Foreign Minister Blames Sanctions for Syria’s Troubles

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Receiving a high-level United Nations delegation on Saturday in Damascus, Syria’s foreign minister blamed international sanctions for his country’s problems and called on the United Nations to help lift the measures, which were imposed to punish the government for its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that spiraled into armed conflict.

Government forces continued airstrikes and artillery barrages in the suburbs of Damascus, the capital, as a top United Nations official, Valerie Amos, visited the city to investigate the needs of Syrians during a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and led more than a half-million to flee the country, with many more displaced inside Syria.

The civil war set off by the brutal crackdown on peaceful protests has devastated many cities and suburbs as the government levels rebellious neighborhoods and some rebels set off bombs.

But Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and other officials placed the blame elsewhere, according to Syrian and foreign news reports, saying, “The sanctions imposed by the United States and countries of the European Union on Syria are responsible for the suffering of the Syrian people.”

In the northern city of Aleppo, rebels claimed to have taken another important military installation, the region’s infantry school, though some reports said that fighting continued on Saturday.

There was an outpouring of grief from antigovernment activists and fighters after a commander of a rebel group, the Tawhid, or Unification, Brigade, was reported to have died in the fighting. It was an unusual moment of focus on an individual in an uprising with few widely known leaders or public faces.

The commander, Yousef al-Jader, also known as Abu Furat, had earlier recorded a statement, posted online on Saturday, that resonated with many Syrians.

“I feel very sad whenever I see a dead man, whether from our side or their side,” he said.

Speaking about President Bashar al-Assad, who has resisted calls to step down, he asked: “Why did he have to hold on to his seat? If he had resigned, we would have the best country in the world.”

Opposition members were distraught over the death of Mr. Jader, considered a skilled and respected officer by others in the loose-knit Free Syrian Army.

“A man has left our world, and men are few,” Samar Yazbek, a prizewinning novelist, wrote on Facebook, adding that Mr. Jader’s statement had made her cry. “His quavering and humanitarian voice represented, for me, the lovely and difficult future of Syria,” she wrote. “He barely lighted a star in the sky of our pain!”

The commander was one of many fighters to die in the fighting at the infantry school, which is north of Aleppo, in Muslimiyah.

A Syrian activist in the region, reached by phone, said rebels, who had breached the school’s compound several days ago and had been fighting for it building by building, had lost as many as 25 fighters there on Saturday. “It was a big victory for us, but very costly,” said the activist, Yasser al-Haji.

It is unclear whether the rebels will keep control of the base. In many cases, rebels have quickly taken ammunition from captured bases and then abandoned them, wary of government attacks.

In Jordan, officials who defected from the Syrian government announced that they had formed a new opposition group led by Mr. Assad’s former prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, one of the highest-ranking officials to desert during the conflict.

The group, called the National Free Coalition of the Workers of Syrian Government Institutions, aims to keep state structures intact if Mr. Assad’s government falls, Reuters reported.

The group includes Abdu Hussameldin, the former deputy oil minister, and others, who, at a news conference in Amman, expressed support for the Free Syrian Army and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, recently recognized by the United States and others as the legitimate representative of Syrians.

Fighting continued east of Damascus; activists reported airstrikes in Beit Saham, near the Damascus airport. The government claims to have pushed rebels out of some southern suburbs after heavy shelling, and is now focusing attacks in the east in an effort to seal off the capital.

While rebels appeared to make many some gains in a semicircle of suburbs around the capital in recent weeks, those were followed by a fearsome government counterattack, and some analysts have suggested that what began as a victory for the rebels has become, as has happened several times before, a defeat.

The government may have led rebels into a trap, reported the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, a left-leaning publication that often supports the pro-Assad Lebanese group Hezbollah. Citing informed sources, the newspaper said that the government intentionally withdrew forces from some Damascus suburbs to draw rebels in, stretch their supply lines and later wipe them out.

Syrian state news media reported that Leila Zerrougui, a United Nations special representative, visited camps for families displaced by the fighting and called on all sides to protect children affected by the conflict.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and C. J. Chivers from Antakya, Turkey. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.

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Bits: New Apps Recall the Details of Your Online Past

THE holiday season of 2011 was a hive of activity for me. One week in early December, I managed to attend a party at the Bowery Ballroom, a movie premiere and a Justin Bieber-themed dinner event. A few days later, in a single afternoon, I saw the movie “Young Adult,” bought animal-shaped glassware as Christmas gifts and shared dishes of handmade pasta with a few friends from college. And three nights after that, I attended a concert at a local music venue with a friend from Australia, then woke up the next morning and hopped on an Amtrak train to Virginia for Christmas.

I know all of this not because my memory is superhuman, or because I keep a detailed journal. My gift of meticulous recollection comes courtesy of several apps I’ve signed up for, including Timehop and Rewind.me. They tap into my social media history and send daily reminders of my past postings, from pictures uploaded to Instagram, the photo-sharing application, to messages on Facebook and Twitter.

At a basic level, these services serve as a cognitive crutch, excavating details about the past that I might not otherwise remember. They offer historical insight into a digital world that is in many ways ephemeral — full of constantly refreshing newsfeeds.

While social networks tell their users what is happening right now, these newer services document life of a year or more ago. They rely on a proliferation of personal data scattered around the Web and easily retrieved with the help of clever engineering and software algorithms. And they offer a rare backward glance, an anthropological perspective on our own online behavior. For example, I’ve noticed that last year, I was posting many photographs and disclosing personal details of my life on social networks, but that these days, I’ve shifted into a cooler, less intimate mode.

Danielle Morrill, founder and chief executive of Referly, a product-recommendation start-up in San Francisco, found that using Timehop, which pings her iPhone with information about how she spent her day exactly one, two, three or even five years ago, reminded her just how “powerful time can be.”

“Sometimes I’ll realize I was doing the exact same thing I was doing a year ago, and I’ll have to ask myself if I’m cool with that,” Ms. Morrill said. “I was grinding through work last year, and I’m still doing that now. Maybe I should think about taking a break. It makes you reflect.”

Timehop and its peers are byproducts of a time of information overload. Many of us can barely keep up with the nearly nonstop stream of news, updates and details about the world around us, let alone find time to put the past into the context of the present.

“Every social network is based in real time,” said Jonathan Wegener, one of the founders of Timehop, which was released to the public in October. “They tend to push down old information, but they don’t leave space to remember it.”

Mr. Wegener has joined a small cluster of entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on a kind of Internet-era archaeology, excavating the troves of data we’ve left on the Web and repackaging them for our enjoyment. It’s an economy betting that as much as people want to pipe details of their daily lives into the social Web as they happen, they will also want reminders on the anniversaries of those experiences — whether theirs or, in some cases, someone else’s. People who sign up for Timehop, for example, can see the social-media pasts of friends who are also using the service. And if Timehop users choose to do so, they can send their memories to other social networks where friends can comment about them.

EXHUMING the past, of course, is fun only until you stumble onto something unpleasant.

In my case, a recent perusal offered photographs of a pet cat that had died, as well as pictures of an exuberant evening with a friend I no longer spend time with. Such reminders can be almost unbearably painful, or they can provide the extra nudge to send a “hello, again” e-mail.

Mr. Wegener said users often requested features that would let them block a particular person or period from appearing in their digest.

Technologically, building such filters would not be impossible, Mr. Wegener said, but he hasn’t done so yet. He said the notion reminded him of the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a quirky romantic comedy in which the main characters wipe away any traces of their past relationship, and presumably, the trauma inflicted.

Such filters are “something we’re considering carefully,” he said.

It’s not clear whether these applications have long-term business potential. Timehop, for example, says it is focused on attracting people to its app, rather than worrying about how it will make money. The company has raised a little more than $1 million from a list of investors that includes Spark Capital and the founders of Foursquare.

Some researchers who study how people interact online say that these services are a logical evolution for social media and hold the potential for longer-term value.

For one thing, they can remind us exactly how long the “half-life of our digital footprints can be” said S. Shyam Sundar, a director of the Media Effects Research Lab at Pennsylvania State University. “People who never stopped to think that their digital postings would be archived could become more aware of their actions online.”

They could usher in a much-needed dose of reality about the permanence of the digital Web, a truth that is hard to grasp when so much of what we post online feels so ephemeral, visible for only a few seconds.

Behaving as if our digital data is fleeting can cause serious trouble, said Mr. Sundar, especially as our offline and online worlds merge. Our actions, documented through the content we share, can have very real effects on what colleges we get into, what jobs we qualify for and what people we meet.

“We have to start taking seriously the idea of social media as self-representation,” he said. “Social media is no longer just a mirror of the present, but also the past.”

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Syrian Rebel Seeks Prisoner Exchange to Free Hostages

Lebanese Captives in Syria Speak Out:
C.J. Chivers, a correspondent for The New York Times, spoke with two Lebanese men held captive in Syria for seven months. Syrian rebels accuse them and seven others of being members of Hezbollah.

BAB AL-SALAM, Syria — When Syrian rebels stopped two buses of Lebanese travelers in the spring and took 11 passengers hostage, they set off a cascade of fallout: riots at the Beirut airport, retaliation kidnappings against Syrians in Lebanon and a deepening of the sectarian character of the war.

Since that day in May, as civil war has raged and opposition fighters have gained momentum in their bid to oust President Bashar al-Assad, the rebels have continued to detain most of their prisoners, having released two as a good-will gesture. The rest, nine men who the captors insist are members of Hezbollah — which the prisoners deny — will be released only as part of a prisoner exchange, the rebel commander holding the group said.

The commander, Amar al-Dadikhi of the North Storm brigade, which has been holding the prisoners at an undisclosed location in Syria’s northern countryside, said in interviews that he would free the hostages if the Syrian government released two prominent opposition figures and if Lebanon freed all Syrian activists in government custody.

The men’s prospects for freedom, he said, are “in the Syrian government’s hands, and the Lebanese government’s hands.”

Their detention began after they were removed at gunpoint from buses driving though Syria while returning from a Shiite religious pilgrimage to Iran. The case has remained stubbornly unresolved, even as it has raised questions about the character and criminality of some of the rebels whom the West has hesitatingly backed.

The hostage-taking also sullied the reputation of the Free Syrian Army, the loosely organized antigovernment fighting groups. Without any public evidence to support the claim that the hostages are members of Hezbollah, the case has exposed the limits of the Free Syrian Army’s influence over rebels who fly its banner.

The Free Syrian Army’s leadership appears not to have been able to persuade Mr. Dadikhi to release the men, even as it seeks international recognition and tangible military aid, two desires undermined by the hostage case.

Mr. Dadikhi, a large and scarred man who is alternately praised by many opposition activists for battlefield bravery and whispered about as an accomplished smuggler who once maintained extensive ties to the government, claims to have 1,300 armed fighters and a network of cross-border contacts. His control of the border crossing that leads to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, makes him a power broker by default.

Col. Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, a former Syrian military officer and one of the Free Syrian Army commanders in the Aleppo region, declined to comment on the case beyond saying that he was aware of the demands of Mr. Dadikhi, whom he called Abu Ibrahim.

“Abu Ibrahim has his requests,” he said. “If they are taken care of, he will free the Lebanese.”

Relatives of the hostages, reached by telephone in Beirut, expressed deep anger upon hearing Mr. Dadikhi’s demands. “Let them capture someone from the regime. Why abduct Lebanese? What do we have to do with the revolution?” said the wife of one of the hostages. “They are liars; they won’t release them. It is just blackmail.”

Mr. Dadikhi allowed two journalists from The New York Times to meet with two of the hostages — Ali Abass, 30, and Ali Tormos, 54 — for about 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon. The men appeared to be in good health, and they said they and the other hostages had not been harmed.

They expressed weariness and asked that Lebanon and Syria meet their captors’ demands. “It has been a long time, and we want to go home,” Mr. Abass said.

The interview was held in a former government office at the border crossing from Syria to Kilis, Turkey. Mr. Dadikhi agreed to leave the room while the hostages spoke. The meeting remained all but scripted.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Bits Blog: Android Malware Creeps Into Cellphone Bills

Smartphones are meant to be headache-free compared with old-school computers. But malicious software written for Android devices can be even sneakier than the malware that invaded PCs.

The most prevalent form of Android malware scrapes small amounts of money from smartphone owners by making secret charges to their phone bills, according to a report published by Lookout, a mobile security company in San Francisco. This type of malware is called toll fraud, and it has the potential to fool plenty of people who don’t pay close attention to their phone bills every month.

But how does toll fraud work if the carriers control our bills? The process is actually very complex, said Derek Halliday, a product manager at Lookout.

First, it helps to understand a legitimate transaction involving text messages. Say, for example, a person wants to send a text message to a service to buy a new ringtone. When this happens, the cellular network forwards the text message to a middleman service, which handles the transaction between the wireless provider and the ringtone provider. The ringtone provider then shoots a message to the cellphone owner asking for confirmation of the order. When the customer confirms the order, he receives the ringtone, his cellphone bill is charged, and the carrier takes a cut and gives the rest of the money to the ringtone provider and the middleman service.

Here’s how toll fraud works: A person downloads a malicious app. The app invisibly sends a text message to a service that uses a middleman service that has a relationship with the malware author. A confirmation message is sent back to the malware, which blocks it from being seen by the customer and confirms the charge. The charge goes to the user’s bill, and the carrier takes its cut and gives the rest of the money to the service and the middleman, and thus the malware author.

In its  report, Lookout estimates that from the beginning of 2012 to the end of 2013, 18 million Android users may encounter malware. About 72 percent of the malware that Lookout detected this year was toll fraud, and the company expects this number to grow, because even though the process is complex, the code isn’t difficult to replicate. The company advised cellphone owners to regularly check their bills for suspicious charges.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Wealth Matters: As End of Gift Tax Exemption Nears, Ways to Use It Proliferate

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Mark E. Haranzo, a partner at the law firm Withers Bergman, helps clients use the so-called power of substitution, by setting up a trust that allows someone to put in cash now and exchange it for other assets in the future.

HOLIDAY shoppers and tax filers are known for procrastinating. This year, they’re joined by the wealthy who have still not decided whether to make a gift under a generous gift tax exemption that may soon disappear.

Back in December 2010 President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner reached an agreement to raise the exemption levels on estate and gift taxes to $5 million a person as part of a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. (This year, that rate was adjusted upward for inflation to $5.12 million.)

As I have often written, this was an amazing giveaway to the superrich. But it also provoked anxiety among those at the next level down — the merely very rich — for whom giving away as much as $10 million a couple, to avoid higher taxes when they die, was not as simple a matter. The gifts represented a larger percentage of their net worth.

Now, with a little more than two weeks left in the year, tax lawyers and advisers say the wealthy are scrambling to make gifts before the exemption expires.

“We are having this come up daily,” said Mitchell A. Drossman, national director of wealth planning strategies for U.S. Trust. “One of the first things I’m asking is, ‘Why are they warming up to this idea now? Is it that they didn’t want to make the gift? They didn’t know how? They didn’t get around to it?’ ”

With so little time left, advisers have come up with quick and easy ways to get the gift done for tax purposes this year.

A simple solution is to forgive any loans made to family members. This is a fairly painless way to use up some of the gift tax exemption because most parents never expected their children to repay those loans and would have forgiven those loans at death anyway.

While giving cash outright is easy, few wealthy people want to do that. The exemption may be at a historically high level, but the wealthy still want to give assets that will continue to grow.

Leiha Macauley, a partner and head of the Boston office at Day Pitney, says one solution is to set up a trust that allows someone to put in cash now and exchange it for other assets in the future, when the person has had enough time to have the assets properly appraised. Using the so-called power of substitution means that cash can become just about anything else next year.

“The power of substitution is key when we’re so pinched for time,” she said. “Appraisals are not coming out quickly enough. And people giving right up to the limit makes us nervous, because what if the appraisal says something is worth $6.2 million and then the I.R.S. says you owe tax?”

Typical assets that people swap in later include a home, which they then rent back from the trust, or a large life insurance policy, which can be purchased with the cash. But Andy Katzenstein, a partner in the personal planning department at the law firm Proskauer Rose, said he had clients ready to swap more nontraditional assets into trusts. One has a collection of Ferrari sports cars, while another couple has art that is valuable but that they no longer like displaying in their house.

These assets also have the virtue of being relatively painless to part with. The man with the Ferraris can pay the trust rent when he drives one of the cars. (The rent further reduces the estate’s value.) The couple with the art already had it in storage.

But Mr. Katzenstein cautioned those choosing this option to know the law, particularly if they plan to keep using these assets. “The devil is in the details,” he said. “If you don’t follow the rules you get into trouble. Make sure you have a real lease, you pay the rent every month and it also has to be fair market rent.”

Mark E. Haranzo, a partner at the law firm Withers Bergman, said he had suggested to clients with private companies that they use the cash as essentially a down payment on a loan to put all or part of their company into a trust for their children. He said the general rule of thumb was to put down 10 percent of the value of the company and then use the company’s profits to pay off the loan.

For the really rushed, Mr. Katzenstein said, another option is to include the power to rewrite the terms of the trust next year if their lawyer does not have time to customize a trust for them before the end of the year. This is done by naming someone to the role of “trust protector” and allowing that person to rewrite the trust at a later date.

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Rice Drops Bid for Secretary of State, Citing Opposition

WASHINGTON — Susan E. Rice, the Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, has withdrawn her name from consideration for secretary of state, in the face of relentless opposition from Republicans in Congress over her role in the aftermath of the deadly attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

In a letter to President Obama, Ms. Rice said she concluded that “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly — to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. The tradeoff is simply not worth it to our country.”

Mr. Obama, who spoke with Ms. Rice on Thursday, said he accepted her request with regret, describing her as “an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant.”

He said she “will continue to serve as our ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my cabinet and national security team.”

“While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our national interests first,” Mr. Obama’s statement said.

The president had steadfastly defended Ms. Rice from attacks that she misled the American public in televised appearances after the attack in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. And until Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed ready to face down Ms. Rice’s critics on Capitol Hill.

The most vociferous of them was Senator John McCain of Arizona, but several other Republicans had joined in sharply questioning her suitability for the job.

One defender, Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is often mentioned as another candidate to become secretary of state, was among the first on Thursday to issue a statement reacting to Ms. Rice’s withdrawal.

“I’ve defended her publicly and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again because I know her character and I know her commitment,” Mr. Kerry said. “She’s an extraordinarily capable and dedicated public servant. Today’s announcement doesn’t change any of that. We should all be grateful that she will continue to serve and contribute at the highest level.

“As someone who has weathered my share of political attacks and understands on a personal level just how difficult politics can be, I’ve felt for her throughout these last difficult weeks, but I also know that she will continue to serve with great passion and distinction,” he added.

The debate over Ms. Rice had been a significant distraction during the Obama administration’s transition between its first and second terms, as many changes in top positions are expected, and difficult negotiations over resolving the nation’s fiscal crisis are dominating the domestic agenda.

It was unusual for so much attention to be focused on a potential nominee to a cabinet post before any selection had been announced, and for the administration to put on a full-court press on behalf of the contender.

And it was unorthodox, too, for her to be sent to Capitol Hill to defend herself in meetings with her critics, who only extended and even broadened their attack on her credentials.

Some officials said they feared that Mr. Obama was limiting his own maneuvering room by engaging the critics so vehemently.

“For them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous,” the president said at a news conference shortly after the election.

“When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” he continued. “And should I choose — if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity — the State Department, then I will nominate her.”

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World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life, and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women in this country formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said.

The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The change means that people are living longer, an outcome that public health experts praised. But it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing noncommunicable diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

Read More..

World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life, and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women in this country formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said.

The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The change means that people are living longer, an outcome that public health experts praised. But it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing noncommunicable diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

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European Leaders Hail Accord on Banking Supervision

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders gathering here Thursday for their year-end summit meeting hailed an agreement to place euro zone banks under a single supervisor, calling it a concrete measure to maintain the viability of the currency as well as a step in laying the groundwork for a broader economic union.

Pool photograph by Michael Euler

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and François Hollande, the French president, conferring on Thursday at a summit meeting of European leaders. "It's a good day for Europe," Mr. Hollande said.

The pact was hashed out in an all-night session of finance ministers that ended Thursday morning after France and Germany made significant compromises. Under the agreement, between 100 and 200 large banks in the euro zone will fall under the direct supervision of the European Central Bank.

A round of talks a week earlier broke up amid French-German discord over how many banks in the currency union should be covered by the new system.

In a concession to Germany, the finance ministers agreed that thousands of smaller banks would be primarily overseen by national regulators. But to satisfy the French, who wanted all euro zone banks to be held accountable, the E.C.B. would be able to take over supervision of any bank in the region at any time.

The agreement by the finance ministers, which still requires the approval of the European Parliament and some national parliaments including the German Bundestag, made it possible for E.U. leaders arriving here later Thursday to gather in a spirit unity.

“It’s a good day for Europe,” said François Hollande, the French president. “The crisis came from the banks, and mechanisms have been put in place that will mean nothing is as it was before.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the agreement was “a big step toward more trust and confidence in the euro zone.” The summit meeting could now focus “on strengthening economic coordination” and “set out a road map for the coming months,” she added.

In another measure to shore up the euro, the finance ministers approved the release of nearly €50 billion, or $65 billion, in further aid to Greece, including long-delayed payments, support that is crucial for the government to avoid defaulting on its debts.

“Today is not only a new day for Greece, it is indeed a new day for Europe,” Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, said ahead of the summit meeting.

But threatening to spoil the upbeat atmosphere were questions over the future leadership of Italy, where the economy is contracting, debt levels are rising, and Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, has threatened to try to reclaim the office in an election next year.

It remained unclear Thursday whether Mr. Berlusconi would run and, if that were to happen, whether he would campaign on promises to reverse reforms put in place by Mario Monti, the current prime minister. Even so, the re-emergence of Mr. Berlusconi — who attended a summit meeting of center-right parties in Brussels on Thursday — could destabilize markets and even rekindle the financial crisis.

The bank supervision plan was first discussed in June and wrapped up in a matter of months — record time by the glacial standards of E.U. rulemaking. The agreement should serve as a springboard for leaders to weigh further steps toward economic integration during their meeting.

Such measures could include a unified system, and perhaps shared euro area resources, to ensure failing banks are closed in an orderly fashion. This could be followed, in time, by measures intended to reinforce economic and monetary union, including, possibly, the creation of a shared fund that could be used to shore up the economies of vulnerable members of the euro zone.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the agreement on banking supervision “marks an important step towards a stable economic and monetary union, and toward further European integration.” But he noted that governments and the European Commission still had to work on the details of the supervision mechanism.

The new system should be fully operational by March 2014, but ministers left the door open for the E.C.B. to push that date back if the central bank would “not be ready for exercising in full its tasks.”

A series of compromises were needed for finance ministers to reach agreement on banking supervision.

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IHT Rendezvous: In China, Fears Ours Would Be a 'One-Week Puppy'

BEIJING — China has many genuine pet lovers who care well for their dogs, but also many owners who don’t. The dog trade is virtually unsupervised and selling sick animals to unsuspecting customers is common. Animal shelters are full. The pet scene is tough. Buying a dog, which I write about in my latest Letter from China, can be a risky business.

“Some breeders just want to make money. Some are real animal lovers,” said Xing Xiaosi, an editor and marketer at goumin.com, a Web site for dog lovers in China that offers an interactive education and information platform.

“But in general, the situation isn’t that positive or optimistic,” she said.

A week after we bought our boxer puppy, Xiao Tongzhi, or Little Comrade, he fell ill.

Knowing the horror stories, I took him to the vet, feeling queasy.

Here’s how Ms. Xing described an all-too common scenario: “Many dogs are not well treated in kennels and if the owners feel the dog looks sick, they may give it an injection to stimulate it, and make it more active. It usually lasts for about a week. They hope to sell the dog within a week to make their money, but the dog may die very soon after the week. If the buyer takes it to an animal hospital for treatment it may live. But if he doesn’t want to spend the money, it won’t.”

The serious — possibly deadly — illnesses include puppy distemper, canine parvovirus and canine coronavirus, usually contracted in dirty and crowded conditions at kennels.

Was Little Comrade a “one-week puppy,” as they are called?

Thankfully, the vet said he had only caught a cold. He tested negative for parvovirus and distemper, though he had been exposed to coronavirus, she said. Beijing’s cold had turned even harsher the weekend we bought him in early December, with temperatures dropping below freezing.

Still, the vet didn’t take any chances, administering anti-distemper serum and large amounts of antibiotics. The bottom line was — all puppies are vulnerable to serious disease because of the conditions they are often kept in before sale.

Overall, animal rights awareness here is low, said Ms. Xing.

“Many people are not responsible towards their pets,” she said. “They buy them as if they were toys. Then, once they have them back home, they feel they are difficult to care for because they urinate and defecate and they feel that’s dirty.”

“Some people throw their pets away when the family gets a baby,” she added. “When they’re abandoned some people do try to look for a new home. But many just throw them into the streets.”

As a result, animal shelters in Beijing and other cities are full.

“People’s consciousness about keeping pets needs to be raised,” Ms. Xing said. “They need to feel responsible for their lives.”

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App Smart: Apps Help Extend the Battery Life of Devices

As you jet off on a winter vacation or a holiday season trip to see family, chances are you’ll face a 21st-century problem: mobile device battery angst. It’s a never-ending itch at the back of your thoughts. Though we all love to use our smartphones to stave off boredom, or to navigate a new city, every moment of use eats precious battery time. And, particularly during a journey, you never know when you will find power next.

Thanks to my job, I experience more battery angst than most people, so I have tried some battery life apps. You may too. But unlike other types of apps, you need to be wary with these.

Apple’s tight control of iOS means battery apps on the App Store, even popular ones like Battery Life Pro All-in-One (free on iTunes), cannot automatically control an iPhone or iPad’s real-time battery consumption. This is because of Apple’s own systems for protecting battery life and app security. That said, there are some supposed best practices you can follow to keep your iDevice’s battery healthy. And there are ways you can manually adjust your phone.

Battery Doctor Pro is one of the best-designed battery advice apps ($1 on iTunes). Its main page has a graph showing current battery charge and a grid of icons that activate submenus. The “status” submenu lists estimates of how much talk time your battery offers at that moment, how much video playback and so on. The “inspection” submenu offers a list of actions to help extend battery life — like disabling Wi-Fi. Some of these actions are accompanied with tips on how to carry them out. These are the really useful parts of the app, which teach you about your phone.

Another useful feature is the “maintain” submenu, which guides you through a process said to increase the performance of lithium batteries. This involves letting the battery run down to less than 20 percent charge, then charging it to 100 percent and letting it remain on charge for a while.

Battery Doctor Pro has a long list of other options, like a selection of themes — monitoring the device, keeping track of charges — but really these are just useless frills. For example, it may be interesting to use the “monitor” to see what code your phone is running, but it will not be of immediate use in extending battery life.

Battery Boost Magic (free on iTunes) is a very similar app, with a slightly flashier interface, and its battery life tips section may be more easily accessible for iDevice beginners. Essentially, however, this app works in the same way as Battery Doctor Pro. If you are really into these apps, Battery Life Pro All-in-One has a very flashy interface, although it too works the same way.

Android device owners face a different situation. Android apps can get access directly to some settings in the device to help preserve battery life without the user’s having to dive into them manually. But the more open design of Android itself presents a problem, because some apps can run in ways that really do eat up battery life.

The 2X Battery — Battery Saver app (free) is perhaps one of the more straightforward battery life apps for Android. It indicates how long a battery has left until it runs out and also offers alerts about whether power-hungry systems like GPS are turned on. Tapping these alerts takes you directly to Android’s settings so you can turn off services to save battery life. The app also has different modes, so it can automatically control a device’s behavior — turning Wi-Fi off for long intervals at night, for example, on the premise that you are not using the device while asleep.

Easy Battery Saver (free) is another good battery app. Its best feature is its main dashboard, which reports on current battery status and allows one-tap access to turn off or adjust Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, mobile data and screen brightness. Like 2X Battery, this app has different power-saving modes that try to minimize power-gulping activities like getting access to wireless networks. The app also shows graphically which apps seem to be using the most power. This data may prompt you to turn off an especially power-hungry app you may have forgotten is running, like a live wallpaper app.

The problem with these apps is that the next time you pick up your Android device, you might find you have turned off the very function you need. For example, you may have selected low screen brightness to save battery life, but suddenly find you need to read the screen in a brightly lighted room. Thus you may have to jump in and out of your battery saver apps to adjust their settings.

My advice would be to concentrate on free versions of these different apps on iOS or Android. Try them for a while to see if they help, or at least teach you good habits. But do not panic about battery apps; you bought your phone to use it, after all.

Quick Calls

YouSendIt, the popular cloud file-sharing service, has introduced an exclusive Windows Phone 8 app on the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820. The app has all the usual YouSendIt tricks about syncing and sharing files, and users can share files directly between phones using NFC. ... Etsy, the online store for handmade crafts, has finally released a dedicated Android app (free on Google Play) to help you shop among its wares.

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Health Centers Find Opportunity in Brownfields

PHILADELPHIA — The community health center rising on a derelict corner here in West Philadelphia never would have broken ground if not for the asbestos inside the building that was demolished to make way for it. Because of the contamination, Spectrum Health Services received a $2 million federal cleanup grant, the first piece of a $14 million construction financing puzzle.

When complete, the 36,000-square-foot building will provide a new home for a health center that has been squeezed into a deteriorating strip mall nearby for decades. It will also be the latest in a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers, in essence taking a potential source of health problems for a community and turning it into a place for health care. In recent years, health care facilities have been built on cleaned-up sites in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

“These health care providers are getting good at it,” said Elizabeth Schilling, policy manager for Smart Growth America, an advocacy group. “They have internalized the idea that this is an opportunity for them.”

Because these sites are contaminated, many qualify for government tax credits and grants, providing health centers with vital seed money to build. Community health centers, by design, exist to serve populations in poor neighborhoods, where there also tend to be available but contaminated properties like old gas stations, repair shops and industrial sites.

In fact, many of the country’s 450,000 contaminated sites, known as brownfields, are in poor neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These tracts are disproportionately concentrated in poor communities because contaminated sites are more difficult to redevelop if property values are depressed. Banks are often reluctant to finance construction on a property that might require a costly cleanup.

“In communities where the real estate market isn’t working that well, you end up with a brownfield,” said Jody Kass, executive director of New Partners for Community Revitalization, a brownfield advocacy group.

“It’s a Catch-22,” said Phyllis B. Cater, chief executive of Spectrum Health Services. “The environmental issues are significant and yet there are scarce resources for communities to do the cleanup and remediation that’s required.”

But if the state or federal government provides the first piece of financing, other funders are more likely to fall into step.

Community health centers, in particular, are under pressure to grow. By 2015, the number of Americans who rely on community health centers for care is expected to double to 40 million from the 20 million who relied on the centers in 2010, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. The Affordable Care Act allocated $11 billion to expand these centers. Of that, $1.5 billion was allotted to construction.

But finding a viable site is not always easy. It took Spectrum 15 years to find its new home on Haverford Avenue. The original building, an aging medical office, went up for auction in 2007 after the owner was arrested on a tax evasion charge. Spectrum bought the property for $650,000. Ms. Cater speculated that if Spectrum hadn’t bought the site, it most likely would have fallen into disrepair like the decaying row houses and the dilapidated bodega across the street that Spectrum hopes to redevelop eventually.

Spectrum currently occupies 10,000 square feet in a rundown strip mall four blocks away. The center is divided among three crowded spaces, so employees must walk outside to get from the medical offices to the billing department. The treatment rooms are dreary and cramped, with holes in the drywall and collapsing ceiling panels.

“I’ve seen better centers in rural Mississippi. This is not how you support a community,” Ms. Cater said.

When it opens next summer, the new, three-story center will have 34 exam rooms, eight dental rooms, a spacious community center and a full-service laboratory. It will also employ twice as many people as the current facility, adding 66 jobs to Spectrum’s payroll.

The 50-year-old building was in poor shape, but it was the presence of asbestos that allowed Spectrum to qualify for the critical first piece of financing: a $2 million brownfield redevelopment grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The organization also received an additional $2 million H.U.D. loan that was tied to the brownfield grant, a $1.7 million redevelopment grant from Pennsylvania and $3.45 million in other loans.

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Mandela Is Suffering From Lung Infection

Alexander Joe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In Soweto, an area of Johannesburg, a resident walked past images of Nelson Mandela, the 94-year-old former president of South Africa and hero of the antiapartheid movement, who remained hospitalized on Tuesday.

JOHANNESBURG — Former President Nelson Mandela, who has been hospitalized since Saturday, is suffering from a recurrence of a lung infection and is responding to treatment, the office of South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma, announced on Tuesday.

It was the first indication of Mr. Mandela’s medical condition since he was flown to Pretoria and taken to a hospital for unspecified tests over the weekend. It was his second hospitalization this year; in February he s checked into a hospital for tests to address a chronic stomach complaint, the government said at the time. He was released after minor diagnostic surgery, officials said.

Mr. Mandela, who is 94 and increasingly frail, was said by Mr. Zuma’s office to be “receiving appropriate treatment and he is responding to the treatment.”

The current stay in the hospital is the longest in recent memory, raising fears that Mr. Mandela’s condition is grave. Government officials have been upbeat about his prognosis while offering few details about his condition. Given his age, any infection is by its nature serious, medical experts say.

“I’m not sure we should press the panic button every single time a man of his age has the sniffles,” Mark Sonderup, vice chairman at the South African Medical Association, told The Mail and Guardian, a weekly newspaper, this week. “But unfortunately, we have to accept that simple health matters for a person of that age can turn very serious, very quickly.”

Mr. Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, has suffered from respiratory ailments for years, in part owing to the 27 years he spent in prison, most of it on Robben Island, working in a bleak quarry. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1988 and had fluid drained from his lungs.

Mr. Mandela retired from public life some years ago, and was last seen publicly at the celebrations for the World Cup soccer tournament, which South Africa hosted in 2010, although he receives frequent visits from old friends and visiting dignitaries.

In January 2011, he was hospitalized for an acute respiratory infection, and the news of that illness set off a panic about his health.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited South Africa in August, she stopped by his home in the rural village of Qunu to see him. In a photograph of the two of them, Mr. Mandela beamed his trademark grin, but looked frail seated in an armchair and dressed in a gray cardigan.

Mr. Mandela led the African National Congress to a resounding victory in the first fully democratic elections in South Africa’s history in 1994, after successfully negotiating a peaceful transition from white rule. Despite harsh treatments at the hands of the apartheid government, Mr. Mandela advocated forgiveness and reconciliation, making him an icon of peacemaking the world over. After a single term as president, Mr. Mandela retired from politics in 1999.

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DealBook: Wallflowers of Silicon Valley Get Asked to Dance

SAN FRANCISCO — After years of being wallflowers at Silicon Valley’s hottest tech conferences and Sean Parker’s after-parties, enterprise technology firms are now part of the “in” crowd.

The flameouts of social media stocks over the last year have left venture capital firms searching for a more measured approach to investing.

“Watching capital markets do what they just did — to Facebook, to Groupon, to Zynga — not a lot of people want to get over their skis,” said Hans Swildens, the managing director of Industry Ventures, who said he had not invested in consumer tech since 2010. “They want a nice ride down the hill.”

That means technology sectors — including mobile security, data analytics and storage companies and mobile payment systems — which previously elicited a shrug or a snooze, are suddenly finding millions of dollars of investments coming at them. Here’s a look at some of the more promising sectors.

SEALING THE LEAKS Increasingly, employees are taking sensitive corporate data home with them, frustrated with the limits of corporate technology and using their personal phones and tablets to work. That has created huge security and compliance headaches for chief information officers struggling to regain control over corporate data.

Enter the mobile security industry. Venture firms like Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners are backing companies that wrap extra security around employees’ personal iPhones and Android devices.

Lookout, a start-up, has already been valued at $1 billion. Its software offers spyware and malware protection, helps locate lost or stolen phones and alerts users when their phones have connected to unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

Okta, a start-up that helps employees at companies like LinkedIn and Pandora securely connect to their work applications from their personal devices, recently raised $25 million in fresh financing from Sequoia Capital.

The mobile security sector is also attracting merger deals. ZenPrise, a mobile security start-up, was acquired last week by Citrix, a maker of virtualization software. Investors expect similar acquisitions to follow.

STORING THE BYTES New storage methods will be critical to harnessing the gigabytes of data now pouring in from those mobile devices, as well as the Web, social networks and video. To accommodate the fire hose of information, companies have started revamping their data centers. Increasingly, they are moving away from expensive disk drives and slow backup solutions to the cheaper, high-speed flash memory used in iPhones and digital cameras.

“For 30 years, companies stored everything on spinning disks. Now they’re moving to a flash memory-based model,” said Joseph Ansanelli, a partner at Greylock Partners.

Investors are taking note. Fusion-io, a high-capacity flash memory company, had a successful public offering last year, then increased revenue by 82 percent, to $359 million, in its latest fiscal year. Its technology packs in storage capacity and speeds up database performance — a compelling proposition for Facebook, its largest customer, which now stores 2.7 billion “Likes” and 300 million photos a day, or roughly 105 terabytes of data each half-hour.

Flash storage sites like Pure Storage and Nimble Storage are now attracting millions in venture backing. Pure Storage emerged from stealth mode only a year ago and now serves a wide range of businesses, including Sierra Nevada Brewing and the city of Davenport, Iowa. In August, it raised $40 million, bringing its total funding to $95 million. A month later, Nimble Storage doubled its funding with $40 million in new capital from Sequoia, Accel and others.

CRUNCHING MOUNTAINS OF DATA Some of the hottest innovations are in large-scale data mining. With the right analytical tools, big data can be used to solve complex problems quickly.

“Companies now need to be able to do large-scale data mining and analysis in real time, as opposed to one guy in the I.T. department running a pricing analysis over the weekend,” said Rich Wong, a partner at Accel Partners.

Corporate demand for such high-powered analysis helped make Splunk, a data analytics company, one of 2012’s top-performing I.P.O.’s.

Investors searching for the next Splunk are now watching several start-ups. One front-runner is Cloudera, founded by alumni of Yahoo, Google, Oracle and Facebook. The firm incorporates Hadoop, an open-source software, to make complex data queries that help drug firms predict adverse drug side effects, or media companies target readers with relevant content.

DIGITAL WALLET It may not be the end of paper money just yet, but more and more commercial products are making mobile payments a huge business. In hindsight, eBay’s $1.5 billion acquisition 10 years ago of PayPal, the mobile payments company, was a bargain; PayPal is expected to generate $10 billion in payment volume this year. Square, the four-year-old mobile payments start-up run by a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, has caught up. In November, it said that it, too, was now processing $10 billion in payments a year.

Both are also vying for attention with Google and Intuit, which offer mobile payment services, and, more recently, with big retail chains like Best Buy and Walmart, which said in August that it were working on ways for customers to pay with smartphones.

Even with brutal competition, venture capitalists are still eagerly throwing money at a new crop of start-ups like Braintree, which helps e-commerce sites process credit card payments, and Stripe, which offers a similar service for software developers.

In the last two years, Braintree has raised nearly $70 million. And, this year, Stripe raised $40 million from venture firms and angels, including some of the PayPal founders, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin.

Smaller start-ups may have a harder time taking on PayPal and Square as those services become more ubiquitous. They will also have to compete on the security front, where even one hacker breach can lead to a lack of confidence among customers.

MOBILE CONCIERGE Apps, with the proverbial “touch of a button,” have converted phones into urban remote controls, allowing customers to order meals, errands, car rides, concert tickets and even cocktails.

The darling of the space is Uber, an app that lets users order a car service with the touch of a screen. The three-year-old start-up has already raised $50 million from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief.

Though Uber has run into battles with municipal transportation authorities, other firms, including Cabulous, Taxi Magic and Hailo, are jumping into the space.

Similarly, GrubHub’s app offers mobile convenience for food delivery. Hotel Tonight’s app does the same for same-day hotel bookings. Every day at noon, spontaneous or stranded travelers can find heavily discounted rates for hotel rooms that night. The two-year-old mobile app has already raised more than $35 million in financing.

A younger start-up, WillCall, lets users buy concert and theater tickets. And Coaster even lets users order, pay and tip for cocktails at bars with their smartphones. Those two apps are only in San Francisco, but venture capitalists are optimistic that on-demand mobile services are no fad.

“Soon there will be a remote control for your life,” said Peter Fenton, a venture partner at Benchmark Capital. “The future has arrived.”

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