Graft Scandal Is Approaching Turkey Premier

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VOL. CLXIII . . . No. 56,362
© 2013 The New York Times
$2.50
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2013
Graft Scandal U.S. SENDS ARMS
Is Approaching TO AID IRAQ FIGHT
Turkey Premier
WITH EXTREMISTS
Leader Faces Pressure
as 3 Ministers Quit
75 HELLFIRE MISSILES
By TIM ARANGO
SEDAT SUNA/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Turkish protesters in Istanbul on Wednesday shouted slogans as they held signs calling for the government’s resignation.
E.R. Costs for Mentally Ill Soar, Getting Out of Discount Game,
And Hospitals Seek Better Way Small Colleges Lower the Price
By JULIE CRESWELL
RALEIGH, N.C. — As darkness
fell on a Friday evening over
downtown Raleigh, N.C., Michael
Lyons, a paramedic supervisor
for Wake County Emergency
Medical Services, slowly approached the tall, lanky man who
was swaying back and forth in a
gentle rhythm.
In answer to Mr. Lyons’s questions, the man, wearing a red
shirt that dwarfed his thin frame,
said he was bipolar, schizophrenic and homeless. He was
looking for help because he did
not think his prescribed medication was working.
In the past, paramedics would
have taken the man to the closest
hospital emergency room — most
likely the nearby WakeMed
Health and Hospitals, one of the
largest centers in the region. But
instead, under a pilot program,
paramedics ushered him through
the doors of Holly Hill Hospital, a
commercial psychiatric facility.
“He doesn’t have a medical
By TAMAR LEWIN
complaint, he’s just a mental
health patient living on the street
who is looking for some help,”
said Mr. Lyons, pulling his van
back into traffic. “The good news
is that he’s not going to an E.R.
That’s saving the hospital money
and getting the patient to the
most appropriate place for him,”
he added.
The experiment in Raleigh is
being closely watched by other
cities desperate to find a way to
help mentally ill patients without
admitting them to emergency
rooms, where the cost of treatment is high — and unnecessary.
While there is evidence that
other types of health care costs
might be declining slightly, the
cost of emergency room care for
the mentally ill shows no sign of
ebbing.
Nationally, more than 6.4 million visits to emergency rooms in
2010, or about 5 percent of total
visits, involved patients whose
Continued on Page B4
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — A
higher education riddle: When
can a college slash tuition by almost half, without losing revenues? Answer: When nobody
much pays full tuition anyway.
When Converse College, a tiny
women’s college here, announced
that it was “resetting” next
year’s tuition at $16,500, down 43
percent from the current year’s
published price of $29,000, the
talk was about affordability,
transparency and a better deal
for struggling families.
But of Converse’s 700 undergraduates, only a small number
— in the single digits, its president said, paid the full sticker
price in recent years. Almost everyone received a tuition discount from the college, along
with, in many cases, financial aid
from the state and federal governments.
Now, like some other small private colleges, Converse is cutting
tuition and reducing discounts.
Betsy Fleming, Converse’s president, said the tuition discount
rate would drop to 25 percent,
well below the national average,
from the current 56 percent. The
college will still offer aid to talented students, but only to the
extent covered by its $39 million
endowed scholarship funds.
While Converse’s reset was the
most drastic, others including
Concordia University in Oregon,
Ashland University in Ohio, Ave
Maria University in Florida, Belmont Abbey College in North
Carolina and Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, have also
recently announced tuition cuts.
For decades, most private college pricing has reflected the Chivas Regal effect — the notion that
whether in a Scotch or a school, a
higher price indicates higher
quality.
“Schools wanted a high tuition
on the assumption that families
would say that if they’re chargContinued on Page A18
ISTANBUL — A corruption investigation that has encircled the
Turkish government moved an
ominous step closer to Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
on Wednesday, as three top ministers whose sons have been implicated abruptly resigned — and
one of them, on his way out the
door, said Mr. Erdogan should
step down as well.
The resignations, coming only
hours after the ministers welcomed Mr. Erdogan at the Ankara airport as he returned from
Pakistan late on Tuesday, were
enough to inspire new talk of a
deepening crisis, which Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly denounced as
a foreign plot.
But the words from one of the
departing ministers were considered stunning, coming from a political party known for silencing
dissent. That instantly raised the
significance of the entire inquiry
and left members of the Turkish
public wondering if they were
witnessing the collapse of their
Islamist-rooted government of
the last decade.
“Now it seems the situation
has changed completely,” said
Kerem Oktem, a Turkey expert
and research fellow at the European Studies Center at the University of Oxford. “It seems the
ring around Erdogan has gotten
tighter.”
Later, as a dramatic day came
to a close, Mr. Erdogan emerged
from a meeting with President
Abdullah Gul in Ankara, the
Turkish capital, and announced
that seven other ministers would
leave his cabinet, some of whom
are departing as part of a longplanned shuffle so that they can
run for mayors in coming elections. One of the late-night departures included the European
Union minister, who has been implicated in the corruption investigation.
The investigation became public a week ago with dawn police
raids on the offices of businessmen and others close to the
prime minister. But Wednesday
was the first time that someone
who had been in Mr. Erdogan’s
hierarchy — a confidant, no less
Continued on Page A10
Responding to Appeal
for Help as Insurgent
Violence Rises
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — The United
States is quietly rushing dozens
of Hellfire missiles and low-tech
surveillance drones to Iraq to
help government forces combat
an explosion of violence by a
Qaeda-backed insurgency that is
gaining territory in both western
Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The move follows an appeal for
help in battling the extremist
group by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who
met with President Obama in
Washington last month.
But some military experts
question whether the patchwork
response will be sufficient to reverse the sharp downturn in security that already led to the
deaths of more than 8,000 Iraqis
this year, 952 of them Iraqi security force members, according to
the United Nations, the highest
level of violence since 2008.
Al Qaeda’s regional affiliate,
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has become a potent force in
northern and western Iraq. Riding in armed convoys, the group
has intimidated towns, assassinated local officials, and in an episode last week, used suicide
bombers and hidden explosives
to kill the commander of the Iraqi
Army’s Seventh Division and
more than a dozen of his officers
and soldiers as they raided a Qaeda training camp near Rutbah.
Bombings on Christmas in
Christian areas of Baghdad,
which killed more than two dozen
people, bore the hallmarks of a
Qaeda operation.
The surge in violence stands in
sharp contrast to earlier assurances from senior Obama administration officials that Iraq was on
the right path, despite the failure
of American and Iraqi officials in
2011 to negotiate an agreement
for a limited number of United
States forces to remain in Iraq.
In a March 2012 speech, AnContinued on Page A14
New Tests for Brain Trauma
In a Car-Culture Clash, It’s the Los Angeles Police vs. Pedestrians
Create Hope, and Skepticism
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
By KEN BELSON
Revelations in recent years
that thousands of former football
players might have severe brain
trauma from injuries sustained
on the field have set off a rush in
the medical community to seize
the potentially lucrative market
for assessing brain damage. But
experts say claims regarding the
validity of these assessments are
premature and perhaps unfounded.
Most researchers believe that
C.T.E., or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative
brain disease found in dozens of
former N.F.L. players, can be diagnosed only posthumously by
analyzing brain tissue. Researchers at U.C.L.A. have developed a
test they assert might identify
the condition in a living person
by injecting a compound that
clings to proteins in the brain and
later appears in a PET scan. But
some are skeptical.
“There has really been so
much hype surrounding C.T.E.,
so there is a real need for making
sure the public knows that this
type of science moves slowly and
must move very carefully,” said
Robert Stern, a professor of neu-
rology and neurosurgery at Boston University School of Medicine and a founder of the Center
for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. He is part of a
group that is developing a different biomarker to identify tau, the
protein that is a hallmark of
C.T.E.
“My fear is the people out
there who are so much in need,
scared for their lives and desperate for information, it might give
Continued on Page B12
KEITH SRAKOCIC/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The ex-N.F.L. star Tony Dorsett says he has brain trauma.
LOS ANGELES — In a city of
seemingly endless highways —
with its daily parade of car accidents, frustrating traffic jams
and aggressive drivers — the Los
Angeles Police Department these
days is training its sights on a different road menace: jaywalkers.
It is not quite “Dragnet,” but
the Police Department in recent
weeks has issued dozens of tickets to workers, shoppers and
tourists for illegally crossing the
street in downtown Los Angeles.
And the crackdown is raising
questions about whether the authorities are taking sides with the
long-dominant automobile here
at the very time when a pedestrian culture is taking off, fueled by
the burst of new offices, condominiums, hotels and restaurants
rising in downtown Los Angeles.
“We have to encourage this,
not discourage this,” said Brigham Yen, who writes a blog on
downtown development, as he
stood at a bustling corner in the
city’s financial district at lunchtime the other day, casting an eye
around for a police officer in the
shadows. “We should let pedestrians in L.A. flourish. We shouldn’t penalize it.”
The police say they are simply
trying to maintain order at a time
J. EMILIO FLORES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A police crackdown on jaywalking in Los Angeles carries with it a $197 fine for offenders.
when downtown Los Angeles,
once a place of urban tumbleweeds and the homeless, is teeming with people competing for
pavement with automobiles.
“There’s a huge influx of folks
that come into the downtown
area,” said Sgt. Larry Delgado of
the Central Traffic Division. “If
you go out there, you are going to
see enforcement.”
Still, the enforcement has
struck many of the pedestrians —
the new kids on the block — as
more than a little one-sided and
strikingly strict. When Adam Bialik, a bartender, stepped off the
curb on his way to work at the
Ritz-Carlton a few blinks after
the crossing signal began its red
Continued on Page A3
INTERNATIONAL A4-15
BUSINESS DAY B1-6
NATIONAL A16-18
THURSDAY STYLES E1-8
SPORTSTHURSDAY B7-12
Egypt Outlaws Islamist Group
Shariah Law and Investing
Doubts About Knee Procedure
Breaking the Ice
No Gifts for New York Fans
Egypt’s government designated the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, outlawing the country’s most
successful political movement. PAGE A4
Middle Eastern banks, to diversify investments, are seeking companies
abroad that can do business in ways
PAGE B1
compliant with Islamic law.
Simulated meniscal operations worked
as well as real ones in one study, adding
to research suggesting that a narrower
group should have the surgery. PAGE A16
A writer decided to fight a terror of public speaking by stepping into terror’s
PAGE E1
path, joining Toastmasters.
Japan Premier Visits Shrine
I Promise,
It’s in the Mail
An Invisible Killer Strikes
Already struggling, the Knicks could not
overcome the absence of Carmelo Anthony in a 29-point loss to Kevin Durant
and the Thunder at Madison Square
Garden. The Nets fell to the depleted
Bulls, 95-78, in their fourth straight defeat, drawing a chorus of boos and jeers
PAGE B7
at Barclays Center.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited a Tokyo war shrine that has long strained
relations with Asian neighbors. PAGE A8
NEW YORK A22-25
A Hoarded Clock, Unhidden
A mysterious clock has a place in history, once belonging to the Collyer brothers, the legendary hoarders. PAGE A22
Carriers across
the country failed
to meet delivery
deadlines this holiday season because of bad
weather and a
surge in demand.
PAGE B1
Carbon monoxide from generators was
responsible for several deaths after ice
storms crippled power lines. PAGE A16
ARTS C1-10
A Singer’s Joyful Moment
For Pharrell Williams, a hit 24-hour video of his song “Happy,” Grammy nominations and a shot at an Oscar. PAGE C1
HOME D1-8
From Table
To Farm
Kurt Timmermeister transformed himself
from restaurateur
to self-taught
dairy farmer on
an island near SePAGE D1
attle.
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27
Gail Collins
PAGE A27
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