Israel to Review Curbs on Women’s Prayer at Western Wall

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Members of a group called Women of the Wall read from the Torah near the Western Wall in Jerusalem in December.

JERUSALEM — Amid outrage across the Jewish diaspora over a flurry of recent arrests of women seeking to pray at the Western Wall with ritual garments in defiance of Israeli law, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, to study the issue and suggest ways to make the site more accommodating to all Jews.

The move comes after more than two decades of civil disobedience by a group called Women of the Wall against regulations, legislation and a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that allow for gender division at the wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, and prohibit women from carrying a Torah or wearing prayer shawls there.

Although the movement has struggled to gain traction in Israel, where the ultra-Orthodox retain great sway over public life, the issue has deepened a divide between the Jewish state and Jews around the world at a time when Israel is battling international isolation over its settlement policy. Critics, particularly leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements in the United States, complain that the government’s recent aggressive enforcement of restrictions at the wall has turned a national monument into an ultra-Orthodox synagogue.

“The prime minister thinks the Western Wall has to be a site that expresses the unity of the Jewish people, both inside Israel and outside the state of Israel,” Ron Dermer, Mr. Netanyahu’s senior adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday. “He wants to preserve the unity of world Jewry. This is an important component of Israel’s strength.”

Mr. Sharansky, whose quasi-governmental nonprofit organization handles immigration for the state and is a bridge between Israel and Jews around the world, said that Mr. Netanyahu asked him on Monday to take up the matter, and that he expected to have recommendations within a few months. He and Mr. Dermer said the agenda would include improvements for Robinson’s Arch, a discreet area of the wall designated for coed prayer under the court ruling, and the easing of restrictions in the larger area known as the Western Wall plaza, along with the more sensitive questions regarding prayer at the main site.

Mr. Sharansky said the Jewish Agency itself stopped having ceremonies for new immigrants in the plaza about two years ago after the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which controls the site, said that men and women could not sit together. Under pressure from the international groups that provide its financing, the agency passed a resolution on Oct. 30 calling for a “satisfactory approach to the issue of prayer at the Western Wall.”

Asked whether he could imagine a day when women could wear prayer shawls and read a Torah at the wall itself, Mr. Sharansky said, “I imagine very easily a situation where everybody will have their opportunity to express their solidarity with Judaism and the Jewish people and the state of Israel in a way he or she wants, without undermining the other.”

“That’s as much as I want to say at this moment,” he added. “Now I have to share this vision with the appropriate bodies.”

Mr. Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and widely respected figure, has been called upon before to broker peace with the diaspora over questions of religious pluralism, most recently during a harsh fight over conversion. Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall, reacted with cautious optimism to Mr. Netanyahu’s initiative, but said it would not stop the Israel Religious Action Center, of which she is executive director, from filing a Supreme Court petition as soon as next week challenging the makeup of the heritage foundation’s board.

“It’s a good thing that after 24 years the highest echelons in Israel are actually paying attention to this rift that is breaking diaspora Jews from Israel,” she said. “The table that should run the Western Wall should have everyone who has an interest in the wall sitting around it.”

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the head of the heritage foundation, said in an e-mailed statement that he was unaware of the Sharansky initiative and therefore “does not have an opinion about it.”

While Ms. Hoffman said the women’s group would be satisfied if it were allowed to pray at the wall once a month with full regalia, her religious action center wants hours each day, between scheduled prayer times, when the gender partition is removed and people can freely enjoy the site as a cultural monument.

“If in the end what happens is that the Robinson’s Arch area will be run by the Jewish Agency instead of the antiquities department, then we’re talking about who’s going to take care of the air-conditioning in the back of the bus,” she said. “I don’t care about that. I don’t want to sit in the back of the bus. I want to dismantle the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.”

Abraham H. Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he discussed the wall and other questions of religious pluralism with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday.

“This is a wise initiative, but it’s only a beginning,” Mr. Foxman said.

Irit Pazner Garshowitz contributed reporting.

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News Analysis: Getting Polio Campaigns Back on Track

How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is that they are protecting children — are gunned down in the streets?

Nine vaccine workers were killed in Pakistan last week in a terrorist campaign that brought the work of 225,000 vaccinators to a standstill. Suspicion fell immediately on factions of the Pakistani Taliban that have threatened vaccinators in the past, accusing them of being American spies.

Polio eradication officials have promised to regroup and try again. But first they must persuade the killers to stop shooting workers and even guarantee safe passage.

That has been done before, notably in Afghanistan in 2007, when Mullah Muhammad Omar, spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban, signed a letter of protection for vaccination teams. But in Pakistan, the killers may be breakaway groups following no one’s rules.

Vaccination efforts are also under threat in other Muslim regions, although not this violently yet.

In Nigeria, another polio-endemic country, the new Islamic militant group Boko Haram has publicly opposed it, although the only killings that the news media have linked to polio were those of two police officers escorting vaccine workers. Boko Haram has killed police officers on other missions, unrelated to polio vaccinations.

In Mali, extremists took over half of the country in May, declaring an Islamic state. Vaccination is not an issue yet, but Mali had polio cases as recently as mid-2011, and the virus sometimes circulates undetected.

Resistance to polio vaccine springs from a combination of fear, often in marginalized ethnic groups, and brutal historical facts that make that fear seem justified. Unless it is countered, and quickly, the backlash threatens the effort to eradicate polio in the three countries where it remains endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

In 1988, long before donors began delivering mosquito nets, measles shots, AIDS pills, condoms, deworming drugs and other Western medical goods to the world’s most remote villages, Rotary International dedicated itself to wiping out polio, and trained teams to deliver the vaccine.

But remote villages are often ruled by chiefs or warlords who are suspicious not only of Western modernity, but of their own governments.

The Nigerian government is currently dominated by Christian Yorubas. More than a decade ago, when word came from the capital that all children must swallow pink drops to protect them against paralysis, Muslim Hausas in the far-off north could be forgiven for reacting the way the fundamentalist Americans of the John Birch Society did in the 1960s when the government in far-off Washington decreed that, for the sake of children’s teeth, all drinking water should have fluoride.

The northerners already had grievances. In 1996, the drug company Pfizer tested its new antibiotic, Trovan, during a meningitis outbreak there. Eleven children died. Although Pfizer still says it was not to blame, the trial had irregularities, and last year the company began making payments to victims.

Other rumors also spring from real events.

In Pakistan, resistance to vaccination, low over all, is concentrated in Pashtun territory along the Afghan border and in Pashtun slums in large cities. Pashtuns are the dominant tribe in Afghanistan but a minority in Pakistan among Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis and other ethnic groups. Many are Afghan refugees and are often poor and dismissed as medieval and lawless.

Pakistan’s government is friendly with the United States while the Pashtuns’ territory in border areas has been heavily hit by American Taliban-hunting drones, which sometimes kill whole families.

So, when the Central Intelligence Agency admitted sponsoring a hepatitis vaccination campaign as a ruse to get into a compound in Pakistan to confirm that Osama bin Laden was there, and the White House said it had contemplated wiping out the residence with a drone missile, it was not far-fetched for Taliban leaders to assume that other vaccinators worked for the drone pilots.

Even in friendly areas, the vaccine teams have protocols that look plenty suspicious. If a stranger knocked on a door in Brooklyn, asked how many children under age 5 were at home, offered to medicate them, and then scribbled in chalk on the door how many had accepted and how many refused — well, a parent might worry.

In modern medical surveys — though not necessarily on polio campaigns — teams carry GPS devices so they can find houses again. Drones use GPS coordinates.

The warlords of Waziristan made the connection specific, barring all vaccination there until Predator drones disappeared from the skies.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian who is chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, expressed his frustration at the time, saying, “They know we don’t have any control over drone strikes.”

The campaign went on elsewhere in Pakistan — until last week.

The fight against polio has been hampered by rumors that the vaccine contains pork or the virus that causes AIDS, or is a plot to sterilize Muslim girls. Even the craziest-sounding rumors have roots in reality.

The AIDS rumor is a direct descendant of Edward Hooper’s 1999 book, “The River,” which posited the theory — since discredited — that H.I.V. emerged when an early polio vaccine supposedly grown in chimpanzee kidney cells contaminated with the simian immunodeficiency virus was tested in the Belgian Congo.

The sterilization claim was allegedly first made on a Nigerian radio station by a Muslim doctor upset that he had been passed over for a government job. The “proof” was supposed to be lab tests showing it contained estrogen, a birth control hormone.

The vaccine virus is grown in a broth of live cells; fetal calf cells are typical. They may be treated with a minute amount of a digestive enzyme, trypsin — one source of which is pig pancreas, which could account for the pork rumor.

In theory, a polio eradicator explained, if a good enough lab tested the vaccine used at the time the rumor started, it might have detected estrogen from the calf’s mother, but it would have been far less estrogen than is in mother’s milk, which is not accused of sterilizing anyone. The trypsin is supposed to be washed out.

In any case, polio vaccine is now bought only from Muslim countries like Indonesia, and Muslim scholars have ruled it halal — the Islamic equivalent of kosher.

Reviving the campaign will mean quelling many rumors. It may also require adding other medical “inducements,” like deworming medicine, mosquito nets or vitamin A, whose immediate benefits are usually more obvious.

But changing mind-sets will be a crucial step, said Dr. Aylward, who likened the shootings of the girls to those of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.

More police involvement — what he called a “bunkerized approach” — would not solve either America’s problem or Pakistan’s, he argued. Instead, average citizens in both countries needed to rise up, reject the twisted thinking of the killers and “generate an understanding in the community that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.”

Read More..

News Analysis: Getting Polio Campaigns Back on Track

How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is that they are protecting children — are gunned down in the streets?

Nine vaccine workers were killed in Pakistan last week in a terrorist campaign that brought the work of 225,000 vaccinators to a standstill. Suspicion fell immediately on factions of the Pakistani Taliban that have threatened vaccinators in the past, accusing them of being American spies.

Polio eradication officials have promised to regroup and try again. But first they must persuade the killers to stop shooting workers and even guarantee safe passage.

That has been done before, notably in Afghanistan in 2007, when Mullah Muhammad Omar, spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban, signed a letter of protection for vaccination teams. But in Pakistan, the killers may be breakaway groups following no one’s rules.

Vaccination efforts are also under threat in other Muslim regions, although not this violently yet.

In Nigeria, another polio-endemic country, the new Islamic militant group Boko Haram has publicly opposed it, although the only killings that the news media have linked to polio were those of two police officers escorting vaccine workers. Boko Haram has killed police officers on other missions, unrelated to polio vaccinations.

In Mali, extremists took over half of the country in May, declaring an Islamic state. Vaccination is not an issue yet, but Mali had polio cases as recently as mid-2011, and the virus sometimes circulates undetected.

Resistance to polio vaccine springs from a combination of fear, often in marginalized ethnic groups, and brutal historical facts that make that fear seem justified. Unless it is countered, and quickly, the backlash threatens the effort to eradicate polio in the three countries where it remains endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

In 1988, long before donors began delivering mosquito nets, measles shots, AIDS pills, condoms, deworming drugs and other Western medical goods to the world’s most remote villages, Rotary International dedicated itself to wiping out polio, and trained teams to deliver the vaccine.

But remote villages are often ruled by chiefs or warlords who are suspicious not only of Western modernity, but of their own governments.

The Nigerian government is currently dominated by Christian Yorubas. More than a decade ago, when word came from the capital that all children must swallow pink drops to protect them against paralysis, Muslim Hausas in the far-off north could be forgiven for reacting the way the fundamentalist Americans of the John Birch Society did in the 1960s when the government in far-off Washington decreed that, for the sake of children’s teeth, all drinking water should have fluoride.

The northerners already had grievances. In 1996, the drug company Pfizer tested its new antibiotic, Trovan, during a meningitis outbreak there. Eleven children died. Although Pfizer still says it was not to blame, the trial had irregularities, and last year the company began making payments to victims.

Other rumors also spring from real events.

In Pakistan, resistance to vaccination, low over all, is concentrated in Pashtun territory along the Afghan border and in Pashtun slums in large cities. Pashtuns are the dominant tribe in Afghanistan but a minority in Pakistan among Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis and other ethnic groups. Many are Afghan refugees and are often poor and dismissed as medieval and lawless.

Pakistan’s government is friendly with the United States while the Pashtuns’ territory in border areas has been heavily hit by American Taliban-hunting drones, which sometimes kill whole families.

So, when the Central Intelligence Agency admitted sponsoring a hepatitis vaccination campaign as a ruse to get into a compound in Pakistan to confirm that Osama bin Laden was there, and the White House said it had contemplated wiping out the residence with a drone missile, it was not far-fetched for Taliban leaders to assume that other vaccinators worked for the drone pilots.

Even in friendly areas, the vaccine teams have protocols that look plenty suspicious. If a stranger knocked on a door in Brooklyn, asked how many children under age 5 were at home, offered to medicate them, and then scribbled in chalk on the door how many had accepted and how many refused — well, a parent might worry.

In modern medical surveys — though not necessarily on polio campaigns — teams carry GPS devices so they can find houses again. Drones use GPS coordinates.

The warlords of Waziristan made the connection specific, barring all vaccination there until Predator drones disappeared from the skies.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian who is chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, expressed his frustration at the time, saying, “They know we don’t have any control over drone strikes.”

The campaign went on elsewhere in Pakistan — until last week.

The fight against polio has been hampered by rumors that the vaccine contains pork or the virus that causes AIDS, or is a plot to sterilize Muslim girls. Even the craziest-sounding rumors have roots in reality.

The AIDS rumor is a direct descendant of Edward Hooper’s 1999 book, “The River,” which posited the theory — since discredited — that H.I.V. emerged when an early polio vaccine supposedly grown in chimpanzee kidney cells contaminated with the simian immunodeficiency virus was tested in the Belgian Congo.

The sterilization claim was allegedly first made on a Nigerian radio station by a Muslim doctor upset that he had been passed over for a government job. The “proof” was supposed to be lab tests showing it contained estrogen, a birth control hormone.

The vaccine virus is grown in a broth of live cells; fetal calf cells are typical. They may be treated with a minute amount of a digestive enzyme, trypsin — one source of which is pig pancreas, which could account for the pork rumor.

In theory, a polio eradicator explained, if a good enough lab tested the vaccine used at the time the rumor started, it might have detected estrogen from the calf’s mother, but it would have been far less estrogen than is in mother’s milk, which is not accused of sterilizing anyone. The trypsin is supposed to be washed out.

In any case, polio vaccine is now bought only from Muslim countries like Indonesia, and Muslim scholars have ruled it halal — the Islamic equivalent of kosher.

Reviving the campaign will mean quelling many rumors. It may also require adding other medical “inducements,” like deworming medicine, mosquito nets or vitamin A, whose immediate benefits are usually more obvious.

But changing mind-sets will be a crucial step, said Dr. Aylward, who likened the shootings of the girls to those of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.

More police involvement — what he called a “bunkerized approach” — would not solve either America’s problem or Pakistan’s, he argued. Instead, average citizens in both countries needed to rise up, reject the twisted thinking of the killers and “generate an understanding in the community that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.”

Read More..

India Ink: Adding Indian Spice to Christmas

For those who celebrate Christmas, the meal eaten to mark the holiday can be as important as the ritual of exchanging gifts or decorating a green tree.

South Asians, of course, make food center stage at any occasion, and many have come to embrace the tradition of Christmas dinner, whether they’re Hindu, Muslim or Christian. But just as Indians adjust Western dishes to their tastes – like adding cilantro to pasta or green chili to grilled cheese – so do they “Indianize” Christmas food classics.

NYCDesi

The Indian Scene, as Seen From New York

Saira Malhotra, a recipe developer based in New York and founder of the food site Passport Pantry, recalled how many Indians in her hometown of London would use tandoori masala and ginger to marinate the traditional British meal of turkey, fearing the traditional holiday recipes might not stand up to a palate accustomed to spice.

A plate of meat with mint jelly and roasted potatoes might sound like a nice enough meal, but for many South Asians it can be a bit bland. An Indian chef might add roasted cumin to the potatoes, chilies in the chutney and a crust of mango powder on the meat.

It’s easy to get creative with Indian-fusion renditions of Christmas dishes, and Ms. Malhotra has a few recipes she recommends to bring the two cultures together on one plate.

Habanero Savory Cheesecake
This cheesecake, served as an appetizer or side dish, combines Christmas elements, like the rosemary crust, with plenty of heat.

Ingredients

1 packet of rosemary crackers (1½ cups crushed)
1 stick softened butter
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
5 ounces sour cream
16 ounces cream cheese (2 regular-sized packs)
5 ounces blue cheese
2 eggs
4 tablespoons habanero jelly (or any other chili jelly)
Fresh cracked pepper

Method

For the crust:
As the oven heats to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, crush the crackers with the butter and pack tightly against the base of a nine-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the cheese filling:

1. Beat the salt, sour cream, cream cheese and cornstarch. Add the blue cheese and combine well. Add the eggs one at a time, combining thoroughly each time. Swirl in half the habanero jelly and black pepper.

2. Pour mixture over the cooled crust and bake for one hour. Do not overcook the cheesecake or it will lose its creaminess. Once the cheesecake is set on the sides and wobbly in the middle, it is done.

3. Remove and cool completely. It will continue to stiffen as it cools. Wrap well and refrigerate for at least four hours. Spread remaining habanero jelly on top before serving.

Mango and Ginger Chutney
The sweetness of the mango works well with savory dishes, and the sharpness of the ginger and spices balances the richness of a roasted ham or a charcuterie and cheese plate.

Ingredients

3 pounds ripe Mexican mangoes, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 medium-sized onion, diced
2 fresh red or green chilies, chopped into ¼-inch pieces
14 ounces rice wine vinegar
14 ounces jaggery, broken into small pieces (if you can’t find jaggery at your ethnic specialty store, substitute brown sugar)
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon each of cumin seeds, coriander powder (or crushed coriander seeds), fenugreek seeds, nigella seeds
4-6 cloves
6 whole peppercorns

Method

1. Sterilize the pickling jars in boiling water.

2. Heat the cooking oil in a pan. Add the cumin, fenugreek and nigella seeds, coriander, cloves and whole peppercorns. Allow the spices to turn a couple of shades darker.

3. Sauté the onions and fresh chilies in the same pan until the onions are translucent. Add the jaggery/sugar and vinegar and allow the sweetening agent to fully dissolve.

4. Add the mangoes, bring to a boil and turn down the heat to a simmer. Cook for approximately 1 hour or until the chutney has thickened. The mango will have become translucent at this point and will have a sheen to it.

5. Fill the sterilized jars while the chutney is still hot and seal them.

Roasted Yams with Spice Crust
The spices provide complexity to this typically one-toned side dish, thanks to the contrasting components of flavor.

Ingredients

3 pounds yams
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 whole dried red chilies or ½ teaspoon chili flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
¼ cup of olive oil

Method

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. In the meantime, boil water in a large pot and add the whole yams with the skin. Boil yams until halfway tender (approximately 10 minutes). (Be careful not to overcook the yams as they will swell with water and not hold their shape.) Cut into wedges with the skin on and cool.

2. To toast the spices, heat a pan and add the coriander, cumin seeds and red chilies. Toast until the essential oils release and an aroma emerges. Break down the spices and chilies with a mortar and pestle.

3. Coat yam wedges with the oil and spices. Fully cook the yams in the oven, approximately 15 minutes, until golden brown with a nice crust.

Warm Potato and Bacon Salad
This spin on classic potato salad benefits from the zing from smoked paprika. It works well as a side dish but also is a nice accompaniment to cold cuts.

Ingredients

1½ pounds new potatoes
½-pound slab of bacon, cut into ¼-inch pieces
2 shallots, finely diced
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
4 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon mustard
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon crème fraîche or sour cream
1 tablespoon chopped chives

Method

1. Bring the potatoes to a boil, starting them off in cold water. Sauté the bacon, then remove with slotted spoon. In the bacon fat, sauté shallots until translucent.

2. For the dressing: Shake the vinegar, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper and paprika in a bottle. (The bacon can be quite salty so use a light hand with the salt.)

3. Once potatoes are tender (10-15 minutes), cut them in half and toss the potatoes with the dressing while they are still warm. Combine the crème fraîche, shallots, bacon and 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat with the warm potatoes. Sprinkle chives before serving.

Sticky Toffee and Cardamom Pudding
Cardamom adds a floral note to a British classic.

Ingredients

For sticky toffee and pecan sauce:
1 ounce chopped pecans
6 ounces soft brown sugar
6 tablespoons double cream
4 ounces margarine

For date and cardamom cake:
3 ounces margarine, room temperature
5 ounces sugar
6 ounces self-raising flour
2 eggs
2 ounces finely sliced dates
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
½ teaspoon cardamom powder
2 teaspoons coffee essence, like Camp Coffee
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
9 cupcake cups

Method

For the sauce:
Combine sugar, margarine, double cream and pecans in a saucepan over medium-low heat until the margarine has completely melted.

For date and cardamom cake:

1. As the oven warms to 350 Fahrenheit, beat margarine and sugar in a bowl, until fluffy.

2. In a separate bowl, add eggs and slowly whisk in the creamed margarine and sugar. Then fold in the flour (to incorporate air).

3. In a separate bowl, mix 6 fluid ounces of boiling water with vanilla essence, cardamom powder, bicarbonate of soda and coffee essence. Don’t be alarmed if the liquid becomes fizzy.

4. Stir the liquid into the butter, sugar, egg and flour mixture so that it forms a batter. Pour the batter into cupcake cups to about three-fourths full.

5. Sprinkle 4 slivers of dates on each pudding, then bake for approximately 15 minutes. Insert a skewer in the center, and if it comes out clean, your pudding is ready. Pour the toffee and pecan sauce over the pudding just before serving.

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Advertising: Selling Made in U.S.A., but Very Carefully

BRANDS reviving the “Made in the U.S.A.” slogan to attract buyers for American-produced goods are relying less on patriotism and more on data that shows consumers are willing to pay a premium for better quality, quicker availability and product safety.

But many companies are stepping gingerly, avoiding sweeping claims and spelling out what “Made in the U.S.A.” means for their products. Consumers are more shrewd about how few consumer goods actually are made in the United States, leaving companies less wiggle room about the origin of products.

The Whirlpool Corporation, for example, specified in full-page print advertisements this year that 80 percent of its appliances “sold in the U.S. come from our U.S. factories.” Despite its deep American roots, the 101-year-old company — which makes Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air products — has, like other corporate giants, moved some manufacturing abroad.

As a result of its centennial celebrations last year, some consumers have urged the company to talk more about its American origins, said William Beck, a senior marketing director at Whirlpool, which spent $57.4 million in 2011 on advertising, according to Kantar Media, a WPP unit.

In recent months, the appliance giant has been underlining its American factories, and noting in its overall brand advertising that it employs about 22,000 workers (15,000 of them at its manufacturing plants), and spends $7.4 million annually on operating and maintaining its factories in Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

But Whirlpool, whose ad drew a full-page rebuttal from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accusing it of shutting factories in the United States, said nostalgia and similar sentiments do not drive its sales. “Whirlpool’s key differentiating points are quality and innovation,” said Mr. Beck, and “the icing is that, hey, we’re made in the United States.”

Whirlpool does not share its market research, but other market studies show that customers increasingly take note of where a product is made. Perception Research Services International, in a September study, found that four out of five shoppers notice a “Made in the U.S.A.” label on packaging, and 76 percent of them said they would be more likely to buy a product because of the label.

While shoppers, especially those over 35, say they want to help the economy by buying United States-made goods, “the motivating factors actually may be quality and safety,” said Jonathan Asher, executive vice president of Perception Research Services. The company, which is based in Teaneck, N.J., surveyed 1,400 consumers last summer. “People are paying attention in categories that are ingested like food, medicine and personal care products, but less so in electronics, office supplies and appliances,” he said.

In a separate study, the Boston Consulting Group found that 80 percent of consumers surveyed said they would be willing to pay more for “Made in the U.S.A.” products than for those carrying a “Made in China” label.

They would pay the biggest differential for items like baby food and wooden toys, and a smaller percentage for electronics, apparel and appliances, said Kate Manfred, director of the group’s Center for Consumer and Customer Insight in the Americas, which released the study in mid-November.

“Safety and quality, and keeping jobs in America, are the important factors,” she said.

Bixbi, a Boulder, Colo., pet treat provider, has relied on safety to increase sales. The company, which started in 2008 amid revelations of tainted dog food ingredients imported from overseas, sells dog treats made from locally raised chickens and other animals.

“Our sales have grown 600 percent each year,” said James Crouch, who founded the small company with his brother, Michael. “Locally sourced is a key advantage.”

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N.Y.U. and Others Offer Shorter Courses Through Medical School

Training to become a doctor takes so long that just the time invested has become, to many, emblematic of the gravity and prestige of the profession.

But now one of the nation’s premier medical schools, New York University, and a few others around the United States are challenging that equation by offering a small percentage of students the chance to finish early, in three years instead of the traditional four.

Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time in the summer.

Not only, they say, will those doctors be able to hang out their shingles to practice earlier, but they will save a quarter of the cost of medical school — $49,560 a year in tuition and fees at N.Y.U., and even more when room, board, books, supplies and other expenses are added in.

“We’re confident that our three-year students are going to get the same depth and core knowledge, that we’re not going to turn it into a trade school,” said Dr. Steven Abramson, vice dean for education, faculty and academic affairs at N.Y.U. School of Medicine.

At this point, the effort involves a small number of students at three medical schools: about 16 incoming students at N.Y.U., or about 10 percent of next year’s entering class; 9 at Texas Tech Health Science Center School of Medicine; and even fewer, for now, at Mercer University School of Medicine’s campus in Savannah, Ga. A similar trial at Louisiana State University has been delayed because of budget constraints.

But Dr. Steven Berk, the dean at Texas Tech, said that 10 or 15 other schools across the country had expressed interest in what his university was doing, and the deans of all three schools say that if the approach works, they will extend the option to larger numbers of students.

“You’re going to see this kind of three-year pathway become very prominent across the country,” Dr. Abramson predicted.

The deans say that getting students out the door more quickly will accomplish several goals. By speeding up production of physicians, they say, it could eventually dampen a looming doctor shortage, although the number of doctors would not increase unless the schools enrolled more students in the future.

The three-year program would also curtail student debt, which now averages $150,000 by graduation, and by doing so, persuade more students to go into shortage areas like pediatrics and internal medicine, rather than more lucrative specialties like dermatology.

The idea was supported by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former health adviser to President Obama, and a colleague, Victor R. Fuchs. In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, they said there was “substantial waste” in the nation’s medical education. “Years of training have been added without evidence that they enhance clinical skills or the quality of care,” they wrote. They suggested that the 14 years of college, medical school, residency and fellowship that it now takes to train a subspecialty physician could be reduced by 30 percent, to 10 years.

That opinion, however, is not universally held. Other experts say that a three-year medical program would deprive students of the time they need to delve deeply into their subjects, to consolidate their learning and to reach the level of maturity they need to begin practicing, while adding even more pressure to a stressful academic environment.

“The downside is that you are really tired,” said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency for medical schools in the United States and Canada. But because accreditation standards do not dictate the fine points of curriculum, the committee has approved N.Y.U.’s proposal, which exceeds by five weeks its requirement that schools provide at least 130 weeks of medical education.

The medical school is going ahead with its three-year program despite the damage from Hurricane Sandy, which forced NYU Langone Medical Center to evacuate more than 300 patients at the height of the storm and temporarily shut down three of its four main teaching hospitals.

Dr. Abramson of N.Y.U. said that postgraduate training, which typically includes three years in a hospital residency, and often fellowships after that, made it unnecessary to try to cram everything into the medical school years. Students in the three-year program will have to take eight weeks of class before entering medical school, and stay in the top half of their class academically. Those who do not meet the standards will revert to the four-year program.

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N.Y.U. and Others Offer Shorter Courses Through Medical School

Training to become a doctor takes so long that just the time invested has become, to many, emblematic of the gravity and prestige of the profession.

But now one of the nation’s premier medical schools, New York University, and a few others around the United States are challenging that equation by offering a small percentage of students the chance to finish early, in three years instead of the traditional four.

Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time in the summer.

Not only, they say, will those doctors be able to hang out their shingles to practice earlier, but they will save a quarter of the cost of medical school — $49,560 a year in tuition and fees at N.Y.U., and even more when room, board, books, supplies and other expenses are added in.

“We’re confident that our three-year students are going to get the same depth and core knowledge, that we’re not going to turn it into a trade school,” said Dr. Steven Abramson, vice dean for education, faculty and academic affairs at N.Y.U. School of Medicine.

At this point, the effort involves a small number of students at three medical schools: about 16 incoming students at N.Y.U., or about 10 percent of next year’s entering class; 9 at Texas Tech Health Science Center School of Medicine; and even fewer, for now, at Mercer University School of Medicine’s campus in Savannah, Ga. A similar trial at Louisiana State University has been delayed because of budget constraints.

But Dr. Steven Berk, the dean at Texas Tech, said that 10 or 15 other schools across the country had expressed interest in what his university was doing, and the deans of all three schools say that if the approach works, they will extend the option to larger numbers of students.

“You’re going to see this kind of three-year pathway become very prominent across the country,” Dr. Abramson predicted.

The deans say that getting students out the door more quickly will accomplish several goals. By speeding up production of physicians, they say, it could eventually dampen a looming doctor shortage, although the number of doctors would not increase unless the schools enrolled more students in the future.

The three-year program would also curtail student debt, which now averages $150,000 by graduation, and by doing so, persuade more students to go into shortage areas like pediatrics and internal medicine, rather than more lucrative specialties like dermatology.

The idea was supported by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former health adviser to President Obama, and a colleague, Victor R. Fuchs. In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, they said there was “substantial waste” in the nation’s medical education. “Years of training have been added without evidence that they enhance clinical skills or the quality of care,” they wrote. They suggested that the 14 years of college, medical school, residency and fellowship that it now takes to train a subspecialty physician could be reduced by 30 percent, to 10 years.

That opinion, however, is not universally held. Other experts say that a three-year medical program would deprive students of the time they need to delve deeply into their subjects, to consolidate their learning and to reach the level of maturity they need to begin practicing, while adding even more pressure to a stressful academic environment.

“The downside is that you are really tired,” said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency for medical schools in the United States and Canada. But because accreditation standards do not dictate the fine points of curriculum, the committee has approved N.Y.U.’s proposal, which exceeds by five weeks its requirement that schools provide at least 130 weeks of medical education.

The medical school is going ahead with its three-year program despite the damage from Hurricane Sandy, which forced NYU Langone Medical Center to evacuate more than 300 patients at the height of the storm and temporarily shut down three of its four main teaching hospitals.

Dr. Abramson of N.Y.U. said that postgraduate training, which typically includes three years in a hospital residency, and often fellowships after that, made it unnecessary to try to cram everything into the medical school years. Students in the three-year program will have to take eight weeks of class before entering medical school, and stay in the top half of their class academically. Those who do not meet the standards will revert to the four-year program.

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Raw Data: Deciphering the Decline in Spanish Mobile Accounts

BERLIN — It would take the unimaginable — a major power outage, a natural disaster or a sudden, permanent loss of income — for many people to abandon their mobile phones.

That is what appears to be happening in Spain in the midst of its economic crisis. But in the country’s telecom sector, as in a Salvador Dalí painting, there may be more than meets the eye.

The Spanish regulator, Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones, said last week that 486,183 mobile phone accounts were deactivated by Spanish operators in October alone, the ninth straight month of contraction that has seen two million prepaid accounts, or 9.4 percent of the current total, taken off networks since February.

The biggest reason for the industry’s difficulties is the most obvious: Spain’s economic slowdown, highlighted by its 26.2 percent unemployment rate in October, including a jobless rate of nearly 50 percent among cellphone-conscious young consumers.

Rosalind Craven, who analyzes West European mobile operators at International Data Corp. in London, said the nine months of contracting figures reported by Telefónica’s Movistar and Vodafone Spain, the two largest mobile operators, reflected the economic challenges facing consumers.

“Because it has been going on for so long, this indicates that the reason is indeed the country’s economic distress,” she said. “People in Spain have less money and are looking to save where they can.”

From January through October, Movistar, the market leader, has deactivated 2.3 million mobile accounts. Vodafone Spain, the No.2, shut off 1.3 million accounts, according to the telecommunications commission. Conversely, Orange Spain, the No.3, has gained 124,420 customers and Yoigo, owned by TeliaSonera of Sweden, has added 412,580. Virtual operators, which are low-cost resellers, have added 1.1 million customers.

But three other developments unrelated to Spain’s slowing economy may be exaggerating signs of a telecom sector meltdown.

The first was the decision by Movistar and Vodafone this year to stop subsidizing new handsets. The cost-cutting move caused many customers to switch to Orange, Yoigo and virtual operators like Simyo, which continued to provide subsidies. Both Movistar and Vodafone have since partially reinstated subsidies.

The other influence was a decision by Telefónica and Vodafone to focus on their most lucrative clients — contract customers who pay on average about €25, or $33, each month, more than double what prepaid customers pay. Telefónica, for example, has signed up one million customers since October to a new plan called Movistar Fusión, a package of mobile, fixed and Internet flat-rate service starting at €49.99 a month.

A third, less obvious reason, may be the counting methods used by the operators, which during economic downturns have been known to purge inactive accounts more aggressively from subscriber lists. Such cullings bolster the average monthly revenue per user, the main bellwether used by investors to value operators.

Representatives for Telefónica and Vodafone declined to say if they were aggressively purging their lists. Ms. Craven, the I.D.C. analyst, said operators in Greece conducted a mass purge in 2009 as that country’s economic crisis began to worsen.

Operators generally declare accounts to be inactive when they are unused for three or six months. In good economic times, bigger customer rolls help operators claim greater market share. In bad times, the bigger lists dilute scarce earnings.

Spaniards do not appear to be abandoning their “móviles.” Cellphone penetration in Spain was 116 percent in October, and many people carry more than one SIM card. The inactive accounts being shut down, said Agustín Diaz-Pinés, an analyst at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, are likely to be extra SIM accounts.

“Undoubtedly the economic downturn plays a role here, but I don’t think many people are dropping their mobile subscriptions,” he said. “They may rather be canceling duplications, for example, the prepaid line you never use.”

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Dec. 24

NEWS An Islamist-backed constitution was approved by voters in Egypt, propelling deeply split political factions into a new phase in the battle over the country’s future. David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh report from Cairo.

Angry protests escalated into violence in India’s capital Sunday, after thousands of people gathered to demand justice for the victim of a recent gang rape in New Delhi. Heather Timmons and Gardiner Harris report.

The latest chapter in the Greek fiscal drama is a new reminder of how private investors have managed to outmaneuver Europe’s officials at various stages of the debt crisis. And, some experts caution, each time it happens, future debt workouts in the euro zone will become even more costly. Landon Thomas Jr. reports from London.

Alongside Christmas markets peddling sweets, candles, holiday decorations and crafts another kind of market has sprung up in response to Spain’s hard times: “mercadillos,” or little markets, where the entrepreneurial-minded have found a niche by gathering and selling the unsold stock of retailers whose sales have plummeted, or unwanted clothing and other items from people in need of cash. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

Owners of dozens of buildings across Hong Kong drape the exteriors with enormous displays for Christmas, New Year and the Lunar New Year — an expense that appears to be downturn-proof. Bettina Wassener reports.

EDUCATION Elite Western boarding schools, including Marlborough College, the Harrow School and Branksome Hall, are establishing campuses in Asia. The schools are tapping into the demands of Asian parents who want their children to get a high-quality foreign-style education while staying close to home. There is also the desire to escape local school systems, which focus more on exams and rote learning. Kristiano Ang and Yenni Kwok report.

Malaysia is trying to upgrade a hodgepodge of gritty industrial towns and rural villages with Iskandar Malaysia, a planned eco-city and trading zone with districts for tourism, health care and education. EduCity, a 240-hectare, or 600-acre, plot of land is being developed in Nusajaya, with the hope that the city’s lush green fields, neatly paved roads and two theme parks will eventually become a second home to more than 16,000 students. Kristiano Ang reports from Nusajaya, Malaysia.

ARTS The austerity measures that have hurt the arts across Europe have been particularly unsettling in France, where cultural spending had been sacrosanct. Now the directors of grand cultural institutions here are resorting to public appeals to pay for the things they want, cobbling together the money not by courting millionaires but just the average Jules. Doreen Carvajal reports from Paris.

Many of the year’s design coups belonged to small entrepreneurs. Alice Rawsthorn writes from London.

SPORTS The Indian batting legend Sachin Tendulkar announced that he is retiring from one-day cricket events, implying that he intends to continue in five-day tests, taking a career that began when he was 16 up to and beyond his 40th birthday next March. Huw Richards reports.

With the goalkeeper and club captain Iker Casillas sitting on the bench for the first time since May 2002, Real Madrid suffered its first loss to Málaga since 1983. Rob Hughes on soccer.

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Midge Turk Richardson, Ex-Nun Who Edited Seventeen Magazine, Dies at 82

Midge Turk Richardson, who spent 18 years as a nun before spending 18 years as the editor of Seventeen magazine, a redoubt of worldly concerns like clothes, makeup and dating, died last weekend at her home in Manhattan. She was 82.

Mrs. Richardson, whose body was found by family members on Monday, apparently died in her sleep sometime during the weekend, her stepson Kevin Richardson said.

A former Roman Catholic nun, Mrs. Richardson left her order in 1966, a journey she recounted in a memoir, “The Buried Life,” published in 1971. In secular life, she became a member of New York’s social set, and was married for three decades to Ham Richardson, a tennis star who later ran his own investment concern, with homes on Park Avenue and in Bridgehampton, on Long Island.

At Seventeen, which she edited from 1975 until her retirement in 1993, Mrs. Richardson was known for introducing frank discussions of delicate subjects — including sex, anorexia and suicide — from which the magazine, aimed at teenage girls and long considered a bastion of wholesomeness, had traditionally shied away.

Under Mrs. Richardson’s stewardship, certain aspects of the magazine remained comfortably familiar. “Secrets of Staying Thin,” promised one cover, from 1980; “Those Dreamy Summer Romances,” proclaimed another that year.

But other cover lines betrayed her resolve to address modern readers’ concerns: “Teen Suicide: The Danger Signals,” “What You Must Know About Herpes.”

In 1982, Mrs. Richardson instituted a regular column, “Sex and Your Body,” which explored subjects like gynecological health, sexual relations and birth control.

“We’ve been talking about it for years and trying to figure out how to go at it in a tasteful manner,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1983. “We don’t want to be frightening to a young girl, or permissive. But the demands of the time finally brought us around to it.”

All this was a far cry from her life as Sister Agnes Marie, and from the quiet routine of her days in the convent, where she had lived from the ages of 18 to 36.

Agnes Theresa Turk, known as Midge because of her petite stature, was born in Los Angeles on March 26, 1930, the youngest daughter of a Roman Catholic family. As a girl, she worked as an extra in more than a hundred Hollywood films, sometimes appearing opposite Shirley Temple.

At 18, wanting a life of service, she forsook her lively home, her active social life and her boyfriend to enter the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a teaching order with a motherhouse in the Hollywood hills.

Sister Agnes Marie, as she was known in religion, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Immaculate Heart College, run by her order. She embarked on a career as an educator, teaching English, French and drama in local parochial schools and later becoming the principal of a Catholic high school in a blighted, largely Latino section of Los Angeles.

She loved the life, but by the mid-1960s she had become depressed and exhausted — frustrated, she wrote, by what she saw as the failure of diocesan hierarchy to meet the needs of the impoverished community she served. She suffered two bouts of temporary blindness, brought on, her doctors told her, by strain.

In 1966, after much soul-searching, Sister Agnes Marie asked to be released from her vows. (In 1970, Anita Caspary, the mother superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, led an exodus of 300 nuns from the order in response to what they described as the failure of the diocese to lift outmoded restrictions on nuns’ lives.)

At 36, Agnes Turk found herself on her own for the first time. Carrying a single suitcase, she made for New York: it was one place, she reasoned, that offered career opportunities for women. She found a job as an assistant to a dean at New York University, sleeping on the floor of her tiny Greenwich Village apartment because she could not afford furniture.

She learned to navigate an alien social world. Once, preparing for a date, she washed her hair only to realize she did not own a hair dryer. She stuck her head pragmatically in the oven, emerging with singed hair.

After working as the college editor of Glamour magazine and at Scholastic Publications, she joined Seventeen as executive editor, becoming editor in chief in 1985.

Mrs. Richardson’s husband, whom she married in 1974, died in 2006. The No. 1-ranked tennis player in the United States in 1956 and 1958, he won 17 national titles and played on seven Davis Cup teams.

Besides her stepson Kevin, survivors include another stepson, Ken Richardson; a stepdaughter, Kit Sawers; two sisters, Gwendolyn Tighe and Marie Smith; and five step-grandchildren.

Mrs. Richardson was also the author of a children’s biography of a friend, the photographer Gordon Parks.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1970, she described the forces that led her first to take the veil and later to relinquish it:

“I entered the convent not so much because I believed in the church as that I believed in helping people,” she said. “I’d never had any great thing about dressing up in those clothes and jangling my rosary beads.”

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