The Lede: Comedian’s Blog Morphs Into Major Political Force in Italy

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Last Updated, Tuesday, 9:57 a.m. Although an aide to the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded a recount late Monday, after his center-right coalition appeared to lose the battle for the Italian Parliament’s lower house to the main center-left coalition by less than 0.4 percent, a look at the raw vote totals reveals a sharp decline in support for him. According to the provisional count, Mr. Berlusconi’s party got about six million fewer votes than in 2008, slipping from first place all the way to third.

As my colleague Rachel Donadio explains, though, that did not spell a triumph for Mr. Berlusconi’s traditional rivals, the center-left Democratic Party, which lost nearly four million votes, because more than eight million Italians voted for the Five Star Movement, a party that emerged, fully formed, from the comedian Beppe Grillo’s popular blog. At the end of counting late Monday, Mr. Grillo’s party had more votes than any other in the lower house election and the second-most votes for Italy’s Senate.

While Mr. Grillo’s mass movement, which drew support from disenchanted voters on the left and the right, did not run as part of either main coalition and so will not lead Italy’s next government, the scale of the new party’s turnout, organized largely through the Internet and vast rallies, stunned observers.

In an update to nearly 1 million followers on Twitter, Mr. Grillo hailed the result, telling supporters, “We have become the leading force in absolute terms after just three and a bit years, without money, without ever having accepted the reimbursement of expenses.”

According to a translation on the English-language version of his blog, Mr. Grillo told supporters in a telephone interview streamed live on YouTube late Monday:

This adventure that we’re having is fantastic. First of all I just want to thank those extraordinary young people that made it possible to find the stages, the lights, the security services, the people that put us up in their homes, that have helped us with the camper. This is the difference between this grassroots movement and “the others”. “The others” are paid and are carried around in buses with flags. We are all volunteers. This is why so many thanks are needed.

Given that neither of the main coalitions will be able to command a majority, Mr. Grillo said, they will most likely have to combine to form an interim government until there can be fresh election. In the meantime, he added:

We are the obstacle. They can no longer succeed against us. Let them resign themselves to that. They’ll be able to keep going for 7 or 8 months and they’ll produce a disaster but we’ll try and keep them under control. We’ll start to do what we’ve always said – our stars: water in public hands, schools in public hands, public health service. If they follow us they follow us. If they don’t, the battle will be very harsh for them, very harsh.

Since the term of Italy’s president is also at an end, one of the first challenges facing Italy’s fractured new Parliament will be to elect a successor. In an update posted on Twitter on Tuesday, Mr. Grillo declared that his movement would decide who to support in an online ballot. Signalling change, he added, “Spring is coming.”

While the surge in support for Mr. Grillo’s party was described as a shock in many parts of the Italian and international media, there were clear signs of the Five Star Movement’s growing popularity in the series of late rallies Mr. Grillo called his #TsunamiTour on Twitter, culminating in a final campaign appearance attended by an estimated 800,000 in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni.

Images of recent mass rallies for Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement.

One byproduct of Mr. Grillo’s success could be fresh elections, because the center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party, which spurned him as a potential candidate four years ago, is now unable to command a majority in the upper house and so may not be able to form a government.

As my colleagues Ian Fisher and Rob Harris explained in an article and a video report on Mr. Grillo in 2007, he first rallied popular support that year with his “V-Day,” based on the deep-seated desire of many Italians to dismiss their entire political class with an obscene phrase that starts with that letter in Italian.

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Media Decoder: Glenn Beck Begins Campaign to Urge TV Systems to Add His Web Channel

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8:48 a.m. | Updated Glenn Beck is beginning a campaign to get his Internet channel, TheBlaze, onto cable and satellite television systems across the country, and the one system that already carries the channel, Dish Network, is backing him up.

The campaign will begin on Monday when Mr. Beck starts promoting GetTheBlaze.com, a Web site that asks fans to contact their television provider and request the channel. He will talk about the site on his nationally syndicated radio show and link to it on his social networking Web sites.

“You probably pay good money every month to your TV provider for access to channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America — channels that you might not watch, or even agree with,” Mr. Beck wrote in a letter on the Web site. “Adding TheBlaze will ensure that you and your family have a source of news and analysis that you can trust and that doesn’t betray your values.”

Mr. Beck has previously indicated that he plans to position the channel as a libertarian news and entertainment source, which would put it into relatively direct competition with Fox News Channel, where he hosted a hugely popular 5 p.m. talk show for nearly three years. The plan is rather audacious, partly because TheBlaze is owned by Mr. Beck’s company, Mercury Radio Arts, not by a media conglomerate like Fox’s parent, News Corporation.

Twenty months ago Mr. Beck left Fox and started GBTV, the subscriber-only Internet channel that he later renamed TheBlaze.
Within a year he had 300,000 subscribers, no small feat for any Web site. But by then he’d also decided he wanted to get back on old-fashioned TV. In September 2012 Mr. Beck announced a carriage deal with Dish, the first of what his company hoped would be many such deals. Simply stated, the economics of television are better — TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch, and the advertising possibilities are enormous.

Dish has a period of exclusivity with TheBlaze, so no other cable or satellite system can carry the channel quite yet. The companies haven’t disclosed how long this period lasts, but it is probably ending soon, because TheBlaze is starting its campaign now. Such campaigns are attempted all the time by small, independently-owned channels, often with little success. Ordinarily cable and satellite systems are reticent to carry new channels; in fact, the trend is in the other direction, toward dropping independent channels altogether.

But what Mr. Beck has — and what other small channel owners don’t have — is an audience of millions on the radio and on the Internet. And some help from the Dish Network. In a statement provided by a spokesman for the channel, Dave Shull, the Dish senior vice president of programming, said, “TheBlaze and Glenn Beck bring a unique perspective to Dish’s broad spectrum of political programming on all sides.” When the channel was added last fall, he said, “We had customers sign up quickly, and we saw new customers join Dish. In fact, subscriptions attributable to TheBlaze outpaced our projections by 80 percent, proving that Dish is giving customers what they want with a choice in programming, not to mention the technology to choose how to watch it.”

Even with Dish’s endorsement, it remains to be seen whether other cable and satellite systems — such as DirecTV, Comcast and Time Warner Cable — will agree to carry TheBlaze. They may simply point out that viewers can find it on the Internet.

An end to Web streaming was something Al Jazeera accepted when it bought Current TV in January for an estimated $500 million. (Mr. Beck said he tried to bid for the channel, but was rebuffed by Current’s co-founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.) Al Jazeera currently streams its English-language news channel on the Internet free, but to make its cable and satellite distributors happy, it will stop doing so when it officially replaces Current this spring.

Then again, the Al Jazeera stream was free; the Internet stream of TheBlaze is only accessible to subscribers. Asked whether the channel would be taken off the Internet as a condition of gaining carriage on television, a spokesman said, “TheBlaze has no plans to do that at this time and believes that the continued success of the subscription platform proves to distributors the demand for our content.”

Along with the campaign announcement on Monday, TheBlaze said that Lynne Costantini, a former Time Warner Cable and Scripps Networks executive, was joining the channel as president of business development, to lead its effort to get on television.

The “Get TheBlaze” campaign will commence in phases and last for at least nine months. Mr. Beck wrote in his letter: “This journey for truth that we are on is much bigger than you and I; the future of liberty is hanging in the balance. All of us have a choice to make: sit on the sideline, or get involved.” He described TheBlaze not just as a family-friendly news and entertainment channel, but a cog in nationwide political change.

“If we succeed then we change the media. If we change the media, we control the debate. If we control the debate, we change politics. And if we change politics, we change the country,” he wrote.

TheBlaze has more than 40 hours of programming a week, including simulcasts of Mr. Beck’s radio show, a nightly show of his just for the channel, a nightly panel conversation about the news, and a couple of documentaries and reality shows. In January Mr. Beck described ambitious plans for the channel, involving more news reporting (“We are currently looking for our own Woodwards and Bernsteins,” he said) and a libertarian bent. “I consider myself a libertarian,” Mr. Beck said.

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Mediterranean Diet Can Cut Heart Disease, Study Finds

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About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study found.




The findings, published on the New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site on Monday, were based on the first major clinical trial to measure the diet’s effect on heart risks. The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.


The diet helped those following it even though they did not lose weight and most of them were already taking statins, or blood pressure or diabetes drugs to lower their heart disease risk.


“Really impressive,” said Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. “And the really important thing — the coolest thing — is that they used very meaningful end points. They did not look at risk factors like cholesterol of hypertension or weight. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and death. At the end of the day, that is what really matters.”


Until now, evidence that the Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of heart disease was weak, based mostly on studies showing that people from Mediterranean countries seemed to have lower rates of heart disease — a pattern that could have been attributed to factors other than diet.


And some experts had been skeptical that the effect of diet could be detected, if it existed at all, because so many people are already taking powerful drugs to reduce heart disease risk, while other experts hesitated to recommend the diet to people who already had weight problems, since oils and nuts have a lot of calories.


Heart disease experts said the study was a triumph because it showed that a diet is powerful in reducing heart disease risk, and it did so using the most rigorous methods. Scientists randomly assigned 7,447 people in Spain who were overweight, were smokers, had diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease to follow the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one.


Low-fat diets have not been shown in any rigorous way to be helpful, and they are also very hard for patients to maintain — a reality born out in the new study, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.


“Now along comes this group and does a gigantic study in Spain that says you can eat a nicely balanced diet with fruits and vegetables and olive oil and lower heart disease by 30 percent,” he said. “And you can actually enjoy life.”


The study, by Dr. Ramon Estruch, a professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona, and his colleagues, was long in the planning. The investigators traveled the world, seeking advice on how best to answer the question of whether a diet alone could make a big difference in heart disease risk. They visited the Harvard School of Public Health several times to consult Dr. Frank M. Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention there.


In the end, they decided to randomly assign subjects at high risk of heart disease to three groups. One would be given a low-fat diet and counseled on how to follow it. The other two groups would be counseled to follow a Mediterranean diet. At first the Mediterranean dieters got more intense support. They met regularly with dietitians while the low-fat group just got an initial visit to train them in how to adhere to the diet followed by a leaflet each year on the diet. Then the researchers decided to add more intensive counseling for them, too, but they still had difficulty staying with the diet.


One group assigned to a Mediterranean diet was given extra virgin olive oil each week and was instructed to use at least 4 tablespoons a day. The other group got a combination of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts and was instructed to eat about an ounce of them each day. An ounce of walnuts, for example, is about a quarter cup — a generous handful. The mainstays of the diet consisted of at least 3 servings a day of fruits and at least two servings of vegetables. Participants were to eat fish at least three times a week and legumes, which include beans, peas and lentils, at least three times a week. They were to eat white meat instead of red, and, for those accustomed to drinking, to have at least 7 glasses of wine a week with meals.


They were encouraged to avoid commercially made cookies, cakes and pastries and to limit their consumption of dairy products and processed meats.


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Mediterranean Diet Can Cut Heart Disease, Study Finds

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About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study found.




The findings, published on the New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site on Monday, were based on the first major clinical trial to measure the diet’s effect on heart risks. The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.


The diet helped those following it even though they did not lose weight and most of them were already taking statins, or blood pressure or diabetes drugs to lower their heart disease risk.


“Really impressive,” said Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. “And the really important thing — the coolest thing — is that they used very meaningful end points. They did not look at risk factors like cholesterol of hypertension or weight. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and death. At the end of the day, that is what really matters.”


Until now, evidence that the Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of heart disease was weak, based mostly on studies showing that people from Mediterranean countries seemed to have lower rates of heart disease — a pattern that could have been attributed to factors other than diet.


And some experts had been skeptical that the effect of diet could be detected, if it existed at all, because so many people are already taking powerful drugs to reduce heart disease risk, while other experts hesitated to recommend the diet to people who already had weight problems, since oils and nuts have a lot of calories.


Heart disease experts said the study was a triumph because it showed that a diet is powerful in reducing heart disease risk, and it did so using the most rigorous methods. Scientists randomly assigned 7,447 people in Spain who were overweight, were smokers, had diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease to follow the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one.


Low-fat diets have not been shown in any rigorous way to be helpful, and they are also very hard for patients to maintain — a reality born out in the new study, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.


“Now along comes this group and does a gigantic study in Spain that says you can eat a nicely balanced diet with fruits and vegetables and olive oil and lower heart disease by 30 percent,” he said. “And you can actually enjoy life.”


The study, by Dr. Ramon Estruch, a professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona, and his colleagues, was long in the planning. The investigators traveled the world, seeking advice on how best to answer the question of whether a diet alone could make a big difference in heart disease risk. They visited the Harvard School of Public Health several times to consult Dr. Frank M. Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention there.


In the end, they decided to randomly assign subjects at high risk of heart disease to three groups. One would be given a low-fat diet and counseled on how to follow it. The other two groups would be counseled to follow a Mediterranean diet. At first the Mediterranean dieters got more intense support. They met regularly with dietitians while the low-fat group just got an initial visit to train them in how to adhere to the diet followed by a leaflet each year on the diet. Then the researchers decided to add more intensive counseling for them, too, but they still had difficulty staying with the diet.


One group assigned to a Mediterranean diet was given extra virgin olive oil each week and was instructed to use at least 4 tablespoons a day. The other group got a combination of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts and was instructed to eat about an ounce of them each day. An ounce of walnuts, for example, is about a quarter cup — a generous handful. The mainstays of the diet consisted of at least 3 servings a day of fruits and at least two servings of vegetables. Participants were to eat fish at least three times a week and legumes, which include beans, peas and lentils, at least three times a week. They were to eat white meat instead of red, and, for those accustomed to drinking, to have at least 7 glasses of wine a week with meals.


They were encouraged to avoid commercially made cookies, cakes and pastries and to limit their consumption of dairy products and processed meats.


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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Recommending Web Pages With the Google +1 Button

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What happens if I click that +1 button on a Web site?

The +1 button on some Web pages is Google’s version of a personal-approval stamp or recommendation, similar to Facebook’s “Like” button for publicly declaring favorite things on a social network; you probably get the most out of the feature if you are a member of the Google Plus social network. The +1 button often appears on news and entertainment sites around the Web, usually next to Facebook’s “Like” button, and buttons to click for sharing the page by Twitter or e-mail. Other Google properties, like Google Maps, also host a +1 button.

When you click the +1 button on a Web page, your recommendation is noted on your own Google profile page. Google’s guide to the +1 button says you need to have a public Google Profile set up to use the +1 button.

If you happen to use Google Plus, the +1 button is more useful. You can see a list of all the Web sites and pages you have marked. These are listed under the “+1s” tab in the Profile area of your Google Plus page — which is helpful for collecting or just finding those pages again for reference.

The pages you have recommended can also turn up in the search results received by people who happen to be in your Google Plus “circles” of online friends and acquaintances. In those search results, your name appears next to links for pages you have favored, like those for restaurants or products, so your friends can take your opinion into account.

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IHT Rendezvous: Horsemeat Scandal Grows More Serious and More Bizarre

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LONDON — As European governments struggle in vain to draw a line under the scandal over horsemeat being sold as beef, the affair seems only to be widening, in sometimes bizarre ways.

Two German politicians, for instance, suggested over the weekend that one practical use for tainted products, such as tens of thousands of packs of lasagna pulled from supermarket shelves because they contained horsemeat, would be to distribute them to the poor.

Page Two

Posts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.

The idea began with Hartwig Fischer, a lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, who told the mass-circulation Bild Zeitung newspaper on Saturday that products shouldn’t just be thrown away. To prove his point, he was photographed and filmed eating one of the offending lasagna meals and declaring that he could not tell the difference from any other lasagna.

The development minister, Dirk Niebel, supported him, saying that, with hundreds of millions of starving people around the world, and people at home struggling to put food on the table, “I think we cannot throw away good food here in Germany.”

The idea did not meet with universal approval. The social affairs minister, Ursula von der Leyen, called it “absurd.” Some said transferring food without knowing the origin or nature of its ingredients could be illegal. And Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, called the very notion “an insult to people with low incomes.”

As I explore in my latest Letter From Europe column, the sensitivities about eating food packaged as beef but containing horsemeat are particularly acute in Britain.

But other nations are lining up to demand greater regulation of what goes into their processed food. On Monday, inspectors in the Czech Republic said they found horsemeat in the signature meatballs made in Sweden for the IKEA furniture group – not just food, but also a national emblem. The meatballs were distributed in the Czech Republic, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, IKEA said, reflecting the gravity of the crisis and the likelihood that it will spread much further.

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Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

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Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.




With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.


While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.


“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.


The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. “The industry is not in a position to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going,” said Virginia O’Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.


But state and federal officials are taking aim at the banks’ role at a time when authorities are increasing their efforts to clamp down on payday lending and its practice of providing quick money to borrowers who need cash.


The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are examining banks’ roles in the online loans, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Benjamin M. Lawsky, who heads New York State’s Department of Financial Services, is investigating how banks enable the online lenders to skirt New York law and make loans to residents of the state, where interest rates are capped at 25 percent.


For the banks, it can be a lucrative partnership. At first blush, processing automatic withdrawals hardly seems like a source of profit. But many customers are already on shaky financial footing. The withdrawals often set off a cascade of fees from problems like overdrafts. Roughly 27 percent of payday loan borrowers say that the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts, according to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That fee income is coveted, given that financial regulations limiting fees on debit and credit cards have cost banks billions of dollars.


Some state and federal authorities say the banks’ role in enabling the lenders has frustrated government efforts to shield people from predatory loans — an issue that gained urgency after reckless mortgage lending helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis.


Lawmakers, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a bill in July aimed at reining in the lenders, in part, by forcing them to abide by the laws of the state where the borrower lives, rather than where the lender is. The legislation, pending in Congress, would also allow borrowers to cancel automatic withdrawals more easily. “Technology has taken a lot of these scams online, and it’s time to crack down,” Mr. Merkley said in a statement when the bill was introduced.


While the loans are simple to obtain — some online lenders promise approval in minutes with no credit check — they are tough to get rid of. Customers who want to repay their loan in full typically must contact the online lender at least three days before the next withdrawal. Otherwise, the lender automatically renews the loans at least monthly and withdraws only the interest owed. Under federal law, customers are allowed to stop authorized withdrawals from their account. Still, some borrowers say their banks do not heed requests to stop the loans.


Ivy Brodsky, 37, thought she had figured out a way to stop six payday lenders from taking money from her account when she visited her Chase branch in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in March to close it. But Chase kept the account open and between April and May, the six Internet lenders tried to withdraw money from Ms. Brodsky’s account 55 times, according to bank records reviewed by The New York Times. Chase charged her $1,523 in fees — a combination of 44 insufficient fund fees, extended overdraft fees and service fees.


For Subrina Baptiste, 33, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, the overdraft fees levied by Chase cannibalized her child support income. She said she applied for a $400 loan from Loanshoponline.com and a $700 loan from Advancemetoday.com in 2011. The loans, with annual interest rates of 730 percent and 584 percent respectively, skirt New York law.


Ms. Baptiste said she asked Chase to revoke the automatic withdrawals in October 2011, but was told that she had to ask the lenders instead. In one month, her bank records show, the lenders tried to take money from her account at least six times. Chase charged her $812 in fees and deducted over $600 from her child-support payments to cover them.


“I don’t understand why my own bank just wouldn’t listen to me,” Ms. Baptiste said, adding that Chase ultimately closed her account last January, three months after she asked.


A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank always honored requests to stop automatic withdrawals. Wells Fargo declined to comment. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for Chase, said: “We are working with the customers to resolve these cases.” Online lenders say they work to abide by state laws.


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The Texas Tribune: Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain

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Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly


The Sherman grave of Andre Thomas’s victims.







SHERMAN — A worried call from his daughter’s boyfriend sent Paul Boren rushing to her apartment on the morning of March 27, 2004. He drove the eight blocks to her apartment, peering into his neighbors’ yards, searching for Andre Thomas, Laura Boren’s estranged husband.






The Texas Tribune

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.




For more articles on mental health and criminal justice in Texas, as well as a timeline of the Andre Thomas case: texastribune.org






Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

Laura Boren






He drove past the brightly colored slides, swings and bouncy plastic animals in Fairview Park across the street from the apartment where Ms. Boren, 20, and her two children lived. He pulled into a parking spot below and immediately saw that her door was broken. As his heart raced, Mr. Boren, a white-haired giant of a man, bounded up the stairwell, calling out for his daughter.


He found her on the white carpet, smeared with blood, a gaping hole in her chest. Beside her left leg, a one-dollar bill was folded lengthwise, the radiating eye of the pyramid facing up. Mr. Boren knew she was gone.


In a panic, he rushed past the stuffed animals, dolls and plastic toys strewn along the hallway to the bedroom shared by his two grandchildren. The body of 13-month-old Leyha Hughes lay on the floor next to a blood-spattered doll nearly as big as she was.


Andre Boren, 4, lay on his back in his white children’s bed just above Leyha. He looked as if he could have been sleeping — a moment away from revealing the toothy grin that typically spread from one of his round cheeks to the other — except for the massive chest wound that matched the ones his father, Andre Thomas (the boy was also known as Andre Jr.), had inflicted on his mother and his half-sister as he tried to remove their hearts.


“You just can’t believe that it’s real,” said Sherry Boren, Laura Boren’s mother. “You’re hoping that it’s not, that it’s a dream or something, that you’re going to wake up at any minute.”


Mr. Thomas, who confessed to the murders of his wife, their son and her daughter by another man, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death at age 21. While awaiting trial in 2004, he gouged out one of his eyes, and in 2008 on death row, he removed the other and ate it.


At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.


Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.


He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.


Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.


“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.


From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.


bgrissom@texastribune.org



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The Texas Tribune: Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain

Label:

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly


The Sherman grave of Andre Thomas’s victims.







SHERMAN — A worried call from his daughter’s boyfriend sent Paul Boren rushing to her apartment on the morning of March 27, 2004. He drove the eight blocks to her apartment, peering into his neighbors’ yards, searching for Andre Thomas, Laura Boren’s estranged husband.






The Texas Tribune

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.




For more articles on mental health and criminal justice in Texas, as well as a timeline of the Andre Thomas case: texastribune.org






Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

Laura Boren






He drove past the brightly colored slides, swings and bouncy plastic animals in Fairview Park across the street from the apartment where Ms. Boren, 20, and her two children lived. He pulled into a parking spot below and immediately saw that her door was broken. As his heart raced, Mr. Boren, a white-haired giant of a man, bounded up the stairwell, calling out for his daughter.


He found her on the white carpet, smeared with blood, a gaping hole in her chest. Beside her left leg, a one-dollar bill was folded lengthwise, the radiating eye of the pyramid facing up. Mr. Boren knew she was gone.


In a panic, he rushed past the stuffed animals, dolls and plastic toys strewn along the hallway to the bedroom shared by his two grandchildren. The body of 13-month-old Leyha Hughes lay on the floor next to a blood-spattered doll nearly as big as she was.


Andre Boren, 4, lay on his back in his white children’s bed just above Leyha. He looked as if he could have been sleeping — a moment away from revealing the toothy grin that typically spread from one of his round cheeks to the other — except for the massive chest wound that matched the ones his father, Andre Thomas (the boy was also known as Andre Jr.), had inflicted on his mother and his half-sister as he tried to remove their hearts.


“You just can’t believe that it’s real,” said Sherry Boren, Laura Boren’s mother. “You’re hoping that it’s not, that it’s a dream or something, that you’re going to wake up at any minute.”


Mr. Thomas, who confessed to the murders of his wife, their son and her daughter by another man, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death at age 21. While awaiting trial in 2004, he gouged out one of his eyes, and in 2008 on death row, he removed the other and ate it.


At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.


Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.


He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.


Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.


“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.


From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.


bgrissom@texastribune.org



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Mobile Revolution Buffets Taiwan PC Rivals

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TAIPEI — Two computer-making neighbors in the technologically inclined economy of Taiwan seem headed in opposite directions.


Personal computer sales have slumped worldwide as smartphones and tablets have proliferated and gained in popularity. One Taiwan heavyweight, Acer, has shared in the suffering: It is expected to report a second straight annual loss in 2012 after losing 6.6 billion Taiwan dollars, or $223 million at the current exchange rate, in 2011.


But another Taiwan-based PC company, Asustek, which sells computers under the Asus name, grew 43 percent in the quarter that ended in September, to 6.7 billion dollars in net income. The company’s PC sales rose 6.4 percent even as industrywide PC shipments declined 4.9 percent in the last three months of 2012, according to the research firm Gartner.


The companies’ divergent fortunes expose both the mistakes and the opportunities for PC makers in an epic shift in the way consumers use technology.


For more than a decade, with no serious alternatives for consumers, Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard treated the PC as a commodity: All of their machines used the same Intel chips and Microsoft software and even looked similar, analysts said. In that environment, PC makers made money by focusing on marketing and by cutting costs.


For Acer, much of that strategy was driven by the former chief executive, Gianfranco Lanci, who led the company from 2004 to 2011. During his tenure, the company focused only on marketing and distribution, while gutting research and development and outsourcing design and production, analysts said.


The spread of smartphones and tablets has challenged that business model. Consumers have more choices and increasingly focus on how their devices look and feel, how mobile they are and what content they can provide access to.


“At the moment, the PC market is saturated,” said Tracy Tsai, an analyst at Gartner. “When most users have a PC already, they are not looking for just a cheaper notebook. They want something better.”


That has meant meager profits or none for global PC brands. H.P. reported a $12.7 billion loss in the business year that ended in September 2012, while Dell’s poor performance has resulted in an effort to take the company private.


It is a problem that has manifested itself on the street as well. Stam Chuang, a manager at a retail shop in the Guanghua Digital Plaza in Taipei, said notebook sales at his store had dropped 10 percent during the past year.


“There’s only a set amount of demand for computing out there,” Mr. Chuang said. “So if consumers decide they want a tablet or smartphone, that share will get taken out of PCs.”


Because of its research and development cuts, Acer has struggled to produce smartphones and tablets that can compete with the sleek products from mobile powerhouses like Amazon.com, Apple and Samsung, analysts said.


Asustek, however, followed a strategy that emphasized design and innovation. Its personal computer growth in 2012 was driven by the Zenbook, an ultrathin laptop with a metallic finish, stereo speakers and backlit keys.


Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, said he had foreseen the mobile revolution and wanted his company to differentiate itself from the competition.


“Even 10 years ago, I knew I had to be prepared,” Mr. Shih said.


He added that with computer architecture and chips shrinking, he had recognized that “the ‘phone computer’ was going to happen.”


Mr. Shih has become a cheerleader for what he calls “design thinking,” pushing his employees to be creative about building products that enrich the experience for consumers. Asustek incorporated a design and artistry category into its employee evaluation system.


The two companies’ revenue numbers are similar: In the third quarter of 2012, Acer brought in 87.4 billion dollars in revenue, compared with 96 billion dollars for Asustek, according to Bloomberg data.


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