Memphis Aims to Be a Friendlier Place for Cyclists

Lance Murphey for The New York Times

The Shelby Farms Greenline, which replaced a Memphis rail line.

MEMPHIS — John Jordan, a 64-year-old condo appraiser here, has been pedaling his cruiser bicycle around town nearly every day, tooling about at lunchtime or zipping to downtown appointments.

“It’s my cholesterol-lowering device,” said Mr. Jordan, clad in a leather vest and wearing a bright white beard. “The problem is, the city needs to educate motorists to not run over” the bicyclists.

Bike-friendly behavior has never come naturally to Memphis, which has long been among the country’s most perilous places for cyclists. In recent years, though, riders have taken to the streets like never before, spurred by a mayor who has worked to change the way residents think about commuting.

Mayor A. C. Wharton Jr., elected in 2009, assumed office a year after Bicycling magazine named Memphis one of the worst cities in America for cyclists, not the first time the city had received such a biking dishonor. But Mr. Wharton spied an opportunity.

In 2008, Memphis had a mile and a half of bike lanes. There are now about 50 miles of dedicated lanes, and about 160 miles when trails and shared roads are included. The bulk of the nearly $1 million investment came from stimulus money and other federal sources, and Shelby County, which includes Memphis, was recently awarded an additional $4.7 million for bike projects.

In June, federal officials awarded Memphis $15 million to turn part of the steel truss Harahan Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, into a bike and pedestrian crossing. Scheduled to open in about two years, the $30 million project will link downtown Memphis with West Memphis, Ark.

“We need to make biking part of our DNA,” Mr. Wharton said. “I’m trying to build a city for the people who will be running it 5, 10, 15 years from now. And in a region known to some for rigid thinking, the receptivity has been remarkable.”

City planners are using bike lanes as an economic development tool, setting the stage for new stores and enhanced urban vibrancy, said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bike-pedestrian coordinator, a position the mayor created.

“The cycling advocates have been vocal the past 10 years, but nothing ever happened,” Mr. Wagenschutz said. “It took a change of political will to catalyze the movement.”

Memphis, with a population of 650,000, is often cited among the unhealthiest, most crime-ridden and most auto-centric cities in the country. Investments in bicycling are being viewed here as a way to promote healthy habits, community bonds and greater environmental stewardship.

But as city leaders struggle with a sprawling landscape — Memphis covers about the same amount of land as Dallas, yet has half the population — their persistence has run up against another bedeviling factor: merchants and others who are disgruntled about the lanes.

A clash between merchants and bike advocates flared last year after the mayor announced new bike lanes on Madison Avenue, a commercial artery, that would remove two traffic lanes. Many merchants, like Eric Vernon, who runs the Bar-B-Q Shop, feared that removing car lanes would hurt businesses and cause parking confusion. Mr. Vernon said that sales had not fallen significantly since the bike lanes were installed, but that he thought merchants were left out of the process.

On McLean Boulevard, a narrow residential strip where roadside parking was replaced by bike paths, homeowners cried foul. The city reached a compromise with residents in which parking was outlawed during the day but permitted at night, when fewer cyclists were out. Mr. Wagenschutz called the nocturnal arrangement a “Cinderella lane.”

Some residents, however, were not mollified. “I’m not against bike lanes, but we’re isolated because there’s no place to park,” said Carey Potter, 53, a longtime resident who started a petition to reinstate full-time parking.

The changes have been panned by some members of the City Council. Councilman Jim Strickland went as far as to say that the bike signs that dot the streets add “to the blight of our city.”

Tensions aside, the mayor’s office says that the potential economic ripple effect of bike lanes is proof that they are a sound investment.

A study in 2011 by the University of Massachusetts found that building bike lanes created more jobs — about 11 per $1 million spent — than any other type of road project. Several bike shops here have expanded to accommodate new cyclists, including Midtown Bike Company, which recently moved to a location three times the size of its former one. “The new lanes have been great for business,” said the manager, Daniel Duckworth.

Wanda Rushing, a professor at the University of Memphis and an expert on urban change in the South, said bike improvements were of a piece with a development model sweeping the region: bolstering transportation infrastructure and population density in the inner city.

“Memphis is not alone in acknowledging that sprawl is not sustainable,” Dr. Rushing said. “Economic necessity is a pretty good melding substance.”

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Unemployment Deepens the Loss from Hurricane Sandy

In the Rockaways, none of the 450 employees of the Madelaine Chocolate Company will receive a paycheck this week. Until a few days ago, the floor of the company’s 200,000-square-foot complex was a muddy, sludgy, chocolaty mess, and its factory has temporarily closed. Outside, foiled Santas and candy roses lay victim to the hurricane.

Not far away, the cash register at Fast Break, a local deli, is silent, its employees out of work. Next door, Browns Hardware will be shut until at least February.

The story is much the same throughout the region, where residents who lost their jobs as a result of Hurricane Sandy are streaming into career centers in New York and New Jersey, desperate for a paycheck.

“Here, it’s like anyone who didn’t lose his home lost his job,” said Juan Colon, 57, who worked at Madelaine for 26 years.

The devastating storm, which destroyed many businesses, left tens of thousands of New York and New Jersey residents unemployed. How long they will remain jobless is uncertain. In some cases, they may be able to resume their old jobs as their employers get back on their feet, assuming those businesses reopen.

The latest jobs reports from New York and New Jersey, for November, suggested the toll the storm took on the local labor force — New York State lost 29,100 private jobs, while New Jersey lost 8,100.

In the same month, New Jersey processed an unprecedented number of first-time claims for unemployment insurance: 138,661, surpassing the previous record of 83,518 established in December 2009, which came at the height of the recession. And in New York, 158,204 individuals filed initial claims for unemployment, nearing the record set in January 2009, also at the height of the recession.

The unemployment problem has eased a bit as “Grand Reopening” signs have popped up at mattress stores, gas stations and other businesses. And the number of people filing for unemployment for the first time has slowed significantly in recent weeks.

But there are still many people struggling to pay their bills, finding themselves out of a job at a time when the overall unemployment picture remains bleak.

“We were spared the storm, but not the repercussions,” said Hector Valle, 57, who lives on Staten Island. The hurricane left Mr. Valle’s home untouched, but dealt his family a mighty blow: His wife worked at Bellevue Hospital Center as a nurse’s assistant for the last 25 years. When the hurricane shuttered Bellevue, she was transferred to Woodhull Medical Center — a move that caused her to lose her overtime work, as well as part of her night differential pay.

The couple’s income fell to $1,400 a month from $2,200 a month.

“There’s nobody coming to my house to help,” said Mr. Valle, who has been unemployed for three years, “because they’re like, ‘You’re fine.’ We’re not fine.”

Those most affected are the people who already have trouble finding jobs: older workers, single parents with child-care concerns and immigrants who speak little English.

And the storm has further handicapped many of those looking for new work: Interview outfits lie moldy in Dumpsters; computers have been destroyed, résumé files gone forever. Many lack access to transportation. “There are a lot of barriers to employment, from no phone to no home,” said Thomas Munday, director of a city-run Workforce 1 Career Center on Staten Island.

When they do get jobs, many residents will face new, longer commutes, and fewer benefits.

At the Madelaine chocolate company this month, Jorge Farber, the president and chief executive, shuffled past ribbons of ruined Reese’s foil, wearing yellow rubber shoe covers slicked with slime. He intends to reopen, but could not estimate a date.

The company is the largest employer in the Rockaways, and normally pumps out 100,000 pounds of chocolate a day. It was started 64 years ago by two men fleeing the Holocaust, and about a quarter of its employees are Haitian immigrants. Many had family members who died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

Some of the laid-off employees have packaged chocolate here for decades. For them, Mr. Farber said, the company is a good provider: Line workers, many of whom do not speak English, make about $15 an hour, plus benefits. It would be difficult for them to find new jobs with the same salary and benefits.

Over nearly three decades, Mr. Colon rose to a supervisor position, earning about $900 a week.

When the storm left him without a job, he signed up for unemployment benefits. But he is getting only $325 a week, he said.

“I don’t know what I will do,” said Mr. Colon, who lives in a fourth-floor apartment in Far Rockaway with his wife, 22-year-old daughter and a grandchild. “Nobody can survive on $300.”

There is no telling when the company will be able to bring him back.

Some may find work related to hurricane recovery. New York State qualified for a federal grant that will allow it to hire 5,000 temporary cleanup workers for jobs that last about six months and pay $11 to $15 an hour. The city has already hired 788 people to fill some of those temporary jobs, according to Angie Kamath, deputy commissioner of work force development for the city’s Department of Small Business Services. And it will hire 400 more in the coming weeks, she said.

“We hope and expect that that number will continue to grow,” Ms. Kamath said. “The state has every intention to go after additional funding.”

The storm’s aftermath has also created private jobs. Areas hit by hurricanes almost always see a temporary boost in employment because of rebuilding activities, said Allison Plyer, chief demographer at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, which tracked employment after Hurricane Katrina. “There will be no doubt billions of dollars of private and flood insurance to rebuild homes and businesses,” she said.

But few of those jobs will last. Many will go to out-of-state contractors. And not everyone who is out of work can fill labor-intensive cleanup positions.

Ms. Plyer also cautioned against using the experience of Hurricane Katrina to predict what will happen after Hurricane Sandy.

After Hurricane Katrina, residential areas were destroyed, while New Orleans’s business district remained relatively intact. Businesses bounced back, but the housing stock and the area’s population did not, leaving employers seeking workers. “Unemployment rates sunk to their lowest level,” Ms. Plyer said, continuing: “All the McDonald’s were offering signing bonuses. You couldn’t find anyone to work for them.”

“Katrina entailed a massive population displacement that basically emptied out the city,” she added.

On Staten Island, unemployed residents inundated a city-operated career center in St. George after the storm. About 500 people showed up during two days to apply for 240 storm cleanup jobs. (Normally 350 individuals will seek employment assistance during a five-day week.)

Mr. Valle, who once worked as a customer service representative, waited outside the center hoping to land one of those cleanup jobs. He left when all the positions had been filled.

“That was like an audition for ‘American Idol,’ ” he said. “I have never been in line with 500, 600 people for a job in my life.”

His wife, he said, had been their support for the last three years. “Sandy just yanked that from under us,” he said.

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Pakistani Taliban Kidnap 22 Policemen

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani Taliban kidnapped at least 22 policemen after coordinated attacks on multiple security check posts in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, Pakistani officials said. Two policemen were reported killed in related gun battles with the militants.

Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press

Two supporters of Benazir Bhutto, the slain prime minister, at a gathering on Thursday in Islamabad, Pakistan, commemorating the fifth anniversary of Ms. Bhutto’s assassination.

The attacks came before dawn on the outskirts of Peshawar, the insurgency-riven capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which has seen a sharp rise in militant actions recently.

“The militants attacked three posts on Peshawar’s boundary with the semiautonomous tribal region past midnight with mortars and heavy weapons,” a security official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The militants burned down the posts and also seized police weapons.”

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, said security forces had mounted a search operation to recover the kidnapped policemen. Another government official said the authorities had also drawn in the help of tribal elders to hold talks with the militants to secure the men’s release. “We would make all efforts to recover them as soon as possible,” the official said.

Peshawar lies at the edge of the tribal regions, where the Taliban maintain several hide-outs for planning and mounting attacks on urban centers.

On Dec. 22, Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a senior anti-Taliban politician, was killed in a suicide attack after he addressed a political gathering in the Qissa Khwani Bazaar of Peshawar. Militants also attacked the Peshawar airport on Dec. 15, when five of them battled with security forces for several hours in an unsuccessful effort to storm the sprawling facility.

On Thursday, Pakistanis commemorated the fifth anniversary of the death of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in a militant attack in 2007. At least 200,000 people gathered in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in Sindh Province at the Bhutto family’s ancestral graveyard.

Top leadership of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, including President Asif Ali Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s husband, spoke at the memorial. But making one of the more notable appearances was Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 24, the only son of Ms. Bhutto, whose speech was widely seen as the formal start of his political career.

Though Bilawal Zardari is too young to run for office in the coming general elections, expected in April or May, he has long been the heir apparent to the Bhutto family political dynasty within the party.

In his speech, he said his party stood as a “wall against the terrorists,” in contrast with politicians who have seemed reluctant to condemn militancy. “We have chosen a very difficult path,” he said. “Our path is the path of democracy, which Benazir taught us to walk on.”

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting.

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Fear of Amazon Pushes Stores to Offer Same-Day Shipping

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Arianna Simpson of Shoptiques.com, a retail Web site, made a same-day delivery to a Manhattan office building last week.

Ivy Wu did not immediately need the navy lace cocktail dress she ordered the other day. But when a representative from Shoptiques, an e-commerce site, arrived at her Midtown Manhattan office with the dress only hours after Ms. Wu, 26, had placed her order, “I was really impressed that it was here,” she said.

This holiday season, same-day shipping has replaced free shipping as the new must-have promotion. It’s logistically complicated and money-losing — and may not even be a service that consumers want or need, analysts say. But retailers from Walmart to small shops like Shoptiques are willing to take the risk. Even the Postal Service has introduced a same-day option for retailers. And the reason is simple: fear of Amazon.com.

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has hinted that it will expand its same-day shipping service, giving customers the immediate gratification that has been the biggest advantage of brick-and-mortar stores.

For small outfits like Shoptiques, it is not an easy proposition. The courier who showed up at Ms. Wu’s office was the company’s head of boutique operations, who has put aside her regular job this holiday season to make deliveries by hand. Bigger retailers, like Toys “R” Us, Macy’s and Target, have worked with eBay to deliver items the same day, as have other old-line stores. Google has begun testing a local delivery service with several chains.

“There’s lots going on in this space, and it’s all driven by Amazon,” said Tom Allason, founder and chief executive of Shutl, a British same-day delivery service that will expand to the United States next year. “It’s not really being driven by consumers at the moment.”

The same-day delivery idea was a spectacular failure during the dot.com boom. Companies like Kozmo.com and Webvan went under because the services simply cost too much to be profitable. Amazon has offered same-day shipping since 2009, but with limits — only in big cities near Amazon warehouses on certain items ordered in the morning.

The geographical limits exist because Amazon had built warehouses far from major cities to avoid charging sales tax in certain states. But it has now given in on the sales tax fight, and in return, is erecting warehouses near cities like San Francisco, which analysts say is paving the way for faster, more widespread same-day delivery and spurring competitors.

“It’s the old idiom, ‘time is money,’ ” said Lina Shustarovich, an eBay spokeswoman. “How much time are you saving by not going to the store? People want it now, they want it fast.”

Walmart, which is the nation’s biggest retailer but sells just a fraction of what Amazon does online, is testing same-day shipping during the holiday season in five markets. Generally, it gives shoppers a four-hour delivery window and charges $10 for same- or next-day delivery. The idea is “to give customers convenience, by way of combining our online shopping with the local presence of stores,” said Amy Lester, a Walmart spokeswoman for global commerce.

But, Ms. Lester said, the test is showing that consumers often pick next-day delivery rather than same day. She declined to give a specific figure for same-day orders, but said thousands of same- and next-day orders had been placed.

Net-a-Porter, the designer apparel e-commerce site, said its same-day service is quite popular. Its $25 delivery service in the London and New York areas pays for itself, said Alison Loehnis, its managing director. But its clients are accustomed to paying for concierge service, like the customer who ordered clothing to be delivered the same day to her private jet before a vacation.

With the eBay Now iPhone app, introduced this year in San Francisco and New York, customers choose items from physical stores and eBay sends a courier to the store to pick it up and drop it off — at an apartment, office, coffee shop or bar — for a $5 fee.

EBay declined to say whether it loses money on the orders, but analysts who study logistics say it is not profitable.

“The goal with this pilot was never to monetize,” Ms. Shustarovich said. But in the future, it could make money, she said, for example if retailers pay eBay a fee for bringing them customers.

The Postal Service is testing a same-day service in San Francisco that is meant to offset its declining carrier business, a spokesman said. Consumers can order items until 2 p.m. from 1-800-Flowers.com, the first retailer offering the service, and a Postal Service employee will pick up the package and deliver it between 4 and 8 p.m.

Smaller companies are trying different approaches.

TaskRabbit, which offers à la carte personal assistant services, noticed last summer that delivering items from local stores was the most popular task requested.

Now, it charges $10 for delivery from local stores, starting in San Francisco.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2012

A photo caption with an earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of an employee of Shoptiques.com who was making a same-day delivery. She is Arianna Simpson, not Arriana.

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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In Gabon, Lure of Ivory Proves Hard to Resist

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

SEIZED AND DESTROYED Gabon burned 10,000 pounds of ivory in June to show its commitment against poaching, but elephants are still being slaughtered. More Photos »

OYEM, Gabon — This lush country, often called a “forest republic,” used to stand proudly apart from its shaky neighbors, like the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, tropical disaster zones where state failure, rebel marauders and loose weapons conspired to spell doom for endangered wildlife.

The Price of Ivory

This is the second installment in a series of articles exploring how the surge in poaching of African elephants both feeds off and fuels instability on the continent.

Gabon’s government, blessed with billions of dollars of oil money and miles and miles of virgin rain forest, has made many of the right moves to protect its animals by setting aside chunks of land for national parks, actually paying wildlife rangers on time (a rarity in Africa) and recently destroying a towering mountain of ivory in a statement of its refusal to look the other way.

But as the price of ivory keeps going up, hitting levels too high for many people to resist, Gabon’s elephants are getting slaughtered by poachers from across the borders and within the rain forests, proof that just about nowhere in Africa are elephants safe.

In the past several years, 10,000 elephants in Gabon have been wiped out, some picked off by impoverished hunters creeping around the jungle with rusty shotguns and willing to be paid in sacks of salt, others mowed down en masse by criminal gangs that slice off the dead elephants’ faces with chain saws. Gabon’s jails are filling up with small-time poachers and ivory traffickers, destitute men and women like Therese Medza, a village hairdresser arrested a few months ago for selling 45 pounds of tusks.

“I had no idea it was illegal,” Ms. Medza said, almost convincingly, from the central jail here in Oyem, in the north. “I was told the tusks were found in the forest.”

She netted about $700, far more than she usually makes in a month, and the reason she did it was simple, she said. “I got seven kids.”

It seems that Gabon’s elephants are getting squeezed in a deadly vise between a seemingly insatiable lust for ivory in Asia, where some people pay as much as $1,000 a pound, and desperate hunters and traffickers in central Africa.

It is a story of temptation — and exploitation — and it shows that the problem is not just about demand, but about supply as well. Poverty, as well as greed, is killing Africa’s elephants.

Across the continent, tens of thousands of elephants are being poached each year in what is emerging as one of the gravest wildlife crises in decades. Gabon’s elephants are among the last of the planet’s rare forest elephants, a subspecies or possibly a totally distinct species (scientists can’t agree), which makes the stakes particularly high here. Forest elephants are smaller than their savanna cousins and have an alluring, extra-hard pinkish ivory that is especially prized.

A few decades ago, there were perhaps 700,000 forest elephants roaming through the jungles of central Africa. Now there may be fewer than 100,000, and about half of them live in Gabon.

“We’re talking about the survival of the species,” said Lee White, the British-born head of Gabon’s national parks.

In June, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo, defiantly lighted a pyramid of 10,000 pounds of ivory on fire to make the point that the ivory trade was reprehensible, a public display of resolve that Kenya has put on in years past. It took three days for all the ivory to burn, and even after the last tusks were reduced to glowing embers, policemen vigilantly guarded the ashes. Ivory powder is valued in Asia for its purported medicinal powers, and the officers were worried someone might try to sweep up the ashes and sell them.

Some African countries, like Zimbabwe and Tanzania, are sitting on million-dollar stockpiles of ivory (usually from law enforcement seizures or elephants that died naturally) that someday may be legal to sell. Gabon has the unusual luxury of kissing its ivory mountain goodbye because it has an even more lucrative resource: two billion barrels of crude oil.

But it is not clear how long Gabon will continue as this relatively prosperous, politically stable corner of Africa. Protesters recently began chaffing against Mr. Bongo’s rule, saying he rigged an election to ensure that he would take over from his father, who died in 2009 after 41 years in office.

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Public Release of Ozal Autopsy Urged in Turkey

ISTANBUL (Reuters) — The full report of an autopsy on the body of Turgut Ozal, who led Turkey out of military rule in the 1980s, should be released for public scrutiny, his son said on Wednesday.

Mr. Ozal’s body was exhumed in October after years of rumors that he had been killed by militants of the “deep state” — a shadowy group within the Turkish establishment. He had angered some with efforts to end a Kurdish insurgency and survived an assassination attempt in 1988. He was prime minister from 1983 to 1989, then the Parliament elected him president.

The body of Mr. Ozal, who died of what officials said was heart failure in 1993 at the age of 65 while in office, was exhumed on the orders of prosecutors investigating suspicions of foul play.

A summary of the forensic report, released this month, said the exact cause of death could not be determined because no autopsy was conducted immediately after Mr. Ozal died. He was overweight and had kept up a grueling schedule even after undergoing a triple heart bypass operation in the United States in 1987.

Ahmet Ozal, one of the former president’s sons — who, like other members of his family, believes that his father was poisoned — wants the full scientific autopsy report published.

The findings “should not be disclosed only to the Council of Forensic Medicine, but also to universities so specialists and professors can also evaluate the results,” Ahmet Ozal, a former lawmaker, told reporters.

He said he would also file legal cases against people involved in taking his father to a hospital on the day of his death once a full report by the state inspection committee was released.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 26, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated Turgut Ozal’s leadership role in Turkey when he led the country out of military rule in the 1980s. He was prime minister, not president.

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The iEconomy: Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China

The iEconomy: Factory Upgrade:
Change comes to factories in China.

CHENGDU, China — One day last summer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift inspecting iPad cases when she received a beige wooden chair with white stripes and a high, sturdy back.

At first, Ms. Pu wondered if someone had made a mistake. But when her bosses walked by, they just nodded curtly. So Ms. Pu gently sat down and leaned back. Her body relaxed.

The rumors were true.

When Ms. Pu was hired at this Foxconn plant a year earlier, she received a short, green plastic stool that left her unsupported back so sore that she could barely sleep at night. Eventually, she was promoted to a wooden chair, but the backrest was much too small to lean against. The managers of this 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, believed that comfort encouraged sloth.

But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.

Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk.

“The days of easy globalization are done,” said an Apple executive who, like many people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “We know that we have to get into the muck now.”

Even with these reforms, chronic problems remain. Many laborers still work illegal overtime and some employees’ safety remains at risk, according to interviews and reports published by advocacy organizations.

But the shifts under way in China may prove as transformative to global manufacturing as the iPhone was to consumer technology, say officials at over a dozen electronics companies, worker advocates and even longtime factory critics.

“This is on the front burner for everyone now,” said Gary Niekerk, a director of corporate social responsibility at Intel, which manufactures semiconductors in China. No one inside Intel “wants to end up in a factory that treats people badly, that ends up on the front page.”

The durability of many transformations, however, depends on where Apple, Foxconn and overseas workers go from here. Interviews with more than 70 Foxconn employees in multiple cities indicate a shift among the people on iPad and iPhone assembly lines. The once-anonymous millions assembling the world’s devices are drawing lessons from the changes occurring around them.

As summer turned to autumn and then winter, Ms. Pu began to sign up for Foxconn’s newly offered courses in knitting and sketching. At 25 and unmarried, she already felt old. But she decided that she should view her high-backed chair as a sign. China’s migrant workers are, in a sense, the nation’s boldest risk-takers, transforming entire industries by leaving their villages for far-off factories to power a manufacturing engine that spans the globe.

Ms. Pu had always felt brave, and as this year progressed and conditions inside her factory improved, she became convinced that a better life was within reach. Her parents had told her that she was free to choose any husband, as long as he was from Sichuan. Then she found someone who seemed ideal, except that he came from another province.

Reclining in her new seat, she decided to ignore her family’s demands, she said. The couple are seeing each other.

“There was a change this year,” she said. “I’m realizing my value.”

An Inspector’s Push

“This is a disgrace!” shouted Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer and Apple’s most important industrial partner.

Keith Bradsher reported from Chengdu and Chongqing, and Charles Duhigg from New York. Yadan Ouyang contributed reporting from Chengdu and Chongqing.

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Creating the Ultimate Housework Workout

Robert Wright for The New York Times

Chris Ely, an English butler, and Carol Johnson, a fitness instructor at Crunch NYC, perfecting a houseworkout.

CAN housework help you live longer? A New York Times blog post by Gretchen Reynolds last month cited research linking vigorous activity, including housework, and longevity. The study, which tracked the death rates of British civil servants, was the latest in a flurry of scientific reports crediting domestic chores with health benefits like a lowered risk for breast and colon cancers. In one piquant study published in 2009, researchers found that couples who spent more hours on housework had sex more frequently (with each other) though presumably not while vacuuming. (The report did not specify.)

Intrigued by science that merged the efforts of a Martha with the results of an Arnold (a buffer buffer?), this reporter challenged a household expert and a fitness authority to create the ultimate housework workout — a houseworkout — in her East Village apartment. Perhaps she could add a few years to her own life while learning some fancy new moves for her Swiffer. Christopher Ely, once a footman at Buckingham Palace, and Brooke Astor’s longtime butler, was appointed cleaner-in-chief. Mr. Ely is a man who approaches what the professionals call household management with the range and depth of an Oxford don. Although he is working on his memoirs (he described his book as a room-by-room primer with anecdotes from his years in service), he was happy enough to put his writing aside for an afternoon. His collaborator was Carol Johnson, a dancer and fitness instructor who develops classes at Crunch NYC, including those based on Broadway musicals like “Legally Blonde” and “Rock of Ages.”

Mr. Ely arrived first, beautifully dressed in dark gray wool pants, a black suit coat and a crisp white shirt with silver cuff links. He cleans house in a white shirt? “I know how to clean it,” he countered, meaning the shirt. When Ms. Johnson appeared (in black spandex and a ruffly white chiffon blouse, which she switched out for a Crunch T-shirt), theory, method and materials were discussed.

“If you’re dreading the laundry,” Ms. Johnson said, “why not create a space where it’s actually fun to do by putting on some music?” If fitness is defined by cardio health, she added, it will be a challenge to create housework that leaves you slightly out of breath. “I’m thinking interval training,” she said. As it happens, one trend in exercise has been workouts that are inspired by real-world chores, or what Rob Morea, a high-end Manhattan trainer, described the other day as “mimicking hard labor activities.” In his NoHo studio, Mr. Morea has clients simulate the actions of construction workers hefting cement bags over their shoulders (Mr. Morea uses sand bags) or pushing a wheelbarrow or chopping wood.

Mr. Ely averred that service — extreme housekeeping — is physically demanding, with sore feet and bad knees the least of its debilitating byproducts. Mr. Ely still suffers from an injury he incurred while carrying a poodle to its mistress over icy front steps in Washington When the inevitable occurred, and Mr. Ely wiped out, he threw the dog to his employer before falling hard on his backside. And the right equipment matters: After two weeks’ employ in an Upper East Side penthouse, he was handed a pair of Reeboks by his new boss, the better to withstand the apartment’s wall-to-wall granite floors. (For cleaning, Mr. Ely wears slippers, deck shoes or socks.)

Mr. Ely, whose talents and expertise are wide-ranging (he can stock a wine cellar, do the flowers, set a silver service, iron like a maestro and clean gutters, as he did once or twice at Holly Hill, Mrs. Astor’s Westchester estate), is a minimalist when it comes to materials. He favors any simple dish detergent as a multipurpose cleaner, along with a little vinegar, for glass, and not much else. “Dish detergent is designed for cutting grease; there’s nothing better,” he said. He’s anti-ammonia, anti-bleach. He said bleach destroys fabric, particularly anything with elastic in it. “Knickers and bleach are a terrible combination,” he said. “I had a boss who thought he had skin cancer. His entire trunk had turned red and itchy.” It seems his underpants were being washed in bleach. (Collective wince.) “It’s horrible stuff.”

As for tools, he likes a cobweb cleaner — this reporter had bought Oxo’s extendable duster, which has a fluffy orange cotton duster that snaps onto a sort of wand, but Mr. Ely prefers the kind that looks like a round chimney brush. (If you live in a house, he also suggests leaving the cobwebs by the front and back doors, so the spiders can eat any mosquitoes coming or going.) Choose a mop with microfiber fronds (he suggested the O Cedar brand) because it dries quickly and doesn’t smell. And a sturdy vacuum. Also, stacks of microfiber cloths or a terry cloth towel ripped up.

But first, to stretch. Ms. Johnson took hold of this reporter’s Bona floor mop (it’s like a Swiffer, but with a reusable washcloth) and Mr. Ely followed along with an old-fashioned string mop. Though Mr. Ely has a kind of loose-limbed elegance, he is not exactly limber. He grimaced as he parroted Ms. Johnson, who used her mop as Gene Kelly did his umbrella, stretching her arms overhead, one by one, twisting from side to side, sucking in her stomach, rising up on tip toes. (Mr. Ely said his old poodle-hurling injury was kicking in.) Ms. Johnson adjusted his chin — “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep sticking your neck out,” she warned — and Mr. Ely raised a black-socked foot napped with cat hair and chastised this reporter: “Would you look at that?” (The cat had vanished early on, but his “debris,” as Mr. Ely put it, was still very much in evidence. The reporter hung her head. Did she know that cat spit is toxic? Mr. Ely wondered.)

“We’re warming up the spine,” said Ms. Johnson. “Squeeze your abdominals.”

Mr. Ely looked worried: “I don’t think I have abdominals!”

MR. ELY’S technique is to clean a room from top to bottom. That means he begins with the cobweb cleaner, wafting it along ceiling corners, moldings, soffits and, uh, the top of the fridge (major dust harvest there). His form was pretty, like a serve by Roger Federer, if not exactly aerobic. For Mr. Ely kept stopping to lecture this reporter — on condensation; on the basic principles of heat transfer and why one needs to vacuum the refrigerator coils; on the movement of moist air in a kitchen; on floor care, which involved a long story about a Belgian monastery whose inhabitants never washed the kitchen floor; on how to dust the halogen spot lights (use a cotton cloth, not a microfiber one, and make sure the lights are off, and cool).  “I do rabbit on, don’t I?” he said. Ms. Johnson gamely hustled him along, noting that anytime you raise your arms over your head you can raise your heart rate. “What about a balance exercise?” she cajoled, executing a neat series of leg lifts. “That’s good for the butler’s booty!”

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