Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama's election to a second term.

Obama's administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar's previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama's ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar's generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar's point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein's government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi's dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

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Songwriter Diane Warren's music optioned for stage

NEW YORK (AP) — The big hooks and soaring melodies of Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren are heading to Broadway.

Tony Award-winning producer Dede Harris tells The Associated Press on Thursday that she has optioned Warren's entire 2,000-song music catalog with an eye to getting her hits into a musical. The creative team and a timeline for the project will be announced at a later date.

A formal announcement was to be made later Thursday.

"We're starting with a blank canvas and the beauty of the development of this process is that we can let our imaginations run wild," Harris said Thursday. "We have so many different songs that we can pull from and create a story from so many of her songs that it's just too early to say."

Warren's writing credits include Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me," Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart," LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live" and "I Was Here" for Beyonce.

She's scored multiple Academy Award nominations and has won a Grammy and a Golden Globe award. Warren is the first songwriter in the history of Billboard to have seven hits, all by different artists, on the singles chart at the same time.

Although Harris has her favorite songs, she says she won't insist on their inclusion. "Obviously we want to put in her more popular songs, but we're not going to do it just to do it. It has to work with the story," she said.

Harris, who declined to say how much the catalog cost, has produced such hits as "Hairspray," ''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "A Raisin in the Sun." Her recent hits include "One Man, Two Guvnors," ''War Horse" and "Clybourne Park" and she's producing the upcoming "Hands on a Hardbody."

Warren, who also has expressed interest in writing new songs for the project, would be the latest rocker to lend their music to Broadway-bound projects, joining the likes of Sheryl Crow, Glen Ballard, Cyndi Lauper, Dave Stewart and Melissa Etheridge.

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Experts raise concerns over superhuman workplace

LONDON (AP) — Performance-boosting drugs, powered prostheses and wearable computers are coming to an office near you — but experts warned in a new report Wednesday that too little thought has been given to the implications of a superhuman workplace.

Academics from Britain's leading institutions say attention needs to be focused on the consequences of technology which may one day allow — or compel — humans to work better, longer and harder. Here's their list of upgrades that might make their way to campuses and cubicles in the next decade:

BRAIN BOOSTERS

Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge neuropsychology professor, cited research suggesting that 16 percent of U.S. students already use "cognitive enhancers" such as Ritalin to help them handle their course loads. Pilots have long used amphetamines to stay alert. And at least one study has suggested that the drug modafinil could help reduce the number of accidents experienced by shift workers.

But bioethicist Jackie Leach Scully of northern England's Newcastle University worries that the use of such drugs might focus on worker productivity over personal well-being.

"Being more alert for longer doesn't mean that you'll be less stressed by the job," she said. "It means that you'll be exposed to that stress for longer and be more awake while doing it."

WEARABLE COMPUTERS

The researchers also noted so-called "life-logging" devices like Nike Inc.'s distance-tracking shoes or wearable computers such as the eyeglasses being developed by Google Inc. The shoes can record your every step; the eyeglasses everything you see. Nigel Shadbolt, an expert in artificial Intelligence at southern England's University of Southampton, said such devices were as little as 15 years away from being able to record every sight, noise and movement over an entire human life.

So do you accept if your boss gives you one?

"What does that mean for employee accountability?" Shadbolt asked.

BIONIC LIMBS — AND BEYOND

The report also noted bionic limbs like the one used this week by amputee Zac Vawter to climb Chicago's Willis Tower or exoskeletons like the one used earlier this year by partially paralyzed London Marathon participant Claire Lomas. It also touched on the development of therapies aimed at sharpening eyesight or cochlear implants meant to enhance hearing.

Scully said any technology that could help disabled people re-enter the workforce should be welcomed but society needs to keep an eye out for unintended consequences.

"One of the things that we know about technology hitting society is that most of the consequences were not predicted ahead of time and a lot of things that we worry about ahead of time turn out not to be problems at all," she said. "We have very little idea of how these technologies will pan out."

THE PRESSURIZED WORKPLACE

The report was drawn up by scientists from The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.

"We're not talking science fiction here," said Genevra Richardson, the King's College law professor who oversaw the report. "These technologies could influence our ability to learn or perform tasks, they could influence our motivation, they could enable us to work in more extreme conditions or in old age, or they could facilitate our return to work after illness or disability .... Their use at work also raises serious ethical, political and economic questions."

Scully said workers may come under pressure to try a new memory-boosting drug or buy the latest wearable computer.

"In the context of a highly pressurized work environment, how free is the choice not to adopt such technologies?" she said.

Union representatives appeared taken aback by some of the experts' predictions. One expressed particular disquiet at the possibility raised by the report that long-distance truck drivers might be asked to take alertness drugs for safety reasons.

"We would be very, very against anything like that," said James Bower, a spokesman for Britain's United Road Transport Union. "We can't have a situation where a driver is told by his boss that he needs to put something in his body."

___

Online:

The report: http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/human-enhancement

Raphael Satter can be reached on: http://raphae.li/twitter

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New storm dumps snow, snuffs NE power

NEW YORK (AP) — The nor'easter that stymied recovery efforts from Superstorm Sandy pulled away from New York and New Jersey Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of new people in darkness after a blanket of thick, wet snow snapped storm-weakened trees and downed power lines.

From Brooklyn to storm-battered sections of the Jersey shore and Connecticut, about 750,000 customers — more than 200,000 from the new storm — in the region were without power in temperatures near freezing, some living for days in the dark.

"We lost power last week, just got it back for a day or two, and now we lost it again," said John Monticello of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. "Every day it's the same now: turn on the gas burner for heat. Instant coffee. Use the iPad to find out what's going on in the rest of the world."

But most were just grateful the new storm didn't bring a fresh round of devastation.

"For a home without power, it's great. It came through the storm just great," said Iliay Bardash, 61, a computer programmer on Staten Island without electricity since last week. "But things are not worse, and for that I am thankful."

Nearby, Vladimir Repnin emerged from his powerless home with a snow shovel in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and a question from someone cut off from the outside world.

"Who won? Obama?" he asked.

He didn't like the answer.

"The Democrats ruined my business," he said, referring to his shuttered clothing manufacturing firm.

Unlike other holdouts who got by with generators or gas stoves, the 63-year-old from the Ukraine has been without power since Sandy brought eight feet of water through his door and his neighbor's deck into his yard. He tried to beat the cold Wednesday night by sleeping with his Yorkie Kuzya and cat Channel.

"I had the dog right here," he said, pointing to his left side, "and the cat on my chest. It was still too cold, but I cannot leave my house."

Throughout Staten Island's beach area, the storm had blanketed growing piles of debris with several inches of snow. By mid-morning, it was starting to melt, filling the streets with filthy sludge.

Roads in New Jersey and New York City were clear for the morning commute, and rail lines into New York were running smoothly so far, despite snow still coming down heavily in some areas.

The nor'easter, as promised, brought gusting winds, rain and snow, but not the flooding that was anticipated.

"The good news, thank goodness, is except for maybe 2 inches of snow, there were no other problems," said Randi Savron, 51, a schoolteacher who lives in the Rockaways, one of the areas that flooded badly last week. The idyllic beachfront boardwalk was loosed from pilings and ended up outside her apartment building door.

She said it seemed like work would continue.

But additional outages could stall recovery efforts, even though utility companies had prepared, adding extra crews ahead of the nor'easter.

In New Jersey, there were about 400,000 power outages early Thursday; 150,000 of those were new. In New York City and Westchester, more than 70,000 customers were without power after the storm knocked out an additional 55,000 customers.

For Consolidated Edison, the extra outages were dealt with swiftly, so there were only about 3,000 additional customers without power from the total Wednesday of 67,000.

"I think we're going to be able to power through. Our objective was to get power restored to everyone by the weekend and we're still working with that goal," said Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesman for the utility.

On Long Island, an area badly battered, there were 125,000 new outages, but about 80,000 were restored, making a total of about 300,000 customers without power. Long Island Power Authority spokesman Mark Gross said the utility was assessing new damage while working to restore outages.

Paul Farash of West Babylon, N.Y. said he got power back after three days and didn't lose it again.

"Whatever I experienced was minimal compared to a whole lot of other people," he said. "I've seen some things. I've heard about some things. and I know some things. And I'm counting my blessings. I'll survive."

Anthony Gragnano, who lives in Lindenhurst, worried the new storm would further stall getting power returned to his flooded family home.

"It's just colder now," he said. "We still don't have heat or power, but aside from a little snow, we're good."

Under ordinary circumstances, a storm of this sort wouldn't be a big deal. But large swaths of the landscape were still an open wound, with the electrical system highly fragile and many of Sandy's victims still mucking out their homes and cars and shivering in the deepening cold. As the storm picked up in intensity Wednesday evening, lights started flickering off again.

Residents from Connecticut to Rhode Island saw 3 to 6 inches of snow on Wednesday. Worcester, Mass., had 8 inches of snow, and Freehold, N.J., had just over a foot overnight. Some parts of Connecticut got a foot or more.

There was good weather news: temperatures over the next few days will be in the 50s in southern New England, said meteorologist Frank Nocera, and on Sunday it could edge into the 60s.

Ahead of the storm, public works crews in New Jersey built up dunes to protect the stripped and battered coast, and new evacuations were ordered in a number of communities already emptied by Sandy. New shelters opened.

All construction in New York City was halted — a precaution that needed no explanation after a crane collapsed last week in Sandy's high winds and dangled menacingly over the streets of Manhattan. Parks were closed because of the danger of falling trees.

Airlines canceled at least 1,300 U.S. flights in and out of the New York metropolitan area, causing a new round of disruptions that rippled across the country.

Sandy killed more than 100 people in 10 states, with most of the victims in New York and New Jersey.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Kiley Armstrong, Jonathan Fahey, Tom Hays, David B. Caruso, Meghan Barr, Jennifer Peltz and Deepti Hajela in New York; Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y.; and Angela Delli Santi and Wayne Perry in Harvey Cedars, N.J. Eltman reported from Garden City, N.Y.

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China's power transfer: infighting and spectacle

BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist Party opens a congress Thursday to usher in a new group of younger leaders faced with the challenging tasks of righting a flagging economy and meeting public calls for better government.

The weeklong congress is the start of a carefully choreographed but still fraught power transfer in which President Hu Jintao and most of the senior leadership will begin to relinquish office. Vice President Xi Jinping, the anointed heir for the past five years, came a step closer to power Wednesday, being named the congress' secretary-general at a preparatory meeting.

Meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the congress seems drawn from another time. It's a public gathering of 2,268 delegates drawn from the 82 million-member party where the real deal-making is done by a few dozen power-brokers behind the scenes, even as China is ever more connected to the world through trade and the Internet.

Coming so soon after the U.S. presidential election climaxed with President Barack Obama's re-election, the congress has drawn unfavorable comparisons from politically minded Chinese.

"I am doing nothing but staring at the television before Obama gets re-elected. As for China's party congress, there is no need for me to worry. On the contrary, it would be a waste of my time," Xu Xiaoping, a celebrity entrepreneur who co-founded a successful chain of English cram schools, said on a Chinese version of Twitter where he has 6 million followers.

To many Chinese, China is at an inflection point. Its old model of heavily state-directed growth that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made China an economic powerhouse is sputtering in the face of rising domestic debt and a weak global economy. Meanwhile, the government has to contend with the public's continued expectations of higher living standards and for less corruption and greater accountability, if not outright democracy.

Whether the new leaders want to move China in a new direction is not known. Xi and other top candidates for the new leadership have forged their careers as capable administrators in provinces and bureaucracies, not as policy trail-blazers. Should ambitious change be on their agenda, they will have to confront vested interests within their ranks: cosseted state industries and conservative officials grown prosperous and powerful under the current system.

One thing the party appears to be ruling out is a major shift toward a more open, democratic political system, despite appeals in recent months from commentators, retired party members and government think tanks.

"The leading position of the Communist Party in China is a decision made by history and by the people," congress spokesman Cai Mingzhao told reporters on Wednesday. He pointed to China's rise as an economic power and said, "It speaks fully to the strong leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the fact that the political system suits China's national reality."

The congress itself is unlikely to give Xi and his colleagues a mandate for sweeping reform. They have been engaged with Hu, retired party elders and influential senior politicians and military commanders in divisive bargaining, made worse by a pair of scandals. Politburo member Bo Xilai was purged after an aide disclosed that Bo's wife had murdered a British businessman. One of Hu's top lieutenants was also sidelined after his son died crashing a Ferrari, a sign of corruption.

A likely result of the back-and-forth is a leadership that balances interest groups, and over the past decade that has been a recipe for plodding, incremental policy.

The centerpiece of the congress opening, a lengthy speech by Hu, is an uncertain indicator of where the new leadership wants to take China. In the early decades of reform, such speeches provided ideological cover as the party tried to break away from the dogma of central planning and experiment with freer markets. More recently, the documents have become ways for past leaders to constrain their heirs by stressing continuity.

In a preview of the speech given to senior officials in July and excerpted and analyzed in state media, Hu stressed the economy remains key. He said getting growth back to a relatively high rate remained crucial to meeting demands from the public — most clearly evidenced by large-scale strikes and protests, or what he called "contradictions."

Cai, the congress spokesman, ticked off a list of what Hu's team had accomplished — wider access to state-supported education through the ninth grade, an expanded social safety net and the start of a nationwide low-cost housing sector.

"The past decade has witnessed the greatest improvement in people's livelihoods in the history of China's development," Cui said. "We will make guaranteeing and improving the people's well-being the guide and aim of what we do."

___

Associated Press writers Gillian Wong, Christopher Bodeen and Didi Tang contributed to this report.

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Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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ABC's Diane Sawyer spurs jokes from Twitterverse

NEW YORK (AP) — Diane Sawyer's Election Night performance left some viewers asking if she had begun celebrating Tuesday's election a bit early.

Co-anchoring ABC News' coverage, the veteran journalist struck a different manner from her practiced, straight-news-delivering style.

Sawyer spoke more slowly than usual while seeming to prop herself on outstretched arms at the anchor desk she shared with George Stephanopoulos.

"OK," she said at one point around 10 p.m. EST, "I wanna — can we have our music, because this is another big one here? Minnesota, we're ready to project Minnesota, rrright now. ... Well, tonight we know that President Barack has won Minnesota," she rambled on, stumbling over the president's name.

Maybe Sawyer was just weary from the recent torrent of news.

In any case, the Twitterverse took quick notice and began cracking wise.

Her name was soon trending with unflattering posts, while a new Twitter handle, Drunk Diane Sawyer, collected hundreds of followers. An ABC spokesman did not comment.

"A bit tipsy," ''hammered" or "on pain killers, muscle relaxers, benzos or some combination" were among the jeering explanations. Another likened it to an episode of HBO's drama "The Newsroom," where Will McAvoy, the fictitious anchorman, had eaten a couple of pot brownies before unexpectedly being summoned to his anchor desk to report a news story.

Some tweeters joked that a more fun-loving Sawyer was a ploy by ABC to boost viewership. Several Twitter followers said they were drawn to the network by word that Sawyer was behaving, by one description, "a bit wacky."

"Bad night for Romney," one tweeter summed up. "Worse night for Diane Sawyer?"

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Study: Stem cells from strangers can repair hearts

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients' own cells for helping restore heart tissue.

The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone's cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now.

Results were discussed Monday at an American Heart Association conference in California and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study used a specific type of stem cells from bone marrow that researchers believed would not be rejected by recipients. Unlike other cells, these lack a key feature on their surface that makes the immune system see them as foreign tissue and attack them, explained the study's leader, Dr. Joshua Hare of the University of Miami.

The patients in the study had suffered heart attacks years earlier, some as long as 30 years ago. All had developed heart failure because the scar tissue from the heart attack had weakened their hearts so much that they grew large and flabby, unable to pump blood effectively.

Researchers advertised for people to supply marrow, which is removed using a needle into a hip bone. The cells were taken from the marrow and amplified for about a month in a lab at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Miami to be used for treatment, which did not involve surgery.

The cells were delivered through a tube pushed through a groin artery into the heart near the scarred area. Fifteen patients were given cells from their own marrow and 15 others, cells from strangers.

About a year later, scar tissue had been reduced by about one-third. Both groups had improvements in how far they could walk and in quality of life. There was no significant difference in one measure of how well their hearts were able to pump blood, but doctors hope these patients will continue to improve over time, or that refinements in treatment will lead to better results.

The big attraction is being able to use cells supplied by others, with no blood or tissue matching needed.

"You could have the cells ready to go in the blood bank so when the patient comes in for a therapy — there's no delay," Hare said. "It's also cheaper to make the donor cells," and a single marrow donor can supply enough cells to treat as many as 10 people.

Dr. Elliott Antman of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who heads the heart conference, praised the work.

"That opens up an entire new avenue for stem cell therapy, like a sophisticated version of a blood bank," he said. There's an advantage in not having to create a cell therapy for each patient, and it could spare them the pain and wait of having their own marrow harvested, he said.

The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Hare owns stock in a biotech company working on a treatment using a mixture of cells.

Juan Lopez received his own cells in the study, and said it improved his symptoms so much that at age 70, he was able to return to his job as an engineer and sales manager for a roofing manufacturer and ride an exercise bike.

"It has been a life-changing experience," said Lopez, who lives in Miami. "I can feel day by day, week by week, month by month, my improvement. I don't have any shortness of breath and my energy level is way up there. I don't have any fluid in my lungs."

And, he said happily, "My sex drive has improved!"

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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Election night was a good night for Calif., civility and statheads

By Jeff Greenfield

Forgive me if I don’t offer thoughts on the impending Republican civil war, the brilliance of the Obama campaign team, the effect of Hurricane Sandy, the demographic nightmare confronting the GOP, or prospects for the 2016 Iowa caucuses, now just a short 1,100 days or so away.

There’s plenty of that for your Wednesday pleasure. But Tuesday night produced other news that’s worth your attention.

First, California’s voters made two decisions that will have a profound impact on the state’s fiscal and political life. They approved Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to increase sales taxes and income taxes on the affluent to ease the state’s perennial budget dilemma. (California’s 34-year-old Prop 13 requires a two-thirds vote in the legislature to increase taxes, an all but unreachable level). Had Prop 30 failed—and most thought it would—the already draconian cuts on California’s schools, public universities, and other services would have been just a prelude to further slashes.

Second, the state’s voters rejected Prop 32, which would have banned labor unions and corporations from raising money for state political purposes through paycheck deductions. Because corporations rarely use this tactic, Prop 32’s real impact would have kept tens of millions of dollars from aiding Democratic Party candidates in the state—one reason why business interests contributed some $120 million in a futile effort to pass the Proposition.

While Democrats might cheer the result, it also means that labor unions will continue to hold outsize power with the party—meaning that Brown’s efforts to rein in pension benefits for public employees may have gotten a lot harder.

Second, civility in the House of Representatives just took a step forward, as two of the most rhetorically combative members lost re-election. Allen West, a Florida Republican and Tea Party favorite who once declared that “there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party,” lost his seat. Across the aisle—way, way across the aisle—Pete Stark of California, a 40-year veteran whose temper tantrums are the stuff of legend, was defeated by a fellow Democrat.

On the other hand, Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann narrowly survived re-election, meaning we may be treated to at least two more years of her idiosyncratic approach to history (locating the battle of Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire) and medicine (vaccines cause mental retardation because someone she just met told her). And Florida’s Alan Grayson, who once said the Republican health care plan was for older people to die quickly, will return to the House. Cable news networks now have their hot-ticket debaters for the coming year.

Third, the ability of the Obama campaign to target supporters and lure them to the polls, and the ability of analysts like the New York Times’ Nate Silver to predict the outcome of a race with near precision, means that those of us who got into politics because we were told there’d be no math have got to get a clue.

If you care at all about politics, your two pieces of required reading are Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise” and Sasha Issenberg’s “The Victory Lab.” Silver explains why predictions from the world of sports, finance, science and politics fail, and should offer a permanent rebuke to those pundits who write and speak in gaseous terms of gut instincts, vibes and a mystical ability to detect sweeping forces that will drive elections. Issenberg’s book details precisely how the combination of behavioral psychology and data crunching enables campaigns to find supporters and persuade them to go to the polls.

This just-concluded campaign demonstrated forcefully that if you do not understand this brave new world, you will not understand politics, no matter how well you know the history of the Electoral College.

Finally, let me end with a concession. I plan to spend this day searching the websites of all of those who so confidently asserted why and how Obama was destined to lose. I’m particularly eager to read the wisdom of Dick Morris, the most consistently, hilariously ignorant pollster/strategist, who wrote just a few days ago “Here Comes The Landslide.” Mr. Morris’ continued employment is an inspiration to all those who believe that a career should in no way be limited by a total lack of competence.

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