New job posting suggests Nokia may still be considering Android after all

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Glen Campbell considering more live shows in 2013

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Glen Campbell may be wrapping up a goodbye tour but that doesn’t mean he’s done with the stage.

Campbell is considering scheduling more shows next year after playing more than 120 dates in 2012.

The 76-year-old singer has Alzheimer’s disease and has begun to lose his memory. He put out his final studio album, “Ghost on the Canvas,” in 2011 and embarked on the tour with family members and close friends serving in his band and staffing the tour.

Campbell’s longtime manager Stan Schneider said in a phone interview from Napa, Calif., where the tour wrapped for the year Friday night, that recent West Coast shows have been some of the singer’s strongest. Campbell will break for the holidays and if he still feels strong he’ll begin scheduling more shows.

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Online:

http://glencampbellmusic.com

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ukraine fights spreading HIV epidemic

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Andrei Mandrykin, an inmate at Prison No. 85 outside Kiev, has HIV. He looks ghostly and much older than his 35 years. But Mandrykin is better off than tens of thousands of his countrymen, because is he receiving treatment amid what the World Health Organization says is the worst AIDS epidemic in Europe.

Ahead of World AIDS Day on Saturday, international organizations have urged the Ukrainian government to increase funding for treatment and do more to prevent HIV from spreading from high-risk groups into the mainstream population, where it is even harder to manage and control.

An estimated 230,000 Ukrainians, or about 0.8 percent of people aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Some 120,000 are in urgent need of anti-retroviral therapy, which can greatly prolong and improve the quality of their lives. But due to a lack of funds, fewer than a quarter are receiving the drugs — one of the lowest levels in the world.

Ukraine’s AIDS epidemic is still concentrated among high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, homosexuals and prisoners. But nearly half of new cases registered last year were traced to unprotected heterosexual contact.

“Slowly but surely the epidemic is moving from the most-at-risk, vulnerable population to the general population,” said Nicolas Cantau of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who manages work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “For the moment there is not enough treatment in Ukraine.”

Stigma is also a big problem for those with HIV in Ukraine. Liliya, a 65-year-old woman who would give only her first name, recently attended a class on how to tell her 9-year-old great-granddaughter that she has HIV. The girl, who contacted HIV at birth from her drug-abusing mother, has been denied a place in preschool because of her diagnosis.

“People are like wolves, they don’t understand,” said Liliya. “If any of the parents found out, they would eat the child alive.”

While the AIDS epidemic has plateaued elsewhere in the world, it is still progressing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to Cantau. Nearly 21,200 new cases were reported in Ukraine in 2011, the highest number since the former Soviet republic registered its first case in 1987, and a 3 percent increase over 2010. As a result of limited and often delayed treatment, the number of AIDS-related deaths grew 17 percent last year to about 3,800.

Two years ago, Mandrykin, the prisoner, was on the verge of becoming part of that statistic, with his level of crucial CD4 immune cells — a way to measure the strength of the immune system — dropping to 11. In a healthy person, the CD4 count is usually over 600.

“I was lying in the hospital, I was dying,” said Mandrykin, who is serving seven years for robbery, his fourth stint in jail. “It’s a scary disease.”

After two years of treatment in a small prison clinic, his CD4 count has risen to 159 and he feels much better, although he looks exhausted and is still too weak to work in the workshop of the medium-security prison.

The Ukrainian government currently focuses on testing and treating standard cases among the general population. The anti-retroviral treatment of more than 1,000 inmates, as well as some 10,000 HIV patients across Ukraine who also require treatment for tuberculosis and other complications and all prevention and support activities, are paid for by foreign donors, mainly the Global Fund.

The Global Fund is committed to spending $ 640 million through 2016 to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in Ukraine and then hopes to hand over most of its programs to the Ukrainian government.

Advocacy groups charge that corruption and indifference by government officials help fuel the epidemic.

During the past two years, Ukrainian authorities have seized vital AIDS drugs at the border due to technicalities, sent prosecutors to investigate AIDS support groups sponsored by the Global Fund and harassed patients on methadone substitution therapy, prompting the Global Fund to threaten to freeze its prevention grant.

Most recently, Ukraine’s parliament gave initial approval to a bill that would impose jail terms of up to five years for any positive public depiction of homosexuality. Western organizations say it would make the work of AIDS prevention organizations that distribute condoms and teach safe homosexual sex illegal and further fuel the epidemic. It is unclear when the bill will come up for a final vote.

AIDS drug procurement is another headache, with Ukrainian health authorities greatly overpaying for AIDS drugs. Advocacy groups accuse health officials of embezzling funds by purchasing drugs at inflated prices and then pocketing kickbacks.

Officials deny those allegations, saying their tender procedures are transparent.

Much also remains to be done in Ukraine to educate people about AIDS.

Oksana Golubova, a 40-year-old former drug user, infected her daughter, now 8, with HIV and lost her first husband to AIDS. But she still has unprotected sex with her new husband, saying his health is in God’s hands.

“Those who are afraid get infected,” Golubova said.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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African Union asks UN for immediate action on Mali

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — In an open letter Thursday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the president of the African Union urged the U.N. to take immediate military action in northern Mali, which was seized by al-Qaida-linked rebels earlier this year.

Yayi Boni, the president of Benin who is also head of the African Union, said any reticence on the part of the U.N. will be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the terrorists now operating in Mali. The AU is waiting for the U.N. to sign off on a military plan to take back the occupied territory, and the Security Council is expected to discuss it in coming days.

In a report to the Security Council late Wednesday, Ban said the AU plan “needs to be developed further” because fundamental questions on how the force will be led, trained and equipped. Ban acknowledged that with each day, al-Qaida-linked fighters were becoming further entrenched in northern Mali, but he cautioned that a botched military operation could result in human rights abuses.

The sprawling African nation of Mali, once an example of a stable democracy, fell apart in March following a coup by junior officers. In the uncertainty that ensued, rebels including at least three groups with ties to al-Qaida, grabbed control of the nation’s distant north. The Islamists now control an area the size of France or Texas, an enormous triangle of land that includes borders with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger.

Two weeks ago, the African Union asked the U.N. to endorse a military intervention to free northern Mali, calling for 3,300 African soldiers to be deployed for one year. A U.S.-based counterterrorism official who saw the military plan said it was “amateurish” and had “huge, gaping holes.” The official insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

Boni, in his letter, said Africa was counting on the U.N. to take decisive action.

“I need to tell you with how much impatience the African continent is awaiting a strong message from the international community regarding the resolution of the crisis in Mali. … What we need to avoid is the impression that we are lacking in resolve in the face of these determined terrorists,” he said.

The most feared group in northern Mali is al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, al-Qaida’s North African branch, which is holding at least seven French hostages, including a 61-year-old man kidnapped last week.

On Thursday, SITE Intelligence published a transcript of a recently released interview with AQIM leader, Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, in which he urges Malians to reject any foreign intervention in their country. He warned French President Francois Hollande that he was “digging the graves” of the French hostages by pushing for an intervention.

Also on Thursday, Islamists meted out the latest Shariah punishment in northern city of Timbuktu. Six young men and women were each given 100 lashes for having talked to each other on city streets, witnesses said.

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Associated Press writer Virgile Ahissou in Cotonou, Benin and Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali contributed to this report.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Xbox 720 Is Coming Sooner Than Anyone Anticipated

After almost three years without an update, and with Windows 8 sales flailing, Microsoft will release a new Xbox just in time for Christmas next year, sources told Bloomberg’s Dina Bass and Ian King. Last year Microsoft had said that it wouldn’t release a new version of the gaming system “anytime soon,” with other sources talking up a date sometime in 2013 “at the earliest.” This new Christmas launch makes perfect sense for the video-game nerd anticipated “Xbox 720,” as the rumorers refer to it. An Xbox is one of those it toys that gets people lining up at 3 a.m. during holiday shopping craziness. Even the aging 360 console has managed to double the sales of the new Nintendo Wii so far this holiday season, according to numbers from the NDP Group. Microsoft hasn’t put out an entirely new console since 2005, which led to riots during Black Friday of that year.

RELATED: Foxconn Is Still a Hard Place to Work

And Microsoft needs a super-anticipated something, since Windows 8 sales fell so flat this year. After whispers that the new operating system wasn’t selling well, NDP research group found that sales fell 21 percent for new computers running Windows. The research group doesn’t measure sales from Microsoft stores or online, but Microsoft has said most of its sales come from third-party retailers like Best Buy anyway. Windows 8 tablet sales were almost “nonexistent” said the report, making up just 1 percent of all Windows 8 sales. Yeesh. However, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said he is playing the long game on this one, claiming that people will get used to the new look and when they do fall in love with it. Maybe the people will line up for Windows 8 next year, too? 

RELATED: Amazon’s New Cloud Music Player Is Great, But Is It Legal?

If not, though, the new Xbox sounds like an upgrade that will get gamers excited and buying. As for what exactly the gadget will look like, the rumorers say it will be cheaper and smaller than the 360, which retails starting at $ 300. In addition, it will have an udpated Kinect controller, a quad core processor, 8GB Ram, Blu-Ray, and augmented reality glasses, according to “leaked reports.” 

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Producer sues Pythons over ‘Spamalot’ royalties

LONDON (AP) — It’s no joking matter.

A producer of the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is suing the British comedy troupe over royalties from the hit stage musical “Spamalot.”

Producer Mark Forstater wants a bigger share of proceeds from the show, which is based on the Pythons’ 1975 movie spoof of the legend of King Arthur.

Lawyers for Monty Python are contesting Forstater’s claim and will present their arguments later. Python members Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones will give evidence during a five-day hearing that began Friday at London’s High Court.

Forstater is suing the trio and the two other surviving Python members, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. The sixth member of the troupe, Graham Chapman, died in 1989.

Forstater’s lawyer, Tom Weisselberg, said that under an agreement made when the film was produced, “for financial purposes Mr. Forstater was to be treated as the seventh Python” and entitled to the same share of “Holy Grail” merchandising and spin-off income as the other members.

But the lawyer said Forstater had not received his fair share of royalties from the stage show, which has been a hit around the world. It ran on Broadway for almost four years to 2009 and is still playing in London’s West End.

Weisselberg said Forstater, who was declared bankrupt earlier this year, had been forced to go to court because of his “difficult financial circumstances.”

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Deaths more common on popular heart drug: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People with a common type of abnormal heart rhythm were more likely to die within several years if they had been prescribed digoxin, a drug used to help control abnormal heart rates, in a new analysis.

The research involved 4,060 people with atrial fibrillation, in which the heart’s upper chambers quiver chaotically instead of contracting normally. More than two-thirds of the participants were treated with digoxin at some point either shortly before or during the 3.5-year study.

Dr. Samy Claude Elayi, from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, said digoxin – which is widely available in generic form – may benefit some people who have heart failure in addition to a heart arrhythmia.

“But in patients that have no heart failure and (have) atrial fibrillation, I think there is no reason to use this drug as a first line,” added Elayi, who worked on the study.

Another cardiology researcher, however, said the new study isn’t robust enough to warrant changing treatment strategies, and that earlier studies have shown digoxin is safe.

Elayi and his colleagues re-analyzed data from a past trial of people with atrial fibrillation and a high risk of stroke that were treated with a variety of drug combinations, including beta blockers and calcium channel blockers.

Over the study period, 666 people died, according to results published in the European Heart Journal.

People who had taken digoxin in the previous six months, the study team found, were 41 percent more likely to die of any cause and 61 percent more likely to die from a heart rhythm problem, in particular.

That increased risk of death was seen in people with and without heart failure, and in both men and women.

DIZZINESS, FAINTING

Digoxin works by helping to stabilize the upper heart chambers affected by atrial fibrillation, Elayi said – but it can also cause problems by creating a bad rhythm in the heart’s lower chambers. That can lead to dizziness, fainting and heart palpitations.

The researchers noted that they didn’t have data on what dose of digoxin people were prescribed – or how closely they stuck to those prescriptions.

Because the trial wasn’t originally intended to measure the negative effects of digoxin, and people weren’t assigned randomly to one arm or the other, the analysis also can’t prove that digoxin caused the extra deaths.

Dr. Ali Ahmed, who has studied digoxin at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, called that a major limitation of the new study.

He said an earlier randomized controlled trial – considered the gold standard of medical research – did not find more deaths among people with heart failure taking digoxin. Other research, Ahmed added, has suggested that low doses of the drug can actually lower the risk of death among some patients.

An analysis like this one can’t fully account for the likelihood that sicker patients are prescribed certain drugs more often, he said.

“When you do non-randomized studies, you always wonder, was it really digoxin or was it the other confounders” such as patients’ chronic diseases, that led to more deaths.

“This should be taken with extreme caution, because of the potential for confounding and bias from a variety of sources,” Ahmed, who wasn’t involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

“The fundamental thing is you cannot overrule the findings of a randomized controlled trial with non-randomized data.”

‘NOT A KILLER’

Digoxin can be bought for about $ 10 for a month’s supply. It’s been used worldwide for decades to help control heart rate, the researchers said.

Elayi said the findings don’t mean that people with heart failure and atrial fibrillation shouldn’t be taking the drug.

But based on his team’s study, he said he would recommend other heart medications before digoxin for people without heart failure. However, if an atrial fibrillation patient also has very low blood pressure – which makes drugs such as beta blockers and calcium blockers unsafe – digoxin might be a reasonable second choice, he added.

In that case, doctors should prescribe digoxin at low doses and keep a close watch on the amount of the drug in patients’ blood, Elayi told Reuters Health.

In addition, he said, “From the patient perspective, if doctors put them on the drug they should check their rationale for that.”

But according to Ahmed, patients and doctors shouldn’t worry about taking or prescribing the drug because of this study. Digoxin, he said, “is not a killer.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/99ohTH European Heart Journal, online November 27, 2012.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A Pet Food Store Fights to Survive Sandy

When Robert Freed walked into Pet Foods Plus, his flooded store on Midland Avenue in Staten Island, two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, he knew what he smelled immediately: the stench of rotten kibble and cat food, a few tons of it. During good times, that $ 250,000 worth of inventory was the equivalent of Freed’s bank. Now his windows had been broken, the walls had been pushed in by the storm surge, and his counters and the platform they rested on were gone, washed way up the avenue. His racks and shelves were knocked over, dog food was spread all over the floor, his cat toys and doggie chews soggy and covered in what looked like seaweed.

It was Oct. 31. Rob, 47, and his younger brother Matt, 37, had waited out the storm in New Jersey. Their homes were in the highest-risk, Zone A sections of Staten Island, as was their store. The first morning the Outerbridge Crossing, one of the bridges that connect New Jersey to Staten Island, reopened, they hopped in their cars to check on their store. Rob had gotten calls from friends and neighbors telling him it was on fire, the callers shouting over emergency sirens wailing in the background. He’d dismissed these as the hysterical bulletins of those who were still in a state of shock from the flood. But after crawling across Staten Island—traffic was backed up because the traffic lights were out—he realized that the MetroPCS location next door had indeed gone up in flames. The old, wooden clapboard house was now a charred mess spilling blackened shingles into the street.

Their store, a cinder-block structure built on a concrete slab, hadn’t burned. Instead, it had been flooded. The waterline, marked in kelp and mud on the walls, stood at nine feet.

“I went numb,” Rob says, “I’m standing there thinking this is my store but this isn’t my store. This, this is—it’s like being at a wake. You’re standing there, laughing about the person who died, but then it hits you.”

Matt was by his side, and as they headed inside, he bent to pick up a flat of Fancy Feast cat food that had broken open, then stopped and dropped it. What was the point? There was so much, spread and piled so high, mixed with sewage and sand.

Then they were surrounded. A dozen people had entered the store with them. They were stepping over the spilled dog food and scattered cans and were stuffing cat toys and leashes and dog bones into garbage bags. They were looting.

“They didn’t even know we were the owners,” says Matt, “They were pushing us out of the way to get in the store.”

They had seen a few cops on a boat going down the still-flooded Colony Avenue, but they were still in a search-and-rescue phase. They would find at least eight dead within five blocks of Pet Foods Plus. The police weren’t going to stop the crowd now making off with the store’s goods.

Rob turned to Matt and told him he was going to get the Chevy Tahoe, back it into the store through the broken doors, and then sleep in the car. “We gotta protect our business,” he said.

“We can’t protect it. They’re gonna kill us,” said his brother. The sun was going down soon, he pointed out. “They’ll stab us.”

The brothers agreed to leave. They walked down Midland Avenue toward the beach. They saw shoeless children using plastic bags and rubber bands to keep their feet dry, survivors hosing down the inside of their houses to wash the mud from their walls. Both men decided that while there was nothing they could do to save their store, they could at least help some of their neighbors—their customers—in the area.

Rob and Matt spent the rest of the afternoon, and the next four days, hauling soggy drywall, waterlogged furniture, and moldy carpet from the bungalows of Midland Beach, helping those who’d lost much more than a business.

“We were numb,” says Rob. “We were just doing the next thing. Lift this mattress. Strip that carpet. Whatever needed to be done, we just did it. We just kept going.”

Every once in a while, walking around, they would come upon cans of cat food or a piece of a point-of-sale display that looked familiar. Much of their inventory had been carried by the floodwaters and deposited around the neighborhood.

After a disaster, the immediate focus of government officials and ordinary citizens is saving lives and providing food and shelter to those who have lost everything. In the aftermath of Sandy, that’s what countless small businesspeople in New York City and New Jersey did—people like Rob and Matt Freed. With their business partner, Bernard Hilzenrath, the Freeds spent days in hard-hit areas, not just Midland Beach but also the Rockaways and Breezy Point in Queens, helping friends clear out flooded basements and first floors. Through it all, concern about their own livelihood was never far from mind. Lending their muscle to those less fortunate helped keep the fear at bay, but only for a little while.

For a community to return to normalcy after a catastrophe, small businesses also must come back. In New Orleans, the lag in the reopening of small businesses has made some low-lying communities into retail ghost towns more than seven years after Hurricane Katrina. “It won’t matter if you rebuild your residential areas,” says Mary Wong of the Office Depot Foundation, part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Business Civic Leadership Center. “If you don’t rebuild your downtown, your small businesses, then you don’t have an engine.”

While individuals can get immediate help—and zero-interest loans—from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there is no similar agency that’s prepared to work with small businesses. The Small Business Administration (SBA) is the only federal agency set up to provide assistance to small businesses—in the case of retailers that means those with annual revenue below $ 21 million—but it does not provide zero-interest disaster-related loans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that after a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, 52 percent of small businesses never reopen.

The Freed brothers are luckier than many of their peers. Their homes survived the storm with little damage, giving them more cushion than store owners who need to find housing before even considering whether to restart their business. Up and down Midland Avenue, numerous businesses have already decided to give up. Midland Pharmacy, a block from Pet Foods Plus and in business for 25 years, has shuttered, as has Krypton Comics on the corner of Midland and Baden. “I’m done,” says owner Arthur Palomba. “My stock was destroyed.”

The prospects for Pet Foods Plus are only slightly brighter. “We don’t have retirement plans, 401(k)s, IRAs, savings. Everything we have is in our inventory,” says Rob. It will take months, or even years, before businesses in Staten Island and other New York communities recover fully from Sandy’s devastation. The Freeds believe theirs will be one of them. But neither nature nor time is on their side.

Rob Freed, short, stocky, muscular, with graying hair at the temples, had bought fully into the idea that the supreme American achievement is to run your own business. The fourth of six children and the oldest son, he’d been a mediocre student—“my best subject: lunch”—at Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School. He never considered college, finding work in a delicatessen and as a car salesman after graduating. He settled into a decent-paying job as a wholesale meat salesman, selling sides of beef to restaurants and butchers, and occasionally taking home a few scraps for his dogs, a boxer named Hank and a Lhasa apso named Wally. He usually bought his dog food at a store on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, where an older man named Ira Licht sold him 40-pound bags of Eukanuba. “Pet food stores are like bars,” Rob says. “People come in to talk. They like to talk about their animals, so you get to know your customers.”

In 1997, when Ira, who’d started the store 15 years earlier, wanted to sell out, he asked Rob, then 32, if he was interested in taking the place over. The store was about 2,500 square feet, a long and skinny one-story retail building in Sheepshead Bay, one block from the F train. It was shabby, the racks sagging, some of the inventory expired, but Rob thought there was potential. Matt had just graduated from high school and Rob talked to him about going into business together. Matt liked the idea. Rob and Ira negotiated a price: $ 10,000 for the inventory, and Rob would take over the lease. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Your own place,” Rob says. “Of course you have your doubts, you’re scared, but still, it’s a great feeling.”

The pet food business, like the people food business, is low-margin, low-markup. The profit on a bag of dog or cat food is about 10 percent. Cat and dog toys, leashes, catnip—those are the items with the big markups. Carpeted kitty castles are a relative gold mine.

Most days, though, you’re slinging dog food. Some customers come in every day to buy one can of cat food because they like to stop and talk. Rob and Matt are convinced that people who take care of animals are good people, making for a nicer clientele than you might have if you ran, say, a liquor store.

“We’re not making money on people’s vices,” says Matt.

“Not usually,” Rob says. “You do get those ladies who say they own 60 cats. And that’s what they admit to. The reality is probably 180.” Cat ladies are great for business.

Pet Foods Plus averaged about $ 300,000 to $ 400,000 a year in revenue, with the brothers each taking out about $ 20,000 a year in salary, putting everything else back into the store: in inventory, in improvements, in promotions. Managed carefully, the business, while no great moneymaker, supported their young families. Rob had married and already had a boy and a girl at home.

Their neighborhood, however, was changing. Working-class Italians and Jews—pet owners—had given way to more recent Syrian Jewish immigrants, who were not in the habit of keeping dogs or cats in the home.

The other problem, Rob had realized, was that pet stores do most of their volume in bulk—those 40- or 50-pound bags of dog food and cat food or 50-pound bags of kitty litter—but at a city store like theirs that lacked parking, customers could only buy what they could carry, which kept revenue at a trickle.

About eight years ago, they began looking for a second location. Rob knew that pet food salesmen who weren’t willing to cut much of a deal for one store’s business would be more inclined to do so if they could double their volume. Also, with two stores, it might not be necessary to carry as much inventory in each location if Rob could move product as needed. And if two stores worked and those savings were realized, then what about three, four?

Many of their former customers had moved to Staten Island. Rob and Matt had moved there as well, to a beachfront community they felt was improving. They found a new 2,500-square-foot building on a commercial strip, at the corner of Patterson and Midland, across the street from a deli and a dog groomer, up the block from a comic book store, a judo dojo, a Chinese restaurant, and a Mexican grocery. The ethnic makeup of the neighborhood was diverse, with Chinese families crammed in next to retired widowers, yuppies tearing down bungalows to put up two-story houses, plus a few city workers who enjoyed the fresh ocean breezes. They knew the neighborhood wasn’t great—there was a welfare hotel nearby where drug addicts overdosed at an alarming rate—but it seemed to be on the way up.

The brothers and their friend, Bernard, each put up $ 50,000 and made a deal on the location, paying about $ 6,000 a month in rent, with three months’ rent free that they’d use to build out the store. They did the work themselves, laying out the retail aisles with chalk on cardboard, erasing and redrawing until they were happy with the configuration. They wanted a raised platform and counter for the cash register, so one person working behind it could also take in the whole store. “And because I’m short,” jokes Rob. They put the dog food in the back and the higher-margin leashes, cat toys, and dog treats in colorful displays near the register. (Eventually, if you work in a pet food store, you will try the pet food, usually to win a bet or answer a dare. Rob recalls there was one brand, Rewards, that wasn’t bad. “They had turkey with gravy and the gravy was pretty good.”)

Their red-and-white logo, a cartoon illustration of a dog and cat, was stenciled on the window. After a few months of 16-hour days, they had a store that looked as spiffy and professional as a chain retailer. They could duplicate it in a third store, or a hundred stores, if they generated the capital to do so.

Opened in 2005, Pet Foods Plus’s Staten Island location wasn’t an overnight sensation—very few retail operations are—but the brothers didn’t expect that. What they found was that they had surveyed the neighborhood correctly. This was a pet-friendly community, and business was steady. After three years, Rob had paid off the line of credit he’d taken out for the store. They were in the black most months. “Every month was a little better,” says Rob. “You keep making a little more, you keep putting it back in the store, buying more inventory because of the volume discounts.”

The salesmen from the pet food companies were cutting them better deals, taking the brothers out to dinners to write up the orders. Rob and Matt never took more than $ 20,000 apiece per year out of the Staten Island location, but the business grew, surpassing $ 400,000 in revenue last year and climbing steadily as the brothers’ reputation spread in the neighborhood.

This year was on track to be their best yet, and the Christmas season was looking particularly promising. The three partners decided to put up $ 15,000 to buy cat and dog toys in bulk. “We figured that never goes bad, it’s like money in the bank,” says Matt. “That turned out to be the wrong decision.” They were going to go all out this year, with a fancy Christmas display they finished putting up just days before the order to evacuate.

One of the strangest after-effects of natural disasters is the impulse of Americans to collectively empty out their closets and donate everything that doesn’t fit or that they don’t want anymore. It’s a well-intentioned gesture, in most cases, but the result is that neighborhoods like Midland Beach very quickly resemble a giant, messy closet with abandoned clothes strewn everywhere.

Five days after the storm, several relief agencies have set up on the sidewalk and inside Pet Foods Plus, pulling out some of the retail racks to serve hot food and distribute some of the tons of used clothing that have poured into Midland Beach. There is a Salvation Army distribution center in the parking lot. Inside the store, garbage bags of donated clothes are now mixed in with the rotting dog food. “People are donating sandals and bikinis,” Rob says. “In November? What are they thinking?”

Girls hauling wagons walk by regularly and ask if anyone wants water or a snack. “Otherwise we gotta carry it all back,” they say.

Richard Aloi, the owner of a nearby building gutted by the flood, says he needs to get his place fixed up or he’ll lose his tenant. He has a generator going and several pumps to dry the place out. “This was my achievement in life,” Aloi says of his small retail building. “If I lose the tenant, I’m gone, I’m shot.” The Russian martial-arts instructor who runs a judo school in the building has promised to come back if Aloi can get the place cleared out.

He says he got through to the Small Business Administration, who told him he might qualify for a 3 percent loan. “How about zero percent?” Aloi says. “Look around this place. We’re shot. I can’t afford 3 percent.”

Rob shakes his head. “Even at zero percent, I’m not sure I could reopen. $ 100,000 over eight years, paying back $ 1,000 a month on top of my overhead. I don’t know if I could do it.”

His brother Matt adds, “And if we reopen, where will our business be? Twenty percent, 40 percent of before the storm?”

The most common complaint among Staten Island business owners is they can’t reach their insurance companies on the phone, or if they can get through, they’re told there’s a backlog of claims and the company can’t schedule an adjuster to come out. “Our company said they usually get about 7,000 claims a year,” says Rob. “They told us they have 30,000 pending right now.” (They were also told by their insurance company, Tower Insurance, that they do not have flood insurance.)

The Freeds’ landlord lost his home in Brooklyn and hasn’t even been able to make it out to Midland Beach to survey the damage. His insurance company is similarly backed up. “We don’t know anything,” says Rob. “How can we make a plan when we don’t have any numbers?”

The Office Depot Foundation’s Wong points out that it usually takes about eight weeks for the disaster response to transition from rescue to recovery. That’s when the business and political leadership of the community has to come together to make the long-term recovery plan that will presumably also include some support for local businesses. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has already asked for $ 42 billion in federal disaster relief, some of which will likely be distributed by local politicians or through local agencies. The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce has implemented a microloan program to help businesses reopen their doors after Sandy. But along Midland Avenue in Staten Island, Rob and Matt wonder if this flooded area should even be rebuilt.

The response of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to the devastating floods of 2008 provides a possible model for a post-Sandy recovery. The state initiated a comprehensive plan to rebuild outside the flood basin and help businesses recover. It set up a $ 3 million small business grant fund and earmarked an additional $ 7 million to clear debris. A similar program in New York and New Jersey, with many more zeros at the end of it, may jump-start small businesses and encourage them to stick it out.

“Where am I going to get the capital to start over?” Rob wonders. “I’m not borrowing the money. I’m not going into debt again.”

Rob, Matt, and Bernard are walking down Midland Avenue to Father Capodanno Boulevard, which runs alongside the Atlantic, now blocked from view by an eight-story-high pile of toxic rubbish on the beach. Garbage and dump trucks are idling on the highway, waiting to unload more of what used to be the interior walls, floors, and fixtures of people’s homes and is now labeled hazardous waste.

In better times, the men had strolled along this beach with their children, and each shared the same dream: that they could pass on the business to their kids. Now, with the beach closed, the three head up the boulevard, turn inland along Hunter Avenue, and then back to the store. On every block, in every other house, families are digging out, piling their ruined possessions in heaps along the sidewalk, waiting for sanitation trucks to take them to the beach.

“See, here’s the thing,” says Matt. “The people who own their own houses, they might stay. But if you were renting? Would you wait two months till the landlord made your house habitable?”

Bernard says, “Our customers may be gone.”

“If we were a big company,” says Matt, “if we had real money, we’d hire a team to go out and survey the neighborhood to see who’s staying and who’s going, who has pets.”

Rob recalls all the talk during the presidential campaign about small businesses being the backbone of America. “Sometimes,” he says, “I think what they mean by small business is actually big business.”

A woman with red hair comes out of her house and asks how Rob and the guys are doing. “I saw what happened to the store,” she says. “Terrible.”

“You got power?” Rob asks.

She shakes her head. “No power. We got water.”

“How’s your dog?” Rob asks.

“He died.”

Rob says he’s sorry.

As he’s walking away, he smiles and says, “I hope she gets another dog.”

Back at the store, the relief workers are long gone, and they’ve taken all the remaining undamaged retail racks with them, without asking. Steadily, Rob’s customers and neighbors come up and give him a hug. One customer who stuck it out through the storm, the water in his house rising up to his neck, somehow saved three of his five cats. “Thank God, thank God,” he says. Rob looks around the store for some unopened cat food. Another neighbor comes by and recommends drinking plenty of Irish whiskey.

Matt is inside the store, kicking at the ruins. “My son Gavin, he’s three, he heard about the damage and he said, ‘Daddy, I’ll fix it. I’ll bring my paintbrush and fix it all up.’”

Rob nods. “In my heart, I want to reopen. But my head is telling me it may not happen.”

As he speaks, an attractive blonde wearing gold-rimmed sunglasses parks her convertible Lexus and walks up to the store before noticing it’s not exactly open for business. She looks around, confused. “When did this happen?” she asks.

She gets back into her car and drives away.

Greenfeld is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Myanmar cracks down on mine protest; dozens hurt

MONYWA, Myanmar (AP) — Security forces used water cannons and other riot gear Thursday to clear protesters from a copper mine in in northwestern Myanmar, wounding villagers and Buddhist monks just hours before opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was to visit the area to hear their grievances.

The crackdown at the Letpadaung mine near the town of Monywa risks becoming a public relations and political fiasco for the reformist government of President Thein Sein, which has been touting its transition to democracy after almost five decades of repressive military rule.

The environmental and social damage allegedly produced by the mine has become a popular cause in activist circles, but was not yet a matter of broad public concern. However, hurting monks — as admired for their social activism as they are revered for their spiritual beliefs — is sure to antagonize many ordinary people, especially as Suu Kyi’s visit highlights the events.

“This is unacceptable,” said Ottama Thara, a 25-year-old monk who was at the protest. “This kind of violence should not happen under a government that says it is committed to democratic reforms.”

According to a nurse at a Monywa hospital, 27 monks and one other person were admitted with burns caused by some sort of projectile that released sparks or embers. Two of the monks with serious injuries were sent for treatment in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second biggest city, a 2 ½ hour drive away. Other evicted protesters gathered at a Buddhist temple about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the mine’s gates.

Lending further sympathy to the protesters’ cause is whom they are fighting against. The mining operation is a joint venture between a Chinese company and a holding company controlled by Myanmar’s military. Most people remain suspicious of the military, while China is widely seen as having propped up army rule for years, in addition to being an aggressive investor exploiting the country’s many natural resources.

Government officials had publicly stated that the protest risked scaring off foreign investment that is key to building the economy after decades of neglect.

State television had broadcast an announcement Tuesday night that ordered protesters to cease their occupation of the mine by midnight or face legal action. It said operations at the mine had been halted since Nov. 18, after protesters occupied the area.

Some villagers among a claimed 1,000 protesters left the six encampments they had at the mine after the order was issued. But others stayed through Wednesday, including about 100 monks.

Police moved in to disperse them early Thursday.

“Around 2:30 a.m. police announced they would give us five minutes to leave,” said protester Aung Myint Htway, a peanut farmer whose face and body were covered with black patches of burned skin. He said police fired water cannons first and then shot what he and others called flare guns.

“They fired black balls that exploded into fire sparks. They shot about six times. People ran away and they followed us,” he said, still writhing hours later from pain. “It’s very hot.”

Photos of the wounded monks showed they had sustained serious burns on parts of their bodies. It was unclear what sort of weapon caused them.

The protest is the latest major example of increased activism by citizens since the elected government took over last year. Political and economic liberalization under Thein Sein has won praise from Western governments, which have eased sanctions imposed on the previous military government because of its poor record on human and civil rights. However, the military still retains major influence over the government, and some critics fear that democratic gains could easily be rolled back.

In Myanmar’s main city of Yangon, six anti-mine activists who staged a small protest were detained Monday and Tuesday, said one of their colleagues, who asked not to be identified because he did not want to attract attention from the authorities.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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