Letters: The Financial Future of Veterinarians

The Financial Future of Veterinarians

To the Editor:

“The Vet Debt Trap” (Feb. 24), about the veterinary student debt crisis, hit the nail on the head. It should be required reading for all prospective veterinary students, regardless of age, to temper their passionate pursuit of the profession with a sobering dose of financial realism before they commit.

I am a 28-year veteran of the profession. My demographic of private-practice owners will also suffer the consequences of this vicious debt cycle, since the eventual sale proceeds of our practices represent a significant portion of our potential retirement nest egg. Good luck finding a qualified buyer among our debt-ridden younger colleagues in the next 5 to 10 years and beyond, especially in the face of falling practice revenue. Some newly minted veterinarians won’t be able to qualify for a home mortgage, let alone the financing to buy a practice.

JEFFREY T. KRYSINSKI, D.V.M.

Grosse Pointe, Mich., Feb. 24

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To the Editor:

The article shed light on a subject that is hugely overlooked and underreported.  Before I applied to veterinary school, it was my understanding that there was a lack of veterinarians, especially in large-animal practice. Now I face the challenge of paying off student debt when jobs are few and far between.

I will most likely have to take an internship that may pay about $26,000 a year — $13 an hour for a 40-hour week, working 50 weeks a year. Considering that an intern may work 60 to 70 hours a week, that’s about $8 an hour. I made more money when I worked shoveling horse manure.

 I entered veterinary school with the best intentions — I love animals and can’t imagine a career that would make me happier. We are all young, starry-eyed animal lovers with dreams of saving lives; we are not accountants or business people. I hope that veterinary schools, the government and, most important, our future clients will take into account the sacrifices we make to live our dreams.

LAUREN PETERSON

Baton Rouge, La., Feb. 26

The writer is a third-year veterinary student at Louisiana State University.

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To the Editor:

I bought my veterinary practice in 2005, just two years out of school.  And while the economy in my area has not been kind to veterinary practices, I am still here.

But I have seen a change in the face of veterinary medicine, as more pet owners want low-cost, online, do-it-yourself medicine for their pets.  Sometimes I foresee the field becoming a trade, rather than a profession — even as so many veterinarians have student loans to deal with.

It’s hard to compete, and I have had to resort to coupons and lowering my own costs to get business in the door.  I hope that it will be enough to finish paying off my loans.

ANDREA MAYBERRY, D.V.M.

Grove City, Ohio, Feb. 25

The writer is owner of Grove City Veterinary Hospital.

Letters for Sunday Business may be sent to sunbiz@nytimes.com.

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Leaving North Korea, Rodman Calls Kims ‘Great Leaders’

Jason Mojica/VICE Media, via Associated Press

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman watched an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang on Thursday.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders" — an assessment that got short shrift from the U.S. government.

Rodman, the highest-profile American to meet Kim since he inherited power from father Kim Jong Il in 2011, watched a basketball game with the authoritarian leader Thursday and later drank and dined on sushi with him.

At Pyongyang's Sunan airport on his way to Beijing, Rodman said it was "amazing" that the North Koreans were "so honest." He added that Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder, "were great leaders."

"He's proud, his country likes him — not like him, love him, love him," Rodman said of Kim Jong Un. "Guess what, I love him. The guy's really awesome."

At Beijing's airport, Rodman pushed past waiting journalists without saying anything.

Rodman's visit to North Korea began Monday and took place amid tension between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test just two weeks ago, making clear the provocative act was a warning to the United States to drop what it considers a "hostile" policy toward the North.

The State Department on Friday distanced itself from Rodman's visit and his praise for Kim, saying he doesn't represent the United States.

"The North Korean regime has a horrific human rights record, quite possibly the worst human rights situation in the world," spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters in Washington. He accused the regime of depriving their people of food, shelter, water and maintaining prison gulags.

Ventrell also took aim at Pyongyang for its grand treatment of the visiting basketball stars.

"Clearly you've got the regime spending money to wine and dine foreign visitors, when they should be feeding their own people," he said.

Rodman traveled to Pyongyang with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy and a production crew to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series.

Kim, a diehard basketball fan, told the former Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls star that he hoped the visit would break the ice between the United States and North Korea, said Shane Smith, founder of the New York-based VICE media company.

Dressed in a blue Mao suit, Kim laughed and slapped his hands on a table during the game at Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium as he sat nearly knee to knee with Rodman. Rodman, the man who once turned up in a wedding dress to promote his autobiography, wore a dark suit and dark sunglasses, but still had on his nose rings and other piercings. A can of Coca-Cola sat on the table before him in photos shared with AP by VICE.

Smith, after speaking to the VICE crew in Pyongyang, said Kim and Rodman "bonded" and chatted in English, though Kim primarily spoke in Korean through a translator.

Thursday's game ended in a 110-110 tie, with two Americans playing on each team alongside North Koreans. After the game, Rodman addressed Kim in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands of North Koreans and told him, "You have a friend for life," VICE spokesman Alex Detrick told AP.

At an "epic feast" later, the leader plied the group with food and drinks and round after round of toasts were made, Duffy said in an email to AP.

Duffy said he invited Kim to visit the United States, a proposal met with hearty laughter from the North Korean leader.

Kim said he hoped sports exchanges would promote "mutual understanding between the people of the two countries," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

Ventrell said the U.S. wanted North Korea to come into line with their international obligations and to stop ballistic missile tests and their nuclear programs. "We're not going to read into this sort of theater one way or another," he said.

North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The foes never signed a peace treaty, and do not have diplomatic relations.

Rodman's trip is the second attention-grabbing American visit this year to North Korea. Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a four-day trip in January to Pyongyang, but did not meet the North Korean leader.

The Obama administration had frowned on the trip by Schmidt, who was accompanied by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, but has avoided criticizing Rodman's outing, saying it's about sports.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

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Gadgetwise Blog: How to Beat Some Facebook Scammers

You’ve probably seen those wildly popular Facebook postings that entice you to share something — like a photo of a bear sneaking up on a man — with the instructions, “Press Like and type the number 1 and see what happens.” These posts often list hundreds of thousands of responses.

If you’ve tried it, here’s what you saw happen: nothing. Behind the scenes something is happening, though. With each click, a scammer gets a little closer to cashing in.

The most thorough explanation I’ve seen of how this deception works comes from Daylan Pearce, whose job title is Search Lead at Next Digital, described as Australia’s largest independent digital agency, in Melbourne.

Somewhat simplified, here’s how it works. There is a thriving business in selling Facebook pages. The idea is that a page builds an audience, then essentially sells that audience to someone else. It’s a practice Facebook opposes, but has limited control over.

If a company can buy that audience, its “edge rank” will increase. Edge rank — a term people like Mr. Pearce use, but which Facebook doesn’t officially acknowledge — measures how often someone’s posts show up in other people’s news feeds. “So,” Mr. Pearce said, “a page that has 50,000 likes will have greater exposure on people’s news feeds than a page with only 10,000.”

Edge rank is based on several factors, chief among them affinity, weight and decay, Mr. Pearce said. Affinity is largely based on the number of likes. Weight is based on what accompanies those likes. “A ‘like’ isn’t worth as much as a comment and a comment isn’t worth as much as a ‘share,’” he said.

Decay relates to the age of the post. More views, likes and shares over more time increases edge rank.

Facebook did not quarrel with the basics of Mr. Pearce’s explanation, but said it’s more complicated.

These scam posts are designed to do three things. Get you to like, comment and share the post. It’s a recipe to make it go viral, which takes care of decay.

To hook you, the posts make an intriguing promise, or ask you to support a worthy cause – “like this and share it if you know of someone who has suffered from cancer.”

While you can’t stop people from such postings, you can keep them off your page and reduce the potential profit. You lower their edge rank when you report or at least hide the post.

To do that, hold your cursor over the post and an arrow should appear in the upper right corner. Click it and a drop-down menu offers you the option of hiding or reporting the post.

The more often you report or hide these kinds of posts, the less often they will show up in your news feed.

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Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.

Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes for Health should be useful. Root vegetables, tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are called yams by most vendors – I mean the ones with dark orange flesh), winter squash and cabbages are the only local vegetables available during the winter months in colder regions, so these recipes will be timely for many readers.

Roasting is a good place to begin with most root vegetables. They sweeten as they caramelize in a hot oven. I roasted baby carrots and thick red scallions (they may have been baby onions; I didn’t get the information from the farmer, I just bought them because they were lush and pretty) together and seasoned them with fresh thyme leaves, then sprinkled them with chopped toasted hazelnuts. I also roasted a medley of potatoes, including sweet potatoes, after tossing them with olive oil and sage, and got a wonderful range of colors, textures and tastes ranging from sweet to savory.

Sweet winter vegetables also pair well with spicy seasonings. I like to combine sweet potatoes and chipotle peppers, and this time in a hearty lentil stew that we enjoyed all week.

Here are five colorful and delicious dishes made with root vegetables.

Spicy Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew With Chipotles: The combination of sweet potatoes and spicy chipotles with savory lentils is a winner.

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Roasted Carrots and Scallions With Thyme and Hazelnuts: Toasted hazelnuts add a crunchy texture and nutty finish to this dish.

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Carrot Wraps: A vegetarian sandwich that satisfies like a full meal.

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Rainbow Potato Roast: A multicolored mix that can be vegan, or not.

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Leek Quiche: A lighter version of a Flemish classic.

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Read More..

Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.

Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes for Health should be useful. Root vegetables, tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are called yams by most vendors – I mean the ones with dark orange flesh), winter squash and cabbages are the only local vegetables available during the winter months in colder regions, so these recipes will be timely for many readers.

Roasting is a good place to begin with most root vegetables. They sweeten as they caramelize in a hot oven. I roasted baby carrots and thick red scallions (they may have been baby onions; I didn’t get the information from the farmer, I just bought them because they were lush and pretty) together and seasoned them with fresh thyme leaves, then sprinkled them with chopped toasted hazelnuts. I also roasted a medley of potatoes, including sweet potatoes, after tossing them with olive oil and sage, and got a wonderful range of colors, textures and tastes ranging from sweet to savory.

Sweet winter vegetables also pair well with spicy seasonings. I like to combine sweet potatoes and chipotle peppers, and this time in a hearty lentil stew that we enjoyed all week.

Here are five colorful and delicious dishes made with root vegetables.

Spicy Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew With Chipotles: The combination of sweet potatoes and spicy chipotles with savory lentils is a winner.

---

Roasted Carrots and Scallions With Thyme and Hazelnuts: Toasted hazelnuts add a crunchy texture and nutty finish to this dish.

---

Carrot Wraps: A vegetarian sandwich that satisfies like a full meal.

---

Rainbow Potato Roast: A multicolored mix that can be vegan, or not.

---

Leek Quiche: A lighter version of a Flemish classic.

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Ireland Seeks Easing of Its Debt Terms

DUBLIN — Ireland has been widely praised as the good pupil of the euro zone’s austerity school of thought. Now it wants to be rewarded.

Ireland, whose banking crisis required it to receive a bailout of €85 billion, or $110 billion, by international lenders in 2010, is pressing for the right to ease the payback terms of billions of euros of debt it incurred in that process. It is also pushing other European capitals to stick to a promise made last year that the euro zone’s bailout fund could eventually be used to prop up struggling banks directly, relieving governments of that burden.

Ireland’s proposals are likely to come up when European finance ministers begin two days of meetings in Brussels on Monday.

The issue is significant because it could have a decisive impact on the ability of a fragile Irish economy to emerge from the crisis, officials say. And within European politics, a new relief package would be significant because Ireland is the only bailed-out euro zone country so far that in hewing to the harsh austerity terms of its rescue has shown clear, if early, signs of an economic recovery.

Since 2008 the country has come up with spending cuts and tax increases totaling 18 percent of its gross domestic product. But unemployment remains high and households remain weighed down with debt, a legacy of the real estate crash that was the main cause of the banks’ troubles.

And yet, visiting Dublin on Thursday, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said that Ireland had “turned the corner,” proving that the international rescue programs put together by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund “can work and that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Ireland is pressing an issue raised at a European Union summit meeting last June, when leaders promised that the euro zone’s bailout fund would eventually be able to lend directly to troubled banks, once a more centralized banking system was in place for the 17-nation euro zone.

At the time the deal was seen as significant because it could alleviate the debt burdens that bank bailouts had placed on the governments of Ireland and Spain, among others. But in subsequent months, the finance ministers of Germany, Finland and the Netherlands sought to dilute the agreement, arguing that it referred only to new bank rescues and not to so-called historic or legacy assets.

In addition to direct help for its banks, Ireland is also pressing for longer maturity dates on its international loans. Mr. Barroso, asked by reporters Thursday about Ireland’s proposals, said that the European Commission — the administrative arm of the Union — “has been arguing for rewards to those who are the good performers in terms of the programs.”

He cited Ireland and another bailed-out euro member, Portugal, as the members “we have a positive attitude toward.”

Under Ireland’s definition, its “dead banks,” which were crushed by the weight of bad debt incurred in the property and credit bubble, would not qualify. These include Irish Bank Resolution Corp., which took over Anglo Irish Bank, and the Irish Nationwide Building Society.

But banks that still operate but have been recapitalized by the state could receive help.

Michael Noonan, the Irish finance minister, said there was “a distinction being drawn between the word ‘legacy’ and the word ‘retrospective.”’

“If you have a dead bank there are legacy issues, and we are not negotiating for anything broadly to be done for Anglo Irish-I.B.R.C.,” Mr. Noonan said.

He said that about €28 billion was invested in banks that were still trading, and that this was debt his government would like the euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, to assume.

Though no direct recapitalization of banks from that fund is likely to take effect before the end of the year, a promise that Ireland could receive such help could bolster market confidence. That might aid Ireland’s effort to emerge from the bailout program and return to the bond markets fully next year.

Alan Barrett, head of the economic analysis division at Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute, said there were several factors that could derail the government’s plans. These include a lack of domestic economic demand, the weakness of vital export markets including the euro zone, and the appreciation of the euro against the currency of Ireland’s neighbor and key trading partner, Britain.

And while Ireland’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product has been forecast as peaking soon at around 120 percent and then begin to fall, Mr. Barrett estimated that there was still a 30 percent chance that this would not happen. “We are basically of the view that this is a fairly unstable situation,” he said.

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At Ice Age End, a Smaller Gap in Warming and Carbon Dioxide

A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth’s climate.

Previous research had suggested that as the world began to emerge from the depths of the ice age more than 20,000 years ago, warming in Antarctica preceded changes in the global carbon dioxide level by something like 800 years.

That relatively long gap led some climate-change contrarians to assert that rising carbon dioxide levels were essentially irrelevant to the earth’s temperature — a side effect of planetary warming, perhaps, but not the cause.

Mainstream climate scientists have rejected that view and argued that carbon dioxide, while it did not initiate the end of the ice age, played a vital role in the feedback loops that caused a substantial warming.

Still, a long gap between increases of temperature and of carbon dioxide was relatively hard for the scientists to explain. In the political debate in the United States over global warming, the supposed gap has been invoked repeatedly by climate-change contrarians.

In 2007, for example, Al Gore was testifying to Congress about the science in his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” He came under attack by Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas.

“CO2 levels went up after the temperature rose,” Mr. Barton said, citing a scientific paper from 2001. “The temperature appears to drive CO2, not vice versa. On this point, Mr. Vice President, you’re not just off a little. You’re totally wrong.”

But the paper published online Thursday by the journal Science, together with a string of other recent studies, suggests that Mr. Gore was right all along.

The research was led by Frédéric Parrenin of the University of Grenoble, in France. He and his colleagues took a new stab at sorting out the sequence of events at the close of the last great ice age.

Since the 1980s, scientists have been collecting a climate record from those earlier times by extracting long cylinders of ice from the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Air bubbles trapped in the polar ice give direct evidence of the past composition of the atmosphere. And subtle chemical variations in the ice itself give an indication of the local temperature at the time it was formed.

The trouble is that the air bubbles do not get sealed off for hundreds or even thousands of years, as the snow is slowly buried and compressed. Therefore, it is tricky for scientists to put the atmospheric record and the temperature record onto a common time scale.

Early analyses had fairly large error margins. Nonetheless, they produced one of the most striking findings of modern science: an extremely tight association between the temperature and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is consistent with basic physics showing that carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas.

But in several reconstructions based on ice cores, local temperature increases at the poles appeared to slightly precede global increases of carbon dioxide. In the 2001 paper that Mr. Barton cited, for example, Antarctic temperature appeared to lead global carbon dioxide levels by 800 years, give or take 600 years.

Using high-precision chemical techniques, Dr. Parrenin and his colleagues have essentially reduced the error margin. Their findings suggest that increases of carbon dioxide lagged temperature increases in Antarctica by no more than about 200 years and may have even preceded the temperature increase.

“It’s a breakthrough in our concept of how past climate evolved,” Dr. Parrenin said in an interview.

It remains to be seen how well the paper will withstand scientific scrutiny. “I’m left with this uneasy feeling that the uncertainties are larger than they claim,” said Eric Steig, a climate scientist at the University of Washington.

Dr. Steig noted that Dr. Parrenin’s paper is the third in recent years to suggest that the gap in the climate records between polar temperature and CO2, if it exists at all, is relatively small. And Jeremy Shakun, a visiting scholar at Harvard, compiled a temperature record for the whole planet, not just Antarctica. He concluded that the carbon dioxide increase preceded the overall planetary warming.

A small gap poses no conceptual problems, scientists said. They have long known that the ice ages are caused by variations in the earth’s orbit around the sun. When an intensification of sunlight initiates the end of an ice age, they believe, carbon dioxide is somehow flushed out of the ocean, causing a big amplification of the initial warming.

That understanding is one of the cornerstones of the scientists’ warning that modern society is running a big risk by burning fossil fuels and pumping enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The level has already jumped 41 percent since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, and given the weakness of global efforts to control emissions, scientists say it could eventually double or triple. Even at the current concentration, the evidence suggests that increases in sea level of 25 feet or more may have already become inevitable, albeit over a long period.

“We’re just entering a new era in earth’s history,” Dr. Shakun said. “It will be an unrecognizable new planet in the future. I think the only question is, exactly how fast does that transformation happen?”

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Bits Blog: Samsung Is Forming an Army in Barcelona

Samsung Electronics had no new phone to show at Mobile World Congress this week. But it was ubiquitous in Barcelona nonetheless.

The South Korean company’s presence was unavoidable even outside the conference. The walls of Barcelona’s metro stations were plastered with enormous posters showing Galaxy phones. Samsung even had a booth where people could try Galaxy devices right by the exit of the metro stop near the convention center.

Samsung, of course, had one of the biggest booths on the conference floor. Other companies, like Visa, were largely interested in discussing their new partnerships with Samsung.

One of the companies at the conference was NTT Docomo, the Japanese phone carrier. It gave a modest presentation about mobile wallets. After the briefing, a Samsung employee approached a Docomo executive and introduced himself. Another partnership, perhaps, in the works.

After a day of reporting I met an old colleague for dinner. He now works at a small start-up in San Francisco.

“What brings you to the show?” I asked.

“We have a collaboration with Samsung,” he said.

For years, many technology companies, analysts and journalists have argued that trade shows have become less relevant when it comes to showing new products. The consensus: There’s too much noise, and businesses can always use Twitter and Facebook or simply hold their own news conferences to avoid competing for attention with other companies. Therefore, less news comes out of these shows.

Apple was one of the most vocal to say it was done with trade shows. It pulled out of the Macworld Expo conference after 2009, saying its retail stores were like mini Macworlds all over the world where it could reach out to customers — so what was the point?

Google is taking a page from Apple. Its presence at this trade show was minimal — there was no Google booth, just a small round-table meeting with journalists where it had no news to share.

Apple, the most successful technology company in the world, knows that it doesn’t need to try hard to get other companies to work with it. So it stayed home this week (though at least a few folks from Cupertino were probably here in stealth, scoping out the competition). Samsung, which has been steadily creeping up on the industry leader, was forming an army in Barcelona, striking partnerships with companies big and small from all over the world, and proactively searching for even more to form alliances.

If you were No. 1, wouldn’t that make you feel a little nervous?

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First Lady Announces Public-Private Plan to Bolster Physical Education

CHICAGO — As part of her campaign to curb childhood obesity, Michelle Obama on Thursday announced an ambitious plan to increase physical education in the country’s public schools with the help of private companies.

Jeff Haynes/Reuters

Michelle Obama spoke in Chicago on Thursday about her plan to increase physical activity in schools.

Under the $70 million program, the first public-private partnership of its kind, schools will be able to apply for grants to assess and improve their health and physical education programs, with the goal of getting children to exercise an hour a day.

“This is an earth-shattering awesomely inspiring day,” Mrs. Obama said in an emotional speech announcing the program in her hometown. “I grew up just a few miles from where we are today, over on the South Side.” She said that even though “my family certainly wasn’t rich, our neighborhood was barely middle class,” back then “being active was a way of life.” She recalled doing double Dutch on jump-ropes and going to summer camp.

“Where would I have been without those activities that kept be busy and safe and off the streets?” she said.

The program is supported by Nike, which will provide $50 million over five years to help schools and communities set up programs and spaces to get children to exercise. Other groups, including the GENYOUth Foundation, ChildObesity180, Kaiser Permanente and the General Mills Foundation, will give a combined $20 million for grants, training and other resources to help develop exercise programs and other health programs in schools.

All the money will be offered through Let’s Move Active Schools, Mrs. Obama ‘s new initiative. It will be administered through the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

“This is a huge deal for me,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who appeared with Mrs. Obama. “When students have a chance to play and be active, they do better academically. This needs to become the norm.”

Mr. Duncan said he hoped the initiative would spread to 50,000 schools over the next five years. Schools will be able to sign up at LetsMoveSchools.org, where they will be directed to training programs.

Mrs. Obama, who is on a three-city, two-day tour to promote her Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, was joined in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, as well as the athletes Serena Williams, Gabrielle Douglas, Allyson Felix, Bo Jackson, Colin Kaepernick, Sarah Reinertsen, Ashton Eaton, Paul Rodriguez and Dominique Dawes, and the personal trainer Bob Harper. Ms. Williams said the program “has Serena written all over it.”

Mr. Duncan said that Mrs. Obama’s support would help bring a similar attention to exercise that she had to school lunches. “She brings voice, she brings power, she brings tremendous personal passion,'’ he said. “She speaks from experience.”

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First Lady Announces Public-Private Plan to Bolster Physical Education

CHICAGO — As part of her campaign to curb childhood obesity, Michelle Obama on Thursday announced an ambitious plan to increase physical education in the country’s public schools with the help of private companies.

Jeff Haynes/Reuters

Michelle Obama spoke in Chicago on Thursday about her plan to increase physical activity in schools.

Under the $70 million program, the first public-private partnership of its kind, schools will be able to apply for grants to assess and improve their health and physical education programs, with the goal of getting children to exercise an hour a day.

“This is an earth-shattering awesomely inspiring day,” Mrs. Obama said in an emotional speech announcing the program in her hometown. “I grew up just a few miles from where we are today, over on the South Side.” She said that even though “my family certainly wasn’t rich, our neighborhood was barely middle class,” back then “being active was a way of life.” She recalled doing double Dutch on jump-ropes and going to summer camp.

“Where would I have been without those activities that kept be busy and safe and off the streets?” she said.

The program is supported by Nike, which will provide $50 million over five years to help schools and communities set up programs and spaces to get children to exercise. Other groups, including the GENYOUth Foundation, ChildObesity180, Kaiser Permanente and the General Mills Foundation, will give a combined $20 million for grants, training and other resources to help develop exercise programs and other health programs in schools.

All the money will be offered through Let’s Move Active Schools, Mrs. Obama ‘s new initiative. It will be administered through the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

“This is a huge deal for me,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who appeared with Mrs. Obama. “When students have a chance to play and be active, they do better academically. This needs to become the norm.”

Mr. Duncan said he hoped the initiative would spread to 50,000 schools over the next five years. Schools will be able to sign up at LetsMoveSchools.org, where they will be directed to training programs.

Mrs. Obama, who is on a three-city, two-day tour to promote her Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, was joined in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, as well as the athletes Serena Williams, Gabrielle Douglas, Allyson Felix, Bo Jackson, Colin Kaepernick, Sarah Reinertsen, Ashton Eaton, Paul Rodriguez and Dominique Dawes, and the personal trainer Bob Harper. Ms. Williams said the program “has Serena written all over it.”

Mr. Duncan said that Mrs. Obama’s support would help bring a similar attention to exercise that she had to school lunches. “She brings voice, she brings power, she brings tremendous personal passion,'’ he said. “She speaks from experience.”

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