Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ARMIES (91%); DEFENSE CONTRACTING (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); GRAND JURY (78%); CONSPIRACY (78%); DEFENSE DEPARTMENTS (77%); PUBLIC CONTRACTING (77%); FRAUD & FINANCIAL CRIME (77%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (77%); LAWYERS (77%); STATE DEPARTMENTS & FOREIGN SERVICES (77%); CONTRACTS & BIDS (77%); EXPORT TRADE (73%); INVESTIGATIONS (71%); CONTRACT AWARDS (70%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (69%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (60%); INDICTMENTS (90%)
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GEOGRAPHIC: MIAMI, FL, USA (93%) FLORIDA, USA (93%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); UTAH, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); ALBANIA (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); HUNGARY (79%); CHINA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Efraim E. Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ASSOCIATED PRESS)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

661 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 19, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

INSIDE THE TIMES: June 19, 2008
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 2292 words
INTERNATIONAL

U.S. BLAMES SHIITE LEADER FOR DEADLY BAGHDAD BLAST

The American military blamed a Shiite militia leader for detonating a car bomb that killed 63 people in a Shiite district a day earlier, saying he had intended to incite sectarian violence against Sunnis returning to the area as security improved. Enraged residents had blamed either American soldiers, who had been nearby, or Sunni insurgents from Al Deel, the bordering Sunni district. But the United States military said it was Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi and identified him as a leader of the Iranian-linked Shiite fighters known as the Special Groups. PAGE A14

MORE CLASHES WITH TALIBAN

Using helicopter gunships, NATO and Afghan forces battled Taliban insurgents a few miles north of the city of Kandahar. The fighting left 2 Afghan soldiers and about 23 Taliban fighters, including two commanders, dead, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. Three Afghan soldiers were also wounded, the provincial governor said. PAGE A14

SOUTH AFRICAN HEAD VISITS MUGABE

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the region's most powerful nation, met with Zimbabwe's strongman, President Robert Mugabe, as a rising chorus of voices warned that a fair vote could be impossible. It is far from clear that Mr. Mbeki, chosen by regional leaders to mediate Zimbabwe's political crisis, has the clout to persuade Mr. Mugabe to halt the systematic efforts to intimidate the political opposition. Mr. Mugabe has vowed in recent days to go to war if he loses after 28 years in power. PAGE A8

CHALLENGES FOR E.U. AFTER IRISH VOTE

The Irish refusal last week to support a new organizational treaty for the 27-member European Union has thrown the bloc into confusion, shocked its bureaucratic elite and done significant damage to France's plans for its six-month presidency, which begins in less than two weeks. European leaders meeting in Brussels for summit talks intended to focus on the next six months, but will spend their time analyzing the solid Irish ''no'' and deciding what, if anything, they can do about it. PAGE A10

OLD CAPITAL IS GLOBAL DESTINATION

Germany's former capital, Bonn, known derisively as the Hauptdorf, or capital village, is supposed to be a relic of the past. But the little city on the Rhine, immortalized by John le Carre as ''a small town in Germany'' in the novel of the same title, has succeeded in the unlikely goal of remaking itself as a place of the future, becoming an international campus for everything from medical research to alternative energy. PAGE A10

Taiwan Leader on China Policy A6

NATIONAL

A TEXAS CITY TAKES A STAND

Against Inheriting More Waste

When a town's list of nicknames includes Cancer Alley, the Armpit of Texas and Ring of Fire, the threat of it becoming the final destination for 40 million pounds of toxins from Mexico does not rub the residents the right way. ''Who's next? Germany? Finland? England? We have a right to a clean environment,'' said a community advocate from the downtrodden chemical town on the Gulf of Mexico, Port Arthur. PAGE A16

MRS. OBAMA CO-HOSTS 'THE VIEW'

Just as Cindy McCain appeared as a co-host on ''The View'' to smooth over her campaign kerfuffle, Michelle Obama followed in her steps. Mrs. Obama went on the television talk show to combat the notion that she is a little too authentic to be a first lady, while Mrs. McCain did it to undercut the image that she is too fake. PAGE A19

CHANGING THE WAY WE TEACH

A new class of young social entrepreneurs seeking to reshape the United States' educational landscape is sprouting across the nation, like Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, a nonprofit program that recruits elite college graduates to teach in low-income schools. Some prominent academics are skeptical. But others think they just might etch important changes on the nation's schools. PAGE A16

LEVEES FALL SHORT IN ILLINOIS

The Mississippi's waters broke over a levee near the hamlet of Meyer, Ill., and surged over tens of thousands of acres of farm fields. The runaway river was gruesome news for the farmers and the residents near Meyer and in other towns near where more than 20 levees have overflowed so far. PAGE A21

TOMATOES CASE REMAINS UNSOLVED

The Food and Drug Administration may never be able to pinpoint the origin of salmonella-tainted tomatoes that have sickened hundreds of people, an agency official said. PAGE A24

McCain's Goals for Nuclear Reactors A18

Oak Tree Protesters Are Victorious A16

METRO

AFTER 3-YEAR-OLD'S DEATH,

Grief and Regret at Missed Clues

The outpouring of support at the wake and funeral of 3-year-old Kyle Smith belied the biography of a boy whose parents had left him in what prosecutors describe as the monstrously brutal Brooklyn home of a woman who had previously lost custody of her own children in Texas. While many of the mourners expressed anger at city officials for not protecting the boy, the Adminstration for Children's Services was only peripherally involved in the case. PAGE B1

BUSINESS

CREDIT CRISIS HITTING

Regional Banks Hard

The announcement by Fifth Third Bank of Cincinnati, which has lost two-thirds of its value this year, that it plans to sell $1 billion in convertible preferred stock, sell noncore operations and reduce its dividend by 66 percent is more evidence of the difficult conditions faced by small and midsize banks as credit losses continue to mount. ''Everybody is trying to figure out where the bottom is,'' said one regional bank analyst. PAGE C1

AIR TRAVEL GOING a LA CARTE

Airlines that are adding fees and surcharges on top of rising fares would like travelers to embrace them as a la carte pricing. (The phrase came up several times during a Merrill Lynch transportation conference in New York.) Some carriers are charging for checking the first bag, while US Airways has said it will begin charging $2 for nonalcoholic beverages. The new schedule of fees and charges is expected to generate $300 million to $400 million for US Airways, the company's president said. PAGE C1

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BOLLYWOOD

Steven Spielberg and other top executives at DreamWorks SKG may be bolstered by an ambitious Bollywood player, Reliance Big Entertainment of India, that would allow them to split from Paramount Pictures, which owns their boutique film label. Mr. Spielberg and another executive, David Geffen, could get $500 million to $600 million in cash in return for an undisclosed equity stake in their new company, say executives briefed on the negotiations. PAGE C2

DOCTORS SPLIT ON ELECTRONIC RECORDS

A report published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that doctors who use computerized patient records overwhelmingly say that they have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation's doctors have started using such records. Why? The cost of the equipment. ''The economics of it just seem so daunting,'' said one doctor. PAGE C3

THE NETFLIX OF GROCERIES

When George Jetson got hungry, he pushed a couple of buttons on the Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle, and a meal would appear on a plate. Now, a machine that could be that gadget's great-great-grandfather is available in the real world: the Ikan. Each time you are about to throw away an empty container, you pass its bar code under the Ikan's scanner, which beeps and displays the product's name. After a few days of this, you can review a list you've compiled online and click once to have everything delivered to your home at a time you specify. PAGE C1

Pfizer Heads Off Lipitor Competition C1 Americans Driving Less, Study Says C3

Morgan Results Reflect Decline C4

ARTS

BEHIND THE PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST,

A Fierce Muse

When asked to play the legendary sculptor Louise Nevelson in ''Edward Albee's Occupant,'' Mercedes Ruehl knew little of Ms. Nevelson's assemblages. So she read biographies, collected art books and interviewed Ms. Nevelson's friends, like the art dealer Arnold Glimcher and, of course, Mr. Albee, who was close to her for more than 40 years. The earthy performance that resulted has won plaudits from critics, and the playwright. ''She has a lot of opinions and ideas, and the nice thing about them is most of them are right,'' Mr. Albee said. PAGE B1

SHE KNEW HOW TO USE THEM

A Hollywood immortal, she was not. But those moves! Those legs! It is impossible to imagine the Hollywood musical without Cyd Charisse, the long-legged beauty who in the 1950s gave Fred Astaire some midcareer oomph and Gene Kelly his match in pure animal vitality. An appraisal of the dancer's life by Manohla Dargis. PAGE B1

INSTALLATION RESTORATION

The pivoting windowsills and panels that make up the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, on Kenmare Street, were designed by Steven Holl and Vito Acconci in the early 1990s to illustrate an aesthetic concept that Mr. Holl calls porosity. As it turns out, the building's porosity was more than metaphorical: water flowing through the facade has left it badly damaged. After considering donating the facade to a museum, the Storefront's board has decided instead to commission a restoration. PAGE B3

Dinitia Smith: Mahfouz's 'Cairo Modern' B9

STYLES

BLACK AND WHITE, YES, BUT NOT CHECKERED ALL OVER

A man can successfully borrow style tips from the early 1980s, as long as he knows which ones to choose. Aggressive neon colors, outsize silhouettes and asymmetrical hairstyles? File them under Missing Persons. Skinny black Levi's, checkerboard Vans and a pair of red Wayfarers, though, and you're good to go. David Colman, Dress Codes. PAGE E5

A CYCLIST'S LEVELHEADED APPROACH

Christian Vande Velde, who is expected to be selected for the United States road racing team for the Summer Olympics, does not think that you have to train on lung-busting climbs to be competitive. ''I'm proof that you don't have to ride hills to do well on hills,'' he said. Other tips on offer: spend wisely (''The difference between a $1,500 bike and an $8,000 bike is very small''); rely on power readings, not heart rate or wheel cadence; and skip the Nutella rice. PAGE E1

HOUSE & HOME

OF MILES AND YEARS AND PENCIL LINES

Once a shambles, now a fortress of steel and stone, the house of Mircea and Silvia Marinescu has been transformed. Mr. Marinescu was an architect in Bucharest, Romania, but was stripped of his portfolio and any evidence of his degree when he left for the United States. Starting over at the bottom, he held jobs beneath his skills, happy to be at least holding a pencil instead of a shovel. In the end, a 100-year-old house in Fort Lee, N.J., became his masterpiece. PAGE D1

IS THAT A GALLOWS ON YOUR PLATE?

Those plates that you reserve for special occasions may have had a previous owner, but rest assured they have never looked as good. After an epiphany that she found most dinnerware boring, Sarah Cihat, a ceramist based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, began pillaging local thrift shops for old ceramic dishes, and Rehabilitated Dishware was born. She covers the old dishes with new designs, including silhouettes of cuttlefish, flamingos and even chains. Page D7

Give That Old Deck New Life D2

A Paradise in Upstate New York D4

OBITUARIES

DETLEF GROMOLL, 70

A mathematician who helped lay the foundations for studying the abstract distortions of shapes in three or more dimensions, he did research that formed some of the groundwork leading to the proof of the Poincare Conjecture, one of the most famous and intractable problems in mathematics. PAGE C17

DONALDSON PILLSBURY, 67

A lawyer and great-great-grandson of one of the founders of the Pillsbury Company, he guided Sotheby's, the auction house, through a welter of legal problems and helped restore its reputation after a price-fixing scandal in 2000. PAGE C17

SPORTS

SURF AND TURF AT TROPICANA FIELD

Along with their lofty status atop the National League Central, the Cubs brought to the Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., the celebrity cachet of their manager, Lou Piniella, a Tampa native who ran the Rays from 2003 to 2005. The Cubs-Rays combination proved electric. ''It was a little bit awesome,'' Rays third baseman Evan Longoria said of the game's boisterous atmosphere. The Rays pulled off a tense 3-2 victory before a crowd of 31,607. PAGE C13

The Impact of Tiger's Injury C12

EDITORIALS

THE BIG PANDER TO BIG OIL

President Bush wants to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America's continental shelf. This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. PAGE A26

TESTING AND LEARNING

Testing is the only real way to measure student progress and teacher effectiveness. But as a new study from the University of Chicago shows, teaching to the test can be self-defeating. PAGE A26

A WAR WITH KBR

Four years ago, a Pentagon contract manager confronted KBR because it could not adequately explain more than $1 billion in war billings. Whoops! He was suddenly replaced. PAGE A26

OP-ED

GAIL COLLINS

There President Bush was in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, unveiling his plan for reducing the price of oil. A little grayer, but strangely unchanged. PAGE A27

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

In Gaza, the yearlong blockade feels not only morally bankrupt but also counterproductive. If the United States and Israel had formed a Joint Commission to Support Hamas Extremists and Bolster Iranian Influence among Palestinians, they could hardly have done a better job. PAGE A27

SUE OPEC

The price of oil is nearly twice as high as it needs to be given the cost of production. States could help bring the price down by collectively bringing a suit against OPEC, says Thomas W. Evans in an Op-Ed. PAGE A27

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
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LOAD-DATE: June 19, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

662 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 19, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Keeping the Water Pure Is Suddenly in Demand
BYLINE: By JAMES FLANIGAN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1199 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
WATER has always been an issue in California. But drought conditions, not to mention worries about continued supplies of clean water, are turning water into a growth industry in California and elsewhere.

Big companies like General Electric, Siemens and Veolia Environnement of France have ambitious plans to bring water to developing countries and clean water everywhere. But many small companies are finding niches and doing well these days, too.

Puretec Industrial Water, of Oxnard, Calif., for example, ''grew 34 percent last year,'' said Jim Harris, the owner and president. The company, with 90 employees, leaped to $18 million in revenue from $13.5 million in 2006. ''We have 4,000 customers,'' said Mr. Harris, ''but we have grown 15 percent or more every year since I started.''

Puretec dates back to 1965, when Mr. Harris started an industrial division of his father's and grandfather's water business. They were franchisees of Culligan water softeners, a residential service that removed minerals from local water to make tap water taste better.

Mr. Harris, now 69, said he decided to go into purifying water for industry because he saw the rising semiconductor companies were demanding purer water for their processes and electric power plants were imposing stricter water standards.

''They used to throw any kind of water into turbine generators,'' said Jed Harris, 32, who is in line to become the fourth generation to head Puretec. ''But General Electric found that impurities damaged turbine blades and reduced output. So G.E. demanded purer water and raised standards of the whole industry.''

Drug makers and biotech firms, soft drink and food companies and other kinds of industry have raised purity standards in recent years. That increased business for Puretec, which uses membranes, ion transfer and activated carbon filters to remove impurities. ''We rent or sell customers tanks of purifying resins and then pick up and replenish the tanks,'' said Jim Harris. ''It's a service business and therefore has great stability.''

Business is also growing because municipalities are looking to recycle water to assure residents and businesses of having enough water at desired levels of purity. Los Angeles is planning a long-term project to recycle wastewater. Orange County will officially inaugurate a major recycling project next week.

Such projects increase demand for water treatment technologies, like those supplied by another California business, Systematix Company, a chemical engineering firm in Buena Park.

Charles F. Michaud, a chemical engineer, founded Systematix in 1982 to manufacture water filtration materials and to ''interpret the complex design parameters of water treatment'' so that small companies could keep up with developing technologies and compete with larger firms.

''This is a fragmented industry,'' he said. ''More than 500 companies are in water treatment, and the larger firms only have about 20 percent of the total market.''

Systematix is small, with $5 million in annual revenue and only four employees, including Mr. Michaud, whose title is technical director and who consults widely in the industry.

He is a consultant on the Orange County project, called Water Factory 21, that will pump 70 million gallons of treated sewage into the aquifer under the county, replenishing the volume of underground water and ensuring supplies for the county's growing population. More than three million people already live there.

''We must replenish the aquifers or the ground will subside, as happened in Mexico City,'' Mr. Michaud said. ''The pumped water will, of course, mingle with the groundwater and soon become part of the regular water supply, coming through residents' faucets,'' he said.

Recycled water, he added, is simply a growing fact of life. ''When you think about it, all water is recycled,'' Mr. Michaud said, citing nature's cycle of rainfall, absorption, evaporation and rainfall again.

The most immediate factor driving California to think of new sources and of treating wastewater is the drought. In many parts of the state, housing developments cannot be started without identifying water supplies for future residents.

The state is expected to have a 30 percent increase in population in the next dozen years. And allocations of water from the Colorado River and other sources are already being cut back, said Jeanette Lombardo, a longtime water policy planner who is now business development officer for City National Bank. ''We must consider many alternatives,'' Ms. Lombardo said.

There are 16 projects for desalination of seawater on the drawing boards and plans to pump recycled water into aquifers, in part to prevent seawater from flowing back into shrinking reservoirs of groundwater. Start-up companies like Green Wave Energy Solutions, of Ventura County, are looking to harness wave power for energy while desalinating seawater for freshwater supplies.

Nor is California the only state with water needs. Neil D. Berlant, an investment banker and manager of the PFW Water Fund, who has been involved in the industry for 22 years, said that there are 51,000 municipal water companies in the United States. He said these companies have deferred maintenance for so long that the nation now faces as much as $1 trillion in capital spending to upgrade the pipes and distribution systems.

As a result, municipal water companies are active customers for the kind of water treatments supplied by large operators like Siemens Water, which acquired the old US Filter company in 2004, and smaller companies like Puretec, which has been managing water treatment for Burbank, Calif., since 2004.

''It's called own and operate,'' Jim Harris of Puretec said. ''We put equipment into Burbank, and it's on a 10-year contract,'' adding that ''for us, it's profitable and for them, there is no investment and they do not have to worry about training people for the highly specialized work.''

''The opportunities are tremendous and worldwide,'' Mr. Berlant said. Indeed, Richard Heckmann, who pioneered the contemporary water business by putting together 50 companies to form US Filter in the 1990s, announced this month that his new investment company, Heckmann Corporation, is acquiring China Water and Drinks Inc., a bottled water company based in Hong Kong, for $625 million. ''We are excited about the opportunity to build a global water company,'' Mr. Heckmann said.

And at recent forum on water at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Earl Jones, general manager of GE Water and Process Technologies, and Eric Lesueur, project manager for Veolia Water, a descendant of France's original Suez Canal company, spoke of global demand for water growing 40 percent by 2025.

Desalination and advanced techniques for recycling will be needed, the executives agreed. One panelist, Booky Oren, former chairman of Mekorot, Israel's national water company, said that ''Israel recycles 75 percent of its water.''

This column about small-business trends in California and the West appears on the third Thursday of every month. E-mail: [e-mail]