Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered arrested

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Tahirul Qadri, the fiery Islamic cleric leading a large antigovernment protest in the heart of the capital, was in the middle of a speech denouncing President Asif Ali Zardari's administration when an aide interrupted him with news.

The Supreme Court, Qadri was told, had just ordered the arrest of Zardari's prime minister on corruption charges. As he relayed the news to the crowd Tuesday, legions of Pakistanis filling a plaza about 500 yards from the parliament exploded in a yelp of joy. Many danced in the streets. Others embraced, tears streaming down their cheeks.

"My happiness is beyond words," said Ghulam Nabi, a 28-year-old laborer from Lahore. "We thank God for giving us this victory."

For demonstrators, the ruling served as validation of Qadri's message that Pakistan's current government is corrupt and incompetent, and cannot be trusted to oversee national elections this spring. But for Zardari's ruling party and many observers, the ruling heightened suspicion that Qadri's protest is being engineered behind the scenes by a powerful entity, perhaps the military, with the possible involvement of the judiciary.

"It looks like the Supreme Court is part of this intrigue," said Asma Jehangir, a human rights activist and former Supreme Court Bar Assn. president. "This isn't coincidence. Look at the timing. I believe the Supreme Court's moral authority has vanished."

Speaking to a Pakistani television channel, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said, "This decision by the Supreme Court doesn't look like a coincidence."

The order to arrest Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with a scandal from his days as water and power minister broadsides Zardari's government at the worst possible time, as he struggles to withstand pressure on his administration created by Qadri's populist movement.

An estimated 40,000 Pakistanis unhappy with Zardari continued to take part in Qadri's sit-in protest Tuesday, and many who were interviewed said they would stay put until the parliament was dissolved and Zardari stepped down, demands Qadri made Monday after leading a long caravan of demonstrators from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad.

Zardari's inability to remedy a host of ills, from crippling power outages to militant attacks, is cited by demonstrators as a prime reason why they joined the sit-in. Voters have the choice of electing a new government in May, but Qadri contends the electoral system is weighted unfairly toward the two most powerful parties.

The system requires the appointment of a caretaker government during the run-up to the election, and leaves the choice of appointees to Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party, the PML-N.

Qadri has said Pakistan's powerful military should be involved in the appointment, a remark that has led many observers to speculate that the country's security establishment is behind Qadri's movement. Both Qadri and the military deny that.

Until Tuesday, Zardari's team had tried to appear confident that Qadri's movement wasn't large enough to effect change and would eventually wither. Qadri fell far short of his goal of rallying 1 million Pakistanis for the protest march.

The Supreme Court ruling, however, put Zardari's party on the defensive. Party leaders in the coalition running the parliament said they would meet Tuesday night to discuss strategy.

"We were right that [Qadri's movement] is an effort to derail democracy," said Sharjeel Memon, a PPP stalwart and information minister for Sindh province. "What's happening now is not good for democracy."

For more than a year, the high court has been investigating Ashraf's role in the issuance of licenses to so-called rental power plants, a short-term project that was supposed to help solve the country's power shortage. The government signed three-to-five-year contracts with relatively small private power stations, essentially renting them while it worked on building larger plants.

The effort did little to alleviate the country's power troubles, however, and wasted millions of dollars in government money.

The corruption allegations against Ashraf involve purported kickbacks related to bidding for the rental plants, which took place while Ashraf was water and power minister from March 2008 to February 2011.

Ashraf was appointed prime minister in June to replace Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was forced from office that month by the Supreme Court after he was convicted of contempt for ignoring the court's order to revive an old corruption case against Zardari.

Many analysts at the time warned that Ashraf's appointment was risky, given the power plant scandal hanging over him. The episode earned Ashraf the nickname "Raja Rental" in the Pakistani media.

The Supreme Court order also seeks the arrest of several other officials suspected of being linked to the scandal.

It remains unclear how Zardari's government will respond. Gilani remained in office after he was convicted of contempt in April 2012, and stepped down only when the high court ordered his dismissal weeks later.

Deep animosity has for years tainted the relationship between Zardari's government and the judiciary, led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. The feud dates to the early days of Zardari's presidency, when he balked at reinstating Chaudhry as chief justice. Chaudhry had been ousted by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's leader in 2007.

Zardari reportedly feared that Chaudhry would allow old corruption charges against him to proceed. After intense political and public pressure, Zardari relented and reinstated the judge.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

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Reports of the iPhone 5's Waning Popularity Are Overstated

Recent reports that Apple is cutting orders for the components needed to assemble its flagship handset likely have more to do with seasonal buying patterns and iPhone production ramp up than iPhone fever fading.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to Apple, reported that Apple cut orders for iPhone 5 parts following weaker-than-projected demand. But a bevy of analysts have chimed in since Sunday’s report, suggesting that inventory stockpiling, an aggressive international iPhone rollout and perhaps even the beginning stages of iPhone 5S production could be behind the drop in component orders.

Even so, the Cupertino company’s stock slid 3 percent on Monday following the somewhat shocking report, which came a little more than a week before Apple’s next earnings announcement.

Apple does appear to be cutting iPhone 5 parts orders, though. Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging displays at IHS, told Wired he’s seeing reduced iPhone display shipment numbers in this quarter compared to last quarter, in the range of 10 to 11 million compared to 19 million. Paul Semenza of NPD echoed those numbers in a report by the The New York Times. NPD DisplaySearch expected Apple to order 19 million iPhone 5 displays, but the order looks to be in the range of 11 to 14 million.

Jakhanwal says the discrepancy could be explained by seasonality — first-quarter numbers usually are smaller than fourth-quarter numbers — and also could be attributed to other components holding up iPhone production.

“The reduction in display orders could be to align to shipment of other components like the battery, which is challenging to manufacture for the new phone and may not have been able to ramp up to the display numbers,” Jakhanwal told Wired via email.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek posits that Apple could be starting production on its next handset, perhaps the iPhone 5S or a budget iPhone. This could be one cause for the drop in parts orders, as could an “assembly bottleneck” that led to component inventories being stockpiled over the holidays. Semenza and Jakhanwal also believe excess inventory could be a reason for the cut. Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan thinks the order cuts could also be due to improved manufacturing yields, and Apple was simply backtracking on “excess orders” of some parts.

Apple’s super aggressive iPhone roll out, which reached 100 countries by the end of 2012, could also be a reason why demand is slowing a little sooner than normal.

Still, there are certainly signs the iPhone 5 may not be selling as briskly as its predecessors. For instance, a selection of major retailers recently cut the price of the iPhone 5 by $50, and analysts like Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves have told investors iPhone demand isn’t as strong as anticipated. Anecdotally, a lot of people I talk to are still holding onto their 4′s and 4S’s — they’re still good phones, run iOS 6, and breaking that carrier contract to fork over a couple hundred more for a new phone just isn’t worth it to some.

On top of that, Samsung, with its Galaxy S III smartphone, has emerged as a major competitor to Apple.

“The competitive landscape is quite different this year than with iPhone launches years before,” Canalys analyst Chris Jones told Wired. Some people are also leaving Apple’s 6 year old mobile operating system in favor of something different, and options like Samsung and even Windows Phone are looking fresh.

In Apple’s last quarterly earnings call, which included the iPhone 5′s first week on sale, CEO Tim Cook announced the company sold a whopping 26.9 million iPhones — 58 percent more than the same period the year prior. While numbers for the holiday quarter aren’t in yet (that will be announced next week), last year Apple sold over 37 million iPhones over that period.

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Singer Jessica Simpson to star in TV comedy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop singer Jessica Simpson is set to star in a television pilot in development for NBC that is loosely based on her life, executive producer Ben Silverman said on Tuesday.

The comedy could be Simpson‘s first step back into a major acting role in more than five years.

The former teen pop star is best known for her reality TV shows, including MTV’s “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,” which followed Simpson and her first husband and fellow pop singer Nick Lachey. She also served as a mentor on NBC’s “Fashion Star.”

Simpson, 32, will play a celebrity who must balance life as a mother and a public figure, Silverman told Reuters.

The singer gave birth to her first child in May 2012 and said last month that she was pregnant with her second.

“The show is inspired by her life as she’s going through a new phase in her life becoming a mom,” said Silverman, who is the creator of NBC’s reality show “The Biggest Loser.”

“It’s a combination of ‘I Love Lucy’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’” he added, referring to the classic 1950s Lucille Ball comedy series and the HBO series by “Seinfeld” creator Larry David.

Simpson will also serve as an executive producer.

In 2004, Simpson taped a pilot for the ABC network about a pop star who becomes a TV news anchor, but it never became a series.

Simpson’s film credits include 2005′s “The Dukes of Hazzard” and 2006′s “Employee of the Month.”

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Stacey Joyce)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: How to Go Vegan

When I first heard former President Bill Clinton talk about his vegan diet, I was inspired to make the switch myself. After all, if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.

At the grocery store, I stocked up on vegan foods, including almond milk (that was the presidential recommendation), and faux turkey and cheese to replicate my daughter’s favorite sandwich. But despite my good intentions, my cold-turkey attempt to give up, well, turkey (as well as other meats, dairy and eggs) didn’t go well. My daughter and I couldn’t stand the taste of almond milk, and the fake meat and cheese were unappealing.

Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous vegan chefs and diners who say it can be a challenge to change a lifetime of eating habits overnight. They offer the following advice for stocking your vegan pantry and finding replacements for key foods like cheese and other dairy products.

NONDAIRY MILK Taste all of them to find your favorite. Coconut and almond milks (particularly canned coconut milk) are thicker and good to use in cooking, while rice milk is thinner and is good for people who are allergic to nuts or soy. My daughter and I both prefer the taste of soy milk and use it in regular or vanilla flavor for fruit smoothies and breakfast cereal.

NONDAIRY CHEESE Cheese substitutes are available under the brand names Daiya, Tofutti and Follow Your Heart, among others, but many vegans say there’s no fake cheese that satisfies as well as the real thing. Rather than use a packaged product, vegan chefs prefer to make homemade substitutes using cashews, tofu, miso or nutritional yeast. At Candle 79, a popular New York vegan restaurant, the filling for saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms and cashew cheese is made with cashews soaked overnight and then blended with lemon juice, olive oil, water and salt.

THINK CREAMY, NOT CHEESY Creaminess and richness can often be achieved without a cheese substitute. For instance, Chloe Coscarelli, a vegan chef and the author of “Chloe’s Kitchen,” has created a pizza with caramelized onion and butternut squash that will make you forget it doesn’t have cheese; the secret is white-bean and garlic purée. She also offers a creamy, but dairy-free, avocado pesto pasta. My daughter and I have discovered we actually prefer the rich flavor of butternut squash ravioli, which can be found frozen and fresh in supermarkets, to cheese-filled ravioli.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST The name is unappetizing, but many vegan chefs swear by it: it’s a natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor. Ms. Coscarelli uses nutritional yeast flakes in her “best ever” baked macaroni and cheese (found in her cookbook). “I’ve served this to die-hard cheese lovers,” she told me, “and everyone agrees it is comparable, if not better.”

Susan Voisin’s Web site, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, offers a nice primer on nutritional yeast, noting that it’s a fungus (think mushrooms!) that is grown on molasses and then harvested and dried with heat. (Baking yeast is an entirely different product.) Nutritional yeasts can be an acquired taste, she said, so start with small amounts, sprinkling on popcorn, stirring into mashed potatoes, grinding with almonds for a Parmesan substitute or combining with tofu to make an eggless omelet. It can be found in Whole Foods, in the bulk aisle of natural-foods markets or online.

BUTTER This is an easy fix. Vegan margarines like Earth Balance are made from a blend of oils and are free of trans fats. Varieties include soy-free, whipped and olive oil.

EGGS Ms. Coscarelli, who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with vegan cupcakes, says vinegar and baking soda can help baked goods bind together and rise, creating a moist and fluffy cake without eggs. Cornstarch can substitute for eggs to thicken puddings and sauces. Vegan pancakes are made with a tablespoon of baking powder instead of eggs. Frittatas and omelets can be replicated with tofu.

Finally, don’t try to replicate your favorite meaty foods right away. If you love a juicy hamburger, meatloaf or ham sandwich, you are not going to find a meat-free version that tastes the same. Ms. Voisin advises new vegans to start slow and eat a few vegan meals a week. Stock your pantry with lots of grains, lentils and beans and pile your plate with vegetables. To veganize a recipe, start with a dish that is mostly vegan already — like spaghetti — and use vegetables or a meat substitute for the sauce.

“Trying to recapture something and find an exact substitute is really hard,” she said. “A lot of people will try a vegetarian meatloaf right after they become vegetarian, and they hate it. But after you get away from eating meat for a while, you’ll find you start to develop other tastes, and the flavor of a lentil loaf with seasonings will taste great to you. It won’t taste like meat loaf, but you’ll appreciate it for itself.”

Ms. Voisin notes that she became a vegetarian and then vegan while living in a small town in South Carolina; she now lives in Jackson, Miss.

“If I can be a vegan in these not-quite-vegan-centric places, you can do it anywhere,” she said. “I think people who try to do it all at once overnight are more apt to fail. It’s a learning process.”

---

What are your tips for vegan cooking and eating? Share your suggestions on ingredients, recipes and strategies by posting a comment below or tweeting with the hashtag #vegantips.

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Global Economy Is Looking Brighter, World Bank Says

WASHINGTON — Some of the darkest clouds threatening the global economy have started to lift, according the World Bank’s periodic update to its economic forecasts.

The latest version of the twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report is one of the development bank’s least pessimistic in recent years, but hardly an exercise in optimism. It describes a “dramatic” easing of financial conditions around the world, stemming in part from policy changes to soothe the bond markets in Europe. Still, it warns that global growth will continue to be sluggish for years to come.

In the report, the World Bank estimates the world economy grew just 2.3 percent in 2012. It expects growth to pick up only modestly in the coming years, from 2.4 percent in 2013 to 3.3 percent in 2015.

Developing countries were responsible for more than half of global growth in 2012, the report said, and they will continue to be an engine of growth. The report estimates that developing countries grew 5.1 percent in 2012, and that the pace of growth will accelerate to 5.8 percent in 2015.

“Four years after the crisis, high-income countries are still struggling,” Andrew Burns, the report’s lead author, said in an interview. “Developing countries need to respond to that difficult environment not through fiscal and monetary stimulus, but rather by looking to reinforce their underlying growth potential in order to have sustainably stronger growth going forward.”

For the last four years, developing countries have remained in something of a defensive crouch, World Bank experts said. Their central banks and finance ministries have intently focused on managing the volatile financial and economic conditions emanating from the United States and Europe, and their policy making has focused on the short term.

But credit conditions have eased significantly in Europe, particularly since the European Central Bank, led by Mario Draghi, embarked on a major bond-buying program last year. Growth has started to pick up in the United States, after taking a hit in the second half of 2012 because of uncertainty stemming from the presidential election and the so-called fiscal cliff, a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases that Congress mostly averted this month.

Now, developing economies need to focus more on their domestic economic troubles, bank economists said. That might mean making long-term investments in infrastructure, education, public health or regulation, rather than focusing on short-term stimulus measures to counteract economic fluctuations from elsewhere around the globe.

“They have spent the past four years reacting to what’s going on in high-income countries,” said Mr. Burns, noting that different developing countries faced significantly different development challenges. “As a result, almost necessarily, they’ve been paying less attention to some of these long-term growth-enhancing reforms that are so necessary.”

The report says that significant downside risks to global growth persist, including stalled progress in solving the European debt crisis, fiscal uncertainty in the United States, a decline in investment in China and spiking oil prices. However, the report said, “the likelihood of these risks and their potential impacts has diminished, and the possibility of a stronger-than-anticipated recovery in high-income countries has increased.”

Developing countries may start to reorient away from a crisis mind-set, the bank said. “The whole discussion has been dominated by the global crisis,” said Hans Timmer, the director of the development prospects group at the World Bank. “It’s logical that you are distracted, but there are several problems with that: If you don’t go back to the reform agenda, you don’t have that growth in the future.”

Weakness in large, wealthy countries continues to weigh on growth in the developing world, the report notes, hitting big exporters in South Asia, for instance. Political turmoil continues to rack the Middle East and North Africa, it said. But economic activity in East Asia has rebounded because of increasing regional trade and domestic demand in China.

In contrast, developed countries, like Germany, Japan and the United States, had growth of only 1.3 percent in 2012. The bank expects that growth to pick up starting in 2014, reaching 2.3 percent by 2015. The bank projects that the euro zone will continue to contract in 2013, reaching sluggish growth of 1.4 percent by 2015.

Global trade in goods and services is a bright spot in the report. Over all, such trade grew just 3.5 percent in 2012. The bank expects trade to jump 6 percent in 2013 and 7 percent by 2015, in no small part because of an accelerating demand from new consumers in big developing countries.

“From hopes for a U-shaped recovery, through a W-shaped one, the prognosis for global growth is getting alphabetically challenged,” Kaushik Basu, the World Bank chief economist, said in a statement. “With governments in high-income countries struggling to make fiscal policies more sustainable, developing counties should resist trying to anticipate every fluctuation in developed countries and instead ensure that their fiscal and monetary polices are robust and responsive to domestic conditions.”

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Syria refugees say rape is a key reason they fled, report says

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Rape is one of the primary reasons that Syrian refugees say they fled their country, “a significant and disturbing feature” of the war raging between rebels and Syrian government forces, the International Rescue Committee said Monday.

In a new report based on hundreds of interviews in Jordan and Lebanon, the assistance group said refugees recounted Syrian women and girls being gang-raped in front of their families or assaulted by armed men in public. Others were kidnapped, violated, tortured and killed, the refugee aid group was told.

The aid group did not assign blame to either side in the conflict for the reported rapes. “We deliberately do not ask about perpetrators,” said Alina Potts, Women’s Protection and Empowerment Emergency Coordinator for the group. “We’re looking at what the needs are.”

Syrian rape survivors face shame and stigma that compounds the trauma, and often inhibits them from reporting sexual violence. Many families have married off their daughters early, believing a husband could protect girls from rape. The rush to early marriages has also been reported by other groups.

"They rape girls who are as young as her in Syria now," the father of a pregnant 14-year-old child bride told IRIN news service last year. “I will not feel OK if I do not see her married to a decent man who can protect her.”

Other girls are wed after an assault, in the belief that a marriage could “safeguard their honor,” the IRC reported. Some fear being killed by their own families if they reveal they were attacked. In one extreme case, a father shot his daughter as armed men drew near, trying to prevent the “disgrace” of her rape, the aid group was told.

Despite the continued reports of rape, help for sexual assault survivors is scant in the countries that Syrian refugees have fled to, the group reported.

“Syrian women say they feel unsafe in crowded shelters where they have minimal privacy, yet they are scared to report violence, because of shame or fear of reprisal from family members,” the report said. “Others just don’t know where to turn for help.”

The IRC said it was expanding targeted care and counseling for refugees in Jordan and Lebanon and launching similar programs in Iraq, but warned that funding from abroad hasn’t kept pace with the needs of women and girls across the region.The outpouring of refugees has also given rise to new threats of exploitation outside Syria.

"There must be safeguards to protect women from further violence.... There have been reports of people being targeted by unscrupulous landlords, saying, ‘I know you can’t afford the rent, but if you give me your daughter, your family will have a place to stay,’” Potts said.

Sexual violence is one of a long list of reported atrocities in Syria, including killings, torture and abductions. More than 600,000 refugees have poured out of Syria and millions more are believed to be in need inside the country, according to the U.N.

Aid agencies partnering with the U.N. have appealed for more than $1.5 billion to aid Syrians for six months, the biggest appeal ever made for such a crisis.

The IRC urged donors to meet the pleas for help, focusing added attention on the needs of women and girls. It also pressed for more aid for refugees living outside of the camps, who make up the bulk of the displaced yet garner less attention from media and donors. Borders should be kept open to allow more Syrians to flee, it said.

For the record, 2:40 p.m. Jan. 14: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that rape was the most common reason for leaving Syria cited by the refugees. The report called it "a primary reason," but did not say it was the most common one.

ALSO:

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New Russian law forbidding U.S. adoptions draws major Moscow protest

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Watch the Entirety of <em>Toy Story</em> as a Live-Action Remake

How much do uber-geeks Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta love Toy Story? Enough to spend two years filming a DIY feature-length stop-motion remake of Pixar’s entire 1995 blockbuster shot for shot, using little more than cardboard boxes, string and toys.

It’s hardly the first time DIY auteurs have used action figures to make fan films about iconic movie characters, but the Live-Action Toy Story Project represents extraordinary fan devotion, and even used of the original soundtrack dialogue from Tom Hanks and company along with the original Randy Newman score.

That’s usually the part where lawyers usually start firing off cease and desist orders, but in this case, the project managed to make its own happy ending. After Pauley, 19, and Perrotta, 21, trekked to Pixar headquarters in Emeryville last week and passed out DVDs of their homespun homage, they received the studio’s blessing, and Live-Action Toy Story Project can now be seen in its entirety above.

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Jodie Foster comes out as gay at Golden Globes

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) – Hollywood actress Jodie Foster confirmed long-running speculation that she is gay by coming out at the Golden Globes awards on Sunday, but joked she wouldn’t be holding a news conference to discuss her private life.

The notoriously private Foster stunned the audience of stars and Hollywood powerbrokers as she accepted a life-time achievement awarded by announcing she was now single.

“Seriously, I hope that you’re not disappointed that there won’t be a big-coming-out speech tonight,” she said, “because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age.”

Foster said she had always been up front with trusted friends and family about her sexual orientation.

“But now apparently, I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference … that’s just not me,” she said.

Foster, 50, then talked to her “ex-partner in love” Cydney Bernard, from whom she recently split, and their two sons in the audience.

“Thank you Cyd, I am so proud of our modern family, our amazing sons,” Foster said.

Over the years, Foster had come under withering criticism from the gay community for not publicly recognizing she was gay.

The two-time best actress Oscar winner for “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Accused” said she had valued her privacy because of her early acting career, which started at the age of three.

“If you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you, too, might value privacy above all else,” she said.

(This story is corrected with spelling of Bernard’s first name to Cydney in paras 6 and 7)

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Mary Milliken; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: How to Go Vegan

When I first heard former President Bill Clinton talk about his vegan diet, I was inspired to make the switch myself. After all, if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.

At the grocery store, I stocked up on vegan foods, including almond milk (that was the presidential recommendation), and faux turkey and cheese to replicate my daughter’s favorite sandwich. But despite my good intentions, my cold-turkey attempt to give up, well, turkey (as well as other meats, dairy and eggs) didn’t go well. My daughter and I couldn’t stand the taste of almond milk, and the fake meat and cheese were unappealing.

Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous vegan chefs and diners who say it can be a challenge to change a lifetime of eating habits overnight. They offer the following advice for stocking your vegan pantry and finding replacements for key foods like cheese and other dairy products.

NONDAIRY MILK Taste all of them to find your favorite. Coconut and almond milks (particularly canned coconut milk) are thicker and good to use in cooking, while rice milk is thinner and is good for people who are allergic to nuts or soy. My daughter and I both prefer the taste of soy milk and use it in regular or vanilla flavor for fruit smoothies and breakfast cereal.

NONDAIRY CHEESE Cheese substitutes are available under the brand names Daiya, Tofutti and Follow Your Heart, among others, but many vegans say there’s no fake cheese that satisfies as well as the real thing. Rather than use a packaged product, vegan chefs prefer to make homemade substitutes using cashews, tofu, miso or nutritional yeast. At Candle 79, a popular New York vegan restaurant, the filling for saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms and cashew cheese is made with cashews soaked overnight and then blended with lemon juice, olive oil, water and salt.

THINK CREAMY, NOT CHEESY Creaminess and richness can often be achieved without a cheese substitute. For instance, Chloe Coscarelli, a vegan chef and the author of “Chloe’s Kitchen,” has created a pizza with caramelized onion and butternut squash that will make you forget it doesn’t have cheese; the secret is white-bean and garlic purée. She also offers a creamy, but dairy-free, avocado pesto pasta. My daughter and I have discovered we actually prefer the rich flavor of butternut squash ravioli, which can be found frozen and fresh in supermarkets, to cheese-filled ravioli.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST The name is unappetizing, but many vegan chefs swear by it: it’s a natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor. Ms. Coscarelli uses nutritional yeast flakes in her “best ever” baked macaroni and cheese (found in her cookbook). “I’ve served this to die-hard cheese lovers,” she told me, “and everyone agrees it is comparable, if not better.”

Susan Voisin’s Web site, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, offers a nice primer on nutritional yeast, noting that it’s a fungus (think mushrooms!) that is grown on molasses and then harvested and dried with heat. (Baking yeast is an entirely different product.) Nutritional yeasts can be an acquired taste, she said, so start with small amounts, sprinkling on popcorn, stirring into mashed potatoes, grinding with almonds for a Parmesan substitute or combining with tofu to make an eggless omelet. It can be found in Whole Foods, in the bulk aisle of natural-foods markets or online.

BUTTER This is an easy fix. Vegan margarines like Earth Balance are made from a blend of oils and are free of trans fats. Varieties include soy-free, whipped and olive oil.

EGGS Ms. Coscarelli, who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with vegan cupcakes, says vinegar and baking soda can help baked goods bind together and rise, creating a moist and fluffy cake without eggs. Cornstarch can substitute for eggs to thicken puddings and sauces. Vegan pancakes are made with a tablespoon of baking powder instead of eggs. Frittatas and omelets can be replicated with tofu.

Finally, don’t try to replicate your favorite meaty foods right away. If you love a juicy hamburger, meatloaf or ham sandwich, you are not going to find a meat-free version that tastes the same. Ms. Voisin advises new vegans to start slow and eat a few vegan meals a week. Stock your pantry with lots of grains, lentils and beans and pile your plate with vegetables. To veganize a recipe, start with a dish that is mostly vegan already — like spaghetti — and use vegetables or a meat substitute for the sauce.

“Trying to recapture something and find an exact substitute is really hard,” she said. “A lot of people will try a vegetarian meatloaf right after they become vegetarian, and they hate it. But after you get away from eating meat for a while, you’ll find you start to develop other tastes, and the flavor of a lentil loaf with seasonings will taste great to you. It won’t taste like meat loaf, but you’ll appreciate it for itself.”

Ms. Voisin notes that she became a vegetarian and then vegan while living in a small town in South Carolina; she now lives in Jackson, Miss.

“If I can be a vegan in these not-quite-vegan-centric places, you can do it anywhere,” she said. “I think people who try to do it all at once overnight are more apt to fail. It’s a learning process.”

---

What are your vegantips? We’re collecting suggestions on ingredients, recipes and strategies.

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On the Road: Security Check Programs Tend to Create an Elite Class - On the Road

THE Transportation Security Administration plans to widen the pool of travelers who qualify for PreCheck, its 14-month-old expedited security program that allows selected passengers to pass through special checkpoints without having to remove laptops from bags or take off their shoes, belts or outer coats.

That’s a welcome prospect for the roughly 40 percent whom the agency considers frequent fliers out of the annual 640 million domestic passengers — people who are screened “time and time again” at airports, according to John S. Pistole, the agency’s administrator. As such, these frequent travelers are presumably “known and trusted” fliers who make up a pool of potential members of so-called known-traveler security programs like PreCheck, he said.

A traveler qualifies for PreCheck only after passing a background check, and only the highest-frequency travelers are invited to take part by the five airlines currently participating.

But as the T.S.A. expands the program into the general population, some questions arise. For example, the agency is considering inviting private companies to help conduct those background checks, which would be done only on people who volunteer their information in order to enroll.

In a year-end report to agency employees, Mr. Pistole suggested that the checks could be conducted by companies “that we would contract with that would vet to our criteria and assess the exact things that we want to know about a person.”

Last week, the agency took a step in that direction, issuing a request for proposals from companies that might want to do the background checks to identify passengers who “present a low risk to the aviation transportation system” and who could enroll in an expanded PreCheck.

Every traveler I know who has participated in PreCheck likes the program enormously, even though there is no guarantee that a member is able to use a dedicated PreCheck lane on any given trip. That is because the T.S.A. has built in randomness as a security measure. PreCheck is now available at 35 airports, and the agency plans to expand the number of participating airports and airlines this year.

The potential for such programs to increase the possibility of racial profiling is well known. But another question concerns overall privacy. Assuming private businesses become involved, the security of passengers’ private data will be an issue — especially considering that the collected information may have commercial value beyond security purposes.

Another question is whether the government wants to create a class system for treating citizens differently at airport security. For example, I occasionally complain here about the way the airlines have instituted stark contrasts between the haves and have-nots in air travel, devising ever more complex ranks of privilege and status on the plane or at the boarding gate.

At the security checkpoint, it arguably makes sense to de-emphasize what Mr. Pistole calls the “one size fits all” approach and rely more on intelligence-based risk assessment. But what about the have-nots, the majority of travelers who pose no risk but who are not “known” well enough to qualify for special treatment?

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed reservations about the T.S.A.’s idea of “allowing private companies to carry out risk analysis” to determine which Americans might qualify as trusted travelers.

Jay Stanley, an A.C.L.U senior policy analyst, described concerns about a system that would rely on a commercial “data broker” to collect background information and essentially assign a passing score to qualified participants. Aside from the implications for those who may fail a background check for any reason, what about the majority of air travelers, who simply don’t apply, or who don’t travel enough to qualify for consideration?

Mr. Stanley said that he has no serious issue with the current PreCheck program because its scope is limited. But as it expands more into the general population, he said, “I’m uncomfortable with the logic of this kind of program, and where it will take us in the end,” as government and possibly private businesses share more and more data on travelers.

In its request for proposals, the T.S.A. enumerates strict standards for privacy protections in “safeguarding the personal information from loss or disclosure.”

Incidentally, here’s a disclosure of my own. I recently enrolled in another known-traveler program, Global Entry, which is run by the Customs and Border Protection agency and provides expedited re-entry into the country for members who have passed a background check, submitted to a personal interview and fingerprinting and paid $100 for five years. Global Entry also automatically bumps its members into the PreCheck program — and that was a prime incentive for me to join.

Which makes me one of the “haves” in security, I suppose. My hubris is tempered, however, by my decidedly have-not status elsewhere, as I wait at the gate with my fellow humble have-nots and watch the privileged board ahead of us, rank by elite rank.

So are we indirectly creating a security underclass as we filter out trusted travelers for special treatment at the checkpoints?

“The notion that our own government is going to either directly or via an arms-length corporate relationship sort through the population and stamp some people with a trusted label and others with an untrusted label — that makes me uneasy,” Mr. Stanley said.

Me too, actually.

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