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

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SUMMER OLYMPICS (90%); STADIUMS & ARENAS (90%); POLITICAL PARTIES (90%); OLYMPICS (90%); POLITICS (90%); POLITICAL SCIENCE (73%); ECONOMIC POLICY (69%); ECONOMIC NEWS (69%); GLOBALIZATION (69%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (67%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (62%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BEIJING, CHINA (94%); SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (78%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (94%); XIZANG, CHINA (58%) CHINA (98%); EUROPE (92%); SOUTH KOREA (79%); EASTERN EUROPE (72%); TIBET (79%)
LOAD-DATE: August 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: (PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG BARKER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Volunteers prepared Tiananmen Square, home to more than its share of history, for another moment in the spotlight, the arrival of the Olympic torch. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHINA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES)

People across Beijing celebrated in 2001 when the city was granted the 2008 Olympics, and many aspects of life there have changed since. (PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG BAKER/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (pg.A14)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

508 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
August 7, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Coldblooded Commerce In Coldblooded Contraband
BYLINE: By JANET MASLIN
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 994 words
In ''The Lizard King,'' his book about the wild world of reptile-dealing chicanery, Bryan Christy describes a smuggling incident at Miami International Airport. An Argentine man who claimed to be carrying a suitcase full of ceramics turned out to have crammed all this into his single piece of luggage: 107 chaco tortoises, 103 red-footed tortoises, 76 tartaruga turtles, five boa constrictors, seven rainbow boas, seven parrot snakes, 20 tarantulas, 10 scorpions, 90 tree frogs, 20 red tegu lizards, about a dozen other lizards and two South American rattlesnakes. It was one wiggling, squiggling, brilliantly packed load of trouble.

The man got a 15-month prison sentence. But that was negligible, given the vast criminal enterprise that Mr. Christy's book describes. ''The Lizard King'' is a wild, woolly, finny, feathery and scaly account of animal smuggling on a grand scale, in a weird world so expansive that a few hundred stray snakes and turtles amount to peanuts. Mr. Christy is after much bigger game.

There are reptile suppliers whose businesses devour one million mealworms, 50,000 crickets and 10,000 frozen rodents per week. And these breeders supply pet shops with an entirely above-board inventory of snakes, lizards and tortoises, critters that are ''the only reptiles many Americans will ever see.'' But their business stories are about as interesting as the antibacterial shoe washes that reptile-replicating operations require. Mr. Christy's entertaining book is about the crooks, swashbucklers and drug kingpins who constitute the underbelly of the reptile-dealing world.

At the risk of oversimplifying its story, this book insists on a Hollywood dynamic. Though ''The Lizard King'' involves a great many characters united only by their ability to connect rare animal specimens with dollar signs, Mr. Christy tries to arrange it around two central figures: Mike Van Nostrand, the reptile dealer of the title, and Special Agent Chip Bepler, the dogged official from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service who turned the stalking of Mr. Van Nostrand into his safari of choice.

Since Mr. Van Nostrand is a sufficiently colorful character to have chosen Conditional Release and Pillage and Plunder as names for boats, he does make an interesting target for this investigative story.

Mr. Van Nostrand is a second-generation pet profiteer. His father, Ray Van Nostrand, started out as a Bronx pet shop owner of exceptional entrepreneurial talent. The book amusingly describes some of the elder Mr. Van Nostrand's best pet tricks, like secretly dosing parakeet seed with anise oil so that parakeets would refuse to eat anything else. The senior Mr. Van Nostrand would also take his mangiest birds and release them in the park next to the Bronx Zoo, wait for people to adopt them, then wait for customers to come buy parakeet supplies.

To capture this kind of stunt as effervescently as he does, Mr. Christy must share some of his subjects' fetishism. (He himself was a snake-fancying kid. He also worked for Ray Van Nostrand cleaning snake cages while doing research for ''The Lizard King.'') So he understands the basic principle that governs reptile trafficking: collectors' tastes evolve on a ''bigger, meaner, rarer, hot'' trajectory. When they read about a rare species in National Geographic (a publication for which Mr. Christy has written), some of them want that species at any price.

Mike Van Nostrand found endlessly creative ways to exploit collectors' appetites. With much of Strictly Reptiles, the Van Nostrand family business, perfectly legitimate, he still found ways to fence smuggled merchandise. ''The Lizard King'' explains the set of circumstances that made such operations possible, like the lack of law-enforcement enthusiasm for pursuing pet cases. ''There was no room in a prosecutor's day for a Pine Barrens tree frog,'' Mr. Christy writes.

When the zealous Chip Bepler goes to work in Miami (''like Siberia with mosquitoes and paperwork'') and gets the Van Nostrand operation in his sights, this book's designated good guy finds no easy way of interrupting a smuggling operation. Animals can be laundered, and not just with soap and water. If a creature has documentation that describes it as ''captive-bred,'' whoever buys it can plead ignorance as to whether it was actually poached in the wild. Mr. Bepler figures out how this process works and which countries are most suspect.

The chase eventually becomes international. So Mr. Christy has the makings of cat-and-mouse suspense. He also has a tangle of smugglers, agents, breeders and highly colorful minor players (like the tiger-purchasing Miami gangster who sounds like the prototype for ''Scarface'') with stories to tell. But Mr. Christy approaches his book-length task with a magazine writer's taste for the funny moment and bright turns of phrase, at the expense of coherence and investigatory forcefulness.

Still, with a main character willing to smuggle baby Timor pythons in his pants, not to mention a contraband dealer in Penang, Malaysia, named Anson Wong who likes to say, ''There's the right way, and there's the Wong way,'' his account makes up in brio what it lacks in depth.

By the time ''The Lizard King'' has escalated to describing the bear-gallbladder trade, it is rich with memorable moments. There is the smuggler willing to come clean with a United States customs agent only after his laundry bag moves. There is Mike Van Nostrand as a bratty child, being told by a woman not to pet her dog -- and kicking it instead.

And there are opinions about pet shop merchandise. Reptiles are ''the Bic lighters of the pet industry.'' The animal business is ''a lint screen for human vices.'' And pets, to Mike Van Nostrand, are not just money. They are money that can either thrive or die.

THE LIZARD KING

The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers

By Bryan Christy

241 pages. Twelve. $24.99.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SMUGGLING (90%); PETS (89%); WILDLIFE CONSERVATION (78%); INVESTIGATIONS (78%); PET STORES & SUPPLIES (78%); TRAVEL HOSPITALITY & TOURISM (77%); BIRDS (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); WILDLIFE (73%); ORGANIZED CRIME (73%); AIRPORTS (72%); SENTENCING (69%); RODENTS (68%); CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES CRIME (73%); JAIL SENTENCING (69%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (90%) FLORIDA, USA (92%); NEW YORK, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: August 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL BRYANT)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

509 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

A Top Producer for 'Idol' To Leave for Other Projects
BYLINE: By EDWARD WYATT
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 610 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
Nigel Lythgoe, whose deft hand at producing live television broadcasts helped to build ''American Idol'' into a prime-time juggernaut, is leaving that show to concentrate on another promising Fox reality series and a new joint venture with Simon Fuller, the creator of ''Idol.''

Mr. Lythgoe said in a statement late on Monday that he would be devoting more time to ''So You Think You Can Dance,'' the Fox series that has attracted an average audience of about 9.5 million viewers this summer, making it one of the season's best-performing shows.

The British-born Mr. Lythgoe, who is a creator, an executive producer and a judge for that dance show, said he would be traveling to South Africa, Australia and Canada to work on local versions of the series, making it difficult for him to continue his work on ''Idol.'' He will also be starting a new venture with Mr. Fuller, also a creator and executive producer of ''Dance.'' Fox announced on Monday that it had ordered a fifth season of the dance competition series.

While Mr. Lythgoe, 59, has been an executive producer of ''Idol,'' he stands to earn more money from shows that he has had a hand in creating, like ''So You Think You Can Dance'' and future ventures developed with Mr. Fuller.

''I will step back from my day-to-day producing work on 'American Idol' and will be devoting my time to a new venture with Simon Fuller,'' said Mr. Lythgoe (pronounced LITH-go). Neither he nor a spokesman for 19 Entertainment Ltd., Mr. Fuller's company, offered any details on the new project.

While it is not unusual for an executive producer to leave a series that, like ''Idol,'' is starting its eighth season, his departure as the show runner, the producer responsible for the day-to-day production, comes as the series is experiencing some pains of aging.

This year's ratings for ''Idol'' were, once again, by far the biggest on television, with an average audience of 28.5 million per show. But that audience was nevertheless down about 10 percent from that of the previous two years, and the producers and Fox have already discussed ways to give the show a boost when it returns in January.

Fox Broadcasting said in a statement that it was ''disappointed'' that Mr. Lythgoe, whose creative contributions to the show ''have been immeasurable,'' was leaving ''Idol.'' Two other executive producers who are closely involved with the production, Cecile Frot-Coutaz and Ken Warwick, will stay on.

''Idol'' is currently holding auditions for contestants for the new season, and mostly the usual crowds of thousands of hopefuls have been turning out. But at least one audition drew an unusually small response.

Omar Marrero, an Associated Press reporter based in San Juan, P.R., who attended the audition there this past Saturday, said that only a few hundred people showed up. That is a stark contrast with the more than 6,000 reported to have attended the recent audition in Salt Lake City.

Ms. Frot-Coutaz said the producers of ''Idol'' had expected a small turnout in Puerto Rico because it is an island, but that they went there ''to give a different flavor to the show.''

''American Idol'' changed its rules this year to allow more contestants from last season to return to audition for the new season. In earlier years a portion of the contestants who advanced to the Hollywood tryout round but who did not make the final 24 appearing in the studio performances were ineligible to return.

But only the top 24 of last year's contestants are ineligible this year, meaning that some of the hopefuls who were seen in the Hollywood round but who did not make it any further can return.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (90%); REALITY TELEVISION (90%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (90%); BROADCASTING INDUSTRY (89%); TELEVISION RATINGS & SHARES (78%); JOINT VENTURES (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%)
COMPANY: FOX ENTERTAINMENT GROUP INC (95%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS515120 TELEVISION BROADCASTING (95%); SIC4833 TELEVISION BROADCASTING STATIONS (95%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CANADA (56%); SOUTH AFRICA (56%)
LOAD-DATE: August 6, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Nigel Lythgoe (PHOTOGRAPH BY FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Sorting Out Coffee's Contradictions
BYLINE: By JANE E. BRODY
SECTION: Section F; Column 0; Science Desk; PERSONAL HEALTH; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1087 words
When Howard D. Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America's leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions.

Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee -- it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores -- scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.

But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.

Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.

Caffeine Myths

Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.

Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.

So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body's daily water needs.

Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.

''Contrary to common belief,'' concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is ''little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk'' of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.

In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women's Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.

Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.

Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.

In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.

And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.

Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.

Dr. Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine's negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine's effect on their bones.

Weight loss. Here's a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn't.

Health Benefits

Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.

Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.

For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.

Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee's popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease.

Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee's antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CAFFEINE & HEALTH (90%); COFFEE & TEA STORES (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); WOMEN'S HEALTH (89%); BEVERAGE PRODUCTS (89%); DISEASES & DISORDERS (89%); CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE (87%); HYPERTENSION (86%); WOMEN (78%); COFFEE & TEA (78%); COFFEE (78%); CARDIOLOGY (73%); COFFEE MARKETS (73%); RESEARCH INSTITUTES (73%); SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (65%); SCIENCE NEWS (65%); PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS (63%)
COMPANY: STARBUCKS CORP (58%); WOMEN'S HEALTH INTERACTIVE LLC (50%)
ORGANIZATION: CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST (55%)
TICKER: SBUX (NASDAQ) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS722213 SNACK & NONALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE BARS (58%); SIC5812 EATING PLACES (58%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (79%); SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (66%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: August 5, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY JEZ BURROWS)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

511 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

What a Chic New Bag. And X-Ray Friendly, Too.
BYLINE: By JOE SHARKEY.

E-mail: [e-mail]

SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ON THE ROAD; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 701 words
THE Transportation Security Administration had planned to brief and train screeners by September to recognize and handle newly designed luggage bags that would enable travelers to keep laptops in their cases at airport security checkpoints.

But that has changed. Because at least one company already has the new bags on the market, the agency accelerated the timetable and will have its officers up to speed by Aug. 16, a spokeswoman for the agency, Ellen Howe, said.

Initially, September had seemed about right. After all, once the agency gave the green light to the concept, various manufacturers needed time to design new ''checkpoint friendly'' cases that met agency's specifications and get them into production.

The specifications require a bag design that allows the X-ray equipment to have a clear view of the laptop itself, unobstructed by pockets, flaps or extra gear like power cords.

Several big manufacturers said they expected to have products available by late September or mid-October. So agency officials thought they had until after Labor Day to get ready.

''I guess they underestimated the American entrepreneur,'' said Ben Bosma, general manager of a small aviation and travel accessories company, Aerovation Products, in Tipp City, Ohio.

Mr. Bosma's company, which he operates with his wife, Ginny, already has checkpoint-friendly bags on the market. Mr. Bosma said he has sold (and in some cases given away as promotions) about 1,100 bags.

''It's very important to be first in the marketplace,'' said Mr. Bosma, a former Air Force pilot. Before it joined the rush to produce checkpoint-friendly bags, Aerovation specialized in specialty baseball caps for pilots to wear comfortably under bulky headsets.

The Chinese factory that makes Aerovation's caps promptly took the designs for the new laptop bags and began turning them out, he said. The bags were snapped up as soon as they arrived in the United States by travelers who did not want to deal with removing laptops from cases and placing them on the X-ray belt at security gates, he said.

It is not laziness that makes travelers want to circumvent the rule, which is right up there with having to remove shoes as a checkpoint irritations. They see their unprotected laptops trundle along the checkpoint belt to be rudely deposited into a pileup at the other end. In the commotion, there is the potential for damage, theft and misplacement.

''I'm extremely paranoid about my laptop when I come to the checkpoint,'' said Jim Lahren, the vice president for marketing at Briggs & Riley, a big travel luggage company. Briggs & Riley announced last week that it would be the ''first to market'' with new laptop bags, which it expects to have available in retail stores on Aug. 15.

But Mr. Bosma's little company had already quietly claimed the title. Being first, of course, can have a price. Some customers complained to Mr. Bosma that some airport screeners had told them they knew nothing about the new rule and required owners of checkpoint-friendly bags to remove their laptops just like everyone else.

So Mr. Bosma posted a disclaimer on the Aerovation Web site (www.aerovation.com) that says, in part: ''We've had customers who've been told to remove their laptops from the bag for screening. This isn't the fault of the bag. T.S.A. is moving as quickly as possible to deploy signage and new standard operating procedures to their screeners.''

Agency officials were amazed that a retailer could get the bags produced so quickly. ''We'll get the word out,'' Kip Hawley, director of the agency, told me the other day. The agency is now accelerating training and other procedures to be ready by mid-August.

The bags come in various styles. The most basic design is a protective sleeve that can be slipped out from a carry-on bag. More complex designs include a laptop compartment that unzips and can be folded down flat on the belt.

Most big travel luggage manufacturers are rushing to get new models of checkpoint bags out. Targus, the largest maker of cases for laptops and notebooks, began production in China early last month, and says that the first of its new models will be available by October.