The bad business of payday loans

In an effort to curb abusive lending practices, the US government has finally issued guidelines – long overdue – on short-term bank loans tied to consumers’ income. The new federal limits will help to protect consumers and, surprisingly, the banks who make such loans.


The benefit for consumers is obvious. These deposit advance loans (which are really just payday loans offered by legitimate banks rather than shady neighborhood dealers or online outlets) hit consumers with a myriad of expensive fees and charge up to 120 percent in interest. The new guidelines, issued last month by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., rein in the interest rates that banks can charge and the balloon payments they require.

Here is how the loans work: A bank advances money to existing customers against their paycheck, Social Security, or other benefit that is due to be deposited into their accounts. When the expected deposit hits, the bank withdraws its principal plus interest directly from the account.

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So far, such an advance could be construed as a valuable service for cash-strapped consumers. Deposit advance lending exists because some people cannot meet their near-term financial obligations and need a little extra time to round up the necessary funds.
The problems start, however, when the deposit cannot cover the full amount of what the customer has borrowed. The bank takes its money anyway, and socks the borrower with overdraft fees and additional interest.  Since people who need these advances are invariably low income and struggling to pay their bills in the first place, these fees and interest charges quickly build up and can create a growing and never-ending cycle of debt.

But the practice is problematic for the banks, too. They do not typically do a credit check for deposit advance loans, which means they cannot assess the real risk of lending to such borrowers. Plus, high interest loans can easily push borrowers with bad credit further into the red and render them unable to pay back the bank. Free enterprise is not a license for irresponsibility and there are few business practices worse than lending to unqualified borrowers at high rates.  The outcome is predictable and ultimately runs to the detriment of both the borrower and the lender.

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To see evidence of this, look no further than the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, which began with mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers and ended in mass foreclosures and the widespread destruction of wealth.  While in that case banks and mortgage originators were able to offload most of their risk onto quasi-governmental agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, there is no such safety net for deposit advance loans.

It is also worth noting that the investment banks that bought the bad mortgages in order to securitize them and sell them to outside investors profited at first but eventually took massive losses when the loans went bad and the insurers who had backstopped them could not pay up. The moral of the story is that whenever lenders fail to assess true risk or actually compound that risk through onerous terms, the results are bound to be bad.

That’s why the new federal guidelines should help banks. They require banks to moderate the fees and interest on their loans to avoid increasing the chances of default and, equally importantly, refrain from lending when consumers show patterns of delinquency. It’s sad that in a free enterprise system the federal government has to step in to save the banks from themselves, but when lending bubbles can cause the type of havoc we witnessed in 2008, and when respected banks like Wells Fargo (Ticker: WFC) and U.S. Bancorp (Ticker: USB) choose to ignore the risk of offering dubious products like deposit advance loans, what choice is there?

For a list of the banks who do this and their respective terms, click here.

– Political and business commentator Sanjay Sanghoee has worked at leading investment banks Lazard Freres and Dresdner, as well as at multibillion-dollar hedge fund Ramius. His opinion pieces have appeared in Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and Huffington Post, and he has appeared on CNBC’s ‘Closing Bell’, TheStreet.com, and HuffPost Live.

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Who are the 'new rich'?

—The group is made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners. They are 21 percent of U.S. adults ages 25-60, a proportion that has more than doubled since 1979.

—They differ from the super-rich because of their sense of economic fragility. Having reached the top 2 percent of income earners for a year or more of their lives, in some cases they will later fall below it. Those above them on the economic ladder often are more secure, with long-held family assets.

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—The new rich are important in part because they spend only about 60 percent of their before-tax income, making them prime marketing targets. Companies increasingly turn to them to boost revenue with a range of new "mass luxury" products and services. Economists say they'll be important to the U.S. economic recovery as middle class Americans below them in income continue to struggle.

—Although socially liberal on issues such as abortion and gay rights, the new rich are more fiscally conservative than other Americans and less likely to support safety-net programs to help the disadvantaged.

— While 21 percent of working-age adults will achieve affluence for parts of their lives, they are substantially outnumbered by Americans who are financially struggling. Some 54 percent of working-age Americans will experience near-poverty — defined as 150 percent of the poverty line — for portions of their lives, hurt by the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs.

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Five reasons the Arab Spring has not failed

So much for the Arab Spring. In Egypt, history appears to have completed a bloody full circle. The country is back to a “temporary” martial law that will probably last for years.
Given the breadth and depth of the fissures that run through Middle Eastern society, it is tempting to conclude that democracy is bound to fail there. Sooner or later, the pessimists now argue, the countries of the Arab Spring will revert to the old kind of harsh rule by “strongmen.”
Yet I am not quite so pessimistic as to expect a complete restoration of the old order. The Arab Spring may appear to have failed, but in five important respects the Arab world has been changed irrevocably.




1. Less tribalism

The institution of tribalism is not as strong and cohesive as it used to be. Individuals within a tribe or clan have developed other loyalties and can defy traditional forms of authority in ways that were unthinkable a generation ago. The combined factors of urbanization, young demographics, displaced peoples, and emigration will further erode tribal and clan loyalties.


2. Radical Islam’s waning appeal

The appeal of radical Islam is beginning to wane. This trend is paradoxical because Islamists continue to enjoy considerable grassroots loyalty. However, after what people have experienced in countries where Islamists have come to power – notably in Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran and the Taliban’s Afghanistan – it is no longer self-evident that sharia is the answer to all the problems of modernity.

This is the key to the backlash against the Islamists in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere. Islamists thrive in opposition and in chaos but fail miserably in government.


3. Connection to the West

The effects of globalization have changed attitudes toward the West. Thanks to migration and telecommunications, Arabs in particular and Muslims in general are now physically and virtually connected to Europe and the US as never before. They may not approve of everything they see in the West, but they nevertheless are seeing how Western political institutions of freedom actually work.


4. Rise of oppressed groups

The emergence of hitherto oppressed interest groups cannot be reversed. Women, religious minorities, and even homosexuals remain highly vulnerable in the Middle East and North Africa. But such groups are gaining strength through organization. If you are a woman who has been raped, you are better off going to a women’s group than to your local despot. Feminism, in particular, has been one of the surprise winners of the past three years in Egypt.


5. Less US and European support

The attitudes of Americans and Europeans have changed. In the past, any despot in the region worth his salt understood how to present himself as strategically vital to Western interests. For better or for worse, that game is now almost over. Rulers who cannot credibly claim to have popular legitimacy can no longer count on being propped up by Washington, London, or Paris.

Significantly, the restored military regime in Egypt is counting on the Gulf states, not the US, to bankroll it. President Obama has canceled joint US-Egyptian military maneuvers. The minority of Americans who still care about the Arab Spring are urging him to go further. But even if he further cuts US aid to Egypt, it won’t make much difference. Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates can more than compensate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of “Infidel” and “Nomad.”

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To end Egypt's violence, a truce on Islamic fatwas

n many societies, religious individuals often feel competing loyalties between their faith and their government. The tension is usually resolved through law, elections, and other peaceful accommodations. Not so in today’s Egypt, center of the Arab world and home to rising violence over how to blend Islam and democracy.


In the three months since the Army ousted an elected government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt has seen pitched street battles with hundreds killed. Few people can predict when the violence will end or whether a divided nation will descend into civil war.

Yet the weapons of choice are not only bullets.

Both sides are using dueling fatwas in this struggle to define the nation’s identity. They are enlisting Islamic scholars to issue fatwas, religious edicts, favoring their respective causes.

The former grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, for example, was seen in a recent video telling soldiers, “When somebody comes who tries to divide you, then kill them, whoever they are,” according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, a popular Egyptian-born cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, issued a fatwa denouncing the removal of President Mohamed Morsi. He also called for foreign intervention, which led some in Al-Azhar University – the highest institutional authority in Sunni Islam – to cite him for “high treason.”

RELATED: 5 reasons the Arab Spring has not failed

Employing Islam for violence is usually the tactic of militant jihadists fighting the West. But in Egypt, the fatwa wars are pitting Muslim against Muslim. And in an odd twist, both sides want to either restore or improve the democracy that was begun after the 2011 revolution.

The military-controlled interim government is now drawing up a new constitution. It may decide to ban political parties with a “religious reference.” In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its remaining popularity in rural areas, has been outlawed. Most of its leaders are in jail.

Two-thirds of Egyptians say in a poll that they support the proposed ban, especially after witnessing the recent religious-tinged violence. The dueling fatwas are widely seen as a cynical play for power.

RELATED: How Coptic Christians can keep the Arab Spring fresh

Since the 2011 revolution and the Brotherhood’s heavy-handed tactics while it was in power, more Egyptians understand the need for rule of law, secular governance, and equality between the majority Muslims and minority faiths, notably Coptic Christians.

Islam’s spiritual demand for its followers to live in harmony with others can be the basis for Egypt to build a tolerant, inclusive democracy. Evoking religious edicts, either for violence or political gain, works against the goal of cooperation and progress in a diverse society.

Egyptians must sheath the sword of religion as they try again to fulfill the spirit of the Arab Spring and ensure the individual liberty of conscience and a fully representative government.

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Saving Islam from suicide bombs

One of Islam’s leading religious figures, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, spoke out against suicide bombings Thursday. It was not the first time that Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh has done so. But his words were particularly strong and very general.

The possible reason? Suicide bombings – by Muslims against Muslims – are roiling the Middle East.

The Saudi cleric said these suicide killings of civilians are “great crimes” against Islamic teachings. But he distinguished between the bombings and the bombers, saying the latter were “robbed of their minds” and used as tools “to destroy themselves and societies.”

Many more prominent Muslim leaders like Mr. Abdulaziz need to assert, frequently and forcefully, that Islam is a religion of peace – especially now. From Pakistan to Libya, various political events, such as the Iran nuclear deal and the sputtering Arab Spring, as well as shifts in the Syrian and Afghanistan wars, help account for a sharp uptick in suicide bombings.

On Dec. 5, for example, suicide bombers, many from Saudi Arabia, killed 56 people in Yemen. Iraq has seen more than 8,000 people killed this year, mainly by bombings. Suicide bombings are becoming more frequent in Syria as jihadists join the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

One particular attack on Nov. 19 shook the region. Two suicide bombers killed 18 people near Iran’s Embassy in Lebanon. The Al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The attack was seen as not only the spread of the Syrian conflict outside Syria but as a possible escalation of the contest for power between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi leaders fear an interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program may eventually give the Shiite clerics in Tehran more freedom to exert influence in the region. And the Iranian-backed regime in Damascus appears stronger in that country’s civil war.

Many things need to happen to curb the number of terrorists who abuse the name of Islam in murdering civilians. The Middle East needs more freedom, rights, and economic development. Force must be used to hit terrorist cells. Western troops must minimize their role in the region.

But the most effective tool lies with respected Muslim scholars who preach against suicide bombings.

Sheikh Maher Hammoud, a Sunni cleric in Lebanon, told Al-Akhbar news last month that Islamic clergy who justify suicide attacks “are pretenders who take bits and pieces of religious texts and issue fatwas that are suitable to them.” Other Muslim clerics, such as many in Yemen, are trying to reach young men who dream of being heroic martyrs for Islam. In Pakistan, prominent leaders of differing Muslim sects met Dec. 8 to promote interfaith harmony and tolerance. “The Holy Quran teaches the lesson of adopting the path of peace,” Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain told the group.

More Islamic leaders need to speak out.

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4 best holiday gift book ideas

1. "Sense and Sensibility: An Annotated Edition," edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks

If you haven't yet seen the Harvard University Press's annotated Jane Austen series, prepare yourself for a major treat. This year "Sense and Sensibility" joins the other novels – "Pride and Prejudice," "Persuasion," and "Emma" – already available. The books are gorgeous. Notes and commentary in the broad margins enlighten and enrich the text and offer historic context without interfering with the narrative flow. Illustrations are plentiful and include everything from an old engraving of the Theatre Royal in London's Drury Lane to a still from the Hugh Grant-Emma Thompson film version of the novel. Jane Austen lovers worldwide will cherish these books. (Harvard University Press, $35, 448 pp.)


2. "John Updike: The Collected Stories," edited by Christopher Carduff

Some John Updike fans argue that his short stories are the best way to truly understand this American master. Whether in agreement or not, it would be hard for any Updike enthusiast not to embrace "John Updike: The Collected Stories," a wonderful two-volume edition from the Library of America. The stories in the two books, which span 50 years, include the definitive versions – based on new archival research – of 186 Updike stories arranged in chronological order. More than a dozen of these stories have not been included in earlier Updike story collections and two have never before appeared in a trade book edition. Together with more familiar material, they make for wonderful reading. (Library of America, $75, 1872 pp.)


3. "The Economics Book," edited by Niall Kishtainy

From Aristotle to Adam Smith and well beyond, "The Economics Book" joins other volumes – "The Philosophy Book," "The Politics Book," "The Psychology Book," and "The Religions Book – in DK's marvelous "Big Ideas, Simply Explained" series. With colorful graphics and clear, simple explanations, everything from dependency theory to the Keynesian Multiplier suddenly becomes accessible. (DK Publishing, $25, 352 pp.)


4. "New Concise World Atlas," by Oxford University Press

Every civilized home, work space, and dorm room needs one. Oxford University's "New Concise World Atlas" includes more than 100 pages of the most up-to-date topographic and political maps, in addition to information on climate, population, area, and physical dimensions. It's a beautiful book capable of shining a light into every corner of our planet. (Oxford University Press, $39.95, 224 pp.)

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Comet ISON now an ex-comet, says NASA

Comet ISON sprang into public awareness shortly after its discovery, when its early brightening inspired hopes that it would blaze like the full moon. Quickly dubbed the "Comet of the Century," ISON continued its plunge from the Oort Cloud to the sun, but despite predictions, it failed to brighten much. It buzzed by Mars, where NASA's HiRISE observed it, then it passed through the orbits of all the inner planets before skimming the sun on Nov. 28.



Scientists were riveted. Would ISON's ices melt completely in the sun's heat? Would it get drawn in by the sun's gravity? Or – as amateur astronomers everywhere hoped – would it survive, achieve its early promise, and light up the sky?

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ISON got lost in the sun's glare, ultimately passing less than 1.2 million miles from the sun's surface. Even sun-observing instruments couldn't keep track of it at the most critical moment, since they block out the brightest part of the sun to protect their instruments.

Within hours, astronomers saw something faint emerge from the other side of the sun-blocking disk. Maybe ISON hadn't broken up completely? A glowing cloud continued ISON's parabolic path before dissipating so completely that it's now indistinguishable from interstellar dust, says NASA.

"We see the comet going in, and the object formerly known as ISON emerging from the other side," joked astrophysicist Karl Battams at a meeting of astronomers last week.

The Comet ISON post-mortem

"The comet essentially eroded to nothing," explains Zdenek Sekanina, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In fact, says Dr. Sekanina, ISON had ceased to exist as a comet even before it reached "perihelion," the moment of closest approach to the sun. So what happened to ISON, known to scientists as C/2012 S1?

Sekanina has monitored the comet closely for months, comparing it to past comets to try to understand its behavior..

As ISON swept through our solar system, it passed through four or five "cycles" of brightening and dimming, he found. Each cycle corresponded to a source of some ice (or a mixture of ices) sublimating into gas. First was probably carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide, he says, converting from dry ice to gas. Then came other ices in turn, until the most stable, water ice, began to turn to water vapor around the time ISON crossed the orbit of Mars.

By mid-November, the nucleus – the "dirty snowball" of ices, dust, and rock that make up the core of the comet's glowing head – had started to fragment severely, says Sekanina. "Parts of the interior became exposed to sunlight," he says, accelerating the rate of ISON's demise. By Nov. 21, one week before perihelion, scientists recorded a huge increase in water vapor production. "At that point," he says, "the nucleus was fragmented into multiple pieces."

Within a few days, all the water vapor and other gases had burned off, he says. With no volatiles left to sacrifice to the sun's heat, the comet began to vaporize its smallest dust fragments and disintegrate into boulders, pebbles, and dust.


I'd call this the advanced phase of fragmentation," says Sekanina.

"From 3.5 days before perihelion to 3.5 hours before perihelion – that is the time during which, apparently, (the comet experienced) a very intensive fragmentation of the really, really last stuff that remained in the nucleus," he says. And then the fragmentation stopped.

"There was nothing, afterwards," he says. "That was the end of comet activity. The end of fragmentation... After that point, nothing in the comet can change its state."

Comets are constantly changing – growing, shrinking, vaporizing, consolidating – so once nothing "changeable" remained, it stopped being a comet, says Sekanina.

"It was over. About three and a half hours before perihelion, that's it. What you see afterwards is inert fragments and dust. They can be subjected to processes from the sun and corona, sure, but the comet was dead."

Inertia demanded that the "dead" fragments continue on their path around the sun, prompting the term "zombie comet."

With the gases burned away, there was nothing to hold the head of the comet in its typical ball shape, he says. "The sunward tip got ever sharper, indicating that whatever was coming out of the remnant of the the nucleus had no velocity and was subjected only to solar light pressure."

The nose of the comet lengthened into an increasingly sharp needle, made up of the rocks and boulders that were too big to evaporate.

"That's why, one to two hours before perihelion, you see this very faint, narrow extension from the tip," says Sekanina.

And then the comet skimmed through the sun's corona and emerged, continuing to glow in the sunlight, but no longer the master of its own fate. "Comet ISON is dead," announced Dr. Battams at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "Its memory will live on." NASA says scientists will continue to mine the data obtained from the "unprecedented" number of space-based, ground-based, and amateur observations of ISON during its final months.

Battams, an astrophysics with the Naval Observatory, wrote an obituary for the comet, ending with these words: "Survived by approximately several trillion siblings, Comet ISON leaves behind an unprecedented legacy for astronomers, and the eternal gratitude of an enthralled global audience. In ISON's memory, donations are encouraged to your local astronomy club, observatory, or charity that supports STEM and science outreach programs for children."

Rest in peace, ISON.

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With 'American Hustle,' David O. Russell closes a chapter

Film trilogies these days tend to be epic, “Hobbit”-like affairs, the mythology of one film quite literally picked up and furthered in the next, and often in a world not exactly resembling our own.
But trilogies also sometimes come in more subtle flavors, as in the case of David O Russell, whose new film "American Hustle," about cons and criminals in 1970s New Jersey, opens Friday after a whirlwind few weeks of taste maker laurels.

After making just one film over a span of 11 years, Russell has now made three films in the last 36 months. starting with the boxing drama "The Fighter" in 2010 and continuing with the mental-health dramedy "Silver Linings Playbook" in 2012. Perhaps because they were all made during such a short period, these films form a cohesive whole, playing on the same themes of survival, redemption and reinvention—and, more specifically, asking what makes someone finally decide to make a change after years of unhealthy routine.

In “The Fighter,” Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward has been squeezed for much of his adult life by his domineering mother and his needy brother; it takes some new people and events for him to seize control and start living up to his boxing potential. In “Silver Linings,” Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) has a similar problem—coping with bipolar disorder for much of his life. He can’t seem to get out of his own way, let alone out from under the thumb of his dysfunctional parents. It takes some specific elements—namely, the specific Jennifer Lawrence—to motivate some change.

And in "Hustle," Bale's con-man Irv Rosenfeld believes he’s taking control of his life by becoming a huckster and avoiding the fate of his pushover father. Over the course of the film, a series of schemes gone wrong and other developments convince him, after years of comfortable conning, to take control in a different way.

All of this is no accident. Russell, as Cooper told The Times, “wears his heart on his sleeve,” has been eager to put his own story into these movies. And his own story is similarly one in which he needed a precipitating factor to force change.

As Russell told The Times in an interview, "Each one of the people in these movies begins in a place where their lives are in shambles," Russell explained. "They don't know if they want to be who they are or if they want to live as they are. And that's how I felt back before these movies."

After suffering through a divorce, indecision, anger and a general lack of direction, particularly around the production of 2004’s “I Heart Huckabees,” he had lost his way. It took discovering and then adapting a novel by Matthew Quick called “Silver Linings Playbook,” which resonated with him because of his own bipolar-afflicted son, for him to get on a new road.

Much of the fun of the three movies—and like any good trilogy, they are better appreciated when watched in succession,, their connective tissue made more apparent—involves the all-in humor Russell is known for, from the dance scene concluding "Silver Linings" to the sisterly hair-pull fight in "The Fighter," and now, the  spirited squabbling among Rosenfeld, his girlfriend and an FBI agent.

The trio of films also mix and match cast in interesting ways, In “Fighter” Bale is the drag on the hero; in “American Hustle," he’s being dragged. Bradley Cooper reverses the trajectory—in his first Russell film he’s the one trying to break out, while in “Hustle, he’s the impediment in many ways to the evolution of the central character.

Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, who serve as key cast members in "Hustle" also cleverly play off roles from their previous movies--Adams again is the strong-willed girlfriend motivator, while Lawrence is the quirky, unlucky-in-love big personality.)

The result is an even greater feeling that all of these films are of a piece, as though for all the specificity of their stories, characters and  actors are interchangeable. Think of it as one epic movie in three chapters, with different actors playing  different roles depending on which chapter you happen to find yourself.

Russell hasn’t decided what his next movie might be. He has a Kennedy assassination film in development that could well fit the bill. That would seem to take him in a new thematic direction. Then again, as we know from Hollywood tentpoles, trilogies can often morph into fourquels.


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-american-hustle-david-russell-jennifer-lawrence-20131213,0,6606976.story#ixzz2nQE0ABv9

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FILM REVIEW: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Where The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey felt a bit like molasses, its sequel is a fast-paced, action-packed return to J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy world of dungeons, dragons and dwarves, says CBC film reviewer Eli Glasner.

As arrows fly and heads roll in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, it feels like director Peter Jackson is finally enjoying himself — especially with the frenetic and fantastic action sequences.

As the tale returns to the titular Bilbo Baggins, wizard Gandalf, dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield and their merry band, a few new faces also join the fray.

Fair-haired elven prince Legolas (Orlando Bloom of The Lord of The Rings trilogy) turns up along with fellow elf warrior Tauriel, a controversial addition (created by Jackson and Fran Walsh) portrayed by Alberta's Evangeline Lilly. The female elf brings some spunk to The Hobbit boys' club, Glasner says.

Watch Glasner's review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in the attached video (shot in the tunnels of Toronto's Casa Loma).

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Is food the future of entrepreneurial Japan?

TOKYO
In 2008, Tokyo-based entrepreneur Takako Endo partnered with a struggling rice cracker factory in the Niigata prefecture of northern Japan. Her plan: reinterpret traditional Japanese rice crackers with contemporary flavors and packaging, then resell them online to a younger, hipper crowd.


“I wanted people to enjoy our product at a party, as something you could serve with cheese,” she says.

Five years later, the resulting company, Twhy Twhy, has set up permanent shops in Japan and expanded its online business into other parts of Asia. In 2013, Ms. Endo was named one of the winners of Nikkei’s Woman of the Year, an award that recognizes the achievements of Japanese women in business. Her success is impressive, but it’s also rare: Endo spent years struggling in Japan’s stifling startup environment to grow her business. In last year’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a survey ranking the entrepreneurial activity of 24 developed nations, Japan tied for dead last.

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Now, Japan’s leaders are determined to fix that. Improving Japan’s entrepreneurial spirit is a main tenet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ambitious set of economic reforms, known as “Abenomics.” Proposed changes include loosening the strict business lending standards of banks and allocating about $200 million in government funds to encourage and aid women who want to start businesses.

The plan faces obstacles both economic and cultural. Venture capital is scarce in Japan, and bank loans often hinge on personal guarantees that don’t generally exist with a new company.

“It’s a huge contradiction, because in order to borrow money from the bank, you have to have a stable business” says Endo,  who started Twhy Twhy with about $2,000 of her own savings and was only approved for a loan for setting up a store in a subway station on Tokyo’s venerable JR Line. “It’s a chicken or the egg thing.”

Furthermore, an aversion to failure largely steers Japan’s workers into large, established companies. Endo worked at a bank and a luxury real estate firm in the years before she struck out on her own.

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Then there’s the bureaucracy. Endo haunted the local city government’s office in her Tokyo district in Twhy Twhy's early days, navigating a complicated permit process and asking so many questions that she was soon on a first name basis with the head of the legal department.

Japan’s startup culture used to be strong, spawning huge corporations like Sony and Panasonic out of tiny businesses, points out Yuji Genda, a sociology professor at the University of Tokyo who has written extensively on job market issues facing Japanese young people. It’s hard to pinpoint one cause for the decline, he argues, but the self-employed sector of the workforce started to decrease rapidly in the 1980s, and the 1998 stock market crash made the general financial environment more cautious. “I would like to see an increase in people who would be their own bosses and enter into the world of social entrepreneurship, but I think the fear of failure still exists,” he says.

What’s more, there might be cultural issue that government can’t fix, he says. “When starting a business it is key that you capitalize on what we call weak ties,” a loose network of acquaintances with different backgrounds and experiences that can lend perspective and diversity to a nascent company. “However, traditionally, Japanese business has always focused on the strong ties, meaning people with the same backgrounds, education, and information.

“These people in your strong tie network give you stability, but when starting a business you need inspiration,” he adds. “You need tips and hints from people. Unless society shifts from a society that only capitalizes on strong ties to one that also uses weak ties, we cannot have new businesses flourish.”

But if Twhy Twhy and other Japanese entrepreneurial ventures are any indication, the intersection of food and e-commerce could be fertile ground for aspiring business owners.

“There are a lot of food problems in Japan,” says Kohey Takashima, founder of an online delivery service for organic and natural food called Oisix. “ For example, the supply chain in our food industry in Japan is so long, and the producer and the consumer are very far apart.  So it’s difficult to get information [on your food]. By using the Internet we can connect the producer and consumer directly.”

Founded in 2000, Oisix now clears about $126 million in annual sales. In 2008, the startup won a Porter Prize, which recognizes outstanding Japanese businesses, and this past March, it went public.

Japan’s $1.4 billion organic and natural food market is still relatively small. The Japanese buy only 5 percent of the organic food that Americans do even though they’re equal to 40 percent of the US population. But about half of Japan’s organic fruits and vegetables are sold online, suggesting that the country is much more open to the virtual grocery shopping experience than Americans, who buy only 3.3 percent of all their food online.

In addition to the growth possibilities, online companies have much lower startup costs than other businesses do. Plus, like online gaming, another attractive avenue for Japanese entrepreneurs, food commerce doesn’t depend on science and research developments often dominated by the nation’s major technology firms.

Larger companies have started to catch on to the organics trend. Last year DoCoMo, a telecommunications giant, acquired Radishbo-ya Co., one of Oisix’s larger competitors. Supermarket chain Lawson recently entered into a shareholding partnership with Daichi wo Mamoru Ka, another similar company.

For their part, Mr. Takashima and Endo are looking to expand their businesses overseas. Endo soon hopes to open a permanent Twhy Twhy shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and has been exporting limited amounts to France and Australia. Oisox has its sights set on expanding throughout Asia and into the United States.

“I know that in the US organic food is huge in the real market,” Takashima says. “However, not so in the online market. So I think there is a real opportunity for us there.”

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Pint-size parks: Los Angeles turns parking spaces to 'parklets'

LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles sees itself as a city of cars and cutting-edge trends. People here like to drive convertibles and set styles, not follow them.

It’s no coincidence, they say, that the word “pedestrian” has two meanings (a person who travels on foot/lacking in vitality, prosaic, or dull.) So the local boosters are saying that, even though Los Angeles didn’t invent the idea, the fact that the city of cars is now embracing mini-pedestrian oases on auto turf is, at least, a unexpected stretch.

They’re talking about “parklets” – that is, morphing parking spaces back into green spaces by exchanging cement for grass, benches, exercise equipment, table games, or all of the above. Invented in San Francisco at least four years ago, the idea has spread to Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities.

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Los Angeles put in four this year, did a study, and now is tweaking the concept for at least 12 more – as a way to revitalize a key neighborhood that went from chic to Detroitian during the Great Recession: Westwood, the gateway to UCLA. Despite the creation of a business improvement district – with sidewalk upgrades and litter pickup – the area has had problems keeping businesses in its storefronts.

“I love the fact that you can simply take a break here on the street, sit down and have your lunch or read a paper, and it’s not tied to anyone’s restaurant or bookstore,” says Steven Foosan, who recently purchased a condo on downtown’s traffic-choked Spring Street to get in on the fast-gentrifying neighborhood. “This gives the block a real community feeling,” he says.

The parklet he’s talking about has a foosball table, exercise bikes, and redwood seats with glass-tile mosaic backing. Up the street is another. In other communities – El Sereno and Highland Park – are spaces with planters, decks, hanging twinkle lights and more.

Rita Rivers wishes they had a few in Sherman Oaks. “My son wants to know why we have to drive all the way to a park, just so I can stop holding him on my lap,” says the mother of three preschoolers.

Most say the idea really got going because of San Francisco's Pavement to Parks program, a collaboration between the city planning department and a number of other municipal agencies, including the mayor's office. One technique that helped publicize that effort was by Rebar, a group of environmental activists who declared and staged regular “(PARK)ing days” in which participants brought sod, trees, benches and encouraged the public to feed the parking meters.

They also held similar days in Cleveland, Sao Paulo, London, and Glasgow.

Several analysts say the trend is continuing to take hold as more people become aware of what parklets are, and civic entities devise procedures to set them up.

“Parklets are ways to individualize and humanize crowded urban spaces to create a personalized locally functional and desirable infrastructure,” says Mark Stapp, professor of Professor of Real Estate Practice at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in Tempe.

The phenomenon may be the reflection of the activist, millennial generation rather than baby boomers.

“This is a young person’s movement,” says Don Biederman, whose firm, Biederman Redevelopment Corporation, has been contracted to design parklets in seven states. Parklets he has designed in New York’s Herald Square have become staging grounds for miniconcerts that have gone viral on YouTube.

“[Young people] are the ones who have really realized how gray and overcrowded our cities have become and have the energy to pursue this as an antidote," he adds.

Other cities are trying to follow the parklets model, often starting out with a pilot project for assessment. Los Angeles just finished an 18-month trial period and the findings are positive, which analysts say should give the idea another nudge.

“This model has been growing as it moves from city to city,” says Madeline Brozen, the program director for the Complete Streets Initiative at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs. After beginning an 18-month pilot project with grant money, the school has just released findings in a best-practices manual that it hopes can be of use to other cities.

“When San Francisco began, there wasn’t a permitting process for this,” she says. Concerns about loss of parking revenue – one of the most oft-heard objections to converting parking spaces to parklets – were largely overblown, according to study findings. And there is a disconnect between how merchants think their customers arrive – on foot or by car. They apparently have thought that more people come by car than actually do.

But not everyone seems thrilled with the idea. The Boston Globe just three weeks ago opined, “Parklets need rethinking before next rollout.”

“Parklets are supposed to bring a sense of whimsy and spontaneity to a city, but despite a reported investment of $15,000 to $25,000 per parklet, the spaces have found few users in Boston. They may be too close to traditional parks, or too oddly designed. In Jamaica Plain, the arching benches in one parklet offer more adventure to skateboarders than comfort for a conversation.”

That point is not lost on planners here.

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who teaches a course at the Luskin School here, says one great appeal of the parklets is that they can be driven by the community who wants them, rather than the city, which is behind most other public parks. Her students have offered officials in Westwood no fewer than a dozen different designs, some including provisions for WiFi and computer/phone outlets.

The pilot study also showed that parklets seem to work best in front of restaurants and cafes and not regular retail space.  And they don’t have to be designed solely out of parking spaces. They can be made from traffic triangles at intersections as well as the island space in wide boulevards.

Overall, the findings seem to indicate that with the proper input and tweaking, people seem to be warming to the idea.

“This is true for parklets, it’s true for bike lanes, it’s true for bus lanes – it’s true for any innovation in the transportation world,” Vineet Gupta, the Transportation Department’s planning director, told The Boston Globe. “Initially, you don’t see the kind of use that one would hope, but things pick up.”

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Arizona meteor totally unrelated to tonight's eye-popping Geminids

Two things are true: (1) A "fireball" meteor lit up Arizona skies Tuesday night. (2) The most dramatic meteor shower of the year is expected to peak tomorrow night. But despite their coincidental timing, they have nothing to do with each other.


By all accounts, the Arizona fireball meteor was impressive, flaming orange-red and delivering a sonic boom or two that rattled windows and prompted more than one "What was that?!"

The fireball was unrelated to the Geminid meteor shower, a large and impressive meteor shower that has been known to include fireballs and other dazzling light displays. Think of it like this: Not all the drivers on the road at 6 p.m. are commuters. Some are long-haul truckers, some are unemployed people running errands, and some are lost tourists.

How can scientists be so sure that the fireball isn't related? "It's pretty easy," says Bill Cooke, a meteor scientist with NASA. "We rule it out on speed and direction."

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Tuesday night's fireball passed by two meteor cameras, says Dr. Cooke, enabling scientists to measure the speed and the direction of its motion. "A Geminid would appear to be coming from the constellation of Gemini – hence the name, Geminid – and it would also be moving 35 kilometers per second (78,000 miles per hour). The Arizona fireball, when it hit the top of the atmosphere, was not coming from the constellation of Gemini. It was coming from a radiant north of that constellation, and it was moving only 20 kilometers per second (45,000 m.p.h.), so that automatically meant it was not a Geminid."

On any given night, you can expect to see five to eight meteors per hour, says Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. Those make up the "sporadic background," unrelated to any meteor shower. Arizona's fireball was one of those, he says.

Meteor showers deliver a much busier sky. At its peak Friday night and Saturday morning, the Geminids will average 100 to 120 meteors per hour, though the nearly-full moon will hide the fainter ones this year.

"It'll still be a very good show," says Cooke. "Our meteor cameras depicted at least 15 bright meteors – almost fireballs – last night, and we're still a night away from the peak." He recommends heading out after 4 a.m., when the moon sets, for the best observing.

Meteor showers occur when Earth's orbit passes through the breadcrumb trail left behind a by comet. (Well, most meteor showers. Maybe not the Geminids. We'll get back to that in a second.) The glowing tail that gives comets their distinctive look is full of gases and bits of dust and rock splintering off from the comet's central nucleus.


Meteor showers start with only a few extra meteors per hour, as Earth passes through the outer edge of the debris trail, then ramp up to the "peak" observation time, when we're in the thickest part of the trail, and then taper off again. This year, the peak will happen overnight Dec. 13-14. During the peak, Cooke and a team of NASA astronomers will host an overnight web chat from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EDT.

When Earth passes through these cometary leftovers, they burn a path through our atmosphere. Most completely vaporize before they hit the ground, but those few that do reach the surface leave meteorites, brown or black rocks as old as the solar system itself.

"Most meteor shower events, we don't expect to see material fall all the way to the ground," says Meenakshi Wadhwa, who directs the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. Of the 50-100 tons of space debris that Earth encounters each day, she says, only a tiny percentage will make it to the surface.

But she still loves to watch them fall, she says. "These are materials from outer space, leaving a trail through the atmosphere, so that's a spectacular thing to watch."

So, do the Geminids fit the cometary origin story for meteor showers? It's not entirely clear. The Geminids are fragments from an object named "3200 Phaethon," which has some cometary characteristics but has the composition of an asteroid.

"We don't think of asteroids as objects that shed off materials like this," says Dr. Wadhwa.

Cooke says, "3200 Phaethon is an interesting object. It seems to show comet-like activity when it's close to the sun, but dynamically it appears to be an asteroid. It's kind of funny."

Wadhwa describe 3200 Phaethon as a "transitional object ... that you can't put cleanly into the box marked 'asteroids' or 'comets.' It's something in between."

Cooke says, "It's possible that the Geminids are the result of the breakup of Phaethon some time in the past, or a collision between Phaethon and another object, and what we call the Geminids are the debris of that collision that the earth encounters every year."

But whatever their origin, he adds, "The Geminids are the generally best show of the year. If you can, go out – bundle up! – and take a look at them."

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Obama's Syria policy is pretty much dead, and there are few good options

That it was on life support has been clear for a long time. But with the routing of the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) from its headquarters recently by Islamist rebel fighters, the plug should be pulled.

The US can insist that its suspension of non-lethal aid (and a trickle of weapons) to the FSA via a group called the Supreme Military Council (SMC) is temporarily all it wants, but the momentum now belongs to Islamist rebels who are as hostile to US interests as they are to those of Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, Assad's military has won a series of victories around Damascus and Syria's second city, Aleppo, and its evolving alliance with the Lebanese Shiite military Hezbollah has strengthened both sides.

What precisely happened is a subject of some dispute. US officials, behind veils of anonymity, told reporters yesterday that the recently created Islamic Front – representing a variety of rebel units all interested in imposing the Sunni version of Islamic law on Syria – had overrun the more secular and Western-leaning headquarters of the FSA. The Islamic Front also seized a storehouse filled with US-supplied telecommunications equipment, field rations, and medicine, as well as weapons.

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The claim was that FSA chief Gen. Salim Idris had been forced to flee to Qatar – a humiliating exit for a rebel leader touted by US officials as the commander of the armed Syrian rebellion.

Today, the exiled politicians in the Syrian National Council, a US-backed civilian group, claimed that the Islamic Front had actually come to the FSA's rescue. The US has sought since last year to put this council forward as the "legitimate representative" of the Syrian people.  Its spokesman, Khaled Saleh, said that the FSA's base was overrun by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a rival Islamist group to the Islamic Front that sprung out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Reuters reports. The Islamic Front was then invited in by the FSA, and drove out ISIS, Saleh said. Are we clear so far?

Maybe that's the way it happened, but the dramatically different stories told by the US and the US-favored Syrian opposition are not very reassuring. The disputed events near the Turkish border were said to have taken place over the weekend.

The Syrian National Council has often been touted as an umbrella for most of the Syrian rebellion's fighting strength (for instance by Elizabeth O'Bagy, a paid advocate for US intervention in Syria who lost her job earlier this after she was found to have lied about her academic credentials). However, in practice it has represented the FSA and little else – and not very effectively.

Fred Hof, who previously served as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special representative on Syria, writes this week that in the absence of the kinds of guns and money that have been provided to Islamist groups by Gulf sponsors like Saudi Arabia (Hof doesn't name them), rebel units have been abandoning the FSA in droves.

Recent events have highlighted the extent to which respectable Syrian nationalists in the opposition have been sidelined, and the recent suspension of non-lethal assistance to the Free Syrian Army by the United States further attests to this reality. Fighters affiliated with the recently formed Islamic Front—a coalition of armed, non-al-Qaeda Syrian Islamist groups opposed to the Assad regime—recently seized some US-supplied, non-lethal materiel from the Free Syrian Army. Personnel of the Islamic Front can now dine on meals-ready-to-eat and communicate with one another using equipment paid for by US taxpayers. General Salim Idris, the very capable officer through whom the United States wanted all weaponry and equipment for the armed Syrian opposition funneled, has seen forces he had hoped to command migrate to Islamist formations whose sponsors and supporters deliver arms, ammunition, and money, as opposed to rations, medical kits, radios, and pickup trucks. The Coalition-affiliated Supreme Military Council and the disparate units of the Free Syrian Army loosely associated with it are now essentially out of business

"Now essentially out of business." If Mr. Hof is right, and there's very little reason to disagree with his assessment, pulling back together whatever strands of the FSA are left will be very, very hard. The temporary suspension of US aid will make it harder for what remains of its units to hang together. Moreover, a weaker FSA may mean that whatever US aid does go to Syria ends up in the hands of rebel fighters who are hostile to US interests.

Furthermore, the claim today that the FSA teamed up with the Islamic Front to stand up to the Al Qaeda-affiliated ISIS won't exactly give US officials the warm and fuzzies. The front's units have engaged in hyper-sectarian rhetoric and are opposed to any kind of political settlement that would leave in place Syria's current power structure – the only real hope for a negotiated end to the war at this point.

A negotiated end is what Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama have insisted is the only way out of the war, but the marginalization of men like Idris makes any grounds for meaningful talks even shakier than they'd been all along.

What are the options going forward for a real US strategy in Syria – where the conflict continues to cast a shadow of destabilization over Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and to some extent Turkey? None particularly obvious.

Direct military involvement is so unlikely as to not worth being considered. A major outreach to the non-Al Qaeda Islamists, coupled with a major diplomatic effort to convince the Saudis to arm-twist their clients into compromise? Perhaps that's a way forward – though it would mean the US is supporting a group that is pushing Sunni hegemony in Syria, a country with meaningful Christian, Shiite, and Alawite minorities. The US government's mantra of support for democracy would seem to preclude that.

What else? No good options are left. In retrospect, the US might have held its nose and armed moderate rebels that could stand up to the Islamist armies. But the rebels friendly to US interests were never very obvious or well organized. The notion of a national level "Free Syrian Army" with meaningful command and control at anything beyond the local level has been mostly aspirational. As I wrote in May:

Put simply, the Syrian opposition has not come together in the way the US had hoped – not in its military composition, which now involves a lot of fellow  travelers from a regional Al Qaeda affiliate, nor on the international diplomatic front, which is fraught with infighting and doubt about the worth of a conference far from the battlefield.

Meanwhile, members of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah continue to pour into Syria to fight for Assad, with Iranian and Russian military support for the regime lurking in the background.

Seven months on, a policy that was clearly in the process of failing has failed. And coming up with a new approach more suited to reality on the ground has only gotten harder – even as the bodies mount, and the refugees continue to flee.

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'Knack' adds family-friendly wonder to PS4 launch

Sony doesn’t have a colourful plumber as its family-friendly games mascot, so for a character to launch the new PlayStation 4 it built a golem made up of little stone relics. So, here we are with Knack, an oddly-shaped monster that represents the company’s first new franchise in this eighth-generation of consoles – and the game is a solid initial effort, despite it being a little long and rather hard.

The game is a clever fusion of Crash Bandicoot-style platforming and cartoonish visuals and God of War-ish brawling. Players progress linearly through caves, castles and secret hideouts, fighting a host of varying enemies along the way. The camera doesn’t move – this is a tunnel game that shoots players in one end and out the other. That, and its charming animation, made me think a little of Skylanders.

It’s also gorgeously rendered, making it a fine showcase for what the PS4 is capable of graphically. Many elements are simply spectacular: Rock-faces pop with three-dimensional texture, crystal surfaces glitter and cloud formations look positively dreamy.

The story starts with a goblin army declaring war on humanity. But these aren’t “ordinary” goblins – somehow they have guns and tanks. In organizing its defence, mankind’s generals are taking suggestions. One industrialist proposes his robots as a solution, but his offer is trumped by a scientist who shows off a unique discovery – a magical creature made up of stones who can alter his size by absorbing more found relics.

With the hopes of the species pinned on his shape-shifting shoulders, the eponymous Knack sets out to repel the goblin invaders and find out how they came to be in possession of such advanced weapons in the first place.

Knack basically punches his way through the game, with things changing up depending on his size. He often starts out tiny, beating up on relatively simple enemies like beetles and scorpions. Relics are strewn throughout each level, though, which means he inevitably gets bigger. As he ramps up in size, so too do his opponents. Eventually, he’s stomping through cities like Godzilla while fighting big bomb-tossing robots and menacing tanks.

The game keeps things amazingly varied for most of its length, with Knack often having to change size several times in each chapter. Just as he can add new relics to his girth, he sometimes also has to shed them in order to fit through a doorway or to activate a special gate.

Helping with the variation is an incredibly large array of enemies to beat on. Some use projectile weapons, others charge forward with swords or hammers while still others hide behind force fields. The combinations of different bad guy types means that no two battles are alike.

Knack is aided in his quest by sun stones, a kind of crystal that powers up his three magical attacks: distance projectiles, a devastating whirlwind and a powerful ground pound. He has to depend more on his magic abilities when he’s small and relatively weak, but they also come in handy when he’s significantly outnumbered – which is often. He also gets more help when he discovers that he can absorb ice crystals, wood shards and metal fragments to become a sort of Super Knack at times.

Despite all that, the game is hard – sometimes punishingly so – even on medium difficulty, since it only takes a few hits on Knack to force a checkpoint restart. Younger kids are better off starting on easy difficulty. Better yet, they may want to play co-operatively, where the second player controls a smaller Knack who can act as cannon fodder. His death doesn’t force a restart, so his presence in the game can be invaluable. Knack also gathers pieces of various power-up devices hidden across the levels, such as a relic detector, which makes subsequent playthroughs easier.

While I was amazed by how much variety the game packs into such a relatively simple premise, it does go on way too long for what it is. Knack clocks in at more than a dozen hours, I ran out of steam about three-quarters of the way through – though children may stretch those hours across several days of short-interval play time.

It may have benefited from a shorter length and an easing up on the difficulty, but otherwise it’s not a bad first entry in what is sure to be a kid-friendly franchise going forward on the PS4.

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'Ryse: Son of Rome' is a Trojan horse with no surprises inside

Why is Ryse: Son of Rome spelled with a “y” and not an “i?” Playing through the game we learn there is no functional reason for the odd spelling. I guess the “y” just looks so much cooler, which actually tells us a lot about this game: It looks cool, but it’s bereft of any reason – or fun, for that matter. (The reason for the “y” is probably less fun too, developer Crytek used similar mispellings in its other game series, “Crysis.”)


This Xbox One launch game is intended to be an epic action-adventure saga set in – where else? – ancient Rome. For lack of a better description, it’s Microsoft’s attempt at a more realistic version of rival Sony’s highly successful mythological God of War series. But where the PlayStation’s brawler games have been inventive and varied in the action and scenarios they’ve thrown at players, Ryse is a monotonous drone that keeps pounding the same one note over its 10-hour-or-so campaign.

It might not be so bad if there were other, interesting trappings surrounding the repetitive gameplay, but that’s not the case. The beautifully rendered Roman landmarks – the Coliseum, the aqueducts – are just there to look at, not explore, because Ryse is one of the most linear and tightly scripted games in recent memory. And that’s too bad, because I would have really liked to spend more time in such a gorgeously rendered world – the Xbox One’s graphics really shine in this game. Yet Ryse’s sole reason for existence is to funnel players into swordfight after swordfight, which gets pretty dull around hour five.

The tale begins with a barbarian attack on Rome, governed by the Emperor Nero. Marius, a gravel-voice centurion with a troubled past, must defend the city and his emperor. Cue the framed narrative as the two first interact and we’re taken into the protagonist’s past, where we learn of his family’s fate and how he came to be a centurion.

At the risk of hinting at spoilers, if you know anything about Roman history, you know that Nero was among the dodgiest of emperors. So yeah, the story is going to take some predictable turns.

Speaking of which, the awful dialogue is cribbed from pretty much every equally awful action movie in the sword-and-sandals genre. When Marius grunts clichéd inspirational speeches to his troops, it’s very reminiscent of the movie 300 except there’s a lot of “Romans!” yelled instead of “Spartans!”

For reasons never fully explained, some of the Romans come to believe that Marius is Damocles himself, a character from Greek myth who served to illustrate the immense pressure that rulers must often live with. Even with this twist, Marius never becomes a character we want to care about. The relationship between Nero and Marius is instead all about simplistic vengeance.

The story veers into nonsensicality as mythology comes to life later in the game. Some gods get involved, although I have to admit to not understanding who they were or their motivations. All I know is that at several points in the game, a glowing goddess of some sort appears to help Marius onward by speaking the sage words, “Rise, son of Rome!” (Or is it “Ryse, son of Rome?”)

Just about all of the playable action is based on the sort of timing-based fights made most famous by the Batman Arkham games, where the key to taking on large numbers of opponents lies in countering their attacks just right. The basic twist on the formula here is that, after a few hits, the player can launch into colourful executions, which frequently involve disembowelment and severed limbs. It is indeed really cool the first few times, but by number 4,000… not so much.

The executions are accomplished through well-disguised quick-time events. The fight goes into slow-motion for a second or two, during which you have to hit the correct button to continue. Each execution is usually comprised of three or four such chained moves. If you miss the QTEs, the enemy still dies but you don’t get as much of a bonus.

In that vein (no pun intended), you get four bonuses to choose from in between executions, which can be quickly selected with the D-pad. Marius can opt to refill his health, get more experience points, fill his focus meter or cause extra damage. Experience points are spent on upgrading skills and execution moves, while the focus meter lets him unleash a ground-pound attack that stuns enemies.

I fully upgraded every possible execution move, but boredom still creeps in thanks to the sheer number of murderous takedowns you perform over the course of the game. Even worse are the disappointing dual executions, where you can take out two enemies at once. Expecting something really cool, I went through the trouble of whittling down a pair of opponents and then manoeuvring myself in between them. When I hit the execute button, I was shocked to see that Marius simply took one down with a simple thrust, then went ahead with a plain, old regular execution on the other. Talk about your letdowns.

The action does get spiced up a bit with a few sequences in which you man a ballista or lead a line of troops under a shield wall. Both had promise, but both settle into monotony. On the ballista, you simply keep blasting enemies with giant bolts until the time limit expires, while in the shield column you just keep crawling forward until you get close enough to ranks of enemy archers, whereupon you have your troops skewer them with spears.

Ryse also features a multiplayer mode, although it’s more of the same stuff found in the single-player campaign. Two players can team up to fight waves of enemies in an arena. But by the time I was done the solo story, I’d had more than enough of this sort of thing.

Ryse: Son of Rome is perhaps the best example of the worst kind of next-generation game: one that tries to get by solely on its gorgeous good looks. It’s not a bad game, per se, and it’s certainly a nice showcase for the Xbox One’s eye candy, but there just isn’t anything interesting going on underneath the shiny veneer of the Eternal City of Rome.

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Poor and vulnerable, Syrian refugee families push girls into early marriage

Some refugees in Jordan are selling daughters into illegal 'protection marriages,' often with much older men. Sexual exploitation and abandonment are key concerns.




AMMAN, JORDAN
Sara has stopped listening to news from her hometown, Homs, one of the most heavily bombarded cities in Syria’s civil war. Instead, the 17-year-old waits for word of her husband, Fuad, a Saudi national 25 years her senior.


Last October, Fuad paid her family a hefty dowry of 4,000 Jordanian Dinars ($5,600). He then brought her from the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border to live with him in the capital, Amman. After their desperate flight from Syria, a better life, he promised, awaited her and her family in Saudi Arabia.

But after just a month and half, Fuad left without a word, disconnected his Jordanian cellphone, and left the family “alone here, suffering poverty and neglect,” says Sara’s mother, Arij.

Since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, more than 1.2 million refugees have poured into neighboring countries, of whom 70 percent are women and children, according to UN estimates. Also showing up in refugee centers: Arab men on the hunt for child brides.

Aid workers and refugees say that vulnerable teenage women are at risk of sexual exploitation under the pretense of marriage. These marriages are often not consensual, lack legal standing, and can lead to abandonment­–as in Sara’s case–or far worse outcomes, including forced prostitution.

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But, as the war rages on in Syria, many displaced families have married off their daughters early, either in the belief that it can protect them from rape, or to “cover” the disgrace of past sexual abuse both during the conflict and in the camps.

Early marriage, as young as 14, is common in rural Syria, where many of Jordan’s refugees hail from. However, the average age has slightly dropped since their arrival, according to a UN Women survey.  With that drop, comes higher risk for sexual abuse, experts say.

In Syria, rape has been used as a weapon of war to terrorize civilians, says Lauren Wolfe, director of Women under Siege, an organization in New York that maps sexual violence in Syria.  In a report released in January by the International Rescue Committee, refugees in Jordan and Lebanon cited the fear of public armed assault or gang rape, often staged in front of family members, as their primary reason for fleeing.

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“There’s so much stress, and a lot of that violence is coming out toward women,” says Ms. Wolfe.  She says that high levels of sexual violence and exploitation exist in Syria, and refugees are facing the  threat once again in camps and in squalid neighborhoods in neighboring Jordan.

Hospitality fades

With a daily influx of Syrians, hospitality and resources in Jordan are starting to wear thin. Zaatari alone houses some 160,000 refugees, the world’s second-largest camp and now the fourth-largest city in Jordan, a country of 6.5 million. The total number of Syrians in Jordan is put at 500,000, with many of those living outside the camps and often working illegally.

UN-run refugee camps like Zaatari are largely unpoliced.  Girls are terrified of venturing out to unlit bathrooms at night, says Bushra, a widow and mother of four from Homs, who lived at a northern refugee camp for four months.

“We heard all the time about kidnappings and rape of girls. I never let my daughters leave the tent,” she says.

Bushra, who like all of the Syrians interviewed for this story did not want her full name used, smuggled her family out of the camp and found lodgings in Amman. But this has not allayed her fears of violence against her two teenager daughters. Now she is considering finding husbands for them, which she says would be out of the question had they stayed in Syria.

While the minimum marriage age in Jordan is 18, a special waiver requiring official identification papers can be obtained for children as young as 15. For Syrians who arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs, informal marriages are often preferred.

The process includes a brokered dowry and an unauthorized sheikh. The contracts, which require women to forgo many of their legal rights, are illegal under Jordanian law.

Maha Homsi, a UNICEF child protection specialist in Jordan, says that in 2012, 18 percent of the registered marriages of Syrians in Jordan involved girls under the age of 18, up from 12 percent a year before. As most such marriages go unregistered, however, numbers are thought to be much higher.

But "what’s really alarming here is that 48 percent of the [informal marriages] Famil cases involve men 10 years or older,” says Ms. Homsi. That is above the age difference accepted in many Arab societies, she says.

Economic hardship is one factor driving Syrian women to marry early. Another is family honor. “The majority of Syrian refugee marriages are sutra [protection marriages], for the protection of her honor and womanhood,” says Ms. Homsi.

Fears of online trafficking

Women from the Arab Levantine, referring to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan, are often characterized as the most beautiful in the Arab world. So the idea of rescuing a “Levantine houriya [virgin]” has fired the imaginations of wealthy Arab men.  Requests for such women from countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt abound in Internet forums, classified ads, and matchmaking networks.

“Honestly I am looking for a Syrian woman with the following qualifications: she must know the path of Allah and the meaning of raising a family; she must be very beautiful, with white skin and smooth hair,” one Facebook post read, purportedly by a married Egyptian university professor.

Moreover, Saudi clerics have issued fatwas encouraging marriages with Syrian widows and girls, deeming the act a form of Islamic charity. The men fulfill a Muslim deed by rescuing girls from exploitation and shame, while also supporting the admirable Syrian revolution, the fatwas state. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state, has armed and financed rebel forces fighting President Bashir Al-Assad, who belongs to a sect of the rival Shiite community.

Yet the phenomenon has also incited outrage in Arabic language press and social media sites, which say the practice treats vulnerable women as war booty.

Hammoudeh Makkawie, the Amman coordinator of “Refugees, Not Prisoners,” a campaign group for female Syrian refugees, criticizes the hypocrisy of wealthy Arab men driven by ‘white knight’ fantasies.

“In Arab countries there’s support only for weapons, violence, terrorism, there’s no support for women,” he says.

The campaign organizes workshops for displaced Syrian women in countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, in hopes of raising awareness of the dangers of “protection marriages.” The activists also offer vocational training programs to help women earn money so that they can stave off unwanted suitors.

Nour, a teenager who also escaped from Homs, wishes she could have joined such a training program. When she fled two years ago with her family to a camp in Jordan near the Syrian border, her mother refused dozens of marriage requests from Jordanian and Gulf men, saying it was a matter of dignity.

Now married to a Syrian and four months pregnant, she regrets having not finished her medical studies. She prays that her two “very smart” younger sisters can stay in school and not succumb to offers of an early marriage.

When relatives from Syria call, she tells them to stay there. “In our country it’s easier, even though there is war,” she says.

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GameStop sales slump as gamers wait on next-gen consoles

GameStop Corp, the world’s largest retailer of video game products, warned of weak sales this year, as customers delay purchases ahead of the launch of next-generation gaming consoles. Comparable store sales are likely to fall by between 5.5 per cent and 8 per cent in the current quarter, the company warned.

Full-year sales are forecast to remain flat or fall by up to 8 per cent, implying a revenue of between $8.18-billion and $8.89-billion. Analysts expect $8.86-billion on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


GameStop’s full-year earnings forecast also lagged analysts’ estimates by a sizeable margin. It sees full-year earnings at $2.75-$3.15 per share, while analysts had estimated $3.40 per share.

The video game industry is anticipating a strong finish to 2013 with the release of Grand Theft Auto V and the launch of at least one next-generation console by the holidays.

As a result, GameStop expects the first half of the year to be challenging as consumers postpone purchases leading up to the fourth quarter console launch.

Sony Corp said last month it would launch its next-generation PlayStation this year, its first video game console in seven years. Microsoft Corp is also expected to unveil the successor to its Xbox 360 later this summer.

Sales of traditional video game products such as consoles have been pressured globally by the rising popularity of online games as enthusiasts spend more time on tablets and phones.

U.S. sales of videogame hardware and software fell 25 per cent in February, following a month-over-month downward trend that has continued since last year, according to a report by market research firm NPD.

Games software sales were down 27 per cent during the same month, the report added.

GameStop has weathered the trend by focusing on selling new and used games to console owners and expanding its digital and mobile offerings, including the sale of iOS and Android devices in some stores.

The company said total revenue fell marginally in the fourth quarter to $3.56-billion.

Net income rose $261.1-million, or $2.15 per share, from $174.7-million, or $1.27 cents per share a year earlier.

Adjusted for the deferral of digital revenue and other items, the company’s earnings were $262.3-million, or $2.16 per share.

Analysts on average expected earnings of $2.09 per share on revenue of $3.45-billion for the fourth quarter.

In January, GameStop cut its same-store sales forecast for the fourth quarter after customer traffic shrank over the holiday season.

The company’s shares were trading up 2 per cent at $26.92 in early morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

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GSP steps out of the octagon to rekindle a normal life

His friends will tell you watching a fight card at Georges St-Pierre’s house is an exhausting experience – he’s constantly pacing, texting, whipping up a snack, throwing in a load of laundry.

He might also, with a quick glance, predict the outcome of a bout – which ends seconds later, exactly as he said it would.


What he won’t do: sprawl on a couch.

Now, the guy who can’t sit still is vowing to teach himself how to do just that.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s 170-pound champion – and perhaps the planet’s best-known Canadian – is stepping away from the sport he has come to personify, saying the pressure and fame have become too much to bear.

He didn’t utter the word retirement – “it’s not a word I like to use,” he said Friday – but it’s likely that’s what his indefinite hiatus will become.

St-Pierre’s vacating the mixed martial arts title he defended in a controversial fight with American Johny Hendricks last month, and should he return to the UFC – “I don’t know when, I don’t know if” – it will be as a challenger.

“I need to take a break for my own mental health, to recharge … I haven’t had time for a normal life, and now I’m going to take the time to have one,” he said.

The first order of business will be to spend Christmas and New Year Eve’s with his family near Montreal, something he said he hasn’t done in years.

The announcement of St-Pierre’s extended break from the fighter’s life came via conference call with loquacious UFC president Dana White, and a few minutes later, he bounded onto a stage set up on the hockey rink of a Quebec City shopping mall.

Fans had been lining up for six hours for a chance at an autograph and hand-shake – 400 of them were admitted to a maze-like lineup, several thousand more took in the scene from the mall concourse – they cheered lustily when St-Pierre made his entrance.

Louis Théberge, a 56-year-old fight fan at the head of the autograph queue (he had arrived at 8 a.m.), carried several posters and hand-painted likeness of St-Pierre.

“[The hiatus] is a little disappointing, but at the same time I think he probably needs it. When you have a couple of stains on your kitchen floor, you have to mop them up, he has some housecleaning to do,” he said. “It’s okay, it’s fine. He’s a champion, he’s our Muhammad Ali.”

Sporting a Quebec Nordiques retro jersey, St-Pierre joked: “I just got off the phone with [NHL commissioner] Gary Bettman, the Nordiques are coming back!”

In his first public appearance since the Hendricks fight, which he won in a split decision – White loudly denounced the verdict after the fight, saying the challenger had won – St-Pierre appeared relaxed and buoyant.

Fielding questions from reporters, he expanded on his reasons for taking time for a reset. He likened his life as an athlete to lugging a bag of bricks on his back wherever he goes.

“Every passing day, every fight, every training camp, adds another brick,” he said.

And the burden – the fame, the notoriety, the pressure to win – has simply become too heavy to bear.

The legendarily competitive St-Pierre explained how he becomes entirely consumed by his preparation, noting that when the referee raised his hand to signify a victory over opponent Nick Diaz, he was already thinking about how to beat Hendricks, his next opponent.

“When I eat, when I’m driving, before I go to sleep, I’m completely obsessed … you have to be a little nuts and obsessive if you want to achieve great things,” he said.

The decision to take a break has been percolating for some time, he said, and predates the Nov. 16 tilt with Hendricks.

St-Pierre said “nobody can understand” what he’s had to deal with, and that his day-to-day existence (he is recognized and stopped everywhere he goes, whether in Montreal or some far-flung part of the world) is “completely insane.”

Unlike many pro athletes, St-Pierre is going out at the very pinnacle of his career, and he is doing so after an emotional, bruising fight with Hendricks, parts of which he said in a postbout interview he had forgotten – a classic concussion symptom.

St-Pierre insists his mental faculties are just fine, the damage from the Hendricks fight was “superficial,” he is in tip-top physical condition and will continue to train at TriStar, the Montreal gym where he works with long-time coach Firas Zahabi.

But it’s clear hanging up the gloves after a pro career that started when the 32-year-old was 19 won’t hurt his long-term cognitive health.

Bullied as a child in his hometown of Saint-Isidore, Que., St. Pierre took up martial arts in order to learn how to defend himself.

He’s become quite good at it: St-Pierre has stepped into the UFC octagon 22 times, and on 15 of those occasions a title belt was on the line (he won all but two).

He leaves as UFC’s biggest, most bankable star, and as the most-decorated welterweight in the history of the sport.

White called St-Pierre “the gold standard in everything,” adding he supports St-Pierre’s decision.

“I think it’s the right move,” he said.

St-Pierre has only lost twice since joining the UFC – he fought on a Quebec-based pro circuit before signing on – and the last of his defeats was in 2008; he has won his last 12 consecutive fights.

He has a record 19 wins, and has won more title bouts than any other fighter. St-Pierre has also spent more time in the octagon than any other athlete, landed more blows and scored more takedowns.

It’s an impressive legacy, but while St-Pierre says is “content” with what he’s achieved, he also alluded to not succeeding in “taking the sport to the next level” – presumably an allusion to drug testing.

Opponents have occasionally accused St-Pierre of skulduggery and subterfuge (whether it be through the liberal application of Vaseline or performance-enhancing drugs), and when he proposed an upgraded anti-doping testing regime for himself and Hendricks, the offer went unheeded.

Though detractors accuse St-Pierre for taking a low-risk, conservative approach to fighting, his genius lies in attacking his opponent’s perceived strength, and in meticulous preparation.

And the fans plainly love it – St-Pierre has made millions for himself, and tens of millions for White and his partners.

If there was a rift between St-Pierre and White after the Hendricks fight – the former recounted how a UFC press officer tried to prevent him from going to the postfight news conference – there are no longer any hard feelings

St-Pierre says if he returns to fighting, it will be with UFC.

But that day will only come if St-Pierre wants it to.

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PC games we love: 'The Pit' and 'Outlast'

At the beginning of Outlast your objective is to explore an asylum. Barely 10 minutes in your goal has changed to “escape.” Of course, in a “rated mature” horror game like this, from Montreal’s Red Barrels, that’s easier said than done.

Did I mention there’s no fighting in Outlast? Your only recourse when confronted by something awful is to run and hide. Or die.

You are a reporter, investigating claims of illegal activity at the asylum. The fact that blood and body parts are everywhere is an indication of how bad things are at the facility. As you explore – escape – the place, you’ll find documents that tell the story of what’s going on. You can document your experience with a camcorder, but the camera will be more important because you’ll need its night vision to see in the dark.

And as Fatal Frame proved, there’s something about having to look through a lens in a horror video game that adds a level of panic to the experience.

But the night vision function of the camcorder requires batteries. So you’ll need to manage your supply. Because you do not want to find yourself in a part of the asylum that is pitch black. Trust me.

As is always the case with a good horror, sound design is essential (Want proof? Watch The Exorcist with the sound off.) and the most unnerving sound of all is the sound of your own character breathing, especially when he’s scared out of his wits. It serves as an excellent cue that you should be scared, too.

There are plenty of jump scares in Outlast. The fact that they are so effective goes to the atmosphere created in the game. You’ll never have so much fun scaring yourself silly.

Developer: Red Barrels

Platform: Windows, PS4 in 2014

The Pit: Mind Games

This top-down roguelike has you descending into a pit, natch, to find the cure for a plague. After choosing your class (engineer, marine, psion, ranger, scout), each with slightly different starting skills and equipment.

The mind games of the title refers to the psionics, mind powers, that your character can use in the game. Using your skills and abilities, from picking locks to destroying things with your mind, automatically improves your skill at those tasks.

The pit, which is actually levels of an abandoned alien facility, is filled with equipment of unknown function. You tamper with it at your own risk. And every time you attempt to open a rusted locker or crack a safe, you are presented with the likelihood of your success. With the right supplies you can sometimes improve your chances.

You’ll also find items and supplies by foraging in rot piles. And when you find loot, it can be good and bad. The bio-mods for your weapons bestow an unknown mutation; Sometimes it will improve your weapon, sometimes it won’t.

Crafting is key here, too, from adding mods to weapons to combining items to come up with food that you require to keep going.

Combat is turn-based, and the bizarre enemies varied, deadly, and taken from the Sword of the Stars franchise, also developed by Vancouver’s Kerberos Productions.

Each level has an exit that you need to reach, which only takes you to the next level down. If you die – and you will die – you have to start the game over at the beginning. But you won’t mind. Much.

You have to reach level 30 to find the cure you’re looking for. You’re probably never going to get there.

Developer: Kerberos Productions

Platform: Windows

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Downtime Download: 'Gone Home' an award-winning game with emotional heft

The setting is everything in Gone Home, recently named the Best Independant Game at Spike TV’s VGX awards. The story that unravels could not take place anywhere else or at any other time.

It’s June 1995. It’s late at night and Katie is arriving home in Portland, Oregon, after a year spent traveling Europe.


It’s raining. Hard. And there’s no-one at home. Just a cryptic note from Katie’s little sister, and a big, empty house. A house that’s unfamiliar to Katie, as the family moved while she was away.

You play as Katie, and just as you’d expect to be a bit unnerved looking around an unfamiliar – and empty? – house late at night during a thunderstorm, so too is it unsettling to be doing so in Gone Home.

It’s a mansion, this new home. And as it’s Katie’s first time in the house, it’s also ours. It’s strange to be walking around in the empty place, piecing together the lives of people the protagonist knows but the player doesn’t.

There are secrets here. Both in the house and in the stories that Katie learns about her family, who have become strangers in the year she’s been gone. In the audio logs that are triggered as you explore, Katie’s sister describes it as “psycho house.”

It’s a simple game to play. You move with the arrow keys and look around with the mouse. You can interact with the environment with the left mouse button, and in a nice touch you can set down objects that you’ve picked up. There’s no combat. Just discovery.

Bit by bit, you’ll learn the stories of the people who inhabit – have inhabited – this house. Bit by bit, you realize you have developed deep feelings for them.

Haunting, heartbreaking and honest, Gone Home is a rare gem.

Developer: The Fullbright Company; Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows

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Manchester City crushes Premier League leader Arsenal

Manchester City produced another fearsome attacking display to overpower Arsenal 6-3 in a wild Premier League shootout on Saturday, leaving the leaders in range of the chasing pack in the title race.

Prolific strikers Sergio Aguero and Alvaro Negredo scored first-half goals while Fernandinho netted twice and David Silva and Yaya Toure added others after the break to keep up free-scoring City’s average of four goals per league game at Etihad Stadium this season.


Theo Walcott scored twice for Arsenal, the first to make it 1-1 in the 31st minute and then to cut City’s lead to 3-2 in the 63rd, but the visitors were dismantled by City, favoured for the title by many pundits.

Per Mertesacker was the other scorer for Arsenal, which went down to its third defeat of the campaign. City is now just three points behind Arsene Wenger’s side.

This was always going to be a testing afternoon for Arsenal, coming less than three days after a grueling Champions League match at Napoli and given City’s flawless record at the Etihad in seven previous matches at the Premier League.

And so it proved, with City — whose first-choice players were rested in Wednesday’s shock 3-2 win at Bayern Munich in the Champions League — sharper both in possession and off the ball and simply irresistible going forward. Manuel Pellegrini’s team has scored 35 goals in eight home matches this campaign, putting at least four past Manchester United, Tottenham and now Arsenal.

With their away form slowly improving, City appears to be the team to beat in what is proving to be an open, exciting title race. The only negative was the sight of Aguero hobbling off with what appeared a right calf injury at the start of the second half.

As for Arsenal, this was its third high-intensity match in the space of seven days, having drawn with Everton last weekend, and it clearly took its toll. Thankfully for the creaking leaders, they have a much-needed nine-day break before playing Chelsea next.

The last thing their tired backline needed was to deal with a sprightly Aguero and the Argentina striker continued his prolific scoring run by volleying in expertly in the 14th minute after Samir Nasri’s corner was flicked in at the near post by Martin Demichelis. It was Aguero’s 19th goal in 20 matches in all competitions

Arsenal was being pinned back and swamped by City’s fluid midfield but Wenger’s side is made of sterner stuff this season. Aaron Ramsey dispossessed Toure to play in Mesut Ozil for the team’s first incisive attack and the German’s cutback was met with a first-time shot from Walcott that took a slight deflection off Demichelis into the net.

Back came City, though, and after Negredo curled an excellent chance wide, the Spain striker guided home a cross by the galloping Pablo Zabaleta in the 39th. Worse for Arsenal, key defender Laurent Koscielny sustained a deep laceration to his left knee as he attempted to cut out the cross and was carried off on a stretcher.

Aguero’s movement in the first half had been too much for Arsenal’s defenders, so they would have been delighted to see the striker pull up injured moments after the restart before hobbling off.

That could be bad news for City in the long term but it didn’t hinder the Blues here, with Fernandinho making it 3-1 within two minutes after Mathieu Flamini failed to collect Ozil’s pass across the face of the area. The Brazilian seized on the mistake and curled in a fine finish from 25 yards for his first goal since joining City in the summer.

Arsenal came back into the match, with Olivier Giroud heading a good chance wide before Ramsey lofted a ball over the top to Walcott, who curled a brilliant shot past Costel Pantilimon from the angle.

An unlikely draw was now a distinct possibility for the visitors but their hopes were punctured by a fourth goal by City that was made in Spain, Jesus Navas providing the centre for Silva to deftly sidefoot in from close range in the 66th.

Fernandinho scored his second for 5-2 in the 88th, Mertesacker replied at the start of injury time with a header but Toure had the final say, sweeping home a penalty after James Milner was tripped by Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny.

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