IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 5

NEWS Gen. Moisés García Ochoa was blocked from becoming defense minister of Mexico after American officials expressed their concern that he had ties to drug traffickers. Ginger Thompson reports from New York, Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

On Monday, confirming what many historians and archaeologists had suspected, a team of experts at the University of Leicester concluded on the basis of DNA and other evidence that the skeletal remains were those of King Richard III, for centuries the most reviled of English monarchs. John F. Burns reports from Leicester, England.

In a major victory for feminists and the rule of law, a Beijing court has granted a woman a divorce on grounds of abuse and made history by issuing a three-month protection order against her ex-husband — a first in the nation’s capital, Beijing, according to lawyers and the Chinese media. Didi Kirsten Tatlow reports from Beijing.

The Thai government faces the quandary of what to do with all the creatures it has saved — a sort of Noah’s ark of endangered species. Thomas Fuller reports from Khao Pratubchang, Thailand.

A strike by garbage collectors in Seville, Spain, is entering its second week and threatening to turn into a health and safety issue in one of Spain’s most touristic cities. Raphael Minder reports from Seville, Spain.

Days ahead of a summit meeting where leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states are to wrestle again with a proposed seven-year budget, a spokesman for the bloc’s executive body was forced to defend the salaries of some officials. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

It was only a few years ago that some economists were arguing that Europe was “decoupling” from its long dependence on trade with the United States, but German carmakers proved otherwise. Jack Ewing reports.

FASHION This month Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and Internet guru to the fashion world, will throw her might behind London Fashion Week. Suzy Menkes reports from London.

ARTS Song Dong gathered multitudes in Hong Kong and asked them to help complete his autobiographical “36 Calendars” project. Joyce Lau reports from Hong Kong.

SPORTS A 19-month investigation found that criminal groups had infiltrated European and international soccer with hundreds of people involved in match-fixing, global law enforcement officials said. Sam Borden reports.

It would be naïve to believe that soccer is beyond corrupting, or to doubt that the allegations by police investigators in the Netherlands on Monday are anything but the smallest ripples on an enormous global pond. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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Little House on the Prairie's Mary Ingalls Did Not Have Scarlet Fever, Researchers Say

By Maggie Coughlan

02/05/2013 at 09:45 AM EST

Little House on the Prairie

Think you know everything about Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series?

Think again.

Readers of the beloved series will remember how Wilder's older sister Mary went blind as a result of scarlet fever. But a new study published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has revealed the cause of Mary's blindness was actually meningoencephalitis – a disease similar to meningitis.

Over the course of 10 years, Dr. Beth Tarini and a team of researchers studied papers and letters written by Wilder, newspaper articles about Mary's illness and data on blindness and infectious disease in the late 19th century, CNN reports.

Tarini discovered that in Pioneer Girl, Wilder's unpublished memoir, there is no reference to Mary contracting scarlet fever before going blind. "She never says scarlet fever. She never says rash," Tarini told CNN.

Then Tarini unveiled what would lead her to discover a different diagnosis. In a letter Wilder wrote to her daughter, Rose, she referenced Mary suffering from "some sort of spinal sickness." The letter goes on to mention that Mary was told by specialist in Chicago that the "nerves of her eyes were paralyzed and there was no hope."

But why would Wilder write that her sister suffered from scarlet fever? Researchers think perhaps Wilder and her editors felt the illness would be more relatable to her readers.

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Wall Street rebounds from steep decline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, rebounding from their worst daily loss since November in the prior session.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 84.21 points, or 0.61 percent, at 13,964.29. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 9.12 points, or 0.61 percent, at 1,504.83. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 10.31 points, or 0.33 percent, at 3,141.48.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Reformers Aim to Get China to Live Up to Own Constitution

Pool photo by Ed Jones/Getty images

A recent speech by Xi Jinping in which he stressed the need to enforce the Constitution has stirred hope among reformers.

BEIJING — After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the surviving Communist Party leaders pursued a project that might sound familiar to those in the West: Write a constitution that enshrines individual rights and ensures rulers are subject to law, so that China would never again suffer from the whims of a tyrant.

The resulting document guaranteed full powers for a representative legislature, the right to ownership of private property, and freedoms of speech, press and assembly. But the idealism of the founding fathers was short-lived. Though the Constitution was ratified in 1982 by the National People’s Congress, it has languished ever since.

Now, in a drive to persuade the Communist Party’s new leaders to liberalize the authoritarian political system, prominent Chinese intellectuals and publications are urging the party simply to enforce the principles of their own Constitution.

The strategy reflects an emerging consensus among advocates for political reform that taking a moderate stand in support of the Constitution is the best way to persuade Xi Jinping, the party’s new general secretary, and other leaders, to open up China’s party-controlled system. Some of Mr. Xi’s recent speeches, including one in which he emphasized the need to enforce the Constitution, have ignited hope among those pushing for change.

A wide range of notable voices, among them ones in the party, have joined the effort. Several influential journals and newspapers have published editorials in the last two months calling for Chinese leaders to govern in accordance with the Constitution. Most notable among those is Study Times, a publication of the Central Party School, where Mr. Xi served as president until this year. That weekly newspaper ran a signed editorial on Jan. 21 that recommends that the party establish a committee under the national legislature that would ensure that no laws are passed that violate the Constitution.

After the end of the party’s leadership transition last November, liberal intellectuals held a meeting at a hotel in Beijing to strategize on how to push for reform; constitutionalism was a major topic of discussion. At the end of the year, 72 intellectuals signed a petition that was drafted by a Peking University law professor who had helped organize the hotel meeting. In early January, a censored editorial on constitutionalism at the liberal newspaper Southern Weekend set off a nationwide outcry in support of press freedoms.

Several people involved in the advocacy say their efforts are not closely coordinated, but that rallying around the Constitution was a logical first step to galvanize reform.

“We have a common understanding that constitutionalism is a central issue for China’s reform,” said Zhang Qianfan, the law professor who drafted the petition. “The previous reform was preoccupied with economic aspects. But we learned from the experiences of the recent two decades that economic reform can go wrong if it’s not coupled with political reform, or constitutional reform actually.”

Through the decades, party leaders have paid lip service to the Constitution, but have failed to enforce its central tenets, some of which resemble those in constitutions of Western democracies. The fifth article says the Constitution is the supreme authority: “No organization or individual may enjoy the privilege of being above the Constitution and the law.” Any real application of the Constitution would mean severely diluting the party’s power.

It is unclear whether the latest push will be any more successful than previous efforts. A decade ago, a similar wave of advocacy failed to significantly alter the status quo, despite some initially encouraging words from Hu Jintao, the newly designated president at the time. The authorities admonished scholars who took part in seminars on the issue, and propaganda officials ordered the state news media not to publish articles on calls for constitutional government.

Liberals have been encouraged by a speech that Mr. Xi gave on the 30th anniversary of the Constitution in which he said, “The Constitution should be the legal weapon for people to defend their own rights.” He added that implementation was needed for the document to have “life and authority.” Analysts say the speech, delivered Dec. 4, was much stronger than the one given by Mr. Hu on the Constitution’s 20th anniversary. And on Jan. 22, Mr. Xi said in a speech to an anticorruption agency that “power must be put in the cage of regulations.”

But Deng Yuwen, an editor at Study Times, said he had so far only seen talk from Mr. Xi. “We have yet to see any action from him,” Mr. Deng said. “The Constitution can’t be implemented through talking.”

And since taking power, Mr. Xi has appeared more concerned with maintaining party discipline than opening political doors. In remarks made during a recent southern trip that have circulated in party circles, Mr. Xi said China must avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, which broke apart, in his view, after leaders failed to stick to their socialist ideals and the party lost control of the military.

In part, liberals advocating constitutional checks on power have been energized by the party’s takedown of Bo Xilai, the polarizing former Politburo member who is expected to be prosecuted soon on charges of corruption and subverting the law.

One journal supported by reform-minded party elders, called Yanhuang Chunqiu, published a New Year’s editorial that said fully carrying out the Constitution would mean “our country’s political system will take a big step forward.”

Mia Li contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 4, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the family name of Liu Junning in one reference as Lui.

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Estonian pleads guilty in U.S. court to Internet advertising scam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.

The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included a large number of computers at data centers located in New York, federal prosecutors said.

Valeri Aleksejev, 32, was the first of six Estonians and one Russian indicted in 2011 to enter a plea. They were indicted on five charges each of wire and computer intrusion. One of the defendants, Vladimir Tsastsin, was also charged with 22 counts of money laundering.

In U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday, Aleksejev pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 25 years in prison, deportation and the forfeiture of $ 7 million.

The scam had several components, including a “click-hijacking fraud” in which the malware re-routed searches by users on infected computers to sites designated by the defendants, prosecutors said in the indictment. Users of infected computers trying to access Apple Inc’s iTunes website or Netflix Inc‘s movie website, for example, instead ended up at websites of unaffiliated businesses, according to the indictment.

Another component of the scam replaced legitimate advertisements on websites operated by News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc and others with advertisements that triggered payments for the defendants, prosecutors said.

The defendants reaped at least $ 14 million from the fraud, prosecutors said. However, Aleksejev’s lawyer, William Stampur, said in court on Friday that Aleksejev has no assets.

Estonian police arrested Aleksejev and the other Estonians in November 2011. One other Estonian, Anton Ivanov, has been extradited, and the extradition of the other four is pending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The Russian, Andrey Taame, remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Aleksejev told Magistrate Judge James Francis he assisted in blocking anti-virus software updates on infected computers. Francis asked Aleksejev if he knew what he was doing was illegal.

“I thought it was wrong,” Aleksejev said in broken English after a long pause. “But of course I didn’t know all the laws in the U.S.”

Francis set a tentative sentencing date of May 31 for Aleksejev.

The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court in Manhattan, No. 11-00878.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Jenny McCarthy Gets a New Tattoo During Super Bowl Blackout

By Andrea Billups

02/04/2013 at 09:50 AM EST

Jenny McCarthy (inset) and new new tattoo

Courtesy Jenny McCarthy

At least someone was productive while the Super Bowl experienced a power outage Sunday night.

Jenny McCarthy Tweeted an early Monday morning photo of a fresh tattoo that now covers the top of her left foot.

"Got a new tattoo during half time black out. So excited 2 b wearing heels on The Today Show this morning. Ouch," McCarthy, 40, posted with a photo, noting it was still painful. The tattoo features a rose with leaves and intricate vines.

McCarthy, a veteran Playboy centerfold and comedian, hosted a Super Bowl kickoff party, Leather & Laces, on Friday in New Orleans. But it was back to business this week as she continues to make press rounds, promoting her return to TV on the new The Jenny McCarthy Show, which premieres Friday on VH1.

Apparently her foot wasn't the only thing hurting as McCarthy headed over for an appearance with Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb Monday morning. She Tweeted: "Cramps on press tour. Doing Kathy lee and Hoda next. Hoping they have a heating pad and Whisky. Wait... Of course they will have Whisky."

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Wall Street opens lower after recent gains

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks opened lower on Monday, dipping after a recent rally that took the S&P 500 to a five-year high and the Dow to 14,000 for the first time since October 2007.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 58.67 points, or 0.42 percent, at 13,951.12. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 6.84 points, or 0.45 percent, at 1,506.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 18.33 points, or 0.58 percent, at 3,160.77.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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IHT Rendezvous: Doctors to Prescribe Self-Help Books, Poetry for Mental Health Ills

LONDON — Doctors in England will soon be prescribing books as well as pills to patients suffering from anxiety and depression.

In a government-endorsed initiative supported by medical associations and librarians, physicians will be sending patients to their local libraries for a range of approved self-help titles targeted at those suffering from mild to moderate mental health problems.

Patients are also being encouraged to turn to what The Bookseller magazine described as “uplifting novels and poetry.”

Extolling the potentially curative powers of literature, the Reading Agency charity quoted research that showed reading reduced stress levels by 67 percent.

The charity, which is a partner in the new Books on Prescription program announced this week, quoted the New England Journal of Medicine as saying reading also cut the risk of dementia by more than a third.

The list of 30 approved self-help titles available on prescription from May includes page-turners like “The Feeling Good Handbook,” “How to Stop Worrying” and “Overcoming Anger and Irritability.”

“There’s growing evidence that shows that self-help reading can help people with certain mental health issues get better,” Miranda McKearney, the Reading Agency’s director said.

The sick often rely on the Internet to search for advice on symptoms and cures that can turn out to be unreliable. Doctors will now be able to write a prescription that gives patients immediate membership to their local library and access to recommended titles.

It is the first so-called bibliotherapy initiative to have received such high-level official backing from health authorities and librarians.

Campaigners for public libraries have applauded the program but worry that not enough is being done to protect the libraries themselves. Last year, 200 libraries were closed and another 300 are reportedly facing closure or being handed over to volunteers this year.

The Reading Agency meanwhile has come up with a core list of Mood-boosting Books designed to promote feeling good.

It includes proven classics such as “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but also upbeat titles from the likes of Bill Bryson, the best-selling U.S. humorist.

Development of the book prescription idea was paid for by the Arts Council England, which distributes public money to arts projects.

The Reading Agency has applied for funding from the government, which it says spends £14 billion, or $22 billion, a year treating mental health.

So, should sufferers of depression or panic attacks be advised to curl up with a good book? Or is this just a new health fad to find an alternative to costly medication and therapy.

The Reading Project is soliciting suggestions for stress-relieving books at the Twitter hashtag #moodboosting.

If you think there might be something in it, send us your own suggestions for therapeutic reading. And, while you’re at it, let us know any titles that are best avoided when we’re feeling low.

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