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Stakes are high for U.S., China during Clinton visit

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will arrive in Beijing on Friday.
When Hillary Clinton visits Beijing this week, her Chinese hosts will closely watch her body movement and parse her every word. Her first trip here as the U.S. secretary of state comes in the shadow of the global financial crisis, the pressing North Korea nuclear issue and a warming planet.

The U.S. Congress has passed a massive stimulus bill that will plunge America even deeper into debt. Will China help out About $700 billion of China’s $1.9 trillion of foreign reserves are in U.S. Treasuries. If China sold those assets, U.S. interest rates would spike and would further decimate China’s export industries. Such a scenario would be distasteful for both Washington and Beijing, and that’s why it’s critical that Clinton convince the Chinese to hold this arrangement together. Why should China buy even more “There’s some protectionist language in the stimulus package,” said James McGregor, who runs JL Mcgregor & Company, a business consulting company in Beijing. “During the campaign, Hillary called on the president (George W. Bush) not to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. China doesn’t know what to think of them. She’s got to come here to build trust.” The stakes are high for America. “I think if China sits out a treasury auction, what happens to the American economy What happens to the American stock markets” McGregor asked. “China is now in a position of power when it comes to American finances.” What do Chinese expect to hear from Clinton Victor Gao, director of China National Association of International Studies, hopes America’s top diplomat can “assure the overseas investors, including China, that their investments in these securities will be protected.” He believes China will ask Clinton to keep the U.S. dollar as strong as possible and keep it from depreciating.

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For its part, Gao said China “will not do anything irresponsible” with the bulk of U.S. treasury bills it holds “because the interests of the Chinese and American economy are now very much intertwined.” McGregor agreed: “China already owns so much American debt that they cannot afford not to have America be successful.” The Chinese also hope Clinton will help mute the protectionist voices in the United States. “It’s time for the U.S. to demonstrate that it will continue as the champion of free market and free trade,” Gao said. “If anyone wants to equate patriotism with protectionism, that’s the wrong recipe.” “Things are going to be very, very different from now on between the United States and China,” said Michael Santoro, author of the book, “China 2010.” The established relationship between the two nations — China selling products to the United States, and then Beijing buying up U.S. debt — needs to change, Santoro said. Watch Santoro explain how the U.S. and China need to build a new relationship with each other. » Much more is at stake. Barack Obama has identified the relationship with China as one of the most important foreign-policy issues of his administration. Washington also needs Beijing to play a positive role in the resolving regional hot spots. The Korean nuclear issue has brought Beijing and Washington together to seek the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Chinese President Hu Jintao is just as eager to strengthen ties. “China still needs America’s market, needs to keep the U.S. dollar strong, and also needs the U.S. to open its market to Chinese export,” said Yan Xuetong, an America-watcher in Tsinghua University. Since China and the United States. formally established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, bilateral relations have grown. Quite often, however, they have been punctuated by disputes over trade, human-rights disagreements and China’s policies on Taiwan, Tibet, and religious freedom. Now the aim is to put the relationship on a more predictable, even keel. Political analysts here do not expect substantive results coming out of Secretary Clinton’s visit. Says Yan Xuetong: “The purpose of her visit is to lay the foundation for future collaboration between China and the U.S.” Presidents Hu Jintao and Obama have talked on the phone and have agreed to meet in April during an international economic summit in London.

Despite problems, there is optimism in Beijing. “Our common interests are much bigger than our differences,” says a government official who asked to remain anonymous. “We don’t see either side making significant shifts in policies.” Meanwhile, China analyst James McGregor already notes a shift in tone: “The U.S. used to come here and lecture China,” he says. “Now the US is coming here to kiss up to China.”

Helicopter goes down near California nuclear plant

Kenneth Lewis is the CEO and chairman of Bank of America, the nation's largest bank.
A U.S. Border Patrol helicopter went down Thursday night near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been highly critical of Wall Street firms in general and Merrill Lynch in particular for the way they have conducted themselves in the midst of a financial crisis. Last week, he accused Merrill Lynch, which was acquired by Bank of America late last year, of secretly doling out big bonuses before reporting a huge quarterly loss. “Merrill Lynch’s decision to secretly and prematurely award approximately $3.6 billion in bonuses, and Bank of America’s apparent complicity in it, raise serious and disturbing questions,” Cuomo wrote in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. In his letter to Frank, Cuomo said Merrill gave bonuses of at least $1 million each to 696 employees, with a combined $121 million going to the top four recipients. The next four recipients were awarded a total of $62 million, and the next six received $66 million, he said. In all, the bonuses for 2008 totaled $3.6 billion. “While more than 39,000 Merrill employees received bonuses from the pool, the vast majority of these funds were disproportionately distributed to a small number of individuals,” Cuomo wrote. “Indeed, Merrill chose to make millionaires out of a select group of 700 employees.” The attorney general said Merrill “awarded an even smaller group of top executives what can only be described as gigantic bonuses.”

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Cuomo also claimed Merrill handed out the bonuses ahead of its federally funded acquisition by Bank of America, which was announced in mid-September and closed by year’s end. It “appears that, instead of disclosing their bonus plans in a transparent way as requested by my office, Merrill Lynch secretly moved up the planned date to allocate bonuses and then richly rewarded their failed executives,” Cuomo wrote. Bank of America has received $45 billion in federal bailout money, including $20 billion to support its takeover of Merrill. Bank of America reported a net loss of $1.79 billion for the fourth quarter. Merrill reported a net loss of $15.31 billion for the fourth quarter. Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri that Merrill was “an independent company” when the bonuses were awarded. “Bank of America did urge the bonuses be reduced, including those at the high end,” Silvestri wrote. “Although we had a right of consultation, it was their ultimate decision to make.” Silvestri said the top executives for Bank of America “took no incentive compensation for 2008,” with an 80 percent reduction for the “next level” of executives. Top executives from Bank of America — as well as Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo — appeared before the Financial Services Committee last week to explain how they spent the $165 billion they received from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In the testimony, Lewis said he received no bonus for 2008 and was paid a salary of $1.5 million. Bank of America’s stock, which traded higher than $40 a share in the past year, closed at a fresh 52-week low of $3.93 a share Thursday. It’s the largest bank in terms of assets in the United States and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.

New York Post apologizes for, yet still defends, chimp cartoon

A New York Post cartoon has sparked a debate over race and cartooning this week.
A day after publishing a cartoon that drew fire from critics who said it evoked historically racist images, the New York Post apologized in a statement on its Web site — even as it defended its action and blasted some detractors.

Many of those critical of the cartoon said it appeared to compare President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee in a commentary on his recently approved economic stimulus package. “Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon — caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut — has created considerable controversy,” the paper said about the drawing, which shows two police officers standing over the body of a chimpanzee they just shot. The drawing is a reference to the mauling of a woman by a pet chimpanzee, which was then killed by police. In the cartoon, one of the officers tells the other, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The Post said the cartoon was meant to mock what it called an “ineptly written” stimulus bill. “But it has been taken as something else — as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism,” reads the statement. “This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.” But the statement immediately swerves to fire back at some of the image’s critics.

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“However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past — and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback,” the statement says. “To them, no apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon — even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.” Several African-American leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, attacked the image, which was drawn by artist Sean Delonas. Sharpton said Thursday he and the leaders of “various groups” would respond at 5 p.m. Friday outside The Post’s offices in midtown Manhattan. “Though we think it is the right thing for them to apologize to those they offended,” the statement appeared to blame those who raised the issue “rather than take responsibility for what they did,” Sharpton said. He accused the newspaper of having “belatedly come with a conditional statement after people began mobilizing and preparing to challenge the waiver of News Corp in the city where they own several television stations and newspapers.” Delonas has made Sharpton the butt of previous cartoons in The Post. In a brief phone interview with CNN, Delonas called the controversy “absolutely friggin’ ridiculous.” “Do you really think I’m saying Obama should be shot I didn’t see that in the cartoon,” Delonas told CNN. “It’s about the economic stimulus bill,” he added. Col Allan, the Post’s editor-in-chief, said Wednesday that the cartoon “is a clear parody of a current news event.” “It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist,” Allan said in a written statement. But Sharpton was not alone in his criticism. Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said The Post showed a “serious lapse in judgment” by running the cartoon. “To think that the cartoonist and the responsible editors at the paper did not see the racist overtones of the finished product should insult their intelligence,” Ciara said in a written statement. “Instead, they celebrate their own lack of perspective and criticize those who call it what it is: tone deaf at best, overtly racist at worst.” “Comparing President Obama and his effort to revive the economy in a manner that depicts violence and racist inferences is unacceptable,” said National Urban League President Marc Morial in a statement issued Wednesday. The nearly $800 billion stimulus package was the top priority for Obama, the first black U.S. president, who signed it Tuesday. In an open letter to The Post, musician John Legend criticized the newspaper and called on New Yorkers not to buy it, or talk to its reporters or buy its advertising space. Addressing the newspaper’s editors, Legend wrote, “Did it occur to you that our president has been receiving death threats since early in his candidacy Did it occur to you that blacks have historically been compared to various apes as a way of racist insult and mockery Did you intend to invoke these painful themes when you printed the cartoon “If that’s not what you intended, then it was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connectable dots. If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive.” Either way, Legend said, the fact that the cartoon was printed “is truly reprehensible.”

30 injured on 747 flight to Japan

About 30 people were injured Friday when a Northwest Airlines flight suffered turbulence before landing at Japan’s Narita International Airport, a Northwest spokesman said.

Why Europe Is Fuming About the Stimulus Package

Europe’s euphoria over Barack Obama is fading fast. As Congress wrangles over the President’s $819 billion stimulus package, a “buy American” clause has the European Union threatening legal action and retaliatory sanctions and opening up the prospect of an explosive trade war.

Just weeks after hailing Obama’s election, E.U. officials are now howling that his plans are putting a global economic recovery at risk. They want Obama to resist any retreat into protectionism, warning that it could turn the recession into a 1930s-style slump.

The “buy American” clause in the President’s economic stimulus package states that only U.S. iron, steel and manufactured goods can be used in construction projects funded by the bill. The package has already been approved by the House of Representatives, and the Senate is currently debating an $888 billion version of the bill.

The provisions might protect U.S. jobs in the short term, but the E.U. says they would hobble global trade, a key motor for the world economy. John Bruton, the E.U. ambassador in Washington, has described the measures as “setting a dangerous precedent, and “neither the right or effective response to the situation.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that “past world economic crises showed protectionism would be the completely wrong answer.”

Similar measures to “buy American” have been adopted or considered in Argentina, China, Indonesia, Ecuador, India, Russia and Vietnam. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, warned on Feb. 2 that any go-it-alone route would foster a spiral of retaliation. “Today we run the risk of sliding down a slippery slope of tit-for-tat measures. It was Mahatma Gandhi who said ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,’ ” Lamy said.

The E.U.’s alarm is partly a reflection of its own precarious situation in the face of a widespread backlash against globalization. The commission is now scrutinizing the E.U.’s own stimulus schemes for potential discrimination against foreigners. In focus are plans such as France’s $10 billion move to bail out its car industry by requiring firms to source car parts from local suppliers.

“In this climate, many people resent seeing billions of tax dollars leak outside the country. But if this ‘buy American’ clause is adopted, it will make it harder for those in Europe in arguing for markets to stay open,” says Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Also, after Europe’s huge expectations for Obama, there is bound to be a huge disillusion with him if the U.S. goes down this road.”

“Buy American” is highly popular among Congressional Democrats and trade unions. Obama supported it during his White House campaign, even distributing campaign buttons and flyers with a special emblem.

But the move is opposed by most Republicans, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has demanded that it be stripped from the bill. Major U.S. companies like General Electric and Caterpillar have also opposed the provision, saying it will hurt their ability to win contracts abroad — and impose layers of bureaucracy on what is already likely to be a cumbersome contracting process.

The provision would also cost far more jobs than it created, according to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Although it focuses on iron and steel provisions, the “buy American” clause would save just 1,000 U.S. jobs because steel is very capital intensive, the study’s authors Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott say. “In the giant U.S. economy, with a labor force of roughly 140 million people, 1,000 jobs or less is a very small number,” they wrote. That number, they contend, would be exceeded by the jobs that would then be lost if other countries emulate U.S. policies or retaliate against them.

In the face of the criticism, Obama sent out signals on Tuesday that he was prepared for a rethink. He did not promise to remove “buy American” but said he would take another look at the language in the bill. “I think we need to make sure that any provisions that are in there are not going to trigger a trade war,” he told TV network ABC. And speaking to Fox News, he said, “I think it would be a mistake though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for U.S. to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves.”

But he will have to twist arms in his own party to tone down the measures, especially since the Senate is currently looking at an even tougher version of the provisions. If he fails to extract the offensive language, Europe may indeed be readying itself for an old-fashioned trade battle.

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Official: Mexican drug turf wars have led to surge in violence

Mexican police carry a body after a clash with gangs that left 21 dead in the state of Chihuahua on February 10.
No one, especially not one of Mexico’s top law enforcement officials, denies that killings by drug cartels have reached record levels.

But Monte Alejandro Rubido Garcia, executive secretary for the National System for Public Safety, has an explanation. “Mexico all of a sudden stopped being a drug-transit country and became a drug-consuming country,” Rubido told CNN on Thursday. That means gangs that once shipped drugs into the United States are now fighting each other to sell the drugs at home, he said. Their fights center on territory — who gets to sell what and where. “The only way to settle their differences is through violence,” Rubido said. “They’re fighting block by block in a very violent way.” The result is a brutal onslaught that resulted in about 5,400 deaths last year, more than double the 2,477 tallied in 2007. Many analysts say Mexico is on track to set a record again this year. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the situation in Mexico a “civil war” on a national TV program a few weeks ago.

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Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, terms it “a sickening vertigo into chaos and plunder.” The violence also is a result of the Mexican government’s stepped-up fight against the drug cartels. President Felipe Calderon’s administration has spent more money and confiscated more drugs than any previous one, Rubido said. “Every time the state strikes a blow against them, their reaction is more violence,” Rubido said of the drug cartels. A United Nations report released this week notes that the “government of Mexico faces violent opposition by drug cartels to its attempts to fight organized crime and drug trafficking,” adding that “drug cartels have responded with unprecedented violence.” Much of this violence, Rubido said, is carried out in “high-impact” fashion, aiming to get attention and demoralize the cartels’ enemies. For example, decapitations have become common. But decapitation often is not the cause of death. “They’re first killed with a shot, then decapitated for maximum visual impact,” the law enforcement official said. “They’re trying to make the state go into reverse.” That will not happen, Rubido vowed. “The only way to fight this is like we’re doing in Mexico.” He listed three fronts in the conflict: a frontal assault on the gangs; prevention campaigns against drug use; and a common strategy and tactics among Mexico 1,660 police agencies. It’s a tough battle, he admits, especially since the use of cocaine in Mexico has doubled in the past four years. Cocaine traffickers, Rubido said, have been looking for new markets and have targeted Europe and Mexico. Watch how the violence is affecting the United States » The U.N. report released this week notes that “despite concrete measures adopted by the government, drug abuse remains high in Mexico, especially among school-age children and young people.” The war on drugs in Mexico is made even more difficult by rampant corruption, the report says. “There is so much money involved in the drug trade, there is so much fear involved in the drug trade, that no institution can survive unaffected,” said Birns. Says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center: “This has really revealed just how corrupt Mexican officeholders are, how many people in key positions in the anti-drug war have been taking money from narcotraffickers.” In one recent instance, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who was the nation’s top anti-drug official from 2006 until August 2008, was arrested on charges that he accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers while in office. There have been other similar arrests of high-ranking officials for taking bribes from drug traffickers. “There’s no way the public treasury can pay what the drug traffickers are paying,” Hakim said. Rubido acknowledges the situation. “It is a problem, and it is assumed as fact,” he said Thursday. But he also sees the arrest of high-ranking officials as proof that anti-corruption efforts are working. Drug lords have two ways to battle anti-crime efforts, he said: bribes and intimidation. That intimidation can often take brutal forms. Last weekend, for example, a police official in Tabasco state who had arrested a trafficker a week earlier was killed. So were his mother, his wife, his children and nieces and nephews. His brother, also a state police officer, was wounded, as were two others. In all, 12 people were shot dead in three homes. Six of them were children. A few days earlier, a retired army general was abducted, tortured and shot 11 times, less than 24 hours after becoming Cancun’s top anti-drug official. He, his aide and a driver were all found dead in a truck by the side of a road. Cancun’s police chief was arrested a few days later in connection with the slayings. Still, Rubido and others say, most of the deaths involve just drug traffickers, not ordinary citizens. “Ninety percent of the people who died last year in organized crime were involved in crime,” Rubido said. “The problem is among criminal gangs.” Rubido sees the Mexican government prevailing. “I have a firm conviction that it’s a battle we will win,” he said. Others are much less certain. “The occasional anti-drug battle is being won, but the war is being lost,” said Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs public policy institute. “And there’s no prospect the war is going to be won.” That pessimism that the current strategy is working has led to calls for a new approach. Last week, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil called for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use and a change in strategy on the war on drugs. Ex-presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil made their announcement at a meeting in Brazil of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. “The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results,” Gaviria said at a news conference in which the 17-member commission’s recommendations were presented. Robert Pastor, a Latin America national security adviser for President Carter in the late 1970s, calls the problem in Mexico “even worse than Chicago during the Prohibition era.” He said a solution similar to what ended that violence is needed now. “What worked in the U.S. was not Eliot Ness,” he said, referring to the federal agent famous for fighting gangsters in 1920s and ’30s. “It was the repeal of Prohibition.”

Rubido is diplomatic, saying decriminalizing drugs is a “terribly sensible” approach that has received much thought. But he’s not buying it. “This has become a world of globalization,” he said. “Globalization has many virtues, but some errors. I can’t conceive that one part of the world would decriminalize drugs because it would become a paradise for drug use. It might bring down violence, but there would be social damage.”

Chimp attack victim moved to Cleveland Clinic

Travis, seen here as a younger chimp, was fatally shoy by police after attacking Nash, authorities say.
A Connecticut woman attacked Monday by her friend’s pet chimpanzee was taken Thursday from a Connecticut hospital to the famed Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, a hospital spokeswoman said. She would not divulge the victim’s condition nor the reason for the move.

Charla Nash, 55, was transferred by airplane and ambulance to the clinic, where doctors in December performed the first facial transplant in the United States. The attack has raised questions about whether exotic animals should be kept as pets. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Wednesday that primates and crocodiles should be added to a state list of animals citizens are not allowed to own. Nash initially was taken to Stamford Hospital, where she underwent seven hours of surgery after she was attacked by the 14-year-old chimp, named Travis. Nash’s friend, Sandra Herold, 70, had called Nash for help in getting the animal back inside her house after he used a key to escape. When Nash arrived at Herold’s Stamford home, the chimp, who has been featured in TV commercials for Coca-Cola and Old Navy, jumped on her and began biting and mauling her, police said.

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Doctors said Wednesday that Nash had received extensive injuries to her face and hands. A Stamford police officer fatally shot the nearly 200-pound chimp after the primate turned on him inside a police cruiser, police said. Herold told reporters at her home that she and the chimp slept together and that she considered him like a son.

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Ameneh Bahrami said her attacker pestered her with marriage demands.
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If she gets her way, her attacker will suffer the same fate. The 31-year-old Iranian is demanding the ancient punishment of “an eye for an eye,” and, in accordance with Islamic law, she wants to blind Majid Movahedi, the man who blinded her. “I don’t want to blind him for revenge,” Bahrami said in her parents’ Tehran apartment. “I’m doing this to prevent it from happening to someone else.” Bahrami says she first crossed paths with Movahedi in 2002, when they attended the same university. She was a 24-year-old electronics student. He was 19. She never noticed him until they shared a class. He sat next to her one day and brushed up against her. Bahrami says she knew it wasn’t an accident. “I moved away from him,” she said, “but he brushed up against me again.” Watch Bahrami return to the attack scene for the first time » When Bahrami stood up in class and screamed for him to stop, Movahedi just looked at her in stunned silence. He wouldn’t stay silent for long. Bahrami said that over the next two years, Movahedi kept harassing her and making threats, even as he asked her to marry him. “He told me he would kill me. He said, ‘You have to say yes.’ ” On a November afternoon in 2004, Movahedi’s threats turned to violence. That day at 4:30 p.m., Bahrami left the medical engineering company where she worked. As she walked to the bus stop, she remembers sensing someone behind her. She turned around and was startled to see Movahedi. A moment later came the agonizing pain. Movahedi had thrown something over her. What felt like fire on her face was acid searing through her skin. “I was just yelling, ‘I’m burning! I’m burning! For God’s sake, somebody help me!’ ” The acid seeped into Bahrami’s eyes and streamed down her face and into her mouth. When she covered her face with her hands, streaks of acid ran down her fingers and onto her forearms. Watch how the still-pungent acid destroyed Bahrami’s clothes » Two weeks after the attack, Movahedi turned himself in to police and confessed in court. He was convicted in 2005 and has been behind bars all along. Bahrami’s lawyer, Ali Sarrafi, said Movahedi had never shown any remorse. “He says he did it because he loved her,” Sarrafi said. Attack victims in Iran usually accept “blood money”: a fine in lieu of harsh punishment. With no insurance and mounting medical bills, Bahrami could’ve used the cash, but she said no. “I told the judge I want an eye for an eye,” Bahrami said. “People like him should be made to feel my suffering.” Watch how the acid destroyed Bahrami’s eyes (includes graphic content) » Bahrami’s demand has outraged some human rights activists. Criticizing acid-attack victims is almost unheard of, but some Internet bloggers have condemned Bahrami’s decision. “We cannot condone such cruel punishment,” wrote one blogger. “To willingly inflict the same treatment on a person under court order is a violation of human rights.” Late last year, an Iranian court gave Bahrami what she asked for. It sentenced Movahedi to be blinded with drops of acid in each eye. This month, the courts rejected Movahedi’s appeal. Bahrami’s lawyer, Sarrafi, said the sentencing might be carried out in a matter of weeks. He said he doesn’t think Bahrami will change her mind. Neither does Bahrami. “If I don’t do this and there is another acid attack, I will never forgive myself for as long as I live,” she said. Bahrami is largely self-sufficient despite not being able to see. She can make a salad, prepare tea and walk up the five flights of stairs that lead to her parents’ apartment. She has undergone more than a dozen surgeries on her badly scarred face, but she says there are many more to come. She can’t afford to pay for her medical care, so she’s using the Internet to raise money.

She’s lost her big brown eyes, but she likes to smile, especially when she imagines her wedding day. “I always see myself as someone who can see and sometimes see myself in a beautiful wedding gown, and why not”

Are We Failing Our Geniuses?

Any sensible culture would know what to do with Annalisee Brasil. The 14-year-old not only has the looks of a South American model but is also one of the brightest kids of her generation. When Annalisee was 3, her mother Angi Brasil noticed that she was stringing together word cards composed not simply into short phrases but into complete, grammatically correct sentences. After the girl turned 6, her mother took her for an IQ test. Annalisee found the exercises so easy that she played jokes on the testers–in one case she not only put blocks in the correct order but did it backward too. Angi doesn’t want her daughter’s IQ published, but it is comfortably above 145, placing the girl in the top 0.1% of the population. Annalisee is also a gifted singer: last year, although just 13, she won a regional high school competition conducted by the National Association of Teachers of Singing.

Annalisee should be the star pupil at a school in her hometown of Longview, Texas. While it would be too much to ask for a smart kid to be popular too, Annalisee is witty and pretty, and it’s easy to imagine she would get along well at school. But until last year, Annalisee’s parents–Angi, a 53-year-old university assistant, and Marcelo, 63, who recently retired from his job at a Caterpillar dealership–couldn’t find a school willing to take their daughter unless she enrolled with her age-mates. None of the schools in Longview–and even as far away as the Dallas area–were willing to let Annalisee skip more than two grades. She needed to skip at least three–she was doing sixth-grade work at age 7. Many school systems are wary of grade skipping even though research shows that it usually works well both academically and socially for gifted students–and that holding them back can lead to isolation and underachievement. So Angi home schooled Annalisee. But Angi felt something was missing in her daughter’s life. Annalisee, whose three siblings are grown, didn’t have a rich social network of other kids. By 13, she had moved beyond her mother’s ability to meaningfully teach her. The family talked about sending her to college, but everyone was hesitant. Annalisee needed to mature socially. By the time I met her in February, she had been having trouble getting along with others. “People are, I must admit it, a lot of times intimidated by me,” she told me; modesty isn’t among her many talents. She described herself as “perfectionistic” and said other students sometimes had “jealousy issues” regarding her. The system failed Annalisee, but could any system be designed to accommodate her rare gifts Actually, it would have been fairly simple to let her skip grades, but the lack of awareness about the benefits of grade skipping is emblematic of a larger problem: our education system has little idea how to cultivate its most promising students. Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term “no child left behind,” those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs. But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids–about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds. In 2004-05, the most recent academic year for which the National Opinion Research Center has data, U.S. universities awarded 43,354 doctorates–more than ever during the 50 years NORC has gathered the data. But the rate of increase in the number of U.S. doctorates has fallen dramatically since 1970, when it hit nearly 15% for the year; for more than a decade, the number of doctorates has grown less than 3.5% a year. The staggering late-1960s growth in Ph.D.s followed a period of increased attention on gifted kids after Sputnik. Now we’re coasting. To some extent, complacency is built into the system. American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can’t make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential. We take for granted that those with IQs at least three standard deviations below the mean require “special” education. But students with IQs that are at least three standard deviations above the mean often have just as much trouble interacting with average kids and learning at an average pace. Shouldn’t we do something special for them as well True, these are IQs at the extremes. Of the 62 million school-age kids in the U.S., only about 62,000 have IQs above 145. That’s a small number, but they appear in every demographic, in every community. What to do with them Squandered potential is always unfortunate, but presumably it is these powerful young minds that, if nourished, could one day cure leukemia or stop global warming or become the next James Joyce–or at least J.K. Rowling. In a no-child-left-behind conception of public education, lifting everyone up to a minimum level is more important than allowing students to excel to their limit. It has become more important for schools to identify deficiencies than to cultivate gifts. Odd though it seems for a law written and enacted during a Republican Administration, the social impulse behind No Child Left Behind is radically egalitarian. It has forced schools to deeply subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered. The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000. Federal spending declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to $7.6 million this year.

The Trouble With Repeat Cesareans

For many pregnant women in America, it is easier today to walk into a hospital and request major abdominal surgery than it is to give birth as nature intended. Jessica Barton knows this all too well. At 33, the curriculum developer in Santa Barbara, Calif., is expecting her second child in June. But since her first child ended up being delivered by cesarean section, she can’t find an obstetrician in her county who will let her even try to push this go-round. And she could locate only one doctor in nearby Ventura County who allows the option of vaginal birth after cesarean . But what if he’s not on call the day she goes into labor? That’s why, in order to give birth the old-fashioned way, Barton is planning to go to UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. “One of my biggest worries is the 100-mile drive to the hospital,” she says. “It can take from 2 to 3 1/2 hours. I know it will be uncomfortable, and I worry about waiting too long and giving birth in the car.”

Much ado has been made recently of women who choose to have cesareans, but little attention has been paid to the vast number of moms who are forced to have them. More than 9 out of 10 births following a C-section are now surgical deliveries, proving that “once a cesarean, always a cesarean”–an axiom thought to be outmoded in the 1990s–is alive and kicking. Indeed, the International Cesarean Awareness Network , a grass-roots group, recently called 2,850 hospitals that have labor and delivery wards and found that 28% of them don’t allow VBACs, up from 10% in its previous survey, in 2004. ICAN’s latest findings note that another 21% of hospitals have what it calls “de facto bans,” i.e., the hospitals have no official policies against VBAC, but no obstetricians will perform them. Why the VBAC-lash Not so long ago, doctors were actually encouraging women to have VBACs, which cost less than cesareans and allow mothers to heal more quickly. The risk of uterine rupture during VBAC is real–and can be fatal to both mom and baby–but rupture occurs in just 0.7% of cases. That’s not an insignificant statistic, but the number of catastrophic cases is low; only 1 in 2,000 babies die or suffer brain damage as a result of oxygen deprivation. After 1980, when the National Institutes of Health held a conference on skyrocketing cesarean rates, more women began having VBACs. By 1996, they accounted for 28% of births among C-section veterans, and in 2000, the Federal Government issued its Healthy People 2010 report proposing a target VBAC rate of 37%. Yet as of 2006, only about 8% of births were VBACs, and the numbers continue to fall–even though 73% of women who go this route successfully deliver without needing an emergency cesarean. So what happened In 1999, after several high-profile cases in which women undergoing VBAC ruptured their uterus, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed its guidelines from stipulating that surgeons and anesthesiologists should be “readily available” during a VBAC to “immediately available.” “Our goal wasn’t to narrow the scope of patients who would be eligible, but to make it safe,” says Dr. Carolyn Zelop, co-author of ACOG’s most recent VBAC guidelines. See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.

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