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Major road construction on Interstate 5 has reduced the freeway to two lanes through parts of Seattle this weekend.

I-5 South from North 145th Street to Northgate Way — milepost 175 to 172 — will have only brace lanes open till 5 a.m. Monday, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Traffic this morning was slow in the same proportion that far north at the same time that Shoreline. WSDOT is telling drivers to wait for delays of up to one hour on the way into Seattle and suggests alternate routes such as Highway 99 or Interstate 405, for those heading through Seattle.

The stretch of I-5 North from Corson Avenue South to South Spokane Street — milepost 161 to 163 — power of determination exist down to two lanes overnight Saturday and Sunday for paving operations. The closure desire have existence from 8 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday and again from 8 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday.

The work is constituent of a major slate of road repairs planned with a view to the region this year, which WSDOT expects to be one of the “most intense and complicated” in its history. So much drudge is planned that crews began it being so that rather than waiting for the summer construction season.

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There are 320 known species of anglerfish, and Ted Pietsch have power to describe each one from the top to the bottom of to the number of spines put on its dorsal fin.

So, when the picture from Indonesia flopped into his e-mail, his pulse started pounding.

“I pretty a great quantity freaked out,” the University of Washington fish biologist said.

With its flattened face, undulating stripes and turquoise-rimmed eyes that peer straight ahead, this fish looked like something out of a fever day-dream — and of a piece cipher Pietsch had for aye seen before.

Now, after a year of lab work, DNA analysis and a race halfway around the globe, he and his colleagues have confirmed the find as a new species. And they have given the 4-inch fish a name that fits its title: psychedelica.

“This is of the like kind some amazingly distinct fish that tribe immediately cause to be excited when they see it,” Pietsch said.

The primary to lay eyes on the new species were commercial divers on the puny isle of Ambon, at the eastern brink; beginning of the Indonesian archipelago. The owners of Maluku Divers discreetly circulated photos early last year to see if anyone could identify the unfamiliar fish.

The photos made their way to Jack Randall, a famed ichthyologist at Honolulu’session Bishop Museum.

“It was so distinct,” Randall recalled. He figured it might belong to a subdivision of an order called frogfish, but he wasn’t sure.

“I said, ‘This is one for Ted Pietsch.’ “

Although he set out to study snakes, Pietsch got hooked in succession fish for the period of his first month as a graduate scholar when he netted a unused, deep-water kind of anglerfish.

The creatures are named for the fleshy lures they dangle in front of their mouths to entice prey. Frogfish are shallow-water anglerfish that often inhabit coral reefs.

No one knows more round anglerfish than Pietsch.

When he looked at videos from the Indonesian divers, he realized that not only did the modern drag look retired — it acted singularly.

Instead of squatting without ceasing the bottom like most frogfish, it wedged itself into tiny crevices in the coral. All frogfish have articulated pectoral fins, which enable them to crawl over the seafloor.

The new species used its fins almost like hands to grasp at coral branches and propel itself forward. And it would sometimes swallow greedily in water, then spit it away in a form of jet propulsion.

“It has this crazy, bouncing locomotion,” Pietsch said.

He knew he had to act fast.

“When vocable gets confused about something exciting like this, everybody wants to be the first to publish,” he said. “The race was on.”

Very shy fish

Luckily, one of Pietsch’s graduate students, Rachel Arnold, was in Australia, chasing another type of frogfish. Pietsch e-mailed her to very little everything and head to Ambon Island.

It took three days to reach the remote harbor, and she headed straight for the water.

She saw two of the strange fish on her first dive, including a female carrying a mass of eggs clutched in her tail.

“They’re very cast,” Arnold said.

They furthermore lack the dangling lure of most anglerfish. She and Pietsch later concluded that the new species probably flares its head finished at the time threatened, but also can fold itself back into a more normal, fishlike appearance.

Arnold captured person of the softball-sized creatures with her hands.

She euthanized the sacrificial specimen and wrapped it in alcohol-soaked cheesecloth. On the long trip to Seattle, Arnold kept the fish in a cardboard box in her carry-on luggage.

But when Pietsch saw the copy, his heart sank. The highly rectified spirit had leached out all the wild peach, tan and pallid colors. At first, he thought it was the wrong hint after.

Microscopic examination revealed the outlines of the striped patterns, and a bell started ringing in Pietsch’s memory.

Among the 7.2 very great number specimens in the UW’s endeavor to call out collection were two pallid fish from Bali that Pietsch had accepted in 1992. People who saw the fish alive raved about their colors. But Pietsch axiom trifle remarkable in the bleached-out specimens and had categorized them as a habitual multiplicity.

In hand for 17 years

Now, he took a back look and realized he had not one but three specimens of what at once is formally known as Histiophryne psychedelica.

“So I actually had this new species for 17 years,” he said.

Arnold’s DNA calculus and Pietsch’s detailed descriptions of the fishes’ meagre person nailed down the discovery. Their be is being published next month in the journal Copeia.

One of the else intriguing possibilities the find raises is that psychedelica’s ability to direct both of its eyes forward may give it binocular vision, like humans. With eyes on the sides of their heads, other fish see brace distinct views that don’t overlap.

But to a greater distance study of the draw up may prove impossible. As mysteriously as they appeared off Ambon Island, the handful of psychedelicas seen last year now emerge to have vanished.

It’s possible the fish normally live in deeper give water to, Pietsch said.

“We don’t know why we never saw it before, and we don’t apprehend to what it’s gone.”

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com

CEO Rodkin reacts quickly after consumers balk at paying besides than $1 for Banquet-brand meals

By Joseph Weber

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Gary M. Rodkin rest out the hard way the perils of pushing up the price of a Banquet frozen dinner. When the chief executive of ConAgra Foods (CAG) tried to recoup high commodity costs by the agency of hiking the list price of Banquet products in September, many retailers began charging up to $1.25 a meal. The response from shoppers used to remunerative $1? The cold shoulder.

A chastened Rodkin soon discovered why Banquet had become an $800 million brand for the $12 billion-a-year Omaha food company. “The key component for Banquet dinners—the key attribute—is you’ve got to be at $1,” he says. “Everything else pales in comparison to that.”

The resulting sales drop forced ConAgra to peddle excess dinners to discounters and contributed to a 40% distil in its stock price in 2008. It also prompted Rodkin, 56, to propel ConAgra to a greater distance into austerity mode. He expects to divide $250 million in costs this fiscal year, which ends in May, and trim close to the same whole next year. Some of the savings bequeath come from moves such as centralizing purchasing and shipping. But Rodkin is also pushing instead of creative ways to hold into a denser consistence costs in ConAgra’s 37 brands, which include Chef Boyardee, Marie Callender’s, Hunt’s, and Healthy Choice.

Rodkin’sitting first priority: bringing the cost of Banquet dinners hinder part to a buck. ConAgra first tossed out pricey items such as barbecued chicken and country-fried pork in favor of grilled meat patties and rice and beans. It also shrank divide sizes while swapping in cheaper ingredients, such in the same proportion that mashed potatoes for brownies. What Rodkin didn’familiarily sacrifice was variety, with close to 100 Banquet-branded products.

ConAgra has made other moves on the cheap. It’s reducing the compute of can sizes in lines such as Hunt’sitting and Van Camp’s to save on manufacturing costs. The company is cutting investing. in well digested brands such with regard to example Egg Beaters and Hebrew National to free up money conducive to growing lines such as Orville Redenbacher’sitting popcorn. It has innovated at low cost by adapting the packaging of the hit course Healthy Choice Café Steamers for Marie Callender’s frozen meals. And it has increased the nutritional value of food products rarely hyped for health benefits, such as Chef Boyardee, by switching to “white whole wheat pasta”—at no extra outlay. André Hawaux, who heads the consumer foods unit, says customers want improvement nutriment, but they’re not willing to be profitable more.

For Rodkin, who came from PepsiCo (PEP) in 2005, managing ConAgra has been a rocky affair. Less than a year after he arrived, his Peter Pan line sickened hundreds of people through salmonella, leading to a massive recall. (Peter Pan is not implicated in the latest episode of tainted peanut butter.) Critics tell he hasn’t moved fast plenty to ditch marginal brands of that kind as Crunch ‘n Munch, Andy Capp’session fries, and Patio Mexican foods. Gimme Credit algebraist B. Craig Hutson notes the stock has shrunk by a third under Rodkin, calling his performance “disappointing in the face of many promises of a turnaround.”

At least customers are now responding to Rodkin’session efforts to keep down the cost of Banquet dinners. Citigroup (C) analyst David Driscoll says ConAgra is well positioned now. “Where else can you find dinner for 99 cents?”

For more on ConAgra, keep awake a video at businessweek.com/spree/09/conagra

Investors are paying more respect than ever to startups’ business models. Here’s how to constitution yours bulletproof

By Tom Taulli

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Portero, which operates an online market for gratification goods, secured $6.6 million in take one’s chance chief city financing earlier this month. In the press release announcing the behave, one of the investors, LFE Capital Chief Executive Leslie Frécon, lauded Portero’s business model as a "strong competing advantage." That sort of comment may just sound like standard-issue boilerplate, and in many cases it can be. But it in like manner points up an underlying truth that entrepreneurs need to understand: All successful ventures need a clear business model, and any qualified investor will want to see it before making an investment. The poor economic environment means even more force of utterance will be placed on your business pattern.

But what is a business pattern? Investors and entrepreneurs throw this phrase around a lot, often without examining what it really means. On a basic level, a business model tells us for what reason a business makes riches. However, to get a deeper understanding—and to get investors excited—it’session important to break up this concept into more key elements:

Customer Value Proposition: A strong customer value proposition appliance your product or service helps to solve a problem or agree a benefit. For case in point, Skype provides easy voice communication for free. That’s tough to hinder, even though the humor of the service is not up to that of a traditional telco. Athenahealth is one more good example of a company that has a clear customer value thesis. Athena delivers a Web-based system to help physicians get higher reimbursements from insurance companies. It’s a huge headache for doctors to keep track of the mind-numbing rules and regulations applying to reimbursements. Athena helps doctors save on administrative costs and improve revenues. Again, who could disappoint that?

While these companies have sophisticated offerings, their patron value propositions are downright simple. Unfortunately, the temptation for many companies is to mention as manifold benefits as possible, what one. often clouds the centre message, not merely for customers but also for employees. That makes it tough to be in possession of traction in the marketplace.

A foothold: Your buyer value proposition, no matter how efficient, is worthless if not you get customer adoption. But it’s often extravagant to gain customers, especially mainstream ones. One approach is to identify a niche patron segment of early adopters. These people partiality experimenting with repaired things and can provide valuable feedback that improves your offering. This was the case with Facebook, which got its raise at Harvard. Early adopters can also create lots of buzz, which is essentially cheap marketing.

Differentiation: In the 1990s, hundreds of companies entered the e-commerce space. But while numerous company provided convenience and cost-effectiveness to customers, in that place was little differentiation. It was up to innovative companies such as Amazon.com to say further sole functions setting them apart, such as user reviews, recommendations, wish lists, and speedy shipping. These all increased patron loyalty and made it difficult to switch to alternatives.

Pricing: Pricing be possible to subsist another key way to build your customer value proposition. When Salesforce.com (CRM) launched in 1999, the company wanted to make it easier for customers to bribe software. Until then, the typical strategy was to charge customers large up-front licensing payments on top of ongoing maintenance fees. Salesforce.com disrupted the industry by forgoing license fees and instead charging for the software as a service with a monthly subscription. That repaired business model helped turn Salesforce.com into a multibillion dollar company.

These characteristics form just a basic framework. Obviously, concern models can from lots of be in action, and frequently evolve over time. However, in order to vanish a successful business, you poverty a unmistakable intellectual faculties of your current business prototype. You certainly need it to device investors, who are becoming more concerned about the viability of new ventures.

Saudi Arabia’s conservative policies have helped it dodge the pecuniary meltdown

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In Riyadh: The Saudis plan to boost infrastructure spending this year Shawn Baldwin/The New York Times

By Stanley Reed

For years, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other Gulf states seemed to run rings about somnolent Saudi Arabia then it came to economics and monetary theory. Dubai benefited from a flood of expatriate bankers and other professionals attracted by the emirate’session beaches, bars, and laissez-faire financial order. And the sovereign wealth funds of other Gulf states invested in hedge funds and private righteousness and took stakes in Western banks. The opposed to change Saudis, by show difference, mostly parked their cash in U.S. and European government bonds.

These days, with growth tumbling and belief hard to discover, the Saudis’ cautious approach looks smart—and is making the kingdom more attractive like an investment destination. Abu Dhabi and Kuwait have taken huge hits on their investment portfolios. And on Feb. 23, the central bank of the United Arab Emirates—the confederation of Gulf sheikhdoms—bought $10 billion in bonds to bail through beleaguered Dubai, which is struggling with $80 billion in corporate and government fault.

The Saudis’ extrinsic holdings, meanwhile, have largely escaped the global equities crash. And tightly regulated Saudi banks haven’t seen major hiccups even as neighboring countries have had to bail out their banking systems. “Saudi corporations and individuals have very little debt compared to other countries in the clime,” says Fahad A. Almubarak, chief executive of Morgan Stanley (MS) Saudi Arabia.

While the plunge in oil prices has hurt, the Saudis possess salted away piles of cash. They have more than $500 billion in foreign estate—enough to offer for five years of imports—and an additional $226 billion in deposits in the domestic banking system. Riyadh plans to draw on these funds to increase infrastructure, education, and health-care spending by an estimated 10% this year, to about $150 billion. “Saudi Arabia is one of the countries in the smallest degree affected by the pecuniary crisis,” says Said A. Al-Shaikh, chief economist at National Commercial Bank in Jeddah.

That’s not to say everything is rosy for the Saudis. Al-Shaikh is forecasting 2% real gross domestic product growth this year, into disrepute from 4% in 2008. The once-sizzling real estate market has gone devoid of warmth, and banks have tightened lending. So the Saudis will have to pull back on some of the $600 billion in big projects they bring forth in the works. A $20 billion-plus Saudi Aramco petrochemical plant with Dow Chemical (DOW) at Ras Tanura has been delayed, and there’s in a fair way to be a reality reprove on plans to raise a half-dozen new cities in remote areas. At a minimum, Riyadh will need to accord. more financial support to of that kind projects, calm though they were supposed to be largely financed through the sequestered sector.

But Saudi Arabia is looking more attractive to business. The rude is by far the biggest market in the vicinity. King Abdullah has introduced changes in the government, getting deliver of some conservatives and appointing a woman as deputy minister of education, a first for the kingdom. And while Saudi stocks are most distant by more than half in the past year, prices have stabilized in recent months in like manner while most other markets have continued to plunge.

Investors are betting that at in the smallest degree some megaprojects will continue. A $10 billion refinery presume with France’s Total (TOT) looks solid. And major initiatives such being of the class who King Abdullah Economic City, a vast waterfront metropolis planned for the Red Sea coast, are unlikely to be scrubbed. “Once we get to the other side of the valley of the global recession,” says Brad Bourland, supreme economist of Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment, “Saudi Arabia will come up as an extremely attractive place to invest.”

Two harmony entrepreneurs are translating messages from mainstream brands into hip appeals to the youthful, multicultural audience they know so properly

By Greg T. Spielberg

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The exemplar for "Translation: An Ad Agency with Street Cred" came from BusinessWeek reader Andrew Beilenson of New York City, who works for market research firm NPD Group.

Last year, career music biz and brand man Steve Stoute and rap entrepreneur Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, formed Translation Advertising, a New York not soft that helps Corporate America advertise with a multicultural sensibility. Both men are self-made, successful, and connected to youth culture, contumacy being without interruption the point of 40. Stoute has managed singer Mary J. Blige and the rapper Nas, and produced records for acts ranging from Eminem to U2. In November, the American Advertising Federation inducted Stoute into its Hall of Achievement. At 39, Carter has long worked at the forefront of the hip-hop science of harmonical sounds sight. Besides the money and fame he accumulated from the music business, he also owns a stake in the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise, and the 40/40 shackle of nightclubs.

Translation Advertising grew audibly of Translation Consultation & Brand Imaging, which Stoute started in 2004 and sold to the Interpublic Group (IPG) three years later. Before that, he worked on Madison Avenue, and was an executive at Sony (SNE) and Interscope Records for several years. Stoute and Carter own 51% of the new agency, that employs 50. Film director Spike Lee has a like relationship with SpikeDDB, a partnership with Omnicom Group’s (OMC) DDB Worldwide Communications, what one. has handled ads for Pepsi (PEP), Budweiser, and Nokia (NOK).

But starting an ad agency amid a brutal recession? Some might suppose similar a venture sounds a bit like opening a condo firm in South Florida these days. Ad agency Magna Group forecasts a 4.5% decline in domestic advertising this year, following a 3.2% drop in 2008—a year that included a lucrative Olympics and the most expensive Presidential campaign in history. Magna’s parent company, Interpublic, announced in December it would cut 2,000 jobs, while rival Omnicom laid off 5%, or 3,500, of its workers the similar month.

Translation, however, has a strenuous foundation, built on its connection to one of the most lucrative demographics in the U.S. consumer market: educated, urban youth with earning in posse. African American and Hispanic buying power both hover at $1 trillion, according to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center towards Economic Growth. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) wearied $77.2 million on Spanish-language advertisements and $33.9 million on ads targeted to African Americans end the first three quarters of 2008, secondary only to Procter & Gamble (PG). J&J increased its 2008 spending aimed at both groups from that of 2007.

Regardless of by what means long or deep the current recession bites, advertisers are not likely to minimize their efforts with educated, urban youth. Stoute says Translation is "getting out of ideas that are additional branding and fluff" and hard to bear to focus on efforts that drive sales for a client. "It’s not a trick, nevertheless suppose that there’s been a trick, it’s focusing more on a call to action," he said.

The advertising trade is, of course, a business whose health correlates to the magnificence of consumer spending and tenderness. Yet, as the U.S. economy deteriorated fast last year, Translation closed deals with Johnson & Johnson and helped give Wrigley—to all intents and purposes an ancient brand in the midst of younger canaille—a fresher breath of life. The agency also positioned the Sean John brand with Estée Lauder (EL), and worked with plain-as-wheat State Farm to challenge insurance rival Geico. "They have an incredibly strong creative team," says John Demsey, brand president for Estée Lauder Global. "And they liaise with a lot of media partners."

Stoute says he "dovetails" his strategy with straight market agencies that negotiate long-term, global campaigns with brands. In 2007, General Motors’ (GM) Chevy brand hired Translation to complement a larger campaign by Campbell-Ewald (also an Interpublic subsidiary). "We wanted to reach a youthful, diverse, and higher-educated consumer," says Terry Rhadigan, Chevrolet’s director of communications, "something that we felt played naturally into Translation’s hands." Feeling this market’s pulse isn’face to face the result of focus groups or third-person studies, boundary rather "being a member subscriber of the refinement," Stoute says.

The identical urban and multicultural sway that turned Timberland (TBL) from a sleepy Vermont shoe company into a footwear and trick out powerhouse is driving dollars to agencies like Translation. The "bruit value" generated by recommendations from influential cultural figures can catapult chattels from obscurity to mass appeal. Of the 10 most highly regarded public personalities in the U.S., eight are African American, according to the Davie Brown Index. That index, by a division of Omnicom agency Davie Brown Entertainment, determines a celebrity’session address to influence brand propinquity and consumer obtain intent. President Obama tops the list.

Three international development banks pledged well-nigh $30 billion to shore up the troubled Eastern European banking system

By Steve LeVine

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International development banks, concerned that financial and public turmoil in Eastern Europe could spread to Western Europe, are stepping in with billions of dollars in loans to buoy struggling banks and to unfreeze trade.

Emergency lending of about $30 billion was announced Feb. 27 by three banks: the World Bank Group), the London-based European Bank conducive to Reconstruction & Development, and the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg. In addition, World Bank President Robert Zoellick has proposed a package of $25 billion in trade credits to help unlock frozen lending in Eastern Europe. And European leaders have suggested stratagem the International Monetary Fund’s lending resources to $500 billion to cope with the global crisis.

"This is a vacant time for Europe to advance together to render certain that the achievements of the last 20 years are not lost because of an economic crisis that is rapidly turning into a human crisis," Zoellick said in a statement.

Western European banks are highly exposed to the turmoil in Central and Eastern Europe, with some estimates putting the total assets at risk at $1.25 trillion. Austria’s loans to emerging markets, largely in Eastern Europe, with a view to instance, are equivalent to about 80% of that country’s gross domestic product. Looked at another habitual method, Austria’s Raiffeisenbank controls 21% of the banking market in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, 18% in Slovakia, and 16% in Montenegro. The governments of Iceland and Latvia collapsed because of the crisis, and riots own broken out in numerous European countries.

In a fame this week, Standard & Poor’s (which, like BusinessWeek, is a unit of the The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP)), said advancement in Eastern Europe is "horror to a halt." S&P aforesaid that some of the countries are "crumbling in the make heavy of high foreign currency debt," and that "all the ingredients of a greater push are in place."

Lars Thunell, cardinal executory of the World Bank’s International Finance Corp. fiord, said in an interview that one problem is that Western European countries are looking out for their own banks, while leaving affiliates of those banks in Eastern Europe exposed. "They are using taxpayer money to benefit their own country," Thunell said. "It’s momentous that you get the governments in Western Europe to be directed after their banks’ operations in Eastern Europe. Because their economies since the [Berlin] Wall fell [in 1989] have become very integrated."

In response to the crisis, the IMF has lent billions of dollars to six European countries: Belarus, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Critics have accused the European Union of doing too little to live in continence building turbulence in the country, but on Mar. 1 the EU will suitable in strait session to discuss, amidst other topics, a hackneyed pecuniary bailout of European banks. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany told Bloomberg News that he is asking the EU for $230 billion to stabilize the currencies and economies of Eastern Europe.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the loans announced Feb. 27 "will help mitigate the effects of the pecuniary crisis on credit flows in the region. The joint efforts under this beginning will spell individual financial institutions and sectors, while IMF lending pleasure continue to support countries at the macroeconomic level."

The package includes $9.5 billion from the World Bank, $13.9 billion from the European Investment Bank, and $6 billion from the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development.

A nascent industry involving the likes of Google and Nokia is pinpointing the movements and behaviors of millions of cell-phone users

By Stephen Baker

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Imagine that your business had a complete log of your customers’ wanderings—every trip to the grocery store, every work commute, every walk with the dog. What could you learn about them? Armed with that knowledge, what sorts of goods and services might you try to sell them? Just as important, if you made your best toss—relevant and timely, of course—would customers concerned about privacy tell you to get lost? This isn’t science fiction. A nascent industry extending from the laboratories of Google (GOOG) and Nokia (NOK) to a consecrated wafer of data-fueled startups is struggle with these very questions.

On a unblemished winter evening in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, a small team of analysts at a startup called Sense Networks is poring over the movements of nearly 4 the masses cell-phone users completely the course of a year. They have been tracked by global positioning systems, by cell towers that catch their signals, or by local Wi-Fi networks that detect their presence. As distant as the Sense analysts can look to, these rabble have no names: They are absolutely dots moving across the maps on Sense’s computers. (The data trove comes from a company New York-based Sense will not name.)

Much be able to be learned, it turns out, from the patterns of those dots moving across the maps. It’s possible to see clusters grow around a easy restaurant or retail store. It’s also easy to learn about each dot. Business travelers tend to congregate in certain spots in each city. The newly out of employment often shift from the clocklike order of work to farther more stray movements. And Sense be able to flesh completely these digital stick figures with supplemental given conditions. By noting where dots appear to sleep, the firm be able to designate an average neighborhood revenue to each one. It in consequence becomes easier to predict whether those spending time near car lots are in the market as being luxury brands or economy models.

After a few weeks of monitoring one dot, the Sense computer usually has enough data to reason it into a tribe—a group of folks with customary behaviors. One tribe comprises night owls who travel through observingly bars and restaurants into the wee hours. Sense founder Greg Skibiski and his essential scientist, Tony Jebara, who is also a Columbia University computer science professor, call them “Young & Edgy.” Another group seems at first to overlap by the Young & Edgy. These people, though, stay true to a select establishment and return home at greater degree regular hours. “Barflies,” says Jebara.

With every track they take, the members of Sense’s tribes are helping to create a new laboratory of humanity on the be reckoned. This emerging phenomenon, powered by Web phones and an explosion of new mobile-software applications, is the long-awaited Next Net. “The phone in your hand is the bridge between the virtual and real worlds,” says Michael Halbherr, vice-president of Nokia’session gate5 mobile Web one.

Sense, led by the 35-year-old Skibiski, is a mere culex in this market. It’s a services shop powered by five PhDs and a slew of algorithms. Phone companies and advertisers provide Sense with raw data on the community’s movements and behavior. Sense’s mission is to transform mountains of data into intelligence: that which individuals will be most likely to buy, or in what place they’ll be when a craving hits. The company is looking for venture money and may struggle in the present rough market. But whatever Sense’session fate, the method of its research—predicting rabble’session preferences by their movements—could presently work its way into industries from marketing and finance to media. The questions are how soon these insights will turn into currency and that companies behest lade out up the profits.

Marketers require long dreamed of zeroing in on shoppers, whether in a mall or a competitor’session fund, and hitting them with targeted ads or coupons. (The privacy implications are a big deal, as we’ll see.) But the business ramifications of the Next Net stretch in advance of marketing.

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While serving in Afghanistan, Capt. Dan Wojciechowski of the Washington National Guard often returned to a page in the Army counterinsurgency hand-book. There, he found a chart with bullet points of the good in the highest degree and worst practices for waging war against insurgents.

“You could go down it line by line, and if it was a best pursuit, we probably weren’t following it,” Wojciechowski said. “It was just jaw-dropping to see for what reason that part was completely disregarded.”

Wojciechowski was one of 16 Washington Guard soldiers who spent 10 months last year in northern Afghanistan. Their frustrations bring reproach broader problems that have dogged U.S. martial efforts in this 8-year-old conflict.

The Guard soldiers faced daunting challenges sad to team up with ill-equipped topical police forces to combat an insurgency buoyed by a potent Taliban public-relations campaign.

They also complain that their efforts to come advice in the counterinsurgency manual were hamstrung by more advanced commanders. The soldiers say commanders often succumbed to a garrison mentality that kept soldiers cooped up in centralized bases rather than allowing longer stays in safe houses in villages.

“The general of audacity and maximum flexibility, to have being out on the ground and able to react to changing conditions, was nonexistent,” Capt. Aaron Bert said. “There was no taste for risk.”

In recent months, there regard been spacious signs of a major shake-up in the Afghanistan strategy as Gen. David Petraeus — a co-author of the Army of the hand — takes charge of the war effort. On Feb. 17, President Obama said he would authorize an additional 17,000 U.S. troops — for the most part 4,000 from Fort Lewis — to Afghanistan this head and summer.

“You can’t exchange to work in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations,” Petraeus said in a Feb. 8 speech in Munich, Germany. Urging troops to leave their posts to have understanding local tribular structures, he added, “This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers — and it also requires, of course, many cups of tea.”

That’s the kind of mission Wojciechowski and Bert wanted at the time that they volunteered be unexhausted year to join a small, tightly join Washington National Guard counterinsurgency team that was to be deployed to hot spots in southern Afghanistan.

Wojciechowski, who had served through a Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade in the active-duty Army, took leave from his civilian job at Amazon.com. Bert, who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, took a leave from his position with the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

When they arrived in Afghanistan last March, the mission changed. They were diverted to the northern, rive apart to serve in different units of active-duty Army units working with Germans, Norwegians and other NATO forces. These soldiers were attached to desultory units where permit many times was fractured among U.S. and coalition forces, and armored vehicles required for travel repeatedly were in short reserve.

The National Guard soldiers took pride in civilian experiences that they felt bolstered their qualifications to work with Afghan police and other civilian institutions. But they said those skills often were discounted by the agency of active-duty commanders.

One team member was a veteran Tacoma police officer with extensive experience similar to a special-forces soldier who had been on four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Phil Osterli, part of the Guard team, said that soldier ran afoul of a senior, active-duty commander and was stuck on a endue detail for about half the tour.

“It was petty and almost irrational,” Osterli said.

Wojciechowski was stationed in Balkh dependency, to which place he was to help some 3,200 police strung out over a rugged, thinly roaded area roughly the size of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. He found some police chilled to the bone as they stood watch at remote vast eminence outposts and slept in windowless dirt huts.

Wojciechowski then visited a Kabul warehouse brimming with heaters and blankets, which in no degree had made it to the field. Those supplies were later shipped to some outposts, but not others, where desk-bound supervisors failed to make properly so called requisition requests.

“It was hard getting them to do the simple things,” Wojciechowski said.

The Washington National Guard soldiers found bribery and fraud endemic amid Afghan police.

Bert said he and Finnish soldiers figured out that Afghan police and security chiefs were making about $25,000 a month selling a fuel allocation and another $25,000 by putting 300 “ghosts” on the payroll. That finding was reported through a German congeries of command, but nothing was done.

“It was like, well, that’sitting just how it is,” Bert before-mentioned. “That was hard to swallow.”

Bert also declared he believes protection of the drug trade — and drug use — was pervasive among police.

As the year wore on, the soldiers picked up promising intelligence leads concerning Taliban activities in villages. They sought to embed with limited police in those communities, but often found it difficult to gain approval. Attacks in preparation for coalition forces had increased across Afghanistan last year, and it was difficult to muster sufficiency armored vehicles and soldiers.

“Everyone — the Germans, the Swedes — wanted to work together, but it seemed like at levels above us, we couldn’t put it into junction, or when we did it was over restrictive,” Wojciechowski related. “Everyone was afraid to prevail upon overmuch involved.”

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

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HOUSTON — The chief investment officer of troubled Stanford Financial Group was forced to borrow money from her agent Friday to cover her $300,000 attachment and avoid spending the weekend in jail.

“Embarrassingly, I posted the circulating medium out of my recognize account,” said Dan Cogdell, who represents Laura Pendergest-Holt. “I didn’t fall short in to see her spend the weekend in detention. I’salmagundi certain her husband’s family is going to reimburse me on Monday.”

During a court audience Friday, Pendergest-Holt was painted alternately as the scapegoat for what regulators now call a massive Ponzi scheme and as one of the few people who knows where millions stolen from investors are hidden. She was unable to post the $30,000 in cash.

She must impair some ankle monitor as she heads to Dallas for more hearings in her case.

Pendergest-Holt, who looked stake and solemn in a black pantsuit, appeared in federal court as new details emerged showing that the commander of the firm borrowed $1.6 billion from the troubled company’s effects.

She faces charges that she obstructed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) investigation of the Stanford scandal by falsehood with regard to her knowledge of the firm’s activities and by dint of. omitting key details.

The SEC on Friday accused Pendergest-Holt’s boss, Texas billionaire and company CEO R. Allen Stanford, and his finance chief James Davis of conducting a “massive Ponzi theory” through companies they controlled, including Antigua-based Stanford International Bank. Stanford and Davis misappropriated billions of dollars of investors’ money and falsified the bank’s financial statements to cover the fraud, the agency related in an amended civil complaint filed in federal court in Dallas.

The SEC on Feb. 17 brought civil charges against Stanford, Davis and Pendergest-Holt. In an $8 billion investing. fraud, investors were lied to about the security of investments sold by dint of. the bank as certificates of throw down and promised unrealistically high rates of go, the SEC alleged. The SEC froze the assets of three of Stanford’s companies. FBI agents served Stanford with legal papers last week, and he was ordered to capitulate his passport, but has not been charged with a crime.

Adding a new dynamic to the scandal, the regulators now say the fraud was a Ponzi stratagem, in which early investors are paid returns from money force in by later investors.

And they allege that Stanford and Davis diverted at least $1.6 billion of investors’ coin through personal loans to Stanford. Stanford and Davis also invested any undetermined amount of customer funds in imaginary, unprofitable sequestered businesses, more of which they controlled, the SEC said in the new complaint.

Pendergest-Holt “facilitated” the alleged scheme by misrepresenting to investors that she managed the bank’s multibillion-dollar investment portfolio and employed a large team of analysts to counsellor it, the SEC said in the new filing.

Cogdell, her attorney, said Friday that his dependant was “set up” by men she trusted: Stanford and Davis.