed legitimate suspicions on the right and left alike that even their loudest public voices can be silenced if the business interests of the real American elite decree it.

You might wonder whether networks could some day cut out the middlemen — anchors — and just put covert lobbyists and publicists on the air to deliver the news. Actually, that has already happened. The most notorious example was the flock of retired military officers who served as television “news analysts” during the Iraq war while clandestinely lobbying for defense contractors eager to sell their costly wares to the Pentagon.

The revelation of that scandal did not end the practice. Last week MSNBC had to apologize for deploying the former Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe as a substitute host for Olbermann without mentioning his new career as a corporate flack. Wolffe might still be anchoring on MSNBC if the blogger Glenn Greenwald hadn’t called attention to his day job. MSNBC assured its viewers that there were no conflicts of interest, but we must take that on faith, since we still don’t know which clients Wolffe represents as a senior strategist for his firm, Public Strategies, whose chief executive is the former Bush White House spin artist, Dan Bartlett.

Let’s presume that Wolffe’s clients do not include the corporate interests with billions at stake in MSNBC and Washington’s Topic A, the health care debate. If so, he’s about the only player in the political-corporate culture who’s not riding that gravy train.

As Democrats have pointed out, the angry hecklers disrupting town-hall meetings convened by members of Congress are not always ordinary citizens engaging in spontaneous grass-roots protests or even G.O.P. operatives, but proxies for corporate lobbyists. One group facilitating the screamers is FreedomWorks, which is run by the former Congressman Dick Armey, now a lobbyist at the DLA Piper law firm. Medicines Company, a global pharmaceutical business, has paid DLA Piper more than $6 million in lobbying fees in the five years Armey has worked there.

But the Democratic members of Congress those hecklers assailed can hardly claim the moral high ground. Their ties to health care interests are merely more discreet and insidious. As Congressional Quarterly reported last week, industry groups contributed almost $1.8 million in the first six months of 2009 alone to the 18 House members of both parties supervising health care reform, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer among them.

Then there are the 52 conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who have balked at the public option for health insurance. Their cash intake from insurers and drug companies outpaces their Democratic peers by an average of 25 percent, according to The Post. And let’s not forget the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which has raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs ever since it was profiled in The New Yorker this spring.

In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it’s not clear who any American in either party should or could root for. The bipartisan nature of the beast can be encapsulated by the remarkable progress of Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman. Tauzin was a founding member of the Blue Dog Democrats in 1994. A year later, he bolted to the Republicans. Now he is chief of PhRMA, the biggest pharmaceutical trade group. In the 2008 campaign, Obama ran a television ad pillorying Tauzin for his role in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Last week The Los Angeles Times reported — and The New York Times confirmed — that Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, had secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices. Now we know why the president has ducked his campaign pledge to broadcast such negotiations on C-Span.

The making of legislative sausage is never pretty. The White House has to give to get. But the cynicism being whipped up among voters is justified. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose chief presidential campaign strategist unapologetically did double duty as a high-powered corporate flack, Obama promised change we could actually believe in.

His first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street’s latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.

It’s in this context that Obama can’t afford a defeat on health care. A bill will pass in a Democrat-controlled Congress. What matters is what’s in it. The final result will be a CAT scan of those powerful Washington interests he campaigned against, revealing which have been removed from the body politic (or at least reduced) and which continue to metastasize. The Wall Street regulatory reform package Obama pushes through, or doesn’t, may render even more of a verdict on his success in changing the system he sought the White House to reform.

The best political news for the president remains the Republicans. It’s a measure of how out of touch G.O.P. leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are that they keep trying to scare voters by calling Obama a socialist. They have it backward. The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy. If anything, the most unexpected — and challenging — event that could rock the White House this August would be if the opposition actually woke up.

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