Puerto Rico Races to Rescue Its Pension Fund

Puerto Rico is fighting to stay afloat in a rising sea of debt.

Its economy is sputtering. Its population is shrinking. Its recent election is disputed. Its public pension fund is perilously low on cash. The American territory has just been through a brutal five-year recession, something not experienced in the United States as a whole since the 1930s.

Desperate to raise cash, Puerto Rican officials have been selling off anything they can: two toll roads and the main airport so far.

To bring in tax revenue, they are trying to lure people out of the underground economy. Coffee shops, hairdressers, even outdoor market stalls are being required to issue printed receipts with every sale. The receipts carry a lottery number, with a chance to win cars or cash, as an incentive to get shoppers to pay the island’s 7 percent sales tax.

Though many of Puerto Rico’s problems are reminiscent of Greece’s — tax noncompliance, a stagnant economy, years of issuing long-term debt to cover short-term payments — investors have had a nearly insatiable appetite for its bonds.

But now their support is dwindling. Some big investors are pruning their holdings. That is beginning to widen the cost of borrowing for Puerto Rico relative to other states and municipalities, which are benefiting from a big decline in borrowing costs. The interest rate its 30-year bonds now pay is about 2.5 percentage points higher than other municipal borrowers’, up from a difference of just 1.5 percentage points at the beginning of 2012, according to Municipal Market Data.

The possibility of a credit downgrade also hangs in the air, something that could lead to more selling.

“There is no specific event looming on the horizon,” said Alan Schankel, a managing director at Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia. “But it’s a problem of immense magnitude, and it’s very challenging to sit here and see how they work their way out of it.”

Puerto Rico needs to be able to issue bonds at attractive rates to cover its short-term financing needs. Perhaps more important, it has to figure out how to salvage its retirement funds. After shortchanging them for years, it now has the weakest major public pension system in America.

The main fund, which serves about 250,000 government workers, past and present, is only 6 percent funded — a small percentage of what is considered the minimum needed for a marginally healthy pension plan — and could run out of money as soon as 2014. Another fund, for about 80,000 teachers, which is 20 percent funded, will last just a few years longer if nothing is done. Police officers and teachers in Puerto Rico have opted out of Social Security and rely entirely on their pensions.

“For now, I’m not totally shaken about the possibility of the fund going broke,” said Jorge Ramón Román, a 78-year-old retired instructor for the island’s Civil Air Patrol. “But I do fear for the future, when I’ll be an even older person, more infirm and with less of a pension.”

Héctor M. Mayol Kauffman, the executive director of the pension system, said it would be impossible to cut the benefits of people who are already retired, citing court precedent.

Puerto Rican officials were racing this fall to put together a rescue plan for the pension fund. Voters, though, pushed out Gov. Luis Fortuño, who had tried austerity measures that included cutting tens of thousands of government workers along with a revamping of the fund.

They elected Alejandro García Padilla, who promised to create 50,000 new jobs in the next 18 months. But the margin was razor-thin and Mr. Fortuño has requested a recount. Mr. García Padilla’s party had dropped out of the retirement overhaul effort, but the governor-elect says he will deal with the looming pension crisis with “diligence and promptness” and has put together a task force of economists and financial advisers.

“We will not leave retired government workers stranded at a bus stop in their older years,” he said.

Since the election, yields on the island’s 30-year bonds have continued to widen.

“I don’t think that there’s a default that’s about to happen, but a default isn’t the only bad thing that can happen when you’ve got bonds,” Mr. Schankel said. Puerto Rico’s bonds are just a notch or two above junk status. If they fall to that level, at least some institutions would be forced to sell, potentially setting off a chain reaction. And individual investors could get a jolt if they saw the value of their holdings fall. Many people own Puerto Rican debt without knowing it, through their mutual funds.

“The concern is that Puerto Rico is a systemic risk to the municipal bond market because it’s so widely held,” said Robert Donahue, a managing director with Municipal Market Advisors.

Rafael Matos contributed reporting from San Juan, P.R.

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Survey finds lots of unused vacation time

As an information technology supervisor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Dennis Crowley had so much work to do last year that he finished 2011 without using nearly five days of paid vacation.

"And to be frank, I was too busy to even realize I was losing time," he said.

Crowley's situation is not unusual. A survey by Harris Interactive Inc. found that by the end of 2012, Americans will leave an average of 9.2 days of vacation unused, up from the average of 6.2 days in 2011.

Nearly 90% of those questioned said they would take more leisure trips on their vacation if they had the time and money to do so, according to the survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults that was commissioned by travel website Hotwire.

Hotwire has a selfish reason for pointing out the survey results: The travel website says vacationers can save lots of money by traveling between Thanksgiving and Christmas. During the holiday gap, hotel rates drop 33% in Boston, 28% in San Francisco and 26% in Seattle, compared with the peak summer travel season, according to the website.

Crowley has learned his lesson. He said he is keeping closer tabs on his vacation time this year. But instead of using his accrued vacation time to travel, he said is spending more time with his children.

Airline food getting more healthful

On the nation's airlines, the days of free lunch are long over. That also goes for breakfast, dinner and snacks. Once complimentary, most airline food now comes with a price tag.

But there is some good news about what you get to eat on commercial airlines: It is getting more healthful.

That's the assessment of Charles Platkin, a professor of nutrition at the City University of New York's Hunter College who has tested and ranked airline foods off and on since 2000. With few exceptions, Platkin said most airlines now offer at least one healthful meal alternative on their menu.

"It's actually moving in a good direction," he said. "It's been an ebb and flow, but the overall trend is positive."

Platkin gave the top ranking this year to Virgin America, noting that the airline based in California offers low-calorie options such as roasted pear and arugula salad, a "protein plate" with hummus and whole wheat pita bread, plus oatmeal for breakfast. He gave the airline 41/4 stars out of a maximum of five stars.

At the bottom of the list was Allegiant Air, with a rating of only one and a half stars. Platkin said the Las Vegas airline "made it clear that their foods were not healthy. It shows."

The airline's snacks include M&Ms, Oreo Brownies and Pringles chips.

Air Canada and Alaska Airlines came in second and third, respectively, in Platkin's ranking. The other big airlines — including United, American, Delta and US Airways — ranked in the middle of the list.

Platkin does not eat the food on every airline. "I don't have that kind of time," he said. "I have classes to teach."

Instead, he collects and reviews lists of food items, including the ingredients and calorie numbers, from the airlines.

TSA defends stopping traveler over watch

A traveler was stopped by federal security officers at the Oakland International Airport this month because of an unusual wristwatch he was wearing.

When word got out about the incident, critics of the Transportation Security Administration blasted the agency, saying it was another example of the TSA overreacting.

In hopes of stifling the uproar, the TSA released a photo of the watch last week. This is no ordinary timepiece. It includes a toggle switch, wires and what look like tiny fuses attached to the wristband.

A TSA explosives detection team determined that the watch was not an explosive device. Still, the Alameda County sheriff's deputies, who were called by the TSA to investigate, arrested the watch owner, Geoffrey McGann, a teacher and artist from Rancho Palos Verdes. He was jailed on suspicion of possession of components to make a destructive device, according to news reports.

The Alameda County district attorney's office declined last week to file charges against McGann.

McGann's attorney accused the TSA of being "hyper-vigilant."

The TSA responded in its blog last week, saying, "Terrorists take everyday items and attempt to manipulate them to make improvised explosive devices. Our officers are trained to look for anomalies such as this one."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 26

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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“Rise of the Guardians” Barrier-Breaker: The First African-American to Direct a CG Animation Film

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Peter Ramsey didn’t just have the pressure of making his feature directing debut on an $ 145 million tentpole film, he also had to deal with the expectations that came with being a barrier-breaker.

By sliding behind the camera on DreamWorks Animation‘s “Rise of the Guardians” Ramsey made history as the first African-American to helm a major CG animated film.

“Rise of the Guardians,” a sort of “Avengers” for the fairy-tale set, opened Wednesday. It tells the story of a group of mythological heroes like Santa Claus (voiced by Alec Baldwin), Jack Frost (Chris Pine) and the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) who team up to prevent the Nightmare King (Jude Law) from plunging children around the world into a state of despair and hopelessness. The film is an adaptation of a popular series of children’s books by William Joyce.

Ramsey talked with TheWrap about the responsibility of being a role model, the need to inject a little darkness into children’s entertainment and the possibility of a “Guardians” sequel.

What does it mean to be the first African American to direct a CG movie on this scale?

I really wasn’t thinking, “Oh, I’m a pioneer” when I first got the project. It wasn’t until my mom and dad saw an article that mentioned that fact – and I saw that my dad had tears in his eyes – that it really snapped back to me and I realized this is kind of a big deal. That’s the way it is any time some hurdle falls away.

I grew up in South-Central L.A. at a time before there was Spike Lee or John Singleton, so there was really no conception that I could make films. It’s super fulfilling that kids growing up like I did can now have it permanently in mind that it’s a possibility for them.

What films inspired your approach to the film?

I always knew that I wanted to make a fun, action-packed, big, epic fantasy movie rather than a quaint little fairy tale. So I thought of “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter,” where there were big ensemble casts. But stylistically I also thought of Michael Powell’s “Black Narcissus.” I really wanted Santa’s world to have the same dreamlike feel with bold, striking visuals.

There are some really dark elements in the film. Were you worried about it becoming too scary?

It’s important that we acknowledge the existence of some darkness in the world. Part of the point of the film is to say that these characters are real because kids believe in them, that kids know fear, too. We didn’t want to present a world that was free of the shadow that the Guardians fight, because they are using imagination to combat fear and hopelessness.

What drew you to the material?

For me, it was just hearing about Bill Joyce’s notion that all these characters are real and knew each other and had a common purpose.

It seemed like it had this epic fantasy, “Lord of the Rings” potential.

And when I started looking at what Bill had done, I was blown away. The mythologies are so wild and ornate. It’s an entirely new universe, and our movie just scratches the surface. We just started to go down the rabbit hole.

I’m beginning to smell “franchise.” Would you want to direct the sequels?

Yeah, I would love to. I’ve fallen in love with the characters. I feel like there’s plenty of fertile ground for more good stories. There’s more opportunities to push it further. I almost wish I could do the first feature again, to do it more justice.

You are self-taught, no? You came into this industry not as a director, but as a storyboard artist, is that correct?

Yeah, I am. It’s the old thing about how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. I’ve been drawing ever since I was 3. But I wanted to be a comic-book artist, and it was not until quite a bit later that I realized I could work in the movie business.

I stumbled into story boarding through a lucky confluence of things. I realized the work I was doing for comics was similar to helping directors visualize a story. I took maybe a couple of film history classes in college, but I couldn’t afford to make films in film school. I needed to get in on the fringes of the industry to get the on the job training I needed to become a director.

Did you have a favorite Guardian?

If I had to say one, it would be North. It was great to give him a real presence, and casting Alec did a lot to help that. It was slightly unexpected, but it feels so right. I would just love to hang out with that guy and it helps that he reminds me of Guillermo del Toro.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Agency Investigates Deaths and Injuries Associated With Bed Rails

Thomas Patterson for The New York Times

Gloria Black’s mother died in her bed at a care facility.

In November 2006, when Clara Marshall began suffering from the effects of dementia, her family moved her into the Waterford at Fairway Village, an assisted living home in Vancouver, Wash. The facility offered round-the-clock care for Ms. Marshall, who had wandered away from home several times. Her husband Dan, 80 years old at the time, felt he could no longer care for her alone.

Thomas Patterson for The New York Times

Gloria Black, visiting her mother’s grave in Portland, Ore. She has documented hundreds of deaths associated with bed rails and said families should be informed of their possible risks.

But just five months into her stay, Ms. Marshall, 81, was found dead in her room apparently strangled after getting her neck caught in side rails used to prevent her from rolling out of bed.

After Ms. Marshall’s death, her daughter Gloria Black, who lives in Portland, Ore., began writing to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. What she discovered was that both agencies had known for more than a decade about deaths from bed rails but had done little to crack down on the companies that make them. Ms. Black conducted her own research and exchanged letters with local and state officials. Finally, a letter she wrote in 2010 to the federal consumer safety commission helped prompt a review of bed rail deaths.

Ms. Black applauds the decision to study the issue. “But I wish it was done years ago,” she said. “Maybe my mother would still be alive.” Now the government is studying a problem it has known about for years.

Data compiled by the consumer agency from death certificates and hospital emergency room visits from 2003 through May 2012 shows that 150 mostly older adults died after they became trapped in bed rails. Over nearly the same time period, 36,000 mostly older adults — about 4,000 a year — were treated in emergency rooms with bed rail injuries. Officials at the F.D.A. and the commission said the data probably understated the problem since bed rails are not always listed as a cause of death by nursing homes and coroners, or as a cause of injury by emergency room doctors.

Experts who have studied the deaths say they are avoidable. While the F.D.A. issued safety warnings about the devices in 1995, it shied away from requiring manufacturers to put safety labels on them because of industry resistance and because the mood in Congress then was for less regulation. Instead only “voluntary guidelines” were adopted in 2006.

More warnings are needed, experts say, but there is a technical question over which regulator is responsible for some bed rails. Are they medical devices under the purview of the F.D.A., or are they consumer products regulated by the commission?

“This is an entirely preventable problem,” said Dr. Steven Miles, a professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, who first alerted federal regulators to deaths involving bed rails in 1995. The government at the time declined to recall any bed rails and opted instead for a safety alert to nursing homes and home health care agencies.

Forcing the industry to improve designs and replace older models could have potentially cost bed rail makers and health care facilities hundreds of million of dollars, said Larry Kessler, a former F.D.A. official who headed its medical device office. “Quite frankly, none of the bed rails in use at that time would have passed the suggested design standards in the guidelines if we had made them mandatory,” he said. No analysis has been done to determine how much it would cost the manufacturers to reduce the hazards.

Bed rails are metal bars used on hospital beds and in home care to assist patients in pulling themselves up or helping them out of bed. They can also prevent people from rolling out of bed. But sometimes patients — particularly those suffering from Alzheimer’s — can get confused and trapped between a bed rail and a mattress, which can lead to serious injury or even death.

While the use of the devices by hospitals and nursing homes has declined as professional caregivers have grown aware of the dangers, experts say dozens of older adults continue to die each year as more rails are used in home care and many health care facilities continue to use older rail models.

Since those first warnings in 1995, about 550 bed rail-related deaths have occurred, a review by The New York Times of F.D.A. data, lawsuits, state nursing home inspection reports and interviews, found. Last year alone, the F.D.A. data shows, 27 people died.

As deaths continued after the F.D.A. warning, a working group put together in 1999 and made up of medical device makers, researchers, patient advocates and F.D.A. officials considered requiring bed rail makers to add warning labels.

But the F.D.A. decided against it after manufacturers resisted, citing legal issues. The agency said added cost to small manufacturers and difficulties of getting regulations through layers of government approval, were factors against tougher standards, according to a meeting log of the group in 2000 and interviews.

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Oprah Winfrey Seeks a Younger Audience to Bolster a Flagging Empire

Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Oprah Winfrey spoke last month at a convention held by O, The Oprah Magazine, in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES — It’s not easy to find a fresh way to photograph Oprah Winfrey.

That’s why the editors of O, The Oprah Magazine, recently tried to create a shot that recalled the glory days of Ms. Winfrey’s syndicated talk show. They arranged to photograph her for its April 2013 issue as she stepped onstage to speak to 5,000 attendees at the magazine’s annual conference, a New Age slumber party of sorts for women held at the convention center here last month. When Ms. Winfrey confidently strode out dressed in a sea foam green V-neck dress and a pair of perilously tall ruby red stilettos, the audience collectively leapt to its feet and shrieked at the sight of her.

“I love you, Oprah,” some women shouted, while other fans brushed away tears. “I love you back,” she responded in her signature commanding voice. “It’s no small thing to get the dough to come here.”

Ms. Winfrey, who used to receive this kind of applause from fans five days a week, has had fewer such receptions since the talk show she hosted for 25 years ended 18 months ago. The cable network OWN, which she started with Discovery Communications, is emerging from low ratings and management shake-ups. And without a regular presence on daytime network television, she cannot steer traffic to her other products as easily as in the past. Her magazine, in particular, has experienced a decline in advertising revenue and newsstand sales since the talk show finished.

“She’s still Oprah. But she’s still struggling,” said Janice Peck, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado who wrote the 2008 book “The Age of Oprah.” “I think she’s scared, even though she’s very, very rich and she’s always going to be very, very rich. The possibility of failure, it’s quite scary.”

Ms. Winfrey, 58, has shown some signs of strain. She arrived at the conference with faint shadows under her eyes and announced to her best friend, Gayle King, and the audience simultaneously that she had a breast cancer scare the week before. (It was ultimately a false alarm.) When Ms. King grew visibly upset, one woman chided Ms. Winfrey for not telling her friend ahead of time and ordered her to apologize to Ms. King — all before an audience. Ms. Winfrey also did not hide her dissatisfaction with the criticism she had faced. She told the audience, “the press tried to cut me off at the knees” in its coverage of OWN, and bristled at questions about the challenges her magazine confronted.

“I don’t care what the form is,” Ms. Winfrey said with the conviction of a preacher. “I care about what the message is.”

With signs of progress at OWN, Ms. Winfrey now has more time to devote to other media platforms — her magazine, her radio channel on XM Satellite Radio, her Facebook page, which has 7.8 million subscribers, her Twitter account, which has nearly 15 million followers, and her latest content channel on The Huffington Post.

“It’s all an opportunity to speak to people,” Ms. Winfrey said as she sat for an interview during the conference, a pair of glittery gold stilettos slung in her hand and a couple of handlers in the corner quietly tapping away at smartphones. She pushed aside a bottle of sparkling water, a glass with a silver straw and a delicate orchid placed before her and spoke frankly about her plans.

“Ultimately, you have to make money because you are a business. I let other people worry about that. I worry about the message. I am always, always, always about holding true to the vision and the message, and when you are true to that, then people respond.”

When it comes to the magazine, Ms. Winfrey said her staff prepared her to expect a 25 percent decline in newsstand sales after the talk show ended. (It has been closer to 22 percent.) And while she acknowledged that she enjoyed “holding the magazine in my hand,” she was pragmatic about print’s future and said she would stop publishing a print magazine if it were not profitable.

“Obviously, the show was helping in ways that you know I hadn’t accounted for,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I’m not interested, you know, in bleeding money.”

Ms. Winfrey, who spoke in a conference room over the roars of an expectant crowd in the convention space below, said she knew that her brand’s strength stemmed from how she resonated with a breadth of viewers.

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L.A.'s revamped teacher evaluation system getting mixed grades

Third-grade teacher Kelly Vallianos wanted to find an engaging way for her students to learn about measuring perimeters. One idea — to have students design a restaurant floor plan — was too difficult, she feared.

But with the help of colleagues, she found a way to tailor that fifth-grade idea to her younger students at Dominguez Elementary School, who excitedly sketched out an imaginary pizzeria.

Vallianos credits the Los Angeles Unified School District's new teacher evaluation system for sparking deeper and more collaborative conversations with administrators, who she said gave her ideas to make the lesson work.

The district's new performance reviews have come under fire by United Teachers Los Angeles, which opposes the controversial element of using student test scores as one factor in measuring teacher effectiveness.

But largely lost in the debate is the fact that the system's centerpiece is a new classroom observation process that, despite some drawbacks, is being praised by many as a better way to help teachers improve.

"It's a more reflective, much more well-rounded process," said Vallianos, who has been teaching for 19 years.

Teachers are ranked on a scale on instruction, lesson plans, classroom environment and dozens of other criteria. A highly effective teacher, for instance, will be able to intellectually engage all students and prompt them to lead their own discussion topics. An ineffective teacher will generate all questions and most answers, involving just a handful of students.

During observations, administrators type notes into their laptops and later rate each of 61 skills. Principals and other administrators conducting the observations must pass a test to ensure they are fairly and accurately scoring instructors. Conferences with teachers before and after the classroom visits are required.

The method is meant to make observations more useful, uniform and objective, using evidence rather than opinions. But it's an elaborate process and has provoked widespread criticism that it takes too long for principals who are already overwhelmed with increasing workloads. And those who can't type well take even longer, administrators say.

"The technology is creating great difficulty and frustration," said Judith Perez, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. "It feels like an immense amount of pressure on people without alleviating their workload."

Teachers union President Warren Fletcher agrees that a better system is needed; UTLA has designed its own. He said "the jury is still out" on the district's observation process but added that it shares some common elements with the union's proposal.

The new system also includes evidence of student achievement — which could be in the form of test scores — feedback from students and parents, and the teacher's contributions to the school community.

The new observations were tested last year on a voluntary basis with about 450 teachers and 320 administrators; this year, every principal and one volunteer teacher at each of the district's 1,200 schools are expected to be trained.

Officials have not yet announced when the system will be used for every teacher — or when the ratings will begin to count for decisions on layoffs, tenure or pay. But in a video shown at the training sessions, L.A. Supt. John Deasy made the stakes clear.

"We have perhaps no greater responsibility than assuring that every student in this district is taught by an effective teacher in a school led by an effective leader," he said.

Many educators agree that the current evaluation system — known as Stull for the state law that created it — doesn't promote that goal of top-notch teachers for every student. Criticized as a perfunctory checklist of expectations that doesn't help teachers improve, the system awarded 99.3% of L.A. Unified teachers the highest rating in 2009-10 — even though only 45% of district students that year performed at grade level for reading and 56% were proficient in math.

The new system has given teachers like Lisa Thorne a boost. Thorne, a math teacher at Hamilton High School, said the new process is "unwieldy" but far more helpful in homing in on her strengths and weaknesses.

After the self-evaluation part of the process, Thorne chose to focus on improving her work with small groups of students, prompting her to try such techniques as using a three-dimensional pegboard to teach geometry. And she started a new computer-based class to help struggling ninth-graders master algebra. Administrators had seen her use the techniques with older students during a class visit and were impressed enough to give her the green light, she said.

"I would definitely say the new system is an improvement, because it's more specific about what they're looking for," Thorne said. "It helps to get the conversation going with administrators."

Eduardo Solorzano, principal of San Fernando Middle School, agrees. In particular, he said, the focus on careful note-taking has given him specific examples to use in helping teachers improve.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 25

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Review: “Liz & Dick” Is Bad, But You Knew That

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Lifetime’s “Liz & Dick” is very bad, just as you knew it would be.

Let’s not pretend it ever had a shot at being decent. The decision to cast Lindsay Lohan as Oscar-winning screen legend Elizabeth Taylor told us right up front that the filmmakers were more interested in trashy publicity than quality. She isn’t good, but no one could be good with this dialogue.

On an online “Saturday Night Live” skit this week, Bobby Moynihan portrayed celebrity chef Guy Fieri responding to a New York Times review of his new Times Square restaurant, saying the paper shouldn’t have had high expectations.

“If you come in expecting Le Cirque, then you’re a le jerk,” he says.

That applies here, too. But “Liz & Dick” isn’t even good as junk food goes. It’s redundant and boring in a way no star could save.

It’s been suggested that the movie could at least be dopey fun, the stuff of drinking games. But that seems a perverse way to watch a movie about two people who, as portrayed here, were messy drunks. The only appropriate drinking game might be one where you take a shot of water every time you scream at the screen, “STOP DRINKING.”

Because the producers invested nearly all their energies in stunt casting, the only point of interest is how Lohan looks and sounds as Taylor. Though she often looks lovely – nice to see after her years of battling drugs and alcohol – Lohan doesn’t look like Taylor, just like someone wearing knockoffs of her clothes and diamonds. She also doesn’t sound like her, or seem to be making any attempt to.

Taylor and Richard Burton (Grant Bowler) meet cute while making “Cleopatra” together and quickly fall into a dull cycle of making out, breaking up, drinking too much, fleeing the paparazzi, and conniving to make movies together. This takes up the middle hour or so of the two-hour movie, and requires that the last 15 minutes be stuffed with an absurd number of events, including (spoiler alert) a cancer scare, a remarriage, and a death.

It’s impossible to feel any emotional connection with the characters, because, as portrayed here, they’re self-centered asses. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is awful, and that many scenes are less than 30 seconds long, which doesn’t allow us into the character’s heads. The scenes are strung together by sub-sitcom transitional music that at least tips us off to the disposability of the entire movie.

Lohan will probably make the case, somewhere down the line, that her flat, vacant line readings were a campy attempt to distance herself from the film’s many bad lines. One of the worst comes when Taylor’s mother notes her tendency to get married a lot.

Mom: “Not that I’m counting, but if I’m not mistaken you’ve just ended, what, you’re fourth marriage?”

Liz: “Who’s counting?”

Well, not her mother, since she just said… never mind.

Bowler is better, handling his lines with the professionalism of a good soaps actor. At one point he gets to call Liz a “harridan” in an amusing Welsh accent. But he has none of Burton’s gravity or grit. He may also be too generically handsome for the role, no surprise in a movie with no pretensions of depth.

Lohan’s costumery is especially silly near the end, when her hair has grey streaks but she still looks far too young to play a woman in her sixties. We’re also told throughout the movie how fat Liz and Dick are getting – usually by Liz and Dick themselves – but we have to pretend to see it, since the actors who play them remain trim.

Perhaps because of her own awful relationship with the press, Lohan seems unwilling to let herself appear vulnerable. It’s become a major impediment to her performances.

Her idol, Marilyn Monroe, continued to study acting well into her stardom, and turned in some very good performances as a result. Lohan might want to imitate Monroe’s interest in her craft, rather than just dressing like her for magazine spreads.

It’s too late for her to do more than dress like Taylor.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Indian Prostitutes’ New Autonomy Imperils AIDS Fight

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

Sex workers in Mumbai’s long-established red-light district, where brothels are dwindling.

MUMBAI, India — Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS.

Indeed, the recent closings of hundreds of ancient brothels, while something of an economic victory for prostitutes, may one day cost them, and many others, their lives.

“The place where sex happens turns out to be an important H.I.V. prevention point,” said Saggurti Niranjan, program associate of the Population Council. “And when we don’t know where that is, we can’t help stop the transmission.”

Cellphones, those tiny gateways to modernity, have recently allowed prostitutes to shed the shackles of brothel madams and strike out on their own. But that independence has made prostitutes far harder for government and safe-sex counselors to trace. And without the advice and free condoms those counselors provide, prostitutes and their customers are returning to dangerous ways.

Studies show that prostitutes who rely on cellphones are more susceptible to H.I.V. because they are far less likely than their brothel-based peers to require their clients to wear condoms.

In interviews, prostitutes said they had surrendered some control in the bedroom in exchange for far more control over their incomes.

“Now, I get the full cash in my hand before we start,” said Neelan, a prostitute with four children whose side business in sex work is unknown to her husband and neighbors. (Neelan is a professional name, not her real one.)

“Earlier, if the customer got scared and didn’t go all the way, the madam might not charge the full amount,” she explained. “But if they back out now, I say that I have removed all my clothes and am going to keep the money.”

India has been the world’s most surprising AIDS success story. Though infections did not appear in India until 1986, many predicted the nation would soon become the epidemic’s focal point. In 2002, the C.I.A.’s National Intelligence Council predicted that India would have as many as 25 million AIDS cases by 2010. Instead, India now has about 1.5 million.

An important reason the disease never took extensive hold in India is that most women here have fewer sexual partners than in many other developing countries. Just as important was an intensive effort underwritten by the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to target high-risk groups like prostitutes, gay men and intravenous drug users.

But the Gates Foundation is now largely ending its oversight and support for AIDS prevention in India, just as efforts directed at prostitutes are becoming much more difficult. Experts say it is too early to identify how much H.I.V. infections might rise.

“Nowadays, the mobility of sex workers is huge, and contacting them is very difficult,” said Ashok Alexander, the former director in India of the Gates Foundation. “It’s a totally different challenge, and the strategies will also have to change.”

An example of the strategies that had been working can be found in Delhi’s red-light district on Garstin Bastion Road near the old Delhi railway station, where brothels have thrived since the 16th century. A walk through dark alleys, past blind beggars and up narrow, steep and deeply worn stone staircases brings customers into brightly lighted rooms teeming with scores of women brushing each other’s hair, trying on new dresses, eating snacks, performing the latest Bollywood dances, tending small children and disappearing into tiny bedrooms with nervous men who come out moments later buttoning their trousers.

A 2009 government survey found 2,000 prostitutes at Garstin Bastion (also known as G. B.) Road who served about 8,000 men a day. The government estimated that if it could deliver as many as 320,000 free condoms each month and train dozens of prostitutes to counsel safe-sex practices to their peers, AIDS infections could be significantly reduced. Instead of broadcasting safe-sex messages across the country — an expensive and inefficient strategy commonly employed in much of the world — it encircled Garstin Bastion with a firebreak of posters with messages like “Don’t take a risk, use a condom” and “When a condom is in, risk is out.”

Surprising many international AIDS experts, these and related tactics worked. Studies showed that condom use among clients of prostitutes soared.

“To the credit of the Indian strategists, their focus on these high-risk groups paid off,” said Dr. Peter Piot, the former executive director of U.N.AIDS and now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A number of other countries, following India’s example, have achieved impressive results over the past decade as well, according to the latest United Nations report, which was released last week.

Sruthi Gottipati contributed reporting in Mumbai and New Delhi.

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